"Cabrito" (1957/1976)

“Well, it is. When the soul is pulled out of the body it is just like the body only smaller. The same four limbs and all, but only the size of a cabrito, for the soul is the body in miniature.”

A colleague has invited me to give a talk on narrative. I’m looking forward to showing his students how semiotic squares are used to analyze stories, which connects well with what they have been studying in class. But there is something else. What a fine pretext to teach some Lafferty for the first time. I picked his early and impressive short story, "Cabrito." "Early" is a bit misleading, though, since—as Andrew Ferguson has pointed out—it was the first story Lafferty completed in 1957 when he began writing again. So another part of the fun is just that. The first time teaching him is the first story he completed in his 260+ story speedrun.

"Cabrito" starts in a curious setting, a borderland bar made to look three times its size by wall mirrors. An Airman (the Norwegian) sits with his companions. In the apparent world, Lafferty tells us, this is Airman Lundquist; in the real world, he is a wild Viking, and his mirrored doubles—his fetches—are not exact copies of him. They’re holding other conversations. Significantly, all the stories are self-preoccupied.

The fetches follow invisibly when Lundquist and his friend, an Irishman, decide to get some cabrito. Rejecting a nearby joint, Lundquist says, “We will go farther and do worse,” and thus they travel miles into the desert (at fairy tale speed) to a barn-like building where rows of cabritos turn on spits over a fiery furnace. From there, the story has some great twists.

So why use semiotic squares on this one? “Cabrito” makes us ask how appearances, identities, and explanations relate to one another. A square can help formulate those questions, but its terms have to fit the story. Teaching the method is also an occasion to ask where it stops helping.

The three squares below use the veridictory form developed by Greimas and Courtés. Each holds one property constant and distinguishes being from seeming. The dashed diagonals join a statement to its negation. An unknown remains unassigned. A change in what the reader knows need not mean a change in what has happened.

Reality and appearance are troublesome choices here. An appearance can disclose something real, and an extraordinary being can be real within a story. The fetches make that difficulty plain. I have kept the passage-by-passage reading below without assigning them to a category of nonbeing.

This kind of analysis is decidedly out of fashion, but I sometimes think about semiotic squares when reading Lafferty, since they offer a sort of precision. Take the notion of the liminal. We can all recognize it, but the term itself is vague: a thing can be liminal for countless reasons. A few months ago, I dug into how “the liminal” gained such academic and popular traction, eventually becoming a cliché of literary criticism. The word captures a mood, but as a critical tool, I find it unhelpful.

The above graph from Google’s Ngram Viewer illustrates the dramatic surge in the use of the word liminal, rising from near obscurity to current overuse. For more than 150 years, from 1800 through the mid-20th century, the term was exceptionally rare, appearing mainly in specialized academic contexts such as anthropology. A modest uptick began in the 1980s, but the wild feature is the exponential, hockey-stick-shaped spike that takes off around 2000 and accelerates sharply over the past decade. This kind of S-curve, when it comes to a piece of jargon, always leaves me skeptical.

Calling “Cabrito” liminal is a beginning. The question is what happens at its thresholds: reflections leave the mirror, diners hear competing accounts of their meal, and the journey home separates the man from his doubles. Each crossing has different consequences.

The fetches begin as reflections but behave independently of Lundquist. They tell different stories, drink different drinks, follow him, and are finally butchered. They are real enough to suffer. The question is how they belong to Lundquist once they cease to behave as images.

Amata offers each explanation as true, then retracts it when she offers the next. Her listeners must decide what to believe while continuing to eat. A claim’s provisional acceptance does not make it untrue. We need to distinguish what Amata claims, what the diners accept, and what the narrator confirms.

Amata successively describes the meal as dog meat, damned souls, and butchered customers. Her stories change the diners’ understanding of their food; we do not see the food itself change. At the end, however, the narrator shows the fetches being butchered and served. The opening scene’s doubles enter the business described in Amata’s tales.

I like Airman Lundquist. One of his three selves recalls Bougainville, another talks about his estranged wife, and a third talks about Elena. These divided conversations invite a reading of the man through his doubles. I feel a little sorry for him when the fetches are caught at the back of the buggy and put in the vat. He seems to have already lost a lot.

Perhaps losing the fetches frees Lundquist from parts of his past. Perhaps it diminishes him. We cannot say which opening story belongs to the man who escapes, and we never see him afterward. I might wish him a return to his wife, but the story gives us no such return.

Lundquist and the Irishman escape; the fetches do not. The ending divides their fates. What first seemed an optical duplication has become a separation with consequences: Lundquist survives while his doubles suffer the fate he avoids. Whether their loss changes the surviving man remains unanswered.

"Cabrito"

The Taberna was only as big as a cracker box, but it had full wall mirrors on each end which made it look three times as large. The seven stools had (not in order of importance) the Norwegian, the Irishman, a Little Brown Man, a Big Brown Man, two lesser persons, and Anita. Anita on this evening was not being spoken to by any of the other patrons of the bar; it was as though she were not there. (The mirrors enlarge the apparent room without changing its size. Their images will soon behave in a way that an ordinary reflection cannot.)

The Norwegian, in the apparent world, was known as Airman Lundquist, and was stationed at the Air Base across the river. He had been a sergeant and Air Man for twenty years; and now, purged of wife and family, was happy in a border town with a twenty-four hour pass every third day. The Norwegian, in the real world, was a wild Viking with a keen sense of humor and adventure, and no other sense of any kind whatsoever. (The narrator distinguishes Lundquist’s military identity from his Viking character. These are two descriptions of the same man; the independent doubles introduce a further problem.)

These seven people drank slow cool drinks and talked easily, for they were all good friends.

With the mirror images, it was as though twenty-one people were seated there in three only slightly separated groups; and Airman Lundquist was prominent in each group. An odd thing (hardly worth mentioning) is that, though the images of the other six persons followed them in detail, those of Airman Lundquist did not do so exactly. There were (though none at first noticed it) three Airman Lundquists, each telling a different story and drinking a different drink. The story of one was a happening at Bougaineville long ago in those happier days of the great southern war; and the story of another was of a wife in Minnesota who was separated from him . . . and the third one was talking about Elena... But except for these little things Lundquist and his two images were very similar as mirror images always are. (Lundquist’s images depart from his movements, speech, and choice of drink. Their separate conversations divide his history and interests among three speakers. The passage does not identify which story belongs to the man who later escapes.)

“We will go get some cabrito,” said Lundquist, the real and not the imaged or imagined Airman, “we can get it a half block from here and it's real good. Or we can go about twelve miles out and get some that's always burned. That sure is a rough ride out there and it'll take a couple of hours. Let's go get some cabrito.”

He left with his companion, the Irishman, and it seemed as if the two images of the Airman also followed, but invisibly. And all the rest of the evening they were following, for these as you have already guessed were fetches. (The narrator identifies the images as fetches and says they follow the men. They can leave the mirrors and act independently.)

“Irishman,” said Lundquist, “let's get in the buggy and go get some cabrito.”

“Norwegian,” said the Irishman, “we could walk the half block.”

“We will go farther and do worse.” (Lundquist chooses the longer journey and the worse meal. His appetite for adventure takes the men out of town, though the extraordinary doubles are already with them.)

. . . They went in and the two fetches of the Norwegian followed them.

There is an idea that only Irishmen have fetches or doubles... a great many people have them and the Norwegian had two of the best.

While they waited for their cabrito they drank an old essence of cactus juice... And Amata came over to talk to them. (Amata introduces a second uncertainty: the source of the meat the men have come to eat.)

“For a peso I will tell you a story... if you like that one too (listen closely) the third one will cost you only half as much.” (Amata sells the stories in sequence and discounts the third. She controls the order in which her listeners receive the explanations.)

“...They aren't cabritos at all, they're dogs... a never-ending supply... Isn't that a good story? Give me a peso.” (The first account substitutes dogs for goats and describes a cycle in which dogs eat the remains of earlier meals before becoming meals themselves. This is Amata’s account, not yet a fact established by the narrator.)

An old lady came over in a fury. “Did you tell them the dog story? ... Believe me, gentlemen, it is a lie.” (The old lady denies the dog story. Her denial competes with Amata’s claim; it does not by itself settle the source of the meat.)

“No, she is my granddaughter. I am enchanted . . .” (Amata disputes the apparent relation between her age and the old lady’s. Paco calls the old lady grandma. Their competing accounts leave the family relation uncertain.)

“Well, the first story was a lie. But this is a true story. Those aren't really cabritos, they're animas...” (Amata retracts her first explanation and substitutes damned souls. She changes her claim about the food; the scene does not show the food changing.)

“I hardly know whether to eat it or not,” said the Irishman, “I don't believe I ever ate either dog or damned soul before.” (The Irishman must decide whether to eat without knowing what the meal contains. The stories have altered his understanding of it.)

“The third story as I promised will only cost you half a peso. The first two stories were lies but this is the truth... they are calculating now... You can make six out of a man and thirty-one out of a horse.” (The third account threatens the diners themselves. Amata also gives them something to check: the departure ruts should be shallower because fewer parties leave than arrive.)

“Is it true?”

“The last story is always true until it is superseded.” (This is Amata’s rule for accepting successive stories. The ending must still be examined for what it confirms or leaves uncertain.)

They wiped their fingers on the bread and threw it to the dogs under the table, who perhaps would be cabritos the next night. (The narrator’s suggestion recalls the first account after Amata has retracted it. The possibility of dog meat remains in play.)

And when they left... they noticed that the ruts where they circled around to drive out were not as deep as where they came in; for always fewer people left than arrived. (The shallower ruts corroborate Amata’s warning that fewer parties leave than arrive. They do not independently prove every detail of her account.)

They got away safely, the last ones to do so that night. (The men escape. Their departure is successful, although the doubles fail to follow.) But the two fetches of the Norwegian were not so lucky. They stupidly allowed themselves to be caught just before they could jump on the back of the buggy. And despite their screams they were put in a vat and chopped up to the size of cabritos. And they were barbecued and served to the fortunate patrons the next night. (The narrator now describes capture, butchery, and consumption as events. The victims are fetches, bringing the opening multiplication of Lundquist into the restaurant’s trade. His survival leaves the significance of their loss unresolved.)