The Avram Davidson Treasury (50 page)

Lobats had said that he was “a fool for all sorts of circus acts, sideshows, mountebanks, scientific exhibitions, odd bits, funny animals, house-hauntings …” He might have added: “and fires.”

Three fire engines of the newest sort, each drawn troika-fashion by three great horses of matching colors, had come one after another to The Street of the Defeat of Bonaparte (universally called Bonaparte Street), as near as they could maneuver, and made much with hoses into the Arcade. But the watchmen of the neighborhood, many of whom had been employed there before the modern fire department came into being, had set up their bucket brigade and were still passing the old but functioning leather containers from hand to hand. A sudden breeze now whipped up the flames and sparks and sent them flying overhead, straight up and aloft into the black sky—at the same time clearing the passageway of the Arcade from all but the smell of smoke.

Off in a corner, her red velveteen dress flying loose about her fat body, Frow Grigou crouched, hand to mouth, mouth which screamed incessantly,
“Ruined! Ruined! The curtains, the bad gas jets! The bad gas jets, the curtains! Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!”

All at once the firehoses heaved, writhed, gushed forth in a potent flow. The smoke turned back and clouds of steam arose. Eszterhazy felt himself choking, felt himself being carried away in the powerful arms of Herrekk, the Mountain Tsigane. In a moment he cried, “I am all right! Set me down.” He saw himself looking into the anxious face of Lobats, who, seeing Eszterhazy on his feet and evidently recovered, gestured silently to two bodies on the pavement in Bonaparte Street.

Murgatroyd. And Polly Charms.

[Later, Lobats was to ask, “What was it that you found out when you put your fingers on the Englishman’s head?” And Eszterhazy was to answer, “More than I will ever speak of to anyone.”]

Eszterhazy flung himself down beside them. But although he cursed aloud the absence of his galvanic batteries, and although he plied all the means at his behalf—the cordials, the injections, the ammoniated salts—he could bring no breath or motion to either of them.

Slowly, Lobats crossed himself. Ponderously, he said, “Ah, they’re both in a better world now. She, poor little thing, her life, if you call that long sleep a life—And he, bad chap though I suppose he must’ve been in lots of ways, maybe in most—but surely he expiated his sins in dragging her almost to safety, trying to save her life at the risk of his own when her very hair was on fire—”

And indeed, most of the incredible mass of hair had burned away—those massive tresses which Murgatroyd (for who else?) must have daily and nightly spent hours in brushing and combing and plaiting and braiding…one must hope, at least lovingly…that incredible profusion of light-brown hair, unbound for the night, had indeed burned away but for a light scantling, like that of a crop-headed boy. And this shown in the dim and flaring lights, all a-glitter with moisture, shining with the drops of the water which had extinguished its fire. The girl’s face as calm now as ever. The lips of the color of a pink were again so slightly parted. But whatever she might once have had to tell would now forever be unknown.

And as for Murgatroyd, Death had at least and at last released him from all need of concealment and fear. The furtive look was quite gone now. The face seemed now entirely noble.

“I suppose you might say that he’d exploited her, kept her in that state of bondage—but at least he risked his life to save hers—”

One of the watchmen standing by now stepped a pace forward and respectfully gestured a salute. “Beg the Sir High Police Commissioner a pardon,” he said now. “However, as it is not so.”

“What is not so?” Lobats was annoyed.

The watchman, still respectful, but quite firm: “Why, as the poor gentleman tried, dying, to save the poor missy. But it wasn’t so, Sir High Commissioner and Professor Doctor. It was as one might say the opposite way. ‘Twas
she
as was trying to get
him
out.
Ohyes
, Sirs. We heard of him screaming, oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, how he screamed! We couldn’t get in to them. We looks around and we looks back and there she comes, she come out of the flames, sometimes carrying him and sometimes she dragged at him and then her pretty hair went all ablaze and they two fell almost at our feet and we doused them with water… Y’see,” he concluded, his eloquence exhausted.

“Ah, stop your damned lies, man!” said Lobats.

Eszterhazy, shaking his head, murmured, “See, then, how swiftly the process of myth-making and legendry begins…
Oh! God!”
Shocked, speechless, he responded to Lobats only with a gesture. Still on his knees, Eszterhazy pointed wordlessly to the feet of Polly Charms, the Sleeping Woman. The feet were small and slight. They were, as always, naked, bare. And Lobats, following the slight gesture, saw with a shock that even experience had not prepared him for that the bare feet of the dead girl were deeply scratched, and torn and red with blood.

The Final Adventure of Harlan in Avramland
by his friend, Harlan Ellison

I loved him most because he redeemed me from almost a decade of ridicule, and he did it all-knowing. It wasn’t an accident; he knew what he was doing; and I was his pal from that moment to this, even though he’s gone.

I was a hyperkinetic fan when I was a teenager. Loud, and whacky, and far too cocky for my own good. So smartalecky that I made instant enemies, just because of the brashness, just because of the ebullient manner. That I had a good heart, and meant no harm…well, that didn’t much serve to beat the bull dog, as they say. I rubbed people the wrong way. Not at all the urbane, suave, and charming self I present today, midway in my sixties.

And it came to pass that one of those who found my manner rankling, even pawky, set about humiliating me…lynching me with my own hubris.

It was something like 1952. We all wanted to sell our first story. Me, Bob Silverberg, Terry Carr, Lee Hoffman, Joel Nydahl, Bill Venable, every fan in the game. We hungered to follow Bob Tucker and Bob Bloch and Arthur Clarke and John Brunner, and all those other one-time fans who had crossed over into the Golden Land of Professionalism. I was in high school in Cleveland. And I was writing stories that Algis Budrys was reading with dismay, as he tried by mail and occasional personal contact to turn me into something like a writer.

But I kept getting rejections. Not just from Campbell at (what was then, still) Astounding, and Horace Gold at Galaxy, but from everyone. I was an amateur, a callow callow amateur, and the best I could get was a scribbled note of pity from dear, now-gone Bea Mahaffey at
Other Worlds
. And at
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
the world-famous and incredibly astute Anthony Boucher was returning my pathetic efforts with little 4×5 bounce notes that read (as did one dated Sep 14 51)

Harlan Ellison——THE BEER CAMPAIGN——Sorry, but—nice idea…but once you’ve stated it, that’s all.

You haven’t developed it into a story.

AB

Come by the house some time. I’ll show you the original. And its many companions.

Of all the markets available to writers in the genre in 1952, the most prestigious—if you had any literary aspirations at all—was
F&SF
. Boucher and McComas. Oh, be still my heart! But I kept being bounced. And out there somewhere…probably still alive and still smirking…someone who had it in for that smartmouth kid was setting me up.

I sent a story to Mr. Boucher. I think it was called “Monkey Business.” Can’t tell you if it had any merit or not, because I don’t even have a copy of it. Maybe someone out there has a copy, but I don’t. And I waited for the word. All drool and expectation, dumb kid, waiting for what I knew in my heart had to be another of the many many rejections.

And one day there came an envelope from wherever it was in California that Tony Boucher edited the magazine (did I mention I was in East High School in Cleveland?). And it was in that dove-gray typewriter face that Mr. Boucher used in his letters, the typeface I knew so well by then.

And I opened the envelope when I got home from school, and it wasn’t a rejection note. It was an acceptance. Tony Boucher was buying “Monkey Business” and he said he was pleased to be able to make another First Sale author, like Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont and Daniel Keyes and Walter Miller and so many others.

I’ll spare you. I called Bob Silverberg first, because, well, never mind why
because. Just because. And he was cool, but pleased for me. I’d beaten him to publication, it appeared, by a hair, because Bob was on the edge of professional status himself And then I called everyone in the known universe.

Well, it was a hoax, of course. Someone had gotten hold of a sheet of official F&SF stationary, and s/he had done a very good job—or at least a serviceable job—of emulating Tony’s way with the typewriter, even to the strikeovers, and had sent it on to hang me out to dry. And I’d done the rest. To a fare-thee-well.

I spent the next ten years trying to sell to F&SF, even after Mick McComas and Tony were gone, and I couldn’t even sell a story to the magazine when my own agent, Robert P. Mills, one of the finest men who ever lived, was the editor. Nope. No way.

And then Avram became editor. In 1962 he bought my short fantasy “Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman”—yes, I know what you’re startledly thinking—yes, of course, he was running a pun on my title with his own—yes, he did it on purpose—we were joshing pals, remember—and he published it in the August 1962 issue. And when he sent me an advance copy of the issue (I was living in Los Angeles by that time), he wrote me a note and it said, “Remember ‘Monkey Business’? This should damp the sound, bad cess to them; and may they choke on their laughter.”

I have appeared in
Fantasy & Science Fiction
close on a hundred times. Some of my best work over more than three and a half decades. But no triumph in those pages was ever as sweet to me as the one put in print by my now-gone friend, Avram, who was brilliant beyond the telling; funny and witty and acerbic and cranky beyond the believing; who once purposely dropped and broke my Olympia typewriter on purpose, when I was on a stepladder handing it down to him prior to our trip to the WorldCon in Pittsburgh in 1960, because it was a German-made machine, and Avram took the Holocaust very seriously and wouldn’t go anywhere near a German-made product. But he rode all the way from Manhattan where we lived at that time, to Pittsburgh, with the top down on my Austin-Healy, wearing a jaunty sporting cap, singing at the top of his voice.

He is gone, and I miss him. And that. Is that.

My last adventure, this one, in Avramland.

I
NTRODUCTION BY
R
ICHARD
A. L
UPOFF

In a perfect world, Avram Davidson would be revered as one of the great writers of his generation. You can name your own list of the others. Updike, Mailer, Heller, Atwood, and perhaps a few more, might share Avram’s pedestal. But instead, he is known to a small circle of readers and admirers, and we are sometimes inclined to ask if it is the rest of the world that is crazy…or ourselves.

In fact, Avram suffered two misfortunes which robbed him, in his lifetime, of the critical and financial rewards that his works clearly merited. He was a natural short story writer who lived and worked in the age of the novel, and he selected for his realm of imagination the world of science fiction.

His stories, complex and lovingly crafted miniatures, were relegated to the category of minor works, ancillary to the one true form for worthwhile fiction, the novel. Avram’s manuscripts weighed in at an ounce or two. The serious literati (and, for the most part, the moguls of publishing) preferred works that were measured by the pound.

And as for Avram’s selection of science fiction as his major area of creation, one fears that he was ensnared, as so many other authors have been, into mistaking one of science fiction’s periodic flirtations with “maturity” for true love. Alas, when the field reverted to its usual hodgepodge of crude narrative and cliché themes, Avram was left, a wounded giant, brought down by a keening troop of Lilliputians.

Avram’s fine story “And Don’t Forget the One Red Rose” is alone a greater achievement than the entire bloated accumulation of ponderous fantasy novels that cross my desk each month. I see in it a literary tradition that bears comparison to the best stories of Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, John Collier, and Stanley Ellin. That Avram was able to place the story with Playboy magazine rather than one of the penny-a-word pulps is at least a small consolation to me.

AND DON’T FORGET THE ONE RED ROSE

C
HARLEY BARTON WAS THE
staff of an East New York establishment that supplied used gas stoves on a wholesale basis. He received deliveries at the back door, dollied them inside, took them apart, cleaned them (and cleaned them and cleaned them and cleaned them) till they sparkled as much as their generally run-down nature would allow, fitted on missing parts and set them up in the front of the place, where they might be chaffered over by prospective buyers.

He never handled sales. These were taken care of by his employer, a thickset and neckless individual who was there only part of the time. When not fawning upon the proprietors of retail used-appliance stores, he was being brutal to Charley. This man’s name was Matt Mungo, and he arrived in neat, middle-class clothes from what he referred to as his “other place,” never further described to Charley, who did not venture to be curious.

Charley doubted, however, that Mungo did—indeed, he was certain that Mungo did not—display to employees and patrons of his other place the insulting manner and methods he used in the stove warehouse.

Besides calling Charley many offensive names in many offensive ways, Mungo had the habit of shoving him, poking him, and generally pushing him around. Did Charley, goaded beyond patience, pause or turn to complain, Mungo, pretending great surprise, would demand, “What?,
What
?”—and, before Charley could formulate his protest, he would swiftly thrust stiff thick fingers into Charley’s side or stomach and dart away to a distance, whence he would loudly and abusively call attention to work he desired done, and which Charley would certainly have done anyway in the natural course of things.