Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

In fact, Avram suffered two misfortunes which robbed him, in his lifetime, of the critical and financial rewards that his works clearly merited. He was a natural short story writer who lived and worked in the age of the novel, and he selected for his realm of imagination the world of science fiction.

His stories, complex and lovingly crafted miniatures, were relegated to the category of minor works, ancillary to the one true form for worthwhile fiction, the novel. Avram’s manuscripts weighed in at an ounce or two. The serious literati (and, for the most part, the moguls of publishing) preferred works that were measured by the pound.

And as for Avram’s selection of science fiction as his major area of creation, one fears that he was ensnared, as so many other authors have been, into mistaking one of science fiction’s periodic flirtations with “maturity” for true love. Alas, when the field reverted to its usual hodgepodge of crude narrative and cliché themes, Avram was left, a wounded giant, brought down by a keening troop of Lilliputians.

Avram’s fine story “And Don’t Forget the One Red Rose” is alone a greater achievement than the entire bloated accumulation of ponderous fantasy novels that cross my desk each month. I see in it a literary tradition that bears comparison to the best stories of Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, John Collier, and Stanley Ellin. That Avram was able to place the story with Playboy magazine rather than one of the penny-a-word pulps is at least a small consolation to me.

CHARLEY BARTON WAS THE staff of an East New York establishment that supplied used gas stoves on a wholesale basis. He received deliveries at the back door, dollied them inside, took them apart, cleaned them (and cleaned them and cleaned them and cleaned them) till they sparkled as much as their generally run-down nature would allow, fitted on missing parts and set them up in the front of the place, where they might be chaffered over by prospective buyers.

He never handled sales. These were taken care of by his employer, a thickset and neckless individual who was there only part of the time. When not fawning upon the proprietors of retail used-appliance stores, he was being brutal to Charley. This man’s name was Matt Mungo, and he arrived in neat, middle-class clothes from what he referred to as his “other place,” never further described to Charley, who did not venture to be curious.

Charley doubted, however, that Mungo did — indeed, he was certain that Mungo did not — display to employees and patrons of his other place the insulting manner and methods he used in the stove warehouse.

Besides calling Charley many offensive names in many offensive ways, Mungo had the habit of shoving him, poking him, and generally pushing him around. Did Charley, goaded beyond patience, pause or turn to complain, Mungo, pretending great surprise, would demand, “What? What ?”—and, before Charley could formulate his protest, he would swiftly thrust stiff thick fingers into Charley’s side or stomach and dart away to a distance, whence he would loudly and abusively call attention to work he desired done, and which Charley would certainly have done anyway in the natural course of things.

Charley lived on the second floor of an old and unpicturesque building a few blocks from the warehouse. On the first floor lived two old women who dressed in black, who had no English and went often to church. On the top floor lived an Asian man about whom Charley knew nothing. That is he knew nothing until one evening when, returning from work and full of muscular aches and pains and resentments, he saw this man trying to fit a card into the frame of the name plate over the man’s doorbell in the downstairs entrance. The frame was bent, the card resisted, Charley pulled out a rather long knife and jimmied the ancient and warped piece of metal, the card slipped in. And the Asian man said, “Thank you, so.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” and Charley looked to see what the name might be. But the card said only BOOK STORE. “Funny place for a store,” Charley said. “But maybe you expect to do most of your business by mail, I guess.”

“No, oh,” the Asian man said. And with a slight bow, a slight smile and a slight gesture, he urged Charley to precede him up the stairs in the dark and smelly hall. About halfway up the first flight, the Asian man said, “I extend you to enjoy a cup of tea and a tobacco cigarette whilst in my so newly opened sales place.”

“Why, sure,” said Charley, instantly. “Why, thank you very much.” Social invitations came seldom to him and, to tell the truth, he was rather ugly, slow and stupid — facts that were often pointed out by Mungo. He now asked, “Are you Chinese or Japanese?”

“No,” said his neighbor. And he said nothing else until they were on the top floor, when, after unlocking the door and slipping in his hand to flip on the light switch, he gestured to his downstairs co-resident to enter, with the word “Do.”

It was certainly unlike any of the bookstores to which Charley was accustomed…in that he was accustomed to them at all. Instead of open shelves, there were cabinets against the walls, and there were a number of wooden chests as well. Mr. Book Store did not blow upon embers to make the tea, he poured it already sweetened, from a Thermos bottle into a plastic cup, and the cigarette was a regular American cigarette. When tea and tobacco had been consumed, he began to open the chests and the cabinets. First he took out a very, very tiny book in a very, very strange looking language. “I never saw paper like that before,” Charley said.

“It is factually palm leaf. A Bhuddist litany. Soot is employed, instead of ink, in marking the text. Is it not precious?”

Charley nodded and politely asked, “How much does it cost?”

The bookman examined an odd-looking tag. “The price of it,” he said, “is a bar of silver the weight of a new-born child.” He removed it gently from Charley’s hand, replaced it in the pigeon-hole in the cabinet, closed the cabinet, lifted the carven lid of an aromatic chest and took out something larger, much larger, and wrapped in cloth of tissue of gold. “Edition of great illustrated work on the breeding of elephants in captivity, on yellow paper smoored with alum in wavy pattern; most rare; agreed?”

For one thing, Charley hardly felt in a position to disagree and for another, he was greatly surprised and titillated by the next illustration. “Hey, look at what that one is do ing!” he exclaimed.

The bookman looked. A faint, indulgent smile creased his ivory face. “Droll,” he commented. He moved to take it back.

“How much does this one cost?”

The dealer scrutinized the tag. “The price of this one,” he said, “is set down as ‘A pair of white parrots, an embroidered robe of purple, sixty-seven fine inlaid vessels of beaten gold, one hundred platters of silver filigree work and ten catties of cardamoms.’” He removed the book, rewrapped it and restored it to its place in the chest.

“Did you bring them all from your own country, then?”

“All,” said the Asian man, nodding. “Treasures of my ancestors, broughten across the ice-fraught Himalayan passes upon the backs of yaks. Perilous journey.” He gestured. “All which remains, tangibly, of ancient familial culture.”

Charley made a sympathetic squint and said, “Say, that’s too bad. Say! I remember now! In the newspapers! Tibetan refugees — you must of fled from the approaching Chinese Communists!”

The bookman shook his head. “Factually, not. Non-Tibetan. Flight was from approaching forces of rapacious Dhu thA Hmy’egh, wicked and dissident vassal of the king of Bhutan. As way to Bhutan proper was not available, escape was into India.” He considered, withdrew another item from another chest.