Stories From The Old Attic - Robert Harris (ebook reader 8 inch .TXT) 📗

I take to be the path of true wisdom—is seen only from the top.”

Year after year, therefore, arrived with hope and left disappointed; new generations were born and millions of hopeful readers mingled their own dust with that of the earth without the benefit of even a phrase of Professor de Laix’ wisdom.

Then one spring his colleagues and students noticed that he was gradually becoming more and more animated, and was heard occasionally to mutter, “Yes, yes, that’s right, that’s right.” Finally one day while he was sitting in a coffee shop regaling a few favorite students with tales of fruitless thinking journeys upon which he had in the past embarked, he took a sip of coffee (or perhaps he had inadvertently been served espresso) and then suddenly opened his eyes widely, sprang to his feet, and announced excitedly, “That’s it! I see it all now! Now it can be written! Everything is completely clear! So clear! Ha ha! Now I understand! Now, at last, I understand!”

After this brief speech, he burst out of the coffee shop (leaving his students with expressions of amazement and an unpaid bill) and began to run toward his office where he could finally sit down and produce his great work. Now at last he could pour forth his hitherto inexpressible wisdom to fertilize the orchards of culture and bring into being a new and wonderful fruit for civilization to munch upon.

Unfortunately, in his highly focused and externally oblivious rush toward his office, he neglected to watch for the traffic as he crossed the busy boulevard between the coffee shop and the university (for academia is often separated from the rest of life by just such a metaphor), and as a result he was tragically but thoroughly run down by a fully loaded manure truck, whose cargo had been produced after only one day’s rumination, and whose owner also hoped that it would swell the fruit on the trees of a less figurative orchard.

Such was the life and death of the great Professor de Laix, a man for whom someday almost came.

 

How the Humans Finally Learned to Like Themselves

It is man’s peculiar distinction to love even those who err. —Marcus Aurelius, VII.22 A sweet disorder in the dress. —Herrick

Once upon a time, many years from now, technology had continued its remarkable progress to the point that the construction of artificial people had finally become possible. These humakins, as they were called, were made so carefully and with such art that no one could tell the difference between a real human and an artificial one—except that the artificial ones were flawless. Physically the humakins were always young, always beautiful, always fresh; they never had a hair out of place, never a pimple, never a wrinkle, never a gray hair. Mentally they were always bright, alert, and smiling; they always got their facts right, and never took a wrong turn or got lost.

At first the appeal of the humakins was irresistible, and most humans chose them over other humans for spouses. What human female could compete with an always slim, beautiful, and lively imitation? And what human male could compete with an always confident, correct, and handsome construction? In fact, the word “humakin” quickly became a synonym for “perfect,” as in, “That’s a really humakin car,” or “This pie tastes just humakin.” At the same time the word “human” became a term of opprobrium, indicating something defective or of low quality, as in, “I never shop there because it’s such a human store with human-quality merchandise.”

To the consternation of many, however, while the humakins could construct more of themselves in a factory, the humans could produce more of themselves only by following the ancient method of their ancestors, so that the result of the marriages between flesh and plastic was the eventual decline of the human race.

When about nine tenths of the persons on the planet consisted of the precisely fabricated humakins and only one tenth of the really human, quite an odd and unexpected situation arose. It had become so unusual to see, for example, a woman wearing glasses or a man with wind-blown hair that such a detail now took on a natural appeal to some of the other humans.

One bright morning at breakfast in a fancy resort dining room, a human female, almost as lovely as a humakin, sat chatting with a humakin male who had condescended to sit with her. Suddenly she inadvertently spilled a glass of tomato juice onto her white tennis dress. While her humakin companion predictably stood up and stared at her with horror, across the room a human male who had just witnessed the event was so filled with ardor and longing that he almost broke the table in his rush to get over to her and make her acquaintance. His excitement to declare his affection left him without the capacity for coherent speech, so that only tentative and confused phrases stumbled from his mouth. In the midst of his babbling, though, he could see, in the welling dew of the woman’s eyes, the tenderness of regard he had inspired.

As other humans, too, began to grow weary of the expectation of constant perfection in their relationships, scenes similar to this one began to be repeated with increasing frequency. A loose shoe lace, a chipped fingernail, a shiny nose—all gradually became sources of romantic and emotional attraction, and those very characteristics that had before been viewed as defects soon came to be seen as emblems of the truly and desirably human, as guarantees of that unique inner fire that no amount of perfectly crafted plastic could equal.

The word “human” now began to be associated with the genuine, the natural—and the beautiful. It became not uncommon to hear a young lady remark to her admirer as he gently put a flower in her hair, “Oh, what a human thing of you to do.” The word “humakin,” on the other hand, began to imply something slickly unrealistic or laughably fake and was often pronounced with a sneer.

At length, having rediscovered the amorous appeal of their distinctives like freckles and missing buttons and the inability to refold road maps, the humans began to marry each other again. It wasn’t many years before a young pledge of one of these new relationships was heard to ask in a tone of frustration, “But Mommy, why must I have a crooked tooth?” To which the mother replied, “That’s so I’ll always remember how truly beautiful you really are.”

 

The Caterpillar and the Bee

A bee, flying proudly around the garden, approached a caterpillar sitting on a shrub. “I don’t know how you can stand to be alive,” the bee said. “I’m valuable to the world with my honey and wax, I can fly anywhere I want, and I’m beautiful to behold. But you’re just an ugly worm, not good for anything. While I soar from bloom to bloom feasting on nectar, all you can do is creep around and chew on a stem.”

“What you say may be true,” replied the caterpillar, “but my Maker must have put me here for some purpose, so I trust him for my future.”

“You have no future,” said the bee. “You’ll be crawling through the dirt for the rest of your life. If you ask me, you’d be better off choking on a leaf.”

Sometime later the flowers in the garden woke to find that the bee and the caterpillar had both disappeared. All that they could see now was a shriveled yellow body hanging from the edge of a spider web and a magnificent butterfly flexing its wings in the sun.

* This story reminds us that we cannot predict the future, either for others or for ourselves.

*This story teaches us to trust in God rather than in the opinion of men.

 

The Wise One

High in the mountains of a distant land there once lived a man so incredibly old that his life no longer had any plot. He was so old that his very name had faded from the memories of all those around him, and he was known only as “The Wise One.” He spent his later days hearing and commenting on people’s problems and sitting among a dozen or two disciples who waited patiently to hear all that was asked of him and all that he spoke. Sometimes an entire day would pass when not a syllable opened his lips; whether this was from a temporary lack of strength or simply because he had nothing to say, no one knew.

While his reputation among his disciples and a few others was that he possessed amazing wisdom and insight, many people thought him to be an idle and incoherent fool because, they said, he never provided a practical solution to the problem he was asked about. Instead he would ask a simplistic question or tell a story whose point was so obscure that many left his presence shaking their heads.

Some said that in his youth he had earned and spent large quantities of money, only to turn from what he saw as a life of vanity to the pursuit of wisdom. Others said that had that been true, he was proved all the more fool for giving up the good life for a life of hardship that was of little use to anyone. Thus, for every person who called him The Wise One with reverence, twenty pronounced his name with irony.

Of the stories still not erased by the hand of time, consider these and judge the man as you will:

 

*

 

One day a man, clearly troubled by the cares of life, came to The Wise One and spoke thusly:

“My son, to whom I had entrusted my farm, last week stole my best cows, sold them in the market, and spent the money in wild and shameful living. Now he says he is sorry and will repay me. What should I do?”

“Tell me,” replied the old man, “when you drop your bar of soap while bathing, what do you do?”

“I pick it up, of course,” the man answered, with some irritation.

“And now tell me, which is of more value, a bar of soap or a human soul?”

While the questioner left not at all certain about what to do, one of The Wise One’s disciples, who had been deeply affected by this exchange, rose and said, “Excuse me, O Wise One, but I must go and reconcile myself to a man I have wrongly ceased to love.”

“Yes, my daughter,” is all The Wise One said.

 

*

 

Another time a young couple came to The Wise One to settle a great argument. The old man listened seemingly more politely than attentively as each gave a lengthy explanation of the dispute. Finally the two looked to The Wise One for his decision, both of them more confident than ever of being right. The Wise One reached over to a vase sitting nearby and pulled out a rose. “Shall I hit you with the bloom or with the stem?” he asked the couple.

“What are you talking about?” asked the young woman.

“It is written in the Book of Worn Out Sayings that ‘in the rose garden of life he who plucks thorns for his partner’s bed is a fool.’”

“I don’t understand,” said the young man.

“Those who sell flowers put them in a pan of colored water and the flowers take on the color of the water,” concluded The Wise One. The couple left confused and without resolving their dispute, but they did seem to agree that their trip to The Wise One was worthless.

 

*

 

On one occasion two men came to The Wise One on the same day. The first was