The Magic Kingdom

by Stanley Elkin

  At Journey Into Imagination they watched a sort of electronic puppet show—to him, they seemed riveted; how could he know?—and saw rainbows stripped as you’d strip paint, and led electronic orchestras, and walked across a floor that turned their footsteps into music, and stared, his distorted kids, into distorting mirrors. He watched a 3-D movie with them and saw them draw back as objects leaped out at them from the screen.

  So how could he, how could he know whose uncompromised oohs and ahhs, like someone watching birthday candles being blown out, came from the heart? Or that Colin Bible stifled his injury-nursed gasps and carefully suppressed sighs and whimpers as he stared down from Epcot Computer Central’s glassed-in balcony at the massive and complicated control boards that handled it all?

  Or that Nedra Carp, seated between Janet Order and Tony Word, wondered why Mr. Moorhead hadn’t assigned her to a car with children who were her official responsibility rather than hustling her in with strangers? (Did she know the contents of their pockets, what awful contraband candy they might have brought with them? Had they had a B.M. today? Who’d made sure they’d tinkled before permitting them to come out?) And a bit angry with the children, too, or put off—she was not the sort to lose her temper with children, not like that woman Mary Cottle, who used to run off to the bathroom for a sulk whenever things didn’t go entirely spit-spot and now disappeared altogether whenever the poor dears fussed or grew cranky (and now she knew where, didn’t she, and maybe it was something more than a bit of a sulk, and perhaps, if she’d wanted Mr. Bale to find out, it had been something of a mistake to have entrusted Colin Bible, who’d probably known it anyway, with the information, birds of a feather and all that)—because they hadn’t protested, and had abandoned her without so much as a by-your-leave to finicky Tony Word with his peculiar tastes and foul vegetable breath, a boy, she suspected, who, had it been left to him, would actually have gotten down on the ground and rooted for potatoes, carrots, onions, the level radish and asparagus and pumpkin, the foreign zucchini and eggplant and broccoli, eating them from the soil, the earth itself; and that disgusting Janet Order, whose blue dreadfulness, even in the dark, was palpable to her, awful as vein, livid as beetle or basilisk. Or that she could not stop thinking about the woman?

  Or that Benny Maxine couldn’t either, or of the two discrete and darkened hollows in her ass, larger, sweeter than dimples?

  Or that Mr. Moorhead, having removed his watch and put it in the pocket of his jacket and, out of earshot of the others, inquired of semitic-looking tourists for the one hundred and sixty-eighth time the time of day—he was a scientist, trial-and- error was part of his training, watching their wrists as they raised their arms to within inches of their eyes—and, hypothesis too, they would have at least to be in their late middle age (the youngest among them would have been almost fifty by now) or, more likely, elderly, in their sixties, or, most probable of all, old, in their seventies, nearsighted, waited—patient observation was—and watched for the bookkeeping to appear on their skin, the fadeless, telltale numbers, the careful tattoo audit, and listened also—there could have been shame; they might have been wearing their watches on the opposite arm or worn a timepiece about their neck—auscultating their accents, and had found his Jew?

  Or that Lydia Conscience no longer believed she was fooling anyone with her cheap rings and big belly? (That was made quite clear in that dream she’d shared with Mudd-Gaddis and Tony Word. They’d only been patronizing her. Mudd-Gaddis pretending Tony Word was the father! Tony Word! The remarks about morning sickness, her own bitter comments about the buddy system when all she meant, she supposed, was that she didn’t want anyone to know her details. Better to be known for a loose under-age slut than for a terminal! And people stared when they were with her. Mr. Bible sometimes wearing that white nurse’s jacket! Outrageous! Might as well take out an advert. As if Mudd-Gaddis weren’t advert enough. Or Rena Morgan, thinking she fooled anyone with her dumb hidden hankies. Didn’t the twit realize that the wet spots showed when she slipped them up her sleeve again? Or bald Tony Word, who didn’t even have the decency to wear a wig! Or blue-skinned Janet Order, who invaded her dream on the plane. “I dream of Janet with the light blue skin,” she sang to herself in her head. Or bloated Benny with his puffy face, and stupid Noah who couldn’t read and, now he was losing his fingers, couldn’t even count right!) And that was why she still wore the rings even though she knew they didn’t fool anyone anymore and, twice removed—once to make people think she was preggers and now to keep them from knowing just what the hell she was—merely masked the details she couldn’t bear anyone to know? Or that ever since she’d heard about Mary Cottle’s private room she’d been trying to work up the nerve to tell her she hadn’t spent any of her money and to ask her that, if she paid her fair share, could she use it just to get away once in a while?

  Or that Noah Cloth, remembering the lady who’d visited him at home that time and recalling what she’d told him about denial, rage, bargaining, and acceptance—hadn’t the compulsive shopping been, at least partly, a kind of bargaining? if that were so, then even if he couldn’t recollect the denial and rage parts, he was almost gone—wondered whether, if she’d let him, maybe he could use Miss Cottle’s room as a sort of hospice?

  Or that Janet Order had grown tired of her camouflage, the permutations of all those blue dreamed force fields that had shielded her, hidden her like so much dun-colored predator, dun-colored prey, like birds indistinguishable from the trees they perch in, or soldiers in the always-too-flat Indian summer drabs of battle dress? Because the fact was that blue, quite apart from the cyanotics of her illness, was her favorite color. And hadn’t she, in the ocean depths and sky heights of those blue dreams, at the balls and celebrations, the coronations, inaugurals, and masques, all the dress-blue ceremonials, lost against the royal- and midnight- and navy-blue buntings, against the sleep-wrought hyacinthine drapes and wall hangings, or hovering over the peacock- and robin’s-egg-blue napery, all the blue arrangements, all the deep cobalts of sparkling, spanking accessory, the sapphire studs, the violet eyeshadow, clothed in all the forget- me-not hues of her blue-jeweled skin, loved, even admired, above all else, herself? And now wants, actually needs, suddenly, quite simply, privacy—the bathroom’s too small (Tony’s and Noah’s medications, her own, Mr. Moorhead’s digestives and shaving equipment, all their toothbrushes, toothpastes, shampoos, and special soaps clutter the sink, its deep, wide counter); the children are suspicious of her in the toilet; if she runs the shower to cover the sounds of her inspections, the mirror clouds over—and longs to sneak into 822, wants, needs, to examine herself, at leisure to pry her blue behind, her budding cornflower breasts, her Prussian blue nipples?

  Or that leukemic Tony Word, fearful because he’s not been eating properly, suspicious of the scraped strained vegetables he’s served, of the mashed, crushed potatoes, the creamed carrots and pea purées, the smashed beets and thrice-diced watery cauliflower, the brothy fruits and minced greens, beneath their staring, the kids’ and adults’ and waiters’, yields, discards what is not even the menu but only some rote-recalled menu of the head and asks what baby food they have, orders it, and feels anyway this sinful dietary guilt, vaguely religious, aware that he chews (and knowing that he needn’t, it’s like chewing soup), thoughtful and careful as any Jew or Muslim, profane food, as if, if he’s careful enough, he might be able to trap and spit out lumps of preservative and additive like bits of pork? Or that he is worn out by their curiosity (baby food? a kid his age?), dreads their attention at meals, and wishes to go back to the old regime, doing for himself (which would have been impossible of course until Mudd-Gaddis told him and he’d had the idea, now his dream), and thinks that if he can only get their permission he can use his food allowance, make up from cash whatever the difference comes to, and, specifying exactly the ingredients he needs, instructing the kitchen how long each must be boiled, what wood tools, what pots he requires, he could use Mary Cottle’s
telephone and order his dinner from room service?

  Or that Charles Mudd-Gaddis, snagged on some shard of memory—is it personal or just more ancient history?—vague as the scattered fragments of a dream (how terrible to grow so old, infirm and invalid, to feel summer like a chill, trapped not only in skeleton—brittle as archaeology—and flesh—brittle as skeleton—but hobbled by crochet, got up like furniture, all the doily cerements of the old, the caps and shawls and lap robes—and a thousand years ago, it seems, worked out his answer, waits only for the question to be asked, the secret formula of his geologic life, will tell the smart-ass kid whose assignment he will be, will tell, if he can still remember his own remarks, will tell, will say, “Masochism. You’ve got to love pain and worship humiliation”—to be permitted such a long, forced-march lifetime), tries, as if he were trying, working about the obstacles of pain, all the pangs, nips, cramps, and bruises of his land-mined steeplechase being, to draw a very deep breath, to grasp and hold it? Pleasure was in it. He’d been a sort of witness. Shared the witness. With. A baby? How could that be? Since the baby had spoken. He distinctly remembered. Well, distinctly. But they were all babies to him, to a man of his years. The nurses and attendants. So not literally a baby. And there was something illicit. A display or performance. All right, some secret display or performance which had given him, them, himself and the child, pleasure. They’d gone to see some show. On an outing. But without the others in the Home and not to some museum of ancient history like this one today, where all there’d been to look at were some old-fashioned space platforms and obsolete computers like faded daguerreotypes. His nurse. Of course. His nurse. The one who smelled of that foreign tobacco. Whom he sat next to. He’d, they’d—himself and the other old-timer—spied on his nurse. Or that he had the memory now, only couldn’t make sense of that comment afterward, the ancient mariner’s, who’d asked him, “How about them hidey-holes in her hidey- hole, Charley?”

  Or that Rena Morgan was exhausted?

  Or that Mary Cottle, out of the starting gate serene, her laundered nerve endings smooth as fresh sheets, has begun to feel not the oppression again (which hadn’t been there even in that tunnel-of-love rideup time or even under the circumstances of their imposed coze—the kids calm, sedate, almost contemplative, their attentions absorbed, whatever preoccupied them releasing them for once from whatever had preoccupied them, their pull of obsession, the steady-state tensions of their defective bodies, because, face it, these children, why she bothered with them, who was, after all, the improbable party here, less probable than Nedra Carp, less probable than Bale, were, for her, projections not of the two stillborn fetuses which she did not have or even of the two aborted amniocentesisized fetuses which she did, the two wounded full-term babes themselves, damaged goods, those little suffering citizens whose sealed, suspected tantrums and soft exacerbated lives triggered, probably in inverse ratio, her own violent encounters with herself, her furious fixes) but still an itch, pastel, softer than she’s accustomed to, even tender, locked in the wavelengths and frequencies of something like courtship—nothing alien is alien to her—some strange and lovely magnetism of skin, the compulsive yearning of the centrifugals along the tumbling, degraded orbit of her life, her interests focused for once on the conventional forks, playing catch-up who’d been hung up on fastidy and reserve but who knew her G-spot like the back of her hand, what the fuss was all about; this woman, lusty as a sailor, a fleet, a navy, bringing the spilled beans of her fevers and kindling points like all the pressed and faded roses of love, not barbarians at her gates now but blander, more unsuspected things, not the wired protocols of flesh or her body’s steamy skirmishes and star wars so much as the politics of etiquette and love, all the gossip of the heart and head, of some brand-new flower style like those dumb sexual displays in nature, the bright bandings on birds, say, who do not even know that what they’re wearing is instinct and evolution; that innocent, that naive, up to her ass in guilt and underwear and outraged as someone trying to clear her name, wanting, needing frill and circumstance, some all-the-trimmings life she hadn’t ever lived and hadn’t even known she’d longed to live, her lust diffused, broad and scattered as cloud cover? Or that the old gaffer seated between them, Mudd-Gaddis, could just as easily be patriarch as child, is patriarch, some ancient totem of relation who monitored behavior and whom they had to impress to please, wanting, she who had never wanted anything from men, some soft service, the honorable, ancient courtesies of pleasure: flowers and candy boxes in Romance’s turnstile, toll-booth doorways, vino, gypsy violins, and, later, the more inventive stuff: pet names and pretty speeches, billet-doux, the rose beneath the windscreen wiper, a star of one’s own, sonnets initialed as handkerchiefs, gems in the picnic hamper, cars sent, orchestras bribed, baths drawn—all Soft Soap’s pretty handouts, all Love’s free lunch? Or that wholesome, afferent affections shot from the juiced peripheries of her heart to collect and gather like pooled blood beneath the little old gaffer, child-totem-patriarch’s and Cupid-kid’s dim scrutinies?

  So how could Eddy, who could not sort his own, have made anything at all of the jumble of mixed motives and crossed purposes, ordinary and routine as heavy traffic, or seen design in their snarl of wills, feelings, and intentions, asynchronous and asyndeton as timber soaking in a logjam?

  4

  Well, Colin Bible had seen enough. He’d a feeling he’d disgraced himself. He’d been had. But was in no position to cast aspersions. The guy was as good as his word (though, just as well, not that great in bed). The repair manuals were waiting for him in an outsized manila envelope when he checked his and Bale’s box the next day. There were even some blueprints Matthew had been able to lay his hands on, even a few diagrams of what Colin supposed—he was no mechanical illiterate, after all; he was a nurse, could make a certain sense of x-rays and cardiograms, plug in I.V.’s and administer shots, and just generally knew his way around the human body (oh, yes, he thought, remembering and flushing), which was as complicated as any piece of just machinery—were schemata for wiring, for fire alarm systems, burglar.

  But, he saw, the Empire was finished, over, dead. The future, certainly the present, was with the superpowers and the go-getter Nips. They had the nuclears and lasers, they had the highest tech and the microchips and the animatronics. One day soon there wouldn’t be an up-to-date, decent, self-respecting tourist attraction left anywhere between America and the U.S.S.R. Everything else was just scenery—yes, and they had the wilderness areas, the deepest canyons and longest rivers; they had the sunsets; they had the climates—and thrill rides. There’d be nowhere else a dying kid could go.

  But his real gloom, his real patriotism, he reserved for Colin back in Blighty in his obsolete waxworks. (We have the wax.) Poor Colin, Colin thought, and could not have said which one of them he had in mind.

  No, by disgrace he meant he’d allowed his desperation to show and knew that, in his position, Mary Cottle would not have permitted herself the luxury. He admired the woman, and if he tried to snitch on her that time she’d become separated from the group, that had only been duty. The desperation was something else. Everyone’s desperate, he knew, Mary Cottle included. It was giving oneself permission to reveal it that was off. Like the poet said, most blokes lead lives of quiet desperation, but the poet was wrong. Most blokes shouted it from the rooftops, they shouted and shouted it till the rafters rang. He yearned for the days of his former silence, for the old-time, stiff-upper-lip qualities that made him British and had kept him in the closet. He wanted his quiet desperation back. (It was too late, of course. If they hadn’t maintained such a sterile field in this place—you could practically operate here—his name would be spray-painted all over the lavs by now.) It had been Mary Cottle’s room they’d used, Mary Cottle’s bed—his nursing skills had come in handy when he remade it; Matthew marveled at his hospital corners—and the least he owed her was his silence. He hadn’t told Gale it was not his room. He didn’t know what she was up to
in hiring a hall—he’d cut Nedra off when she offered her theories after telling him of its existence—but desperation was bound to be in it. He’d leave her to Heaven. She could be one of the blokes to lead the quiet desperation life. While he, now he was in it, would have to continue to make his unseemly noises.

  So the first chance he had he took his manuals and sought Gale out.

  “What do you mean?” Gale said. “You’ve got William Henry Harrison there. You’ve got Dwight Eisenhower and Martin Van Buren. Warren Harding, James Knox Polk. You’ve got Republicans and Democrats. I gave you a Whig! I made up a nice assortment.”

  “A lovely assortment.”

  “I picked it out myself,” Matthew said.

  Fags, Colin thought, and had a vagrant image of Matthew Gale’s toes curled in his shoes, smitten, shy and sly beneath the shoelace line. The penny-loafer line, he corrected, and realized Gale was in love, and wondered again if he were holding out on him.

  “Matthew?” Colin said.

  “What?”

  “Are you holding out on me?”

  “Holding out? Did I last night?”

  “I’m not talking about last night.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?”

  Fags, he thought. High-minded fag-aristocrat syntax-flourish. “I’m talking about the manuals. Really, Matthew! ‘The Lowdown on Central Heating in the Magic Kingdom!’ ‘Secrets of Mickey Mouse’s Loo Revealed!‘”

  “Do you know what would happen if they found out I was giving this stuff away?”

  “Trading it,” Colin Bible said.

  “Oh,” Matthew Gale said, “we’re KGB, are we? We’re CIA, we’re MI-Five.”