The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 36

11.07.02

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

Click image to enlarge

Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

36. [Plate 30]

The Miser

Here's a jolly tale for a change. It's about a miser. Not just any miser

either, but a flint-hearted, grasping, cinder-souled old curmudgeon, the

sort of fellow who is the delight of pranksters everywhere. Because one

can do anything at all to them, you see, and nobody minds. All the world

laughs when they get their come-uppance.

One day, some merry lads hatched a delightful plot to teach the miser a

lesson. First they made the usual elaborate preparations. Then one of

their number, the closest thing (and not very close at that) to a friend

that the miser had, remarked casually that he'd heard gold was going out

of fashion.

"Out of fashion?" the miser cried. "Not likely! Why, gold is as solid an

investment, sir, as? as? as gold itself!"; Gold was all he had. It was

the wife he never married, the children he never had. Late at night, he

stroked it lovingly and crooned softly over it.

"Think what you will," the prankster said with an insouciant shrug, and

left.

The hook was set.

Over the next several days, a consortium of practical jokers employed all

the classic tricks of a major "sting" on the miser. They separated him

from reality. They fed him doctored newspapers. They plonked him down in

front of rigged radios. They staged conversations that were meant to be

overheard.

GOLD TUMBLES! the headlines read. "There was panic in the markets today,

as an precious metals fell to unprecedented lows," the radio reported. "I

took my bullion and lashed it together with steel cable," a businessman

confided to a friend, as he got up from a nearby table. "At least it can

serve as an anchor for my boat."

When the waitress saw that the businessman had left a gold coin as a tip,

she threw it after him with a curse.

The miser was devastated. He believed every word. Clutching his gold to

him, he sank to his knees. "But gold is all I have!" he cried. "Gold is

all I have!" That night he hung himself from a rafter, with his bags of

gold tied to his belt so their weight would help speed him to his end.

Humor is the great leveler. A pompous man slips on a banana peel! A

society woman falls on her prat! A politician is hit in the face with a

pie! All humor is rooted in pain, humiliation, and exaggeration. We laugh

at extremes of behavior that would horrify us in real life.

That's why this story is so funny.

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This is the 36th of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

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