Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

The others crouched and cringed, panting. The One-Eye sank his teeth into the living knot, and, instantly a Father screamed and lunged forward, cried stop.

“That is pain!” he whimpered. “I have not felt pain before, I cannot bear it. Keeper will come, the others will save Us, The Race—”

And none would listen to the Mother.

“Mother, I am afraid,” the One-Eye said. “The smoke is thicker.”

“Go, then, save yourself,” she said.

“I will not leave without you.”

“I? I am part of the whole. Go. Save yourself.”

But still he would not, and again he crept up to her.

They came at last to the end of the passage. They could not count the full number of the dead. The smoke was gone now. The Mother clung to him with her fore limbs. Her hind limbs dragged. She was weak, weak from the unaccustomed labor of walking, weak from the trail of thick, red blood she left behind from the wound which set her free.

“Is this outside?” she asked.

“I think so. Yes, it must be. See! Overhead — the goldshining! The rest I do not know,” the One-Eye answered.

“So that is the goldshining. I have heard — Yes, and the rest, I have heard, too. Those are the houses of the slaves and there are the fields the slaves tend, and from which they make the food which they store up for Us. Come help me, for I must go slowly; and we will find a place for Us. We will mate, for We are now The Race.” Her voice was like milk. “And our numbers will not end.”

He said, “Yes, Mother. Our numbers will not end.”

With his single eye he scanned Outside — the Upper World of the slaves who thought themselves masters, who, with trap and terrier and ferret and poison and smoke, warred incessantly against The Race. Did they think that even this great slaughter was victory? If so, they were deceived. It had only been a skirmish.

The slaves were slaves still; the tail-tied ones were kings.

“Come, Mother,” he said. And, slowly and painfully, and with absolute certainty, he and his new mate set out to take possession of the world.

Astronomers had speculated about the existence of Pluto long before the planet was discovered in 1930: Even while it remained unseen, its influence on comets could be observed. “The Price of a Charm; or The Lineaments of Gratified Desire” is the story of one of the key events of the twentieth century, and it is all the more powerful for being extremely subtle. It is the account of a meeting between Old Steven, a maker of charms for success in the hunt or in love, and a younger man, Gabriel (or Gavrilo), who is a…fanatic. This brief, shattering tale (first published as “Price of a Charm” in 1963) is right at the core of an issue that is very much in the public eye (again) as I write this in 1996. The story will always be unsettling and timely, whatever the headlines may read.

The paradox of Avram Davidson’s writing is that the unspoken, unwritten words matter as much as those actually on the page. In “There Beneath the Silky-Tree and Whelmed in Deeper Gulphs Than Me,” there is a wonderful description of Jack Limekiller’s first response to the peculiar economy of British Hidalgo :

… and he had the flashing thought that somehow he might help fill those holes; he was a while in finding out that this amounted to hoping to fill the holes in a piece of lace: the holes were part of the pattern.

This is also a description of Avram’s writing. His strategy of narration by omission is nowhere so clear as in this story (only “Naples” comes close). Avram doesn’t use the overheated rhetoric of the horror writer; his omissions have nothing in common with latter-day minimalists whose world is narrow and monotone. What Avram writes is enough: he demands of us that we make connections he himself made, so that we reach the point where we know why his one or two clues are sufficient to evoke the entire history of Europe. I am not writing an explanation of this story, so I too must omit two or three words that Avram chose to leave out; for explanations, see my comprehensive survey, “A Preliminary Annotated Checklist of the Writings of Avram Davidson” in the Bulletin of Bibliography (vol. 53, issues 1 & 2 [1996]).

THE MOUNTAIN AIR WAS clear and sweet, scented with wild herbs, and although the young man had come quite a distance, he was not at all tired. The cottage — it was really little more than a hut — was just as it had been described to him; clearly, many people in the district had had occasion to visit it.

At one side a tiny spring poured over a lip of rock and crossed the path beneath a rough culvert. At the other side was a row of beehives. A goat and her kid grazed nearby, and a small black sow ate from a heap of acorns with a meditative air.

A man with white hair got up from the bench and held out his hand. “A guest,” he said. “A stranger. No matter — a guest, all the same. Everyone who passes by is my guest, and the toll I charge is that I make them drink with me.”

He laughed; his laugh was infectious, and the young man laughed too — though his sallow, sullen face was not that of one who laughed often.

The hand he shook was hard and callused. “I am called Old Stevan,” the peasant said. “It used to be Black Stevan, but that was a long time ago. Even my mustache is white now—” he stroked its length affectionately—“except for here, in the middle. I am always smoking tobacco. Smoking and drinking, who can live without them?”

He excused himself, and returned almost at once with bottle, two glasses, and cigarettes.

“I do not usually—” the young visitor began, with a frown which seemed familiar to his face.

“If you do not smoke, you do not smoke. But I allow only Moslems to refuse a drink. One drink — a mere formality.”

They had one drink for formality, a second drink for friendship, and a third drink to show that they did not deny the Trinity.

Stevan wiped his mustache between his index finger and thumb, thrust in a cigarette, lit it, and smiled contentedly.

“A good thing, matches,” he said. “When I was a boy we had to use tinderboxes. How the world does change! You came for a charm?”

The young man seemed relieved now that the preliminaries of his visit were over. “I did,” he said.

“Your name?”

“Gavrillo.”

Old Stevan repeated it, nodding, blowing out smoke. “I am, of course, well-known for my charms,” he said complacently. “I refer to those I make, not those with which Providence endowed me — although there was a time… Well, well. My hair was black in those days. I can make quite a number of charms, although some of them are not in demand any longer. I don’t remember the last time I supplied one to keep a woman safe from Turks. Before you were born, I’m sure. On the other hand, charms to help barren women conceive are as much called for as ever.”

Gavrillo said, scowling, that he was not married.

“My charges are really quite reasonable, too. I can guarantee you perfect protection against ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and the evil spirits of the hills and forests — their cloven hoofs and blood-red nails—”

“I am not afraid of those. I have my crucifix.” His hand went to the neck of his open shirt.

“Very well,” Old Stevan said equitably. “I’ve nothing to say against that. I also prepare an excellent charm for success in the hunt …”

“Ah.”

“And an equally excellent one for success in love.”