Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

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.

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] From Ronsard, Poems of Love , selected and edited by Grahame Castor and Terence Cave, Manchester University Press, 1975.

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

“‘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.