Helen’s landlady informed her, regretfully, that she could no longer let her have the house for its current price as she had been offered five times that amount by a Montreal Sporting Club. And then a story appeared in the St. John’s newspaper (which circulated locally), describing the boom at Little York Cove, and incidentally mentioning that among the residents was a woman who had lost her husband and child under tragic and once well-known circumstances, which it proceeded to recapitulate in gory detail.
Helen left the next week.
The name of the writer whose report had worked these far-reaching changes was Robert Pepper.
* * *
THE STORY TOLD—slowly, painfully—by Don and Donna Smith was not too dissimilar. All their lives they had suffered from extreme shyness. They had met, in fact, at a party to which they had been dragged by different sets of friends, and found each other huddling diffidently in the same corner.
After their marriage they acted on a mutual resolve to avoid crowds, and believing that in a country of a different language their bashfulness would be less obvious and hence less troublesome, they moved to a town in the Cape Verde Islands. They obtained a lease, at a most moderate sum, on one of the many splendid old houses that dated from the period when the town was an outpost of Portuguese empire. Food was equally inexpensive; they kept several horses and they swam a good deal. Also resident in the town were an Indo-Chinese ex-King and a family of exiled Balkan nobles.
The shy Smiths smiled politely at them in passing and were in turn politely smiled at. They did not so much invite Robert Pepper into their facienda as suffer his presumptive presence; they were infinitely relieved when he left.
Pepper thoughtfully sent them clippings in several languages which commended the Smiths for their “hospitality” and spared no detail, however slight, about San Jao—Hideway Home of Princes and Potentates and Sun-kissed Shangri-la.
At first it meant little to the Smiths. Bewildered when the flowering tree-lined streets of the old town began to swarm with visitors, they retreated behind their walls, refusing in terror to answer the repeated calls of the bell, or—when the bell was disconnected—trying not to hear the constant pounding on the gate. Isolation proved impossible when they were informed that their sea-near facienda had been sold as a nucleus of a posh residential hotel to be erected by a syndicate of Scotch herring smokers in search of a better climate and a more diversified portfolio.
The last to tell his story was a thin dry grayish man who in a thin dry grayish voice briefly related a like account.
Arthur Clay had settled in the neighboring Republic of Santa Anna “before”—as he put it—“any of these countries had signed extradition treaties with the United States.” Making botany his new interest, he had classified over 1,800 species of plant life unknown to taxonomical science before the questing eye of R. Pepper had lighted on the pleasant piedmont area called Las Mesas, where Mr. Clay was making his home.
Enlarging on the picturesqueness of the native costumes and festivals, the fertility of the soil, the amiability of the population, and the low tax policy of the Santa Anna government, Pepper’s widely syndicated column had brought such an influx of new people to Las Mesas that before long Arthur Clay beheld, vanishing before his eyes, the wild plant life he could no longer afford to study and catalogue.…
Captain Stone’s deep and angry voice jerked them out of their profound silence.
There was, he declared, a sort of fourfold pattern visible in this whole ironic business. First (he counted on a huge hairy finger), a group of people who, for one good reason or another, were unable to live in their original homes and societies. Second, this same group of people had the useful talent of being able to locate little-known, remote, and pleasant places in which they were able to live. Third, this filthy swine, Robert Pepper, seemed to possess a similar talent for nosing out such places, but only after they had originally been discovered by the same group.
“Fourth, and most damnable,” the Captain trumpeted, “is that every ‘discovery’ he makes is—for everyone except himself—utterly self-defeating! He writes about places which are little-known; directly they become famous! He writes about places which are cheap; immediately they become expensive! He advertises places which are unspoiled, and in a short time they are spoiled into corruption. He is, in short, a cuckoo laying his cockatrice’s eggs in nests which he invariably fouls as a reward for hospitality!”
When the echo of his voice had died away Helen said, hopeless beyond despair, “And there is nothing we can do about it.”
“Yes, there is! There is!” cried Captain Stone. “We can at least refuse to help the rogue! We can refuse to assist him in spying out the land! We can—”
He fell into a fit of coughing, toward the subsidence of which Richard Stanley was heard to say, “But I promised.”
“Promised what?” Arthur Clay asked.
Promised to show Pepper the ruins of the Temple of Achichihuatzl, Richard Stanley said. The next morning.
In vain it was pointed out to him, in tones most urgent, that this was just the sort of thing on which Pepper doted. Ruins! Temples! Picturesque antiquities! He would lap it up, spread the news far and wide.
“What do you think will happen to all of us when he gets done?” Captain Stone demanded, face redder than his beard. “What do you suppose will happen to you? You told me yourself that you live on the $750 a year you get from two non-amortizing mortgages your sister gave you. Could you live on that anywhere else in the world?
“Do you know how much Coca-Cola a thousand tourists a month can drink? They won’t be satisfied to drink it tempo as the locals do, they’ll want it frio—and not from an ice bucket, either, because they’ll be afraid of bugs in the ice. No, they’ll want it chilled in a refrigerator, and nice old Don Nestor will have to buy one—he’ll have to buy a big one—he’ll have to borrow money to pay for it—and he won’t be able to go on lodging you and feeding you at the bargain-basement rates he’s charging now.
“What will you do when he raises your rent, Richard? Where will you go? How will you live?”
They all looked at him—the furious Captain Stone, the hopeless Helen, the grim Arthur Clay, and the terrified Smiths.
He had no answer. All he could say, over and over again, was, “But I promised, I promised…”
The next morning he met Bob Pepper, already bubbling over with enthusiasm. “How far are these ruined temples of yours, Dicky-boy? Very far?” He was festooned with cameras and such impedimenta.
“Not really. Not if you don’t mind a rather long walk.”
“I don’t mind! I’ll take lots of shots on the way. Love that scenery! Hey, see that muchacha? What a pair of legs! Hey?”
He did not take many shots after all, for the trail along which Stanley led him was a narrow track between thick growths of trees; so Pepper began to ask questions about the ruins and who built them. Stanley warmed to the subject.
The local Indians (he said), though not comparable in the level of their culture and technology with the Aztecs, Mayas, or Incas, had nevertheless achieved a rather high degree of both. They worked well in stone and metal, had a complex and extremely interesting code of manners, and were opposed to shedding human blood.
“Red-skin Quakers!” Pepper exclaimed, pushing aside an obtrusive branch. “You must have made quite a study of all this, huh?”
“Oh, I have. For years. And I’ve learned things which—it sounds romantic but it’s true—no other living white man knows.”
Bob Pepper grinned happily. He’d have to get all this down on paper. No other living white man—great! Simply great! Such as what?
They had come now to the ruins themselves. Stone statues green with moss leaned at crazy angles, and native pines grew in the courtyard, thrusting up great slabs of stone and covering others with a thick layer of pine needles.
“Well,” said Stanley, shy and proud at the same time, “legend refers to The Three Sacred Wells of the
Temple. But only two of them—the locations of only two of them, I mean—are known.”
“Sacred Wells! Great!”
One—Stanley pointed it out—was The Well of Good Wishes. The other was The Well of Secret Sorrows. And the third—
“It took me over ten years of consulting old accounts and very old maps, and gaining the confidence of the Indians. But in the end, Mr. Pepper—Bob—I finally found it.”
Past the area of stone floors and statues they went, and finally stopped under a huge and stately old pine. With his feet Stanley scraped and scraped. The pine needles fell away in heaps to reveal a circular stone engraved with petroglyphs.
“Don’t try to lift it—you couldn’t,” said Stanley. “But I can.”
Deftly Stanley pressed down at a certain point. Smoothly the stone lid swung up on its pivot. The well gaped ancient and black. Bob Pepper rubbed his hands and peered down.
“Won’t the schoolteachers from Des Moines go for this!” he exclaimed. “What’s this one called?—don’t tell me—it’s The Well of the Virgins, right?”
“No,” said Stanley. “It isn’t. It’s called The Well of the Messenger of Evil Tidings.”
And Stanley put his right foot diagonally behind Pepper’s ankles at the Achilles tendons, and pushed. The irrepressible journalist went straight down without touching the sides. There was no outcry, and only after a long time, a muffled, echoing splash.
Richard Stanley scuffed back the heaps of pine needles and brushed them with a handy fallen branch. Once again the stone cover lay hidden from sight.
He turned and began to walk briskly back to town. If he did not dawdle along the way he would be just in time for lunch. Don Nestor’s lunches were as enormous as they were delicious. And, perhaps not least of all, they were so very, very cheap.
THE LORD OF CENTRAL PARK
“THE LORD OF CENTRAL PARK” was first published in 1970. It is a playful story that shows Davidson’s skill as a prose stylist. In an introduction to an earlier Davidson Collection (The Redward Edward Papers, Doubleday, 1978), author Michael Kurland explained:
“Some of you who read this collection are venturing into the arcane, erudite world of Avram Davidson for the first time. Probability theory insists that, despite the acres of trees cut down to provide the wood pulp, the scores of dragons killed and bled to provide the ink, some of you will not have read any of the earlier published works of Don Avram. For that few I issue the following warning: breathe steadily through the nose, if possible, proceed slowly and examine the foliage. Do not search for meanings, as they are scattered like empty oyster shells around the Walrus. I hope that helps. The prose itself will be purely and indisputably Davidson.
“Avram Davidson is the master of the parenthetical phrase. Many’s the time I’ve seen a parenthetical phrase groveling before Avram’s stern hand, begging for mercy. But he takes them and twists them to his will. In the spirit of the true explorer, Avram is ever pushing and prodding at the bounds of language.”
—GD
This all took place a while back.…
It was a crisp evening in middle April.
Cornelius Goodeycoonce, the river pirate, headed his plunder-laden boat straight at an apparently solid wall of pilings, steering with the calm of a ferryboat captain nearing a slip, and cut his motor.
Up in Central Park, where he was kipped out in a secluded cave, Arthur Marmaduke Roderick Lodowicke William Rufus de Powisse-Plunkert, 11th Marquess of Grue and Groole in the Peerage of England, 22nd Baron Bogle in the Peerage of Scotland, 6th Earl of Ballypatcoogen in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Penhokey in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, Laird of Muckle Greet, Master of Snee, and Hereditary Lord High Keeper of the Queen’s Bears, heard a familiar beat of wings in the night and held out a slice of bread just in time to catch a medium-rare charcoal-broiled steak.
Not a mile away the Grand Master of the Mafia, Don Alexander Borjia, admired for the ten-thousandth time the eternally enigmatic smile on the lips of the original Mona Lisa, which hung, as it had for 50 years, on the wall of the Chamber of the order’s Grand Council.
A certain foreign visitor, who called himself Tosci, came down the gangway ladder on the side of the yacht which in daylight flew the flag of the landlocked nation whose citizenship he claimed, and got gingerly into the launch which was to bear him to shore.
Daisy Smith, in her trim and tiny bachelor-girl apartment, prepared herself a tuna-fish sandwich without enthusiasm, and reflected how much more—how very much more—she would rather be preparing, say, roast beef and potatoes for a young man, if only she knew a young man she considered worth preparing roast beef and potatoes for.
And across the North River, on the Jersey shore, a thin line of green still hugged the outline of the cliffs; and over that, a thin line of blue. And then the night rolled all the way down, and the lines of light were lost.…
The momentum of Cornelius’s boat carried it swiftly toward the bulkhead. A crash seemed inevitable. Then Cornelius picked up an oar and prodded one certain timber well below the waterline. Instantly a section of the pilings swung open, just wide enough and just high enough for the boat to pass through; then it swung shut once more.
The boat proceeded onward in gathering darkness as the light from the river dimmed behind it. Gauging the precise instant when the momentum would cease to propel his boat against the mild current of Coenties’ Kill—walled in and walled over these 150 years—the man lowered his oar and began to pole. The eyes of an alligator flashed briefly, then submerged.
Presently a light showed itself some distance off, then vanished, reappeared, vanished once more in the windings of the sluggish creek, and finally revealed itself, hissing whitely, as a Coleman lamp. It sat on the stone lip of what had been a fairly well-frequented landing in the days when De Witt Clinton was Mayor and Jacob Hays was High Constable of the City of New York. Cheap as labor had been in those days—and fill even cheaper—it had been less expensive to vault up rather than bury the Kill when the needs of the growing metropolis demanded the space. Experience had proved that to be the case when other Manhattan “kills” or streams, refusing meekly to submit to burial, had flooded cellars and streets.
The Goodeycoonce-the-river-pirate of that time had noted, marked, mapped, and made the private excavations. They were an old, old family, loath to change what was even then an old family trade.
“Well, now, let’s see—” said the present-day Cornelius. He tied up. He unloaded his cargo onto a pushcart, placed the lamp in a bracket, and slowly trundled the cart over the stone paving of the narrow street, which had echoed to no other traffic since it lost the light of the sun so long ago.
At the head of the incline the path passed under an archway of later construction. The Goodeycoonce-of-that-time, trusting no alien hand, had learned the mason’s trade himself, breaking in onto a lovely, dry, smooth tunnel made and abandoned forever by others—the first, last, and short-lived horse-car subway. The wheels of the push-cart fitted perfectly into the tracks, and the grade was level.
Granny Goodeycoonce was reading her old Dutch family Bible in the snug apartment behind her second-hand store. That is, not exactly reading it; it had been generations since any member of the family could actually read Dutch; she was looking at the pictures. Her attention was diverted from a copperplate engraving of the she-bear devouring the striplings who had so uncouthly mocked the Prophet Elisha with the words, Go up, ballhead (“Serve them right!” she declared. “Bunch of juvenile delinquents!”), by a thumping from below.
She closed the Book and descended to the cellar, where her only grandchild was hauling his plunder up through the trap door.
“Put out that lamp, Neely!” she said sharply. “Gasoline costs money!”
“Yes, Granny,” the river pirate said obediently.
* * *
DENNY THE DIP stared in stupefaction at the sudden appearance of a steak sandwich’s most important ingredient. Then he stared at the winged visit
or which had appeared a second after the steak. The winged visitor stared back—or, perhaps “glared” would be the mot juste—out of burning yellow eyes. “Cheest!” said Denny the Dip.
There had been a time when, so skillful was the Dip, that he had picked the pocket of a Police Commissioner while the latter was in the very act of greeting a Queen. (He had returned the wallet later, of course, via the mails, out of courtesy, and, of course, minus the money.) But Time with her wingèd Flight, and all that—age and its concomitant infirmities, much aggravated by a devotion to whatever Celtic demigod presides over the demijohn—had long rendered the Dip unfit for such professional gestures.
For some years now he had been the bane of the Mendicant Squad. His method was to approach lone ladies with the pitch that he was a leper, that they were not to come any nearer, but were to drop some money on the sidewalk for him. This, with squeaks of dismay, they usually did. But on one particular evening—this one, in fact—the lone lady he had approached turned out to be a retired medical missionary; she delivered a lecture on the relative merits of chaulmoogra oil and the sulfonamides in the treatment of Hansen’s Disease (“—not contagious in New York, and never was—”), expressed her doubts that the Dip suffered from anything worse than, say, ichthyosis; and the paper she gave him was neither Silver Certificate nor Federal Reserve Note, but the address of a dermatologist.
Her speech had lasted a good quarter of an hour, and was followed by some remarks on Justification Through Faith, the whole experience leaving Denny weak and shaken. He had just managed to totter to one of those benches which a benevolent municipality disposes at intervals along Central Park West, and sink down, when he was espied by the 22nd Baron and 11th Marquess aforesaid, Arthur Marmaduke et cetera, who was walking his dog, Guido.
The dog gave Denny a perfunctory sniff, and growled condescendingly. Denny, semisubliminally, identified it as a whippet, reidentified it as an Italian greyhound, looked up suddenly and whimpered, “Lord Grey and Gore?”
The Investigations of Avram Davidson Page 12
