"I don't see any work being done here," the Vice President shot back.
"We're thinking," the young woman said.
"This doesn't look like thinking to me."
"Oh? And what does thinking look like to you?" asked the young man.
"Well, it certainly doesn't look like this. This is goofing off—and stop wasting that paper. Who are you, anyway?"
"I'm Scott and this is Tina," the young man said. "We're creative analysts. We're working on cost-cutting ideas."
"Cost cutting?" sneered the Vice President. "You don't even have a calculator. And besides, we've got engineers and accountants to cut costs, so even if you were doing that, you'd be either superfluous or redundant. I want you out of the plant by this afternoon."
That afternoon Scott and Tina went to the Vice President's office. As Scott stretched out on the floor and began to spread out a few papers, Tina pushed aside many feet of adding machine tape and sat in the Lotus position on one end of the Vice President's desk. The Vice President was not quite so upset that he did not notice that Tina was wearing earrings made from crumpled balls of paper hanging from bent paper clips. "We'd like to ask you to reconsider your firing us," said Tina. "We have some good ideas for the Blister."
"Get out," said the Vice President.
The next day all the executives met at a regularly scheduled administrative meeting, where there seemed to be some confusion and delay in getting started. Finally, the President of the company spoke up. "I'm sorry for the delay," he said, "but we had scheduled a report on cost saving ideas by two of our top creative analysts and it now appears that some idiot fired them yesterday. However, we are in the process of getting everything straightened out, and they should be here soon."
"I hope it's Scott and Tina," one of the other executives said."They're really brilliant."
"If unconventional," noted another.
"Unconventional or not," said the Chief Operating Officer, "I'll never forget how they saved us eighty-six million dollars on the Dazzle II by helping us reduce the number of parts. And when their expense account came through, all they'd bought were radio batteries and a couple of reams of paper."
"I remember that," said the first executive. "No fancy research, no costly experiments, just pure thought, just great ideas. They actually know how to think."
"What kind of a jerk would fire people like that?" someone asked.
And so it was that the new Vice President for Design Concepts was invited to take his skills to some other company, even though he could recite the exact cost of every part of every car the corporation made.
The Wall and the Bridge
In the high country of a far away land there once stood a massive wall, blocking the pass between two mountains. Just below the wall was a path leading around the mountains—a path made possible by a bridge connecting it across a deep chasm directly in front of the wall.
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. You're just an obstructionist, but I'm a facilitator—a metaphor for access, for hope, for possibility."
On another day a young maiden fleeing evil men ran across the rocks until she reached the wall where she could go no farther. She cried out and pounded her fists against the wall in despair until the men caught up with her and carried her away. The bridge then said to the wall in disgust, "You once accused me of having no discretion, but you are worse, for you are completely heartless. You're so cold and rigid that you cruelly prevent even the distressed and needy from passing by. Maybe that's why walls are known everywhere as symbols of 'No!' while we bridges are known as symbols of 'Yes!'"
"You, my loose and easy friend," said the wall, "indeed let the distressed pass, but you also let the criminals pass. I, on the other hand, provide the needed security to keep the land behind me safe from harm. I am a protector, and I defend this pass and the country well."
This dialogue continued for many years until one morning when suddenly the earth shook with great violence. So strong was the tremor that both the wall and the bridge were reduced to rubble at the bottom of the chasm. Not many months later men came to repair the damage. In the process of reconstruction, however, the stones that were once part of the bridge were used to rebuild the wall and the stones that were once part of the wall were used to rebuild the bridge.
"Now I'll show you what a wall should really be like," said the new wall. "It shouldn't be cold and rejecting to everybody." And so at first, the new wall let many people climb up over it.
"And I'll show you what a bridge should do," said the new bridge. "It shouldn't let just anybody across." And so at first, the new bridge provided a difficult passage, causing many travelers to trip on the surface and a few even to fall over the edge.
But as spring and summer, harvest and winter came and went again and again, the rocks on the new wall grew more and more slippery and the little projections gradually broke away, so that climbing over or even getting a foothold became very difficult. And in the same passage of time, the rough spots on the new bridge wore down and the crevices filled up, so that passage across became much easier.
"You see," said the new bridge to the new wall, "you've learned something about being a wall."
"Well," the new wall replied, "I've known all along that I must guard the pass and fortify the defenses of the country. And of course I know it's my job to keep out all those who don't belong. But I see you've finally discovered how to be a bridge."
"You can say what you like," answered the new bridge. "But I've always understood that I provide a critical link in the path around the mountains, and that my purpose is to help travelers across the gorge."
As the years collected, as years do, the new bridge and the new wall began to think less and less about what they had once been and more and more about the task they currently had to do, until eventually it became impossible for anyone to tell that the new wall had once been a bridge or that the new bridge had once been a wall.
"How indiscriminate and common you are," the new wall would often tell the new bridge.
"And how inflexible and repressive you are," the new bridge would reply.
The Wish
While walking along the beach one day, a man spotted an old, barnacle-covered object which on closer examination he discovered to be an ancient bronze oil lamp. "Hah! Aladdin's lamp," he thought, jokingly. "I'll rub it." To his surprise, when he did rub it, a genie appeared.
"Okay, Bud," said the genie, in a remarkably bored tone. "You have one wish—anything you want. What is it?"
"Money," the man said instantly, his eyes widening. "Yes! Endless money. Riches! Wealth! Ha! Ha! Huge, massive, obscene wealth!"
"I thought so," said the genie in the same bored tone.
"No, wait," the man said, his eyes suddenly narrowing. "Power. Yeah, that's it. Complete and total power over everyone and everything in the world. With power I could get all the money I wanted."
"So you want power, huh?" asked the genie.
"Well, yes," said the man, now a bit hesitant because of the genie's less-than-enthusiastic tone. "Of course, with money I suppose I could buy power. Which do you think I should ask for, Genie?"
"How about world peace or personal humility or an end to famine or maybe an end to greed," suggested the genie, emphasizing the last phrase. "Or perhaps the gift of discernment or knowledge or spiritual enlightenment or even simple happiness."
"But with money or power I could buy or command all those," objected the man.
"Yeah, sure," said the genie.
"Well, just give me power and I'll show you that I can have everything else, too."
"You shall have what you ask," said the genie resignedly. "Whether you shall have what you imagine you must learn for yourself, and you will soon find out."
"Well, I certainly hope to have it all. Don't you ever hope, Genie?"
"Yes," said the genie. "I hope that someday my lamp will fall into the hands of a wise man."
And so the man was given power over everything on earth, over every government, every event, every activity of every soul. As a result, his name was soon pronounced with hatred and contempt by everyone, and in a few months he was assassinated by his most trusted followers.
Several One Way Conversations
"Yes, they are shackles, but they are made of gold," said the man, as he asked for another pair on his wrists and two more on his ankles.
* * *
"You can see how great I am by observing what I have done," said the chisel to the other tools, as they gazed upon the beautiful statue.
* * *
"My word is as good as my check," said the forger, as he handed over partial payment and promised to pay the balance later.
* * *
"May you get everything you want," said the philosopher to his enemy, knowing that his enemy would not recognize his words as a curse.
* * *
"I'll teach this dirt not to muddy my shoes," said the man, shoveling madly, only soon to discover himself in a pit.
* * *
"Now I see how essential material things are," said the man, as he looked at the ashes of his burned down house.
* * *
"How dare you, who are nothing but a low worm, try to tell me what to do," said the man, as he stood there unmoving, just before the piano landed on him.
How the King Learned about Love
Back in the days of knights and chivalry and courtly love, a beautiful young woman fell in love with a man of noble birth, who, however, was already married. Their love continued to grow until the woman granted and the man took more than virtue could properly countenance and one morning the woman awakened with the right to use the pronoun "we" whenever she spoke.
She realized that she could not inform her lover because of his position, for he was not only married but also a very prominent member of the court. So she concealed the matter remarkably over many months, until, in the fullness of time, it could be concealed no longer. At that point she resolved to throw herself on the mercy of her mistress, the king's daughter, to whom she was a lady in waiting. She took her newborn son to the princess and begged quite pathetically for her help.
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. She decided instead to declare to the king that the child was her own and take the guilt, together with any other consequences, upon herself, for she loved her lady in waiting very much.
When the king learned that his daughter had given birth (or so he believed), he was unutterably furious, and spent the better part of an hour ranting and shouting execrations and breaking things. But when he demanded which of his knights had helped her into this situation, the princess, not willing to sacrifice any of the noble and completely innocent knights of the castle, invented the story of a secret lover from outside the castle walls.
The king suspected that his daughter was lying, or trying to lie—for the girl was so honest that she could not dissemble with conviction—so that he was now even more uncontrollably enraged than before; he now began screaming directly at his daughter and breaking larger and more expensive things. And because he could think of nothing but her duplicity and disobedience and his injured honor and her betrayal of his affection, he coldly (or rather hotly) determined to banish her from the kingdom. "For," he argued, "I will love not those who love not me." He therefore cruelly turned the girl and the child over to the traders of a passing caravan from a distant land who would take them past the borders of the kingdom.
Even as she saw her father's look of hatred as she was packed into the wagon at the rear of the caravan, the princess did not alter her resolve to keep her secret, for now she knew that if the king knew the truth, her lady in waiting would most certainly be executed. As for the lady in waiting, she was so stricken with grief over the king's actions that she very nearly took her own life. But the princess had commanded her never to reveal the secret, regardless of the consequences, and the lady in waiting feared that the princess would be exposed by such an action. So the woman, helpless to remedy the situation, instead fled the palace in tears.
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.
The caravan traveled two full days before her deception was detected. When it was, the princess once again played audience to violent anger. The traders yelled and cursed the girl; then they beat her with fists and even with sticks, accompanied by more curses and threats; but nothing they could do could force her to tell what she had done with the baby. The traders, remembering the promises made to them by the king to encourage the secrecy of their charges, and fearing the consequences of a breach of that secrecy, sent riders back over the route they had traveled, to search everywhere.
Meanwhile an old woodcutter, who lived in the hut with his wife, found the baby and brought it inside. As they looked upon the beautiful, healthy child, their eyes shone with a sparkle that they thought had long ago disappeared forever. But even in their delight, they recognized immediately that the child was no ordinary foundling, for it had noble features and was wrapped in silks and wore a gold brooch with a white lily on it.
They soon recognized that the child would need better fare than the rough crusts and ordinary water the couple subsisted on—for they were extremely poor—so they began to wonder how they could take care of it.
"We could pick some of our neighbor's fruit at night," suggested the woman, "or perhaps sell the gold brooch."
"Or we could cheat the king the next time he buys wood," said the woodcutter sarcastically. "But we won't do any of those things. You know that it isn't right to do wrong, even to bring good. God has brought us this child; I pray that he will help us feed it."
Now, the old woodcutter had been saving a few coins from his meager earnings over the past three years in order to buy himself a new axe head in the spring. "But," he thought to himself, "I suppose I could sharpen this old head one more season, and with a little longer handle, it ought to be good enough to get my by." So he took the money he had saved and gave it to his wife, instructing her to buy the child proper food and raiment.
The old woman was so moved by this sacrifice that she took off her locket—other than her wedding ring the only piece of jewelry she owned, and an heirloom from her great grandmother, at that—and contributed it to the welfare of the child. "For," she said, "I was never so foolish as to believe that love had no price."
Just a few days later a rider from the traveling caravan arrived, and visited the woodcutter's neighbor. Because the woodcutter was not far away at the time, he overheard the conversation. "Have you seen anyone with a baby in the past week?" demanded the rider roughly.
"Who's asking?" asked the neighbor, without excessive politeness. 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. They both found themselves unexpectedly humming little tunes or smiling for no apparent reason, and they both found their chores suddenly lighter and easier. They worked faster, eager to finish and once again spend some time playing with the child.
However, it wasn't many weeks before the old woodcutter and his wife were forced to admit that they were simply too old and too poor to raise the child as it should be, and that they ought in all fairness to the babe to find a better home for it. "For," as the old woman explained, "I love the child too much to keep him."
So the woodcutter took the child to a house where several holy women lived and, after explaining the brief history of the child as he knew it, asked for their help. "The wife and I don't have the learning behind us, the money with us, or the years ahead of us to raise this child as it ought to be raised," said the woodcutter to the matron of the house, "so we'd appreciate it if you could find it a proper home."
"Our small endowment provides us with only a modest living," the matron said, "but we will care for the child until we can find out whom it belongs to, or until we can find it a good home." So the man left the child with them and went on with his wood cutting. The matron of the house assigned care of the child to one of the newest of the holy women, who could nurse it.
About this season in the kingdom, the queen gave birth to a son also. The child, however, was weak and sickly, and failed to flourish. In just a few weeks it developed a fever and died suddenly in the night. The queen, in addition to her grief, was frantic with anxiety, knowing that the king was such a hard man that if he knew his only son had died, he would hate the queen and perhaps divorce her. So she sent, with the utmost secrecy, a trusted servant to find another child to replace the one she had lost. "Bring me a child with no past," she told her servant, "and I will give it a future."
Finding such a child was a tiring and frustrating task for the servant, and he met with humiliation and rejection and insult and false leads and failure at every turn. But since this story is not about him, nor about the rewards of perseverance, let us say simply that eventually he found himself at the door of the holy order of women we have mentioned above.
"Yes, we do have such a child as you seek," the matron told him. "We were keeping him until we could find his parents, or until we could find him a good home. Perhaps your mistress, whoever she is, will care for him well." The servant assured the matron that this would be so and gave her a large gift to maintain the house and its charitable work. As she handed him the child, she said, "The woman who has been nursing the child says that this parting is like a death to her, for she has become very attached to him. But she loves him too much to think of her feelings. I hope that what is a sadness for her will be a happiness for the child."
"Truly, good woman," replied the servant, "it is rightly said that the death of every fruit is the seed of new life. Every ending is also a beginning."
As the years passed, the baby grew up into a fine, strong young man. The king, who remained crusty and harsh toward everyone else, changed completely when his son (as he supposed) entered the room. The king became actually friendly and laughed some and often engaged in animated conversation with the young prince. The king was often heard to say that he would never let the prince part from him even for a day but that the prince should be his always. They often rode on horseback through the forest all day or sat together by the fire until the servants fell asleep, discussing the kingdom and enjoying each other's company.
When the prince reached his early manhood, the king not only took him into confidence on affairs of state, but began to share power with him, knowing that not many more years would pass before there would necessarily be a new king. Many of the king's decisions were now submitted to the prince before they were made, and the prince, to his credit, frequently moderated the king's stern and often cruel decrees.
By this time, the queen was in poor health, troubled by constant pain and a lingering cough. Everyone at the court eventually recognized that she was about to die. For several days the queen debated with herself whether or not to let the secret of the prince die with her, but at last, showing the heritage of her daughter's honesty, she decided that she must reveal it to the king.
By the time she reached this decision, the queen was truly on her deathbed, so she called the king to her and sat up weakly. "My king," she began, "I have a matter to disclose to you that has burdened my heart for many years. It concerns the prince." And here she hesitated for a few moments. The king waited in silence. "You," she continued, "are not his father."
The king, immediately concluding that the sanctity of his marriage bed had been violated, exploded into a rage that would likely have ended the queen's suffering prematurely had she not added as loudly as she could, "And I am not his mother." The king then, though still in shock, calmed himself enough to hear her explanation of the death of their natural son and her subterfuge in adopting the child who was now the prince. The king at first gave little credit to this tale, thinking that the queen was either delirious or scheming against him and his beloved son in some way. But he sent attendants to the holy order to discover the truth. 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.
"With all deference to my Lady and to her majesty," she said, "the queen is only half correct. For the child was indeed not hers, but he is the king's son." She then pulled back the cowl of her robes, took down her hair and showed the king her face. Even through the ravages of two decades, the king could still clearly see the face of his daughter's lady in waiting, his lover who had borne his child without his knowledge so many years ago. The lady briefly explained what had happened then and how she had immediately recognized the child when the woodcutter brought it to the holy house.
"You willingly gave me your son, even though I was evil?" the king asked in disbelief.
"I loved you," the lady in waiting said simply. "And I loved my son—our son—more."
When he realized how unjust and hypocritical he had been toward the lady, the princess, and the queen, the king was so overwhelmed with shame and humiliation that he fell to his knees and began pulling on his hair and sobbing loudly. His crying was the only sound in the room until the queen spoke.
"I forgive you, my husband and my king," she said. "And I love you."
"You love me?" the king asked, rising and turning to her with astonishment. "You love me after I have banished your daughter and proven unfaithful to you?" But there was no answer, for the queen had already closed her eyes for the last time.
The king stood as one who had been stunned. He could not speak or think. As he sat down in a stupor at the foot of the queen's bed, the prince suddenly spoke. "I have found a mother today," he said. "I must now find a sister, too. I shall leave immediately in search of her."
"No!" the king yelled, standing up. But then, recollecting himself, he said, "No, you're right. You must go from me and find your sister."
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; only in surrender, and not in triumph.
The Fly and the Elephant
A fly sat on an elephant's back. When the elephant shuffled down a dirt road, the fly said, "What a dust we are making!" When the elephant trudged knee-deep in the mud, the fly said, "How heavy we are!"
The Man Who Talked Backwards
There was once a bizarre old philosopher who always seemed to say the opposite of what those who sought his advice expected. So contrary were his words that he was known as The Man Who Talked Backwards. His blessing on those he loved was, "May you have difficulty in this life," and his bitterest curse on his enemies was, "May your life pass without a single sorrow." 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." Rather than noting that "seeing is believing," he would say, "Believing is seeing." For, he explained, what you believe controls what you see.
A young woman once asked him, "What can I do to make someone my friend? Shall I oil my skin or brush my hair?"
"Rather you should oil the skin and brush the hair of the one you like," answered the philosopher.
Another day a young scholar approached The Man Who Talked Backwards and asked him what books he should read, "For," the student said, "I realize that the more I read the more I will know."
"You will indeed learn something by reading," answered the philosopher, "but the more you read the less you will know. That is what makes reading of value."
"But how shall I know what beliefs I should hold in order to live the best life?" the young scholar asked.
"You think that your beliefs shape your actions," replied the philosopher, "but I tell you, it is your actions that shape your beliefs."
One day a woman came to the Man Who Talked Backwards for advice. "I know," she said, "that 'to live is to choose,' so I have come here to discover how I might fix my choices to live a fuller, more productive life."
"The better saying," said the philosopher, "is that 'to choose is to live.' But if you want to live life more fully, do less."
"Do less?" the woman asked with surprise. "But I'm an achiever. I thrive on accomplishment."
"Perhaps you have already diluted your life into meaninglessness," suggested the philosopher.
"But I'm easily bored," said the woman.
"I am truly sorry," said the philosopher. "Did you ever seek help for yourself?"
"What do you mean?"
"For your infirmity of being bored."
"My infirmity?" asked the woman, again surprised.
"Ah," said the philosopher, "You attribute your boredom to others or to external circumstances."
"Well, of course," she said.
"In that case, I am sorry for your two infirmities."
"But I want to get as much out of life as I can," the woman protested. "You philosophers all say that one's life does not consist in material things because they disappear, but what then can I gain that I can keep?"
"The only thing that you can really keep—and keep forever—is what you give away," said the philosopher.
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."
"So you are ready to end your life?" asked the blunt young man.
"Death is not an end to life, as you suppose," said the philosopher. "This world is but a mirror that reverses everything as it reflects it. Death therefore is merely the shattering of a mirror."
"Your mirror already has a large crack in it," said the blunt young man, with a laugh.
"Thank you," said the philosopher.
The Clue
In every civilization, someone has to put up the signs that guide us on our way. —Proverb
Sometimes they had to drill the post holes up on Rocky Bluff—and it was a tough dig, what with the rocks and the hardness of the soil. They came home plenty tired and dirty on those days. Other times they drilled the holes down in Sandy Meadow, where the augur slipped in smoothly, quickly, and easily. They all praised the meadow and said how great it was to get an assignment to put up some signs there. And yet, when they told the stories of their lives—the stories that animated their faces and brightened their eyes—they always seemed to be speaking of Rocky Bluff.
An Analogy
As he clung to the sheer face of the rock, he could hear in his mind the voice of his climbing instructor: "If you make even a slight mistake, you will die instantly." He knew then that he need not debate whether to be attentive in his climb. And he was glad also that God is like a rock only in his steadfastness.
About the Author
Robert Harris was born in Los Angeles, California in 1950. He is currently (1995) an English professor at Southern California College in Costa Mesa, California. He lives in Costa Mesa with his wife, Rita.
(C)1992 Robert Harris
End of Project Gutenberg's Stories From the Old Attic, by Robert Harris