The Avram Davidson Treasury

by Avram Davidson

  After I succeeded Avram as editor, he sent me a story that I loved, but I asked for some minor changes. Avram made them and returned the piece to his agent, who promptly sold it to another market. Avram sent me “Selectra Six-Ten” as a replacement; I loved it even more and it appeared in F&SF’s October 1970 issue.

  SELECTRA SIX-TEN

  His Honor the Ed., F&SF

  Dear Ed:

  Well, whilst sorry that you didn’t feel BELINDA BEESWAX didn’t exactly and immediately leap up and wrap her warm, white (or, in this case, cold) arms around you, so to speak, nevertheless I am bound to admit that your suggestions for its revision don’t altogether seem difficult or unreasonable. Though, mind you, it is against my moral principles to admit this to any editor. Even you. However. This once. I’ll do, I think I shd be able to do the rewrites quite soonly, and whip them off to you with the speed of light. At least, the speed of whatever dim light it is which filters through the window of our local Post Office and its 87,000 friendly branches throughout the country.

  By the way, excuse absence of mrag, or even marger Oh you would you . Take that. And THAT. AND THSTHATHAT. har har, he laughed harshly. The lack of margins. There. I have just gotten a new tripewriter; viz an Selectra Six-Ten, with Automated Carriage

  Return

  Return

  Return

  hahahaHA! I can’t resist it, just impress the tab and without sweat or indeed evidence of labor of any swort, or sort, whatsoever,

  ZING.

  RETURN! You will excsuse me, won’t you? There I knew you would. A wild lad, Master Edward, I sez to the Gaffer, I sez, but lor blesse zur its just hanimal sperrits, at art h’s a good lad, I sez. WELL. Enough of this lollygagging and skylarking Ferman. I am a WORKING WROTER and so to business. Although, mind ewe, with this Device it seems more like play. It hums and clicks and buzzes whilst I am congor even cog cog cog got it now? gooood. cogitating. very helpful to thought. Soothing. So. WHERE we was. Yus. BELINDA BEESWAX. Soonly. I haven’t forgotten that advance I got six years ago when my wife had the grout. Anxious to please.

  (Tugs forelock. Exit, pursued by a

  Your Seruant to Command,

  Avram

  Eddy dear;

  I mean, of course, Mr. Ferman Sir. Or is it now Squire Ferman, with you off in the moors and crags of Cornwall Connecticut. Sounds very Jamaica Inn, Daphne Du Maurieresque. I can see you on wild and stormy nights, muffled to your purple ears in your cloak and shawl, going out on the rocky headlands with False Lights to decoy the Fall River Line vessels, or even the Late After-Theater Special of the New York, New Haven, and Hartburn, onto the Rocks. And the angry rocks they gored her sides/Like the horns of an angry bull. Zounds they don’t indite Poerty like that anymore. I mean,

  I don’t have to tell you, ethn ethic pride, all very well, enthic? ethnic, there, THAT wasn’t hard, was it deary? Noooo. Now you can ahve a piece of treacle. Where was I. I mean, my grandfather was a was a, well, acttually, no, he WAS n ’t a Big Rabbi In The Old Country, he drove a laundry wagon in Yonkers, N.Y., but what Imeantosayis: “Over the rocks and the foaming brine/They burned the wreck of the Palatine “—can ALAN GUINZBURG write poetry like that? No. Fair is fair.

  Zippetty-ping. Kerriage Return. Automatic. Whheee! After all Ed I have known you a very long time, that time your old girl friend, the one you hired to read Manuscripts, you remember? Nuf sed. And I know you have only my own welfare at heart. Right? Right. So you wouldn’t be angry when I explain that Igot the idea, whilst triping on my new tripewriter, that if I carried out your nifty keen suggestions for the rewrite of my BELINDA BEESWAX story, that would drolly enough convert it into a Crime Story, as well as F and SF. Just for the fun of it, then, I couldn’t resist sharyimg or even sharing, my amusement at this droll conceit with Santiago

  Ap Popkin, the editor over at QUENTIN QUEELEY’s MYSTERY MUSEUM. But evidentially I wasn’t as clear in my explanations as I should have been. Fingers just ran away with themselves, laughing and giggling over their shoulders (well, knuckles. be pedantic) , down the pike. ANYhow, Caligula Fitz-Bumpkin somehow misunderstood. He is not, I mean we must simply Face these things, and Seneca Mac Zipnick is just NOT/very bright. He, do you know what simpleton did? this will hand yez a real alugh, *Ed: Guy sent a check. Thought I was offering the story to him. Boob. A doltish fellowe, Constantine O’Kaplan. But, well, Ed, put yourself in my position. Could I embarass the boy? Bring a blush to those downy cheeks? Nohohohoho.

  Well Ed it’s just one of those things that we have to face as we go through life: and the fact that QQMM happens to pay four or is it five times what F&SF pays, has got simply nothing to do with it. Avile canard, and that’s that. However, I have not forgotten that advance the time I was in Debtors Prison. And I will,

  I will, promise you now NOW, I” 1 sit down at my merry chuckling Selectra Six-Ten, and write you a real sockadaol sok?dolager of a Science Fiction story. VISCIOUS TERRESTRIAL BIPED xxxxxxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXXXXXX ZZZZZZZzzzznnngfhfghhhBZZZ blurtle blep ha ha, well, perhaps not quite along those lines. Zo. So

  “Forgiven”?

  Thine ever so

  Avram

  Dear Ed:

  Well, you mehk me sheahme, mahn, the way you have forgiven me for that peculiar contretemps anent BELINDA BEESWAX’s going to the QUENTIN QUEELEY’s MYSTERY MUSEUM people instead. That yuck, Gerardo A

  *or “laugh”, as some have it.—Ibid.

  Klutskas. Anyway, I have really been sticking to my last, tappetty-tapp. “Tap”. ZW.W.W.W.EEPPP! Cling. It’s a veritable psychodrama of Semi-Outer Space. XXXXXXXXXnnnnnggggg llullrp prurp plup ZZZZBBGGGgnn INTELLIGENT NONCHITINOUS BIPED ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND haha it’s always fun and games with this new Selectra Six-Ten, clicketty-cluch, hmble-hmble hmble-hmble. Just you should drip by you the mouth, so enclosed is a couple pp of the first draft. draught. drocht Spell it can’t, not for sour owl stools, but leave us remember the circumstances under which it grew to maturity. More to be piddled than centered. You like, huh? Huh? Huh. Thass whut I thought. XXXxxZZZZzzzzxxxxngngngn clurkle cluhnkle NOCHITINOUS BIFRU BIFURCATE ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND.

  Agreat line, hey? Arrests you with its like remorseless sweep, doesn’t it? Well well, back to the saline cavern

  Love and kisses,

  Avram

  Dear ED:

  See, I knew you would enjoy LOADSTAR EXPRESS.

  Even the first draft gripped you like ursus somethingorothera, didn’t it? Yes. True, it was rather rough. Amorphous, as you might say. But I was going to take care of that anyway. Yesyes I had that rough spot, pp 3-to-4 well in mind.

  I admit that I hsdn’t a hadn’t exactly planned to do it the way you tentatively suggest. But. Since you do. It would be as well that way as any other.

  Blush, chuckle. Not exactly what one would formerly have considered for the pp of a family, or even a Family Magazine. Tempura o mores, what? However. WHY N T? XXXXXxxxx--ZZZZZzzzz bgbgbgbngngngn bluggabluggablugga TATATA TA TA AT ATT AT ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND TERRESTRIOUS BIFURCATE NONCHERIDERMATIC XXXNN FASCIST AGGRESSIVE BIPED goddam Must quit reading alla them student Undrground Wellhung Classified Revolt Papers. To work work WORK toil

  “With fingers weary and worn, with eyelids heavy and red/ Awoman sat in unwomanly rags, mumbling a crust of bread. ’ ’ Can Laurence Ferlinghetti write lines like that? Can Richard Gumbeiner? It is to laugh. Anon, sir, anon. We Never Forget. Advances advanced to us in our hour od Need, earned eternal gratichude. clicketty-clunck.

  Industrously, Avram

  Dear Edward:

  WowWowWOW! WOW-WOW/WOWW’. !gotcha at alst)) Ignore. Confused by Joy. BUNNYBOY. BUNNYBOY, hippetty goddam HOP, B*U*N*N*N*Y*B*O*Y* M*A*G*A*Z*I*N*E*. You got that? Educational & Literary Compendium? With the big tzitzkas? Tha-hats the one. Bunnyboy Magazine has bumped a burse of bold, gumped a gurse of XXXXXXX xHa xHa xHa bgnbgn of gold, dumped a purse of gold in my lap. I kid y ou not.

  NOT NOT. “Not.” He adumbrated hilarriously. EXPLOITIVE DIOXIDIFEROUS BIPE
DS ah cummon now, cumMON. Shhest, I hardly know what to say, and this Selectra Six-Ten, elecrtified wit and terror, never but never a case of The DULL LINE LABOURS, AND THE WHEEL TURNS SLOW, goes faster than my MIND, my mind is BLOWN, out through both ears, walls all plastered with brain tissue.

  Carriage return. When in doubt. Carstairs Macanley, formerly of Midland Review, to which I sold, years ago—but you don’t want to hear about that, anyway he is now and has been for some time past Fiction Editor of Bunnyboy. So whilst making with the clicketty-clack and addressing the MS of LOADSTAR EXPRESS, I H happened to be thinking of him, and just for kicks, you know, Ed, I mean, YOU. Know me. Ed. Just abig, overgrown kid. So just for k.i.c.k.s., I absentmindedly addressed it to him. Laughed like a son of a gun’ when I found out what I’d done. And had already stamped the manila! “Well …” (I figured) “I’ll send it to good old Ed at F&SF soons as Carstairs Macanley returns it. Just to let him see what I’m doing these days.

  Ed, you have never wished me nothing but good, Ed, from the very first day we met, Ed, and I know that the last thing on your pure, sweet mind, i would be that I return the money to Bunyboy, and, besides, I am almost 100% sure it’s already in type: and we could hardly expect them to yank it. You’re a pro yourself, Ed. But don’t think for aminute, Eddy, that I’ve got abig head and/or have forgotten that advance you so, well, tenderly is really the only—And, Ed, any time you’re out on the West Coast, just any time at all, night or day, give me a ring, and we’ll go out for dinner somewhere. “A Hot bird and a cold bottle”, eh Ed? Hows that b grabg bgrarg XXXxx TREACHEROUS BgN BgN bGN TERCH XXXXXzzZZZ bgn bgn bgn TREACHEROUS AMBULATORY TERRESTRIAL AGGRESSIVE BIPED ATTEND ATTNEDNA Attn bgna bgn cluck.

  Please excuse my high spirits, my head is just buzzing and clicking right now, Inever SAW such a C*E*C*K in my LIFELIFE in my life. Hey, Ed, I could offer to rewrite the story for Bunnyboy leaving out the parts you suggested, but I don’t think it would be right to deprive you of the pleasure of seiing them in print. Wait for the story. I”ll do you something else sometime.

  Right now I’m going out and buy the biggest can of typewriter cleaning fluid anybody ever saw WE EXSALIVATE ON YOUR PROFFERED BRIBES EXPLOITIVE TERCHEOROSE TERRESTRIAL BIPED AGGRESSIVE NONCHERODERMATOID BIPED LANDING YOUR PLANETARY–RAPING PROBE MODULEWS ON THE SACRED CHITIN OF OUR MOTHER–WORLD FASCISTICLY TERMED “MOOM” XXXZZZZBGN BGN BGN BGN BGN BGN IGNORING OUR JUST LONG–REPRESSED PLEAS FOR YOUR ATTEND ATTE ND ATTEnD OHmigod

  ed oh ed my god i i oh

  e

  d

  e

  d

  o

  bgna bgna bgna bgna bgna bgna bgna bgna bgna bgna

  bpur bpur bpur bpur bpur bpur bpur bpur bpur BURP

  Goslin Day

  INTRODUCTION BY JACK DANN

  When Grania Davis told me she was editing a comprehensive volume of Avram’s best stories, I made a case for including “Goslin Day.” For my money, this is one of Avram’s very best stories, a story that has been unfortunately overshadowed by the charming and more famous “The Golem.” Avram’s “The Golem” is more accessible, more mainstream, if you will, but “Goslin Day” is perhaps the best example of his stylistic brilliance. It’s a tour de force of stylistic pyrotechnics. It’s sheer poetry. And, like “The Golem,” it goes to the very root of Avram’s Orthodox Jewish concerns.

  Even as Avram’s literary playfulness threatens to overwhelm this rich loaf of a story, Avram shows himself to be in absolute control. Here is a seamless example of style and content informing each other. In the few pages that follow, you’ll discover one of Avram’s most completely realized worlds, a world bursting with nervous movement, a world of deadly goslin spooks and night-spirits, a world conjured out of the ancient arts of Kabbalah, out of numerology, gematria, noutricon, anagrams, and acrostics.

  In Yiddish, gozlin means thief or swindler. Avram gives us “goslins”: the thieves that lie within us all, the swindlers that at any time can come “leaping through the vimveil to nimblesnitch, torment, buffet, burden, uglylook, poke, makestumble, maltreat …”

  Here are the monsters that stare back at us from dusty mirrors.

  Here is the world that inheres inside the world.

  Here we are.

  God bless you Avram. Nobody could do this better than you!

  GOSLIN DAY

  IT WAS A GOSLIN day, no doubt about it, of course it can happen that goslin things can occur, say, once a day for many days. But this day was a goslin day. From the hour when, properly speaking, the ass brays in his stall, but here instead the kat kvells on the rooftop—to the hour when the cock crows on his roost, but here instead the garbageman bangs on his can—even that early, Faroly realized that it was going to be a goslin day (night? let be night: It was evening and [after that] it was morning: one day. Yes or no?). In the warbled agony of the shriekscream Faroly had recognized an element present which was more than the usual ketzelkat expression of its painpleasure syndrome. In the agglutinative obscenities which interrupted the bangcrashes of the yuckels emptying eggshells orangerinds coffeegrounds there was (this morning, different from all other mornings) something unlike their mere usual brute pleasure in waking the dead. Faroly sighed. His wife and child were still asleep. He saw the dimlight already creeping in, sat up, reached for the glass and saucer and poured water over his nails, began to whisper his preliminary prayers, already concentrating on his Intention in the name Unity: but aware, aware, aware, the hotsticky feeling in the air, the swimmy looks in the dusty corners of windows, mirrors; something a tension, here a twitch and there a twitch. Notgood notgood.

  In short: a goslin day.

  Faroly decided to seek an expert opinion, went to Crown Heights to consult the kabbalist, Kaplánovics.

  Rabbaness Kaplánovics was at the stove, schauming off the soup with an enormous spoon, gestured with a free elbow toward an inner room. There sat the sage, the sharp one, the teacher of our teachers, on his head his beaver hat neatly brushed, on his feet and legs his boots brightly polished, in between his garments well and clean without a fleck or stain as befits a disciple of the wise. He and Faroly shook hands, greeted, blessed the Name. Kaplánovics pushed across several sheets of paper covered with an exquisitely neat calligraphy.

  “Already there,” the kabbalist said. “I have been through everything three times, twice. The NY Times, the Morgen Dzshornal, I. F. Stone, Dow-Jones, the Daph-Yomi, your name-Text, the weather report, Psalm of the Day. Everything is worked out, by numerology, analogy, gemátria, noutricon, anagrams, allegory, procession and precession. So.

  “Of course today as any everyday we must await the coming of the Messiah: ‘await’—expect? today? not today. Today he wouldn’t come. Considerations for atmospheric changes, or changes for atmospheric considerations, not—bad. Not—bad. Someone gives you an offer for a good airconditioner, cheap, you could think about it. Read seven capitals of psalms between afternoon and evening prayers. One sequence is enough. The day is favorable for decisions on growth stocks, but avoid closed-end mutual funds. On the corner by the beygal store is an old woman with a pyshka, collecting dowries for orphan girls in Jerusalem: the money, she never sends, this is her sin, it’s no concern of yours: give her eighteen cents, a very auspicious number: merit, cheaply bought (she has sugar diabetes and the daughter last week gave birth to a weak-headed child by a schwartzer), what else?” They examined the columns of characters.

  “Ahah. Ohoh. If you get a chance to buy your house, don’t buy it, the Regime will condemn it for a freeway, where are they all going so fast?—every man who has two legs thinks he needs three automobiles—besides—where did I write it? oh yes. There. The neighborhood is going to change very soon and if you stay you will be killed in three years and two months, or three months and two years, depending on which system of gemátria is used in calculating. You have to warn your brother-in-law his sons should each commence bethinking a marriagematch. Otherwise they will be going to cinemas and watching televisions and puttin
g arms around girls, won’t have the proper intentions for their nighttime prayers, won’t even read the protective psalms selected by the greatgrandson of the Baalshemtov: and with what results, my dear man? Nocturnal emissions and perhaps worse; is it for nothing that The Chapters of the Principles caution us, ‘At age eighteen to the marriage canopy and the performance of good deeds,’ hm?”

  Faroly cleared his throat. “Something else is on your mind,” said the kabbalist. “Speak. Speak.” Faroly confessed his concern about goslins. Kaplánovics exclaimed, struck the table. “Goslins! you wanted to talk about goslins? It’s already gone past the hour to say the Shema, and I certainly didn’t have in mind when I said it to commence constructing a kaméa.” He clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Am I omniscient?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? Man walks in off the street, expects to find—”

  But it did not take long to soothe and smooth him—Who is strong? he who can control his own passion.

  And now to first things first, or, in this case, last things first, for it was the most recent manifestation of goslinness which Faroly wished to talk about. The kabbalist listened politely but did not seem in agreement with nor impressed by his guest’s recitation of the signs by which a goslin day might make itself known. “‘Show simônim,’” he murmured, with a polite nod. “This one loses an object, that one finds it, let the claimant come and ‘show simônim,’ let him cite the signs by which his knowledge is demonstrated, and, hence, his ownership …” but this was mere polite fumfutting, and Faroly knew that the other knew that both knew it.

  On Lexington a blackavised goslin slipped out from a nexus of cracked mirrors reflecting dust at each other in a disused nightclub, snatched a purse from a young woman emerging from a ribs joint; in Bay Ridge another, palepink and blond, snatched a purse from an old woman right in front of Suomi Evangelical Lutheran. Both goslins flickersnickered and were sharply gone. In Tottenville, a third one materialized in the bedroom of an honest young woman still half asleep in bed just a second before her husband came back from the nightshift in Elizabeth, New Jersey; uttered a goslin cry and jumped out the window holding his shirt. Naturally the husband never believed her—would you? Two more slipped in and out of a crucial street corner on the troubled bordermarches of Italian Harlem, pausing only just long enough to exchange exclamations of guineabastard!/goddamnigger! and goslin looks out of the corners of their goslin eyes. Goslin cabdrivers curseshouted at hotsticky pregnant women dumb enough to try and cross at pedestrian crossings. The foul air grew fouler, thicker, hotter, tenser, muggier, murkier: and the goslins, smelling it from afar, came leapsniffing through the vimveil to nimblesnitch, torment, buffet, burden, uglylook, poke, makestumble, maltreat, and quickshmiggy back again to gezzle guzzle goslinland.