The Avram Davidson Treasury (49 page)

And Eszterhazy now said, “All right.
Enough …
” He moved up; the crowd moved back. He took out the stethoscope. The crowd said Ahhh.

“That’s the philosopher,” someone said to someone else. Who said, “Oh yes,” although what quality either one attached to the term perhaps neither understood precisely.

God only knew where the girl’s garment had been made, or when, or by whom; indeed, it seemed to have been made over many times, and to consist of sundry strata, so to speak. Now and again it had occurred to Whomever that the girl was supposed to be sleeping, and so the semblance of a nightgown had been fashioned. Several times. And on several other occasions the theatrical elements of it all had overcome, and attempts had been made to provide the sort of dress which a chanteuse might have been wearing…wearing, that is, in some provincial music hall where the dressmakers had odd and old-fashioned ideas of what a chanteuse might like to wear…and the chanteuses, for that matter, even odder ones.

There was silk and there was cotton and there was muslin, lace, artificial flowers, ruches, embroidered gores, gussets, embroidered yokes—

The girl’s eyes were almost entirely closed. One lid was just barely raised, and a thin line gleamed, at a certain angle, underneath. Sleepers of that age do not flush, always, as children often do, in sleep. There was color in the face, though not much. The lips were the tint of a pink. A small gold ring showed in one ear; the other ear was concealed by the hair.

“The hair,”
said Murgatroyd,
“the hair has never stopped growing!”
A kind of delight seemed to seize him as he said it.

Eszterhazy’s look brought silence. And another flurry of tics. Several times he moved the stethoscope. Then the silence was broken. “A wax doll, isn’t it, Professor? Isn’t—”

Eszterhazy shook his head. “The heartbeat is perceptible,” he said. “Though very, very faint.” The crowd sighed. He removed the ear-pieces and passed the instrument to Commissioner Lobats, who, looking immensely proud and twice as important, attached himself to It—not without difficulty. After some moments, he—very slowly—nodded twice. The crowd sighed again.

“Questions? Has anyone a question to ask of Polly Charms, the Sleeping Woman?—ah, one moment please. It is time for her daily nourishment.” Murgatroyd, with a practiced flourish, produced two bottles, a glass, and a very tarnished, very battered, but unquestionably silver, spoon. “All attempts to make the mysterious and lovely Miss Mary partake of solid sustenance have failed. Nor will her system accept even gruel. Accordingly, and on the advice of her physicians—of the foremost physicians in Christendom—” Here he turned and beckoned to a member of the audience, an elderly dandy, audibly recognized by several as a ribbon clerk in a nearby retail emporium. “I should like to ask of you the favor, sir, to taste and smell of this and to give us your honest and unbought opinion as to its nature.”

The man simpered, sniffed, sipped. Smacked his lips. “Ah. Why that’s Tokai. Bull’s-blood Tokai.” And he made as though to take more. Laughs and guffaws and jests. The contents of the other bottle were declared to be water. The girl’s manager then ceremonially mixed the glass half-full of wine and half of water. He might have been an alchemist, proving an elixir. “Come on, now, come on. Some of you are in a hurry, you say… Questions?”

Snickers, jokes, people being pushed forward, people holding back. Then the ribbon clerk, glancing at his watch, a-dangle and a-bangle with fobs and seals, said, “Very well. One question and then I must go. Gracious Lady: Who is Frantchek? And where?”

Murgatroyd held the spoon to her lips, and, indeed so gently, raised her head a trifle. “Just a spoonful. Polly. A nice spoon of something good. To please Father Murgatroyd.” The slick and hairless head bent over, indeed like that of a father cosseting an ill child. Slowly and slightly the lips parted. The spoon clinked against the even rows of teeth. Withdrew.

“
Very
well, Polly. You’re a
good
girl. Father Murgatroyd is very
pleased
with you. And now, if you please, an answer to the question. ‘Who is Frantchek? And where?’”

The lips parted once again. A faint, a very faint sigh was heard. And then, in the voice of a girl in her middle teens imitating one much younger, in tones artificial and stilted, Polly Charms spoke.

“Why, Brother, I am in America. With Uncle.”

All turned to the old dandy, who had been standing, one hand on hip, with an expression of one who expects to be fooled. But who won’t be, even if he is. Because of expecting it. This expression quite fell away. He gaped.

“Well, Maurits. And what about that?” they pressed him.

“Why…why… Why, Frantchek
is
my brother. He run off, oh, five-and-twenty-year ago. We none of us had a word of him—”

“And the uncle? In America?”

Old Maurits slowly nodded, dumbfounded. “I
did
have an uncle, in America. Maybe still do.
I
don’t know—” With a jerk away from the hand on his shoulder, he stumbled out, face in his hands.

Comment was uncertain. One said, “Well, that didn’t really prove nothing… Still …”

And another one—probably the same who had loudly demanded the biographical details be omitted, now said, loudly, “Well, Miss,
I
think you’re a fake, a clever fake. Wha-at? Why, half the people in the Empire have a brother named Frantchek, and an uncle in America! Now, just you answer
this
question. What’s this in my own closed hand, here in this coat pocket?”

Another spoonful of wine and water.

Another expectant silence, this time with the questioner openly sneering.

Another answer.

“The pearl-handled knife which you stole at the bath-house …”

And now see the fellow, face mottled, furious, starting toward the sleeping woman, hand moving up and out of the pocket. And see Lobats lunge, hear a sudden and sick cry of pain. See a something fall to the ground. And watch the man, now suddenly pale, as Lobats says, “Get out! Or—!” Watch him get…holding one hand with the other. And see the others stoop and gape.

“A pearl-handled knife!”

“Jesus, Mary, and—”

“—known him for years, he ain’t no good—”

And now someone, first clutching his head in his hands, and then leaning forward, then drawing back and staring, glaring all round, face twisted with half shame and half defiance: “Listen…listen… Say—I want to
know.
Is my wife…is she all that she should be—to me—
is she
—” He doesn’t finish, nobody dares to laugh. They can hear him breathing heavily through heavily distended nostrils.

Another spoonful. Another pause.

“Better than she should be…though little you deserve it …”

The man will not face anyone. He leans to one side, head bent, breathing
very
heavily.

And soon the last question has been asked, and the wine is all gone.—Or, perhaps, it is the other way around.

And, as Murgatroyd goes to put down the spoon, and the audience is suddenly uncertain, suddenly everyone looks at someone whom nobody has looked at before. Who says, “And so, Professors, what about the French song?” A spruce, elderly gent, shiny red cheeks, garments cut in the fifth year of the Reign, looking for all the world like a minor notary from one of the remoter suburbs (“Ten tramways and a fiacre ride away,” as the saying goes) where each family still has its own cow, and probably up to the center of the city for his annual trip to have his licensure renewed; wanting a bit of fun along with it, and, not daring to tell the old lady (“Tanta Minna,” probably) that he has had it at any place more risky, has been having it at a “scientific exhibition.”

“Wasn’t there supposed to be a French song?” he asks calmly.

Murgatroyd, at a murmur from Dougherty, produces a wooden tray lined with worn green velveteen and covertly places in it a single half-ducat, which he watches rather anxiously. “For a very slight additional charge,” he says, starting the rounds, “a beautiful song in the French language will be sung by the lovely and mysterious Polly Charms, the—”

Spectators show signs of departing…or, at any rate, of drawing away from the collection tray. A single piece of gold spins through the air, all a-glitter, falls right upon the half-ducat with a pure ringing sound. Mr. Murgatroyd looks up, almost wildly, sees Eszterhazy looking at him. Who says, “Get on with it.”

Murgatroyd makes the money vanish. He leans over the sleeping woman, takes up her right hand, and slowly caresses it. “Will you sing us a song, Polly dear?” he asks. Almost, one might think, anxiously.

“That sweet French song taught you by Madame, in the old days… Eh?” And, no song being forthcoming, he clears his throat and quaveringly begins, “
‘Je vous envoye un bouquet …’
, Eh, Polly?”

Eszterhazy, watching, sees a slight tremor in the pale, pale throat. A slight rise in the slight bosom, covered in its bedizened robe. The mouth opens. An indrawn breath is clearly heard. And then she sings. Polly Charms, the Sleeping Lady, sings.

Je vous envoye un bouquet de ma main

Que j’ai ourdy de ces fleurs epanies:

Qui ne les eust à ce vespre cuillies,

Flaques à terre elles cherroient demain.

No one had asked Dougherty to translate the previous French song, sung by the eunuch singer (surely one of the very last) on the gramophone; nor had he done so; nor did anyone ask him to translate now. Yet, and without his gray face changing at all, his gray lips moved, and he began, “‘I send you now a sheaf of fairest flowers / Which my hand picked; yet are they so full blown, / Had no one plucked them they had died alone, / Fallen to earth before tomorrow’s hours.’”
²

Still, Murgatroyd caressed the pallid hand. And again, the eerie and infantile voice sang out.

Cela vous soit un exemple certain

Que voz beautés, bien qu’elles soient fleuries,

En peu de tems cherront toutes flétries,

Et periront, comme ces fleurs, soudain.

“‘Then let this be a portent in your bowers,’” Dougherty went on. “‘Though all your beauteous loveliness is grown, / In a brief while it falls to earth o’erthrown, / Like withered blossoms, stripped of all their powers …’”

Quietness.

A dray rumbles by in the street. The gas lights bob up and down. Breaths are let out, throats cleared. Feet shuffle.

“Well, now,” says old Uncle Oskar, “that was very nice, I am sure.” Smiling benignly, he walks over, and, into the now empty collection plate he drops a large old five-kopperka piece. Nodding and beaming, he departs. It has been worth every kopperka of it to him, the entire performance. Tonight, over the potato dumplings with sour-crout and garlic wurst, he will tell Tanta Minna all about it. In fact, if he is alive and she is alive, ten years from now, he will still be telling about it; and she, Tanta Minna, will still be as astonished as ever, punctuating each pause with
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
or, alternately,
Oh, thou dear Cross!

Some follow after, some still remain.

“The performance is over,” says Eszterhazy.

Lobats: “
Over
. Good afternoon to you.”

And Frow Grigou calls after them, anxious as ever, “There is another performance at half-past five, Dear Sirs, and also at eight and at ten!”

Lobats looks at Eszterhazy, as though to say,
What now?
And Eszterhazy looks at Murgatroyd. “I am a Doctor of Medicine and a Titular Court Physician,” he says; “and I should like your permission to make an examination of—” he gestures. Dougherty, without looking anywhere in particular, at once begins to translate Eszterhazy’s English into Avar, then slowly seems to feel that this is, perhaps, not exactly what is wanted at the moment, and his voice dies away.

Murgatroyd licks his lips, the lower parts of his moustache. Almost, he licks the tip of his nose. “Oh no,” he says. “Oh no …”

“And this,” Eszterhazy says, calmly, “is a Commissioner of Police.”

Murgatroyd looks at the Commissioner of Police, who looks back; he looks at Dougherty, who looks away; then he looks for Frow Grigou.

But Frow Grigou has gone, quite gone.

Excerpts from the Day-Book of Dr. Eszterhazy:

… Query Reuters for the precise date of the death by apoplexy of ENTWHISTLE, LEONARD (see Private Encyclopedia), British mesmerist and mountebank, supposedly in the midst of an exhibition or performance …

… no signs of any callosities whatever on the soles of the female’s feet, or heels…degeneration of the muscular tissue, such as is found among the long-senile, was not present, however …

Murgatroyd declared, though reluctantly, that passage of waste materials was infrequent, and cleanly …

Murgatroyd was almost violent in reply to the tentative suggestion of Lobats that an attempt, by mesmerism, to bring the young woman out of this supposed-mesmeric trance be attempted. MEMO: To reread story by American writer E. A. Poe, “The Case of Monsieur Waldemar.” In this tale, a presumed account of facts, a dying man is placed under mesmeric trance of long duration (exact duration not recalled); removal of trance state or condition discloses that “Waldemar” has actually been dead, body at once lapsing into decay. Cannot state at present if the story is entirely fictitious or not; another story by same writer (Marie Roget?) known to be demi-factual.

Obvious: welfare of young woman, Charms, is first consideration.

Suggestions: Consider question of use of galvanic batteries, but only if—

For some seconds the sound of running feet had echoed in the narrow street below. A voice, hoarse and labored… Then the night porter, Emmerman, entered. He was always brief. “Goldbeaters’ Arcade on fire, master,” he said now. Adding, as Eszterhazy, with an exclamation, ran for his medical bag, “Commissioner Lobats has sent word.” The Tsigane had appeared, as though rising from out of the floor (where, indeed, on the threshold of his master’s bedroom door he always slept), but Eszterhazy, waving aside the coat and hat, said two words: “
The steam
—” He followed the silently running Herrekk through the apartment and down the back steps to the mews, where the runabout was kept, and they leaped on it. Schwebel, the retired railroad engineer who maintained the machine, had been charged to see that a head of steam was always kept up, and he had never failed. With a sketch of a salute, he threw open the stable door. With a low hiss, the machine, Eszterhazy at the tiller, rolled out into the night. Herrekk had already begun to toll the great bronze handbell to warn all passersby out of the way.