Millroy the Magician

by Paul Theroux

  Though the noise was the same noise and music we had been hearing for weeks, it was not a party, and I sensed that Millroy was thinking, We should have known.

  At the edge of the porch, which was at the edge of the sea cliff, there was a dead woman. She lay on a narrow bed that was upraised and covered with flower blossoms and silk scarves. She was neither old nor young, she was wrapped loosely in a white cloth, she was almost bald, though her head was pillowed in flower blossoms. A photograph of a lovely woman – the woman she had once been, you knew – was propped against the narrow bed, and her name was printed on it: Momi.

  Millroy walked across the room looking serious, as though he were expected, hurried past the weepers, the jokers, the drinkers, the dogs, the eaters gnawing at chicken drumsticks.

  A man said to me, ‘You want one laulau. Is chicken. Is ono – numba one.’

  A Hawaiian woman with tufty hair and big arms held onto the dead woman’s bedposts, sobbing, but the TV cartoon was louder than she was, and each time she opened her mouth I heard a cartoon dog’s laughter.

  ‘You know Momi?’ the woman said to Millroy. ‘Tree dis morning she die.’

  ‘Momi is pow,’ a young man said. He wore a bathing-suit and a surfer tee-shirt printed Local Motion.

  ‘She maki, die, dead,’ another man chanted. ‘She maki, die, dead.’

  Millroy smiled his You don’t know smile and placed his hand over the face of the woman lying in the bed.

  The dead woman’s skin had a whiteish tinge, as though it was a thin and fragile wrapper that had been touched with frost, her eyes bruised-looking, her dry mouth so sad.

  ‘Momi was laying there almost a month after the keemo, with a drip in her,’ the Hawaiian woman said. ‘She didn’t say nothing, but she could hear. We play Keiki o Ka’Aina and she smile like a keiki too.’

  The party-looking people in the room were now more interested in Millroy than in the dead woman or each other, and I thought it must have been their fascination for the way that Millroy’s hand was over Momi’s face, his slender fingers gripping her.

  ‘So frushtrateen, she never get one chance to say goodbye,’ a man near Millroy said. He was eating a sandwich. He saw me looking at him. ‘Spam. You want?’

  ‘We don’t use meat,’ Millroy said.

  ‘Is Spam, brah. Not like the same as real meat.’

  It was true, as Millroy had taught, saying the word meat made people show their teeth and grin like dogs.

  ‘We don’t put meat into our mouths,’ Millroy said to the man. ‘We do not introduce meat into our bodies.’

  The man was staring with mayonnaise on his lips, and holding his sandwich, with a bitten flap of Spam showing like a shingle between the bread slices.

  ‘Feed your head,’ the man said, licking his lips. ‘That’s more better, yuh.’

  ‘Momi was one sweet lady.’ This was a howlie man with gold chains around his neck, looking drunk, his belly poking out of his half-buttoned shirt. ‘A wonderful wife.’

  ‘For the gods’ sake, she didn’t say goodbye,’ the Hawaiian woman said in a sorrowing voice.

  Millroy kept his right hand over Momi’s face. He raised his left one and spoke to the whole room.

  ‘She is not gone,’ he said, in his new Remember this voice.

  Whatever was coming next I did not want to see, but the people in the room pressed close to Millroy and the dead woman, and I was trapped.

  The music still played, but no one spoke up.

  Millroy’s big hand spread out over Momi’s face, his thumb against one of her eyes.

  ‘She is with us,’ Millroy said. ‘Aren’t you, sister?’

  Someone cut off the music with a sudden gulp and the stillness jangled, and all you could hear were people chewing and swallowing.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Momi said.

  A woman screamed. A man laughed out loud.

  Shut up, Wendell!

  Others hugged and kissed. Millroy’s hand stayed in its bold grapefruit-testing grip on the woman’s face, but he did not look at her – he was staring at the people in the room.

  ‘She wants you all to say goodbye,’ Millroy said. ‘And she wants a chance to say thank you.’

  There was now so much noise of crying and laughing, people jostling, that Millroy had to shout. The children went on playing, though, pinching the dogs and pulling their tails and eating the food off the floor.

  Lifting his hand, Millroy said, ‘Listen.’

  Very distinctly, in a gluey voice, the dead woman Momi said, ‘Mahalo for your kokua.’

  ‘She opening her eyes!’ the big Hawaiian woman cried out, and she began to laugh in a more frightening way than when she had wept.

  A man said, ‘That give me chicken-skin!’

  ‘This man bring Momi back from the dead!’

  ‘Auntee!’

  Again, very distinctly, a ghost voice from the bed said, ‘Aloha, my dear friends. I love you all. Aloha kekakiaka.’

  There was a little silence before the screaming came again. ‘Aloha, Momi!’ That went on for several minutes, until Millroy released his hand from the woman’s face and let her die again, this time in peace.

  Millroy faced them all with stony eyes. He was not moved, and it was then that I remembered how I had never seen him cry.

  ‘Who is that bald-headed man?’ someone asked. ‘He look familiar.’

  Only I had been with Millroy long enough to know that the expression on his face, his eyes, the angle of his mustache, the way his ears had tightened, were not signs of solemnity but rather his whole head smiling.

  ‘I am Doctor Millroy and this is my young friend, Jilly.’

  I thought, Jeekers.

  41

  I was woken by dribbly rainfall in my dream, like the muddy spatter of a shower of pebbles falling slowly into a shallow puddle. I opened my eyes and it bubbled to a stop. Trees dripped at my window. It had also been raining outside the house. The humid darkness that was like a blanket of night pressed against my face. In the glimmer of dropping water I saw a tall knob-headed man in my room, staring at me from the foot of my bed – Millroy – and I was dead scared.

  My feet and legs went numb, a spike of pain tore my heart, fingers of fear gripped my throat and squeezed my windpipe.

  As I strained to scream, Millroy began to dissolve, and a moment later there was only a gauzy blowing curtain where he had been standing.

  My ragged heart kept me awake. The sun came up yellow-orange, rinsing the ocean with fruit juice and light, as the birds clacked and chattered, and the surf grew noisier, rattling the stones at the shoreline.

  Breakfast usually reassured me after a bad night’s sleep, but not this morning.

  ‘I saw you in my room last night.’

  Whittling the green peel from a papaya Millroy did not even look up at me.

  ‘Sometimes you imagine the thing you want in your heart. You call it fear, but it is more often desire.’

  ‘No. I was having a bad dream and I was wicked scared.’

  Millroy’s silence and the way his head was tilted meant he disagreed with me.

  ‘The guy sure looked like you.’

  ‘Maybe you put me there, angel.’

  ‘Why would anyone do a thing like that?’

  Penetrating me with his eyes while he ate the yellow paw-paw, he silently seemed to be saying that I ought to know the answer to that question.

  I wanted to cry.

  ‘What’s wrong, angel?’

  ‘Who said anything was wrong?’

  But everything was. I had been sinking, drowning, feeling lost, ever since landing on the Big Island. I had never been so far from home, from anything I had known. Before, I had had Millroy as my protector. Now I hardly knew him, was scared of his surprises – what next? Everything was strange to me here except the food – Day One meals, Millroy cooking his head of
f, preparing his fruits and pottages, his herbages and thickened loaves. He was also a magician, but an explosive one. I took up sucking my thumb again.

  This is my young friend, Jilly.

  Jeekers.

  So it was not just my homesickness in the perfumed world of this high floating island of rain and fire, rotting earth, hot springs, wet trees, droopy ferns, muddy roads, black beaches. It was not only the tearing wind, and the waves frothing on our front steps, nor the great red beaks of bird-like blossoms, leaves like sword blades, plopping pink flowers, big twisted vegetables and swollen fruits. It was Millroy himself.

  I wanted to scream Help me! I had always depended on him.

  But he was working magic, frightening me with his power and being conspicuous, making his How am I doing? face. Millroy at his most magical was a perfect stranger, and my young friend, Jilly bothered me most of all. I had felt safe when it had been the simple lie of my son, and I would have been able to stand his saying my daughter. This was different.

  ‘I thought I was your son, Alex.’

  ‘We’ve moved on, muffin.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Don’t you want to be my friend, Jilly?’

  Friend was one of those slippery words that might mean anything. And I had gotten used to being small slender Alex. I did not want to be skinny plain Jilly. And what was the use of replying? All Millroy’s radar had been turned on. He knew what I was thinking.

  The island people spooked me with their laughter. What was so funny? My hair was always damp and sticky. The people kept their distance and stared at Millroy and sometimes pointed at him. They tried to figure out who I was to him, which made me suck my thumb all the more, because I did not know myself. I longed for the old days when Millroy had said, Of course, I’m not his biological father.

  They whispered when they saw him. Now Millroy had a reputation on the island for magic – raising that woman, Momi, from the dead.

  The exaggerated story people told was that Millroy had brought her back to life – dead one minute, swaggering around the bungalow like her old self in a bedsheet the next. I knew better, I had seen it, the way he had stroked her face, how she had flickered awake, lifted her head, said goodbye and died again – just a few seconds of life. Yet even the people at the funeral party said he had had her up and talking and laughing and swinging her arms, cured of cancer for an hour or more.

  Millroy smiled and did not deny it.

  Though it made me fearful to be so visible we went hiking on the beach. Today we were down at the stone jetty near Pohoiki, where black waves from a dark sea broke on a black beach.

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to be conspicuous.’

  ‘Should I be worried, angel?’

  ‘You raised that woman from the dead.’

  He seemed grateful to me for mentioning it. He was smiling hungrily at me, as though he wanted me to say more.

  Okay, I thought.

  ‘You touched her,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you always said that the best magic was no-hands,’ I said. ‘That the magic in the Book was great because Jesus just said things like, “Go home – your son is healed.” ’

  The light went out of Millroy’s eyes and when he turned their darkness on me I was sorry for what I had said.

  ‘Sometimes I need to use these to work miracles,’ Millroy said, but when he lifted his hands to show me they looked like weapons.

  ‘People are talking about you,’ I said.

  ‘I am not listening, petal.’

  But I was.

  ‘You’re going to have a wicked reputation here.’

  ‘It’s worth the risk,’ he said.

  I did not ask why, though I was wondering.

  ‘Because of what I have to gain,’ he said.

  He stopped walking on the black boulders and looked at me. The light had returned to his eyes, and they were on me, feeding on my face. I had to turn away and pretend to be interested in two men with buckets scrambling and dodging waves and chipping barnacles off the rocks next to the sea.

  I envied those scrambling men. Jump on a rock, scrape off a barnacle, stick it in your bucket – all that time whistling or rapping. It was more like play than work, and you ended up with something to eat. You went home with your dented bucket and watched TV, and tomorrow you were back on the rocks, barnacle-hunting. Simple life was magical enough, and you didn’t need miracles, only a bucket.

  I said, ‘The woman back from the dead. The vanishing jewels. The wild dogs that lick your hand. It scares me when you do that magic.’

  ‘You’ve seen me do it plenty of times, angel.’

  ‘But these people haven’t.’

  I looked up and saw the barnacle men stumbling in our direction.

  ‘Magic doesn’t have to be a miracle,’ I said.

  ‘Miracles are quicker,’ Millroy said. ‘Listen, there’s nothing for you to be afraid of.’

  ‘Ha. Except the police. They’ll only come and take you away. Plus, probably put you in jail.’

  He surprised me by smiling and seeming relaxed, stepping closer to where the waves were sloshing on the spiky cliffs and rocks.

  ‘Would it bother you if I got hauled away?’

  I did not want to think about it, but watching him I imagined a wave rising up right now like a large jagged crab-claw, all water and froth, and smashing Millroy down against the boulders, and dragging his dead body into the sea while I stood there, not afraid for my own life but sorrowing that he was gone, that I would be all alone until this island sank.

  ‘Would it?’ he repeated.

  How could I answer his question? I kept a straight face, kept my mouth shut so that I would not sob, but still the tears flowed down my cheeks.

  That seemed to excite him – he stepped over to me and put his arm around me.

  His hand was cold, his arm was heavy, no warmth came from him. I should have felt safe, the way he was locked onto me, but instead I became terrified of him and worried that he could just squash me, flip me over and toss me into a bucket, the way those hopping men crunched barnacles.

  ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  That made me more afraid. He could feel me going stiffer.

  With his arm around me I remembered some of the magic he had worked. Rats leaping out of people’s mouths. Girls turned into milk and drunk. His twisting off his Day One finger and slicing it with a knife. The jumbo jet shaking. Volunteers vanishing in his Indian basket. Objects tangibilized. Spoons bending when he stroked them. The dead woman Momi raising her head and opening her white sticky eyes and saying in a gluey voice, I love you all. Aloha kekakiaka.

  Millroy was on the point of saying something, but he was holding back. Yes, I was afraid, because he could do anything he wanted, he could have anything at all.

  ‘You’re going to be all right.’

  Sometimes, when a person reassures you, it is worse than an outright threat. He gave me another cold hug. Touched by a strange magician, how could I not be terrified?

  I felt guilty, because I wanted to love him for his magic, but that power of his only made him seem suddenly unfamiliar.

  ‘Mister’ – it was one of the barnacle-hunters, stepping near.

  Millroy let go of me, and the blood rushed into my arm again.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Ohpeehee,’ the man said. He was big and brown, wearing soggy sneakers.

  The other man showed us his bucket, which contained bleeding fish.

  The fish man, smaller than his friend, looked unhappy and dangerous. He had inky home-made tattoos scribbled on his arm.

  We were all standing on wobbly boulders getting our feet splashed as we tried to balance.

  ‘If the tide woulda come up, you get real wet,’ the big man said. ‘One howlie guy he get caught and die.’

  ‘You got some
money for us,’ the other man said.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Millroy said.

  ‘Wendell. This is Jacklick. You see us at Momi’s house.’

  ‘We do know where you live,’ the big man named Jacklick said. ‘The painted house. In the trees.’

  In da chrees, the way he said it, made it seem a dangerous house.

  ‘Have you met my young friend, Jilly?’

  ‘He asking you for money,’ Jacklick said, as though correcting him.

  ‘I heard him.’ He faced the man, who did not know that Millroy could destroy him as easily as he had raised the woman from the dead. ‘Would that make you happy, Wendell?’

  ‘Maybe it make you safe.’

  Millroy smiled as he considered this. He seemed to enjoy being challenged.

  ‘I have no money,’ Millroy said.

  He had tons of it – bricks of it, chunks of it, enough to pay cash for a house, cash for a new pickup truck, cash for air tickets, all new bills smelling of fresh ink. A million dollars in small bills weighs just about fifty pounds, angel. Did you know that? Why not give a little of it to nasty tattooed Wendell?

  ‘But you have gold in that bucket,’ Millroy said, and he winked at me.

  ‘I got mahneenee fish.’ The man seemed fiercer and more horrible when he laughed.

  ‘Take out the biggest fish. This one,’ Millroy said, in an instructing voice, taking care not to touch anything, but pointing into the bucket at a soft plump fish. ‘Now look into its mouth.’

  This man Wendell squeezed the fish, making the eyes bulge and the mouth open, and out came a glittering gold ring, along with some blood-flecked slime and sea drool.

  Walking back to the house, I said nothing, trying to figure out what all this meant, when suddenly Millroy jerked his whole body around and gasped in satisfaction.

  ‘I didn’t give them anything!’

  Then I understood, and it had to do with me, because I had reminded him about the magic in the Book that was done no-hands, just a few suggestions, and when these were followed the magic was accomplished.