Begun in a fit of enthusiasm for Michael Palin, Not Mad Just Crazy has gotten nearly to the halfway point, and continues to mystify everyone, including me. Below is the beginning.
Logic comes afterwards. It’s how we retrace our steps.
It’s being wise after the event. Before the event you have to be very silly.
—‘A Salmon of Doubt’ Douglas Adams
Chapter One I’m No Thief, I’m Just A Liar
The year of 1976 saw me two years old, and watching cartoons. Very, very bored. All year. All stinking year. My father only turned the TV off at night. He wanted me to keep busy, I guess, or at any rate occupied. See, he was writing a novel. A great, blockbuster, 16th century novel. Everything my father did was better if you compared it to what the 16th century had to offer. He finished the novel nearly twenty years later. I was, of course, not still parked in front of the TV. I was still, however, living at home. Attending school. Oldest kid in twelfth grade. Not the dumbest, though, not by a long shot.
I leave that honor to my friend Elmer Olthwaite.
‘Elmer!’ my teacher says, her high heels clicking, her gaze like a stiletto upon Elmer’s face. ‘Are you paying a-ten-shun!’
She always says ‘Attention’ like that. And always to Elmer. Poor Elmer.
‘Yes’m,’ says Elmer.
‘Fool boy,’ mutters the Devil, our mentor and teacher, with her spectacles-on-a-string. Everything is attached to her in some way, so she won’t lose or forget anything. Probably soap-on-a-rope at home.
‘Excuse me,’ says Elmer. ‘I need— I need to go to the bathroom.’
Mrs. Hartley would sigh. ‘Alright, Elmer— you may go.’
‘Thank you,’ says Elmer. He moves very, very slowly towards the door.
‘Elmer!’
‘I’m going! I’m going!’
‘Elmer!’
He slams the closet door behind him. The class erupts into laughter. Mrs. Hartley sighs. This happened more often than it should have.
Elmer Olthwaite was a peculiar sort of duck. His eyes were blue and beguiling. His hair dark most of the time, unless it was dry, which it very rarely was. His nose was a constant drippy faucet. Serious moments made him laugh, eye-contacts made him sneeze, and Fat Henry, the school bully, made him eat rats-on-a-stick.
My name, such as it is, is Demetrius Michaelangelo Eric Moore. It’s no good my having a normal name like Eric because it doesn’t get used, it gets shoved in back of a bunch of idiotic syllables. Demetrius, they call me. Sometimes.
Metric Measure Man, for the alliterative.
Where the Mets Play. Sportsfans. Not very intelligent.
Mete-ing Out Punishment. Eye-catching. But not true.
Lovely Metry, Meter Maid. Beatles.
Meter of Idiocy. A magical title used by those fond of making faces at me behind my back, namely, everyone.
Metry. Pronounced ‘Mee-tree.’ My campaign of a few years back to get people to call me ‘Dimit’ (especially when they were angry), sadly, failed.
And my life is, otherwise, miserable. Things do tend to be when you’re six foot three, live at home, attend school, work at McDonald’s, and have never had a girlfriend in your entire life, not even in kindergarten. So there, in my twenty-second year, I got fed up with it all. I decided to go on a Holy Crusade, minus the holy part.
‘Oh yes?’ Elmer said when I told him. ‘Like Monty Python?’
‘You never know,’ was all I said.
Because you never do. You really never do.
We joined a gypsy community. Elmer had suggested the circus, but none was coming until summer, and I wanted to get out of there before I was held back again.
‘Besides,’ I told Elmer, ‘I’m not weird enough for the circus. They’d have no reason to hire me.’
‘You’re extraordinarily tall,’ he said.
‘Not extraordinarily tall enough for the freak show.’
‘Oh, right.’
So when the Mulligan Gypsy Caravan came through, Elmer and I went and applied.
We were met by a man named Slit. He was small and fair-haired and smilingly charming, and when we asked he told us he was named ‘Slit’ in honor of an unfortunate occurrence with a specially-sharpened butter knife and the throat of a friend of his. The occurrence was what had led him to become a gypsy in the first place.
‘And who precisely are you?’ he said.
We told him.
‘And why precisely do you want to belong to us Mulligans?’
We told him.
‘Hmm,’ he said.
‘Um, excuse me?’ said Elmer, like he was getting ready to ask permission to go to the bathroom. ‘But— are all gypsies like you or is it only you that’s... like... you?’
Slit stiffened and stared at him. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he said harshly.
‘Oh. Nothing.’
‘You don’t trust me, do you?’
‘Oh. Ha ha. No.’
Slit smiled and lunged for Elmer’s throat, his quill pen with the metal tip forward outstretched. Elmer shied away backwards and fell off his chair.
“Absolutely not,” said a voice from the doorway. A small hand took the pen from Slit, who stood still and fell silent.
The man who stood in the doorway was, at a rough guess, nineteen. His hair was bushy and black and reached his shoulders. Underneath his long fringe of bangs, two piercing silver eyes looked out. A streak of grey ran through his hair despite the youth of his face.
He spoke to Slit. “Never,” he said, “never, ever, kill an applicant. Applicants are supplicants at the altar of the gypsy, do you hear? Don’t ever kill them. Especially not with a pen.” He sniffed.
The hand that had taken the quill pen away from Slit belonged to a person that was, after a bout of determined staring, female. Her short black hair and misleading tee-shirt ( “I’m a LUMBERJACK,” it said, “and I’m OKAY”) were, well, misleading. She had a silver bracelet around her wrist in the shape of a dragon. Looking at it, I felt the first pang of something that, I later realized, was thievery.
The girl examined the pen closely for a minute, said, “It’s been specially sharpened, you know,” to the man in the doorway.
“Specially sharpened,” he repeated in a dull rumble. “You specially sharpened that pen, Slit, I know you did, don’t try to deny it.”
“I didn’t,” said Slit.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“What do you know, anyway?” said the man in the door to the girl with the pen, ands he shrugged and gave it back to Slit, despite my cry of alarm. Elmer sat up, looked around vaguely, then said, “Oh, right,” and lay back down.
“Who are you?” said the man in the doorway.
“Well, who are you if it comes to that?” I said.
“I’m Norman Craven, I own this establishment,” he said. “Shut up. Answer the question. I’m in charge here.”
“I’m—” I said, and hesitated. There was no reason why I should tell them my real name,a and plenty of reasons why I shouldn’t. I didn’t like it, for one thing. “I’m— I’m Jerk. Sorry, no, I meant Jack. John. Er, John, but people call me Jack. Most of the time. I mean, my mother still calls me John, on account of my father’s name was John and I’m named after him, ha ha, only he died when I was twelve, you see, very sad, and so my mom calls me— yes, but you can call me Jack.”
“Metry,” whispered Elmer loudly, “isn’t your father at home going over the drudges?”
“Shh!” I hissed at him.
A brief pause. Then Craven offered his hand to me. “Well, Metry, welcome to the Mulligan Gypsy Caravan. You aren’t in yet, you know. Telling us your name does not guarantee that you get to be a gypsy. Well, sometimes it does, if it’s a nice name. What’s your name?”
“Elmer,” said Elmer. “Elmer Olthwaite.”
“Yes? And what do people call you, then?”
Elmer puzzled through this for a minute. “Most people call me Elmer,” he said at last, “as far as I can tell.”
Elmer shook hands with Craven, too. Craven gestured to the girl.
“This is uh— uh—”
“Samanthe,” said the girl, with a smirk instead of a smile,a nd gave us a high-five. “Nice to meet you— Jacques.”
“I’m Elmer,” said Elmer, and his mouth stuck open.
“I should mention the effect of the feminine form on my friend here,” I said by way of explanation. “Elmer, not normally given to loquacity at the best of times, is rendered virtually speechless by anything with remarkable legs, and therefore you—” I pointed at the girl called Samanthe, in order to make myself perfectly clear. “— should really stay away from him.”
“No wonder nobody likes you,” said Samanthe.
Gosh, you try to give someone a compliment. “What do you mean, nobody likes me,” I said, annoyed. “How do you know? You just met me.”
“Well, if people liked you,” she pointed out, “would you be here with him?” She sideled up to Elmer and put her arm around his shoulders. “Hello, Elmer,” she cooed.
“Hrrrng,” said Elmer, like Frankenstein’s monster. “Urrgh.”
“What are you doing here, anyway,” said Craven, crossing over to the desk and pushing Slit out of his chair. He sat down on a whoopee cushion, only I don’t seem to recall one being there previously.
“We want to be gypsies,” I said.
“So do I,” said Elmer.
“You’re part of the ‘we,’ Elmer,” I told him.
“Oh,” said Elmer, looking at the floor again and sending surreptitious glances at Samanthe every few seconds, which rendered them considerably less surreptitious.
“Me too,” said Samanthe.
“Srrrgh,” said Elmer. “Whaa?”
“Sorry, I don’t think its going to work,” said Craven. He stared at his desk, where Slit had been carving some original graffiti with the pen. “Nope. Almost certainly not. I mean, why should it? What kind of audacity and conceit is it to even try?”
“Why wouldn’t it work?” said Samanthe.
“Because it wouldn’t,” said Slit, who was standing to one side of his boss.
“Shut up,” barked his boss, whos side he was standing to. “He’s right. It wouldn’t.”
“But,” I said.
“That’s it,” said Craven, folding his hands in front of him and lookin ineffably pleased with himself. “I have spoken.”
“You see—” said Slit.
“Shut up!” said Craven. “There’s no reason on earth why we should give them an explanation. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. You see,” he explained ot us, “being a gypsy calls for— well— peculiar talents.”
“Oh really,” said Samanthe.
“Yes really,” said Craven testily.
“Then I’m your woman,” said Samanthe. “I’ve got the most peculiar talents of anyone you ever met. Don’t I, baby?” she asked Elmer.
“Oh yes,” said Elmer. “Drrrrr.”
“Yes, but what can you do?” Craven asked her.
“I’m a smithy,” she said. “I make things out of silver and gold.”
“Gold?” said Craven alertly. Greedily.
“And silver.”
“Ah, well, in that case, welcome to the family.” They shook hands. Craven eyed the dragon on her wrist. “Did you, er, make that yourself?”
“This? Oh, yes. Yeah, I did.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a dragon.”
“Yes, yes, I know. What’s it made of?”
“Silver.”
Craven peered at her .”Silver?” he said,
“Yes.”
“Oh. So that’s what silver looks like. Hmm.”
“What about us?” said Elmer.
“What about you? Who cares about you? You haven’t got a chance, d’you hear me, not a chance!” thundered Craven. “What do you do?”
“Just fine, thanks,” said Elmer, who was a bit confused.
“Let me think a minute,” I begged.
“Of course, of course, take all the time you need, but make it quick, boy, I can’t stand around here all day.”
I thought. Elmer didn’t, he just plunged in with the first thought that came to his head, which was an extraordinarily stupid one.
“He’s very tall,” he offered, pointing at me.
“This isn’t the circus, Elmer,” I hissed at him.
“Well, you are, anyway.”
“You have two minutes to convince me,” said Craven, his impatience growing.I opened my mouth to speak and he said, “No, I changed my mind. One minute.”
“Well—”
“No, thirty seconds. And counting,” he added, peering at his watch.
“Uh—”
“No, I haven’t got that much time; ten seconds. You have time for one sentence if its quick.”
“We could get him some stilts,” said Elmer, “if he’s not quite tall enough.”
