by Terry Carr
“No biological processes. Anywhere. We’d always assumed that something had gone wrong on Venus, leaving her sterile under a hothouse atmosphere. Some people have made a career of developing explanations for the phenomenon. But Venus, it turns out, is the norm: it’s Earth that is the anomaly.
“I believe, Harmon, that we are quite alone.”
“You and I and a few others, Gambini.” He threw open the door, and whirled to face the physicist. “Despite everything you’ve said, I believe you tried. I hope that the day will come when you will realize that you could have done no more.”
“If you think that,” Gambini said, “I will tell you something to remove all doubt: If it were to do over, with a new universe to know, I would do nothing differently! Do you understand that?”
Harmon’s features twisted into a murderous frown, and he wondered (at that moment, and for all his life after) what the physicist was trying to provoke.
But Gambini had already turned away. When the door closed behind Harmon, he was standing at the window. It was raining again, and he was grateful for the cloud cover.
Travel and communications have improved so greatly that anthropologists have noted a trend toward homogeneity among the various peoples of the world: more and more tribes and cultures have adopted the ways of others, so that rituals, customs, even languages are rapidly disappearing from our contemporary world. And what about the specialized knowledge that specific peoples lose when they become assimilated into larger societies? Are techniques and age-old discoveries disappearing too?
Avram Davidson, one of the most original stylists and thinkers in science fiction (among several other genres in which he’s written), has won both the Hugo Award and the Edgar Award given by the Mystery Writers of America. His most famous novel is The Phoenix and the Mirror; the long-awaited sequel to that, Vergil in Averno, will be published next year by Doubleday.
AVRAM DAVIDSON - THE SLOVO STOVE
It would have been a little bit hard for Fred Silberman to have said a completely good word for his hometown; “a bunch of boors and bigots,” he once described it; and life had carried him many leagues away. However. In Parlour’s Ferry lived Silberman’s sole surviving aunt, Tanta Pesha; and of Tanta Pesha (actually a great-aunt by marriage) Silberman had only good memories. Thinking very well of himself for doing so, he paid her a visit; as reward—or punishment—he was recognized on the street and almost immediately offered a very good job. Rather ruefully, he accepted, and before he quite knew what was happening, found himself almost a member of the establishment in the town where he had once felt himself almost an outcast.
Okay, he had a new job in a new business; what was next? A new place to live, that was what next. He knew that if he said to his old aunt, “Tanta, I’m going to live at the Hotel”—Parlour’s Ferry had one, count them, one—she would say, “That’s nice.” Or, if he were to say, “Tanta, I’m going to live with you,” she would say, “That’s nice.” However. He rather thought that a roomy apartment with a view of the River was what he wanted. Fred developed a picture of it in his mind and, walking along a once long-familiar street, was scarcely surprised to see it there on the other side: the apartment house, that is. He hadn’t been imagining, he had been remembering, and there was the landlady, sweeping the steps, just as he had last seen her, fifteen years ago, in 1935. He crossed over. She looked up.
“Mrs. Keeley, do you have an apartment to rent? My name is Fred Silberman.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh. You must be old Jake Silberman’s grandson. I reckemize the face.”
“Great-nephew.”
“I reckemize the face.”
The rent was seventy-five dollars a month, the painters would come right in, and Mrs. Keeley was very glad to have Nice People living there. Which was very interesting, because the last time Silberman had entered the house (Peter Touey, who used to live upstairs, had said, “Come on over after school; I got a book with war pictures in it”) Mrs. Keeley had barred the way: “You don’t live here,” said she. Well. Times had changed. Had times changed? Something had certainly changed.
The building where the new job would be lay behind where the old livery stable had been; Silberman had of course already seen it, but he thought he would go and see it again. The wonderful dignified old blue-gray thick flagstones still paved most of the sidewalks on these unfashionable streets, where modernity in the form of dirty cracked concrete had yet to intrude; admiring them, he heard someone call, “Freddy! Freddy?” and, turning in surprise, almost at once recognized an old schoolmate.
“Aren’t you Freddy Silberman? I’m Wesley Brakk. We still live here.” They rambled on a while, mentioned where each had been in the War, catalogued some common friends, then Wesley said, “Well, come on into the house, we’re holding my father’s gromzil,” or so it sounded; “you don’t know what that means, do you? See, my father passed away it’s been three years and three months, so for three days we have like open house, it’s a Slovo and Huzzuk custom, and everybody has to come in and eat and drink.” So they went in.
There were a lot of people in the big old-fashioned kitchen at the end of the hall; the air was filled with savory smells, the stove was covered with pots—big pots, too. One of the older women asked something in a foreign language; immediately a younger man snapped, “Oh for Crise sake! Speak United States!” He had a dark and glowering face. His name, Fred learned, was Nick. And he was a relative.
“This is beef stomach stuffed with salami and hard-boiled eggs,” said a woman. “Watch out, I’ll pick away the string.”
“You gonna eat that stuff?” asked Nick. “You don’t hafta eat that stuff; I’ll getcha a hamburger from Ma’s Lunch.”
Ma’s Lunch! And its french-fried grease! And Ma, with frowsy pores that tainted the ambient air. “Thanks, Nick, this is fine,” said Fred.
Nick shrugged. And the talk flowed on.
By and by a sudden silence fell and there was a tiny sound from forward in the house. “Aintcha gonna feed the baby, f’Crise sake?” cried Nick. His wife struggled to rise from a chair crowded behind the table, but “old Mrs. Brakk,” who was either Wes’s mother or Wes’s aunt, gestured her not to; “I will do,” said she. And produced a baby bottle and a saucepan and filled the pan at the sink. There was a movement as though to take one of the heavy cook pots off the stove to make room to warm the bottle, but the dowager Mrs. Brakk said a word or two, and this was not done. Perhaps only Fred noticed that she moved toward a small pile of baby clothes and diapers in a niche, as though she wanted to bring them with her, but Fred noticed also that her hands were full. So he picked them up and indicated that he would follow.
“Thank you, gentleman,” she said. She gave him, next, an odd glance, almost as though she had a secret, of which she was very well aware and he was utterly ignorant. Odd, yes; what was it? Oh well.
In her room, “You never see a Slovo stove,” Mrs. Brakk said. It was not a question. It was a fact. Until that moment he had never heard of a Slovo stove. Now he gave it a glance, but it was not interesting, so he looked away; then he looked back down at it. Resting on a piece of wood, just an ordinary piece of wood, was a sort of rack cut from a large tin can, evidently not itself brought from Europe by whichever Slovo brought the stove. On top of the rack was something black, about the length and width of a book, but thinner. Stone? Tentatively he touched a finger to it. Stone… or some stonelike composition. It felt faintly greasy.
“You got to put the black one on first,” Mrs. Brakk said. However glossy black the old woman’s hair, wrinkled was her dark face. She put on the saucepan of water and put the baby’s nursing bottle in the pan. “Then the pot and water. Then you slide, underneath, the blue one.” This, “the blue one,” was about the size and thickness of a magazine, and a faint pale blue. Both blue and black pieces showed fracture marks. As she slid “the blue one” into the rack, Mrs. Brakk said, “Used to be digger. Both. Oh yeah. Used to could cook a whole meal. Now, only room for a
liddle sorcepan; sometimes I make a tea when too tired to go in kitchen.”
Fred had the impression that the black piece was faintly warm; moving his finger to the lower piece (a few empty inches were between the two), he found that definitely this was cool. And the old woman took up the awakening child and, beaming down, began a series of exotic endearments: “Yes, my package; yes, my ruby stone; yes, my little honey bowl—” A slight vapor seemed to arise from the pan, and old Mrs. Brakk passed into her native language as she crooned on; absolutely, steam was coming from the pan. Suddenly Silberman was on his knees, peering at and into the “stove.” Moistening a fingertip as he had seen his mother and aunts do with hot irons a million times, he applied it to “the blue piece,” below. Mrs. Brakk gave a snort of laughter. The blue piece was still cool. Then he wet the fingertip again and, very gingerly, tested the upper “black piece.” It was merely warm. Barely warm. The pan? Very warm. But the steam continued to rise, and the air above pan and bottle was… well… hot Why not?
She said, “You could put, between, some fingers,” and, coming over, baby pressed between one arm and bosom, placed the fingers of her free hand in between the upper and lower pieces. He followed her example. It was not hot at all in between; it was not even particularly warm.
Silberman peered here and there, saw nothing more, nothing (certainly) to account for… well… anything… She, looking at his face, burst out laughing, removed the lower slab of stone (if it was stone), and set it down, seemingly, just anywhere. Then she took the bottle, shook a few drops onto her wrist and a few drops onto Fred Silberman’s wrist—-oh, it was warm all right. And as she fed the baby, calling the grandchild her necklace, her jewel ring, her lovely little sugar bump, he was suddenly aware of two things: one, the bedroom smelled rather like Tanta Pesha’s: airless, and echoing faintly with a cuisine owing nothing to either franchised foods or Fanny Farmer’s cookbook (even less to Ma’s Lunch!); two, that his heart was beating very, very fast. He began to speak, heard himself stutter.
“Buh-buh-but h-h-how does it wuh-work? work? How—” Old Grandmother Brakk smiled what he would come to think of as her usual faint smile; shrugged. “How do boy and girl love? How does bird fly? How water turn to snow and snow turn to water? How?”
Silberman stuttered, waved his arms and hands; was almost at once in the kitchen; so were two newcomers. He realized that he had long ago seen them a hundred times. And did not know their names, and never had.
“Mr. Grahdy and Mrs. Grahdy,” Wesley said. Wes seemed just a bit restless. Mrs. Grahdy had an air of, no other words would do, faded elegance. Mr. Grahdy had an upswept moustache and a grizzled Vandyke beard; he looked as though he had once been a dandy. Not precisely pointing his finger at Fred, but inclining it in Fred’s general direction, Mr. Grahdy said, “How I remember your grandfather well! [“Great-uncle.”] His horse and wagon! He bought scraps metal and old newspaper. Sometimes sold eggs.”
Fred remembered it well, eggs and all. Any other time he would have willingly enough discussed local history and the primeval Silbermans; not now. Gesturing the way he had come, he said, loudly, excitedly, “I never saw anything like it before! How does it work, how does it work? The—the”—what had the old one called it?—“the Slovo stove?”
What happened next was more than a surprise; it was an astonishment. The Grahdy couple burst out laughing, and so did the white-haired man in the far corner of the kitchen. He called out something in his own language, evidently a question, and even as he spoke he went on chuckling. Mr. and Mrs. Grahdy laughed even harder. One of the Brakk family women tittered. Two of them wore embarrassed smiles. Another let her mouth fall open and her face go blank, and she looked at the ceiling: originally of stamped tin, it had been painted and repainted so many times that the design was almost obscured. There was a hulking man sitting, stooped (had not Fred seen him, long ago, with his own horse and wagon—hired, likely, by the day, from the old livery stable—calling out Ice! Ice! in the summer, and Coal! Coal! in the winter?); he, the tip of his tongue protruding, lowered his head and rolled his eyes around from one person to another. Wesley looked at Silberman expressionlessly. And Nick, his dark face a-smolder, absolutely glared at him. In front of all this, totally unexpected, totally mysterious, Fred felt his excitement flicker and subside.
At length Mr. Grahdy wiped his eyes and said something, was it the same something, was it a different something? was it in Slovo, was it in Huzzuk? was there a difference, what was the difference? Merry and cheerful, he looked at Fred. Who, having understood nothing, said nothing.
“You don’t understand our language, gentleman?”
“No.”
“Your grandfather understood our language.”
“Yes, but he didn’t teach me.” Actually, Uncle Jake had taught him a few words, but Silberman, on the point of remembering anyway one or two of them, and quoting, decided suddenly not to. Uncle Jake had been of a rather wry and quizzical humor; who knew if the words really meant what Uncle Jake had said they did?
Wes’s sister (cousin?) said, perhaps out of politeness, perhaps out of a wish to change the subject, perhaps for some other reason—she said, “Mrs. Grahdy is famous for her reciting. Maybe we can persuade Mrs. Grahdy to recite?”
Mrs. Grahdy was persuaded. First she stood up. She put on a silly face. She put her finger in her mouth. She was a little girl. Her voice was a mimic’s voice. She became, successively: hopeful, coy, foolish, lachrymose, cheerful. From the company: a few chuckles, a few titters. Then she stopped playing with her skirts, and, other expressions leaving her face, the corners of her mouth turned down and she looked around the room at everyone. Some exclamations of, supposedly, praise were heard, and a scattered clapping of hands; Mrs. Grahdy silenced all this in a moment. For a second she stood there, poker-faced, stiff. Then she began a rapid recitation in what was obviously verse. Her face was exalted, tragic, outraged, severe: lots of things! How her arms and hands moved! How she peered and scouted! How she climbed mountains, swung swords. A voice in Fred’s ear said, half whispering, “This is a patriotic poem.” Mrs. Grahdy planted the flag on, so to speak, Iwo Jima. Loud cries from the others. Much applause. The patriotic poem was evidently over. The down-turned mouth was now revealed to be, not the mask of Tragedy, but the disciplined expression of one too polite to grin or smirk at her own success.
After a moment she turned to Silberman. “I know that not one word did you understand, but did the ear inform you the verses were alexandrines?”
He was hardly expecting this, scarcely he knew an alexandrine from an artichoke: and yet. Not pausing to examine his memory or to analyze the reply, he said, “Once I heard a recording of Sarah Bernhardt—” and could have kicked himself; surely she would feel he was taking the mickey out of her? Not at all. All phony “expression” gone, she made him a small curtsy. It was a perfectly done thing, in its little way a very sophisticated thing, an acknowledgment of an acceptable compliment, an exchange between equals. It made him thoughtful.
Grahdy: “So you didn’t understand what this Mr. Kabbaltz has asked?”—gesturing to the white-haired man in the far corner. Fred shook his head; if the question dealt with iambic pentameter, he would plotz. “This Mr. Kabbaltz has asked, the Slovo stove, you know, ‘Did it even get warm yet?’ Hoo, hoo, hoo!” laughed Mr. Grahdy, Mrs. Grahdy, Mr. Kabbaltz. Hoo, hoo, hoo!
Fred decided that ignorance was bliss; he turned his attention to the steaming bowl set before him as the people of the house dished out more food. Soup? Stew? Portage? He would ask no more questions for the moment. But could he go wrong if he praised the victuals? “Very good. This is very good.” He had said, evidently, the right thing. And in the right tone.—It was very good.
Mr. Grahdy again: “Your great-grandfather never send you to the Huzzuk-Slovo Center to learn language?”
“No, sir. Not there.”
“Then where he did send you?”
“To the Hebrew School, as they called it. To le
arn the prayers. And the Psalms.” Instantly again he saw those massive ancient great thick black letters marching across the page. Page after page. A fraction of a second less instantly Mr. Grahdy made the not quite pointing gesture, and declaimed. And paused. And demanded, “What is the second line? Eh?”
Silberman: “Mr. Grahdy, I didn’t even understand the first line.”
Surprise. “What? Not? But it is a Psalm. ” He pronounced the p and he pronounced the l. “Of course in Latin. So—?”
“They didn’t teach us in Latin.”
More surprise. Then, a shake of the head. Silberman thought to cite a Psalm in Hebrew, reviewed the words in his mind, was overcome with doubt. Was that a line from a Psalm?—and not, say, the blessing upon seeing an elephant?… or something? The Hebrew teacher, a half-mad failed rabbinical student, had not been a man quick with an explanation. “Read,” he used to say. “Read.”
More food was set out: meat, in pastry crust. Then (Mr. Grahdy): “When you will be here tomorrow? Perhaps I shall bring my violin—he pronounced it vee-o-leen—“and play something,”
“That would be nice”—Fred, noncommittally; and turning again to the food of the memorial feast, “Delicious!” said Fred.
“Is it warm yet?”—Mr. Grahdy. Hoo, hoo, hoo!—Mr. Grahdy, Mrs. Grahdy, Mr. Kabbaltz. People entered, talked, ate, left. Someone: “You’re old Jake Silberman’s grandson?” “Great-nephew.” By and by Fred looked up: Mr. Kabbaltz and the Grahdys were gone. For a moment he heard them just outside the door. Laughing. Footfalls. The gate closed; nobody seemed left but family members. And Fred. Silence. Someone said, “Well, there go the Zunks.” Someone else: “Don’t call them that. Call them Huzzuks.”
Wesley suddenly leaped up, almost toppling his chair. Began to bang his head against the wall. “I can take Chinks!” Bang. “I can take Japs!” Bang. “I can take Wops, Wasps, Heebs, and Micks!” Bang. Bang. Bang.