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Authors: Avram Davidson

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BOOK: The Other Nineteenth Century
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The sisters sighed, shook their heads.
“So that is where it was? Dear me.”
“An unfortunate speculation in wildcat currency on the part of Great-uncle Isaac—dear grandpapa’s brother. We never knew him.
He fell at the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing in the year—”
A heavy hand beat loudly on the front-door knocker. A heavy voice called, “Is anything wrong, ladies? Hello, hello! Is anything—”
Miss Isabella, looking Goltz straight in the eye and without changing by a hair’s breadth the expression of calm disdain on her face, opened her mouth and called. “Help!” in a clear, level voice. Goltz went livid, raised the revolver, shook his head threateningly. “Help! Footpads!” Miss Isabella called out.
Miss Sapphira took the candelabra and, with an underhand pitch, threw it through the windowpane.
“Stop, thief!” she sang out. “Summon the watch!”
“I hope you don’t mind eating from the same cake as those two scant-soaps fed upon,” Miss Isabella said. This time
she
cut and passed, while Miss Sapphira poured the tea. Patrolmen Freitag and Johansson shook their heads, swallowed, accepted more. “This recipe comes down to us from the days of Abraham Vanderhooft’s second wife. They say that she was an indentured servant before he married her, but it doesn’t really signify, does it? And we ourselves descend from the first wife … . Dear me, what an afternoon!”
Patrolman Freitag washed down his second slice of cake with half of his second cup of tea. “This guy Dandridge—the real one, I mean, the reporter—he better be careful what he does with his old press cards from now on, instead of throwing them away. I hope,” he said, rather anxiously, “that you ladies won’t mind too much having to go to court and all that? Because—I guess—well, we could maybe say you were sick and have them come here to take your testimony—maybe.”
Miss Sapphira shook her head, setting the long gray ringlets in motion around her pink face. “It is very kind of you young men to be so considerate—but I trust that my sister and I are sensible of our duty as citizens.”
Her sister nodded, then asked, as if the thought had just struck her, how it was that the attention of the two policemen had been
drawn to the house so much earlier than usual. Johansson smiled. Freitag smiled. The former answered.
“It was the electric light,” he said. “We were just cruising down Huyk Street and we saw the electric light—I mean, the shade and the curtains were drawn, but we could see it was electric. So I says to Freitag, I says, ‘Oh-oh. I been living in this neighborhood for thirty years and I never saw no electric lights burning in the Vanderhooft house, not since Mr. Cornelius passed away.’ And he says, ‘Neither did I, Nels. Never anything but candles.’ So we figured we’d better investigate. I gotta give you both credit—what you did, it took courage.”
Miss Isabella said, “Poo.” Her sister said, “Pshaw. Hog-snatchers is all they were, trying to get above themselves.”
“It was not our idea at all, to install the incandescent lamps,” Miss Isabella explained. “It was our brother’s. But we have never used them since he died. Such devices exude a malign magnetical influence.”
“Isabella,” asked Miss Sapphira, “now that so much attention has been drawn to the matter I confess that I am mildly curious myself as to where those bank notes are.”
The older sister’s ivory forehead creased in thought. Then she said, “Do you know, Sister—I wonder if we did not ask Mr. Caldwell to take them down to the Trust Company and purchase bonds or something with them during the war.”
Miss Sapphira considered. “Did we? Perhaps you are right. Perhaps we did.”
“Ah, well,” said Miss Isabella. “It doesn’t signify. More tea for the watch?” she asked.
“Summon the Watch!” is one of a number of Davidson’s stories set in New York City. Even more than he did in “Lord of Central Park,” Davidson has woven into the tale allusions to bygone events and
customs that evoke a particular mood. Any one of these references—the Collier brothers, the “malign magnetical influence,” Mathew Brady, wildcat currency, or a story by Poe in
Godey’s Lady’s Book
(“The Cask of Amontillado,” most probably)—would require more than this brief paragraph by way of explication. You may be certain that Davidson could have supplied the details in a narrative meander (and in other instances he did so). In “Summon the Watch!” these little sparks of information are gold strands in a complex fabric: tantalizing evidence of the writer’s learning, inseparable from his narrative skill.
—Henry Wessells
When Corporal Bill Howard, USMCR, of Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, Fifth Marines (currently quartered in the old Austrian Legation), arranged with his friend, Gunnery Sergeant Jackson, to go on liberty together and have some roast duck, he had the exact restaurant in mind. The background was as follows: not long after the Regiment had arrived in Peiping from Okinawa he went sightseeing one afternoon in the Forbidden City. Howard did not spend his money on fast living as so many of the Marines unfortunately did, so he was able to hire an interpreter-guide and this man (considering the fact that his black robe was going green with age he was unreasonable in the fee he demanded, but Howard was able to beat him down without difficulty), in pointing out places of interest, had mentioned—several times—a certain class of Imperial officials. This aroused Howard’s interest. It was not a morbid or indecent interest, of course, it was just that, after all, this same class was mentioned in the Bible. So Howard had asked if it might be possible to meet one of these people, and the interpreter-guide had put on quite an act. He said it was impossible just to walk in on this particular one outright because he was very famous, and so forth and so on. Finally Howard agreed to give a dinner for him, and when he arrived at the restaurant he found he was entertaining, not just the interpreter and
the ex-official (a Mr. Chen), but a supernumerary interpreter as well, also a man who had acted as go-between, and his small son. Although expensive ($6.00, gold—that was what they called U.S. money, “gold”), it was not without interest, and the interpreter told him he had gained much face by giving the dinner. That was why he picked the same restaurant to eat at with the Gunny.
“How’s about we bring some women?” the Gunny said; ribbing Howard as usual. “Nice Chinee girl, huh? One for you and one for me?”
“Chacun à son goût
,” was Howard’s answer. And he told Gunny Jack he was thinking of asking a former official of the Imperial Court to join them over the
kow yahdza,
or roast duck; promising him that this man was worth meeting. “Okay by me,” said the Gunny. And he curled his long and black handle bar mustache. This gunnery sergeant was tall and dark and fierce-looking and had a dent in his nose. Like so many others in the Corps then stationed in China, he led a rather dissolute life. Indeed, he once persuaded Bill Howard to accompany him to a place called The Palace of All Seasons.
“Let your hair down, damn it,” he said. The place was full of smoke and noise and everyone was drinking freely. A Chinese woman came and sat down, uninvited, next to Howard, and tried to show off that she knew a little English. She called in a coarse voice to another woman, “Sister! Come over here, Sister! I want you to meet this nice American.” And the other woman, also garishly painted, came and sat down on Howard’s other side. From the ribald comments of the other Marines he gathered that these women were not “hostesses” as they claimed to be, but just common prostitutes, so he made only perfunctory replies to their questions and they finally let him alone. The older one, Blossom, was a disgusting sight, with cigarette smoke dribbling out her flat nose; but the younger one, May (or “Sister”), was rather pretty underneath the paint. It was too bad she lived a sinful life.
On this particular afternoon Corporal Howard and Gunnery Sergeant Jackson got into two rickshaws and went off through the maze of crooked streets and dirty alleys until they reached the place where
Old Mr. Chen lived, somewhere in the quarter known as the Imperial City. The elderly gentleman was obviously very pleased to see them, and when Bill Howard said to him (in Chinese, for, instead of wasting time talking pidjin-English to prostitutes, he took Chinese lessons at the Y),
“Chir fahn, low yay”
—“low” rhyming with “cow”—which is to say, “Sir, I invite you to dinner,” he agreed at once. The old man put on a robe of black silk or satin, with a flowery design, over his knitted upper and lower garments, and they hired a third rickshaw and off they went. Jackson was moody and silent, which pleased Howard just as well because, once or twice before, Gunny Jack under the slight influence of liquor had called out something in a loud voice which amused the rickshaw-coolies and other lower-class Chinese very much, until Howard asked him not to. The Gunny protested it was the only Chinese he knew. Indeed, this friendship, with two people so different in their habits and whole outlooks, was rather puzzling to some people. Only the wonderful
esprit-de-corps
of the Marines could explain it.
As the three rickshaws rolled down the street and the shouts of the coolies mingled with the cries of the street vendors and the sound of the phonographs playing Chinese music in the shops crammed with strange merchandise, Bill Howard felt as if he were witnessing something unreal from a novel by Mrs. Pearl S. Buck or other commentators on the Oriental scene—picturesque and exciting, but impossible to understand despite the many attempts he made to do so because of the importance of China in the world scene. They crossed Morrison Street and rolled to a stop inside the East Bazaar. This was a large building containing stalls and shops where absolutely every kind of ware was sold, and upstairs was the Mohammedan restaurant where they were going to eat. Two of the coolies accepted their money at once, but the third one demanded more. At this Old Mr. Chen made a noise of shock and outrage and he took the Americans by their hands and stalked them away like an indignant old grandmother. While they were walking past the curio section he stopped and began to talk to a man who had a briefcase under his arm. This man wore a very tired-looking felt hat and on the whole looked the
picture of failure, but he turned out to speak perfect English. It seemed that Old Mr. Chen asked him to join the party to interpret, and although for a moment Bill was annoyed—because each time he came here to eat he seemed fated to feed half the population of Peiping—it was just as well, because his own knowledge of Chinese, while equal to the stresses and strains of shopping, was certainly inadequate for conversational purposes, and there was absolutely no point in just
feeding
Mr. Chen.
He wanted him to talk about the old days before the monarchial system was overthrown, and he wanted to see if he could get some interesting stories out of him. Something that, in the future, in later years, when he was a father and had all his children gathered around him, he could say, such as, “Listen closely, now, and I’ll tell you a story that an old Chinese nobleman told me once.” And they would shush one another and snuggle up close.
So the four of them went upstairs, and by some miracle they were still only four when they reached their private dining room (actually a small cubicle with a curtain across the door). A fat man with a wispy mustache had set up a cry as soon as he saw them come in. Little Mr. Wong (this was the interpreter’s name) fiddled with his dirty fedora and started to speak to him, but the fat man interrupted after a few words. Mr. Wong laughed. The Chinese laugh when they are embarrassed or when they hear bad news or even when they tell it. One of them had said to Bill Howard once, “My concubine dies last week, hah-hah-hah!” and Howard did not know whether to be more shocked at this easy confession of loose living or at the callous way the man laughed, but after a while he came to understand the Chinese character better. And it must be admitted you cannot judge them altogether by American standards: first, because they are not a Christian nation, and second, because they have been so long engaged in unremitting struggles for their liberties against external and internal enemies.
The time before, when Howard was here in this restaurant, and roast duck was ordered, a delicacy for which Peiping is famous, there took place an amusing incident. The waiter had led him downstairs
and out through the kitchen, which was full of steam and sizzling and half-naked men shouting and little boys running about, down to the backyard where there was a pen full of white ducks quacking around, and the waiter asked him to pick out the ducks he wanted! This time he told them to fix a duck they had on hand ready to go, but they still insisted on bringing in several plucked ducks, with the heads still on them, for him to pick. Meanwhile Sergeant Jackson was getting restless.
“How’s about some beer?” he demanded. “
And
some whiskey?” And he said loudly, “Hey, boy, got-chee bee’jo? Gotchee whiskeyjo?”
“Oh, never mind that pidjin-English,” Howard protested. “That’s what Mr. Wong is here for, to interpret. Not that we aren’t glad to have you with us anyway, I mean, Mr. Wong.” Mr. Wong sat up straighter and opened his mouth. He looked kind of sad and soiled and crumpled.
“Bring three piecee bee-jo, chop-chop,” the Gunny said.
The waiter, who was just a boy in a dirty apron, yelled something. Outside, someone yelled back.
“They have no whiskey,” Mr. Wong explained. “They have wine. I shall order wine?”
“You’re doggone-ay right, order wine,” said the Gunny, only he used another word instead of doggone. Mr. Wong spoke to the boy, and looked more cheerful. Mr. Chen just sat back and smiled blandly and benevolently. The table was spread as follows: a clay pot (with a wire tripod around which was coiled a long piece of glowing punk to light cigarettes on) to hold the ashes, three tall brown bottles of lager beer, glasses, five pairs of chopsticks (one to serve with), some squares of soft paper (to wipe the chopsticks on), two teapots, cups, and four small dishes of chopped raw vegetables. These last Howard would not have sampled at any price because what the Chinese use to fertilize their vegetables with is too disgusting to mention. Jackson and Wong began drinking the beer and the wine and Howard and Old Mr. Chen had tea. Then the old man had some beer and wine, so that left only Howard sticking to tea.
“Very good wine,” Mr. Wong said. His cheeks were flushed. The wine was in one of the teapots, as is seen in moving pictures about Prohibition days. It wasn’t really wine, but was distilled from grain of some sort and was a very pale yellow. “You are a Moslem?” Mr. Wong asked.
“No, I just don’t drink,” Howard said.
“Have you been long acquainted with famous Mr. Chen?” On hearing his own name, the old man beamed and nodded.
“What makes him famous?” asked the Gunny, wiping beer off his long mustachioes and pouring his cup full of “wine.”
“Oh, he is a very famous eunuch.” (Gunnery Sergeant Jackson said, “Well, J——————C———————!”) “Oh, yes. You see his eyes? They are eunuch’s eyes. His face is the face of a eunuch. All have the same eyes, face. The lids—see how they droop? The face has no hair, only a soft down, it is like a face made of very pure but unbleached beeswax, in which grooves have been scored with a hot knife—no wrinkles. And his voice is the voice of a eunuch.”
Mr. Wong, his tongue perhaps loosened by his potations, went on to explain that the Imperial Government used the eunuchs as a kind of civil service. There were two grades. One was recruited from the lower classes to be servants of the Imperial Family—barbers, valets, and so on. The other was recruited from the upper classes, and these became government officials.
“They don’t do that any more, do they?” the Gunny asked.
“No, not since the tyrannous Imperial power was overthrown. It was a very wicked government.”
Corporal Howard quoted the text from Mark which says, “Some are eunuchs from their mothers’ wombs, some are made eunuchs by men, and some become eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. He that can receive it, let him receive it.”
“Well, don’t look at me,” the Gunny said. Mr. Wong drank some more wine. “The Chinese Revolution was nurtured in the United States,” he said. Then he belched. The Chinese consider this the height of politeness. “It is one reason why I love the United States,” he said. Then he made quite a speech about Sun Yat-Sen
and the wonderful work Chiang Kai-Shek (which he pronounced Jong Gay-Shur) had done, and the traditional friendship between the United States and China.
“I’m getting hungry,” the Gunny interrupted. He, too, had been drinking, not wisely, but too well. “How about a oyster, Samivel,” he said. “Or a srimp?”
The Corporal asked, “What?” Just then they brought in a great big fish with the head still on it. In fact, the Gunny mumbled something to the effect that in China they leave the heads on everything but the people. Old Mr. Chen took the extra pair of chopsticks and was about to start serving the fish, but Mr. Wong took them away and poured hot tea over them and wiped them clean and gave them back. After Mr. Chen had very deftly taken off the skin and then all the fish on the top side, he turned it over and as he was carving it out he said something. Mr. Wong translated.
“Ah, yes, you see, this is very interesting: at the table of the Empress Dowager, whose aide he was, they only served the fish on top. As it was beneath their dignity to turn the fish over, the rest was sent to the servants. See, how proud and haughty the Manchus were. Now everything is democratic.”
“Does Jong Gay Shoo give his servants half his fish?” the Gunny asked.
“Mohammedan cooking is very good,” Mr. Wong said, ignoring this foolish question.
The Gunny wiped his mouth. “By Allah, yes,” he said. “I desire more.
But the fish was already gone. They brought in a big plate of shrimp cooked in some kind of yellow batter, and after that there was paper-thin mutton and vermicelli, cooked together over charcoal, with cabbage, and about ten different sauces. Old Mr. Chen asked if they had vermicelli in America.
“Yes,” Howard told him. “Marco Polo brought it from China to Italy, and the Italians brought it to America.”
BOOK: The Other Nineteenth Century
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