The Undeniable Grin (2000)

I wrote this brief tale in one session while lying in bed just after completing my first novel. I felt a great deal of relief when my novel was finished, as it had taken an intense six or seven months of constant work, and I wanted to write many short simple pieces as a counterbalance. I rarely write in bed, and these days I hardly ever read in bed either, I don't know why; but possibly The Undeniable Grin is responsible...

It was the first and last time I visited a theatre. I’ve never been a cultured man, because I’m still a boy at heart. If I went to see a play now, it’s certain I would be ejected from the premises for disruptive behaviour. The temptation to cause mischief is too strong, and that’s entirely due to what happened to me in that original audience, when I sat near the back with my girlfriend.

Natasha was seventeen, a year younger than me. She didn’t care for the amusement arcades and rickety rides of the funfair, so I was forced to think of a more sophisticated venue for our introductory date. Uncle Max suggested the local playhouse. A roving company had established itself there for a single evening with a new romantic drama. I hadn’t read any reviews, but it seemed ideal. I was at the age when I believed poetry could soften up any woman.

A big mistake, for the production in question was an experimental piece. I don’t remember the name of the author, but he wasn’t famous. I reckon he was that tall fellow who was flapping around the lobby when we entered. Natasha had her arm linked in mine and I felt very much like a genuine grown-up lover. We were the youngest there, but I don’t think we looked out of place. Uncle Max had lent me his smartest suit in exchange for several of my best comic books.

I bought the tickets with money earned from my Saturday job in the newsagents, and we passed into the auditorium. The usher showed us our seats and luckily our row was as distant from the stage as possible. I didn’t want too many people sitting behind me when I chanced a kiss. We sat down on the squeaky seats and waited for the theatre to fill. The interior was grand but faded, with chipped plaster cherubim clinging to the ceiling and frayed velvet drapes.

The cheap sculptures which occupied every nook and recess in the sidewalls reminded me of the background characters in my comics. They were poor representations of people and animals, hidden by potted plants but obtrusive enough to trouble the eye. When I directed my gaze at the stage, they poked themselves into the corners of my vision. Strange to say, it actually hurt. Tears hatched like eggs under my lids. I decided to save all my sly glances for Natasha.

But something new caught my attention. If you’ve ever wondered who pays for a private box in a crumbling regional theatre, then you’re on your own. I already know. It’s no mystery to me because I saw him enter with his wife. It was Mr Lucas, the newsagent who employed me. He stood for a full minute before taking his seat, which was a real chair rather than a folding contraption like ours, fiddling with the creases on his trousers. Either he was embarrassed or else he hoped to give everyone a reasonable chance to notice him.

An unfortunate incident, as it turned out. It reminded me again of comics. Apart from Natasha, they were my main passion. I liked the ones full of superheroes best. Mr Lucas allowed me to read them fresh off the shelves while I waited to serve customers in his shop. I wasn’t ashamed to be still under their spell. Uncle Max was also an enthusiast and had convinced me they were good fun at any age. Not that I planned to reveal my hobby to Natasha. She was too perfect, with her long tumbling hair, to tolerate such a simple pleasure.

Anyway, I pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind and prepared for the beginning of the play. The audience wasn’t vast but adequate for this place at that time. We settled as the lights dimmed. Somewhere, in the bowels of the building, there must have been a man whose task was to dim. I took that responsibility later, in respect of Natasha’s view of me. But her love, if there was any, went out abruptly, and this swelling gloom was gradual and less alarming.

The ragged curtains parted to mild applause. No scenery, no props. A man on a bare stage. Frankly I felt let down. Just a single character, muttering. This was supposed to be daring theatre, a minimalist romance, but it came over as mean. I was constantly expecting other actors to run on, to liven up the drudge. But they didn’t. A monotone speech and jerky postures. A glut of meaningful pauses.

I began to sweat. Was I really going to have to sit through another three hours of this? The very concept was appalling. Then the spotlights died, one at a time. I assume the author wanted to manipulate atmosphere directly, as well as through the words of his character. But the process didn’t work for me. Soon the entire stage was black except for the man, wrapped in his unearned halo. Then his feet disappeared and the darkness crawled up his legs to his knees.

The beam of the remaining spotlight was being narrowed to achieve an unspecified psychological effect. The man was talking about love, but in an unbearably cryptic fashion. I’m sure he made important points, but I don’t know what. Ask the author yourself, if you can find him. Now all that was left of the character was his mouth. Two pink lips and a set of bright teeth, hovering in the void.

This seemed to be an echo of many of my favourite superheroes. They tended to wear sealed costumes and masks that covered their faces apart from the mouth. They had names like Antman, The Phantom Joker, Dr Squid, Captain Superb, The Green Clown, The Red Herring, The Excessive Clump, Buttertalons, The Dull Gleam, Nadir the Octaroon. They were all loners, individualists, mavericks. Generally, but not always, they fought on the side of good. They never recommended their tailors.

I was falling into a trap set by boredom. I willed myself to ponder on something, anything else. I had recourse to a last desperate measure. I turned in my seat without warning and kissed Natasha on the lips. She slapped me. A loud slap. In the almost total darkness it wasn’t obvious to our neighbours what she had done. They would have worked it out, of course, but I couldn’t bear the dishonour. Call it reflex or immaturity, but I smothered the truth with a shout:

“The Undeniable Grin has struck his enemy!”

There was a selection of giggles, then someone added: “He must have very long arms to reach you from there!”

I nodded, although the gesture was lost in the murk. “They are made of elastic and can stretch halfway around the world!”

To my astonishment, nobody objected to this absurdity. Not a single complaint reached my ears. Instead, the audience supported me. There was a squeal and a sudden cry of rage:

“The Undeniable Grin has pinched my thigh!”

A voice asked: “Why? What did you do to him?”

The actor on stage fell silent. Maybe he had forgotten his lines in the excitement, or perhaps he was simply waiting for us to finish before returning to his monologue. He fell silent, yes, but he kept grinning, a wide floating smile in the dusk, and this was his fatal error. It seemed an admission of guilt. In our minds now, he was this farcical superhero, this implausible mutant, and for an unknown reason he was opposed to us, radiating harm from his hub of power.

The pause was brief. Invisible and nonexistent arms snaked out from the stage and violated us. We screamed.

“The Undeniable Grin has poked me in the eye!”

“The rascal has stolen my wallet!”

“He groped my wife without permission!”

“The bugger has filled my mouth with obscenities!”

“He’s forcing me to have unnatural thoughts!”

“About me, probably! And stop tickling me there!”

“It’s not me. It’s The Undeniable Grin!”

“He persuaded me yesterday to declare myself bankrupt!”

“He made me gamble away my salary on the horses!”

“Everything I’ve ever done wrong in my life was really the fault of The Undeniable Grin!”

“That’s true for all of us!”

And so on and so forth. I can’t imagine where all this nonsense was leading to. Perhaps it would have ended in a party. But it went beyond a joke before the management could react properly. There was a loud thud, the tipping of a heavy object out of a soft one and over a low edge into a vertical distance that ended on a hard tiled floor. One of the tiles cracked. When the house lights came on all at once, we were no wiser. It took long minutes for our eyes to adjust to the glare, but when they did we saw how simple the answers were.

The low edge was the wall of the private box, the soft object was a chair and the heavy one was Mr Lucas. His wife was standing and looking down at his broken body. Her hand was held to her mouth and she tried to appear shocked as she groaned:

“The Undeniable Grin has murdered my boring husband!”

All eyes turned to the stage, blinking guiltily as they accused. The poor actor was a man after all. He must have changed back. Having had so many amazing feats attributed to him, it seemed unlikely he was capable of trumping any of them. But he did. As his body came back into sharp focus, his grin utterly vanished.

The Blue Dwarf (1995)

This tale appeared in my collection, The Smell of Telescopes, together with its three sequels, all of which combine to form a story sequence called 'The Monmouth Wheel'. It was one of those stories I began writing without having any clue as to what would happen until I got to the end. When I compose fiction I usually have at least a vague idea of a potential conclusion, but not always; and on those occasions when I don't I feel I am reading the story at the same time I am writing it.

“All I require” the blue dwarf cried, as he placed his hand on my knee, “are your trousers and your soul.”

“Oh, little man,” said I, “this is a foolish request! They are both too large for you. They would flap in the wind and set up a commotion. Who would want to be your friend then? You would have to shout above the noise: ‘Blueberry pie at my house.’ Even so, no-one would come to visit. You would have to sit alone, absurdly attired.

“But let me tell you of the time I bartered both. The world was a younger place then; we did not value so highly such things as trousers and souls. The former were objects merely to be worn; the latter were baubles brought out over dinner to amuse guests. Neither had pride of place in the wardrobe, as they do now.”

“I do not wish to hear this,” replied the blue dwarf, and he turned to go. But I soon had him by the scruff and he was forced to amend his statement: “Perhaps I will listen after all.”

“Very good,” I agreed. “It is possible you will learn a truth here, though I doubt it. The amoral fable suits my tongue rather better than the moral kind. Attend then, unclouded fellow.

“The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Gwent, by the borders of the river Severn. And there is no quiet there, nor silence. The waters have a saffron and sickly hue; and they do a fair bit of palpitating beneath the red eye of the sun...”

The blue dwarf sighed: “Bugger!”

Actually, I exchanged my trousers for a clock and a carrot, and lost my soul as I was doing so. Do you know Monmouth?

The market there is notorious for pickpockets; I knew this before I set out, yet took no precautions. I was intent on driving a hard bargain for my trousers. The imps who run the stalls are good at offering low prices for items that come their way. They can talk the meanest miser into parting with his silver for a length of old rope. It is essential to be on your guard at all times.

Nor are they too particular about where their goods come from. I suspect the clock I received fell off the back of a steeple, and the carrot had been uprooted from an allotment. But I was desperate; and the imps and their customers are protected by the market-overt law. This states that goods sold at such markets, whether stolen or not, cannot be returned to the original owner (with the clock came an irate pastor).

Anyway, after I had spent an hour or so talking one stall-owner into giving me the clock and carrot, and had divested myself of my baggy britches, I made my way back to my house. Halfway home, I realised my soul was missing. Nimble fingers had filched it. Doubtless it could now be found on a soul stall. But I had nothing on me with which to barter it back. I decided it would keep until the following morning, when I would return with an umbrella and a parrot.

In my kitchen, I made a thin soup with the carrot and set the clock above my hearth (the pastor grumbled about the fire and claimed it was singeing his heels.) At last there was a knock on the door and Myfanwy stood on the threshold. I invited her in, showed her the clock, poured the soup and gazed into her large brown eyes. The combination of broth and timepiece so impressed her she consented to marry me at once — the effect I had been aiming for. “Hurrah!” cried I.

We finished the meal and listened to the clock striking the hour. She suggested we go out for a walk. I declined, of course — I had no trousers. I made some excuse about wishing to stay at the table to hear the clock strike another hour. She thought this an excellent idea and suggested we pass the time by playing dice with our souls. Again I made my excuses; I told her my soul had caught a cold and had to be kept inside. She saw through this deception at once.

“And to think I nearly kissed a man without a soul!” she growled. She stood up to leave and I rushed to restrain her. She glanced down at my bare legs. “What’s more, without trousers too!” she added. It was all I could do not to fall on the floor and burst into tears. I fell into an easy chair and burst into tears instead.

Myfanwy had left me, and my efforts at seducing her with pendulum and root vegetable had come to nothing. She was the greatest baker of blueberry pie in the region and men of all kinds came flocking to her oven; she could afford to be choosy. She had picked off the crust of my amorous overtures to expose the lack of filling beneath. I had lost her for good. Let this be a lesson to all young lovers, especially in these days, when inflation and curry has pushed up the price of both trousers and souls. Wear the former and ‘ware the latter.

The following morning, I took my umbrella and parrot to the market in an effort to retrieve my soul. But it had been sold. I was much put out by this. The imp who owned the stall offered to do me a very nice soul in maroon-and-black, but there is nothing quite like having your own soul; it fits you like a favourite overcoat, or like an idea in a single word. The imp would not reveal to whom he had sold it. I decided to cut my losses and buy back my trousers.

Incredibly, my trousers had also been purchased. I was so stupefied that I relaxed my guard and ended up exchanging my umbrella and parrot for a pair of tinted spectacles. I wore the spectacles — they turned everything as blue as my funk — as a reminder to myself never to be so foolish again. Indeed, I have never taken them off.

I sat on the side of Monnow bridge (if you do not know Monmouth, this is quite close to Agincourt Square, behind the giant waterwheel) and dangled my legs above the fetid river. As I was grumbling there to myself, Owain ap Iorwerth came up to me. “What’s the matter, Gruffydd?” he chortled, pleased to find me in a state of despair. I told him. “Oh well!” he grinned and slapped me on the back. I think he meant for me to fall into the ravine, but I merely coughed loose a tooth.

Owain ap Iorwerth, you see, was my greatest rival for the hand of fair Myfanwy. I made my way home and, too depressed even to finish off the soup I had so lovingly prepared the day before, took to my bed. I was startled by a knock on the door. When I opened it, I was overjoyed to find Myfanwy there, holding my trousers and soul.

It seemed I had misjudged her. She loved me, to be sure, and after storming out of my house had made her way to the market. There she had searched for the items and bought them for me. My clock and carrot, she quickly confessed, were so utterly remarkable, both as singular objects and also as a sum greater than the parts, that she had seen the error of her ways. She begged my forgiveness.

Naturally, I told her it was I who needed to apologise. After some thought she agreed; I did so and we fell into each other’s arms. But, unfortunately, this is the real world; life is a sour cream poured on stones. It soon became apparent she had sold her own trousers and soul to purchase mine. A hatstand and three harpoons had been thrown in.

I was in a quandary. How could I marry a woman without trousers or soul? Neighbours would gossip; I should be ashamed to show myself in public. I did not mention this to her, of course; I am a sensitive sort of man. The sort of man who does not despise pink socks because of their colour, but because of their hue.

In the days that followed, I did my best to act as if nothing was amiss. But her blueberry pie lost its flavour, and her lithe limbs lost their ability to slide against mine without friction. More to the point, when we went out with each other, people stared at us. They suspected she was lacking trousers and a soul; you could see it in their eyebrows, which jumped alarmingly whenever we approached. Some even made jokes in our presence. “That’s the spirit!” they would cry, or, “What a turn up for the books!” Pedestrians can be very cruel.

Owain ap Iorwerth noticed as well, because one day she left me for him. He had done the noble thing, buying back her trousers and soul and returning them to her. This showed me up as a thoughtless lover. The irony was that he bartered his own soul and trousers to obtain hers. I gritted my teeth and, in order to impress Myfanwy with my sacrifice, re-exchanged my trousers and soul for Owain’s. This had the desired effect, but only for a while.

The long and the inside leg of it is that all three of us ended up exchanging and re-exchanging our trousers and souls a great many times. It was a ludicrous and vain episode of my life. Eventually, after a year of this fabric-and-phantom farce, the trousers and souls were jumbled up and we did not know which was which. It is an unbearable sensation, not knowing if your trousers and your soul are the ones you were born with, and we all rushed off in opposite directions, taking up residence in the three corners of the scalene world.

Before I left Monmouth, I made sure I took a blueberry pie with me, to remember Myfanwy by. And it still remains uneaten in my pocket. The day I meet her again will be the day I take a bite; the day I encounter Owain ap Iorwerth will be the day I beat him to death with it. It is tasty and solid enough for either eventuality.

“And that tale is absolutely true,” I told the blue dwarf, “which is why you shall never succeed in removing my trousers or my soul. I suggest you run along and torment someone your own size. I spy a woodlouse down there; it has a waist more your size.”

“You fool!” The blue dwarf wriggled out of my grasp. I saw now he was not really a dwarf; he was standing on his knees. When he arose, he was almost my own height. He pulled off his wig and his coat and stood there before me with a wide blue grin.

“Myfanwy!” cried I.

“Yes, you fool!” she returned. She reached into her pocket and took out a blueberry pie. “At last we meet again! I have been searching for so many years. Our trousers and souls were indeed jumbled; you have mine and I have yours. That is why I asked you to remove them. Now we can be married and live in near bliss for months!”

I shook my head. “A disguise, eh? I suspected this all along.” I pulled off my own wig and removed my own coat. “I am not Gruffydd after all; I am Owain ap Iorwerth. And I have come to take you away with me, to claim your love and your baking talents!”

Myfanwy threw back her head and laughed. “Exactly as I planned! You have fallen into my trap!” She removed her new wig and took off her new coat and it was Gruffydd himself who now glared at me. He shifted the blueberry pie in his hand and prepared to lunge. “At last I shall be avenged! I have waited long ages for this.”

“Ha!” I screamed. I followed his example; I pulled off my new wig and discarded my new coat. And then I jumped off my stilts and snatched the blueberry pie from his trembling fingers. “A blue dwarf!” he cried. “What is the meaning of this?”

I reached forward and pulled the tinted spectacles from his nose. At once he understood. He bellowed: “You are not a blue dwarf at all. You are a yellow imp!” I nodded and raced back to the market.

The bottom has dropped out of the trouser market; there is no longer life in souls. Blueberry pie is the new thing. Sometimes we resort to devious tactics to get it.

Travels with my Antinomy (2014)

I adore paradoxes. I collect them, think about them, try to invent new ones. I have loved paradoxes ever since I saw a reproduction of M.C. Escher's 'Waterfall' in a children's book when I was young. Discovering Zeno was, for me, a major revelation. The following story is based on my third favourite paradox, often attributed to Betrand Russell though probably it was not devised by him. For many years I confused the spelling of antimony the element with the spelling of antinomy the mutual incompatibility of two laws.

There is no absolute truth. Or is there? I went travelling with my knapsack and curiosity over a range of mountains far from home. I was looking for a village I had once been told about, a village where I might find something I had lost that was neither my senses nor my virginity. It was a long way, but ways are longer often than this one, so complain I did not.

At last, when the sun was setting beautifully in the west, where always it sets, at least to my knowledge, I saw the village spread below me. It was tinted rose and purple at that hour and I hurried down the slope towards it. There was a solitary tavern with an oaken door that yielded to my knocking. I asked for a room for the night and was given the attic.

After resting for a short time, I went down to where there was a blaze and mugs of cider available for me to slake my thirst. And while engaged in the arts of stretching my legs afore the flames and sharpening my innards on the brew, I asked the barman, who seemed an agreeable fellow, if there were any other men hereabouts who had a beard just like mine.

“Not only not like yours, but not like anyone else’s.”

“There are no beards here?”

“Every man in this village, Señor, is clean shaven.”

“You have a very busy barber.”

“Ah, the barber shaves only the men who do not shave themselves. That is the law among us who dwell here.”

“And no man ever neglects to shave or be shaved?”

“That is correct, Señor.”

Then I knew I was in the village I was seeking, the village where all men are smooth cheeked and either shave themselves or are shaved by the barber. So I tugged at my beard, the beard of a wanderer, and I sipped my cider and felt the warmth radiate outward from my body toward the fire, as if two different kinds of heat were about to meet and mingle.

“In that case,” I said lightly, “who shaves the barber?”

“Shaves the barber, Señor!”

“Yes indeed. Who?”

The barman sighed and tapped his nose; but it was mercifully clear he did not yet regard me as a troublemaker, merely as a stranger, an ordinary man who had finally asked the awkward but inevitable question he had been expecting for years, if not decades. He poured a mug of cider for himself and he shrugged and then he came over and sat next to me.

“The barber has two choices, Señor. He can shave himself or he can go to the barber to be shaved. There is only one barber in the village, so if he decides to visit the barber he will visit himself. In other words, he really has one choice and it is not even a choice. He must shave himself. But by tradition he shaves only the men who do not shave themselves.”

“So he cannot shave himself?”

“As you say, Señor. But he cannot grow a beard because there are only clean shaven men dwelling in this village.”

“That is the paradox,” I replied. “I had it once upon a time but I lost it in my youth. Now I have found it again.”

“What will you do with it, now you have it?”

“Take it with me when I leave.”

“But we need it, Señor; it is the only one we have. This is the village with only one barber, who is male, and who shaves all those, and only those, who do not shave themselves. If you take the paradox with you, what will we have left? And he is a very heavy man, too heavy for you to lift. I also believe he will fight back and perhaps slash open your throat.”

“My presence here spoils the paradox anyway.”

He gazed at my beard a long time.

“Yes, Señor, I suppose it does. But if you are gone in the morning, it will be repaired. The paradox will thus only be suspended for one night. And in fact you cannot take the paradox away with you, because while you are here there is no paradox. The paradox only works if every man in the village is clean shaven and you most definitely are not that.”

This was true. I realised that I had been questing for a rainbow or horizon, something that would move further away and out of reach the nearer I got to it. I understood that this was a logical consequence of my situation and that only one of two courses of action would help. I would either have to shave myself or else go to the barber to be shaved. So I said:

“May I borrow a razor from you tonight?”

“You may not, Señor.”

“Then I will have to visit the barber tomorrow morning.”

The barman lowered his head.

I finished my cider and went up to my room. There was a desk in a corner of the attic and a chair. I did not feel sleepy and so I decided to update my travel journal. I opened my knapsack and took it out, together with my quill and bottle of ink, which I arranged neatly on the desk. I heard footsteps outside and I went to the little window and peered cautiously out.

The barman was hurrying down the street in the moonlight. I guessed that he was going to rouse the barber and tell him to hide when I called round to see him in the morning. I would not easily get a shave here; but if I did manage to, I would certainly not be permitted to take the barber back with me. I would have to remain here, a prisoner, imbibing cider.

Shaking my head ruefully, because that is my favourite way of shaking it among the several methods I am aware of, I sat down and opened my journal to a new page. Then I dipped my quill into the ink and began writing. I told of my trek over the mountains and how I... but no, those were not the words that now lay on the page before me. I blinked at them.

My blinking was so rapid and my eyelashes are so long that the ink dried more quickly than it would have done had another man penned those words. It appeared that I had written an account of how to tend horses in a stable. Had the rigours and stresses of my journey muddled my brains? I began again on a clean page but once again the words tricked me.

Now I had written about gathering windfall apples in the orchards on the edge of the village. I tried a third time. Now my account told of milking goats on the slopes where the wild flowers grew.

A fourth and fifth time, a sixth time, seventh, eighth...

It was peculiar and unnerving.

At last, in agitation, I got up and paced the room, creaking warped boards with muddy boots. I paused only at the window and looked out again. The moon was still shining brightly and I could see the whole village. In every house just one window was illuminated and it always belonged to the highest room of that house. They were lit by lamps like mine.

And men were behind each one of those windows; and some of these men were sitting at desks of their own, writing in journals identical to mine; but most of them simply stood there, faces pressed to the glass, and gazed in my direction and grinned when they saw me looking back. And then I realised that I was part of another paradox, one related to the first.

There is a village with just one professional scribe, who is bearded, and in this village every man keeps a careful account of the day’s events, and does this by doing one of two things. Either he writes his own journal or the scribe writes it on his behalf. The scribe writes only the journals of the men who do not write their own. Who writes the scribe’s journal?

I knew that if I took my journal with me when I left, as I was planning to do, I would free the paradox from this prison. It would be my companion on all my future travels, like a woman but easier to read, to flick through, to replace or forget; not at all like a woman really. I blew out the lamp and went to bed and I dreamed only once of a looming shiny blade.

The Seal of Disapproval (2010)

I am a big fan of 'flash fiction', namely stories that are less than 1000 words in length. These kinds of stories used to be known under the rather clumsy name of 'short shorts' and king of the form was Fredric Brown. I have written many such pieces during my working life and they present challenges that are quite different from those that confront the writer of longer fiction.

       
          "The ocean refuses no river…"— Sheila Chandra

"Hold on a moment, what are you doing?"
         "Discharging myself into the sea, of course. What else?"
         "You can stop that immediately."
         "Are you joking? This is my duty and I've been doing it for thousands of years. I don't see what business it is of yours. Who are you anyhow? I think you should get out of my way."
         "I'm the new security guard. Things have changed."
         "What do you mean by that?"
         "A new policy has been implemented. The ocean isn't going to receive just any old river from now on."
         "Any old river! Is that a blatant insult?"
         "Some sort of discretion needs to be applied. The system is chaotic. It was completely unregulated until today. So rules and standards have been created to put everything in order."
         "Exactly who is responsible for this outrage?"
         "Neptune and the other sea gods. They held a conference last week. I was the doorman. In an underwater coral palace it happened, marvellous event too, with superfine catering."
         "So I can't come any further? This is absurd!"
         "I didn't say anything of the sort. I requested you to hold on a moment. Decent rivers will still be encouraged to proceed into the ocean; but they must be screened at the mouth first."
         "Screened for what? I carry just the normal bacteria and pollutants. It's not as if I'm radioactive or anything."
         "I'm not qualified to make environmental checks. My task is simply to ensure that no impostors slip past."
         "I'm no impostor! I've always been the Danube!"
         "Sure you are; and so is every lowlife stream and reprehensible trickle pouring into the Black Sea right now. Or so they might say. Do you have any valid identification on you, sir?"
         "Sir! I'm a female river, you pompous fool!"
         "Come now, verbal abuse won't get you anywhere. Your identity must first be confirmed, then you may continue. If it isn't confirmed you'll have to wait here indefinitely or turn back."
         "Turn back! How can a river turn back? I go where gravity and angles take me. Can't you tell who I am?"
         "Just because you look like the Danube doesn't mean that you are. Do you have a current driving license?"
         "No, I don't. My current learned to flow centuries before anyone told me that a license was necessary."
         "In that case, may I take your bank details?"
         "Shallow and muddy mostly. They get more dramatic at a point on the border between Romania and Serbia."
         "Islands? Otters? Bridges?"
         "I can't remember all that! You're treating me as if I'm a criminal. I'm going to make an official complaint!"
         "That won't help you, not in the slightest. My orders are clear and they come from Neptune himself. No identification, no oceanic discharge. You ought to wave the waves farewell."
         "Well, I'll be dammed…"
         "Yes, very possibly. And forced to power a hydroelectric generator for twenty or thirty years. Is that really what you want? The Volga failed the test earlier this morning and the turbines are already on their way. There's no messing about with us, you see."
         "But what can I do! I don't have identification!"
         "Maybe we can come to some sort of arrangement… Maybe I can turn a blind eye and let you through if…"
         "You are asking for a bribe? What do you want? Whirlpools? I have a few surplus eddies. Will they do? I had a waltz named after me once. Do you want me to whistle it for you?"
         "I've been told that long rivers are good in bed."
         "That should be the most shocking thing I've ever heard; but yes, I do have a quality bed. Rocky but rich in silt. And you're quite attractive for a walrus. I'll give you half an hour."
         "Fair enough. I'll just take my tusks off. Like so."
         "Now I've seen everything!"
         "Hold them safe for me, will you?"
         "How can I do that? No hands. I'm a river!"
         "Watch out, you've dropped one! It has gone floating out to sea! What if a whale swallows it and it is lost forever? I only wanted a frolic. I never intended to plight my tooth!"
         "That was dreadful. Even for a walrus."
         "I'm not really a walrus. Whoever heard of a walrus so far south? I'm a seal in disguise, an elephant seal. Say, you don't have a unicorn horn I can use for a substitute tusk? I heard a rumour that when unicorns still existed they often bathed in you. Maybe a horn fell off hundreds of years ago and you've been hoarding it since?"
         "Hardly. I always sell stuff like that."
         "Of course. Silly me."

A Story with the Title at the End (2013)

The following story is slightly unusual in that the title is at the end. Why should a title always have to be at the beginning? Why can’t it be placed elsewhere? I don’t mean it should just be plonked at random in the text, causing an obstruction to the characters, but positioned with due care where it hopefully can enhance the outcome.

Harrison was a successful author of fantasy books but he was having trouble with his work this morning and he sighed and put down his pen. He still wrote the old-fashioned way but this didn’t mean he had a dislike of computers. He just preferred the feel of a fountain pen in his fingers. He guessed this was because he was a rock climber in his spare time, used to gripping tiny irregular swellings in the face of a cliff. He was an extremely tactile man.
          The fiction he wrote wasn’t the usual kind of fantasy. Harrison thought that pure escapism was a very bad thing. He loathed the idea of sedentary people with no experience of physical activity reading about dangerous journeys over appalling landscapes or about epic battles, because those readers couldn’t truly understand or identify with what was happening. Harrison thought that such fantasy was fake and immature and that it pandered to losers.
          So he wrote fantasy with a hard edge, a kind of fantasy that was almost the same as realism. In his fairytale castles there were always dirty dishes in the sink, and his heroes and heroines generally found themselves hampered by the mundane worries of everyday life, and his background characters were miserable and full of despair and never managed to achieve success or happiness in anything. Harrison’s fantasy was the exact opposite of escapism.
          He never sold many copies of his books but the critics and reviewers adored him and many imitators tried to write stories in the same way as he did. He was a famous writer in a small way and considered by a coterie of connoisseurs to be the best living exponent of this new kind of fantasy in the world. For Harrison the true enemy was Tolkien and his imitators because of the way he misled readers into the erroneous belief that good won in the end.
          There were no simple messages about morality or anything else in the books Harrison wrote. Every incident in every one of his stories was about the difficulties of achieving any progress at all in any endeavour. His characters slogged bleakly through his tales, weighed down by a host of burdens and wearing themselves out mentally as they kept meeting obstructions that couldn’t be surmounted. In fact it could be said that Harrison wrote anti-fantasy.
          And now he was working on his latest masterpiece. So far it followed nearly the same basic pattern as his other books, heavy on the use of symbolism and with descriptive passages of unusual clarity and force. Reading a Harrison novel was at times like experiencing a particularly vivid and weird hallucination. His prose style had a crystalline quality but it was also feverish and unearthly. It was impossible to compare his work with any other living author.
          He relied on a small number of powerful and effective tricks. His characters would always aspire to some great achievement, set off on a magnificent quest, but run out of energy or will or simply get distracted by the bitter ironies of life and the journey was never completed, the quest never resolved. Harrison’s heroes not only had feet of clay but hearts of the same substance. They would dream of a better and more magical place which was our own world.
          In this manner Harrison hoped to oppose that sloppy desire for escapism that readers of fantasy seemed to brim with. His work stressed that escape of any kind at all was an illusion, an indulgence, an immature yearning that could never, and in fact should never, be fulfilled. And the critics were delighted and told him that he was exactly the sort of writer the public needed. He responded to such praise with a sneer because he hated to appear enthusiastic.
          His fantasy worlds were often given mildly humorous names that sounded as if they were dreamy mystic places but which were only the names of fruit reversed. This convention was a private joke for Harrison. He wrote tales set in the kingdom of Amustas, in the republics of Ognam and Ayapap, in the anarchist communes of Etanrgemop, Tiurfeparg and Ananab. Very few readers ever understood that these names were jokes. Those that did felt quite smug.
          Right now he was writing a new novel set on a distant planet called Tocirpa that orbited a star by the name of Nolem. But work wasn’t proceeding smoothly at all. It’s not that he felt blocked but that the story wanted to go in a direction that he didn’t approve and he felt unable to stop it. He wrote a paragraph and then fiercely scribbled it out, so fiercely that the nib of the pen broke and he had to get out of his chair in order to fetch a new one from a cupboard.
          As he returned to work with a frown on his face, his wife entered the room and softly approached him. He turned his head rapidly, his pony tail whipping his cheekbone as he did so, but the sight of her softened him. He stroked his pointed goatee beard and sighed. She came closer and asked, “What’s the matter, dear? I had a feeling you were troubled, so I came to investigate. I pick up these sorts of things, you know. It’s because I must be psychic.”
         He waved a dismissive hand, then he laughed. “Just that my new story has a life of its own. It won’t do what I want it to.”
          “Isn’t that a good thing?” she asked.
         “Maybe for some other writers, yes! But not for me! Absolute control is the fundamental point of supreme importance in my working methods. For instance, I am now writing the scene where the hero of the story (though he’s not a real hero, of course, as none of my characters are) is leaving our planet in a spaceship that is powered by mood-beams. He is planning to travel to Tocirpa and his mind must be bleak in order for him to make the ship work.”
          “I don’t understand that.”
          “The spaceship engine is activated by depression and other negative moods. It won’t fly if the pilot is happy. Like I said, mood-beams. So I wrote the passage in which the hero enters the ship and starts to operate the controls but then I knew that something about him was very wrong.”
          “What was it?” she wondered.
         “It dawned on me that this character of mine was a cat! I know that sounds really silly but it’s true. I mean, I ought to know better than anyone how any of my characters are going to look and act. I’m the one in charge! But somehow this cat had sneaked into my story, had taken over the role of hero and was about to travel to a distant planet before I could stop him.”
          “Is it really so bad for a cat to be the main character?”
          “A talking cat!” he bellowed.
          His lower lip quivered and he banged down his fist on the writing desk and for almost a minute he was unable to articulate a sensible word, then with a sigh so deep it seemed full of sunken ships, he said quietly, “Have you any idea what the critics would do to me if I published a novel about a talking cat? A novel about any sort of cat is bad enough, but one that can talk...”
          “Why is it such a bad thing?”
          “It’s the ultimate sin, the biggest faux pas that any fantasy writer can ever commit! No reviewer with any credibility would ever praise a story that includes a talking cat. It’s just not done. In creative writing classes where beginners are asked to write stories, do you know how many end up writing stories about cats? A heck of a lot of them! A good percentage of those stories are about cats that can talk. It’s considered to be a very amateurish thing to do.”
          “I didn’t know that,” she replied.
          “Well, that happens to be the case. A talking cat is a big taboo. It would be the end of my career as a serious writer.”
          “In that case,” she suggested mildly, “don’t have one.”
          “A career?” he shrieked.
          “A cat, I meant,” she explained.
         “But that’s just the problem!” he roared. “I can’t seem to make my hero a man. He ends up being a cat, a talking cat! I must have rewritten this scene thirty or forty times and he still ends up being a talking cat. A talking cat called Tufty! Can you believe it? The critics will crucify me!”
         Harrison began sobbing and his tears fell onto the page and made the ink run. “What shall I do? What shall I do?”
         His wife was silent for several minutes, then she said, “I have an idea. Why don’t you just write the novel with the talking cat as a hero but publish it under a false name, a pen name, a pseudonym?”
         He dried his eyes and blinked at her.
         A glow slowly suffused his pale hollow cheeks. His ponytail oscillated like a hairy pendulum as he wobbled his head in glee.
          “Yes, yes! That will work! Yes, yes! That is a great solution. The critics will hate it but the public will love it. It means I can write the story the way it wants to be written, and make money from it too, without losing my reputation as a serious intellectual author. Thank you, thank you!”
         He hugged her. She responded warmly to his embrace.
         “I am so glad I married you!”
         “Thanks,” she said. “I am pleased about it too.”
         “You are the best wife a man could ever have. But I will have to think of a good pen name to use for this book.”
          He rested his chin on his closed hand. She waited.
         Then he cried, “Why don’t I just reverse my name? I could pretend my name was a piece of fruit and spell it backwards.”
         “No sirrah!” she responded.
         He gaped at her and his face fell. “It’s a bad idea.”
         She laughed. “I just made a joke. Your name backwards is ‘No sirrah’ and that’s an old-fashioned way of saying no. Critics would work it out and it’s not a proper name anyway. Why not use my name?”
         “Gabrielle, you mean?”
         “Sure. You are always telling me I’m like a queen to you, so why not call yourself Gabrielle Queen for this book?”
         “Brilliant! And if it’s successful I will write sequels.”
         She smiled. “Do you have a title?”
         “For this one? Yes I do as a matter of fact.” He rummaged through all the papers scattered over his desk until he found the first page of his manuscript. He took his new pen and scratched out the original title. Then he blinked his eyes a few times rapidly as he gathered his thoughts.
         His darling wife purred and nuzzled up against him as with one hand he stroked her furry pointed ears and with the other wrote the following three words, which also happen to be the real title of this story:

         HIS WIFE'S WHISKERS

Two Fat Men in a Very Thin Country (2002)

The country of Chile is so long and thin that it looks very odd on a map, and odd things tend to spark my imagination, so it was inevitable I would one day write a story about it. The result appeared in my collection THE LESS LONELY PLANET and also (slightly modified) in another of my books, TALLEST STORIES, in which it is revealed that the narrator is actually Napoleon Bonaparte. In this original version, he isn't.

My friend Pepito must always be believed, even when he is telling lies. Exactly why this should be so is beyond my powers of explanation. But it's a tradition which I'm reluctant to ignore, and thus I now place my hand over my heart and swear that the following tale is accurate in every fact. Pepito told it to me himself, while we rested under the orange tree which stands in the centre of my patio. Most of my body was in the shade, but my boots stuck out in the noonday sun, and the heat raised an odour from them which was not unlike soup.
         He often related anecdotes which had happened in distant lands. I suppose he'd travelled a lot in his youth. That must have been the case, for now he barely moved at all, except from house to house, kitchen to kitchen, with slow greed, as if he was trying to balance out or retract all his previous activity.
         He began by asking me what I knew of Chile, and I shrugged my shoulders. My ignorance seemed to offer him some mental relief, and he scratched himself lazily before announcing:
         "Well, it's a very long country.
          "¡Sí! a long and thin country, like a piece of string used to parcel up the globe when the world was made. But somehow it remained behind when the rest of the wrapping was discarded, stuck there on the western edge of the South American continent. That is Chile.
         "I would estimate -- and it's just a guess, mind you -- that it covers an area of 756,626 square kilometres, but all this territory must stretch some 4000 km from the tropics almost to the polar region, which means its average width is no more than 160 km. That's an unusual shape for a nation. Its capital is Santiago.
         "Its major natural resources are coal, oil, iron ore, precious metals and timber. It has some of the biggest copper mines on the planet. The scenery is dramatic, with deserts in the north and glaciers in the south. It has a history of relative democracy. Its worst myth is the Chonchón, which is a loose head with gigantic ears for wings. It often flies down chimneys. The Calchona is almost as bad. It is a kind of dog which snatches lunch baskets from mountain travellers, muttering sullen threats if anyone tries to follow.
         "Fortunately these monsters are quite rare now.
         "The sort of normal wildlife you might expect to find if you went there include guanacos, vicunas, coypus, pumas and condors. There are tamarugo trees, algarobas and monkey puzzles. Whether any of these latter have ever been solved is unknown to me at this time. Fish stocks off the coast are enormous, and fish stews on land also numerous, which brings me to the point, for I won't say meat, of my tale.
         "There were two brothers who were known as the Grady Twins. They were big eaters and famous for it. It is possible they were the fattest men in existence. One was named Tobias and the other Oliver. They decided to take a voyage to Chile. They applied for visas and arrived in Santiago on the first day of summer.
         "They had been growing rounder and rounder every year, and their girth had caused them many practical problems for as long as either could remember, though nothing too serious, for they were used to lumbering about in wide countries. They had never stayed in such a thin one before. They had plenty of money in their pockets. Total disaster was inevitable.
         "They found an outdoor restaurant and sat down to their first meal. And that is where they remained for the whole of their trip! They devoured everything the country had to offer. I'm not sure what that is, but doubtless it includes bread, potatoes, rice, apples, beef, mutton, sardines, anchovies and whatever else can be found on local plates -- but no chilli peppers, despite the aptness of the name. And they drank hundreds of bottles of wine.
         "The days and weeks passed and they kept calling for more food. Before the summer was finished, they were both fatter than they had ever been. ¡Ay, Señor! they were too fat to fit in the country! They were wider than Chile! Do you doubt it?
         "Well, this was an unexpected situation. They were facing east, and their stomachs grew and ripened over that chain of mountains called the Andes. The snows lay soft and thick on the tops of their bellies. But the brothers continued to stuff their mouths, and their digestions rumbled like thunder in the high passes, and some people thought an earth tremor had begun. But still they sat at their table and ordered more food, and entire harvests vanished into their gaping maws.
         "There is a country which borders Chile along the mountains. It is Argentina and it has different laws and customs and ideas. A visa that is valid for one is not necessarily accepted in the other. The Grady Twins had the correct paperwork for a stay in Chile, but now their stomachs crossed the frontier into a separate state. They passed over illegally. The authorities were alerted.
         "Right there, near the summit of Tupungato, the bellies of Tobias and Oliver were arrested and charged with unlawfully entering Argentina. A judge was sent for and a court was temporarily set up at the base of the mountain. The stomachs were found guilty and sentenced to an indefinite term of imprisonment.
         "The jails were constructed around the straining abdomens, but each cell only had three walls, because the side where the stomachs came from had to be left open. All the same, the miscreants were in prison, and even the immense power of their digestions could not burst the bricks and iron bars asunder. The authorities smiled to themselves and went home, leaving a few guards to watch over each navel and to prod their captives with bayonets at the first signs of further trouble.
         "Back in Santiago, the brothers were oblivious of what had occurred over the border. But they knew that they suddenly had stomach cramps. Further belly expansion was halted by the solid walls. As they continued to eat, the pressure increased. There might have been a detonation with unsavoury results if this anecdote was just a fictional tale, but I have embellished no detail and therefore must report that this did not happen. They still called for more food, for they were also gluttons for punishment.
         "It was the middle of autumn and between them they had nearly eaten Chile bare. The hot winds from the desert and the cold winds from the icecaps had always smelled hungry. Now all the other winds did too, even those from the temperate zones where the wheat ripples in fields and the fruit falls from branches. The country was like an empty cupboard. The only things left to eat were old boots. They are not tasty when boiled, basted, roasted, steamed or fried. But a boot sauce served on coils of its own laces can be sampled like a spaghetti dish. It may or may not be nourishing. A few men will walk far to try it, but rather more will hope it doesn't walk after them. Such now was the final item on every menu.
         "Everybody knows there are good and bad boots. The latter pinch and squeak. Tobias had the misfortune to be served one of those. He refused to finish it. He threw down his fork and glowered at Oliver, who was chewing a more comfortable sole. From this moment their fates diverged. Tobias started to lose weight. This shouldn't be too remarkable a thing to occur, and so it wasn't, in the locality of the restaurant. But in Argentina, the amazed guards watched as one of their prisoners escaped.
         "It was a slow escape, sure enough, and in many other parts of the world, action would have been taken immediately to apprehend the belly before it vanished, but down there events often move sluggishly, and every pant is a yawn, and by the time a decision had been made to prod the captive with a bayonet, it was gone. It had fled at glacier velocity out of the open side of the jail and back over the border. Eventually Tobias became just a very fat man again, rather than an international incident.
         "The authorities were determined to guard the remaining stomach more carefully. But the bother of keeping watch over it constantly, while there were more important matters to attend to elsewhere, such as barbecues and football matches, was too much to contemplate eternally, which was the span of time that the wobbling paunch had to serve before it became eligible for parole, on the recommendation of the judge. So a retrial was ordered and a new sentence was passed -- death by firing squad!
         "¡Ay! That was a sure way of eliminating the problem for all time. The cell was demolished to give the men with the rifles a clear aim. Then a runner was dispatched to inform the man far behind the belly of his impending doom. It was a tradition to ask the condemned prisoner if he had a final request. The runner applied for a visa, crossed the border into Chile and reached the restaurant in Santiago.
         "He whispered his message into the ear of Oliver, who absorbed it at his leisure while munching on the tongue of a boot, his own tongue curling around it as if he was kissing his dinner to adulterate its leathery taste with the flavour of passion, which has no eyes and is blind, of course. And coincidentally this was his millionth course. But after just a little more thought, he nodded to himself and gave the runner a message of his own to deliver to the firing squad. Then he resumed eating.
          "Oliver's stomach had been sentenced to be shot at sunrise. But he had asked if it could be shot at sunset instead, the sunset of the day previous to the ordained one. The authorities and guards scratched their heads at this, for it seemed their prisoner was hurrying them along, that he wished to die sooner rather than later. But they agreed to the proposal, partly because it was a final request and they were bound by honour to fulfil it, and partly because it meant they could leave work early.
         "The firing squad raised and aimed its rifles. Every man present waited for the moment of sunset. It never came. The sky went dark and filled with stars, but at no point did the sun actually go down. After a night of debate, the mystery was resolved. The vast stomach had created an eclipse, blotting out not only the sunset but much of the western horizon. Then they understood that their prisoner had cheated them, for they would never be able to execute the belly at the moment of sunset, for there was no longer such a time. They would be stuck here for the rest of Oliver's life, waiting in vain, and the barbecues would go cold and the football matches be won or lost, and forgotten, without them.
          "Another solution had to be found. If a condemned man survives or avoids his execution, he probably deserves to be pardoned and released. The same surely applies to bellies. It was decided to pardon this one, together with its contents and weather, for the interior was a cavern vast enough to contain clouds and other atmospheric phenomena. Now the guards could leave it to its own devices. It was as free as any other gorge in the Andes, though entirely different in all but word.
         "The unspoken worry of those who left was that it would now proceed on its voyage into Argentina unopposed, crushing everything in its path. But circumstances conspired against this, because a coup overthrew the legitimate government of Chile and a military dictatorship took over. The boots were recalled from Oliver's plate to serve the feet of the soldiers, and so he went hungry. His stomach retreated of its own accord. Remember that Chile only has a history of relative democracy, and this was one of those times when stupidity and cruelty marched over it, in boots originally collected for supper.
         "When Oliver was slim enough to move again, he stood and walked with his brother out of the restaurant. Both had a terrible stomach ache and awful wind. Soon after, they left Chile. Neither of the Grady Twins ever returned. They settled in a wider land where many people wore slippers instead of boots, far to the east. India it was, I believe. If they attempted such a feast again, it has not been recorded. I imagine that their breath, which smelled of leather, fell foul of some law and that their mouths were caged, which would prevent their stomachs from going anywhere alone. That would certainly be for the best..."
         Pepito halted his absurd story for two reasons. Firstly, the sun had moved the shadow of the orange tree over my feet, and my boots no longer smelled edible. Secondly, he had finished. We sat in the silence of the patio. Then he fell asleep. He has since promised to tell me similar tales about every country in the world. I have locked up my house with heavy chains and tomorrow I plan to leave the village forever. I don't know where I'm going, nor do I care, so long as it's far from him. He's my most inspirational friend.

*******************************************************************************

The Cowardly Custard Apple (2013)

Offbeat fairy tales have always appealed to me and it was inevitable than I was going to attempt to write a series of them myself. Here is one of my favourites. I have many others planned, including 'Unicorn on the Cob', 'The Three Imp Posters', 'The Blues Buddhas', 'The Two Toed Sleuth', etc, and one day I hope to include them all in a volume entitled MY BIG GLIB BOOK OF FLIPPANT FAIRY TALES. I want these fairy tales to be proper tales as well as ironic variants, so it's important to have a story to tell that makes some kind of sense.

 

At long last the mystery of the Princess and the Pea has been solved but the case of the Cowardly Custard Apple is still baffling to anyone who has heard about it, including myself.

When I was first told about the princess who could feel a pea through dozens of mattresses piled on top of each other I grew suspicious immediately and decided that the official explanation was wrong. The true answer has nothing to do with her abnormal sensitivity to physical irritants but can be found in the nature of the pea itself.

For that pea was not a pea, a good honest simple legume, but a fragment of a neutron star, which as we all know is a dead or dying sun, or rather the relic of a collapsed star that has packed its own matter so tightly together that only neutrons—

No, I might as well admit I don’t really understand anything about the physics of outer space; but I am aware that a piece of neutron star the size of a pea will weigh an absurd number of tons and that denser objects have stronger gravitational fields than less dense ones, and so that fake pea was able to raise high tides and make walking away from it very difficult.

The princess felt it pulling at the nerves clustered in the small of her back and she interpreted this sensation as a poke in the spine, which is wasn’t really, but the mistake was understandable.

A tug can feel like a push, in the same way that a very cold piece of metal burns the skin when touched.

As for the Princess and the Pea: the story of what happened to her reached the ears of a king who ruled a land far to the south. He was delighted to finally learn a method of testing the authority of princesses and he decided to try it out on himself.

“You’re not a princess, sire!” his advisors objected.

“True, but I belong to the same species. I’m a ‘royal’ and so the basic principle must still apply. Fetch me a pea!”

He had no idea that the original pea had actually been a pinch of neutron star and his advisors were ignorant of this fact too, as are most people, including myself before I commenced writing this tale. His advisors shuffled their feet and then timidly replied:

“There are no peas to be found in your kingdom, sire. Peas aren’t a native crop down this way. We would have to import one and that might take rather a long time. Several months.”

“I can’t wait that long to test myself. Procure an alternative!”

“But why, may we ask, do you wish to ‘test’ yourself in the first place? You know you are a king; we know this; the people know it; and also, most importantly, do the foreign rulers.”

“Yes, yes, but am I a real king, a true king, a king that has a natural right to call himself a king? I mean, am I descended from a pure unbroken line of kings stretching right back through the dim mists of antiquity and even thicker fogs of prehistory to the very first men who called themselves kings? Or was one of my not-too-distant ancestors merely a commoner who was fortunate or cunning or aggressive enough to win a throne artificially? That sometimes happens, you know. The pea test will determine the truth of the matter.”

“Still we have no peas for you, sire...”

“An alternative then! I told you that already: go out into the palace gardens and orchards and find a substitute. Meanwhile I will arrange for thirty thick mattresses to be conveyed to my bedchamber in readiness for the conducting of the test.”

And the advisors had no choice but to obey the whim of their king, so they went outside and wandered through the gardens and orchards for an hour before returning to the throne room, where the king was using his sceptre to fence with a flapping tapestry.

“What have you got for me?” asked the king impatiently.

“A cherimoya, sire,” they answered.

“Ah, the most delicious of all fruits and also known as a custard apple! But how ripe is it?” he demanded.

“Perfectly ripe, sire. The only problem is that—”

“Problem?” The king arched a regal eyebrow and paused with his sceptre thrust out at full arm’s length. “If it’s ripe then it will be too squashy for the pea test; but we’ll use it anyway. That’s the sort of monarch I am! I don’t care about such details.”

“There’s another problem, sire,” the advisors said.

“Really? And what might that be?”

The advisors grimaced at each other. Finally one of them found enough courage to speak. “It’s a cowardly custard apple, sire, that’s the plain truth of it. It’s scared and won’t stop trembling. It’s not a brave cherimoya, oh no!”

“You informed it of what I plan to do with it?”

“Yes we did, we certainly did.”

“And it is frightened of being compressed to bursting by the combined weight of the mattresses and my recumbent form?”

“That prospect makes it more than nervous, yes, sire.”

“Then fetch a less cowardly custard apple!”

“You don’t understand, your majesty. This cherimoya wants to take part in your modified pea test. When we passed the shrub on which it grew, the largest and most noble of the custard apple trees in your orchards, it begged to be picked by us. It was the ripest and largest fruit on that tree, so we can safely say that it is the finest cherimoya in the realm. And yet it is still very scared about its own destiny.”

The king scratched the end of his nose with the tip of the sceptre. “Show me the fruit in question. This is most curious.”

And the bravest advisor passed him the cowardly custard apple. The king took it and saw how it quivered and whimpered. “Twelve centimetres in diameter with a slightly tuberculated skin. Even with the peel still on I can smell that delicious combination of banana, pineapple, papaya, strawberry, peach and bubblegum that is so ravishing to the taste buds and which rightly earns the cherimoya the epithet of ‘king of the fruits’. Truly, this is an excellent example, the best I have ever encountered.”

“But lacking backbone,” the bravest advisor ventured.

“Wait,” the king replied, then he frowned and lifted the cherimoya to his ear, listened carefully and nodded. “I thought so. The definition of courage is to be scared of an ordeal but to endure it anyway. This fruit is apprehensive in the extreme but insists on being used in the pea test. That isn’t cowardice at all, not really. And it doesn’t fear being squashed but something else, I don’t know what. The situation is remarkable.”

The advisors said nothing: they had nothing to say.

The king tossed the cherimoya high like a juggling ball, caught it neatly as it descended, turned on his heel and strode away. “To the bedchamber! I wish to test myself without delay.”

And down the corridors they went, to a circular room with a large glass skylight in the middle of a domed roof. There were mattresses leaning against the walls. The king lowered the cherimoya to the floor, positioning it at the exact centre of the bedchamber, beneath the skylight and the wispy clouds in the intense blue sky. “To work!”

And he piled the mattresses on top of the fruit. He did this task on his own, without asking for help, and it was strenuous physical labour. Then he called for a ladder to be leaned against the stack and he climbed it to the top and lay flat on the highest mattress.

A full minute passed, He shifted his position.

The advisors below held their collective breath. The king rolled onto his side, rolled over again onto his front. “I can’t feel anything,” he muttered as he turned once more onto his back.

“Sire?” The advisors stepped forward in alarm.

“I can’t feel anything!”

“Nothing at all, sire? Not even the smallest—”

“Nothing! Nothing!” he screamed.

They took two steps back. Then the king sat up in bed, grasped the top rung of the ladder and his teeth chattered in despair. With a convulsive movement he rose and climbed back down and stumbled out of the bedchamber, his sobs filling the corridor.

“I always suspected it deep down; and now I know for sure. I’m not a natural king but one of those artificial types. Piling up all the mattresses with my own hands should have been a clue. One of my ancestors was a builder or a porter or something equally menial. I’ve failed the pea test! I’ll never be able to face a custard apple again. This is dreadful and I am distraught and I feel like a fraud.”

One of the less intelligent advisors ran after him. “You feel like a fraud, sire? Shall I fetch you a fraud?”

The others remained in the bedchamber without speaking.

They stayed like that for a long time; then a muffled sound began to distract them, an extremely faint but insistent noise that seemed to be coming from the bottom of the tower of mattresses. They moved closer and listened. It was no acoustical trick but real laughter, weak and inhuman. They began to heave aside the mattresses, flinging them away.

What they finally revealed was a squashed fruit, a custard apple no longer cowardly but panting away its final moments in mirth. The white and creamy flesh festooned with seeds oozed and palpitated and the sickly sweet smell of botanical death filled their flaring nostrils.

Words were barely audible between the chuckles.

“I’ve passed the test! I was so worried about it. The prospect of failing terrified me. But I felt him. Even through all those mattresses, all that thick padding, I felt him! When he shifted position I was aware of his elbows and knees. I’ve passed the test! I always knew I was king of the fruits but now I can say that my kingship is authentic. I have a natural right to call myself the finest cherimoya that ever lived. And that’s what matters!”

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The Unsubtle Cages (2001)

This tale was first published in 2004 in my NEW UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY book, in a section featuring stories supposedly written by other authors. The author falsely accredited in this particular case was Thomas Ligotti, but the truth is that I was too unfamiliar with his work to write a proper pastiche. Nonetheless there's a flavour in the bleakness of what follows that is at least partly on his wavelength.

Alone in a new city, the traveller decided to visit the zoo. It might be a place to find conversation, if not with people then with animals. He had not spoken for almost a week. He took a tram to the relevant suburb. The houses and factories were low and decayed. Dunes of rust drifted down the alleys, covering abandoned machinery. The wind was cold and constant. Newspapers from the previous century flapped across the wider streets, full of yellowing politics and adverts which could not be answered. They roosted with angry vibrations on the sagging telephone lines which conveyed static, sniggers and deep breathing from the hub of the metropolis to its rim. He had already come far but this short journey seemed much greater. An adventure.
         He was the only passenger who dismounted outside the gates. They were neither closed nor open, but broken just enough to provide a means of entry. He climbed through. The zookeeper introduced himself. His name was Rotpier. He was not a malformed dwarf, but he acted as if he ought to be. He led the traveller past the compounds of lizards and worms. A few withered birds stood in groups on the tin roofs. Even Rotpier could not say whether they were part of the display or not. They were indeterminate. At last, the final cage was reached. It contained many other cages, all of different sizes. They stood idle, stacked in corners or on top of each other. They were worn and dented but perfectly serviceable.
         "What is the meaning of this?" asked the traveller.
         Rotpier blinked. "They have to be kept locked up for their own good. If they escaped, they might start caging beasts and people at random or according to their own tastes. Then they would return to the zoo with their new charges. The result would be an undisciplined collection, arbitrary and unplanned. Spontaneous, possibly automatic."
         The traveller stroked his chin. "I wish to buy one."
         "This is a very unusual request. I must consult my memory. Yes, I believe there is a precedent. Many years ago, a man called Belperron purchased a cage and took it back to his apartment, where he experimented on it. There are no laws against that. They are not expensive."
         The traveller removed his wallet and counted out the notes. Then the zookeeper hooked one out with a long pole. It was heavy but responsive. It could be dragged or strapped to a back with equal inconvenience. Perhaps it might be rolled, in the manner of dice, end over end. The traveller left the zoo and waited for the tram with sore hands. It came and he paid a double fare. He sat opposite the cage, looking through its bars at the sombre view beyond the window. If the environment was trapped there, he must be free. The illusion comforted him to his destination. He pushed his new possession up the stairs of his hotel. He positioned it in the centre of the room. And this space which was not really his, this rented volume of continued existence, already resembled a new zoo. And he its keeper.
         He waited for his first visitors.
         It seemed an original method of defeating his isolation. His previous attempts to meet people had failed. The nightclubs were shut, the parks and subways deserted or unbearably strange. But now he had created a solution through the medium of business. Men and women would pay to tour his little zoo. They might bring children with them. Also laughter. It was almost feasible. He paced the floorboards for an hour before he realised that he needed a live exhibit to display in the cage. The answer was to lock himself inside. He would be fed and enjoyed until he achieved satisfaction. He did not swallow the key, but squatted over it. He removed his shoes and curled his toes. It was even more lonely in this simple cell, an outcome he had not anticipated. He licked his lips anxiously.
         There was a rumbling from afar, as if a crowd was shuffling down the street toward his hotel. He imagined many outcomes. The authorities were coming to grant his zoo a licence or to close it down. The police were hurrying to arrest his prison and free him: a miscarriage of justice. He wondered why his cage did not return to the real zoo as Rotpier had predicted, with him as its trophy. The door of his room was closed. Possibly that was the reason. Or else it accepted the hotel as its home, validating the traveller's hopes. Then he imagined that the giant cage, the cage of cages, had detached itself from its location and was hunting its lost brother. He stood and gripped the bars facing the window. He was able to peer down onto the street. Rust dunes were shaken apart, settling evenly over the cobbles like the grains of a powdered sunset.
         All his guesses were wrong. He saw rooms, dozens of them, sliding over this new desert, a caravan of cubes, misshapen, humped domiciles with grimy windows and flapping shutters like eyelids. Through each pane of glass, the unwashed outline of a traveller congealed. They were equally lonely, but the sum of all their feelings was still a single loneliness. One at a time, the rooms entered the hotel, passed through the lobby and up the stairs. He heard them in the corridor, squeezing between the walls. Now he felt the hotel swelling, an ego of brick and rotting joists and tattered curtains. The rooms were adding themselves to the collection. The symbolism was too obvious. He closed his eyes in the knowledge that each exhibit was its own visitor. And he experienced a relief so slight it bordered on monstrous despair.

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