The Avram Davidson Treasury (23 page)

The two men had come to Holden within a few months of one another, Dr. Turbyfil from his two-year stay at the Museum of Natural Philosophy in Boston, and Professor Sanzmann from a meager living translating in New York, whither he had come as an exile from his native country. Sanzmann was politically quite pure, with no taint of either far right or near left; was, in fact, a Goethe scholar—and what can be purer than a Goethe scholar? He had a post at the local denominational university: Professor of Germanic
and
Oriental Languages, neatly skipping the questionable Slavs. Dr. Turbyfil was not an ungenerous man, and he was quite content to see Professor Sanzmann enjoy the full measure of linguistic success.

But Dr. Philosoph. Ludwig Sanzmann was also an amateur anthropologist, paleontologist, and general antiquarian: and this was enough to chill the blood of any museum director or even curator. Such amateurs are occupational hazards. They bring one smelly cow bone, and do it with a proud air of expectancy, fully anticipating the pronouncement of a new species of megatherium or brontosaurus. Although Dr. Sanzmann had not—so far—done
that
, he often put Turbyfil in mind of the verse,

“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—”

“Please!” Dr. Turbyfil held up a protesting hand, but Professor Sanzmann neither saw nor heard him. With gleaming eyes gazing into the distance he went on.

“It comes the spring. The ogre family sports in the forest, and Simon with him. Then comes again the autumn and winter and at last the ogre child dies. It is sad. The parents cannot believe it. They moan to him. They rock him in their arms. No use. They bury him finally beneath the cave floor.
Now
you will ask,” he informed the glassy-eyed Turbyfil, “do they smear the body with red ocher as a symbol of life, of blood and flesh, as our scientists say? No. And why not? Because he is already smeared. All of them. All the time. They like it so. It is not early religion, it is early cosmetic, only.”

He sighed. Dr. Turbyfil echoed it.

“And so, swiftly pass the years,” Professor Sanzmann patted his hand on the empty air to indicate the passing years. “The old ogre is killed by a shebear and then the ogress will not eat. She whimpers and clasps Simon to her, and presently she grows cold and is dead. He is alone. The rest we know. Simon grows up, marries, has children, dies. But there are no more ogres.

“Not ever.

“Naturally, I am fascinated. I ask the peasants, where is there a cave called the Cave of the Ogres? They look at me with slanting glances, but will not answer. I am patient. I come back each summer. Nineteen thirty-one. Nineteen thirty-two. Nineteen thirty-three. Everyone knows me. I give small presents to the children. By myself I wander in the hills and search for caves. Nineteen thirty-four. There is a cow-tending child in the high pastures. We are friends. I speak of a cave near there. This, I say, is called Cave of the Ogres. The child laughs. No, no, he says, for that is another cave: it is located thus and so.

“And I find it where he says. But I am circumspect. I wait another year. Then I come and I make my private excavations. And—I—find—this.”

He threw open the carton and unwrapped from many layers of cotton wool something brown and bony, and he set it in front of Dr. Turbyfil.

“There was a fairly complete skeleton, but I took just the skull and jawbone. You recognize it at once, of course. And with it I found, as I expected, the medallion of Charles and Ferdinand. Simon had allowed them to bury it with the ogre child because he had been fond of it. It is all written in the photostatic paper copies… In 1936 the Nazis—”

Dr. Turbyfil stared at the skull. “No, no, no, no,” he whispered. It was not a very large skull. “No, no, no,” he whispered, staring at the receding forehead and massive chinless jaw, the bulging eye ridges.

“So, tell me now, sir museum director: Is this not a find more remarkable than big teeths in a Peiping herb shop?” His eyes seemed very young, and very bright.

Dr. Turbyfil thought rapidly. It needed just something like this to set the Sunday supplements and Mr. Godbody ablaze and ruin forever both his reputation and that of the Holden Museum. Years and years of work—the seventeen chapters on the Mousterian Era alone in
Man Before the Dawn—
the bequest from old Mr. Godbody—

Then the thought sprang fully-formed in his mind: Where there had been
one
skeleton, there must be others, unspoiled by absurd sixteenth-century paraphernalia—which had no business being there, anyway. He arose, placed a hand on Professor Sanzmann’s shoulder.

“My friend,” he said, in warm, golden, dulcet tones. “My friend, it will take some time before the Sanzmann Expedition of the Holden Museum will be ready to start. While you make the necessary personal preparations to lead us to the site of your truly astounding discovery, please oblige me by saying nothing about this to our—alas—unscholarly and often sensational press. Eh?”

Dr. Sanzmann’s rosy face broke into a thousand wrinkles and tears of joy and gratitude rolled down his cheeks. Dr. Turbyfil generously pretended not to see.

“Imagine what a revolution this will produce,” he said, as if he were thinking aloud. “Instead of being tidily extinct for fifty thousand years, our poor cousins survived into modern times. Fantastic! Our whole timetable will have to be rewritten …” His voice died away. His eyes focused on Professor Sanzmann, nodding his head, sniffling happily, as he tied up his package.

“Incidentally, my dear Professor,” he said: “before you leave I must show you some interesting potsherds that were dug up not a mile from here. You will be fascinated. Aztec influences! This way…mind the stairs. I am afraid our cellar is not very well arranged at present; we have been recataloguing…this fascinating collection formerly belonged to a pioneer figure, the late Mr. Tatum Tompkins.”

Behind a small mountain of packing cases, Dr. Turbyfil dealt Professor Sanzmann a swift blow on the temple with one of Uncle Tatum’s tomahawks. The sinister Continental scholar fell without a sound, his rosy lips opened upon an unuttered aspirate. Dr. Turbyfil made shift to bury him in the farthest corner of the cellar, and to pile upon his grave such a pyramid of uncatalogued horrors as need not, God and Godbody willing, be disturbed for several centuries.

Dusting his hands, and whistling—a trifle off-key—the hymn called “Bringing in the Sheaves,” Dr. Turbyfil returned to the office above stairs. There he opened an atlas, looking at large-scale maps of Germany. A village named Maldenhausen, in a valley…(Where there had been one skeleton, there must be others, unspoiled by absurd sixteenth-century paraphernalia—which had no business being there.) His fingers skipped joyfully along the map, and in his mind’s eye he saw himself already in those valleys, with their lovely names: Friedenthal, Johannesthal, Hochsthal, Neanderthal, Waldenthal…beautiful valleys! Green, remote, enchanting…full of mysteries.