The Avram Davidson Treasury (59 page)

Rafael’s rooms were larger, perhaps, than a bachelor needed. But they were the official quarters for the DMO, and so the DMO lived in them. The wide floors gleamed with polish. The spotless walls showed, here a shield, there a paddle, a harpoon with barbed head, the carapace of a huge turtle, a few paintings. The symmetry and conventionality of it all was slightly marred by the bookcases which were everywhere, against every wall, adjacent to desk and chairs. And all were full, crammed, overflowing.

Doctor Rafael shrugged. “Perhaps the woodlice will eat the papers,” he said. “Or the roaches, or the wee-wee-ants. The mildew. The damp. Hurricane… This is not a climate which helps preserve the history of men. I work hard to keep my own books and papers from going that way. But I am not Government, and Government lacks time and money and personnel, and…perhaps, also… Government has so many, many things pressing upon it… Perhaps, too, Government lacks interest.”

“What were those tracks, Doctor Rafael?”

Doctor Rafael shrugged.

“You do know, don’t you?”

Doctor Rafael grimaced.

“Have you seen them, or anything like them, before?”

Doctor Rafael, very slowly, very slowly, nodded.

“Well…for God’s sake…can you even give me a, well, a
hint?
I mean: that was a rather rotten experience for me, you know. And—”

The sunlight, kept at bay outside, broke in through a crack in the jalousies, sun making the scant white hair for an instant ablaze: like the brow of Moses. Doctor Rafael got up and busied himself with the fresh lime and the sweetened lime juice and the gin and ice. He was rapt in this task, like an ancient apothecary mingling strange unguents and syrups. Then he gave one of the gimlets to his guest and from one he took a long, long pull.

“You see. I have two years to go before my retirement. The pension, well, it is not spectacular, but I have no complaint. I will be able to rest. Not for an hour, or an evening…an evening! only on my holidays, once a year, do I even have an evening all my own!—Well. You may imagine how I look forward. And I am not going to risk premature and enforced retirement by presenting Government with an impossible situation. One which wouldn’t be its fault, anyway. By insisting on impossible things. By demonstrating—”

He finished his drink. He gave Jack a long, shrewd look.

“So I have nothing more to say…about
that
. If they want to believe, up in King Town, that the abominable Bob Blaine was mauled by a crocodile, let them. If they prefer to make it a jaguar or even a tapir, why, that is fine with Robert Rafael, M.D., DMO. It might be, probably, the first time in history that anybody anywhere was killed by a tapir, but that is not my affair. The matter is, so far as I am concerned, so far—in fact—as
you
and I are concerned—over.

“Do you understand?”

Limekiller nodded. At once the older man’s manner changed. “I have many, many books, as you can see. Maybe some of them would be of interest to you. Pick any one you like. Pick one at random.” So saying, he took a book from his desk and put it in Jack’s hands. It was just a book-looking book. It was, in fact, volume ii of the Everyman edition of Plutarch’s Lives. There was a wide card, of the kind on which medical notes or records are sometimes made, and so Jack Limekiller opened the book at that place.
seasons, as the gods sent them, seemed natural to him. The Greeks that inhabited Asia were very much pleased to see the great lords and governors of Persia, with all the pride, cruelty, and

“Well, now, what the Hell,” he muttered. The card slipped, he clutched. He glanced at it. He put down vol. ii of the Lives and he sat back and read the notes on the card.

It is in the nature of things [they began] for men, in a new country and faced with new things, to name them after old, familiar things. Even when resemblance unlikely. Example:
Mountain-cow
for tapir. (‘Tapir’ from Tupi Indian
tapira
, big beast.) Example: Mawmee-
apple
not apple at all. Ex.:
Sea-cow
for manatee. Early British settlers not entomologists. Quest.: Whence word
manatee?
From Carib? Perhaps. After the British, what other people came to this corner of the world? Ans.: Black people. Calabars, Ashantee, Mantee, Mandingo. Re last two names. Related peoples. Named after totemic animal.
Also
, not likely?
likely
—named unfamiliar animals after familiar (i.e. familiar in Africa) animals. Mantee, Mandee-hippo. Refer legend

Limekiller’s mouth fell open.

“Oh, my God!” he groaned. In his ear now, he heard the old, old, quavering voice of Captain Cudgel (once Cudjoe): “
Mon
,
een Ahfrica, de mon-ah-tee hahv leg, I tell you. Een Ahfrica eet be ah poerful beast, come up on de lond, I tell you… de w’ol’ people, dey tell me so, fah true…
”

He heard the old voice, repeating the old words, no longer even half-understood: but, in some measure, at least half-true.

Refer legend of were-animals, universal. Were-wolf, were-tiger, were-shark, were-dolphin. Quest.: Were-manatee?

“Mon-ah-tee ees hahlf ah mon… hahv teats like a womahn… Dere ees wahn mon, mehk mellow weet mon-ah-tee, hahv pickney by mon-ah-tee …”

And he heard another voice saying, not only once, saying, “
Mon, eef you tie ah rottlesnake doewn fah me, I weel freeg eet
…”

He thought of the wretched captives in the Spanish slaveship, set free to fend for themselves in a bush by far wilder than the one left behind. Few, to begin with, fewer as time went on; marrying and intermarrying, no new blood, no new thoughts. And, finally, the one road in to them, destroyed. Left alone. Left quite alone. Or…almost …

He shuddered.

How desperate for refuge must Blaine have been, to have sought to hide himself anywhere near Cape Mantee—

And what miserable happenstance had brought he himself, Jack Limekiller, to improvise on that old song that dreadful night?—And what had he called up out of the darkness…out of the bush…out of the mindless present which was the past and future and the timeless tropical forever…?

There was something pressing gently against his finger, something on the other side of the card. He turned it over. A clipping from a magazine had been roughly pasted there.

Valentry has pointed out that, despite a seeming resemblance to such aquatic mammals as seals and walrus, the manatee is actually more closely related anatomically to the elephant.

… out of the bush…out of the darkness…out of the mindless present which was also the past and the timeless tropical forever …

“They are like elephants. They never forget.”

“Ukh.” he said, through clenched teeth. “My God. Uff. Jesus…”

The card was suddenly, swiftly, snatched from his hands. He looked up, still in a state of shock, to see Doctor Rafael tearing it into pieces.

“Doña Sana!”

A moment. Then the housekeeper, old, all in white. “Doctor?”

“Burn this.”

A moment passed. Just the two of them again. Then Rafael, in a tone which was nothing but kindly, said, “Jack, you are still young and you are still healthy. My advice to you: Go away. Go to a cooler climate. One with cooler ways and cooler memories.” The old woman called something from the back of the house. The old man sighed. “It is the summons to supper,” he said. “Not only must I eat in haste because I have my clinic in less than half-an-hour, but suddenly-invited guests make Dona ’Saña very nervous. Good night, then, Jack.”

Jack had had two gin drinks. He felt that he needed two more. At least two more. Or, if not gin, rum. Beer would not do. He wanted to pull the blanket of booze over him, awfully, awfully quickly. He had this in his mind as though it were a vow as he walked up the front street towards the Cupid Club.

Someone hailed him, someone out of the gathering dusk.

“Jock! Hey, mon Jock! Hey, b’y! Where you gweyn so fahst? Bide, b’y, bide a bit!”

The voice was familiar. It was that of Harry Hazeed, his principal creditor in King Town. Ah, well. He had had his chance, Limekiller had. He could have gone on down the coast, down into the republican waters, where the Queen’s writ runneth not. Now it was too late.

“Oh, hello, Harry,” he said, dully.

Hazeed took him by the hand. Took him by both hands. “Mon, show me where is your boat? She serviceable? She is? Good: Mon, you don’t hear de news: Welcome’s warehouse take fire and born up! Yes, mon. Ahl de carn in King
Town
born up! No carn ah-tahl: No tortilla, no empinada, no tamale, no carn-
cake!
Oh, mon, how de people going to punish! Soon as I hear de news, I drah me money from de bonk, I buy ahl de crocus sock I can find, I jump on de pocket-
boat
—and here I am, oh, mon, I pray fah you… I pray I fine you!”

Limekiller shook his head. It had been one daze, one shock after another. The only thing clear was that Harry Hazeed didn’t seem angry. “You no understond?” Hazeed cried. “Mon! We going take your boat, we going doewn to Nutmeg P’int, we going to buy carn, mon! We going to buy ahl de carn dere is to buy! Nevah mine dat lee’ bit money you di owe me, b‘y! We going make plenty money, mon! And we going make de cultivators plenty money, too! What you theenk of eet, Jock, me b’y? Eh? Hey? What you theenk?”

Jack put his forefinger in his mouth, held it up. The wind was in the right quarter. The wind would, if it held up, and, somehow, it felt like a wind which would hold up, the wind would carry them straight and clear to Nutmeg Point: the clear, clean wind in the clear and starry night.

Softly, he said—and, old Hazeed leaning closer to make the words out, Limekiller said them again, louder, “I think it’s great. Just great. I think it’s great.”

Afterword to “Manatee Gal, Won’t You Come Out Tonight”

BY
L
UCIVS
S
HEPARD

The literature of the expatriate has a proud tradition in English and American literature, marked by names such as Conrad, Lowry, Kipling, Bowles, Greene, and Stone, and by some of the best novels produced in the language, novels such as Under the Volcano, Lord Jim, and The Sheltering Sky. Its classic themes are loneliness, man’s folly, and the inimical nature and mysterious laws of a place not one’s own. But more pertinently, in every instance the literature is marked by a writer’s fascination with the place in which he—and his protagonist—have chosen to live, and with his love for that place, even though he may depict it as vile and treacherous and sad.

In his story “Manatee Gal,” Avram Davidson engaged the classic themes with the quirky eloquence for which he became known, incorporating as well many tropes of the great adventure stories—: embracing all his characters, whether villain or naïf or boor, with a kind of splendid, generous crankiness that makes plain his affection for the setting of the story—British Honduras, or Belize. The sense of place he gives us in this and in all the Limekiller stories is pungent, lustrous, sensual in every regard, a feast for eye and nose, ear and palette, and though Jack Limekiller is a wonderfully drawn character, it is ultimately Belize that is the dominant character of the tale, with its dancing butterfiles and magical lizards and mystical coves, all illuminated by the exotic precision of the speech of its citizenry, which Avram rendered in such loving detail. It, Belize, is a great character, as palpably individual as Conrad’s Borneo and Stone’s Vietnam, and I only wish Avram had done more of these stories, or had expanded his territory to include the surrounding region. Had he done so, I believe his name would have been more widely known while he was alive—as it most certainly will now that he has passed away—and we might have seen something even more remarkable from his pen, for I believe he had barely scratched the surface of what he had to tell us about this beautiful, devious, and subtle stretch of beach and jungle and cay.

Sad to say, Avram’s Belize no longer exists, as it is currently being inundated in a wave of American and British commercialism, which may one day soon transform it into something grotesquely Cancun-esque. But that, of course, speaks to the other virtue of the expatriate writer: his ability to preserve a corner of the world and of time for our enduring pleasure. So here, in all its pervasive sweetness and Gauguin-like brightness, embellished by colorful bromeliads and majestic garobos and trees older than most nations, is a real place and time now elevated to the realm of the fantastic and the legendary, caught at the moment when its innocence was just about to be swept away, a place in which every oddly shaped rock had a story attached to it and the lore of jungle and sea was a vital element of people’s lives, and bandits who robbed
chicleros
had not yet been replaced by Colombian cowboys with aluminunm suitcases and small black guns.

When I was starting out as a writer, I wrote Avram a letter telling him that I had recently finished a couple of stories set in Central America, and that I was a bit concerned that, because of the Limekiller stories, people were going to think I was stealing his act, and that I hoped he didn’t think so. It was a terribly naive letter, one of those you wish to God you hadn’t mailed the second you drop it through the slot. A couple of weeks later I received a reply wherein Avram, utilizing that generous crankiness of which I’ve spoken, informed me that “yes, you are absolutely right. The Caribbean littoral is my exclusive preserve. No one could possibly illuminate it as well as I …” Of course I knew he was kidding.

Now, having just reread the story you have read, I’m not so sure.

I
NTRODUCTION BY
W
ILLIAM
G
IBSON

I once told Avram Davidson that I was very busy, finishing a first novel. “But you mustn’t do that,” he wrote back, “you’ll be letting down the side.” Eventually I found myself writing a second novel. I told Avram. He sighed. “But I’ve
told
you that you mustn’t do that.
”

He was a very droll man, was Avram, and one who knew a thing about the perils of literature, and a thing about the giving of encouragement.