The Investigations of Avram Davidson

by Avram Davidson

  Curiosity gave way almost to alarm: Large Pale Savage Female at once set the mantle on a table and, picking up a cold iron, proceeded to strike it repeatedly upon the garment and its contents. Very nearly, it sounded as though bones were being cracked.

  “Desist, ‘Miss-Miss,’” he exclaimed. “That is clearly a costly garment as befits the daughter of a respected usurer and rack-rent landlord, and I fear it may be damaged, and the blame laid on me; desist!”

  Smack! Smack! Smack!

  In a moment the mantle was flung open, inside lay a mass of crushed ice, quicker than he could move to prevent it she had snatched from the pile first one clean wrinkled shirt and then another, tumbled the crushed ice into each and wrapped it up like a sausage; then she set one on each side of the small, feverish body.

  “Doesn’t that feel better now?”

  The female child murmured something very low, but she smiled as she reached up and took the large pale paw in her tiny golden hand.

  Large Pale Savage Female came often, came quite often, came several times a day; Large Pale Savage Female brought more ice and more ice; she bathed the wasted little frame in cooled water many times, she brought a savage witch-doctor with the devil-thing one end of which goes in the ears and the other end upon the breast; also he administered more pills. Large Pale Savage Female fed broth to the sick child—in short, she could not have done more if she were caring for a husband’s grandfather.

  Afterward, Wong Cigar Fellow commented, “Needless to say that I would have gone had it been a boy; although Buddhists have said that even the death of a son is no more than the passage of a bird across the empty sky, who can go quite that far? Forget the matter in much toil and eventually you will have accumulated the thousand dollars which will enable you to return to the Kingdom in the Middle of the World and live at ease forever.”

  Only On Lung himself had been present at the burial of the girl-child. He, that is, and Large Pale Savage Female whose much care had not prevailed, plus the priest-savage she had brought along. It was a wet, chill autumn day; the bitter wind had scattered rain and leaves … golden leaves … henceforth the tiny ghost would sip in solitude of the Yellow Springs beneath the earth. It was astonishing how very painful the absence of the small person was found. One would not indeed have thought it possible.

  The heat had become intolerable; he thought of that sudden illness which was compared to the tightening of a red-hot band about the head: nonsense: he was still upright; merely the place seemed very odd, suddenly. Seemed without meaning, suddenly. Its shapes seemed to shift. It had no purpose. No wonder he was no longer there, was outside, was moving silently from one silent alley to another, on his shoulder the carrying pole of the two laundry-baskets, one at each end. No one was about, and, if anyone were, no one would have noted his presence: merely a Chinaman, which is to say a laundryman, picking up and leaving off shirts. No one. Everything was very sudden, now. He had hidden pole and baskets behind a bush. He had slipped through a space where a board was missing from a fence. He was in a place where wood was stored and split. He had a glimpse of someone whom he knew. He must avoid such a one—indeed all others. Silently his slippered feet flew up the stairs. A voice droned in a room. Droned on and on. And on. “…come when I call you, hey, miss? Miss, Miss Elizabeth? Beneath you, is it? We’ll see if you’ll come when I call you pretty soon,” the voice droned on. “I say, ‘We’ll see if you’ll come when I call you pretty soon, miss.’ Wun’t call me, ‘Mother,’ hey, miss? Well, even if I be Mr. Borden’s second wife, I be his lawful-wedded wife, him and me has got some business at the bank and the lawyer’s pretty soon today, you may lay to that, yes, miss, you may lay to that; we’ll see if you ain’t a-going to come when I call you after that, and come at my very beck and call and do as I tell you must do, for if you don’t you may go somewheres else and you may git your vittles somewheres else, too, though darned if I know where that may be, I have got your father wrapped around my little finger, miss, miss, yes, I say yes, I shall lower your proud head, miss,” the hateful, nasal voice droned on.

  So! This was she: the childless concubine of the father of Large Pale Savage Female! She, the one who planned to assume the rule of family property and cast out the daughter of the first wife? In this heat-stricken, insane, and savage world only the practice of fidelity and the preservation of virtue could keep a man’s heart from being crushed by pain. He who had been known (and rightfully known) as The Deft-Footed Dragon, the once-renowned and most-renowned hatchet-man of the great Ten Tongs, hefted his weapon and slipped silently into the room.…

  A QUIET ROOM WITH A VIEW

  “A QUIET ROOM WITH A VIEW” was published in 1964. It takes place in a retirement home. I remember reading this story as it poured out of Avram’s typewriter, and loving it. There is a wonderful description of a chicken thigh as the tastiest part of the chicken, and lovely descriptions of buttery mashed potatoes and hot apple turnovers, too. How we laughed when we read the story aloud—it must have been just before dinner. In 1964, the grim reality of living in a retirement institution seemed very far away. The years passed, and Avram’s health declined, until he too was confined temporarily in a retirement facility. Then the laughter faded, and the dark side of this warm yet chilling story became very real.

  —GD

  Precisely at midnight, as always, in a predestined order and immutable sequence, Mr. Stanley C. Richards was awakened to the tortures.

  Midnight. The bells in the Cathedral began to toll—twelve strokes. At one, Mr. Richards awoke and was reminded of where he was (which meant he was also reminded of where he was not), sighed, gripped the covers.

  At three, Mr. Nelson Stucker awoke, quite obviously not reminded of where he was or was not, and began to call the name of his dead wife.

  At seven, Mr. Thomas Bigelow, snatched from slumber by the uncertain cries of Mr. Stucker, began to cough. He coughed whenever he was awake—long, slow, deep, ropy, phlegmy, chest-rattling coughs; during the day, as if ashamed, he preferred to keep out of earshot—at the far end of the garden, in the nearby park, in an unfrequented chapel in the Cathedral, even (in bad weather) in the basement; but at night, poor man, where could he go?

  And at the stroke of ten, Mr. Amadeo Palumbo, jolted from dreams of the dank little fruit and vegetable store where he had been busy and happy for forty years, jolted into remembrance that not only the store but the very building had been torn down to make room for a housing project which had no need for fruit and vegetable stores—Mr. Palumbo moaned out his woes and grief and loneliness in the language of his childhood. “Oh, Gesu-Mari’!” he keened. “Oh, San’ Giussep’, San’ Giacom’!”

  And so, by twelve, by the last stroke of the chimes, a stroke echoing infinitely in the clamoring darkness, the tortured pattern of the night was established forever.

  The nights seemed to last forever, there in that room under the eaves of the old building full—overfull, in plain fact—of old men and old women.

  Bedtime was at half-past ten, and at half-past ten the four old men in the attic room overlooking the airshaft sank quickly enough into slumber, tired out by the fatigue of having lived through another day. But by midnight they were all near the surface again.

  It wasn’t, really, that the chimes were noisy or unpleasant. On the contrary, they were soft melodious chimes, world-famous, as was the Cathedral itself—to which the Alexandra Home for Aged Couples and Elderly Men was attached by some loose denominational ties. It wasn’t, really, the chimes so much that awakened Mr. Stanley Richards, who had lived within sound of church bells before and could easily have slept through them. It was the sure awareness of what was yet to come that killed his slumbers at the sound of the first stroke.

  It was Mr. Stucker who was unused to the sound of chimes. Mr. Stucker was very old indeed, and while he knew well enough in the daytime that he was a widower and had been one for many years, he forgot it in the night-time—forgot it again and again and again. Shallow sleep
vexed by slight cause, he knew only that he was awakened to find himself not in the double bed in which most of the nights of his life had been passed. He found himself in a strange bed now, without the proper presence of his wife from whom he had not been parted for a single day or single night until parted by her death—death which he could not, or would not, remember in the darkness.

  So—

  Dong. Dong. Dong.

  And—

  “Henny?” called old Stucker. “Henny? Hen-ny?” And, finally frightened, louder and louder, “Henny, Henny!”

  Thus awakening Mr. Bigelow, in the next bed, to his ungovernable and shameful coughing—coughing which only grew worse as he tried to stop it. Poor, coughing Mr. Bigelow! Where could he go and hide his cough in the cold and hostile night?

  So, in a matter of seconds, Mr. Bigelow woke up old Amadeo—who knew on the instant exactly where he was, and where he was not, and why, and that he could never return—never!—to the nice cool basement store, with a coolness so good for the beautiful fruit, the lovely vegetables, and the sweet familiar smell of them, and the familiar customers whom he had served for more than a generation in the old neighborhood (faults and all) which had been—ah, fatal change of tense!—more than a home. His life—gone, gone forever—urbanly renewed into a giant complex of giant boxhouses, with no crowded streets, no saloons, no restaurants, no little candy stores, no pushcarts—and no basement fruit and vegetable store for Amadeo Palumbo.

  “Oh, Gesu,” he wept. “Oh, Santa Mari’…”

  And so the cycle would go throughout the whole night. Mr. Richards was not bothered by chimes, he missed no wife, he had no cough, he mourned for no lost occupation or familiar home or place. He wanted only to sleep, and he could not sleep because his roommates could not let him.

  * * *

  “WAKE UP! WAKE up there, Richards. You getting senile or something, falling asleep while people are talking to you?” Mr. Hammond shook him into wakefulness.

  Mr. Richards snapped his head up. Smiled. “Sorry for that,” he said.

  “Not very polite, in my opinion,” grumbled Mr. Hammond.

  “Now, Harry—” his wife said.

  “Don’t you Now, Harry me, Alice!”

  They were all in the sun parlor at the front of the first floor. Mrs. Hammond smiled over her knitting. Mr. and Mrs. Darling looked distressed. “Senile” was not a nice word at the Alexandra Home. Mr. Hammond grunted, creased his newspaper.

  “That’s a habit I got into many, many years ago,” Mr. Richards began.

  “What, falling asleep when people are talking to you?” Hammond wouldn’t let go.

  “No, taking cat naps. Many times we’d have to march all night through the jungle, and then, in the daytime, set one man on guard, and the rest of us would just fall down and curl up, sleep for oh not more than five or six minutes, then jump up and start marching again.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Darling stopped looking distressed and started looking interested. Mrs. Hammond paused in her knitting. Her husband unfolded his paper again and said, “Man writes here—as I was saying, Richards, before you fell asleep on me—man writes here—”

  But Mr. Darling was evidently not interested in what a man wrote there. His eyes wider than before, he leaned forward and asked, “Was this when you were fighting the Bolivians in that Grand Shako War, Mr. Richards?”

  Once again, firmly and loudly, rattling his paper, Mr. Hammond said, “Man writes here that—”

  But Mr. Darling, even louder, said, “Hey, Mr. Richards? Fighting the Bolivians?”

  With an apologetic smile to Mr. Hammond, who scowled, Mr. Richards said, “Well, point of order, Mr. Darling. In the Gran Chaco War I was fighting with the Bolivians. Against the Paraguayans. By that time the cat nap habit had been established for many years, far as I was concerned, and I taught it to my men. Nicaragua, fighting the bandit Sandino—Venezuela, trying to overthrow the tyrant Lopez—” He chuckled, as if reminded of something.

  Mr. Darling, his face now bright with vicarious enjoyment, said, “Hey, Mr. Richards? What—?”

  Asking the pardon of the ladies for telling a slightly improper story (the ladies at once assumed an expression both surprised and insistent), but reminding them that the Latin race had different customs from our own, Mr. Richards proceeded to inform them that Lopez, though never married, had had many children.

  “Oh, for goodness sake!” said Mrs. Hammond.

  “Well, I never!” said Mrs. Darling, a featureless, dumpy woman, though inoffensive enough; but Mrs. Hammond was a very good-looking person, her skin still firm and pink and her snow-white hair neatly set.

  Tyrant though he was, Lopez was nevertheless in his own way a sort of what-you-might-call a gentleman, and he had legally acknowledged all his natural children (as the expression goes), and had them legitimatized. One day Colonel Lindbergh flew down to Venezuela and was met at the airport by President Lopez and a number of his children, who presented Colonel Lindbergh with a bouquet of flowers.

  Lindbergh took the bouquet and asked, “Are they natural?”

  And Lopez had replied, “Yes—but legitimate!”

  Mr. Hammond snorted, amused despite himself. Mrs. Hammond laughed softly. Mrs. Darling sat absolutely impassive, while her husband smiled and awaited more, obviously not realizing that the anecdote was completed. So Mr. Richards explained, “Lindbergh meant, were the flowers natural flowers or artificial flowers. But Lopez, when he heard him say, ‘Are they natural,’ thought he was talking about the children; so…” Finally getting the point, Mr. Darling laughed and laughed and wiped his eyes.

  “Well, well, you certainly have led an interesting life,” he said. “How many wars you been in, anyway, might I ask?”

  Mr. Richards smiled, shook his head. “I really couldn’t say. Some of them weren’t big enough to count as wars, I suppose—”

  Mr. Darling started counting on his fingers. “You were in the First Balkan War, I believe you said? Yes; and the Second Balkan War, too, right? Against those Turks—terrible people they must have been in those days. And the First World War, and the Chinese Revolution, and helping the Polish fight for the independence from the Russians and—” He lost track and began to renumber his fingers.

  Giving his newspaper one final slap before thrusting it into his pocket, Mr. Hammond said, “I suppose you call yourself a Soldier of Fortune?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Well, it seems to me—it seems to me, Richards—you were nothing more than just a plain hired killer!”

  Mr. Darling’s mouth went round. Mrs. Hammond cried, “Harry.”

  “A mercenary, a killer, that’s all!”

  “Harry, shame on you!”

  Mr. Richards hesitated, but before he could speak, Mrs. Darling did. Her mind moved slowly, very slowly, and when a word or reference entered, it often took several minutes for the effect to become visible. “Mr. Richards,” she said now, oblivious of her husband’s shock, his friend’s embarrassment, Mr. Hammond’s anger, or Mrs. Hammond’s indignation, “I want to ask you something: did those Turkish men really have all those wives locked up in a harmen, like they say, or is that only a story? I would like to know.”

  His face clearing, Mr. Richards was ready to answer, but he was forestalled by the canny Mr. Hammond who said, “Chicken for dinner today.”

  Instantly forgetting all about every Turk who ever lived, about wives, harmens, and all, Mrs. Darling said, “Chicken for dinner?”

  Pursing his lips and nodding deeply, Mr. Hammond said, “Yup. Chicken for dinner. A nice chicken thigh, hmm, Mrs. Darling?”

  Eagerly and with animation she said, “Oh, yes, I always say that there is nothing like a chicken thigh because the back is too bony and the breast is too rich and the leg has all those grizzles on it and as for the wing—well, it has hardly anything on it; but the thigh—I always say the thigh is just right.”

  “Well, now, look here, Mr. Hammond,” Mr. Richards began; but Mr. Hammond, who had
been through this battle before, wasn’t ready to retreat.

  “Yes, you’re absolutely right, Mrs. Darling,” he said. “A nice chicken thigh with a brown crust on it and maybe some mashed potatoes on the side, eh? Wouldn’t that just touch the spot?”

  She had been listening and nodding and smiling; now she exclaimed, “Why, that’s just what I always say, yes. A brown crust on it and mashed potatoes, why—Edgar always used to love the way I made my mashed potatoes, didn’t you, Edgar? Edgar?”

  Edgar Darling reluctantly shifted his attention from Mr. Richards. Wars! Revolutions! Soldiers of Fortune! Latin Dictators with natural children! And then—right here and now—an insult! Still looking eagerly at his adventurous friend, he began to swivel around to face his wife. “Hey, Mabel? What—?”

  “Didn’t you used to love the way I made my mashed potatoes? Mr. Hammond was just saying, oh, a nice chicken thigh with a brown crust and some nice mashed potatoes would just touch the spot right now, and I was telling him how you used to love the way I made my mashed potatoes. The way I made them was,” she explained to the smiling, interested Mr. Hammond, “after I mashed them I used to put in a little milk and a little buttermilk, too, and salt and pepper and a nice big lump of butter. Edgar used to say, You sure don’t stint or skimp on the butter, do you, Mabel, and I’d say, No, I don’t believe in it and meanwhile I’d be frying a nice onion chopped up fine and then I’d mix it all together and, oh, Edgar, he just loved it! Didn’t you, Edgar? We had such a nice home,” she added, her mood suddenly destroyed.