Tales From Gavagan's Bar (45 page)

             
He used to combine hunting for birds with his fowling piece and prospecting for quartz. One day, when he was out with a peasant named Karl Nickl, somewhere near Blanken-burg, he came on an outcrop that had a vein of fine clear quartz. His only equipment that day was the fowling piece, but he explained to Nickl that he wanted a crowbar or something of the kind to pry loose some of that quartz and make a pair of spectacles. Nickl protested that this vein belonged to the kobolds and shouldn't be disturbed. He was a
little hazy about any penalties for interfering with the kobold quartz, but he was so vehement about letting it alone that Weissenbroch dropped the idea for the time being. It doesn't pay to get those peasants down on you. You're apt to get lost in the mountains.

             
After they got back with their bag of game, Weissenbroch was still fascinated by that kobold quartz, but he didn't say anything more about it. A few days later, without saying anything to anyone, he went back up the valley where the outcrop was, taking a crowbar, and pried out a good clear piece to take back with him. Well, he split off part of it, being careful not to let anyone know what he was doing, because he didn't want stories about raiding the kobold quartz to get around, and ground a pair of spectacles. They were designed to give only a slight correction, but that was about all anyone used in those days.

             
They looked like perfectly ordinary spectacles. But when Hein Weissenbroch put them on, he got the shock of his life. If he looked at the wall of his shop or around in it, they were just glasses and pretty good glasses, too; but when he went into the living room and looked at the floor, the carpet disappeared.

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"How could it?" said Keating.

             
Tobolka said: "Some sort of diffraction-grating effect, I suppose. Go on, Mr. Bache."

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And when his wife came in from the kitchen, her clothes had also become invisible. Weissenbroch's first reaction was that she had gone mad and was going about her housework naked. They must have had a towering row about it, though the letter only hints at that.

             
["What letter?" said Tobolka.]

             
I'm coming to that. Weissenbroch was finally able to determine by feeling that, although he could only see textiles as a sort of shimmery shadow through the glasses, they were still there. He had sense enough to keep from telling anyone else about this, even his wife, but not sense enough to keep
away from the local inn. Unfortunately, he found there just what he hoped he would find; a couple of local
Madchen,
not to mention the barmaid herself. From various hints in the letter, I gather that Weissenbroch became so exhilarated that he was impelled to drink a quantity of schnapps, and his conduct toward the women in question partook of the disgraceful. It was fortunate that he did not break the spectacles. What he did do was get himself taken before a magistrate and fined several marks. It was a large sum for his time.

             
Now, as I remarked, Hein Weissenbroch was a man who had been in touch with the enlightenment movement. He used to correspond occasionally with Goethe and Schiller at the court of Saxe-Weimar in Erfurt, and there is a record that he ground the last pair of spectacles that Schiller wore before his death. It was undoubtedly from someone at the court that he heard of the arrival in France of my ancestor, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, as ambassador of the colonies.

             
["Are you really a descendant of Benjamin Franklin?" said Keating, with something like admiration.]

             
So they tell me [Bache went on]. Well, Weissenbroch knew of Franklin as a scientist, of course, and thought that he might be able to explain how the kobold-quartz spectacles had worked. Possibly he figured he could always go back to the quartz lode and get more of the material. Anyway, he wrapped the spectacles up and sent them to one of his friends at the Saxe-Weimar court, with a covering letter addressed to Franklin, and a request that the package be forwarded. It was the only thing to do in those days; the mail service wasn't so good.

             
I would judge that my ancestor made good use of the spectacles. There are still some of his descendants in France, you know. But he never mentioned them either, and we wouldn't have known about them except for Weissenbroch's letter, in a spidery eighteenth-century German hand.

             
["What did he do about Weissenbroch?" asked Keating.] We don't know. All we have is Weissenbroch's letter, with a marginal note by Franklin. It says: "Tell M. Weissenbroch
d. n. atz. enuz. e. p., 4.13." Nobody knows what he meant by those abbreviations. And all we know about Weissenbroch is his letter to Franklin and his correspondence with Goethe and Schiller. The line of communication was cut. You see that was about the time when the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel began selling his soldiers to King George for service in the American colonies. The court of Saxe-Weimar took a very dim view of it and wouldn't have anything to do with Hesse-Cassel for a while. And Weissenbroch lived in Hesse-Cassel.

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Mr. Cohan leaned across the bar. "And would you be telling us now, that when you have them on, it looks as though nobody had no more clothes than a monkey?"

             
"I'm telling you exactly that," said Bache, producing the spectacles again and seating them on his nose as he surveyed the bartender. "For instance, they tell me that you have a large wen on your abdomen, just northeast of your navel and below your belt buckle."

             
Mr. Cohan turned a color that would have done credit to sparkling Burgundy; but before he could make an appropriate answer, the door opened and the brass-blonde Mrs. Jonas walked in, followed by a taller, younger woman.

             
"Hello, Mr. Cohan," said Mrs. Jonas, steering her protegee down the bar toward Bache. "Sorry if we kept you waiting, Septimius, but we didn't want to get caught in that shower. Marian, this is Septimius Bache; Septimius, I'd like you to meet Marian Marks. I think you two have a lot in common."

             
Miss Marks certainly lived up to the advance notice Gross had given. Hollywood could have used the face that smiled from under a pile of red hair, and the rest of the ensemble down to a pair of very well turned ankles appeared to be in accord with what was visible. But Septimius Bache's face was curiously blank and his voice was curiously cool as he barely touched the hand she offered.

             
"Oh, yes," said Bache, looking through his spectacles. There was a little pause. "Would you—uh—care for a drink?"

             
"A Stinger, please," said the girl.

             
Any conversation was abruptly halted when the door opened again and another girl came in, who might have been the antithesis of Marian Marks. She was short, and shell-rimmed glasses sat on a decidedly plain face beneath round-bobbed black hair. In contrast to Miss Marks's rather gorgeous turnout, she was wearing a short coat over a shapeless smock. She handed Mrs. Jonas a package.

             
"Professor Thott said he had to mark term papers, but he knew you'd be wanting the geranium slip, so he sent me over with it," she said.

             
"Thank you, Ann," said Mrs. Jonas. "You know Marian Marks, don't you? Ann Carter, this is Septimius Bache."

             
Bache took her hand. "Won't you stay with us a while?"

             
"No," said the girl. "I've got to get back to the university. Thanks just the same."

             
She turned, but Bache took a step after her. "As a matter of fact, I've got to go in that direction myself. Do you mind if I walk back there with you?" He turned to the others. "Glad to have met you, Miss Marks. See you later, Ellie."

             
He walked beside Ann Carter to the door, gazing down at her through enraptured eyes. As it swung to behind them, Marian Marks said: "Well! Not that I mind his walking out on me just after an introduction like that, but I wonder whatever he sees in her?"

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Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956) and I began collaborating on imaginative fiction in 1939. Pratt was then an established author of science fiction, history, biography, and military and naval books. I was just getting started as a free-lance writer. After some years of work as a technical editor, educator, and consultant, I had co-authored a textbook and sold a few science-fiction stories and articles.

             
The Hitlerian War interrupted our collaboration. In 1946, at the war's end, Pratt and I decided to develop a series of barroom tall tales, along the lines of Lord Dunsany's stories about Jorkens. I do not recall which of us first had the idea of reporting the events at Gavagan's or whether we were ever consciously influenced by Dunsany's example. Unbeknown to us, across the ocean, Arthur C. Clarke was launching a similar project with his tales of the White Hart.

             
The first Gavagan's Bar story was "The Better Mousetrap." This was rejected by two magazines, rewritten, rejected some more, and finally sold to
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Meanwhile, we had collected several more such tales and enjoyed speedier success as we got into the swing of things. In most of the stories we worked over our notes in consultation. Then I wrote the rough draft, and Pratt did the final.

             
The setting of these stories is an old-fashioned bar in the 1950s. In those days, the dollar had several times its present value; and dimes, quarters, and half-dollars were made of real
silver. Beards were scarce; men wore their hair short, often in the now-rare crew cut. Commercial television was new. Manhattan cocktails were popular. Women's lib, gay rights, and ethnicity were not yet burning issues, but the Cold War was. The sexual revolution was largely in the future, and "Negro" was deemed a more polite term than "Black" for persons of that race.

             
Pratt and I worked on and off for six years with these tales. The last was "The Weissenbroch Spectacles," written in 1953. Of the twenty-nine Gavagan's Bar stories, only twenty-three appeared in the original
Tales from Gavagan's Bar.
The other six, written after that book went to press, were published in magazines. Twelve were published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
three in
Weird Tales,
and two in
Fantastic Universe Science Fiction.
One appears here for the first time.

             
I have given the stories a light editing to remove inconsistencies of style and content, because Pratt punctuated by ear alone. "Oh, Say! Can You See" was retitled "Ward of the Argonaut" by the magazine; I have restored the original title. "Methought I Heard a Voice" was originally published as "When the Night Wind Howls" (from Gilbert and Sullivan), but I think the present title (from Shakespeare) more fitting.

             
With the approach of the Civil War centennial, Pratt became so busy with books about the war between the states that he had no time for either fiction or these reports before his premature death. Hence, we never got around to reporting the story about a vampire with a sweet tooth, who attacked diabetics only. This unwritten story may be "The Moon and I," for which there is an otherwise inexplicable entry in my opus-card file. It apparently never got to the rough-draft stage, for I have no carbon copy. This tale was to have drawn on Pratt's knowledge of professional boxing, he in his youth having been a fighter in the flyweight class. Although he did not mind discussing his pugilistic days, he refused to publicize them, since he disapproved of a writer's exploiting details of his private life.

             
The stories are illustrated by the late Inga Stevens Pratt, a professional artist who was Fletcher's wife, and after his death, the wife of John D. Clark. The present volume is published
under an arrangement with Doctor Clark, my college roommate and a longtime friend of Pratt. Readers who would like to know more about the life and writings of Fletcher Pratt will find a biographical sketch of this versatile author in my book
Literary Swordsmen & Sorcerers,
published by Arkham House in 1976.