Avram Davidson - The Scarlet Fig - Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series

Almost an indiction had passed and Vergil had finally accomplished his intention of making, for use in his elaboratory, a copy of the great globe of Crates, with the nations and zones and climes shown; however, with much more detail. Using his compass and his master-rod and many other such tools, soon enough (taking advantage of weather, warm and yet dry) he had prepared with wood and wire a framework such as often sculptors use in making models, a framework in the Piazza near the orb which the gigantic hand belonging to no gigant stood as it had stood perhaps since the Titans’ times. His well-scraped wettened parchment-hides he had plaistered over the stone bolus and trimmed them neatly into gores; then transferred them to the framework. And it, to his elaboratory. Now, save for a few details … here a degree, so a city, there a sigil … the map was ready for the painters, then the smooth-polishers, then for the semi-public exhibition which he had promised the Camerlengo of the Dogedom of Naples, who took a sincere — if not profound — interest in such matters. (As for the brute Doge, unless the cartographical orb could be induced to disgorge gold … or, at the least … sweetmeats … he would have none of it.)

Today, the Gules of August, although the globe was, he said, still imperfect, still Vergil was showing it to a few friends who would not be able to attend the formal first-viewing; and to a group of foreign visitors — foreign visitors were always present, it seemed. Sacandia, Dacia, Ermony the More …. The Mage stood with a thin unpointed lance in his hand, and he pointed here, he pointed there, mentioned the obliquity of the ecliptic and the retrogressive precessions of the equinox — by vertue of an adamanth stane above and an adamanth stane below, the Great Globe hanged there in the midst of the middle of the air —

“Have you not finished inditing lines of lands in that great space yon, Lord Vergil?” asked an astrologer from Graund Babylone with a scented beard, pointing with his own rule-stick all a-stuck with gaudy golden lines and pretty petty gems.

The Lord Vergil very, very slightly smiled. “That is the surface of the largest sea in the world, thou dan astrologue,” he said. “That is the Great Green Sea of Atlantis, and it stretches between the Peninsula of the Britains unto the far-off Isle called Zipangu. Across that wide wild sea may no bird hope to fly. In all that space, there is nom land at all. Not at all. None.” He rapped there, lightly, thrice with the rod.

Within the globe there sounded a thumping and a knuckling. There came a sound somewhat like that of a tailor tearing a large linen cloth and a butcher ripping apart a rather thicky membrane. A point of light appeared. Sword in hand, clad in byzant skin and a dinty cuirasse, face burned by many suns, out burst Ser Minnimus Rufus, unseen for endless years, and with the wrath of all the Roman gods upon his wrothy face.

The fictitious tales of Vergil Magus were but one part of a vast project that occupied the later part of Avram Davidson’s (1923–1993) life. The fictions were written to engage the reader, but it was the factual and mythic realm, and quasi-historic lore of Vergil Magus that much engaged Avram himself.

His numerous reference books, Pliny the Elder and the like, were extensively hand-annotated with notes and comments for the Vergil project. He had devised a sort of Vergil Magus Encyclopaedia, with a flexible system of page numbering called “Dean Numbers” (named after the late Dean Dickensheet), so that new material could be easily inserted. And he prepared the file boxes of handwritten notecards to keep track of all this data.

Avram wrote (in The Best of Avram Davidson Doubleday, 1979): “As of the date I write this (July 19, 1977) I have at hand twenty-five large notebooks and over five thousand file cards. The ensuing year of my life is to be mainly devoted to reworking it all, and so producing The Encyclopedia of the World of Vergil Magus.”

Was all of this information gathering and cross-referencing a distraction from the novels and tales themselves? Certainly he did not live to complete The Encyclopaedia (his usual preferred spelling), or the proposed 9-volume trinity of Vergil Magus trilogies. If Avram in his later years had spent the countless man-hours of labour on the Vergil Magus fictions, rather than the encyclopedic world building, he might have achieved some of the prosperity that eluded him. But who can say how an author’s mind should work? Especially an author with such a rich and complex mind as Avram Davidson.

I hope one day, a well-endowed university library will acquire The Avram Davidson Archive, and teams of enthusiastic students will catalog this mountain of raw material, and put together the jigsaw puzzles of Avram Davidson’s last great work.

In the meantime, here is a selection of the Vergil Magus Notecards, from A-Y (there are no cards for letters K, X, or Z), focusing on references to The Scarlet Fig. There are 6 shoebox-size file boxes, each containing hundreds and hundreds of these cards, far too many for me to count. I can envision them illustrated and published as an arcane Tarot-like deck.

I will leave it to future scholars to define their precise meaning. For now I present them to readers as a tantalizing glimpse, to puzzle and wonder at how a great writer’s mind works.