by Paul Theroux
‘But I am glad you saw it, angel,’ Millroy said. ‘You had to.’
Mister Phyllis had seemed strong, as people do when they are in charge, but it had not taken much to destroy him, and so I realized how weak he had always been.
‘Some fresh fruit, a bit of that melon, would do him an awful lot of good right now,’ Millroy said. ‘His blood-sugar level must be very low. You can tell.’
This was later in the morning, while Millroy and I were in the executive conference room, waiting for the verdict about Monday’s show. With Mister Phyllis gone, a program emergency had arisen. There was a live Paradise Park every weekday morning from eight to nine. Would Uncle Dick take over the show, or would a whole new format be proposed?
‘I’m glad you’re here, angel. Can you see how I’m right at home in this room?’ Millroy said.
He had a method of levitating tables with his fingertips, and this he did while he was speaking. Up went the long conference table, and as it shivered in the air for a few moments, Millroy made a spider of his fingers on the table-top and pushed it slowly down with his fingertips.
His magic sometimes made me nervous. This was one of those times. I never wondered whether the table would crash down, but I felt flustered when I thought that at any moment Otis or Miss Spitler or Mr Mazzola might open the door and see their mahogany conference table three feet off the floor. It was not that I was embarrassed or fearful, but was it right to work magic with someone else’s table?
‘Don’t worry,’ Millroy said. ‘Work magic is all you can do with someone else’s stuff. You can’t do anything better with it.’
Lowering the table into place, he said that at the moment everyone was probably worried about the show – losing Mister Phyllis – but that when he began doing it they would be very calm, and glad that Mister Phyllis was gone.
‘But it wasn’t me. He pulled the chain.’
Millroy was stroking his mustache with his long slender fingers as he thought this over.
‘There was so much that I could have done. I get scared when I contemplate the power of it.’ He made a thoughtful kissing sound against his fingertips. ‘I could have destroyed him. But that would have been a devilish thing to do. Instead – seeing straight through him – I let him destroy himself.’
Millroy raised his eyes to me, and they were the happiest blue I had ever seen.
‘That’s what God does. He doesn’t punish us. He watches us – and there is something terrible in the brilliance of his steady gaze, like a light searching our hearts. That’s how he lets us punish our own selves.’
He was smiling as he took my hand.
‘I was merely an instrument of his power, and you were a reliable witness.’
My small damp hand rested in his large dry palm, and he seemed to weigh it appreciatively as he lifted it, as though my hand was a baby vegetable.
‘That is why I need you, angel,’ Millroy said. ‘Not now, but some day you will have to tell what you have seen. I want you to remember everything.’
I said, ‘But you did do something to Mister Phyllis.’
‘Not much.’
‘Was it magic?’
Millroy shook his head.
‘Animal magnetism,’ he said, looking around the empty conference room. ‘Call it Dicktronix.’
Bright daylight was framed in the window and dazzled like something beautiful spilled on the long polished table. Right now, the sunlight seemed odd to me, because normally we were on our way back to Buzzards Bay at this time of the morning. We arrived at the studio just at daybreak, when the sky was pink or gray, the clouds – the whole Boston sky – like cat’s fur, and all the streets damp and blacker with the night’s dew. Early in the dim light of these fall mornings, Boston seemed vague and unfinished, but by the time the show was over, the day had turned hot and bright, the sun was over the harbor, and the city seemed old and overbuilt. Then, Millroy was eager to leave – to be back at the trailer for food and facilities.
‘I can’t find anything to eat in this city,’ Millroy said.
He brought out two hunks of bread and a honeycomb, and made a sandwich of them, which he broke in half for us to share. As always he ate slowly, chewing carefully, as though examining each bite, concentrating on the taste. It was not like eating at all, but testing with his mouth.
He ate, looking at the door where the show’s producers were holding their emergency meeting.
‘They’re trying to decide whether I can do the job.’ He munched a bite of honeycomb sandwich. ‘They’re wondering whether I can fill Mister Phyllis’s shoes.’ He swallowed, and smiled. ‘His tinky-winky shoes.’
‘It was kind of sad, seeing him go,’ I said, and saw again the little old man in the striped sweater, limping away, carrying his overweight cat.
‘Like death,’ Millroy said. But he said it briskly, without much feeling. ‘Just like death. How do I know?’ He took another bite of the sandwich and chewed it, nodding at me. ‘Because I’ve been there – I died.’
He became very attentive, waiting to see what that word would do to me. I just blinked and let him go on, because I knew he wanted to talk about the day he died.
Day he what?
‘Remember how I told you that prophets and messengers are tested with all sorts of temptations and sufferings?’
I said no, he had not.
‘Remember how I told you I was fat? Cheeks out like this? Hamburger face? Fat voice? Breathless? People mooing and throwing food at me?’
He said all this lightly, nibbling the edges of the honeycomb sandwich.
‘I was so fat I should have had numbers on my back. People told me to jog or use a rowing machine. I lasted about five seconds. They let me off the hook – claimed I was exercise intolerant.’
He sat at the far end of the conference table and stared down its gleaming length, remembering.
‘How was I to know that I was trapped in the darkness of my body?’
‘You told me about that,’ I said.
‘But why didn’t the doctor find me abnormal and realize that I was doomed?’
What I was wondering was, why is Millroy smiling?
‘Because the doctor was fat,’ he said brightly. ‘And he smoked. Imagine his fingers – Smoker’s Fingers – poking me and trying to find something wrong. He scanned my gallbladder and found nothing wrong. Why? Because it was plugged solid. Single stones didn’t appear. It was one solid mass of stones.’
He had now finished his sandwich. He was dabbing at crumbs with a damp fingertip, tidying the shiny surface of the table.
‘One morning I died. You think it’s going to be a huge earthquake, with music. But it was no great event – I had been dying for years. I just slipped under. My heart stopped – no blood could get through the fat in my arteries. Call it heartburn – that’s what it felt like.’
He stood up looking so strong it was impossible for me to imagine him any other way, and yet I saw this other man he was describing, lying in bed, like a great heavy heap.
‘No one tried seriously to revive me. Why should they bother when they could use me for spare parts? My eyes and liver were still functional. They could transplant my corneas. They’d bury the rest in a toxic waste dump.’
Hearing footsteps behind the door, Millroy became alert and spoke quickly, looking hopeful.
‘I just lay there cooling,’ he said. ‘And I had a vastation.’ He heard something far off, and he repeated, sounding happy, ‘I had a vastation of the person I had been – not recently but long ago, and I saw myself as a child of six – healthy, happy, full of hope, able to work magic. Gifted. Innocent. Like the kids on the show. Like you, angel, the day I first saw you.’
There were people outside the door, moving fast and talking.
‘I rose from the dead, sugar.’
Otis was opening the door, Mr Mazzola and Miss Spitler behind him.
They all laughed, hearing that, because it was true. They shook his hand, congratulating him, and then sat around the table.
‘Your new contract is being drawn up,’ Miss Spitler said. ‘We ought to have something for you by the middle of next week.’
‘Money is not a particular concern of mine,’ Millroy said. ‘My decisions are made without reference to remuneration.’
‘It will be based on Mister Phyllis’s contract,’ Mr Mazzola said.
‘People lose the fat off their personality, as they get older,’ Millroy said. ‘Humorous people get less funny, eccentrics get crazy. And the worst of it is, they don’t know it.’
‘He was our first host,’ Miss Spitler said. ‘No question, Mister Phyllis left his mark on the show.’
‘His contribution was nugatory,’ Millroy said, placing his fingertips on the table.
‘That is a fact,’ Otis said.
‘He lost the fat off his personality,’ Millroy said. ‘His sharp edges stuck out.’
‘You could see them,’ Otis said.
‘He’ll find something,’ Miss Spitler said. But the scripts would stay the same until the end of next week. All Millroy had to do was read the teleprompter – Mister Phyllis’s lines. The week after, she said, Millroy could develop his own material.
They went on talking but I stopped listening. They all seemed pleased, although the atmosphere was stark and a little shaky, as though a storm had just blown through.
‘Now we have to go back home,’ Millroy said. ‘Buzzards Bay.’
He was absent-mindedly levitating his end of the table by tugging the table-top with his fingers.
‘Seems an awful long way,’ Otis said.
‘Got to eat,’ Millroy said.
Now they were all staring at the table jiggling off the floor.
‘Let’s go, son.’
Thump.
Millroy came on playing the Paradise Park theme song (Wear a smile, all the while …) with a harmonica jammed against his nose, snuffling the notes, as he juggled six raw carrots with one hand. He used Mister Phyllis’s script but he spoke it differently, and he introduced the children in the audience – talked to them, got them to comment on the puppets and cartoons.
What Millroy enjoyed most was speaking to the children, giving them little jobs to do, and watching them fuss with pots and bottles and little gadgets – he did not touch anything – so that in carrying out his directions the children worked magic. But they did not know what I knew, that Millroy rejoiced in making magic with words, and that in directing and announcing a miracle he had been inspired.
‘The Book is full of look-no-hands magic,’ he had told me. ‘ “Rise, lift your pallet and go home” – and the cripple walks away. Or, “Go home – your son’s alive” – and the nobleman’s son has recovered from his fever. Or to Peter, “Go catch a fish, open its mouth and you’ll find a coin.” And there’s the coin, just as the Lord said! No hands!’
Even that first day he had done it – instructed the children in the audience to pack a mass of vegetables in an empty silver container.
‘Now put the lid on, and everyone place your hands on the lid. You feel anything?’
‘No, Uncle Dick!’
‘Now take the lid off and look in and tell me what you see.’
The vegetables were gone and in their place was liquid, which Millroy directed them to pour into six glasses of reddish vegetable juice. Looking fearful at first, they tasted it, but they ended up drinking it all.
‘Isn’t that the greatest stuff you ever drank?’
Millroy said there was a stern logic, and a pure motive, in every bit of magic he worked, whether it was look-no-hands or total involvement. He turned big brown spuds into mashed potatoes, flour into bread, and milk into yogurt and then into fat-free ice cream. And he passed this food around to the children in the audience, and there was always enough for everyone and even some left over.
‘It’s natural magic,’ he said after the show on the following Wednesday. ‘Come to think of it, that wouldn’t be a bad name for the whole show. Paradise Park has a ring of unreality about it. It sends the wrong message.’
Otis Godberry agreed with Millroy, but the others – Mr Mazzola and Miss Spitler – said no, it was important that they had name recognition, and that was why the show was staying popular, even without Mister Phyllis.
‘Or how about “Eat with Ernie,” ’ Millroy said.
They gave him a certain silent look that meant Never mind.
‘I’d change my name to Ernie,’ Millroy said.
This confused them, because how were they to know that Millroy was always changing his name?
‘I like you as Uncle Dick,’ Miss Spitler said, not knowing that it too was made up.
‘What do most people do when they watch TV? What do all children do?’ Millroy was still on his feet, still pitching. ‘They chew gum, they chomp popcorn, they snack, they suck candy, they lick their fingers. They seek oral gratification. In a word, they eat.’
‘We have a very reliable format,’ Miss Spitler said. ‘We have Mister Phyllis to thank for that.’
‘Mister Phyllis was unhealthy,’ Millroy said. ‘He was sick and weak because he didn’t eat right. He smoked. He was irregular – that was visible. Now this is a breakfast-time show. Seems to me we can take advantage of the timing.’
None of them saw what he was driving at.
‘Get the kids eating right,’ he said, ‘instead of habituating them to seeing unhealthy people and irrelevant puppets. Let’s face it, the Frawlies are vermin. The Mumbling Humptulips are insects.’
I knew what he was leading up to – he had been talking about nothing else even before the day Mister Phyllis left.
‘Forget Paradise Park. Call the whole show “Mealtime Magic.” Fill it with nutritious foodstuffs.’
‘Kind of a “Fun with Food” thing?’ Otis asked.
‘No,’ Millroy said. ‘A serious thing. Talk about eating in general. About sickness and death. Health and magic. Open a whole world to them. The children might want to know why their parents are big and breathless and sweaty. Why they smell awful. Why they’re unfair and bad-tempered. Why they die.’
‘Why they die?’ Miss Spitler said.
With a patient expression and a soft voice, Millroy said, ‘Your son Tom, who had diverticulitis, whom I counselled you about two weeks ago in this very office – no hands, just a word of nutritional healing – how is the boy?’
‘Much better. He made a full recovery.’ Miss Spitler looked confused and grateful and unsure of herself until she stepped away, as though from Millroy’s magnetic field, and said, ‘But you’re talking about completely changing Boston’s top children’s show.’
‘Left to itself, Tom’s colon might have been completely rerouted, into a colostomy bag,’ Millroy said. ‘I have a message, daughter.’
‘I don’t get what you’re proposing,’ Mr Mazzola said.
Millroy said, ‘Explain to me why Americans who work in restaurants and supermarkets, of all places, always look unhealthy.’
‘Cause they don’t eat right,’ Otis said.
‘This man’s eyes are open,’ Millroy said.
Still standing away from Millroy, Miss Spitler said, ‘We’re keeping the format.’
Without an objection or another word, Millroy accepted this. I followed him afterwards, walking down the corridor to the station lobby.
‘There is only one fat person in the Book,’ Millroy said, throwing his arm around Otis Godberry. ‘His name is Eglon and he is stabbed – where? In the restroom! There are old people and there are sick people – diseases of all kinds are mentioned, not only leprosy and boils, but infections and dropsy and other afflictions. Yet apart from “Eglon was a very fat man” in Judges, obesity is never mentioned. I want you to think about the
implications.’
‘What about Jeshurun, who waxed so fat in Deuteronomy that he was covered in fatness and forsook God?’ Otis asked.
Millroy had started shaking his head as soon as Otis mentioned ‘Jeshurun.’
‘Jeshurun wasn’t a man,’ Millroy said. ‘It’s just another name for Israel. You’re confused.’
Looking more respectful, Otis agreed, and followed us to the Ford, saying that Millroy was an amazing man and it was a shame no one recognized that.
‘What’s the other thing you remember from the Book?’ Millroy said, and answered his own question. ‘That people lived an average of two hundred and thirty years. It’s true. I’ve done the numbers.’
So the name Paradise Park stayed the same, but the material was Millroy’s: more magic, more food, more humor, fewer puppets, children everywhere. The show was more popular than ever. Each morning there was a long line of children waiting in the six o’clock darkness to get into the studio to be part of the audience. Some came with their parents, or in little packs, looking wolfish, others were alone and, when I told Millroy that those were the ones I felt sorry for, he chose them first – ‘Who’s here alone?’ There were eighty seats for children on the show, but within a week there were two or three hundred children waiting to get in.
I stopped sitting backstage – in the green room, the control room, the rear of the studio – lonely little guy waiting to go home to eat with his dad, nothing else to do. With Mister Phyllis around, Millroy had tried to hide me. But from the day Millroy took over the show, I was in the audience with the other children. They were small and sweaty and loud and happy, and Millroy said they – not he – were the heart and soul of the show. They were much happier than when Mister Phyllis had been in charge – they had known how much he hated them – and they were more eager these days, because Millroy had a way of whipping people up, children especially. He said he loved seeing children twitching and squirming with excitement.