She attributed my confusion to childish pleasure and surprise, and gave me a very auntlike smile. “You tell him then. And tell him that all is forgiven between us.”
“Between you and Sam? He’ll be glad to hear that.”
Aunt Lucy chuckled to Rose at my charming belief that Sam could understand what I said. But I was sure hoping he could—that enough of his understanding had lasted—because it was going to have to be his decision. Aunt Lucy was going out for the morning, and I left her and Rose in the kitchen, discussing what to have for lunch.
Sam was snoring in his box. “Wake up, Sam.” He likes to have me wake him up by scratching his neck.
“Woof,” he said sleepily. He still was bleary-eyed, but seemed much better than when I had left him.
“Aunt Lucy says I can keep you.”
“Woof?”
“I mean—keep you as a dog.”
“Woof!” He jumped out of his box. And he was understanding, all right. “Woofwoofwoofwoofwoof!”
“All right, all right, Sam. Cool it now.” There’s such a difference between a yes woof and a no. “But you acted very badly last night. You acted—like a dog.”
“Woof,” he apologized and hung his head.
“You might be happier—”
“Woof!”
“It’s hard being a man. You may not be up to it—”
“Woof!” he declared.
“—and I’d love you just as much—”
“Woof. Wooooooof—” he pleaded and laid his head on top of my foot.
“Well, all right. But this is your last chance. I’ll get the spell. I’ve got to get Dooley out of the carpet anyway.”
I pulled a chair over in front of the closet, to reach the top compartment. I was wondering if I could say it right there and Dooley would just appear in my bedroom—or whether a better idea would be to go back to—
The top shelf was empty … No bone, no Aztec bowl, not any of my special things. And no Good-Luck Devil from Borneo.
“It’s gone—” I said, but couldn’t believe.
Sam started barking hysterically. No conversational woofing now—just pure canine panic at the thought that he might be trapped in himself for the rest of his life.
“Hush up, Sam!” I tried to put a plug in the volcano of fright that was erupting in my chest, too. “Rose may have only moved things around—”
But in the kitchen she shot down any hope I had. “That junk in the closet?”
“Yes, Rose. That junk.”
“You remember the day, a month or so ago, when you stayed out so late at night?”
“Yes—”
“Well, next morning, when you were gone, your aunt said there were going to be some changes made around here. And the first one was, I should throw out all those creepy things you lugged up from the Village.”
“Did you—?”
“Right down the incinerator.”
“But the statuette—with the hollow eyes—”
“That little old ugly idol?—it went down first of all.”
“Oh, my gosh!”
“What’s wrong with that animal?”
“Easy, Sam.” I tried to soothe him and stroked his head. “I have to think.”
* * *
All I could think of to do was go back to Lorenzo’s diaries. (I looked through the last couple of pages I’d taken from them. Instead of putting them in the closet, I’d just tucked them in my copy of The Hobbit. Save time, I thought.)
In the cab Sam was whining pitifully. The driver, who was a nice man, thought I was taking him to the veterinarian and kindly asked, “What’s wrong with your pooch?”
“Mister,” I said, “if I even tried to tell you, you’d take us both straight to the psycho ward at Bellevue.”
I kept petting Sam’s head, although it felt funny—knowing it had been a man’s head only yesterday.
We barged into the shop, which luckily was empty except for Madame S. But every browser in Greenwich Village couldn’t have stopped Sam or me that day. “Madame Sosostris, we’ve got to find—”
“Hi, Tim. And Sam—!”
“—that genie spell again!”
“When did Sam get back?”
“Never mind! Please help me, Madame S. You don’t know how important this is—”
“I don’t see why.” She shrugged. “That spell’s a bust.”
“No, it’s not!” There was nothing else to do. To help me she’d have to know the truth. “You know Dooley—?”
“Sure. Your aunt’s—”
“He’s a genie,” I said as factually as I could.
“And he moonlights as a chauffeur on the side?” She treated herself to a little chuckle.
“Don’t joke! This is critical. That’s how I smuggled him into the house. He came from a rug that’s up in the National Museum, and he got returned there last night—by that one word ‘Allah’—and it’s horrible for him. Because he’s already been in there a thousand years. But it’s even worse for Sam. I mean, Mr. Bassinger—”
“Mr. Bassinger?”
“Yes. Mr. Bassinger is Sam. That is—Sam is Mr. Bassinger. I mean—they were going to exterminate Sam, so my genie turned him into a man, and—”
“Timothy—” Madame Sosostris put her hand on my shoulder—“I’m going to fix you an Alka-Seltzer with some soothing nightshade—”
“Oh, I knew nobody would ever believe me!” I had to find some proof—and I did. “Madame Sosostris, you remember your last séance with the Willy sisters?”
“The best I ever—”
“Dooley did that. The Fiendish Laughter—impersonating Nelly Willy—everything. Has anything like that happened since?”
She thought for a minute and admitted, “No—”
“I don’t mean to put you down, Madame S.—sooner or later I’m certain you’ll have your breakthrough—but it was Dooley who did all that. And last night—the bracelet trick, with all those extra scarves. And since when have you been able to carry a marble egg as big as a dinosaur’s inside that turban of yours?”
The beautiful thing about Madame Sosostris is how quickly she believes.
One minute more and she held out her hand. “Put ’er there.” We shook. “To conjure a genie—wow!”
“So you see that we’ve got to find that spell.”
She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. “Let’s go!”
And we ransacked those books like bandits …
But nothing … Absolutely nothing … No way … Lorenzo had left England a few days after the last entry about Al-Hazred. And he hadn’t gone back to the British Museum again … Oh, why hadn’t I made a copy?…
“We’re licked,” I admitted into a silence that was crushing us like iron.
Sam was lying on the floor, crying. He was crying, too, although most dogs don’t cry—their eyes just water to wash out the junk. A last bit of Sam’s humanity left over, I suppose. As his smile had been its beginning.
“What a way to celebrate your thirteenth birthday.” Madame Sosostris sighed. “But then, it’s always been an evil number.”
“I should have stayed twelve forever,” I said.
My birthday party was really over now.
13
The National Museum
“There’s only one thing left,” I decided. “We have to go up to the National and talk to Mr. Dickinson. Naturally he’ll think it’s all nonsense, but maybe he’s got a good memory. In Arabic.” Better than me, I hoped. I couldn’t even remember the spell in English. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll tell Aunt Lucy that unless she flies me to England, I’ll jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.”
So into a taxi, the three of us … Up to the museum … I deposited Sam in the bushes again, the way I had last time. He fretted and woofed a grumble at me, because of being left behind on such an important occasion, but I got him settled at last.
And down to Mr. Dickinson’s office. “Now play it real cool, Madame S.,” I said. “This guy is a schol
arly type, and I’ll tell him—I’ll tell him you’re doing research on incantations—okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered, enjoying the conspiracy.
“Well, hello!” He recognized me right away. And seemed quite glad to see us, after all that broken crockery.
I made the introductions.
“Oh—incantations. Most interesting,” Mr. Dickinson allowed.
“Yeah. I’m a medium,” said Madame Sosostris. “I need all the spells I can get.”
His eyes began to quiz her dubiously, so I barged right in to the point. “Mr. Dickinson—that genie spell I brought in—do you happen to remember it?”
“Oh dear no! I have the worst memory in the world.” Great! “I have to leave myself a note to close the window.” Mr. Dickinson’s hair was a very strange thing. It was as if, when he got an idea, it tingled in those white puff balls on top of his ears. “But wait a minute. Was there something about a ‘lunar eye’?”
“Yes! yes! That comes back. What else—”
“Um-uh-er—” He rummaged through his mind, which was full of pieces of crockery. Then he shrugged and said, “I’m afraid that’s all I can recollect.”
“Oh, Lord, Mr. Dickinson—!”
“Where is this carpet anyway?” said Madame Sosostris.
“Upstairs. You’ve never seen it?”
“No.”
“Would you like to?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Dickinson, please! We’ve got to—”
“Now, now, my boy. Don’t exercise yourself so.” He made an aside to Madame Sosostris: “Marvelous imagination, the lad has!”
“Imagination, eh?” murmured Madame S.
Then he included me: “It can’t hurt just to look at the Wizard’s tapestry.”
But it did.
There was Dooley. I knew he was in there instantly—through his eyes. But they weren’t burning now, with rage or hatred or anything—they were pleading. Almost as sad as Sam’s … I couldn’t bear to look at them … And the room was full of gawking museumgoers, all staring up at poor Dooley and not even dreaming what they were seeing.
But Madame Sosostris knew. If she’d had any lingering doubts, they were gone by now. She recognized his face and shot me a wild excited look.
“Do you like it, Madame Sosostris?” asked Mr. Dickinson.
“It’s unbelievable!”
No teacher can keep from doing his thing when he’s got a willing audience. “The filagreed border is of special interest. It’s quite unlike any other of the period.”
“How?”
“Mr. Dickinson—” I was wringing out my brains like a dishcloth—“wasn’t ‘skin of night’ part of it, too?”
“Well, the elaboration of the floral motifs is so complex.” Absolutely ignored, I was, in his scholarly enthusiasm. “That leafy pattern unfolding along the top border, for instance—” He stopped.
“Yes?… Yes?” said Madame Sosostris.
But there are some silences you shouldn’t interrupt. I took her hand and squeezed it: quiet!
He made thinking noises. “Mmm. Hmm! Hmm-hmm!”
At last I couldn’t stand any more. “Mr. Dickinson—?”
“It’s really quite extraordinary.”
Through my heart there blew a little breeze of hope. “What’s—extraordinary, Mr. Dickinson?”
“You see that green vine—with the red vine running in back of it—?”
“Yes—”
“It’s been twisted to such a degree that it almost looks like Arabic script.”
“Oh, boy—”
“It isn’t really my field of research—”
“Mr. Dickinson, please!”
“Yes, there are some letters interwoven into it. Mmmmmmm—it’s the esoteric priestly language of the time of Haroun Al-Raschid. Even then it was almost obsolete.”
“Does it say anything?”
“Mm—‘Genie, formed of earth and sky—’”
“That’s the spell! The runes of his release.” In the carpet Dooley’s eyes changed, too, just like the quickening in my chest. They got bright as lightning. “Read the rest.”
“I can’t make it out—this is really amazing!—there’s a shadow on that side. Here, just a minute—” Nobody gets more worked up than a scholar on top of a big discovery. Mr. Dickinson herded everybody else from the room. “Sorry—beg pardon—this room is closed. So sorry—get along there, will you, please—we have some repairs to make.” When he’d pushed all the people out, he got a ROOM CLOSED sign from a corner and put it on the door. “Now help me take it down.”
“Take it down?” This was the National, after all.
“Yes, down!” Madame S. and I helped him lower the carpet to the floor. “This will make my reputation.” He took off his shoes and began to crawl around the border, peering down at that green vine. “Such a thrilling surprise!”
“You’re in for an even bigger one, brother!” Madame Sosostris got the feel of the magic, too, whipped off her sneakers, and started to pad around herself.
“‘Genie—’” he made it out slowly, with difficulty—“‘formed of earth and sky/skin of night, with lunar eye—’”
“Hold it!” I said. An all-too-familiar voice, desperately calling me, barked up from the floor below. “Don’t say any more. And don’t translate it. I’ll be right back.” I dashed out of the room and downstairs.
Sam hadn’t been able to stand it in the bushes one minute more. He’d followed a bunch of people up the museum steps and, mixing himself in their legs, had seen his chance and charged into the huge front hall.
“Dog!”—“Dog!”—“Hey! Stop that dog!”—“There’s a dog in here!”
The museum guards were in the biggest tizzy they’d enjoyed in years. Poor Sam—you’d have thought he was a mad vandal with a hammer. But with all those statues standing around, and the breakable vases, a dog in a museum is just about as welcome as the bull in the china shop.
As I came down the stairs, the uproar was on my left: the Roman rooms. The guards were all bumping into each other, shouting, “Where is he?”—“Where’s that dog?”—and the ordinary museumgoers were milling around, having fun at it all, and making it hard for the guards—thank heaven!
Something told me that Sam was there … No, not something: I smelled him. He’d taken to using a certain after-shave lotion while he was a man, and it stayed on when he relapsed.
To create a diversion I said to one guard, “Sir—I saw a dog in the Medieval Wing. He had his paws up on the base of the porcelain statuette of St. Sebastian—”
“Oh, my God!”
In a torrent of fear and excitement and thrill, everybody flowed out of the Roman room.
“Sam,” I whispered, “Sam—are you here?”
From behind one statue came a very quiet woof. And above the belly of the Reclining Venus, Sam’s head appeared.
“Why didn’t you stay outside? I think we’ve found—” Those guards were everywhere. “Get down!” I ordered, under my breath.
“Hey, kid—there’s no dog in the Medieval Wing. You sure you haven’t seen one in here?”
“A dog?” I got wide-eyed and cutesy and awful. But I had to keep them away from Sam.
“Yeah. A dog.”
Fortunately a marble statue of a Roman dog happened to be nearby. “Just him.” I grinned impishly.
“Thanks a lot!” The guard skulked and stalked out.
“We’ve got to get you out of here—”
“Mama!—there he is!” Some curious little kid was doing detective work on his own.
The people began to stampede in again.
“Run, Sam!”
Sam did some beautiful broken-field running and got through the crowd. He pretended to be heading for the Renaissance—but at the last minute I thought I saw him dodge off toward Ancient Egypt.
Anyway, the crowd was convinced he was pawing among the Botticellis and the Michelangelos, and that’s where they thundered … I’m sure t
hat every single one of them was enjoying this chase much more than the art they’d come to see.
I meandered, very casually, toward Ancient Egypt … Nobody was there … “Sam—?”
“Woof!”—from somewhere behind Bubastis, the cat goddess. She would have been outraged, too, if she’d known that this dog was hiding in back of her granite paws.
“I’ve got to hide you somewhere safe—”
“Woof!” he agreed.
“But where?” Over against the wall was the marble sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Tut-ankh—I don’t remember what. Its marble lid was half off so people could look inside. But they couldn’t see anything because it was dark in there. (The mummy was gone, by the way—it had been grave-robbed ages ago.) “It’ll have to do.”
I lifted Sam up and poured him into the sarcophagus. He grumbled and wiggled—after all, who would want to be stuffed into some old Egyptian king’s tomb—but when I got him down into the darkness, after a few suspicious sniffs, he settled in.
“Now stay there! And shut up!”
“Woof,” he promised quietly.
I went back upstairs—as invisibly as I could.
“Timothy!” Mr. Dickinson and Madame Sosostris were wading around in that carpet as if it were the beach at Riis Park. “This is truly amazing. We’ve found—”
“The spell, Mr. Dickinson! Did you get the spell?”
“Yes. And also—”
“Recite it, please. In Arabic.”
“But in addition to the spell—”
“Hurry, Mr. Dickinson!” I went over to the door, to make sure that no one could watch what was coming.
“Oh, all right. But I don’t see why this worthless rhyme should be of such vital interest to you. When I’ve discovered—”
“Just try.” My voice was being practical, but my heart was already into the magic. “Just do me a favor—and try!”
“Very well.” Mechanically he recited the spell, to humor my whim.
And Dooley shuddered up out of the carpet—in all his genie regalia. His arms, which had been lifted in fury a thousand years ago, reached down and scooped me up, and he gave me a bear hug to end all bear hugs. No magic in it, either—just strength.
“Little Master Timothy! I thought never to see you again—”
He put me down, and Madame Sosostris, who was bubbling with excitement, too, and dying to get in on our reunion, whacked him on the shoulders and said, “Welcome back, Dooley.”
The Genie of Sutton Place Page 11