Robert A. Harris

“ Late one afternoon a blunt young man came up to The Man Who Talked Backwards and asked him, "Now that you are old and about to drop dead, do you look forward to death or fear it—or perhaps I should ask, Did you live a good life or a bad one?"
"It is not one's life that determines his view of death," replied the philosopher, "but one's view of death that determines how he lives." ”

“ Now, the wall and the bridge were always bickering. One day when an old peddler leading an even older mule with a load of shabby wares crossed the bridge on the way to a distant fair, the wall said to the bridge, "You know, the trouble with you is that you have absolutely no discretion. You let just anyone walk over you. In fact, you're the slut of architectural forms, granting promiscuous entry to all and sundry."
"Is the greenness I see all over you moss or envy?" replied the bridge. "I enable people to fulfill their dreams; I provide opportunity for a better life. ”

“ Once upon a time a famous art museum searched the world over for the best paintings it could find. After a long search, the museum found a beautiful Old Master painting depicting youths and maidens frolicking in a wood. The directors were only too glad to pay millions for this painting because they were captivated by its beauty and elegance. How delightfully the maidens' hair and mouths were drawn, how perfectly the hands and arms of the youths, how life-like the bare feet on the forest floor. ”

“ I have three or four rings on every finger, I can caress a beautiful woman's hair in any color, I can ride a week in any direction and find my statue erected and feared, and I can hear any melody or see any play at my command. I possess or can do or enjoy everything I can imagine, and everything that the most creative of my servants can imagine. ”

“ People fly all the time."
"I am sorry that you so much underestimate the intelligence and learning of your audience," said a professor across the table. "That a person could enter some metal device—like a car with fins—and rise into the air, and be sustained there, and move forward, why that clearly violates everything we know about the law of gravity and the laws of physics. If we have learned anything from a thousand years of study of the natural world, it is that an object heavier than air must return immediately to earth when it is tossed into the sky." ”

“ He further reminded himself that Jennifrella had made an adequate wife, even after her face wrinkled and her tummy pudged, and that she had proved to be a reasonable mother to his children. Whenever, in a moment of inattention, he discovered himself pining to enjoy a witty remark or some unguarded laughter, he quoted, hoping that it was true, the old proverb that "we grow most not when something is given but when something is taken away." ”

“ The bright sun and the gentle wind had made the little fish almost bold that summer day, enough so that they were swimming all over the pond, from their home in the reeds at one end to the rocky beach at the other. Or at least they swam very near to the rocky beach—as near as they dared—for all the older fish constantly warned them to stay away. Some of the dangers were clear enough, such as the wading birds who stepped into the shallow water, hoping to pluck out a little fish and swallow him right down, and the foxes, whose gigantic teeth were too awful even to think about. ”

“ As predicted by Sir Philo, Sir Bargle was an excellent shot. As each arrow landed a good handbreadth closer to the center of the target than any of those of Sir Fassade, the smiles on the faces of the princess and her favorite knight grew less and less until they had been completely replaced by somber looks on the knight and what might be described as silent hysteria on the face of the princess. ”

“ And unlike our first horse, when this Macedonian horse ran and knew he had beaten the other horses, instead of letting up he redoubled his efforts and ran even harder—as hard as he could—for he now ran not against the fortuitous competitors with whom he began the race, but against his own heart: against all horses past and all horses future, against every horse in Macedonia and every one in Arabia, and also against the ideal horse with a pace so frighteningly fast that few can conceive its possibility. ”

“ They soon returned with the matron of the house and the woman who had nursed the prince as a baby.
"If what the queen tells me is true," said the king, "I have no happiness, no reason to live. For the only thing I love has been taken away."
The matron from the holy order solemnly attested to the truth of the queen's story. "The prince was indeed the baby given us by the woodcutter so many years ago," she said. As the king felt a wave of despair washing over him, the nurse from the holy order came forward and spoke. ”

“ As the traders proceeded out of the kingdom, the princess resolved that, whatever should happen to herself, she would not see the child grow up a slave. She therefore watched carefully for an opportunity and one night sneaked off from the traders as far as she could get in the cold and dark, and put the child near a hut, hoping and praying that it would find safety and a free life, however humble. She then sneaked back to the traders, and pretended to be cuddling the baby in her arms. ”

“ In the days to come, as the king sat alone in his richly tapestried rooms, he had many hours to think over the events that had formed his life and to ask himself whether there was not in love some quality that can be shown only in sacrifice, not in advantage ”

“ The point is that after all this additional acquisition, the king's lifestyle was much fancier, but the king himself was still not happy.
"What his majesty needs is activity," said the king's culture minister. "Activity is the rubbing paper that scours the rust from the soul and burnishes her to a new shine. If the king would just engage in some hobbies, he would find contentment." ”

“ A young man, in the confusion and embarrassment of youth, was walking across the campus of a great university on the way to his philosophy class. At the previous meeting, the professor had posed the question, "If we do not know the purpose of something, how can we know whether any aspect of it is good or bad?" This question, together with the problem for the day, "Does man have a purpose?" had taken complete occupation of the young man's mind, not because of any intrinsic interest, but because the professor was in the habit of calling on students and expecting a thoughtful response. ”

“ Admirers from all across the surface of the earth produced unremitting and enthusiastic requests—nay, demands—for the wise professor to bestow upon the world his penetrating insights into human nature. As the years passed, however, even though he had been begged repeatedly for the first part, or a first volume, or even a first chapter, he had always answered that he wanted to get the whole work clearly in his head before he put it down on paper. ”

“ And the king found much pleasure in his wives, but he was still not truly happy.
"The king will find happiness only in wisdom," said one of the king's scholars. "For it is written that 'truth is a joy unto itself.'" So the king applied himself to books of wisdom, and to seeking the knowledge of all his many scholars and sending throughout all his realm to find the wise from every land. ”

“ Well, needless to say, by now most of the other knights in the realm were getting sufficient jollies out of Sir Percival's romantic endeavors. Even Sir Wishful had joined in the laughter, ridicule, and derision that seasoned Sir Percival's every meal with his friends. This hilarity touched the young knight and caused him to spend several days in contemplation of his past behavior. "Am I gaining or losing ground with Arissa?" he asked himself. ”

“ But King Cleon would not be dissuaded, and so the news was soon heralded throughout the kingdom, and, as you might suppose, arrow sales shot up immediately and remarkably.
As when a child pounds the ground near an anthill, causing a good many of the residents instantly to surface and run around in massed panic, so on the day of the contest the world arrived in a swarm at the castle of Cleon the Modest and prepared to be a witness, if not the victor, in the winning of Jennifrella. ”

“ So the king decided to realize this scenario in three dimensions and searched throughout his kingdom for the most desirable women he could find. He found pretty ones and witty ones and laughing ones and moody ones and smart ones and elegant ones and plain ones and philosophical ones and decorated ones—women of every proportion, size, color, personality, and talent, and he married a hundred of them, some of whom loved him even more than those among the first few dozen he was already married to. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The king would have had little trouble choosing the richest suitor in the kingdom for his daughter, except that there were no exceptionally wealthy bachelors in the realm, and those of modest wealth all had castles and money boxes of essentially similar dimensions.
For her part, the Princess Jennifrella was repletely enamored of Sir Fassade, a handsome, dashing, suave, carefree young knight who most people, when they faced reality, agreed would almost certainly become her husband and therefore the next king. ”

“ Now the old man, between his nearsightedness and his preoccupation with his great discoveries, wandered unknowingly over to the side of the road, and pretty soon he stepped off into a ditch and fell down with remarkable violence. A farmer not very far off saw this episode, and hurried over to help the old man up. As he got to his feet, the old man, wincing with pain and holding one arm, cried out with a tone of satisfaction, "A broken arm! Just what I was looking for! A broken arm can be very useful." ”

“ The king's daughter, knowing that he was a hard man who had never hesitated to crush, kill, or otherwise persecute anyone who offended him in the slightest, realized that she could not tell the truth or say simply that the child had been found during one of the princess' walks, because the king would then send it to a harsh life in an orphanage—and that would be if she found him in a good mood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whenever someone asked him what course of learning to undertake in order to increase his knowledge, the philosopher would reply, "If you want to learn something, become a teacher." Whenever some grateful hearer would ask how he could repay the philosopher for his advice, he would always answer, "The best way to repay a debt to me is to cancel a debt owed to you."
The Man Who Talked Backwards reversed even the most common of proverbs. Instead of repeating that "to love is to be patient," he would always quote, "To be patient is to love." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the woodcutter heard the angry, cursing, threatening reply of the rider, he ambled back to his hut to inform his wife of what was going on. The couple was quite shrewd enough not to reveal anything to a rude, angry, and ill-dressed man on horseback, because, they concluded that, however deficient their own hospitality to the child, it was likely to be better than whatever would be offered by such a ruffian. "And besides," the woodcutter's wife said, "I already love the child too much to give him up."
As the days passed, the old couple grew thoroughly attached to the baby. ”

“ She then spoke a few strange words, which were followed by a dramatic puff of smoke, and the young man discovered, not that the old woman had transformed herself into a beautiful young maiden, but that the young man could no longer see. ”