Read Online A Graveyard for Lunatics by Ray Bradbury - Free Book Online

He rarely ate in the commissary; his glance spoiled the food. Dogs barked at him as if he were an infernal mailman. Babies bit his elbows and suffered stomach cramps.
    Everyone flinched and pulled back at his arrival.
    Doc Phillips fastened his glare here and there along our group. Within instants, some few of them developed tics.
    Fritz turned to me. “His work is never done. Too many babies arrived early behind Stage 5. Heart attacks at the New York office. Or that actor in Monaco gets caught with his crazy operatic boyfriend. He—”
    The dyspeptic doctor strode behind our chairs, whispered to Stanislau Groc, then turned quickly and hurried out.
    Fritz scowled at the far exit and then turned to burn me with his monocle.
    “Oh master futurist who sees all, tell us, what the hell is going on?”
    The blood burned in my cheeks. My tongue was locked with guilt in my mouth. I lowered my head.
    “Musical chairs,” someone shouted. Groc, on his feet, said again, his eyes on me, “Chairs. Chairs!”
    Everyone laughed. Everyone moved, which covered my confusion.
    When they had done with churning in all directions, I found Stanislau Groc, the man who had polished Lenin’s brow and dressed his goatee for eternity, directly across from me, and Roy at my side.
    Groc smiled a great smile, the friend of a lifetime.
    I said, “What was Doc’s hurry? What’s going on?”
    “Pay no attention.” Groc calmly eyed the commissary doors. “I felt a shudder at eleven this morning, as if the rear of the studio had struck an iceberg. Madmen have been rushing around ever since, bailing out. It makes me happy to see so many people upset. It makes me forget my melancholy job of turning Bronx mud ducks into Brooklyn swans.” He stopped for a bite of his fruit salad. “What do you guess? What iceberg has our dear
Titanic
struck?”
    Roy leaned back in his chair and said, “There’s some calamity at the prop and carpenters’ shop.”
    I shot Roy a scowl. Stanislau Groc stiffened.
    “Ah, yes,” he said slowly. “A small problem with the manatee, the woman’s figure, carved from wood, to go on the
Bounty
.”
    I kicked Roy under the table, but he leaned forward:
    “Surely that wasn’t the iceberg you mentioned?”
    “Ah, no,” said Groc, laughing. “Not an Arctic collision but a hot-air balloon race, all the gas-bag producers and yes-men of the studio are being called into Manny’s office. Someone will be fired. And then—” Groc gestured toward the ceiling with his tiny doll hands—“falling upward!”
    “What?”
    “A man is fired from Warner’s and falls upward to MGM. A man at MGM is fired and falls upward to 20th. Falling
upward
! Isaac Newton’s
reverse
law!” Groc paused to smile at his own wit. “Ah, but you, poor writer, will never be able, when fired, to fall upward, only down. I—”
    He stopped, because…
    I was studying him as I must have studied my grandfather, dead forever, in his upstairs bedroom thirty years ago. The stubble on my grandpa’s pale waxen skin, the eyelids that threatened to crack and fix me with the angry glare that had frozen Grandma like a snow queen in the parlor for a lifetime, all, all of it as clean and clear as this moment with Lenin’s necrologist/cosmetician seated across from me like a jumping jack, mouse-nibbling his fruit salad.
    “Are you,” he asked, politely, “looking for the stitch marks over my ears?”
    “No, no!”
    “Yes, yes!” he replied, amused. “Everyone looks! So!” He leaned forward, turning his head to left and right, skinning his hairline and then his temples.
    “Lord,” I said, “what fine work.”
    “No. Perfect!”
    For the thin lines were mere shadows, and if there were flea-bite stitch scars, they had long since healed.
    “Did you—?” I said.
    “Operate on myself? Cut out my own appendix? Perhaps I am like that woman who fled Shangri-La and shriveled into a Mongol prune!”
    Groc laughed, and I was fascinated with his laughter. There was no minute when he was not merry. It was as though if he ever stopped