Ten Tributes to Calvino by Rhys Hughes Read Free Book Online

sequence is supposed to be a microcosm of a book I wrote that itself is a microcosm of my stated project of writing one thousand linked tales. I call that project my ‘Grand Wheel’ and I’ve been working on it for many years. I’m busy on it right now but it’s still far from completion. The book I mentioned is entitled Tallest Stories and is a sample or preview of what the finished project might be like.
    Provided I do get to finish it, of course… There are forces out to stop me. I am standing in the pub known as the TALL STORY and slurping my pint of stout at the bar. Unlike most other pubs, this one tends to migrate from place to place, sometimes on wheels, sometimes not. It wanders the universe like a nomad; and on one occasion it even became the universe. Next to me is the girl who makes crystal pendants. She also happens to be the female hiker; and I’m the male.
    She is drinking red wine. We have just returned from a camping trip in the forest. Abruptly the front door opens and the hooded figure strides in, his cloak spattered with mud and encrusted with leaves. He gazes around and spots me. Then he cries, “There he is! What did I pay you for? Do the job now, you incompetent buffoon!”
    From a table in the corner rises a man: the assassin. The long dagger in his hand glimmers in the firelight.
    “No hard feelings. I’m just making a living.”
    “But what have I done?” I wail.
    The assassin can’t tell me; he doesn’t know why I must die. But there’s no doubt in the mind of the hooded figure, who throws back his hood and reveals himself to be… The reader!
    Yes, it’s you! You out there!
    But you’re inside here now… And you say:
    “Yes, it’s me! I’m tired of your whimsical nonsense and I want to shut you up. I began reading this story in the hope of learning a sensible thing or two, but almost immediately I realised I had been deceived. You must die and stop writing it; and I have arranged precisely that destiny for you. What do you have to say to that?”
    “You’re too late. The story is over!”
    The door opens again and all the characters from all the sub-chapters swarm in, their work finished. The merchants; astronomer; boy with the toasting fork (he toasts the bread on the open fire instead); the explorer lost in the desert; Ariadne and the dead vampiric Minotaur; Rustichello; the tribal philosophers and the missionary they ate; the woman from Pisa; and the entire population of Wales.
    The pub is very crowded now and when I reach the door and look out, I notice the reader walking away along a winding road, the sun casting his shadow right out of this page and onto the wall or floor next to the chair you are sat in at this very moment.
     
    NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION
     
    “If sunbathing is so dangerous and can cause skin cancer I’d better stop setting in the ocean,” mused the sun to itself one day, “and only set over mountain ranges from now on.”
     

The Parable of the Homeless Fable
     
    It’s high time I told you about a homeless fable I once knew. It’s always better to tell urgent tales at high time; those raconteurs who tell them at low time or middle time don’t seem to appreciate that increased chronic elevation benefits everyone. The views are finer up there, the air fresher. High time is best. And it’s high time right now, so I ought to get started while my temporal altimeter is at maximum.
    There was a fable that didn’t belong to any known collection, neither from antiquity nor more modern times. Whether he was always homeless or had been expelled from some official opus is unknown; he claimed not to recall anything about his origins. I believed him then and I believe him now. I found him wandering, naked and delirious, in the street outside my house in the dark days of a very cold winter.
    Naturally I took him in and nursed him back to a semblance of health. I’m not an especially sympathetic individual, my altruism isn’t copious or available on tap,