The Avram Davidson Treasury (48 page)

“Thank you, Herrekk,” said Eszterhazy. Only he and Herrekk knew.

“I will tell you, Commissioner,” Eszterhazy said, “
so am I!
”

“Well, Doctor,” the Commissioner said,
“I thought as much.”

Chuckling together, they went down the stairs.

At least one of the goldbeaters was still at work in the old Arcade, as a rhythmical thumping sound testified, but for the most part they had moved on to the New. Some of the former workshops were used as warehouses of sundry sorts; here was a fortune-teller, slightly disguised as a couturière; there was a corn-doctor, with two plaster casts in his window showing
BEFORE
and
AFTER
, with BEFORE resembling the hoof of a gouty ogre, while
AFTER
would have been worthy of a prima ballerina. And finally, under a cheaply painted and already flaking wooden board reading
The Miniature Hall of Science
, was a sort of imitation theater entrance. Where the posters would have been were bills in Gothic, Avar, Glagolitic (Slovatchko), Romanou, and even—despite the old proverb, “There are a hundred ways of wasting paint, and the first way is to paint a sign in Vlox”—Vlox. The percentage of literacy among the Vloxfolk may not have been high, but someone was certainly taking no chances.

The someone was certainly not the down-at-heels fellow with a homemade crutch who, pointing the crutch at this last bill, enquired, “Do you know what you’d get if you crossed a pig with a Vloxfellow?” And, answering his own question, replied, “A dirty pig.” And waited for the laugh.

“Be off with you,” said Lobats, curtly. The loafer slunk away.

There was even a bill in French.

And so on. And so on.

The fat old woman at the ticket window, with dyed hair and wearing the traditional red velveteen dress split under the arms, smiled fawningly at them.

“Permit,” said Lobats, putting out his hand.

Nodding rapidly, she reached up to where a multitude of papers hung from a wire on clothespins, took one down, examined it, returned it, took another down, gave it a peep, nodded even more rapidly, and handed it out the window.

“Very well, Frow Grigou,” said Lobats, handing it back. “Two tickets, please,” putting coins on the counter.

Frow Grigou, instead of nodding her head, now began to shake it rapidly, and pushed the money back, smiling archly. “Guests, the High-born Gentlemen, our guests, oh no no
oh
no—”

Lobats turned as red as Frow Grigou’s dress. “
Tickets!
” he growled. “Take the money. Take the—”

She took it this time, and hastily, extending the tickets, her head now rocking slowly from side to side, still smiling archly, but now with a puzzled note added, as though the insistence on paying for admission were some bit of odd behavior, which required the indulgence of the tolerant. “Always glad to see,” she gobbled, her voice dying away behind them as they walked the short, dusty hall, “… High-born Gents…law-abiding…delighted …”

Only one of the five or six functioning gas jets inside the Exhibition Room had a mantle, and at least two of the others suffered a malfunction which caused them to bob up and down whenever a dray went by in the street; the light was therefore both inadequate and uncertain. And a soft voice now came from out of the dimness, saying,
“Billet? Billet?”

Nature had formed the man who now came forward to look noble, but something else had re-formed him to look furtive. His head was large, his features basically handsome, with long and white side whiskers neatly trimmed so that not a hair straggled, but the head itself was completely hairless, with not even a fringe. The head was canted to one side, and the man looked at them out of the corner of one faded-blue eye as he took the tickets. Eszterhazy, almost as though automatically, and rather slowly, reached over and placed the tips of his fingers upon the man’s head and ran them lightly over the surface…for just a moment …

Then he pulled them away, as though they had been burned.

“A phrenologist,” the man murmured in English, indulgently, almost contemptuously.

“Among other things,” said Eszterhazy, also in English.

A horrid change came over the man’s face; his haggard and quasi-noble features dissolved into a flux of tics and grimaces. Once or twice his mouth opened and closed. Then,
“Come right in, gentlemen, the exhibition will commence almost any moment now,”
he said, unevenly, in a mixture of terrible French and broken German. And, “…
one of the most remarkable phenomena of the age,
” he whispered, again in English. Then he seemed to fall in upon himself, his head bowed down, his shoulders hunched, and he turned away from them in a curious twisting motion.

Lobats looked with a quizzical face to Eszterhazy and observed with astonishment and concern that his companion was—even in that dim and fitful light—gone pale and drawn, jaw thrust outwards and downward in a grimace which might have been—had it been someone else, anyone else—fright …

But, in a moment, face and man were the same as before, save that the man had swiftly taken out a silken pocket handkerchief, wiped his face, and as swiftly returned it. And before Lobats had time to say one word, a thin and almost eerie sound announced a gramophone had added its “note scientific” to the atmosphere. It took a few seconds, during which a group of newcomers, evidently mostly clerks and such who were taking advantage of their luncheon-time, entered the room…it took a few seconds for one to recognize, over the sudden clatter and chatter, that the gramophone was offering a song in French.

Strange and curious were the words, and curious and strange the voice.

Curieux scrutateur de la nature entière,

J’ay connu du grand tout le principe et la fin.

J’ay vu l’or en puissance au fond de sa minière,

J’ay saisi sa matière et surpris son levain,
¹

Few of those present, clearly, understood the words, yet all were somehow moved. Obscure the burden, the message unclear; the voice seemed moreover odd, unearthly, and grotesque through the transposition of the primitive machine: yet the effect was as beautiful as it was uncanny.

J’expliquay par quel art l’âme aux flancs d’une mère,

Fait sa maison, l’emporte, et comment un pépin

Mis contre un grain de blé, sous l’humide poussière,

L’un plante et l’autre cep, sont le pain et le vin.

Lobats dug his companion in the ribs gently and in a hoarse whisper asked, “What is it?”

“It is one of the occult, or alchemical, sonnets of the Count of Saint-Germain…if he was…who lived at least two hundred years…if he did,” Eszterhazy said, low-voiced.

Once more the voice—high and clear as that of a child, strong as that of a man—took up the refrain.

Rien n’était, Dieu voulut, rien devint quelque chose,

J‘en doutais, je cherchay sur quoi l’universe pose,

Rien gardait l’équilibre et servait de soutien.

The Commissioner uttered an exclamation. “Now I know! I remember hearing—was years ago—an Italian singer—”

“—Yes—”

“He was a…a…a whatchemaycallit…one of
them
—”

“A castrato. Yes …”

Once more, and for the last time, the voice, between that of men and women, soared up, magnificent, despite all distortion, from the great, curling cornucopia of the gramophone horn.

Enfin, avec les poids de l’éloge et du blâme,

Je pesay l’éternel, il appela mon âme,

Je mourus, j’adoray, je ne savais plus rien …

The moment’s silence which followed the end of the song was broken by another and more earthly voice, and one well-enough known to both Eszterhazy and Lobats. It was that of one Dougherty, a supposed political exile of many years’ residence in Bella. From time to time one came upon him in unfashionable coffeehouses, or establishments where stronger drink was served. Sometimes the man was writing something; sometimes he explained that it was part of a book which he was writing, and sometimes he explained nothing, but scrawled slowly away in a dreamy fashion. At other times he had no paper in front of him, only a glass, into or beyond which he stared slackly. This man Dougherty was tall and he was stooped and he wore thick eyeglasses and now and then he silently moved his lips—lips surprisingly fresh and full in that ruined gray countenance. Officially he described himself as “Translator, Interpreter, and Guide,” and he was evidently acting now in the first and second of these capacities.

“Gentlemen,” he began (and he used the English word), “Gentlemen… Mr. Murgatroyd, the entrepreneur of this scientific exhibition has asked me to thank those of you who have honored him with your patronage, and to express his regret that he does not speak with fluency the languages of the Triune Monarchy, whose warm and frequent hospitality …” Here he paused, and seemed to sag a bit, as though bowed beneath the weight of all the nonsense and humbug which convention required him to be saying—and which he had been saying, in one way or another, over and over, for decades. Indeed, he frankly sighed, put his hand to his forehead, then straightened, and took in his hand something which the entrepreneur had given: it seemed to be a pamphlet, or booklet.

“Mmmm…yes… Some interesting facts, taken from a voluminous work written on the subject of the mysterious sleeping woman, Polly Charms, by a member of the French Academy and the Sorbonne. The subject of this scientific exhibition, the ever-young Englishwoman, Miss Mary Charms, called Polly, was born in—”

His remarks, which had sunk to a monotone, were interrupted by several exclamations of annoyance, amidst which one voice now made itself heard, and distinctly: “Come on, now, Dear Sir [“Lijberherra”—sarcastically], save all this muckdirt [“Schejssdrekka”] for those there
gentlemen
who’ve got the whole afternoon at their leisure: come on, let’s see …”

Lobats coughed sufficiently to draw attention. The voice hesitated, then went on, though in tones somewhat less rough and menacing, to say that they were working-people, didn’t have much time, had paid to see this here Miss Sharms, and wanted to see her or their money back, so, “Save the French Sorbonne for the dessert course, for them as can wait, and let’s get on with it.”

Dougherty shrugged, leaned over and spoke to Murgatroyd, who also shrugged, then gestured to Frow Grigou, who did not bother to shrug, but, indicating by a flurry of nods and smirks that she was only too happy to oblige and merely wondered that anyone should think otherwise, trotted swiftly to the side of the room and pulled at a semi-visible cord. The filthy old curtain, bearing the just-visible name of a firm of patent-medicine makers long bankrupt, began—with a series of jerks and starts in keeping with the hiccuppy gaslights—to go up.

And Mr. Murgatroyd, not even waiting for the process to be complete, moved forward and with a smack of his lips began to speak, and then to speak in English, and went on speaking, leaving to Dougherty to catch up, or not, with the translation and interpretation.

“It was just thirty years ago, my lords and ladies and gentlemen, just exactly thirty years ago to this very day—” But his glib patter, obviously long and often repeated, plus the fact of the term
30 Years
appearing in faded letters on several of the bills posted outside, made it at once obvious that the “thirty years” was a phrase by now ritualized and symbolic. Perhaps he, or perhaps another, had endowed Polly Charms with thirty years’ slumber at the very beginning of the show’s career; or, perhaps, and the thought made one shudder, Murgatroyd had been saying “30 years” for far longer than any period of only thirty years. “That young Miss Mary Charms, called Polly, at the age of fifteen years, accompanied by her mother and several other loved ones …”

He trailed off into silence, having been pushed aside by several of those honoring him with their patronage as they shoved up to see; in the silence, Dougherty proceeded with his translations…which may or may not have been listened to by any.

Eszterhazy realized that he had been expecting, for some reason, to see either a coffin or something very much like it. What he actually saw was something resembling an infant’s crib, though of course much larger, and, at very first glimpse, it seemed to be filled with a mass of—

“…Professor Leonardo de Entwhistle, the noted mesmerologist,” Murgatroyd’s voice suddenly was heard again, after the first burst of exclamations had subsided. His eyes shifted and met Eszterhazy’s. The Englishman’s eyes at once closed, opened, closed, opened, and, as it were desperately, looked away. Where Eszterhazy looked was into the crib, and what he saw it was almost filled with was, or seemed to be, hair…long and lustrous golden-brown hair. Coils and braids of it. Immense tresses of it. Masses and masses of it. Here and there ribbons had been affixed to it. And still it went on.

And, almost buried in it, slightly raised by a pillow at the head of the crib was another head, a human head, the head of, and indeed of, a female in early womanhood.

“Can we touch it—uh,
her?
”

Murgatroyd muttered.

“One at a time, and gently,” said Dougherty. “Gently…
gently!
”

Fingers were applied, some hesitantly. A palm was applied to the side of the face. Another was raised and moving down, though not, by the looks of it, or by the owner’s looks, to the face; at this point Lobats grunted and grabbed the man’s wrist. Not gently. The man growled that he was just going to—but the disclaimer fell off into a snarl, and the gesture was not repeated. Someone managed to find a hand and lifted it up, with a triumphant air, as though no one had ever seen a hand before.