The Avram Davidson Treasury (47 page)

I
NTRODUCTION BY
G
ENE
W
OLFE

This is, as you will already have guessed, Avram Davidson’s variation on the ever-popular sleeping beauty theme.

Ever popular because it is ever fertile, never more so than here. Nor will you, I think, find any variant quite so difficult to harvest as this. It is elfinfield, to be reaped only by the seventh son of a seventh son, wielding a silver sickle by moonlight. Don’t worry, I am here to help you.

But first let me recommend three more-recent variations on the same theme: Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen; “Summer Wind,” by Nancy Kress; and “Waking the Prince,” by Kathe Koja. You can read all three, I promise you, and this story as well, without ever reading the same story twice.

In the high and far off times before women warred upon men, the tale of the sleeping beauty was told at firesides so that young women might know they slept but might someday be awakened, and so that young men might know young women sleep, and that gallantry and chivalry are needed, not threats or force. Perhaps the best way to explain the sleeping beauty story is to say that it is the other side of the story about the frog who is kissed.

The frog story is about men, and so lapses only too readily into comedy. The sleeping beauty story is about women, and so flashes with new colors in each new hand; for men are always much the same, but every woman is a new woman with a new man.

You will not have to be told that in “Polly Charms, the Sleeping Woman” Davidson is burlesquing the detective story. He pokes so much broad fun at it that no one could miss that. Very possibly, however, you must be told that nothing could be more like Davidson than to burlesque the detective story in a real detective story, or to omit the scene in which Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy collects Frow Grigou, Dougherty, Commissioner Lobats, and (one rather hopes) Ignats Louis and Explains Everything.

Davidson was never one to explain everything.

No more am I. But to his multitude of clues I will add two additional hints. The first is that the Ancients knew that it was possible to torture the dead by burning the hair of the corpse. The second is that the worst crime is not murder. And the third (Did you really expect me to tell you everything when I numbered them?) is that you may wish to consider the fifty daughters of Endymion and the Moon.

POLLY CHARMS, THE SLEEPING WOMAN

V
ISITOR TO THE GREAT
city of Bella, capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, have many famous and memorable sights to see, and will find many guides to show them. Assuming such a visitor to be so limited, unfortunately, in his time as to be able to see but three of these sights, and assuming the guide to be of any experience at all, there are three which will under any circumstances however hasty be shown.

One, of course, is the great Private Park, and, of course, the greatest thing about it is that it is no longer private: the first thing which the King-Emperor Ignats Louis having done, upon succeeding the reclusive Mazzimilian the Mad on the throne, being to throw open the Private Park to the public. The park is a marvel of landscape architecture, although this is perhaps caviare to the general. The general prefer to flock there to what is, after all, the largest merry-go-round in the world. And, next to that, the general prefer to stand and watch the vehicles on the New Model Road, which Ignats Louis, with great foresight, established for the exclusive use of what are now coming to be know as “motorcars,” in order (as The Presence sagely said), “In order that they may experiment without frightening the horses or being frightened by them.” In a surprisingly brief period of time it became traditional for all owners of “motorcars,” between the hours of three and four in the afternoon, to make at least three complete circuits of the New Model Road. (The order that all such vehicles, whether propelled by steam, electricity, naphtha, or other means, be hauled to and from the Road by horsepower, is no longer enforced.)

The second sight which it would certainly be impossible to leave Bella without having seen is the Italian Bridge. Although this is no longer the only bridge which crosses, at Bella, the blue and beautiful Ister, the gracious parabolas of its eleven arches are always sure to lift the heart; the legend that it was designed by Leonardo da Vinci remains unproven. But of course it is neither the architecture nor the legend which brings most visitors, it is the site, midway across, marked by a marble plaque [
From This Point On The Italian Bridge / The Pre-Triune-Monarchial Poet
/
IZKO VARNA
/
Having Been Spurned By The Beautiful Dancer, Gretchelle
/
LEAPED TO HIS DOOM
/
Leaving Behind A Copy Of His Famously Heart-Rending Poem
/
FAREWELL
,
O BELLA
/ A
Clever Play Upon Words Which Will Not / Escape The Learned
] usually accompanied by some floral tribute or other. The late well-known character, Frow Poppoff, for many years made a modest living by selling small bundles of posies to visitors for this very purpose; often, when trade was slow, the worthy Poppoff would recite Varna’s famous poem, with gestures.

The third of the sights not to be missed is at Number 33, Turkling Street; one refers of course, to The Spot Where The Turkling Faltered And Turned Back. (The well-known witticism, that the Turkling faltered and turned back because he could not get his horse past the push-carts, refers to an earlier period, when the street was an adjunct to the salt-fish, comb, and bobbin open-air market. This has long since passed. Nor is to be thought that the fiercest action of the Eleventh Turkish War took place under the bulging windows of Number 33, for the site at that time lay half a furlong beyond the old city wall. The “Turkling” in question was, of course, the infamous Murad the Unspeakable, also called Murad the Midget. It was certainly here that the Turkish tide turned back. According to the Ottoman Chronicle, “Crying, ‘Accursed be those who add gods to God!’ the valiant Prince Murad spurred on his charger, but, alas, fell therefrom and broke his pellucid neck…” The Glagolitic Annals insist that his actual words were, “Who ordered this stupid charge? He should be Impaled!”—at which moment he himself was fatally pierced by the crossbow bolt of one of the valiant Illyrian Mercenaries. But the point is perhaps no longer important.

A uniformed guard with a drawn sword paces up and down by the granite slab set level with the pavement which marks the place where Murad fell, and it is natural that visitors take it for granted that the guard is a municipal functionary. Actually, he is not. A law passed during the Pacification of 1858 has limited private guards with drawn swords under the following terms: The employer of such a guard must have at least sixteen quarterings of nobility, not less than five registered degrees in the learned sciences, and a minimum of one hundred thousand ducats deposited in the Imperial Two Percent Gold Bond Funds.

Throughout the entire Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, only one person has ever qualified under this law: and that one is, of course, the unquestionably great and justly famous Engelbert Eszterhazy, Doctor of Jurisprudence, Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Literature, Doctor of Science,
et sic cetera
; and the guard is his own private guard and patrols in front of his own private home, Number 33, Turkling Street.

One afternoon in the middle late autumn, a heavyset man wearing the heavy gray suit and high-crowned gray derby hat which were almost the uniform of the plain-clothes division of the Municipal Police approached the guard and raised his eyebrows. The guard responded by raising his sword in salute. The caller nodded, and, opening the door, entered Number 33. There was none of this petty-bourgeois business of knocking, or of doorbells. Inside the lower hall, the day porter, Lemkotch, arose from his chair and bowed.

“Sir Inspector.”

“Ask Dr. Eszterhazy if he can see me.”

“My master is expecting the Sir Inspector. Please to go right up. I will tell the housekeeper that she may bring the coffee.”

The caller, who had expelled a slight sough of surprise at hearing the first sentence, displayed a slight smile at hearing the last. “Tell me, Lemkotch, does your master know absolutely everything?”

The stalwart, grizzle-haired servant paused a moment, then said, casually, “Oh yes, Sir Inspector. Everything.” He bowed again, and departed on his errand.

The caller trod heavily upon the runner of the staircase, of a dull, ox-blood color which seemed to glow in the gaslight. It had been pieced together from a once-priceless Ispahani carpet which had suffered damages during the Great Fire of ’93 and had been presented by an informal syndicate of the poorer Armenian merchants.

“This is for remembrance,” the spokesman said.

And Eszterhazy’s reply was, “It is better than rue.”

He said now, “You are welcome, Commissioner Lobats. You are not, as you know, invariably welcome, because sometimes you bring zigs when I am engaged in zags. But this business of the young Englishwoman, Polly Charms, promises to be of at least mild interest.”

Lobats blinked, gave a respectful glance at the signed cabinet photograph of The Presence in a silver frame, considered a few conversational openings, decided, finally, on a third.

“Your porter is well-trained in simple honesty,” he said. “He greets me simply as ‘Sir Inspector,’ with none of this ‘High-born Officer,’ with the slight sneer and the half-concealed leer which I get from the servants in some houses… I needn’t say which. Everyone knows that my father is a butcher, and that
his
father carried carcasses in the Ox Market.”

Eszterhazy waved a dismissal of the matter. “All servants are snobs,” he said. “Never mind. Remember what one of Bonaparte’s marshals said to that hangover from the Old Regime who told him, ‘You have no ancestors.’ ‘Look at
me
,’ he said; ‘
I
am an ancestor.’”

Lobats’s heavy lips slowly and silently repeated the phrase. He nodded, took a small notebook from his pocket, and wrote it down. Then his head snapped up. “Say… Doctor. Explain how you knew that I was coming about this Polly Charms…” His eyes rested upon another framed picture, but this one he recognized as a caricature by the famous newspaper artist, Klunck: a figure preternaturally tall and thin, with a nose like a needle and the brows bulging on either side like a house-frow’s market-bag. And he wondered, almost bitterly, how Eszterhazy could refrain from rage at having seen It—much less, framing it and displaying it for all to see.

“Well. Karrol-Francos,” Eszterhazy began, almost indulgently, “you see, I get my newspapers almost damp from the press. This means that the early afternoon edition of the
Intelligencer
got here at eleven o‘clock. Naturally, one does not look for a learned summary of the significance of the new price of silver in the
Intelligencer
, nor for an editorial about the Bulgarian troop movements. One does not read it to be enlightened, one reads it to be entertained. On hearing about this—this exhibition, shall we call it—upon the arrival of the
Intelligencer
I turned at once to the half-page of ’Tiny Topics’…you see …”

Lobats nodded. He, too, no matter what he had heard or had not heard, also turned at once to the half-page of “Tiny Topics,” as soon as he had the day’s copy of the
Intelligencer
to hand. And, even though he had already turned to it once, and already read it twice, he not only turned to see it in the copy which Eszterhazy now spread out over his desk, he took out his magnifying glass. (Lobats was too shy to wear spectacles, coming of a social class which looked upon them as a sign of weakness, or of swank.)

N
EW
I
NTERESTING
L
ITTLE
S
CIENTIFIC
E
XHIBIT

We found our curiosity well repaid for having visited a little scientific exhibit at the old Goldbeaters’ Arcade where we saw the already famous Mis Polly Charms, the young Englishwoman who fell into a deep sleep over thirty years ago and has not since awakened. In fact, she slept entirely the raging cannot-shot of the Siege of Paris. The beautiful tragic Englishwoman, Mis Polly Charms, has not seemingly aged a day and in her condition of deep mesmerism she is said to be able to understand questions put to her by means of the principle of animal magnetism and to answer the questions put to her without waking up; also for a small sum in addition to the small price of admission she sings a deeply affecting song in French.

Lobats tapped the page with a thick and hairy finger. “I’ll tell you what, Doctor,” he said, gravely. “I believe that this bit here—where is it?—what rotten ink and type these cheap papers use nowadays…move my glass…ah, ah, oh here it is, this bit where it says,
‘In fact she slept entirely the raging cannot-shot of the Siege of Paris,’
I believe that is what is called a misprint and that it ought to read instead…oh…something like this:
‘In fact, she slept entirely
through
the raging
cannon-
shot of the Siege of Paris,’
or something like that. Eh?”

Eszterhazy looked up. His gray eyes sparkled. “Why, I believe that you are quite right, Karrol-Francos,” he said. “I am proud of you.”

Commissioner Lobats blushed, and he struggled with an embarrassed smile.

“So. Upon reading this, I looked to see the time, I calculated that the
Intelligencer
would reach you by twenty minutes after eleven, that you would have read the item by eleven-thirty, and that you would be here at ten minutes of twelve. Do you think it is a case of abduction, then?”

Lobats shook his head. “Why should I try to fool
you?
You know as well as I do, better than I do, that I’m a fool for all sorts of circus acts, sideshows, mountebanks, scientific exhibitions, odd bits, funny animals, house-hauntings, and all such—”

Eszterhazy snapped his fingers, twice. In a moment his manservant was at his side with hat, coat, gloves, and walking stick. No one else in the entire Triune Monarchy (or, for that matter, elsewhere) had for manservant one of the wild tribe of Mountain Tsiganes; no one else, in fact, would even have thought of it. How came those flashing eyes, that floating hair, that so-untamed countenance, that air of savage freedom, here and now to be silently holding out coat, hat, gloves, and walking stick? Who knows?