The Avram Davidson Treasury Page 3

  Mrs. Gumbeiner indicated the gray-faced person to her husband.

  “You think maybe he’s got something the matter?” she asked. “He walks kind of funny, to me.”

  “Walks like a golem,” Mr. Gumbeiner said indifferently.

  The old woman was nettled.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I think he walks like your cousin Mendel.”

  The old man pursed his mouth angrily and chewed on his pipestem. The gray-faced person turned up the concrete path, walked up the steps to the porch, sat down in a chair. Old Mr. Gumbeiner ignored him. His wife stared at the stranger.

  “Man comes in without a hello, goodbye, or howareyou, sits himself down and right away he’s at home… The chair is comfortable?” she asked. “Would you like maybe a glass tea?”

  She turned to her husband.

  “Say something, Gumbeiner!” she demanded. “What are you, made of wood?”

  The old man smiled a slow, wicked, triumphant smile.

  “Why should I say anything?” he asked the air. “Who am I? Nothing, that’s who.”

  The stranger spoke. His voice was harsh and monotonous.

  “When you learn who—or, rather, what—I am, the flesh will melt from your bones in terror.” He bared porcelain teeth.

  “Never mind about my bones!” the old woman cried. “You’ve got a lot of nerve talking about my bones!”

  “You will quake with fear,” said the stranger. Old Mrs. Gumbeiner said that she hoped he would live so long. She turned to her husband once again.

  “Gumbeiner, when are you going to mow the lawn?”

  “All mankind—” the stranger began.

  “Shah! I’m talking to my husband… He talks eppis kind of funny, Gumbeiner, no?”

  “Probably a foreigner,” Mr. Gumbeiner said, complacently.

  “You think so?” Mrs. Gumbeiner glanced fleetingly at the stranger. “He’s got a very bad color in his face, nebbich. I suppose he came to California for his health.”

  “Disease, pain, sorrow, love, grief—all are naught to—”

  Mr. Gumbeiner cut in on the stranger’s statement.

  “Gall bladder,” the old man said. “Guinzburg down at the shule looked exactly the same before his operation. Two professors they had in for him, and a private nurse day and night.”

  “I am not a human being!” the stranger said loudly.

  “Three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars it cost his son, Guinzburg told me. ‘For you, Poppa, nothing is too expensive—only get well,’ the son told him.”

  “I am not a human being!”

  “Ai, is that a son for you!” the old woman said, rocking her head. “A heart of gold, pure gold.” She looked at the stranger. “All right, all right. I heard you the first time. Gumbeiner! I asked you a question. When are you going to cut the lawn?”

  “On Wednesday, odder maybe Thursday, comes the Japaneser to the neighborhood. To cut lawns is his profession. My profession is to be a glazier—retired.”

  “Between me and all mankind is an inevitable hatred,” the stranger said. “When I tell you what I am, the flesh will melt—”

  “You said, you said already,” Mr. Gumbeiner interrupted.

  “In Chicago where the winters were as cold and bitter as the Czar of Russia’s heart,” the old woman intoned, “you had strength to carry the frames with the glass together day in and day out. But in California with the golden sun to mow the lawn when your wife asks, for this you have no strength. Do I call in the Japaneser to cook for you supper?”

  “Thirty years Professor Allardyce spent perfecting his theories. Electronics, neuronics—”

  “Listen, how educated he talks,” Mr. Gumbeiner said, admiringly. “Maybe he goes to the University here?”

  “If he goes to the University, maybe he knows Bud?” his wife suggested.

  “Probably they’re in the same class and he came to see him about the homework, no?”

  “Certainly he must be in the same class. How many classes are there? Five in ganzen: Bud showed me on his program card.” She counted off on her fingers. “Television Appreciation and Criticism, Small Boat Building, Social Adjustment, The American Dance… The American Dance—nu, Gumbeiner—”

  “Contemporary Ceramics,” her husband said, relishing the syllables. “A fine boy, Bud. A pleasure to have him for a boardner.”

  “After thirty years spent in these studies,” the stranger, who had continued to speak unnoticed, went on, “he turned from the theoretical to the pragmatic. In ten years’ time he had made the most titanic discovery in history: he made mankind, all mankind, superfluous: he made me.”

  “What did Tillie write in her last letter?” asked the old man.

  The old woman shrugged.

  “What should she write? The same thing. Sidney was home from the Army, Naomi has a new boy friend—”

  “He made ME!”

  “Listen, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is,” the old woman said; “maybe where you came from is different, but in this country you don’t interrupt people the while they’re talking… Hey. Listen—what do you mean, he made you? What kind of talk is that?”

  The stranger bared all his teeth again, exposing the too-pink gums.

  “In his library, to which I had a more complete access after his sudden and as yet undiscovered death from entirely natural causes, I found a complete collection of stories about androids, from Shelley’s Frankenstein through Capek’s R.U.R. to Asimov’s—”

  “Frankenstein?” said the old man, with interest. “There used to be Frankenstein who had the soda-wasser place on Halstead Street: a Litvack, nebbich.”

  “What are you talking?” Mrs. Gumbeiner demanded. “His name was Frankenthal, and it wasn’t on Halstead, it was on Roosevelt.”

  “—clearly shown that all mankind has an instinctive antipathy towards androids and there will be an inevitable struggle between them—”

  “Of course, of course!” Old Mr. Gumbeiner clicked his teeth against his pipe. “I am always wrong, you are always right. How could you stand to be married to such a stupid person all this time?”

  “I don’t know,” the old woman said. “Sometimes I wonder, myself. I think it must be his good looks.” She began to laugh. Old Mr. Gumbeiner blinked, then began to smile, then took his wife’s hand.

  “Foolish old woman,” the stranger said; “why do you laugh? Do you not know I have come to destroy you?”

  “What!” old Mr. Gumbeiner shouted. “Close your mouth, you!” He darted from his chair and struck the stranger with the flat of his hand. The stranger’s head struck against the porch pillar and bounced back.

  “When you talk to my wife, talk respectable, you hear?”

  Old Mrs. Gumbeiner, cheeks very pink, pushed her husband back in his chair. Then she leaned forward and examined the stranger’s head. She clicked her tongue as she pulled aside a flap of gray, skin-like material.

  “Gumbeiner, look! He’s all springs and wires inside!”

  “I told you he was a golem, but no, you wouldn’t listen,” the old man said.

  “You said he walked like a golem.”

  “How could he walk like a golem unless he was one?”

  “All right, all right… You broke him, so now fix him.”

  “My grandfather, his light shines from Paradise, told me that when MoHaRaL—Moreynu Ha-Rav Löw—his memory for a blessing, made the golem in Prague, three hundred? four hundred years ago? he wrote on his forehead the Holy Name.”

  Smiling reminiscently, the old woman continued, “And the golem cut the rabbi’s wood and brought his water and guarded the ghetto.”

  “And one time only he disobeyed the Rabbi Low, and Rabbi Low erased the Shem Ha-Mephorash from the golem’s forehead and the golem fell down like a dead one. And they put him up in the attic of the shule and he’s still there today if the Communisten haven’t sent him to Moscow… This is not just a story,” he said.

  “Avadda not!” said the old woman.


  “I myself have seen both the shule and the rabbi’s grave,” her husband said, conclusively.

  “But I think this must be a different kind golem, Gumbeiner. See, on his forehead: nothing written.”

  “What’s the matter, there’s a law I can’t write something there? Where is that lump clay Bud brought us from his class?”

  The old man washed his hands, adjusted his little black skullcap, and slowly and carefully wrote four Hebrew letters on the gray forehead.

  “Ezra the Scribe himself couldn’t do better,” the old woman said, admiringly. “Nothing happens,” she observed, looking at the lifeless figure sprawled in the chair.

  “Well, after all, am I Rabbi Löw?” her husband asked, deprecatingly. “No,” he answered. He leaned over and examined the exposed mechanism. “This spring goes here…this wire comes with this one …” The figure moved. “But this one goes where? And this one?”

  “Let be,” said his wife. The figure sat up slowly and rolled its eyes loosely.

  “Listen, Reb Golem,” the old man said, wagging his finger. “Pay attention to what I say—you understand?”

  “Understand …”

  “If you want to stay here, you got to do like Mr. Gumbeiner says.”

  “Do-like-Mr.-Gumbeiner-says …”

  “That’s the way I like to hear a golem talk. Malka, give here the mirror from the pocketbook. Look, you see your face? You see on the forehead, what’s written? If you don’t do like Mr. Gumbeiner says, he’ll wipe out what’s written and you’ll be no more alive.”

  “No-more-alive …”

  “That’s right. Now, listen. Under the porch you’ll find a lawnmower. Take it. And cut the lawn. Then come back. Go.”

  “Go …” The figure shambled down the stairs. Presently the sound of the lawnmower whirred through the quiet air in the street just like the street where Jackie Cooper shed huge tears on Wallace Beery’s shirt and Chester Conklin rolled his eyes at Marie Dressler.

  “So what will you write to Tillie?” old Mr. Gumbeiner asked.

  “What should I write?” old Mrs. Gumbeiner shrugged. “I’ll write that the weather is lovely out here and that we are both, Blessed be the Name, in good health.”

  The old man nodded his head slowly, and they sat together on the front porch in the warm afternoon sun.

  The Necessity of His Condition

  INTRODUCTION BY POUL AND KAREN ANDERSON

  We have remembered this story since we first read it, nearly forty years ago. Published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, it won first prize in that periodical’s 1957 contest, against strong competition.

  Like other early works of Avram Davidson’s, already it showed what rich diversity was to come. Two of his fantasies had been set in the here-and-now, although their quirky originality made each of them sui generis. But elsewhere had appeared elements less familiar—a larcenous antique dealer in Cyprus, a Casbah-smart youth with Agitprop training, a mesmerizer in eighteenth-century England. Always the thought and speech of the characters was authentic, fully within their given cultures, and yet those characters were always fully individual human beings. Later tales kept this far too rare quality. They explored more of today’s world, other planets, the future, real and legendary epochs of the past. Invariably their landscapes, mental as well as physical, were vivid and utterly convincing. Much of this came through in the dialogue, for which Avram had an incredibly keen ear.

  “The Necessity of His Condition” is set in an antebellum border state. With a few strokes he gives a town, in it a history, economy, and population as various, in both good and evil, as any real community’s. Every true tragedy is profoundly moral. Avram bore a deep sympathy for the weak and oppressed. Here, in an almost biblical fashion, the unrighteous has digged a pit for another, and fallen therein.

  THE NECESSITY OF HIS CONDITION

  SHOLTO HILL WAS MOSTLY residential property, but it had its commercial district in the shape of Persimmon Street and Rampart Street, the latter named after some long-forgotten barricade stormed and destroyed by Benedict Arnold (wearing a British uniform and eaten with bitterness and perverted pride). Persimmon Street, running up-slope, entered the middle of Rampart at right angles, and went no farther. This section, with its red brick houses and shops, its warehouses and offices, was called The T, and it smelled of tobacco and potatoes and molasses and goober peas and dried fish and beer and cheap cookshop food and (the spit-and-whittle humorists claimed) old man Bailiss’ office, where the windows were never opened—never had been opened, they said, never were made to be opened. Any smell off the street or farms or stables that found its way up to Bailiss’ office was imprisoned there for life, they said. Old man Bailiss knew what they said, knew pretty much everything that went on anywhere; but he purely didn’t care. He didn’t have to, they said.

  J. Bailiss, Attorney-at-Law (his worn old sign said), had a large practice and little competition. James Bailiss, Broker (his newer, but by no means new, sign), did an extensive business; again, with little competition. The premises of the latter business were located, not in The T, but in a white-washed stone structure with thick doors and barred windows, down in The Bottom—as it was called—near the river, the canal, and the railroad line.

  James Bailiss, Broker, was not received socially. Nobody expected that bothered him much. Nothing bothered old man Bailiss much—Bailiss, with his old white hat and his old black coat and his old cowhide shoes that looked old even when they were new—turned old on the shoemaker’s last (the spit-and-whittle crowd claimed) directly they heard whose feet they were destined for.

  It was about twenty-five years earlier, in 1825, that an advertisement—the first of its kind—appeared in the local newspaper.

  “Take Notice! (it began). James Bailiss, having lately purchased the old arsenal building on Canal Street, will henceforth operate it as a Negro Depot. He will at all times be found ready to purchase all good and likely young Negroes at the Highest Price. He will also attend to Selling Negroes on Commission. Said Broker also gives Notice that those who have Slaves rendered unfit for labor by yaws, scrofula, chronic consumption, rheumatism, & C., may dispose of them to him on reasonable terms.”

  Editor Winstanley tried to dissuade him, he said later. “Folks,” he told him, “won’t like this. This has never been said out open before,” the editor pointed out. Bailiss smiled. He was already middle-aged, had a shiny red face and long mousy hair. His smile wasn’t a very wide one.

  “Then I reckon I must be the pioneer,” he said. “This isn’t a big plantation State, it never will be. I’ve give the matter right much thought. I reckon it just won’t pay for anyone to own more than half a dozen slaves in these parts. But they will multiply, you can’t stop it. I’ve seen it in my lawwork, seen many a planter broke for debts he’s gone into to buy field hands—signed notes against his next crop, or maybe even his next three crops. Then maybe the crop is so good that the price of cotton goes way down and he can’t meet his notes, so he loses his lands and his slaves. If the price of cotton should happen to be high enough for him to pay for the slaves he’s bought, then, like a dumned fool”—Bailiss never swore—“why, he signs notes for a few more. Pretty soon things get so bad you can’t give slaves away round here. So a man has a dozen of them eating their heads off and not even earning grocery bills. No, Mr. Winstanley; slaves must be sold south and southwest, where the new lands are being opened up, where the big plantations are.”

  Editor Winstanley wagged his head. “I know,” he said, “I know. But folks don’t like to say things like that out loud. The slave trade is looked down on. You know that. It’s a necessary evil, that’s how it’s regarded, like a—well …” He lowered his voice. “Nothing personal, but…like a sporting house. Nothing personal, now, Mr. Bailiss.”

  The attorney-broker smiled again. “Slavery has the sanction of the law. It is a necessary part of the domestic economy, just like cotton. Why, suppose I should say, ‘I love my cotton, I’ll
only sell it locally’? People’d think I was just crazy. Slaves have become a surplus product in the Border States and they must be disposed of where they are not produced in numbers sufficient to meet the local needs. You print that advertisement. Folks may not ask me to dinner, but they’ll sell to me, see if they won’t.”

  The notice did, as predicted, outrage public opinion. Old Marsta and Old Missis vowed no Negro of theirs would ever be sold “down the River.” But somehow the broker’s “jail”—as it was called—kept pretty full, though its boarders changed. Old man Bailiss had his agents out buying and his agents out selling. Sometimes he acted as agent for firms whose headquarters were in Natchez or New Orleans. He entered into silent partnerships with gentlemen of good family who wanted a quick return on capital, and who got it, but who still, it was needless to say, did not dine with him or take his hand publicly. There was talk, on and off, that the Bar Association was planning action not favorable to Bailiss for things connected with the legal side of his trade. It all came to nought.

  “Mr. Bailiss,” young Ned Wickerson remarked to him one day in the old man’s office, “whoever said that ‘a man who defends himself has a fool for a client’ never had the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

  “Thank you, boy.”

  “Consequently,” the young man continued, “I’ve advised Sam Worth not to go into court if we can manage to settle out of it.”

  “First part of your advice is good, but there’s nothing to settle.”

  “There’s a matter of $635 to settle, Mr. Bailiss.” Wickerson had been practicing for two years, but he still had freckles on his nose. He took a paper out of his wallet and put it in front of them. “There’s this to settle.”

  The old man pushed his glasses down his nose and picked up the paper. He scanned it, lips moving silently. “Why, this is all correct,” he said. “Hmm. To be sure. ‘Received of Samuel Worth of Worth’s Crossing, Lemuel County, the sum of $600 cash in full payment for a Negro named Dominick Swift, commonly called Domino, aged thirty-six years and of bright complexion, which Negro I warrant sound in mind and body and a slave for life and the title I will forever defend. James Bailiss, Rutland, Lemuel County.’ Mmm. All correct. And anyway, what do you mean, six hundred and thirty-five dollars?”