by Paul Theroux
He smiled at our applause and lifted a square pane of glass onto the little table and tapped his knuckles on it, and then placed a circular crystal fishbowl on that, giving it a little spin. To the water in the fishbowl he added the red wine from the second pitcher and he carefully wrapped the top of the fishbowl with clinging plastic. He sloshed the red liquid to show us it was sealed, and as it moved in the fishbowl the mingled water and wine had a swimming stripeyness, like a drowned flag.
Millroy rolled up his sleeve again. Just the sight of his muscular arm seemed to be a warning that something big was coming. And it was. He shoved his bare arm through the plastic and pulled out a length of silk streamers, and kept pulling until it was hundreds of feet long and a yard wide, and we clapped like mad.
But he was not finished. Music played – Stars and Stripes Forever – as he dug into the fishbowl again and hauled out a succession of banners that turned out to be a huge American flag which he hung up on the back of the stage, all this patriotic bunting covering the back wall, where there had only been empty space before. And he reached into the folds of the enormous flag and using both arms lifted out a live bald eagle, which he held up for us to see.
Our cheering drowned the music, but Millroy did not seem to hear it. He looked dignified, holding the flapping eagle, and he turned to me, and stared as he had before, and leaned over to where I sat in the second row.
Popping my thumb out of my mouth made the sound of a cork being yanked from a bottle.
Even through the cheering crowds his voice was distinct, as he said, ‘I want to eat you.’
So I stayed for his second show.
2
Waiting for Millroy’s second act to begin I walked around the fairground, looked at quilts, watched draft horses pulling slabs of cement, peeked at the baby pigs that had been born at the Swine Show tent earlier that morning. Yet after what I had seen, nothing else looked the least bit interesting to me – not Robinson’s Racing Pigs, not Popcorn the Wonder Dog climbing a ten-foot ladder and jumping off, not the giant stuffed panda prizes at the Skee-Ball stand. I spent the last of my money on a root beer float, a chilli dog, and a twist of fried dough, and then went back for Act Two.
There were boxes and cabinets on stage, their flat surfaces shiny with sequins and painted red and decorated with signs of the zodiac. What caught my eye was a wickerwork coffin with belts in the middle and handles at each end, a lovely object so finely woven that when Millroy heaved it up slowly it stretched and mewed like a live thing that had been disturbed.
‘Know what the word “tangibilized” means?’ Millroy asked.
We said no in a sort of moan.
‘I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to need some volunteers. Why more than one? Well, this might not work out. Might lose one. Might need a replacement.’
I was laughing against my thumb when Millroy took a stride towards me.
‘How about you, miss?’
In the same movement he lifted his hand and pointed to me, near enough for me to take hold of his finger, which I did, as he eased me out of my seat. He led me to the stage with his hot damp hand on mine. Was this magician nervous and if so why? It made me think again about his tricks. With a sweaty hand like that he might not do them right.
‘And this is your friend?’ he said, and beckoned another girl with his outstretched finger. She was younger than me, but about my size, and was black and wore jelly shoes.
I had never seen this girl before but we were both so nervous we kept our mouths shut and stared at the wooden floor of the stage while the crowd of people laughed at us.
‘Something I want you to do for me,’ Millroy said, leading the girl by the hand. ‘But first, what’s your name?’
‘Zula Firkins.’
‘Lovely little name. You’ve been eating marshmallows.’
‘Tons of them.’
‘Too bad. Now just hop into this basket, Zula, and we’ll get started.’
‘You going to do anything to me?’ the girl asked, screwing up one eye.
‘Not a thing, Zula,’ Millroy said. ‘I just want you to experience the interior of this Indian basket. I won this basket in a psychic duel with a saddhu some years ago in the pink princely province of Rajasthan, in India.’
But as soon as Zula Firkins was lying inside the coffin-shaped wicker basket and the lid was shut tight and the straps buckled, Millroy opened a box that was filled with swords. He drew out a long glittering one, that looked like the sword he had stuck down his throat that morning. He slashed it in a circle over his head, whipping the air, then he plucked a piece of wicker off the basket and whittled it smaller to show how sharp the sword was, and clamped his teeth on this toothpick. Everyone laughed in fear and excitement, and you thought of Zula Firkins flopped on her back inside the basket.
‘Watch me,’ he said.
He raised this sword over the basket, and then drove it into the middle, ka-shook, right up to its handle. He picked up another sword and did it again, and this one went in with a tearing of wicker, like someone slashing Shredded Wheat.
‘Go ahead. Take a sword and stick it in. What did you say your name was?’
‘Jilly Farina.’
‘You had a snack, Jilly. Root beer and fried dough.’ He inhaled. ‘And a hot dog.’
People laughed, but how did he know? I said, ‘I was wicked hungry.’
‘Weenie worship,’ he said. ‘That’s the worst part of county fairs. And what happened to your legs?’
Bruised when I had been thrashed with a strap by Gaga over a broken butter dish, but I hesitated to say so.
‘Never mind – don’t tell me,’ Millroy said. ‘I can’t stand violence. Now just pick up a blade, sugar, and start stabbing this basket.’
No eyelashes gave him eyes that were so pale and attentive that his gaze did not stop at my face but went so deep into me I felt he knew my whole life and every pure secret and sorrowful joy in my heart. He handed me a sword, which was heavier than I expected, and I pushed it through the long wicker basket into the thick body of Zula Firkins and it went slow as though making a hole, like a knife into meat.
‘Take that,’ Millroy said. ‘And that. And – oh, gee – something’s leaking out of the basket. Jilly, that gooey stuff – you suppose it’s blood?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, not wanting to look down, and the crowd howled at me.
‘Zula – you all right in there?’ Millroy called out.
No voice nor any sound came from the basket which was now bristling with swords.
‘I’ve been doing this trick for years,’ Millroy said, ‘and it’s only gone wrong a few times. I hope to holy heck that this isn’t another of them. What do you think, Jilly?’
Trying to shrug my narrow shoulders only made me feel smaller. I said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘I just love that,’ Millroy said. ‘Matter of life and death! “Dunno.” ’
His perfect mimicking of my voice and the way I blinked made me feel – not weak, but secure, protected – as though he had power over me.
‘Let’s look inside this Indian basket,’ he said. ‘That’s the only sure way to find out. Undo those buckles, Jilly, like a good sport.’
I crouched down and unfastened the straps, and then Millroy lifted the lid, propping the basket up. It was empty except for the sword blades, six of them, sticking through the wicker every which way and smeared sticky red.
‘Zula’s gone,’ Millroy said. ‘Zula’s disappeared!’
Humming insincere sounds of pity in his sinuses he yanked the swords out and wiped them clean with a bloody rag.
Millroy said, ‘You’re going to have to go look for her, Jilly. Think you can do that?’
‘I’m wicked nervous.’
He smiled at that and then whispered in a kindly way to me, ‘Let’s roll, sugar – boot it, you’ll be fine.’
It w
as my first step into the unknown at Millroy’s command and even then – more than climbing into a basket – it seemed like my willing but ignorant descent into a dark tunnel in which I trusted him to make me safe until I emerged from the other side, jarred and shrunk by a blinding light, into a space he controlled like a king yet one I had never known before. I hesitated, because the alternative was my retreating the way I had come, back to Gaga’s on the awful bus, back to my room, my small bed and my posters. Millroy’s eyes were on me, but I knew the choice was mine.
The thing creaked as I stepped in, and it went dark as the lid came down on top of me. I lay there holding my belly with one hand and sucking my thumb and thinking, Let’s roll, sugar – boot it, you’ll be fine. Next thing I knew Millroy was talking loudly to the crowd and I was being shaken into a cloth bag, head first, pitch dark, dusty, and no end to it, like crawling through a stitched-up grain sack, a suffocating dream of narrowness, with death at one end and birth at the other.
Meanwhile, Millroy was calling out, ‘Now you go find Zula, honey. She’s down there somewhere. And just to give you some ventilation I’m going to stick some swords into this basket – open it up a little.’
Ka-shook! Ka-shook!
I heard the blades going in, slicing through the wicker, but I did not feel a thing, only sniffed the thin dusty darkness, and still Millroy was talking.
‘Strange thing, losing a little girl. Be pretty darned strange if we lost both of them. Ha! But let’s have a look –’
The lid creaked open – I heard it not far off, and then I heard the crowd laugh in relief and surprise.
‘Why, hello there, Zula,’ he said. ‘Now you know the meaning of tangibilized. But where’s our friend Jilly?’
In a sulky voice the small girl said, ‘She ain’t no friend of mine,’ and I imagined her climbing out of the basket, the wicker creaking against her knees.
‘Let’s have another look,’ Millroy said.
The lid crunched, the audience groaned, and in my darkness I heard Millroy saying, ‘I’ve had serious lacerations, I’ve had puncture wounds, I’ve had splinters. But this is my first disappearance.’ He sounded worried and helpless. ‘Maybe she’s behind the table – no. Or the curtain – or this box. No, she’s gone, folks. She booted it. I am very sorry. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.’
I’m right in here! I yelled. But it was like the dream in which you panic yet your screech stays in your mouth. I tried again but I sensed that the sound was trapped inside the bag, if it was a bag.
Things went quiet, and after a while, I felt myself being hoisted gently off the floor and carried. When the bag was open I had to squint because of the brightness, the way hamsters do when they are born, blinded and squirming. I was in a small room, a trailer I knew by its tin walls and its narrowness, like the cabin of a sailboat, but a dog barking outside, the hurdy-gurdy music from the fairground and in the distance Chubby Checker singing Come on baby, let’s do the Twist, the evening show.
‘Time to eat,’ Millroy said, ‘and no weenie worship.’
The fragrance on his fingers was a small cut-open orangey fruit which he was holding to my nose.
‘Kind of revives you, doesn’t it?’
Filling my nostrils, it entered my head and soothed it with the sweetness of a blown-open blossom.
‘Comfort me with apples,’ he said. ‘They knew what they were talking about. Song of Solomon. Two five. By apple they meant apricot, which this is – here, have a bite.’
He put it into my mouth and watched me while I chewed it.
There was another stronger odor clinging in the close-together cupboards of the room, and Millroy knew I was wondering.
‘Pottage,’ he explained.
He passed his fingers over my face.
‘Because you don’t need meat in your mouth.’
I blinked at him to show I was listening and not frightened.
‘Or meat in your body,’ he added. He was smiling, inhaling, enjoying the odors. ‘Breads. Grains. Bitter herbs. Infusions. Soups. The odd spice.’
Chanting this list he might have worried me the way you are when a strong bald stranger with a mustache over his mouth blocks your way and utters a garbled sentence and you feel he is insane. Yet I was soothed as though by a promise of well-being and, still with the taste of the apricot on my tongue, sensed a hunger for the food he mentioned rise like yearning in my body and I wanted to eat.
Setting a steaming bowl of thick reddish paste on the table next to me, Millroy smiled again.
‘Parched pulses,’ he said. ‘They knew a thing about fiber.’
I ate two spoonfuls and felt more secure.
‘I don’t eat anything with a face,’ Millroy said.
Thinking hard, I said, ‘I love fried clams and quahogs and scallops.’
He muttered quow-hawgs. He muttered skawlips. He smiled. And I felt as I had in the show tent, when he had imitated the way I spoke – overwhelmed but protected by him, made safe by the way he knew me.
‘And I don’t eat anything with a mother,’ he said.
‘Sounds good,’ I said, but what did that mean?
‘I suppose we’ll have to call your mother and tell her you’ll be late.’
‘I don’t have a mother,’ I said.
He stroked his mustache the way you stroke a cat to calm it.
‘Mumma passed on,’ I said and I touched my face the way I always did when I said the word. He saw me do this and understood. ‘I have a grandmother.’
‘What’s your granny like?’
‘Everyone calls her Gaga.’
‘I know the type,’ he said. ‘And I know she’s not very kind to you’ – he traced the welts on my shins with his fingertips and just his touch seemed to soothe them.
‘She thrashes me,’ I said. ‘Gumpy used to stop her but he passed on too.’
‘I’ll come up with something,’ Millroy said, and he sighed.
‘She thinks I’m with Dada tonight.’
‘And where’s Dada?’
‘Drunk,’ I said.
‘What does he do when he’s sober?’
‘A whole bunch of stuff,’ I said.
‘Mumma, Dada, Gumpy, Gaga. The front-porch folks from Hell City, USA – everyone’s family. I know these people well,’ Millroy said, and he drew another long breath. ‘Maybe you would be happier here with me?’
His eyes were huge and damp and gleamingly mirrored my own face.
‘Go on, angel, eat some more.’
‘I can’t,’ I said, choking a little, and still with unchewed food in my mouth, I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to swallow until you tell me where I’m supposed to sleep.’
My gagging gave me tears in my eyes, which Millroy could have misunderstood.
‘In your own sweet safe room,’ he said. ‘Will you stay?’
‘If you promise not to hurt me, and if you teach me some magic.’
Millroy took my hand – did not grip it but let it rest on his soft fingers the way he had held the fragrant apricot.
‘I’ll never hurt you. We’ll be strong, and we’ll always be friends,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re thinking. But don’t worry, I’m not a nut-bag.’
3
Swallowed up by this stranger Millroy was how I felt that night in the darkness of the trailer in my own locked room, and because I had been swallowed I felt different here, as though I existed but was blind and blundering and had to be led around in this stomach. It was not as simple as his saying We’ll be friends and going to sleep. He said the choice was mine, I could call Gaga and tell her where I was, I could phone the police, I could get up and go home the next morning. But I was so sleepy.
‘I don’t want to let you go,’ he had said. ‘I’ve been waiting half my life for you.’
Saying that, Millroy the Magician looked human and weak and whiney in a way that
I understood better than magic. Even without touching me he was tugging at me.
‘And I don’t want to leave this town without you.’
A person seeing me inside this strange man’s trailer would have told me I was stupid, but no – I felt safer here than I ever had at Gaga’s. There was something about the clean bright room and the good food he had served – I had never seen or tasted anything like it before and it had calmed me and made me trust him. There were no bad smells in the trailer, and it was quiet, it was clean, no clocks, no mirrors, no television set.
‘Why not sleep on it?’
His eyes settled on me again and held me in their motion, and as they cooled from gray to blue I began to dissolve in their yawning pupils and wished only to lie down and let myself fall through the deepness of slumber.
Sleepily I watched him step past me and, sliding a low drawer from the wall, he flapped out its hinged sides and tipped over its front until he had a shelf, which he propped and called a bed. In a false bottom he revealed a mattress and bedding. He folded out a partition like a pair of shutters, and in a matter of seconds he had created a cubicle. It was like one of those collapsing boxes or cabinets, like the Indian basket he used on stage to make solid objects disappear.
‘You will be safe here,’ he said.
Fool, most people would have said to me, but I knew better, I felt only grateful, and I knew that if there was a risk I had to take it. He was opening a door and nodding for me to step through. I took the step, I shut the door, I locked it, I lay down, and that was when I realized that I had been swallowed and that things would never be the same again.
He was outside, on another shelf, in another cubicle, also in darkness. At first I thought he was dreaming, and maybe he was, but he was speaking to me, his voice muffled in a lovely rumble.
‘Something has happened to us,’ he said. ‘Yesterday I was just a solitary man who did tricks at a county fair, and I needed someone to trust me. I found you, and now I am a man with responsibilities. And yesterday you were just a child.’
He released a long yearning breath that narrowed to a sigh, drawing itself fine like a wire that found its way through the cracks in my cabinet.