Fancies and Goodnights

Fancies and Goodnights

John Collier

John Collier’s edgy, sardonic tales are works of rare wit, curious insight, and scary implication. They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters like Jorge Luis Borges and Roald Dahl. With a cast of characters that ranges from man-eating flora to disgruntled devils and suburban salarymen (not that it’s always easy to tell one from another), Collier’s dazzling stories explore the implacable logic of lunacy, revealing a surreal landscape whose unstable surface is depth-charged with surprise.

Some of the stories in this book have been printed in The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, and Harper’s Magazine; some of them have previously been gathered into a volume called Presenting Moonshine (published by the Viking Press, New York, 1941), and a volume called The Devil and All (published by the Nonesuch Press, London, 1934). Witch’s Money was published as a separate volume, for private distribution, in December 1940. The Touch of Nutmeg, copyright, 1943, by The Readers Club. “Gavin O’Leary,” copyright, 1945, by H. Allen Smith

BOTTLE PARTY

Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger-skins. Unfortunately the beautiful women seemed equally rare and inaccessible. At his office and at his boarding-house the girls were mere mice, or cattish, or kittenish, or had insufficiently read the advertisements. He met no others. At thirty-five he gave up, and decided he must console himself with a hobby, which is a very miserable second-best.

He prowled about in odd corners of the town, looking in at the windows of antique dealers and junk-shops, wondering what on earth he might collect. He came upon a poor shop, in a poor alley, in whose dusty window stood a single object: it was a full-rigged ship in a bottle. Feeling rather like that himself, he decided to go in and ask the price.

The shop was small and bare. Some shabby racks were ranged about the walls, and these racks bore a large number of bottles, of every shape and size, containing a variety of objects which were interesting only because they were in bottles. While Franklin still looked about, a little door opened, and out shuffled the proprietor, a wizened old man in a smoking-cap, who seemed mildly surprised and mildly pleased to have a customer.

He showed Franklin bouquets, and birds of paradise, and the Battle of Gettysburg, and miniature Japanese gardens, and even a shrunken human head, all stoppered up in bottles. “And what,” said Frank, “are those, down there on the bottom shelf?”

“They are not much to look at,” said the old man. “A lot of people think they are all nonsense. Personally, I like them.”

He lugged out a few specimens from their dusty obscurity. One seemed to have nothing but a little dried-up fly in it, others contained what might have been horse-hairs or straws, or mere wisps of heaven knows what; some appeared to be filled with grey or opalescent smoke. “They are,” said the old man, “various sorts of genii, jinns, sybils, demons, and such things. Some of them, I believe, are much harder, even than a full-rigged ship, to get into a bottle.”

“Oh, but come! This is New York,” said Frank.

“All the more reason,” said the old man, “to expect the most extraordinary jinns in bottles. I’ll show you. Wait a moment. The stopper is a little stiff.”

“You mean there’s one in there?” said Frank. “And you’re going to let it out?”

“Why not?” replied the old man, desisting in his efforts, and holding the bottle up to the light. “This one—Good heavens! Why not, indeed! My eyes are getting weak. I very nearly undid the wrong bottle. A very ugly customer, that one! Dear me! It’s just as well I didn’t get that stopper undone. I’d better put him right back in the rack. I must remember he’s in the lower right-hand corner.