Chronicles of Wizard Prang
by Stafford Beer

Contents

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Wizard Prang was making soup.

He had a fantastic recipe, but it was pretty hard work.

He had needed the long table to set out the mixture of tomatoes and peppers and cabbage and beetroot and bits of this and onions and cauliflower and mushrooms and bits of that and pepper and salt and various herbs not to mention a liquid. Then there were mixing bowls and saucepans and strainers and funnels and choppers galore.

'What on earth is a liquid?' the wizard kept asking himself.

But the long table groaned under the weight of all this soup making paraphernalia.

Outside on the grass were no fewer than five messed up spells that the wizard had moved to clear the table top.

• One of them was leaking badly.
• One of them was engendering a mauve light. (Never mind,' thought Wizard Prang, 'so long as It doesn't turn purple!).
• Two seemed more or less dormant.
• The other one was obviously wholly Inactive.

So ('Here's a problem,' muttered the wizard) why were there no fewer than seventeen baby frogs gathered round it in an unbroken ring?

Perny came in, her gorgeous grin looking like sunrise.

Perny was Wizard Prang's apprentice. Sometimes he wondered why and so did she.

Once she asked him, outright.

Wizard Prang explained that there were some mysteries which the cosmos had no intention of making manifest. The relationship between wizard and apprentice was one of these. It was quite as odd for him as it was for her. He hoped that this was a complete explanation, as it would have been for Morgan in Arthur's Court and her apprentice, Arthur who else?

'Where was Merlin at the time?' asked Perny.

This leg had bells on it.

'Give me other examples, then,' said Perny, 'of mysteries that the cosmos will not permit to be explained!'

'Here are two,' said Wizard Prang. 'No one can explain how Yasser Arafat's chin always has a four day growth of beard. Secondly, no one can ever know what it is that a television news presenter writes when he has said his piece as the camera turns away.'

'Got you,' said Perny.

'What's all this?' she went on, waving her arms at the table full of whatnottery.

'I am making soup,' said Wizard Prang sternly.

He busied himself with ingredients and preparatory zeal.

Perny was sitting in a favourite crossed leg squatting position, which might have been a yogic asana. It wasn't, because of lack of attention to detail,

'I am your apprentice because you are supposed to know everything, and I am not supposed to know anything yet. Why don't you ever instruct me?' said Perny.

Wizard Prang went on dicing vegetables and boiling saucepans full of water with abandon. It was too much abandon, occasioned by the questioning.

After he had nearly sliced off his thumb, he replied: 'By the time you know what you're talking about, it's too late.'

'Oh' said Perny.

'That's better than "got you",' said Wizard Prang.

Eventually all the ingredients and all the saucepans arrived together in the biggest saucepan of all. It was set to simmer for ten hours to come.

Perny helped clean up the mess. Between them they managed to restore a certain amount of disorder to the cottage.

The messed up spells were put back on the table. The mauve one had come back to a light orange: it was going in the proper direction namely yellow.

Wizard Prang wrote a sign in Sanskrit beside the two dormant spells.

'Will that make any difference?' asked Perny.

'I wonder about you sometimes,' said the wizard.

By now there were twenty three frogs in the ring around the wholly inactive spell. Wisely, they left it where it was.

Perny was bored. She had delivered everything that was expected of her by the Establishment. She was fully qualified to overfill. What was she doing here with Wizard Prang? She tried again.

'You know more than I do, right?'

'Maybe, Possibly, Just!' said Wizard Prang.

'Then WHAT IS IT?' Perny almost yelled.

She was digging at one set of fingers with the other set, as she was wont to do.

He put a hand on both of hers, to calm her.

'You know that I know a little more than you know' he said. 'Is that right?'

'You know that's right,' Perny said.

'Do you know that I know that you know that I know this little more than you know?'

Perny hesitated for a moment.

'Ye...s,' she said. 'I suppose that's true!'

'I know that you know that. You weren't too sure. You are my apprentice because of this. Also I am your apprentice in the same way.'

'How can you also be my apprentice?'

'Because you know that I know that you know that I know that you know that I know more than you know. If not, you would not be my apprentice. But because this is true, then I must be your apprentice!'

Perny said 'Oh, shit.'

The wizard said: 'I am older than you, not wiser.'

Perny said: 'I want someone wiser than I'

'There is no one wiser than you if you will listen to yourself. You're IT!'

'Your extra wisdom is to know that I am IT whereas I don't?'

'You got it,' said Wizard Prang.

Later on, the soup boiled over. The wizard rushed to the saucepan and hauled it off the fire, burning himself.

He got himself organized, of course.

There he stood at the sink, an asbestos gloved hand holding the saucepan a strainer in the other.

'Let me help,' said Perny.

'Be quiet,' the wizard said: 'I have to concentrate on the recipe.'

The recipe said:

Strain the soup carefully.

Wizard Prang held the strainer over the sink, and poured the soup into It carefully, as admonished.

Wizard Prang looked at the collection of tomato skins, pepper rinds, bits of onion, thises and thats, that he held in the strainer.

The collection looked unappetizing.

'Where's the soup?' asked the wizard in a little boy lost kind of voice.

'You poured it down the sink,' said Perny, keeping her voice super normal. 'Will you now please note that Dr. Paiplaton is arriving very soon!'

'Who's he?' asked the crestfallen Wizard Prang.

Perny, who could be very nice when she put her mind to it, brought the wizard a cup of white wine and water.

'Relax,' she said, 'Paiplaton is the classical philosopher who keeps sending you papers about the Eternal Questions!'

'Those questions?' asked the wizard.

'The very same,' said Perny.

'What is a liquid?' asked Wizard Prang.

'Who cares?' said Perny. 'You poured the soup down the sink. A liquid and all. A liquid or not.'

'I understand,' said Wizard Prang.

Dr. Paiplaton walked around Wizard Prang's living room, fingering objects, Inspecting things, listening out, sniffing the air, tasting the canapés that Perny had set out.

Five senses only? Oh no; the young philosopher understood more than that. He had the kinaesthetic sense; he knew relationships. Paiplaton well sensed the muscles and joints whereby he related to the cosmos. Sixth-sense. Paiplaton had a sense of further senses too.

Perny knew it.

Dr. Paiplaton made efforts to convey all this to Perny too, while Wizard Prang was busy with the white wine, water, non sliding table tops, and fresh glasses.

Perny set his hands aside, quietly.

When they were all settled beside the blazing fire, the young philosopher leaned forward earnestly:

'Then just what are the answers to the Eternal Questions?' he asked Wizard Prang.

Perny moved her foot.

The wizard knew that Pemy had moved her foot. Perny knew that he knew. Neither of them indicated this.

'There are no answers at all,' said Wizard Prang.

Dr. Paiplaton was not aware that Perny had moved her foot. She was aware that he was unaware.

His body slumped.

'I can't bear this,' said Dr. Paiplaton: 'There have to be real answers!'

Wizard Prang was very calm.

Perny was not calm in the least, but she controlled her silence.

'There are no real answers,' the wizard blandly said, 'because there are no real questions!'

Dr. Paiplaton projected a question mark into the air between them. Perny caught the question mark, spun it round, and enhanced it. Nothing else happened beyond the crackling of the fire ...

'No questions?' said the young philosopher in a flat, unchallenging voice.

Perny said nothing. But somehow her reiteration of the question reflected in the crackling of the fire.

'There are no real questions,' said Wizard Prang, 'because you made them up!'

'I made them up?'

'Yes, you and Perny made them up.'

Perny moved another foot, but said nothing.

The wizard looked pointedly at Perny's foot.

'Not so much in the foot,' said the wizard, 'but in the head'.

Dr. Paiplaton did not understand the clash between the wizard and his apprentice. But he knew about his own head.

'Well,' he said at last, 'the Eternal Questions are in many people's heads. Is that supposed to be a coincidence?'

Wizard Prang replied: 'Coincidence is the inability to see what really matters.'

'Then what does matter?'

'I don't know,' the wizard said off handedly. 'It was you who started this inquiry. Perny as well, of course, but that was before you came. Soup matters. A liquid may or may not matter.'

Perny tossed her head. There was silence in the room for a long time. The young philosopher said:

'If there are no Questions, then there is no need for answers?'

'Alternatively,' said Wizard Prang: 'There are no answers, because there are no questions!'

There was more silence, save for the pouring of wine and water and the calls outside in the quarry of some bats.

The bat calls were pitched at so high a frequency that Dr. Paiplaton could not hear them. Perny could not hear them either.

Wizard Prang was not using his ears.

A little later, Dr. Paiplaton having thought through the whole discussion two and a third times shot bolt upright.

Perny gasped.

The wizard nearly had a heart attack.

'What you are saying is circular,' yelled Dr. Paiplaton.

'Ah,' said Wizard Prang: 'You got It!'

Chapter Three

Table of Contents

Chapter Five