Author's Note
It should come as no surprise to the casual reader that the event that I am about to relate, and coincidentally all subsequent events as they were related to me, will seem to be of an incomparably extraordinary nature; indeed, this very same nature would situate said events among the highest, most esteemed position of all those stories enshrined in the pantheon of what, in the common parlance, is referred to as the—and permit me to add here the somewhat vertically inaccurate—tall tale.
Nevertheless, the story committed to the confines of these pages remains the whole, absolute, and undeniable truth. I leave it to the good sense of my capable reader to weigh for himself the veracity of this most amazing account.
Most humbly yours,
The Author
It transpired one particular afternoon after I’d completed my daily quota of pages that I found myself sitting alone at a corner table near the back of the Mare’s End, enjoying a well-earned and well-deserved libation. I’d arrived early for our appointment, as was my habit, and to calm my nerves a bit, I’d brought along an old, weather-beaten copy of Tristram Shandy to help pass the time. I was well into my second bottle of beer when the decidedly peculiar figure of my long-anticipated companion caught my eye as he entered the bar.
I recognized him immediately, though, to tell the truth, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d seen him at all at first. However, this was not an occurrence so out of the ordinary. Such is the ethereal nature of the baron. At once both real and imaginary, his has always been a personage that bridged the cosmic gap of both space and time. Much as the mighty legs of the fabled Colossus straddled the harbor at Rhodes, so, too, did the baron stand bestride the tangible and the illusory—always with one foot firmly planted on the ground, even as the other tiptoed on a cloud.
I’d not seen him in years, but the intervening seasons had not much changed him. A little whiter at the temples, a little less sure in his stride, perhaps, but nonetheless unmistakably the baron.
His name had been dancing on the lips of the public for months as unbelievable stories of his travels across America spread over the airwaves. Bold-faced headlines two inches high splashed front pages from New York to San Francisco: “Munchausen Swims Up Niagara Falls!” and “Munchausen Takes Checkered Flag at Daytona in Homemade Pedal Car!” Almost nightly, the evening news had run at least one piece, usually two minutes of fluff, to round out the broadcast, detailing how he’d been spotted ascending Mount Hood alone with nothing but a derby-handle walking cane and a three-foot length of nylon rope, or that he’d emerged from the Appalachian foothills near Johnson City, Tennessee, carrying thirty freshly slain black bears slung over his shoulders and wearing an eastern box turtle shell the size of a Galapagos tortoise on his head like an M1917 helmet.
From Reno, they said an incredible streak of luck broke the banks at both the Peppermill and the El Dorado casinos. Twenty-seven consecutive full houses capped off by an impossible royal flush with not one but two queens of hearts! In Atlanta, at the Georgia Aquarium, he was said to have spent almost four hours retrieving his hat from the belly of Trixie, the whale shark, when the old girl swallowed it. Witnesses reported it had inopportunely slipped off his head while he was enjoying a leisurely ride on the back of a manta ray.
They said he traveled almost exclusively on foot, and only rarely by car or rail, and that flying in the cramped cabin of a modern jet airplane offended his constitution and sense of privacy. Corporate interests, from Apple to Amazon to Walmart, offered him the unlimited use of their more accommodating, more luxurious, and certainly more expedient executive air services, all clamoring over each other, salivating at the opportunity to attach a name of such renown to their entities. The baron politely refused all offers with a wink and a smile, noting there wasn’t anywhere he could not get to with only his own two legs to carry him, if not occasionally helped along by the fortuitous appearance of a passing seahorse or giant eagle.
I’d heard a state parade in his honor was at that very moment scheduled to commence in Washington, DC. Emissaries and representatives from more than forty nations had flown in to attend. Twelve West African lions were harnessed three abreast to draw the baron’s gold-plated phaeton down Pennsylvania Avenue. Fashioned from the carapace of an enormous horseshoe crab draped in laurel wreaths and flowing silk banners six hundred feet long, the carriage itself would be trailed by three separate marching bands comprised entirely of trained lowland gorillas. Hawaiian fire dancers and a cavalcade of Bedouin princes on camelback would lead the procession. The event was to be broadcast live across the globe. Even the SETI Institute got in on the game, arranging for a radio transmission of the festivities to be beamed directly toward the exoplanet Gliese 667 Cc in the Scorpius constellation in the hopes that if there is anyone there, they might be as excited to learn of the baron’s exploits as the people of Earth. At the end of the parade route, he was to give a speech on the steps of the Capitol, and one could only believe his message would be one of peace and praise for what the great land of America had blossomed into from its humble, arduous beginnings.
But there would be no speech, and the phaeton would roll empty down the grand avenue, for when the time came to start the parade, the baron was nowhere to be found. I was honored he’d elected to forgo the festivities in favor of meeting with me instead.
“An ale, my good man. And don’t be stingy with the foam.”
The bartender of the Mare’s End switched the television over to the live coverage of the parade, then mechanically grabbed the tap and poured a golden brew for his newest patron. He took no notice whatsoever of the baron’s personage, or if he did, he appeared unmoved. It’s in the nature of bartenders to listen to sob stories and the occasional outlandish tale but to care little from whose mouth they spill, be he a boozer, a broken heart, or a baron.
Munchausen graciously accepted the proffered glass, lifting the sweaty pint to his lips. Drinking half the lot in one go, the bulging apple in his throat made considerable leaps up and down his neck as the cool ale washed down his gullet. With one final gulp, the remainder was gone. He smacked his lips and called for another.
“And, this time, I shall use a vessel of my own choosing,” he said, his voice creaky as an old wooden door. “If you would permit me, my good man?” The barkeep, not quite sure what to make of it, stepped aside while the baron coolly strode around the back of the bar and from within the folds of his crimson hussar’s coat produced a crystal stein of immense proportion, as tall as a man plus three feet, with a circumference of nearly the same measure. A pewter escutcheon bearing the royal coat of arms of the king of Brobdingnag gave reference to its illustrious origins.
“A gift from an old traveling companion,” the baron clucked as he topped off his beer. The bartender could only watch gape-mouthed as the last drops of his stock poured out into the near-bottomless well of the glass. But Munchausen, no skinflint, left a brick of hundred-dollar bills on the bar for his tab.
“You should find this more than adequately compensates you, my good sir. And as for the rest, a bottle of your finest red and perhaps a plate of kippers?”
By now, the parade on the television had started. Wolf Blitzer, joined by Lester Holt, Mika Brzezinski, Chris Wallace, Anderson Cooper, Jeanine Pirro, and Laura Ingraham provided running commentary. The Great Sphinx of Giza, having been restored to its original splendor and gratefully donated by the government of Egypt for the occasion, glided past the camera, pushed by Pantagruel, the giant king of the Dipsodes, while his father, Gargantua, trailed behind bearing the Statue of Unity (on loan from India) on his shoulders, all to the cheers and horror of the spectators lining the avenue.
The baron finished his mug of beer, drinking it off in long, heaving draughts, down to the last bubbles of creamy white foam, and spilled not a single drop of the precious liquid. Then he took up a glass and the bottle of Malbec left by the barkeep and eased himself into a seat opposite my own to await his plate of kippers. The leather chair accepted its honored guest with an agreeable sigh and welcomed him like a warm embrace, even as the other denizens of the bar regarded his outlandish presence with almost alien bewilderment. The baron always was a peacock among pigeons, but like a good soldier, he maintained a militant aplomb amid the gawkers.
Regarding his carriage, it can be said he bore himself upright with soldierly pride, or at least as much uprightness as his old bones would allow. The passing years had lent his shoulders a modest slump, his spine the gentlest—one might even call it graceful—curvature, like that of a bulrush giving ever so slightly to a passing autumn breeze. A regal curve really detracting not a whit from his elegant mien, but enhancing it, even, somehow lending more gravity to his poise. He carried this frame on long, sturdy legs, strong and lean as a bull’s, so that, despite the bend, he still towered nearly a head taller than most other men in the room. And when he sat, he crossed those sinewy legs with all the intent of a man setting the jaws of a steel bear trap.
His nose was exceedingly long, with two serious brown eyes set narrowly on either side of its cuspate bridge. His face, like his legs, was lean, and his cheeks drew marginally inward, giving his jaw a sturdy, angular line that tapered severely down to a pointed chin that jutted forward like a knife, at the tip of which grew a snowy tuft of hair lovingly teased and waxed into a sharp Vandyke. A pair of thin, bloodless lips concealed a mouthful of well-kept porcelain dentures only moderately yellowed from his near-constant use of tobacco. Above these grew a pencil-thin mustache, white as his beard, curled into upturned points. Tucked between these lips, he kept an old briarwood pipe from which he puffed occasionally, screwing up his eyes into pensive slits, giving over to his whole visage the look of a man deep in intense thought and measure.
Ever the man of action, his uniform bore the memories of bloody battles fought on far-off Ottoman fields of war, his boots trailing the dust of Crimea, Gibraltar, Ceylon, and countless other exotic lands in his wake. His white breeches showed wear at the seams from years in the saddle, but gold braided epaulettes at his shoulders reminded all this was no mere dragoon. He carried with him an old, leather-wrapped horse riding crop tucked under his arm, while at his hip, bulging beneath the lining of his long cavalry coat, the steel of his trusty couteau de chasse described a sinister curve. A horsehair periwig, freshly starched, adorned his head, which, in turn, was crowned with a grand black tricorn hat bearing a cockade of pure white silk.
“I see you’ve started without me,” he said, noting the near-empty bottle of beer on the squat table between us, his tone bright and full of life despite its creaky, adenoidal note. “It is unbecoming of a gentleman to drink without a companion. Allow me to remedy that.”
The baron drew the barkeep’s attention with a casual wave of one finely manicured hand encircled by a cuff of lace at its wrist, and promptly a second glass was brought for the wine.
“You’re late,” I said. “I’d begun to wonder if you would make our appointment at all or just disappear again like you seem to do.”
“Late?” the baron said indignantly. “Munchausen is never late. It is time that’s wrong. I always keep a date.”
While we waited for the wine to breathe, he struck a match and lit his pipe.
“There is no smoking allowed indoors anymore,” I said.
“Yes, I heard something about that.” He blinked in between puffs with complete disregard. “An ill-conceived tyranny of morals. To deprive a man of his smoke, and a soldier, especially, is to deprive him of nothing less than his happiness, as well as his sound judgment. It’s a well-established fact that no decision of significance or magnitude in the history of mankind was ever reached in a smokeless room.”
He sucked the stem of his pipe luxuriously, exuding a long, velvety wisp of vanilla smoke that, to my amazement, drifted not up and over our heads but instead winded downward and slithered like a snake into a hollow tree trunk, disappearing straight into the pocket of his vest.
“I trained them long ago,” he said, launching into a memory with a smile. “A skill that has proved its worth on more than one occasion. I was once enjoying the hospitality of a certain wife of the emir of Kokand when His Highness returned suddenly from a battle with the Tajiks. It was assumed by his advisors the fight would not be easy, and he would be away for many weeks. However, victory had proved unexpectedly swift. I was, of course, regaling Her Majesty with some stories of my adventures in the interior of Africa, and was smoking my pipe, as is my fashion, when the emir burst through the front gates at the head of an army ten thousand strong. I was forced to quickly seek shelter in a tremendous wardrobe of solid gold and encrusted with diamonds and other precious stones while the cuckold searched the palace high and low, convinced of his wife’s infidelity. He was a most distrustful and paranoid fellow, this emir, consumed by jealousy, and tore the place fairly apart looking for his usurper. And he’d have found me, too, had providence not interceded. As it happened, I’d just finished a month-long regimen of training my fog in the manner you have just observed, so the evidence of my presence was well concealed from both sight and smell. If not for it, there is little doubt the emir would have discovered me and taken my head.”
I pointed out the smoking bans were less about preserving decorum and more about protecting the general health and welfare of others. He’d have little of it.
“I have enjoyed at least one pipe every day these last two hundred and eighty-one years, and you will witness it has not been to the detriment of my constitution. In fact, as I have already explained, it has saved my head more times than I can count.”
“Not everyone has the luxury of enjoying a physique as robust as your own,” I said.
“This is true,” he concurred. “I have been blessed, if it can be put that way.”
“Then you would also agree the ill effects of your smoke would naturally be a hazard to any without your good fortune.”
“Which is why I went to such pains to train them. I can contain the offensive exhaust here and release it later where it doesn’t bother anyone. It’s quite simple, and I’d a plan to enact the practice on a national scale, but as is often the case in this strange country of yours, one or two holdouts in your Congress scuttled the entire enterprise. In its place, an abolition, sanctioned by the few and imposed on the whole. A curious result for a land touting itself home to free men. But not one without precedent, I suppose. Yours is a most litigious society. You bicker over your own laws with each other almost as frequently as you make war with others over theirs.”
“Voltaire said the only perfect laws were the ones made for gaming.”
“Leave it to a Frenchman to state the obvious,” he said flatly, tamping the bowl of his pipe methodically with two slender gray fingers.
“We aren’t without our shortcomings,” I said.
“Nor your ironies,” the baron clucked. “They are as multifarious as they are multitudinous. I can tell you, sir, I have learned firsthand just what things both wonderful and terrifying are to be beheld in this America of yours.”
A twinkle flashed in the old man’s eye. It wasn’t hard for him to see the anticipation building inside me. I could do little to hide it. It was what I’d been waiting months to hear. The unvarnished truth straight from the horse’s mouth. He leaned forward, beckoning me to do the same with a conspiratorial nod.
“Those stories they’ve been telling about me in the news?” he said, gesturing toward the television behind the bar. “Those are only the ones they let me tell. The ones they wanted everyone to hear. The others, well . . .”
He reclined back into the folds of his chair, an amused smirk playing about his pale lips, leaving me hunched over the table like a fool. I knew instantly he would not be so forthcoming. An old boaster only plies his trade to a willing audience, lest there be no fuel for his fire. There was no choice but to pick up the bait left so blatantly before me. To get the full story, I would have to appeal to his vanity. Assuming a woefully transparent air of nonchalance, I took the bottle in hand and poured out the wine.
“How many years has it been?” I asked. “Ten? Twenty?”
“Not since Munich, I imagine,” Munchausen said. “I do forget the odd encounter from time to time. Not to belittle our friendship in any way, mind you. It’s just I’ve had so many adventures. Three hundred years is a long time to keep everything straight. You can forgive me the occasional lapse in memory.”
“I’m flattered you would consider us friends,” I said.
“You should be. It is not a term I bandy about lightly. I have had many admirers, and even more respectful enemies, but few I could call friends.”
“Why is that, do you suppose?”
“I attribute it mainly to the cause of philosophy. Rational thought and I have rarely found ourselves on the same sides of the battlefield, though I daresay you won’t find a man more irrational in his thinking than I. It has always been the perceptions of others I’ve found excessively troubling. Reconciling Munchausen against the rigid systems of objectivism, materialism, or idealism is something most are quite incapable of. Personally, I blame Kant for it, though Descartes is not without fault either. Men have forever been knocking their brains against the sides of their skulls to try and figure out just how I do it. But there’s no real secret. I am Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Baron von Munchausen. I do; therefore, I exist. Conversely, I exist; therefore, I do. Like a metaphor, or a line of poetry, the existing is found in the image, not the act. Samuel Johnson understood this. Your Samuel Clemens too. Those were men of vision. Come to think of it, perhaps further research is warranted into why Samuels are more open to the possibilities of time than those with other names. They say the Samuel of the Bible was a seer of sorts. Maybe there was some truth to it after all. Nevertheless, philosophy is such an ancient curse, and we’d do well to avoid its pitfalls here.”
“Doubters shouldn’t be dismissed for their skepticism,” I said. “It’s human nature.”
“But neither should they be countenanced for their impunity, or their lack of critical insight. With them, it is always how. How Munchausen this, and how Munchausen that. Like a blind sword swallower, they always miss the point.”
“I’m not following,” I said.
“The question to ask is not how Munchausen, but why Munchausen.”
I admit, the query left me at a loss. The baron, perhaps sensing blood in the water, arched a curious eyebrow and pressed the attack.
“Have you yourself never thought to marvel at the sheer preposterousness of it all? Ask yourself, why does the woodpecker beat its head so violently against a tree trunk to dig out a meal when there are plenty of perfectly good insects to be found just wandering about free for the picking? Strictly speaking, and no disrespect to the woodpecker intended, the behavior is ludicrous and wholly unnecessary, but does the bird care? No, yet he beats his brains silly all the same. And what about the whale (or even the dolphin, for that matter), an animal that must breathe air to survive, yet lives in the one place on Earth where there is none to be found. Think about it. A creature living almost its entire life holding its breath. The thing itself is the very definition of madness.”
“You’re speaking of natural phenomena, the product of millions of years of evolution. Those things couldn’t be any other way than they are. A whale just can’t get tired of holding its breath and decide to move out of the ocean onto dry land.”
“And why not?” Munchausen asked with all the gravity of a man defending the very principles upon which he has built his life. “The decision is his to make, not yours. When he’s ready, he’ll make the move. I have seen a fox leap right out of its own skin, bones and all, after its tail got nailed to a tree, just as sure as I have witnessed newly free men willfully return to the lands of their own captivity rather than go home, so accustomed had they become to the lifestyle of a slave. You would not classify these as natural phenomena, would you? Yet they happened all the same. It is only because of your rational mind that you find them so troubling to believe. The average brain is too grounded in facts and figures and the mundaneness of what passes for reality these days, too taxed in seeking the genuine. My mind, however, is not bound to these nonfictive anchors. Munchausen is free, then, to explore life with fancy, if not the occasional flight, both literal and figurative, mind you, and see it for what it really is. A revelation of truth, even if expressed in a terminological inexactitude, as Churchill once so eloquently categorized it, remains a truth, nonetheless. Rationality seeks only to discourage the existence of that same truth, because it cannot reconcile itself to the logic of it. But it remains truth all the same, no matter how absurd it may seem. So, you see, how is quite irrelevant. Why Munchausen? Why? Because it could be no other. Desperate times call for fictive measures, and all that and such.”
The baron sipped his wine contentedly and turned his gaze to the fiery majesty of an oval red beryl set in silver adorning his pinky finger. On the television, a fury of coarse words flowed between Laura Ingraham and Katie Couric. Apparently, a discord over the exact number of Spaniards slain by the baron at the siege of Gibraltar. An iron cage was at that moment being erected at John Marshall Park, where the ladies had agreed to settle the matter in gladiatorial fashion.
“So, you admit, then, your stories are fictions?” I said.
“Only as much as life is an unending series of fictions masquerading as realities. And the laws of a fictitious reality must be based on that same fiction. As a rational man, you could no more interpret those laws as you could open up a volume of David Copperfield and step into the shoes of Uriah Heep. The ratiocination is rejected on its premise. But not so for Munchausen, who, as you also know, does not concern himself with fatuity. The whale will walk among us and breathe fresh mountain air when the fancy strikes him; it is all but guaranteed. I have seen much stranger things than this, I tell you, and many right here in your own country. But I don’t suppose you invited me here to listen to a lecture. You’d much rather hear what it is that I’ve learned observing your fellow countrymen these last months. What nuggets of wisdom has Munchausen unearthed in the land of the free and home of the brave? It is, after all, why you’ve asked me here, isn’t it?”
I refreshed his glass of Malbec by way of response, and a delightful sparkle flashed in the corner of the old man’s eye.
“Just remember,” he began. “Upon my honor, I have only, and will only continue to, confine myself to the facts.”
