Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

“A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deeply or touch not the Whozis Spring.”

Ah, well, better to have it over with and done. It would be necessary to take a firm line, and then — finished! No more hints of precious secrets, worldshaking discoveries, carefully guarded treasures, and so on.

When the Professor arrived, Dr. Turbyfil ran his left hand rapidly across his waving brown hair — still thick, praise be! — smiled his famous warm and boyish smile, held his right hand out in welcome. But with horror he saw that Sanzmann had a cardboard carton with him. The worst! Oh, the things one has to put up with…! If not Mr. Godbody, then Professor—

“My dear Dr. Turbyfil! I have looked forward to this our meeting for so long! I cannot tell you—” But, of course, he would. He shook the proffered hand, sat down, held the carton as if it contained wedding cake, took out a handkerchief, wiped his rosy face, and panted. Then he began to speak.

“Dr. Turbyfil!” The name assumed the qualities of an indictment. “What is that which they used always to tell us? Urmensch — Primal Man, that is — he was a stunted little cre-a-ture, like a chimpanzee with a molybdenum deficiency, and he — which is to say, we— grew larger and bigger and more so, until, with the help of the actuarial tables of the insurance companies, we have our present great size attained and life expectancy. And we, pres-u-mably, will greater grow yet.

“But!” (Dr. Turbyfil quivered.) “What then comes to pass? An anthropologist goes into an Apotheke — a druck-store, yes? — In Peiping — oh, a beau-tiful city, I have been there, I love it with all my heart! — he goes into a native Chinese pharmacy, and there what is it that he finds? He finds — amongst the dried dragon bones, powdered bats, tigers’ gall, rhinoceros horn, and pickled serpents — two human-like gigantic molar teeths. And then, behold, for this is wonderful! The whole picture changes!”

Oh my, oh my! thought Dr. Turbyfil.

“Now Primal Man becomes huge, tremendous, like the Sons of Anak in the First Moses-Book. We must now posit for him ancestors like the great apes of your Edgar Burroughs-Rice. And how it is that we, his children, have shrunken! Pit-i-ful! Instead of the pigs becoming elephants, the elephants are becoming pigs!” Dr. Sanzmann clicked his tongue.

“But that is nothing! Nothing at all: Wherefore have I come to you now? To make known to you a something that is so much more startling. I must begin earlier than our own times. Charles the Fifth!”

Dr. Turbyfil quavered. “I beg your pardon?”

“Charles the Fifth of Hapsburg. In 1555 Charles the Emperor resigns, no, retires? Abdicates. His brother Ferdinand succeeds him as sovereign of the Hapsburg dominions, and Charles retreats himself to a monastery.

“‘With age, with cares, with maladies oppres’t,

“‘He seeks the refuge of monastic rest—’”

“Ahhh, Professor Sanz mann,” Dr. Turbyfil began, stopped, blinked.

“Yes — yes: I di -gress. Well. Charles and Ferdinand. A medallion is struck, Charles, one side — Ferdinand the other. And the date, 1555. Here is the medallion.” Dr. Sanzmann reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a flat little box, such as jewelers use. He opened it.

Inside lay a blackened disk about the size of a silver dollar, and a piece of paper with two rubbings — the profiles of two men, Latin mottoes, and the date: 1555. Completely at sea, and feeling more and more sorry for himself, Dr. Turbyfil looked at his rosy-faced and gray-haired caller; made a small, bewildered gesture.

“Soon, soon, you will understand everything. Nineteen thirty. My vacations — I am still in Chair-many — I spend at Maldenhausen, a little rural hamlet in a walley. Then things are quiet. Ah, these Chairman walleys! So green, remote, enchanting, full of mysteries! I drink beer and wine, I smoke my pipe, and go on long walks in the countryside. And — since I am a scholar, and ever the dog returns to his womit — I spend also some time in the willage archives… Many interesting things… A child named Simon.

“In 1555 a child named Simon is stolen by an ogre.”

Dr. Turbyfil pressed a fist to his forehead and moaned faintly. “Is— what ?” he said, fretfully.

“Please. You see the hole in the medallion? The child Simon wore it about his neck on a thong. They were very reverend, these peasant people. An Imperial medallion, one wears it on one’s bosom. A photostatic copy of the testimony.” Professor Sanzmann opened the box, removed papers. Photostatic copies, indeed, were among them, but the language was a monkish Latin, and in Gothic lettering. Dr. Turbyfil felt his eyes begin to hurt him, closed them. Professor Sanzmann, dreadful man, spoke on. There were two witnesses, an old man of the name Sigismund, a boy called Lothar. It was winter. It was snow. The child Simon runs with his dog down the field. He shouts. He is afraid. Out of the snow behind him the ogre comes. He is just as they always knew ogres to be: huge, hairy, crooked, clad in skins, carrying a cudgel. Terrible.

“Lothar runs for help. The old man cannot run, so he stays. And prays. The ogre seizes up the child Simon and runs away with him, back into the fields, toward the hills, until the snow hides them.

“The people are aroused, they are fearful, but not surprised. This happens. There are wolves, there are bears, there are ogres. Such are the hazards of living on the remote farms.”

Dr. Turbyfil shivered. A chill crept into his flesh. He rubbed his fingers to warm them. “Folklore,” he croaked. “Old wives’ tales.”

Dr. Sanzmann waved his hands, then placed them on the photostats. “This is not the Brothers Grimm,” he said. “These are contemporary accounts with eyewitnesses. I continue. The people go out in the storm, with dogs and pikes and even a few matchlocks; and since they huddle fearingly together and the snow has hid all footmarks, it is not a surprise that they do not find the child or the ogre’s spoor. The dog, yes — but he is quite dead. Crushed. One tremendous blow. The next day they search, and then the next, and then no more. Perhaps in the spring they will find some bones for Christian burial …

“The child had been warned that if he went too far from home he would be stolen by an ogre. He did go too far from home, and he was stolen by an ogre. So. Fifteen sixty.”

Dr. Turbyfil ventured a small smile. “The child has been dead for five years.” He felt better now that he knew what was in the carton. He visualized the card which would never, certainly never , be typed! “ Bones of child devoured by ogre in 1555. Gift of Prof. Ludwig Sanzmann, Dr. Phil. ”

The Goethe scholar swept on. “In 1560 the child Simon,” he said, “is discovered trying to pilfer fowls from a farmyard in the nexten walley. He is naked, filthy, long-haired, lousy. He growls and cannot speak coherent speech. He fights. It is very sad.”

The museum director agreed that it was very sad. (Then what was in the carton?)

“Child Simon is tied, he is delivered up to his parents, who must lock him in a room to keep him from escaping. Gradually he learns to speak again. And then comes to see him the Burgomeister, and the notary, and the priest, and the Baron, and I should imagine half the people of the district, and they ask him to tell his story, speaking ever the truth.

“The ogre (he says) carried him away very distantly and high up, to his cave, and there in his cave is his wife the ogress, and a small ogre, who is their child. At first Simon fears they will consume him, but no. He is brought to be a companion to the ogre child, who is ill. And children are adaptive, very adaptive. Simon plays with the ogre child, and the ogre brings back sheep and wenison and other foods. At first it is hard for Simon to eat the raw meat, so the ogress chews it soft for him—”