The Other Nineteenth Century (33 page)

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Authors: Avram Davidson

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Q.
Ah, but sir doctor president, what of these important matters? It is true, then, that some troops of the Counter-Claimant Country,
I refer to el B & B, had landed and were attempting an invasion? the shameless ones.
A. Yes.
At this, roars of indignation swept the crowd, and, almost immediately, the City. The survivors of the Invasion had been observed making an escape in a small bote, from which, it is adjudicated, they transferred into a larger one. Nothing more than that the coalsupplies of our Steam Vessel were limited for a return to port only, prevented the capitan da Costa from at once pursuing this estimated other vessel. But our Nation was well-satisfied that the villians had suffered a sufficient punishment in that fearlessly El Vilvoy had attacked with his machete, and, it cannot be doubted, cut off six of their heads! Effectively, how they could have resisted with their
“superior fire-power,
” as it is called, save only his already-perceived famous wild bravery struck terror to their hearts, the cowards. And they fled. As to the flag which they had previously succeeded to plant on the volcanic soil of las Islas, one may behold it any day at the Museum of the National Patrimony, hours from three to four in the afternoon, a very small surcharge is necessarily made for the benefits of Widows and Orphans. But the public may donate the dueños such gratuities they wish. What greater evidences of breach of faith is needed to condemn a neighboring nation with whom we were legally at peace for invading our quasi-paternal soils? Well could we of the Republic of Ereguay have stricken back and given then, as one says, “titt for tatd,” save that the generous heart of our then Presidente doctor Gaspar de la Vara was moved to avoid any breach between two adjacent nations of this Continent; and so, after a period marked by recriminations on their part and of cold silence on our own (imagine, they accused us of Fabrication of the acCount of the Heads!), the matter has passed off and no longer espoils the cordial relations which now obtain between our two countries, brothers as we are in blood and language anyway.
But think! of this mere youth, how he fearlessly struck of the heads of sixteen necessarily much larger grown men! What an ensample
for our jung people to admire! Ah how very well-founded is this leyyend of El Vilvoy de las Islas.
At this point (or perhaps at some other nearly-contemporary point) the Counter-Claimant Nation simply turned its back on the whole thing: headline in the
Cada Dia
newspaper, widely recognized as government organ: DECLARES THE KING OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY /
The Nations of Europe Are Very Contented to Recognize That the Confederational Union of Bobadilla AND LAS BONITAS IS INDISSOLUABLE.
The King of Sweden and Norway, that civilized and civil man, was always willing to issue such declarations whenever his ministers asked him … and much it helped the union of Sweden and Norway; its effects on South American sales of canned sardines and wooden matches cannot be precisely calculated.
So far as is known, only once did El Vilvoy travel into the Interior of Ereguay … at least only once which is known … it is realized that the generosity of the vaqueros was almost an embarrassment, they incessantly surrounding and offering him many copas of Rum Dinga, their famous naive but strong drink; also constantly they surrounded his horse and soon all its tails hairs had been plucked out for souvenirs and alleged cures for the infirmities of the male person; in these matters of
“Ffolk-wisdon,”
who indeed can say? And as it was seemingly impossible, if not indeed difficult, to avoid almost similar seens in the Ciudad, if thereafter for sundry times of sundry years he came to the capital and port, it would have been as incognito, slipping in and out and then away again: his arrival, departure, presence, alleged comments and appearances, almost in the popular mine and pewrhasp higher, in some essential details resembles the doctrine of Sebastianism, as within the memories of some old and still-living people one found it yet in Brazil, let alone the Question of in Portugal. But of course the mysticism or not, in essential detail this difference: El Vilvoy was not dead!
2
But—
Ah, the sceptics! The sceptics, O! Of much would the sceptics have liked to dismiss entirely the matter of the Twenty-six Severed Heads as lies, old crones’ tails, and propaganda … but little have they been able. There is, for one thing, the testimony of President Doctor Eduardo Gaspar de la Vara, and if revisionist historians would dismiss that: there was, for another thing, the testimony of the Doctor Macvitty: was not the Dr. Macvitty the Author of a learned monograph on Certain Disorders of the Metatarsals, printed in the Journal of the National Scottish Medical Association? Little recked the ravings of the
Cada Dia
newspaper of the Ciudad de Bobadilla against the inflexible probity of the Journal of the National Scottish Medical Association (alleged activities of the dr. Alejandro Nkox and the uneducated Herr Burc are entirely beside the point). It is of course unfortunate that doctor Macvitty’s renewed testimony was not available at a later date, but he had returned to his native Land, there to engage upon his life-long crusade to test and maintained the wholesome nature of Scotch whisky as compared to brandy; and died in Peebles under muffled circumstances. And there is furthermore the errefutable testimony of the Sketches: the Sketches, four in number, clearly show each one clearly six of the Severed Heads reposing on their ledge or ledges in the Secret Cave, and how respectful were all the parties involved to refuse to disturb their repose or even to disclose their location, merely to satisfy a rude curiosity. Or for any other reason. As for the claim that the four Sketches show the same six heads from slightly different angles, or that four times six equals twenty-four and not twenty-six—this is a mere quibble. And also remains unidentified the alleged medical spring.
It is secure that, so far as goes impartial evidence and testimony, El Vilvoy never acknowledged his heroism in this matter, merely giving
a slight jesture and a «grunt» and a movement slightly of the mouth whenever asked of it. How this proves his essential Modesty, that of the Gentleman of Nature, too educated even to deny what his interlocutter has enquired.
“Well indeed,” commented the Spanish Priest (in a former time not yet so very far back at all, priests did not go about in casual dress ever, and with what dignity, too!) “But it now seems quite evident that those heads had probably nothing to do with the so-called Invasion, the Las Bonitas Incursion. Scientists tell us that probably they were the heads (if they existed at all) of pre-Columbian Indians, there on the Islands for mysterious and uncertain reasons.” And it is true that the Heads appear to be entire heads, unlike those prepared by the Jivaro Indians rather on the principle of a stuffed olive: this the priest conceded. Then he said, “But modern science has determined that organic matter stored, so to speak, well within a cave at the well-known and naturally-maintained ‘Cave Temperature,’ cool but not freezing-cold, well may last forever in its original form. Witness,” he said, “the hide of the megatherium in Patagonia, and the deposits of sloth-dung in the cave in North America.
“—The Vilvoy led the president and Dr. Macvitty to the cave where the heads were? Well, perhaps he did, but that in no way proves that he had put the heads there, let alone removed them from the shoulders of the soldiers of Las Bonitas.” The others there in the garden of la Villa de Murphy, moved just a bit restively at this statement, but perhaps all were too polite to dispute, or even to deny. The rural-looking young man said nothing; he seemed, if anything, politely a bit bored. Whiffs of memory, like faint scents of some aromatic plant growing not within sight, began to be perceived by me. Had he been, perhaps, the man with the gun and the gamebag, who had nodded to us from the berm of the road near the forest as we slowed down to avoid a mud rut? I could not be sure. Or was he one of a couple of people considering a bogged-down piece of equipment in a field just before we stopped for water?
“Perhaps, sir, you will give us your opinion,” suggested licenciado Huebner, politely.
The young man seemed to consider the question for a second, then he said, very calmly and equitably, “No.”
And as though the attorney had asked
her:
“To me,” said la doctora, after a moment, “the evidence upon the shell of the great tortuga is a most remarkable thing.” There was a murmur of agreement; and, seeing that I knew nothing of these things, two or three people recapitulated for me a conversation back there on Great Enchanted Island. Imagine! they directed me; imagine that black soil composed of volcanic origins ground so very fine, and the black rocks scattered around, almost a terrain of the inferno; here and there, going infinitesimally slowly, the giant tortoises, moving their flipperlike legs and making so little distance with each step that one might walk alongside them as they did so. And in fact, walking exactly so, is President E. Gaspar de la Vara, and so is capitan da Costa. One points out to the other curious and atypical markings on the giant carapace of one huge crawler. “¡Mira.
MAP
and
VYP!
Are these not the initials of the explorer-brothers Martin Alonso and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón?”
“Indeed, indeed! What else? And examine this set carved on the other side!”
“JPdL. Juan Ponce de Leon! Ah, that great pilot; señores, we are in the presence of history!”
And of those there in the garden of the villa in that suburb of that southern South American city, several look directly at the young priest to see if he is not impressed. “Why,” he asks, “should I doubt that they saw such initials? And why should I not doubt that they saw what had been put there by hoaxers, or shall we say, ‘jokers’? Giant tortoises may live long, but—
that
long? On Santa Elena there is a great tortoise, said to have been there in the time of Bonaparte.
Said.
And on Tonga, in the Pacific, there is another one, said to have been brought there by capitan Cooke.
Said.
Humanity continues to divert itself with fables, and meanwhile it continues, largely, to refuse to accept the truth. Therefore we all suffer.” He said this
with a certain intensity, low-keyed but emphatic. Said the attorney, dressed in that meticulous black and white, “But … Father Juan … it does not follow does it, that because we believe that certain tortoises may live to be old, very very old, surely it does not follow that we deny the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church?” And the young priest answered, slowly, almost I would say, reluctantly, that, No, it did not follow.
But although El Vilvoy made no further, as it were, public appearances in the Capital and Port, he continued to be seen from time to time by visitors from there to his almost-native Island (after all, he had been very young and small when his parents made their landing). From time to time parties of such visitors, it depended always upon the weather, at least, and sometimes also upon other conditions—in time of prosperity perhaps a bit more often, in times of civil unrest certainly somewhat less often; parties of visitors would make what one might call a cruise, one might call it an excursion. Few indeed made the trip, which had to be made by foot, all the way from the shore to the farm. For one thing it was not easy, for another it was known that the senior Kielors did not favor such visitations, interruptive of their private schedules and their private peace; also they said that visitors brought colds. It became the custom for one of the landing parties to fire three shots when they had landed. And, eventually, usually while they were eating their picnic lunches, silently out of the wilderness there would appear upon the upper edges of the shore,
El Vilvoy.
What exclamations! What risings to the feet. What, one might say, clamors. Cheers! And always, always … or anyway, usually, or at any rate: often … someone would level a camera.
“Ah, Toño,” the skipper would say, casually (imagine speaking
casually
to someone so remarkable.); “Toño, here are the things ordered by your Papa. [aside] Here, you, fellow, pile them well back from the tideline.”
And so on.
Sometimes, as the visitors were returning to whichever small ship
by row-boat or by motor-launch, sometimes they looked back, El Vilvoy raised a hand in farewell, abruptly let it fall. What a waving of handkerchiefs! What cries of
Luego, Vilvoy!
et cetera.
But when they looked back again, always he was gone.
Full-page spread in La Voz. Headline: El Vilvoy, Does His Natural Life Keep Him Youthful? Is it his total revulsion of the semi-artificial foods of the civilized living which maintains the Vilvoy in his youthfulness? Is it the conditions so devoid of stress or pressure, in complete harmony with the rhythms of the tides and the cycles of the Nature, which is preventing him from showing the signs of inevitable decay? Has his metabolism thus been slowed? Is he indeed, so to speak,
un pieter-pan?
Let us regard these incontestable photographical evidences … And there they were, each captioned with the names of the photographer and the date of the photograph, an entire series of pictures of el vilvoy, over a period of I forget how many years, numbers do not settle well in my mind. Sometimes his hair was a little shorter and sometimes a little longer, sometimes he was wearing such and such a garment, sometimes another: but always, always, not “usually” but always, really, the same face. And it did not really seem that he was any older in the last one than in the first one.
“I believe that it is the fruitarian diet,” said la doctora, emphasizing that this was her opinion, with slow, deep nods of her handsome head. “I have known really remarkable results to occur with the fruitarian diet. I would observe it myself, but my family will not allow.”

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