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

Reason 46

01.16.03

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

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Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

46. [Plate 12]

Grace at the Gallows

Madness and buggery! What evil wind could have blown the ship of Grace's

fate to such a foul harbor? Yet there she was, long past midnight, in the

lonely gallows-ground at the edge of town, with her hand in the mouth of

the corpse of a hanged murderer, trying to prise out at least two of its

teeth.

Grace was superstitious. How not? Her life was a ramshackle structure of

disaster piled upon calamity piled upon humiliation. Surely somebody had

put a curse on her! The alternative was, for Grace, literally unthinkable.

So she had found a sorcerer who said he could easily undo the curse.

First, however, he needed certain items. What exactly? Oh, he was certain

she would have no trouble obtaining them?

What a terrible thing it is to stand tiptoe before a dead felon, yanking

and yanking at a slippery little nub of bone, all the while its erstwhile

owner stares down at you with sad indifference. It's enough to make a

girl doubt the essential goodness of life.

Oh, dear God, she could smell his breath! The corpse was beginning to

turn and an acrid tang told her that somewhere there were maggots at

work. But underneath that was a familiar sourness born of bad teeth and

worse digestion. She knew this man. He had been one of her regulars. His

face wasn't familiar, but who could forget such a stink? This night just

kept getting worse and worse!

But Grace was determined. She would do anything to end this lifelong

streak of bad luck. Holding a handkerchief to her nose against the

stench, she yanked one, then two ? that was the minimum ? and then, to be

safe, a third tooth.

The next day at noon, when the sorcerer unlocked his door, Grace rushed

into his den, unknotted her handkerchief, and poured its contents into

his outstretched hand. With barely a glance, he threw the teeth into a

cigar box that already held pencil stubs, loose change, mismatched

cufflinks and the like, and said, "Okay, give me a blow job and twenty

bucks, and we can get started. "

Oh, Grace thought. Naive as she was, she'd been scammed, hoaxed, and

defrauded so often that she immediately recognized his game for what it

was. This so-called "sorcerer" was nothing of the sort. He didn't value

the corpse-teeth one whit. Last night's horrors were inflicted upon Grace

only to intimidate her. All he really wanted was her money and some cheap

sex.

Having seen through him, anybody else would have snatched back the teeth

and stormed out of the confidence-trickster's squalid lair. She wouldn't

have stayed. She wouldn't have given him money. She would never have

taken the lying little weasel's filthy thing into her mouth.

But Grace, alas, was Grace, and so she opened her wallet and sank to her

knees. Nothing in her experience had ever taught her that any of her

adventures could end any other way.

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This is the 46th 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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