Modern classics of fanta.., p.54
Modern Classics of Fantasy, page 54
The sunlight, kept at bay outside, broke in through a crack in the jalousies, sun making the scant white hair for an instant ablaze: like the brow of Moses. Doctor Rafael got up and busied himself with a fresh lime and the sweetened lime juice and the gin and ice. He was rapt in this task, like an ancient apothecary mingling strange unguents and syrups. Then he gave one of the gimlets to his guest and from one he took a long, long pull.
“You see. I have two years to go before my retirement. The pension, well, it is not spectacular, but I have no complaint. I will be able to rest. Not for an hour, or an evening… an evening! only on my holidays, once a year, do I even have an evening all my own!—Well. You may imagine how I look forward. And I am not going to risk premature and enforced retirement by presenting Government with an impossible situation. One which wouldn’t be its fault, anyway. By insisting on impossible things. By demonstrating—”
He finished his drink. He gave Jack a long, shrewd look.
“So I have nothing more to say…about that. If they want to believe, up in King Town, that the abominable Bob Blaine was mauled by a crocodile, let them. If they prefer to make it a jaguar or even a tapir, why, that is fine with Robert Rafael, M.D., DMO. It might be, probably, the first time in history that anybody anywhere was killed by a tapir, but that is not my affair. The matter is, so far as I am concerned, so far—in fact—as you and I are concerned—over.
“Do you understand?”
Limekiller nodded. At once the older man’s manner changed. “I have many, many books, as you can see. Maybe some of them would be of interest to you. Pick any one you like. Pick one at random.” So saying, he took a book from his desk and put it in Jack’s hands. It was just a book-looking book. It was, in fact, volume II of the Everyman edition of Plutarch’s Lives. There was a wide card, of the kind on which medical notes or records are sometimes made, and so Jack Limekiller opened the book at that place.
seasons, as the gods sent them, seemed natural to him. The Greeks that inhabited Asia were very much pleased to see the great lords and governors of Persia, with all the pride, cruelty, and
“Well, now, what the Hell,” he muttered. The card slipped, he clutched. He glanced at it. He put down vol. II of the Lives and he sat back and read the notes on the card.
It is in the nature of things [they began] for men, in a new country and faced with new things, to name them after old, familiar things. Even when resemblance unlikely. Example: Mountain-cow for tapir. (“Tapir” from Tupi Indian tapira, big beast.) Example: Mawmee-apple not apple at all. Ex.: Sea-cow for manatee. Early British settlers not entomologists. Quest.: Whence word manatee? From Carib? Perhaps. After the British, what other people came to this corner of the world? Ans.: Black people. Calabars, Ashantee, Mantee, Mandingo. Re last two names. Related peoples. Named after totemic animal. Also, not likely? likely—named unfamiliar animals after familiar (i.e., familiar in Africa) animals. Mantee, Mandee-hippo. Refer legend.
Limekiller’s mouth fell open. “Oh, my God!” he groaned. In his ear now, he heard the old, old, quavering voice of Captain Cudgel (once Cudjoe): “Mon, een Ahfrica, dc mon-ah-tee hahv leg, I tell you. Een Ahfrica eet be ah poerful beast, come up on de land, I tell you… dc w’ol’ people, dey tell me so, fah true…”
He heard the old voice, repeating the old words, no longer even half-understood: but, in some measure, at least half-true.
Refer legend of were-animals, universal. Were-wolf, were-tiger, were-shark, were-dolphin. Quest.: Were-manatee?
“Mon-ah-tee ces hahfah mon…hahv teats like a womahn…Dere ees wahn mon, mehk mellow meet mon-ah-tee, hahv pickney by mon-ah-tee …”
And he heard another voice saying, not only once, saying, “Mon, eef you tie ah rattlesnake doewn fah me, I weel freeg eet…”
He thought of the wretched captives in the Spanish slave ship, set free to fend for themselves in a bush by far wilder than the one left behind. Few, to begin with, fewer as time went on; marrying and intermarrying, no new blood, no new thoughts. And, finally, the one road in to them, destroyed. Left alone. Left quite alone. Or…almost…
He shuddered.
How desperate for refuge must Blaine have been, to have sought to hide himself anywhere near Cape Mantee—
And what miserable happenstance had brought he himself, Jack Limekiller, to improvise on that old song that dreadful night?—And what had he called up out of the darkness…out of the bush…out of the mindless present which was the past and future and the timeless tropical forever?…
There was something pressing gently against his finger, something on the other side of the card. He turned it over. A clipping from a magazine had been roughly pasted there.
Valentry has pointed out that, despite a seeming resemblance to such aquatic mammals as seals and walrus, the manatee is actually more closely related anatomically to the elephant.
… out of the bush … out of the darkness … out of the mindless present which was also the past and the timeless tropical forever…
“They are like elephants. They never forget.”
“Ukh,” he said, though clenched teeth. “My God. Uff. Jesus…”
The card was suddenly, swiftly, snatched from his hands. He looked up still in a state of shock, to see Doctor Rafael tearing it into pieces.
“Doña ‘Sana!”
A moment. Then the housekeeper, old, all in white. “Doctor?”
“Burn this.”
A moment passed. Just the two of them again. Then Rafael, in a tone which was nothing but kindly, said, “Jack, you are still young and you are still healthy. My advice to you: Go away. Go to a cooler climate. One with cooler ways and cooler memories.” The old woman called something from the back of the house. The old man sighed. “It is the summons to supper,” he said. “Not only must I eat in haste because I have my clinic in less than half an hour, but suddenly-invited guests make Doña ‘Sana very nervous. Good night, then, Jack.”
Jack had had two gin drinks. He felt that he needed two more. At least two more. Or, if not gin, rum. Beer would not do. He wanted to pull the blanket of booze over him, awfully, awfully quickly. He had this in his mind as though it were a vow as he walked up the front street towards the Cupid Club.
Someone hailed him, someone out of the gathering dusk.
‘Jock! Hey, mon, Jock! Hey, b’y! Where you gweyn so fahst? Bide, b’y, bide a bit!”
The voice was familiar. It was that of Harry Hazeed, his principal creditor in King Town. Ah, well. He had had his chance, Limekiller had. He could have gone on down the coast, down into the Republican waters, where the Queen’s writ runneth not. Now it was too late.
“Oh, hello, Harry,” he said, dully.
Hazeed took him by the hand. Took him by both hands. “Mon, show me where is your boat? She serviceable? She is? Good: Mon, you don’t hear de news: Welcome’s warehouse take fire and born up! Yes, mon. Ahl de earn in King Town born up! No earn ah-tahl: No tortilla, no empinada, no tamale, no carn-cake! Oh, mon, how de people going to punish! Soon as I hear de news, I drah me money from de bonk, I buy ahl de crocus sock I can find, I jump on de pocket-boat—and here I am, oh, mon, I pray fah you … I pray I fine you!”
Limekiller shook his head. It had been one daze, one shock after another. The only thing clear was that Harry Hazeed didn’t seem angry. “You no understand?” Hazeed cried. “Mon! We going take your boat, we going doewn to Nutmeg P’int, we going to buy carn, mon! We going to buy ahl de carn dere is to buy! Nevah mine dat lee’ bit money you di owe me, b’y! We going make plenty money, mon! And we going make de cultivators plenty money, too! What you theenk of eet, Jock, me b’y? Eh? Hey? What you theenk?”
Jack put his forefinger in his mouth, held it up. The wind was in the right quarter. The wind would, if it held up, and, somehow, it felt like a wind which would hold up, the wind would carry them straight and clear to Nutmeg Point: the clear, clean wind in the clear and starry night.
Softly, he said—and, old Hazeed leaning closer to make the words out, Limekiller said them again, louder, “I think it’s great. Just great. I think it’s great.”
* * * *
T. H. WHITE
The Troll
Born in 1906, the late T. H. White was perhaps the most talented and widely acclaimed creator of whimsical fantasy since Lewis Carroll, and probably did more to mold the popular image of King Arthur and Merlin than any other writer since Twain. Although he published other well-received fantasy novels such as Mistress Masham’s Repose and The Elephant and the Kangaroo, White’s major work—and the work on which almost all of his present-day reputation rests—was the massive Arthurian tetralogy, The Once and Future King. Begun in 1939 with the publication of the first volume, The Sword in the Stone (itself well known as an individual novel, and later made into a not-terribly-successful Disney animated film), the tetralogy was published in an omnibus volume in 1958, became a nationwide best-seller, inspired the musical Camelot, one of the most popular shows in the history of Broadway, and later was made into a big-budget (and quite dreadful) movie of the same name. Gloriously eccentric and impressively erudite, full of whimsy and delightful anachronism, hilarious and melancholy by turns, poetically written and peopled with psychologically complex and compassionately drawn characters, The Once and Future King is probably one of the two or three best fantasies of the last half of the twentieth century, and is surpassed for widespread impact only by J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. (As an example of its influence, most subsequent fantasy books and stories that handle Arthurian themes take for granted the idea that Merlin (or Merlyn, as White spelled it) is living his life backward through time—although that trope is not found in Mallory, Tennyson, or Twain, but only in White’s work. It has become part of the ongoing Merlin legend, with most subsequent writers not even realizing where they’ve picked it up from, and you can’t ask for a much better demonstration of influence than that!)
T. H. White died in 1964. The Book of Merlyn, a postscript to The Once and Future King, was published posthumously in 1980. White was not prolific at short lengths, and most of his stories are garnered in the collection The Maharajah, and Other Stories. White’s strengths as a writer did not desert him at shorter lengths, though, as you will see in the wry story that follows, which shows that, even in the carpeted, comfortable, and luxurious halls of a modern hotel, a leopard does not change its spots, nor a troll its nature …
* * * *
“My father,” said Mr. Marx, “used to say that an experience like the one I am about to relate was apt to shake one’s interest in mundane matters. Naturally he did not expect to be believed, and he did not mind whether he was or not. He did not himself believe in the supernatural, but the thing happened, and he proposed to tell it as simply as possible. It was stupid of him to say that it shook his faith in mundane matters, for it was just as mundane as anything else. Indeed, the really frightening part about it was the horribly tangible atmosphere in which it took place. None of the outlines wavered in the least. The creature would have been less remarkable if it had been less natural. It seemed to overcome the usual laws without being immune to them.
“My father was a keen fisherman, and used to go to all sorts of places for his fish. On one occasion he made Abisko his Lapland base, a comfortable railway hotel, one hundred and fifty miles within the Arctic Circle. He traveled the prodigious length of Sweden (I believe it is as far from the south of Sweden to the north, as it is from the south of Sweden to the south of Italy) in the electric railway, and arrived tired out. He went to bed early, sleeping almost immediately, although it was bright daylight outside, as it is in those parts throughout the night at that time of the year. Not the least shaking part of his experience was that it should all have happened under the sun.
“He went to bed early, and slept, and dreamed. I may as well make it clear at once, as clear as the outlines of that creature in the northern sun, that his story did not turn out to be a dream in the last paragraph. The division between sleeping and waking was abrupt, although the feeling of both was the same. They were both in the same sphere of horrible absurdity, though in the former he was asleep and in the latter almost terribly awake. He tried to be asleep several times.
“My father always used to tell one of his dreams, because it somehow seemed of a piece with what was to follow. He believed that it was a consequence of the thing’s presence in the next room. My father dreamed of blood.
“It was the vividness of the dreams that was impressive, their minute detail and horrible reality. The blood came through the keyhole of a locked door which communicated with the next room. I suppose the two rooms had originally been designed en suite. It ran down the door panel with a viscous ripple, like the artificial one created in the conduit of Trumpington Street. But it was heavy, and smelled. The slow welling of it sopped the carpet and reached the bed. It was warm and sticky. My father woke up with the impression that it was all over his hands. He was rubbing his first two fingers together, trying to rid them of the greasy adhesion where the fingers joined.
“My father knew what he had got to do. Let me make it clear that he was now perfectly wide awake, but he knew what he had got to do. He got out of bed, under this irresistible knowledge, and looked through the keyhole into the next room.
“I suppose the best way to tell the story is simply to narrate it, without an effort to carry belief. The thing did not require belief. It was not a feeling of horror in one’s bones, or a misty outline, or anything that needed to be given actuality by an act of faith. It was as solid as a wardrobe. You don’t have to believe in wardrobes. They are there, with corners.
“What my father saw through the keyhole in the next room was a Troll. It was eminently solid, about eight feet high, and dressed in brightly ornamented skins. It had a blue face, with yellow eyes, and on its head there was a woolly sort of nightcap with a red bobble on top. The features were Mongolian. Its body was long and sturdy, like the trunk of a tree. Its legs were short and thick, like the elephant’s feet that used to be cut off for umbrella stands, and its arms were wasted: little rudimentary members like the forelegs of a kangaroo. Its head and neck were very thick and massive. On the whole, it looked like a grotesque doll.
“That was the horror of it. Imagine a perfectly normal golliwog (but without the association of a Christie minstrel) standing in the corner of a room, eight feet high. The creature was as ordinary as that, as tangible, as stuffed, and as ungainly at the joints: but it could move itself about.
“The Troll was eating a lady. Poor girl, she was tightly clutched to its breast by those rudimentary arms, with her head on a level with its mouth. She was dressed in a nightdress which had crumpled up under her armpits, so that she was a pitiful naked offering, like a classical picture of Andromeda. Mercifully, she appeared to have fainted.
“Just as my father applied his eye to the keyhole, the Troll opened its mouth and bit off her head. Then, holding the neck between the bright blue lips, he sucked the bare meat dry. She shriveled, like a squeezed orange, and her heels kicked. The creature had a look of thoughtful ecstasy. When the girl seemed to have lost succulence as an orange she was lifted into the air. She vanished in two bites. The Troll remained leaning against the wall, munching patiently and casting its eyes about it with a vague benevolence. Then it leaned forward from the low hips, like a jackknife folding in half, and opened its mouth to lick the blood up from the carpet. The mouth was incandescent inside, like a gas fire, and the blood evaporated before its tongue, like dust before a vacuum cleaner. It straightened itself, the arms dangling before it in patient uselessness, and fixed its eyes upon the keyhole.
“My father crawled back to bed, like a hunted fox after fifteen miles. At first it was because he was afraid that the creature had seen him through the hole, but afterward it was because of his reason. A man can attribute many nighttime appearances to the imagination, and can ultimately persuade himself that creatures of the dark did not exist. But this was an appearance in a sunlit room, with all the solidity of a wardrobe and unfortunately almost none of its possibility. He spent the first ten minutes making sure that he was awake, and the rest of the night trying to hope that he was asleep. It was either that, or else he was mad.
“It is not pleasant to doubt one’s sanity. There are no satisfactory tests. One can pinch oneself to see if one is asleep, but there are no means of determining the other problem. He spent some time opening and shutting his eyes, but the room seemed normal and remained unaltered. He also soused his head in a basin of cold water, without result. Then he lay on his back, for hours, watching the mosquitoes on the ceiling.
“He was tired when he was called. A bright Scandinavian maid admitted the full sunlight for him and told him that it was a fine day. He spoke to her several times, and watched her carefully, but she seemed to have no doubts about his behavior. Evidently, then, he was not badly mad: and by now he had been thinking about the matter for so many hours that it had begun to get obscure. The outlines were blurring again, and he determined that the whole thing must have been a dream or a temporary delusion, something temporary, anyway, and finished with; so that there was no good in thinking about it longer. He got up, dressed himself fairly cheerfully, and went down to breakfast.
