The Investigations of Avram Davidson (24 page)

“Do not all the savages, male and female, have such ugly eyes?”

Wong Cigar Fellow was inclined to be argumentative. “No, not at all, all. Some have eyes the color of smoke. Some have eyes of mixed colors. And some even have eyes the colors of human beings' eyes. Ha! Now I know how you will remember! Did she not, as they say, ‘teach a class'? On the morning of the first day of their week, in one of their temple-buildings which they erect with no thought to
feng-shui,
wind and water and other influences as revealed by geomancy—Yes. The one who taught fairy tales and savage songs to the children of our laundrymen, and did not the girl-child attend?—as why not? it may be that their strange god or gods have authority here in savage territory, so far from the Kingdom in the Middle of the World—besides: girls … one gives them away, merely; after eating one's rice for many years, they go off and live in another human's house.…”

On Lung uttered an exclamation. Yes!
Now
he recognized Large Pale Savage Female. Not in the least pausing or even slowing his pace, he listened while Wong Cigar Fellow spoke on.

The father of Large Pale Savage Female had formerly been, it was said, a merchant. Next, by cleverly putting his money out at usury, he had gotten a great fortune and owned estates and houses and documents called stocks and bonds which also gained him money. His wife having died, he had taken a concubine. “They call her a wife, but she has had no children, how can she be a wife?” and between concubine and daughter there had grown enmity.…

“Even in our own country one hears similar stories,” chattered Wong Cigar Fellow. “Still—why does the Old Father not adopt, say, a cousin's son? Marry off the daughter to—”

On Lung said, “Who would marry her? She has such big feet.”

“True. That is true. And even while it is true that the savages never bind the feet of their girl-children and even prevent us from doing so, still, even for a savage, Large Pale Savage Female has big feet. Well!” This time he really got up and grasped the pole of his carrying-basket. “It is said that the second wife so-called is gradually obtaining all the old man's property and that, not content with this, has made plans to—as they say—make a will in her favor. He is old and when he dies, what will become of Large Pale Savage Female? She must either go and play for trade in a sing-song house, or stay at home at the second wife's (or concubine's) beck and call, toiling like a servant. It is to drink bitter tea.—Farewell, Deft-Footed Dragon. It may be cooler by evening.”

On Lung worked on in his steamy back-room. “One Lung,” indeed! The savages had no knowledge that
Lung,
besides being one of the Hundred Names, also meant
Dragon.
It was his success as a warrior which had gained him that full name. Ah, the war! Then came a day when the high military council had summoned him to their chamber. “A treaty of peace has been signed,” said the spokesman, “and one of the terms of the treaty—the others of course need not concern you—is that all such warriors are at once to leave the Golden Mountain City and depart for distant places. These august personages would not leave you without means of earning rice money in savage parts, of course. Here is your passage-ticket on the fire-wagon. It is to a town called Stream-by-a-Cataract, in a distant province whose name means nothing and the syllables of which no human mouth can pronounce. Here are fifty silver dollars. The savages are so filthy that they are obliged to make constant changes of clothing, so you will never lack employment in the laundry which it has been arranged for you to assume. Therefore lay down your heart, Deft-Footed Dragon, and never worry about your rice-bowl.”

The girl-child (her mother, being weak, had taken a fever and died quickly) was indeed of great use in folding shirts; the savages called her Lily Long. Indeed, after a while, he had found comfort in the child's company: perhaps it was not his destiny to have sons. Because she was needed to fold shirts, because she was rather shy, because there were anyway no children nearby to play with, “Lily” (it was, for a marvel, easy to say; often he said it) spent much of her time in the shop. Also she was useful in chattering with the savages, none of whom, of course, could speak, when they came with shirts and other garments. The farthest away she ever went, in fact, was to the so-called “school” held in the worship place in the morning of the first day of their week … as though it were in any way essential to divide the lunar months into smaller quantities.… Sometimes she told him something of the strange tales and stranger songs learned there. Now and then he laughed. She was sometimes very droll. It was a pity she was so weak; her mother, of course, had also been so.

Almost as she entered he had recognized Large Pale Savage Female from the descriptions he had heard. “Lily was not at Sunday School today. Is she ill?” From the rear of the shop came the call of
Miss— Miss—
In the woman went. “Why, Lily, you are burning up. Let me put my lips to your brow … you have a terrible fever. Wait … wait…” Well did On Lung know a fever. Had the pills from the savages' apothecary helped? No they had not: therefore he was brewing an infusion of dried pomegranate rind, very good for restoring the proper balance of yin and yang, hot and cold.—In another moment, out rushed Large Pale Savage Female, swinging her mantle over her fleshy shoulders: it seemed but a second before she was back again, and this time she held the mantle in her arms as though she were swaddling a child; curious, he followed her behind the beaded curtain.

Curiosity gave way almost to alarm: Large Pale Savage Female at once set the mantle on a table and, picking up a cold iron, proceeded to strike it repeatedly upon the garment and its contents. Very nearly, it sounded as though bones were being cracked.

“Desist,
‘Miss-Miss,'
” he exclaimed. “That is clearly a costly garment as befits the daughter of a respected usurer and rack-rent landlord, and I fear it may be damaged, and the blame laid on me; desist!”

Smack! Smack!
Smack!

In a moment the mantle was flung open, inside lay a mass of crushed ice, quicker than he could move to prevent it she had snatched from the pile first one clean wrinkled shirt and then another, tumbled the crushed ice into each and wrapped it up like a sausage; then she set one on each side of the small, feverish body.

“Doesn't that feel better now?”

The female child murmured something very low, but she smiled as she reached up and took the large pale paw in her tiny golden hand.

Large Pale Savage Female came often, came quite often, came several times a day; Large Pale Savage Female brought more ice and more ice; she bathed the wasted little frame in cooled water many times, she brought a savage witch-doctor with the devil-thing one end of which goes in the ears and the other end upon the breast; also he administered more pills. Large Pale Savage Female fed broth to the sick child—in short, she could not have done more if she were caring for a husband's grandfather.

Afterward, Wong Cigar Fellow commented, “Needless to say that I would have gone had it been a boy; although Buddhists have said that even the death of a son is no more than the passage of a bird across the empty sky, who can go quite that far? Forget the matter in much toil and eventually you will have accumulated the thousand dollars which will enable you to return to the Kingdom in the Middle of the World and live at ease forever.”

Only On Lung himself had been present at the burial of the girl-child. He, that is, and Large Pale Savage Female whose much care had not prevailed, plus the priest-savage she had brought along. It was a wet, chill autumn day; the bitter wind had scattered rain and leaves … golden leaves … henceforth the tiny ghost would sip in solitude of the Yellow Springs beneath the earth. It was astonishing how very painful the absence of the small person was found. One would not indeed have thought it possible.

The heat had become intolerable; he thought of that sudden illness which was compared to the tightening of a red-hot band about the head: nonsense: he was still upright; merely the place seemed very odd, suddenly. Seemed without meaning, suddenly. Its shapes seemed to shift. It had no purpose. No wonder he was no longer there, was outside, was moving silently from one silent alley to another, on his shoulder the carrying pole of the two laundry-baskets, one at each end. No one was about, and, if anyone were, no one would have noted his presence: merely a Chinaman, which is to say a laundryman, picking up and leaving off shirts. No one. Everything was very sudden, now. He had hidden pole and baskets behind a bush. He had slipped through a space where a board was missing from a fence. He was in a place where wood was stored and split. He had a glimpse of someone whom he knew. He must avoid such a one—indeed all others. Silently his slippered feet flew up the stairs. A voice droned in a room. Droned on and on. And on. “…come when I call you, hey, miss? Miss, Miss Elizabeth? Beneath you, is it? We'll see if you'll come when I call you pretty soon,” the voice droned on. “I say, ‘We'll see if you'll come when I call you pretty soon, miss.' Wun't call me, ‘Mother,' hey, miss? Well, even if I be Mr. Borden's second wife, I be his lawful-wedded wife, him and me has got some business at the bank and the lawyer's pretty soon today, you may lay to that, yes, miss, you may lay to that; we'll see if you ain't a-going to come when I call you after that, and come at my very beck and call and do as I tell you must do, for if you don't you may go somewheres else and you may git your vittles somewheres else, too, though darned if I know where that may be, I have got your father wrapped around my little finger, miss, miss, yes, I say yes, I shall lower your proud head, miss,” the hateful, nasal voice droned on.

So! This was she: the childless concubine of the father of Large Pale Savage Female!
She,
the one who planned to assume the rule of family property and cast out the daughter of the first wife? In this heat-stricken, insane, and savage world only the practice of fidelity and the preservation of virtue could keep a man's heart from being crushed by pain. He who had been known (and rightfully known) as The Deft-Footed Dragon, the once-renowned and most-renowned hatchet-man of the great Ten Tongs, hefted his weapon and slipped silently into the room.…

A Q
UIET
R
OOM WITH A
V
IEW

“A Q
UIET
R
OOM WITH A
V
IEW
” was published in 1964. It takes place in a retirement home. I remember reading this story as it poured out of Avram's typewriter, and loving it. There is a wonderful description of a chicken thigh as the tastiest part of the chicken, and lovely descriptions of buttery mashed potatoes and hot apple turnovers, too. How we laughed when we read the story aloud—it must have been just before dinner. In 1964, the grim reality of living in a retirement institution seemed very far away. The years passed, and Avram's health declined, until he too was confined temporarily in a retirement facility. Then the laughter faded, and the dark side of this warm yet chilling story became very real.

—GD

 

Precisely at midnight, as always, in a predestined order and immutable sequence, Mr. Stanley C. Richards was awakened to the tortures.

Midnight. The bells in the Cathedral began to toll—twelve strokes. At
one,
Mr. Richards awoke and was reminded of where he was (which meant he was also reminded of where he was not), sighed, gripped the covers.

At
three,
Mr. Nelson Stucker awoke, quite obviously
not
reminded of where he was or was not, and began to call the name of his dead wife.

At
seven,
Mr. Thomas Bigelow, snatched from slumber by the uncertain cries of Mr. Stucker, began to cough. He coughed whenever he was awake—long, slow, deep, ropy, phlegmy, chest-rattling coughs; during the day, as if ashamed, he preferred to keep out of earshot—at the far end of the garden, in the nearby park, in an unfrequented chapel in the Cathedral, even (in bad weather) in the basement; but at night, poor man, where could he go?

And at the stroke of
ten,
Mr. Amadeo Palumbo, jolted from dreams of the dank little fruit and vegetable store where he had been busy and happy for forty years, jolted into remembrance that not only the store but the very building had been torn down to make room for a housing project which had no need for fruit and vegetable stores—Mr. Palumbo moaned out his woes and grief and loneliness in the language of his childhood. “Oh, Gesu-Mari'!” he keened. “Oh, San' Giussep', San' Giacom'!”

And so, by
twelve,
by the last stroke of the chimes, a stroke echoing infinitely in the clamoring darkness, the tortured pattern of the night was established forever.

The nights seemed to last forever, there in that room under the eaves of the old building full—overfull, in plain fact—of old men and old women.

Bedtime was at half-past ten, and at half-past ten the four old men in the attic room overlooking the airshaft sank quickly enough into slumber, tired out by the fatigue of having lived through another day. But by midnight they were all near the surface again.

It wasn't, really, that the chimes were noisy or unpleasant. On the contrary, they were soft melodious chimes, world-famous, as was the Cathedral itself—to which the Alexandra Home for Aged Couples and Elderly Men was attached by some loose denominational ties. It wasn't, really, the chimes so much that awakened Mr. Stanley Richards, who had lived within sound of church bells before and could easily have slept through them. It was the sure awareness of what was yet to come that killed his slumbers at the sound of the first stroke.

It was Mr. Stucker who was unused to the sound of chimes. Mr. Stucker was very old indeed, and while he knew well enough in the daytime that he was a widower and had been one for many years, he forgot it in the night-time—forgot it again and again and again. Shallow sleep vexed by slight cause, he knew only that he was awakened to find himself not in the double bed in which most of the nights of his life had been passed. He found himself in a strange bed now, without the proper presence of his wife from whom he had not been parted for a single day or single night until parted by her death—death which he could not, or would not, remember in the darkness.