Fredric Brown (1906–1972) was a brilliant writer of science fiction, fantasy and crime fiction. He could write serious stuff – as anyone who has read his horror story “The Geezenstacks” or his science fiction story “Arena” (later adapted as an episode of Star Trek) will know. He could write very tense, hard-edged books, as in his first mystery novel The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947). But if he’s remembered for anything it will be for his clever, sardonic vignettes. At one stage he was known for having written the shortest of all stories, “Knock”, arguably the only story to be ever regularly quoted in full. Here are three examples of his wit.
NASTY
Walter Beauregard had been an accomplished and enthusiastic lecher for almost fifty years. Now, at the age of sixty-five, he was in danger of losing his qualifications for membership in the lechers’ union. In danger of losing? Nay, let us be honest; he had lost. For three years now he had been to doctor after doctor, quack after quack, had tried nostrum after nostrum. All utterly to no avail.
Finally he remembered his books on magic and necromancy. They were books he had enjoyed collecting and reading as part of his extensive library, but he had never taken them seriously. Until now. What did he have to lose?
In a musty, evil-smelling but rare volume he found what he wanted. As it instructed, he drew the pentagram, copied the cabalistic markings, lighted the candles and read aloud the incantation.
There was a flash of light and a puff of smoke. And the demon. I won’t describe the demon except to assure you that you wouldn’t have liked him.
“What is your name?” Beauregard asked. He tried to make his voice steady but it trembled a little.
The demon made a sound somewhere between a shriek and a whistle, with overtones of a bull fiddle being played with a crosscut saw. Then he said, “But you won’t be able to pronounce that. In your dull language it would translate as Nasty. Just call me Nasty. I suppose you want the usual thing.”
“What’s the usual thing?” Beauregard wanted to know.
“A wish, of course. All right, you can have it. But not three wishes; that business about three wishes is sheer superstition. One is all you get. And you won’t like it.”
“One is all I want. And I can’t imagine not liking it.”
“You’ll find out. All right, I know what your wish is. And here is the answer to it.” Nasty reached into thin air and his hand vanished and came back holding a pair of silvery-looking swimming trunks. He held them out to Beauregard. “Wear them in good health,” he said.
“What are they?”
“What do they look like? Swimming trunks. But they’re special. The material is out of the future, a few millennia from now. It’s indestructible; they’ll never wear out or tear or snag. Nice stuff. But the spell on them is a plenty old one. Try them on and find out.”
The demon vanished.
Walter Beauregard quickly stripped and put on the beautiful silvery swimming trunks. Immediately he felt wonderful. Virility coursed through him. He felt as though he were a young man again, just starting his lecherous career.
Quickly he put on a robe and slippers. (Have I mentioned that he was a rich man? And that his home was a penthouse atop the swankiest hotel in Atlantic City? He was, and it was.) He went downstairs in his private elevator and outside to the hotel’s luxurious swimming pool. It was, as usual, surrounded by gorgeous Bikini-clad beauties showing off their wares under the pretence of acquiring suntans, while they waited for propositions from wealthy men like Beauregard.
He took time choosing. But not too much time.
Two hours later, still clad in the wonderful magic trunks, he sat on the edge of his bed and stared at and sighed for the beautiful blonde who lay stretched out on the bed beside him, Bikiniless – and sound asleep.
Nasty had been so right. And so well named. The miraculous trunks, the indestructible, untearable trunks worked perfectly. But if he took them off, or even let them down . . .
ROPE TRICK
Mr and Mrs George Darnell – her first name was Elsie, if that matters – were taking a honeymoon trip around the world. A second honeymoon, starting on the day of their twentieth anniversary. George had been in his thirties and Elsie in her twenties on the occasion of their first honeymoon – which, if you wish to check me on your slide rule, indicates that George was now in his fifties and Elsie in her forties.
Her dangerous forties (this phrase can be applied to a woman as well as to a man) and very, very disappointed with what had been happening – or, more specifically, had not been happening – during the first three weeks of their second honeymoon. To be completely honest, nothing, absolutely nothing had happened.
Until they reached Calcutta.
They checked into a hotel there early one afternoon and after freshening up a bit decided to wander about and see as much of the city as could be seen in the one day and night they planned to spend there.
They came to the bazaar.
And there watched a Hindu fakir performing the Indian rope trick. Not the spectacular and complicated version in which a boy climbs the rope and – well, you know the story of how the full-scale Indian rope trick is performed.
This was a quite simplified version. The fakir, with a short length of rope coiled on the ground in front of him, played over and over a few simple notes on a flageolet – and gradually, as he played, the rope began to rise into the air and stand rigid.
This gave Elsie Darnell a wonderful idea – although she did not mention it to George. She returned with him to their room at the hotel and, after dinner, waited until he went to sleep – as always, at nine o’clock.
Then she quietly left the room and the hotel. She found a taxi driver and an interpreter and, with both of them, went back to the bazaar and found the fakir.
Through the interpreter she managed to buy from the fakir the flageolet which she had heard him play and paid him to teach her to play the few simple repetitious notes which had made the rope rise.
Then she returned to the hotel and to their room. Her husband George was sleeping soundly – as he always did.
Standing beside the bed Elsie very softly began to play the simple tune on the flageolet.
Over and over.
And as she played it – gradually – the sheet began to rise, over her sleeping husband.
When it had risen to a sufficient height she put down the flageolet and, with a joyful cry, threw back the sheet.
And there, standing straight in the air, was the drawstring of his pajamas!
THE RING OF HANS CARVEL
(retold and somewhat modernized from the works of Rabelais)
Once upon a time there lived in France a prosperous but somewhat ageing jeweller named Hans Carvel. Besides being a studious and learned man, he was a likeable man. And a man who liked women and although he had not lived a celibate life, or missed anything, had happened to remain a bachelor until he was – well, let’s call his age as pushing sixty and not mention from which direction he was pushing it.
At that age he fell in love with a bailiff’s daughter – a young and a beautiful girl, spirited and vivacious, a dish to set before a king.
And married her.
Within a few weeks of the otherwise happy marriage Hans Carvel began to suspect that his young wife, whom he still loved deeply, might be just a little too spirited, a little too vivacious. That which he was able to offer her – aside from money, of which he had a sufficiency – might not be enough to keep her contented. Might not, did I say? Was not.
Not unnaturally he began to suspect, and then to be practically certain, that she was supplementing her love life with several – or possibly even many – other and younger men.
This preyed on his mind. It drove him, in fact, to a state of distraction in which he had bad dreams almost nightly.
In one of these dreams, one night, he found himself talking to the Devil, explaining his dilemma, and offering the traditional price for something, anything, that would assure him of his wife’s faithfulness.
In his dream, the Devil nodded readily and told Hans: “I will give you a magic ring. You will find it when you awaken. As long as you wear this ring it will be utterly and completely impossible for your wife to be unfaithful to you without your knowledge and consent.”
And the Devil vanished and Hans Carvel awakened.
And found that he was indeed wearing a ring, as it were, and that what the Devil had promised him was indeed true.
But his young wife had also awakened and was stirring, and she said to him: “Hans, darling, not your finger. That is not what goes there.”