The Enemy of My Enemy by Avram Davidson

"Lermencas is part of the modern world; Tarnis isn't.  The Volanth aren't.  But they are going to become part of it, from now on.  And eventually, either with Lermencasi help or without it, the Volanth are going to have what they ought to have: a share in running their own country."

Last year Joachim Boaz, creator of the Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations blog, made a generous donation of SF books to the MPorcius Library, and on and off I have been reading and talking your ear off about these artifacts of the speculative fiction of days gone by.  Today we look at another of these donations, Berkley Medallion X1341, The Enemy of My Enemy by Avram Davidson.  Davidson is one of those critically acclaimed authors I have had mixed feelings about, but about whom I have not yet abandoned all hope of liking.  So let's give this 1966 novel a shot.  Joachim wrote about The Enemy of My Enemy in 2016, and our man tarbandu at The PorPor Books Blog wrote about it three years earlier still, in 2013; you should check out what they have to say, but I,  having, more or less, forgotten their assessments, will refrain from rereading their reviews until I have read the book myself and drafted my own thoughts.

Planet Orinel was colonized by Earthmen some 1500 years ago, and today is home to a dazzling array of distinct and complex human and native cultures and ethnicities.  We spend Chapter One in the port city of Pemath, an overcrowded hive whose high tech skyscrapers have been crudely subdivided again and again over the centuries to accommodate the tiny homes and businesses of the city's millions of impoverished citizens.  (In a memorable opening scene a man rides a disused freight elevator which now serves as the residence of a wretched family who make their meager living by charging passengers a pittance.)  Pemath wallows in public and private corruption, with merchants expecting to lose a fifth or a quarter of all shipments of goods to various species of theft.

In Chapter Two we get a taste of Tarnis Town, where the elites frown on commerce and instead devote themselves to the arts of war, gardening, painting, and scholarship.  We meet two different scholars whose interests are centered on the hairy and brutish natives of Orinel, the Volanth, savages who occupy much of the Tarnis hinterland.  As there has been no international war on Orinel for centuries, it is also the Volanth who are the focus of the Tarnisi aristocracy's periodic and enthusiastic warmaking.

While Pemath is a multiethnic center of international and even interstellar trade, Tarnis is an isolationist island whose dealings with the larger world are erratic, which lays the foundation for one of the big science-fictiony elements of The Enemy of My Enemy's plot.  Jerrod Northi, an orphan who has risen to the position of one of Pemath's top organized crime bosses (piracy a specialty) must flee Pemath because somebody is trying to kill him.  He decides to go to Tarnis, because, in that wealthy and sophisticated land where he will face little business competition, he figures he can make money in ways more safe and more honest than hijacking merchant vessels.  To get through Tarnis's very strict immigration controls Jerrod must hire the services of the mysterious Craftsmen, who perform upon him radical cosmetic surgery--surgery which even changes his voice--and "hypno-indoctrination" that implants false memories into his mind.  The remainder of the novel (which consists of twelve chapters and 160 pages in total) takes place in Tarnis.

Jerrod, posing as a returned exile, integrates himself in Tarnisi high society, where he acquires a girlfriend and sets up a lucrative import business.  When a Volanth uprising erupts he is called up as a member of the militia and participates in a gruesome punitive campaign against the natives, witnessing the aftermath of atrocities committed by the barbaric aborigines and, at first hand, the equally shocking Tarnisi reprisals.  Jerrod may have escaped from filthy and corrupt Pemath, but he has not escaped from the cruelty and horror of human life.

"They say, you--all of you--you always say, the Volanth are like animals.  And I've seen how they can be, and I know it.  But I've seen the Tarnisi like animals as well.  And so I see nothing to choose between them, and it's made all this land I longed so long for, it's made it abhorrent and abominable to me."

After this horrible episode Jerrod gets involved in politics, working, tentatively, in the interests of the exploited and abused Volanth and the Tarnisi landless class, as well as the ghettoized "Quasi," people of mixed Volanth and human race.  This work dovetails with the interests of the Craftsmen to whom Jerrod is beholden; they start calling in favors, and Jerrod finds himself helping other bogus "exiles" into positions of importance, setting the groundwork for a revolution against the Tarnisi aristocracy.  As the final third of the novel begins, Jerrod (while reading a book of economic history!) comes across a clue that indicates that the Craftsmen are agents of Lermencas (a country Davidson hasn't told us much about before, apparently a great power whose wealth comes from international trade) and explains why the Craftsmen want to overthrow the Tarnisi aristocracy--their lives of sophisticated leisure, punctuated by periodic wars against the wild Volanth, are terribly inefficient, leaving much land suitable for agriculture underused or even barren.  The Lermencasi hope to end the wars and cultivate all that unexploited wilderness, employing the Volanth as farm laborers.

Additional revelations follow as the novel builds to a climax.  Jerrod learns that he himself is a Quasi when a hairy witch doctor in the ghetto works his psychic powers on him, unearthing suppressed memories.  Quasi activists don't want to hand Tarnis over to the Lermencasi but to run it themselves, and so they call in help from Baho, another country Davidson gives us only hints of--the Bahon are in a Cold War with the Lermencasi, and are apparently of an authoritarian, anti-individualistic bent.  Jerrod, who is able to move in both Quasi and Tarnisi circles, who has connections to the Craftsmen and Pemath and of course his nautical and piratical skills, becomes a leader of the Quasi/Volanth rebellion that sweeps Tarnis and demolishes the beautiful Tarnisi civilization; he strives to not only liberate those with native blood from their oppressors, but to make sure the new Tarnis is not merely a puppet of the Lermencasi or Bahon.

I'm wracking my brain, but I can't recall any
giant worms appearing in this novel; maybe they
are in the accompanying short story by
Joe Hensley, "Alvin's Witch"

Davidson offers dense descriptions of all aspects of life in Tarnis and Pemath: rituals, social mores, cultural touchstones, etc.  This "world-building" is thick and convincing, and more or less interesting; readers may enjoy trying to figure out Davidson's models: Tarnisi culture seems to share much with that of Japan, and its politics perhaps owe something to that period of Roman history in which the Gracchi are prominent, while the plight of the Quasi may be informed by the experience of African-Americans who are able to "pass" as white.  But is The Enemy of My Enemy entertaining?  While the novel has adventure and detective elements like a chase scene, battles, guys finding clues, guys getting captured and escaping, guys having their air car sabotaged, etc., the story is heavy rather than thrilling, tragic and sad rather than light-hearted and fun; the pace is kind of slow and none of the many characters is really compelling (I found it a little challenging keeping all of them straight, to be honest.)  Jerrod is tormented by a lifetime of intimate experience with poverty, crime and inhumane behavior, and Davidson offers us numerous references to the murder of children and the rape and murder of women, including a shocking description of a maggot-ridden corpse.  The scenes of horror and violence are not sensational or exploitative but literary and depressing.

The Enemy of My Enemy is a serious book that is perhaps easier to admire than to enjoy.  Davidson addresses issues like racial and class conflict and the Cold War, but not in a satirical or cathartic way; he doesn't point fingers or present solutions or engage in wish fulfillment that flatters the prejudices of readers or satisfies their revenge fantasies.  The world changes, but working the change is dirty and sordid rather than glorious, and much that was fine is swept away, including Jerrod's girlfriend, killed by Volanth fighters when they destroy the city with the disintegrator weapons they have been provided by the Bohan.  Davidson describes the processes of history coldly rather than romanticizing them, and his book is sad but not actually moving because Jerrod doesn't really come to life, and neither do any of the other characters.

I'd say The Enemy of My Enemy is OK, a tick or two above acceptable.

Looking at their reviews, I see that tarbandu and Joachim had much less patience for The Enemy of My Enemy than I did; both of them gave it only two out of five stars and use words like "bland" and "dull" and "slow" to describe it.  Joachim compares The Enemy of My Enemy to Jack Vance novel, to Davidson's detriment, and such a comparison is appropriate enough, as baroque societies and divergent human evolution and rogues and semi-intelligent autochthons and detective fiction devices all loom large in Vance's body of work.  I can't really disagree with most of tarbandu and Joachim's specific criticisms, and would certainly bet that any random novel by Jack Vance would be more fun than The Enemy of My Enemy, but I think they are mistaken in looking at The Enemy of My Enemy as an adventure caper which has failed.  I think Davidson's project is to ruminate on conflict between classes and between races and to illustrate the tragedy that is history, and I think that project is a qualified success.

**********

The Enemy of My Enemy is the tenth book from the Joachim Boaz Wing of the MPorcius Library which I have read and discussed.  Here's a list of the first nine, with handy links to my blog posts about them:

Slave Planet by Laurence M. Janifer
Three Novels by Damon Knight
Dark Dominion by David Duncan
New Writings in SF6 edited by John Carnell
Tama of the Light Country by Ray Cummings
Tama, Princess of Mercury by Ray Cummings
A Brand New World by Ray Cummings
Ultimatum in 2050 A.D. by Jack Sharkey
The Power of X by Arthur Sellings