Postscript: The Parable of the Locksmith and the Merchant

The parable, continued

Gentle reader, I must beg thy pardon for this unseemly haste. Scarce had the ink dried upon the foregoing parable — nay, scarce had I set down my quill and reached for a cup of wine to celebrate the completion of mine work — when a great clamour arose in the streets below. Heralds came running with fresh proclamations, town criers shouted new intelligence, and messenger-birds darkened the sky with their frantic wingbeats.

“What now?” I cried, most vexed. “Can a poor chronicler not enjoy even a moment’s peace ere the world spinneth off in some new direction?”

Alas, in this most peculiar age, events moveth with such unseemly velocity that a man can scarce finish recording one chapter of a tale before the next hath already transpired. ‘Twas not thus in my grandfather’s day, when a story, once told, might rest peacefully for a season or two ere requiring amendment. But now? Now we live in times so hasty that a parable scarce hath time to teach its moral ere the very subjects thereof go and add a fresh scene to the drama!

And so, dear reader, I must append to my newly-finished tale — still warm from the telling, as it were — this postscript. I pray thee, forgive the awkwardness of this addition. In mine defense, I can only say that ‘tis the locksmith himself who could not wait even a single day before crying out in response to the merchant’s edict.

Would that the world moved at a more dignified pace, befitting the gravity of parables! But it doth not, and so neither may I.

If thou wouldst readest Part the First, thou mayest find it here.

Herewith, then, the postscript:

When word of the merchant’s edict reached the locksmith’s ears, he flew into a great rage and sent forth a proclamation of his own, declaring the merchant’s actions to be “most hostile and sinister in nature.” The locksmith professed himself “greatly astonished” by the merchant’s boldness, claiming that such measures would “clog the pathways of commerce throughout all the realm” and bring hardship upon many nations.

“There is no cause,” thundered the locksmith, “wherefore the merchant should be suffered to hold the entire world in captivity!” He proclaimed moreover that the merchant had acted treacherously, “lying in wait these many months past,” and that the locksmith had “always held in his heart the suspicion of such duplicity — and lo, now am I proven right!”

The locksmith declared that he would no longer meet with the merchant as had been appointed, saying: “There seemeth now no cause to do so.” He added, with exceeding bitterness: “These letters from the merchant came forth on the very day when, after three thousand years of strife and bloodshed, peace was finally proclaimed in distant lands. Doth anyone suppose such timing to be mere happenstance?”

But then — and here the locksmith’s voice took on a tone both threatening and peculiar — he proclaimed: “Let it be known that I, too, possess monopolies of mine own — yea, monopolies far mightier and of greater reach than those of the merchant! For every material the merchant hath monopolized, I command two! Yet in my wisdom and restraint, I have not chosen to wield these powers. There was never cause for me to do so — UNTIL THIS PRESENT HOUR!”

The locksmith declared his intent to impose great tariffs upon all the merchant’s goods, and spoke darkly of “many other countermeasures” that were “under most serious consideration.” He concluded with a warning: “This matter shall prove, though painful in the present, to be a very good thing in the end for my mountain kingdom.”

Yet all who heard these words noted a certain hollow ring thereto. For though the locksmith spoke boldly of his own monopolies and of countermeasures yet to come, he had not named what these monopolies might be, nor explained how they might succor him when his very tools and workshop fixtures were fashioned of the merchant’s metal. His threats of tariffs seemed a strange remedy for a man whose forge could not function without the merchant’s ore.

And the people whispered amongst themselves: “The locksmith speaketh as one who hath been caught unawares. He calleth the merchant’s actions surprising and hostile, yet was it not the locksmith himself who first forbade commerce? He threateneth to unleash mighty powers he hath held in reserve, yet nameth them not. Perchance these powers exist only in his imagination — or perchance they are not so mighty as he would have us believe. For if a man truly possessed weapons of such dread potency, would he not have deployed them ere now, rather than finding himself in this present extremity?”

Thus did the locksmith learn a second lesson, harder than the first: that bold words and proclamations of hidden strength are poor substitutes for the actual possession of needful things. A man may threaten much when his hinges begin to rust, but if he hath no metal to replace them, his threats are but wind.