Millroy the Magician

by Paul Theroux

  He offered them the loaves and the fishes.

  ‘Every day is different – every day is Day One,’ he said. ‘That is the miracle.’

  But the men – especially Hersh – were hesitating, as though embarrassed that they might not have said the prayer correctly.

  ‘Eat,’ Millroy said, ‘and we’ll have something to talk about. But we’ve got plenty of time. I plan to be around for two hundred years.’

  Hersh was still looking at me sideways as he began to eat, nibbling a little at a time.

  ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘No story,’ Millroy said.

  From that moment I knew I was vulnerable. I felt weak and tricky. He suspected that I was not right, that I was hiding something – and I was, more than he could ever guess.

  ‘What do you mean you never talk about money?’ Walter Hickle complained. ‘Listen, we can get you a whole bunch of contracts.’

  Millroy placed his fingers against the counter and leaned on them.

  ‘Don’t squeeze the fish – it makes the eyes bulge,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want it, just leave it on the plate.’

  But the men were confused. Except for the two fish that were picked apart on their plates, most of the fish were on the platter, where Millroy had conjured, multiplying them.

  ‘I am the fish,’ Millroy explained.

  23

  The first night we slept at the Day One Diner, Millroy’s voice woke me like a slap in the face saying, ‘No!’ and he thumped and fought, as though someone were trying to drag him away. Then he choked, then let off a thirsty gasp of fright, then deep silence, then another thump, then a small sorrowing sound, hoo-hoo-hoo, and I could imagine his shoulders.

  All this worry came from behind the shutter that separated me from Millroy in the cupboard-room at the back of the diner. The noise was so sudden and unusual that I imagined that someone else was in there with him, but who?

  ‘Don’t – please.’

  The voice was so pitiful that I thought it was the other person in there with him talking. I heard it again and realized it was his voice, yet so tiny coming out of his big bumping body.

  ‘No’ – and he swallowed hard – ‘because I’m not finished.’

  It was the sort of confusion you have in your dreams, but when had Millroy ever dreamed like this?

  ‘It is too soon.’ He sounded like a man trapped inside a box.

  Struggling some more he seemed to bang his head, a dull pok of wood knocking on skull-bone.

  ‘Please don’t take me,’ he said, and sucked his breath through the spaces between his teeth.

  I was sweating.

  ‘Aren’t you going to take me?’ I said in a voice as normal as I could make it, reminding him first that I was listening to him and second that we were supposed to be picking up Willie Webb and Stacy today after breakfast.

  ‘Who’s that?’ He still sounded like a man in a box.

  ‘It’s only me.’

  ‘Talk to me, muffin.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Anything – but do it quick. What’s your favorite color?’

  ‘Aqua. You okay?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘A black crab had me in its claws and was trying to drag me into its hole,’ Millroy said. ‘The thing had stuffed me in and I was suffocating. It wanted to eat me. Its bony mandibles were chewing my face.’

  ‘Jeekers.’

  I did not know what else to say to that, but I thought: Suppose I was having a bad dream just then – what use would Millroy have been to me?

  ‘I forgot where I was,’ he said, seeming to mutter to himself. ‘I just woke up and got spooked.’ He pleaded a little, saying, ‘Are you happy, angel?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Tell me why.’ His voice came sharply out of the dark.

  ‘Because I made that phone call you asked me to. Plus Willie and Stacy were glad I called.’

  ‘That was so good of you, angel.’

  It was my new job – to find youngsters to work in the Day One Diner. They had to be the right age, neither too old nor too young. But I had told him that the only ones I knew in Boston were the youngsters who had helped Millroy run Paradise Park – Willie, Stacy, Dedrick and the others.

  That’s a great idea, Millroy had said. They’d be perfect – as though he had not thought of it, too busy to think of other things while he made the arrangements with Hickle and Hersh for his new TV show, which I knew nothing about.

  ‘Muffin, I dreamed I was dying.’

  ‘That’s a real bad dream.’

  He sighed and said, ‘What do you dream about?’

  That potato-head men are chasing me. That Gaga is hitting me with a strap. That I am flying with my arms out and starting to crash into a tree. That I am naked outside on the road and trying to run home to Marston’s Mills. That Mumma is lying in a bed saying Nine, nine, and then when she stops I realize she is saying Dying, dying.

  ‘Different stuff,’ I said.

  ‘The crab in my dream was bigger than me,’ Millroy said. His voice had no echo. It was stifled and simple, still in a box. ‘And black and shiny.’

  ‘You mentioned it was black.’

  ‘I’m all right now.’

  I could not bear the thought that he was frightened, because the rest of the time he was such a happy man. His fear had come quickly, the bad dream sitting on his head, like a fever.

  Snuffling softly he fell asleep again, and so did I – it was always as though we slept on the same cloud – and in the morning Millroy made a loaf of showbread to set up as a way of giving thanks, and for breakfast served us both a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb.

  ‘According to Luke,’ Millroy said, ‘what the Lord ate after he rose from the dead.’

  Cold January rain was darkening the streets and smacking the windshield of the Ford as we drove through Park Square and I knew that tonight it would be black ice all over Boston. But I did not mind: I was happy again, because Millroy was joyous, and I was thinking about what he had said as we got into the car: After I cook for people I feel they belong to me.

  ‘These mornings, Hersh and Hickle are saying, “I feel good, I slept real good, I’m clean.” They’re wondering what got into them.’

  Millroy spun the steering-wheel and laughed, and now I was less troubled about his dream.

  ‘And the fact is that the spirit of righteousness got into them – entered them in the form of Day One food that I myself prepared. They are cleansed. They feel brilliant and hopeful, with an intimation of purity, and they cannot understand why their bowels sound like a harp.’

  We were driving slowly down Columbus Avenue, the rain slashing at the car like sand grains in the wind. Hearing the whup-whup of wipers and the hiss of rubber tires I knew I would have felt sad if I had not been with Millroy. Rain made me feel lonely, and I never felt smaller than when I was wet.

  ‘The pity is that it’s probably too late for them,’ Millroy said. ‘That’s why we need to bring our message to the young.’

  We were passing a row of restaurants and shops, pizza joints, Frijoles, Lenny’s Lunchette, Barakat Grocery, Wholesale Chicken Parts. Millroy’s nose throbbed as he sniffed.

  ‘I got a little sideways last night,’ he said after a while.

  He did not say anything more than that about his dream, but I could easily picture the black crab squeezing him in its claws and trying to stuff him into its black crab hole so that it could eat his face. And because Millroy was big I saw it as a monster black crab.

  ‘But today’s a new day,’ he said.

  I was still thinking that the only other time he had frightened me like that was at Pilgrim Pines Trailer Park, just after he quit the Barnstable County Fair, and he woke up in the middle of the night and yelled, I ain’t ready!

  Whirling rain, heavi
er now, hit the windshield like slop from a rag. I mentioned this.

  ‘Did you say “peltering”?’ he asked.

  And it was soaking into the buildings and staining the stone black.

  ‘Did you say “egg-sorbed”?’

  Crowding the doorways of these stores and laundromats and apartment houses were men in heavy jackets and pulled-down hats, looking wet and angry.

  ‘I am not afraid of anything mortal,’ Millroy said.

  He was still driving slowly through this miserable part of Roxbury.

  ‘Is this the right place?’

  ‘You said to meet them on the corner.’

  Nowhere near their houses, he had said. A street corner would be perfect.

  ‘Then it must be so.’

  People looked so lonely, quietly struggling as they stood in the rain, heads bent, hardly moving, even youngsters like Willie Webb and Stacy. I knew they felt small like me. They were waiting at the corner of Columbus and Drayton, next to a boarded-up furniture store, where a mass of overlapping stuck-on signs advertised rock concerts and used-car dealers and church services. One of them, called COME TO LIFE, showed a familiar chubby face over and over on each poster, The Rev Baby Huber in the Pulpit.

  ‘He is polyphagous,’ Millroy said. ‘I know for a fact that the sinister minister eats pork chops. And what about his fries, and his buckets of hot wings?’

  But Millroy smiled, and I knew he was remembering those sights and stinks.

  Then I heard, ‘Yo. Big guy!’

  It was Willie Webb, rushing up to the car, his hands on his head because of the rain, and Stacy was right behind him. They had thin faces and bright eyes, and though it had only been a month since the show had ended they both looked bigger – taller and bonier, with big hands and feet. They were not dressed for the rain – their jackets were soaked, their hair was wet, their heads tucked into their hunched-up shoulders.

  ‘This your vehicle, Uncle Dick?’ Stacy asked, as she scrambled into the back seat next to Willie.

  It was odd to hear him called Uncle Dick now that the show was over.

  ‘Hi, Alex,’ Willie said.

  ‘I’m Rusty these days.’

  But he did not hear me, because Millroy’s face was pressed against the side of his head and he was inhaling. Then he did the same to Stacy, breathed them both.

  ‘I’m trying to see whether you’ve changed,’ Millroy said. ‘I’m working on a gadget that does this – measures emissions. And I am satisfied that you’ve been eating right. So if you can keep a secret, let’s go.’

  They sat in the back seat looking breathless and pleased, as Millroy drove through the rain, our windshield wipers whacking back and forth. I could see that Millroy was excited, the way he had been at TV rehearsals. He did not approve of the word ‘kids’ but he was always in a good mood when he was around them.

  ‘Any of the others live around here?’ Millroy asked.

  ‘Berry and Kayla are down that street,’ Willie said. ‘And Dedrick’s over that barber shop.’

  ‘That’s good to know.’

  ‘You got a new TV show?’

  ‘That’s not the secret I want you to keep,’ Millroy said.

  Hearing that, they both put on important-looking expressions.

  ‘I need your full attention here. You notice I am driving you farther and farther from your homes. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Psyched,’ Willie said, and screwed up one eye and looked reckless. ‘Alex said something about a job.’

  ‘Not a job,’ Millroy said, ‘but Rusty might have mentioned work, and a new way of life. Do you want to be happy and live two hundred years?’

  They laughed because Millroy had slipped into his Uncle Dick TV voice, but they stopped laughing when he turned around and he was not wearing his Uncle Dick smile. He was in a terror of concentration, his eyes gone black, and he said nothing more until we turned the corner at the Armory and got to the edge of Park Square and there next to the Star of Siam was the Day One Diner – the only white store-front on the block, and even in the rain it was blazing away, shining inside and out, mirrors, tiles, white walls and chrome.

  ‘That is our new home,’ Millroy said, ‘and you are welcome to join us if you observe a few simple rules.’

  He parked the Ford in front and hoicked up the emergency brake.

  ‘Don’t think about school. Don’t think about money. Don’t think about what your parents will say.’

  ‘My momma likes you,’ Stacy said. ‘She said your show was hot. Hey, she wants to meet you.’

  Millroy held Stacy’s shoulders, keeping her straight while he faced her and said, ‘No offense, but I don’t want to meet your momma. You’ll have to leave your momma behind.’

  ‘That is cool with me,’ Willie said.

  ‘Rusty did it, didn’t you, Russ?’

  ‘Left my Dada and my grammy, Gaga.’

  ‘No burgers,’ Millroy said. ‘Now are you ready to come inside?’

  We were swaying slightly in the rain.

  Willie said, ‘Yo,’ and Stacy took a breath and looked at her feet.

  Touching her rain-spattered face so that she raised her eyes to his, Millroy stared into her eyes, seeming to fill her with light, and said, ‘It is beautiful inside.’

  Then he turned and unlocked the front door for us and led us in, still talking.

  ‘It was a mess before, but we got rid of its innards, gutted it, purged it – the stinks, the grease, the smoke-ghosts, the dust-bunnies, opportunistic germs.’

  We followed him, and Willie and Stacy, holding their breath, kept their elbows against their bodies as though they were afraid to touch anything.

  ‘Sit on those chairs – notice how they’re form-fitting,’ he said in the seating area, and in the kitchen he said, ‘Notice no frying-pans. Just a grill and an oven and a microwave – we’re greaseless here.’ He was proudest of all of the customers’ restrooms, with the space and the warmth and the stalls with the skylights and foolproof locks. ‘How can you have a restroom if you don’t have elbow room?’

  ‘I get it. You opening a kind of restaurant,’ Willie said.

  ‘More than a restaurant,’ Millroy said. ‘Let me show you. Pass me that basket, Stacy, please.’

  Stacy lifted a small basket from the counter and passed it to Millroy with both hands – even so, the lid shook from her nervousness.

  ‘You did that real well,’ Millroy said. ‘Willie, do you think you could do the same thing with that next basket?’

  Trying to please Millroy, Willie worked a little harder and lifted the other basket with his fingertips.

  ‘That was superb,’ Millroy said, and tipped up the lid on each basket, showing a small fish in the first one and a grainy bun in the second.

  As the lids went down, Willie and Stacy were thinking: Not enough food.

  ‘Let’s say thanks – let’s pray,’ Millroy said. ‘This day is different from any other on earth. Thank you Lord for Day One.’

  We repeated the prayer, and Millroy opened the baskets and showed that they were brimming, one with fish, the other with grainy loaves.

  ‘I like that a lot,’ Stacy said, looking happier than when Millroy had told her, You’ll have to leave your momma behind.

  ‘Eat,’ Millroy said. ‘All good food is a kind of communion.’

  He prayed over an earthenware bowl, his prayer like the words he called ‘my mutterance’ before a magic trick, and when he took off the lid it was filled with cucumber and bean salad.

  ‘Smells like Mexican,’ Stacy said.

  ‘Christ himself used the word cumin,’ Millroy said, chewing, and with his cheeks bulging with food he said, ‘This is living your faith,’ and put more food into his mouth.

  Afterwards we had herbal tea and on the tags of the tea-bags were quotes from the Book. Millroy suggested we turn our plates over
. There were Book quotes on the bottom. Mine said, I will lead you into a good land – flowing with milk and honey. The border of my paper napkin had a Book quote on it too, but printed so prettily the words looked like the design. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of the devil’s – Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and the table of the devil.

  ‘Think you can shift these plates into the sink as gracefully as you set them out?’

  So we cleaned up while Millroy made more magic – using only his fingers, darting in the air, to create a power surge with the diner’s lights – and he said it was perfect, the way we had put everything away.

  Before Willie and Stacy left for home in the afternoon, Millroy said, ‘If I ever ask you to leave home and follow me, will you do it? Don’t answer the question now. Think it over. If the answer’s no. don’t come back. If it’s yes, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  They showed up hungry, Willie and Stacy, before sun-up, six-thirty or so, the next morning, rapping on the diner door, asking could they come in?

  Breakfast was fresh fruit, yogurt, herbal tea, honey, and toasted Ezekiel bread. Then we got to work. They helped, they swept, they unpacked crockery and flatware and glasses, and at lunchtime we took turns serving while Millroy watched and praised us. He gave us white tee-shirts and white aprons, all of them lettered Day One in big blue letters, with a yellow sun rising, giving off wiggly rays.

  They stayed for dinner. Again Millroy did the cooking, some of it using magic techniques – praying over baskets and bowls and making it appear – but most of the cooking was the slow fragrant kind, mixing up ingredients and using the oven or the grill, baking bread, simmering soup, grilling fish, culturing yogurt, slicing melons.

  ‘I’d like to think you will always eat here,’ Millroy said at dinnertime. ‘If you get hungry at home, gnaw on an apple and drink a glass of pure water to stave off your hunger. But don’t eat your folks’ food. Don’t put it into your mouth, and especially don’t introduce their meat into your body.’

  ‘What’s wrong with meat?’ Stacy asked.

  ‘Flesh?’ Millroy said. ‘Chicken Fingers? Pork Knobs? Beef nuggets?’