The Magic Kingdom

by Stanley Elkin

  “He lives in Mill Valley. He means the San Andreas fault.”

  He sees a picture wrapped in cellophane. It’s of Mack, her dead husband.

  “Was it his second stroke that killed him?”

  She looks frightened. “How did you know?”

  “His grin doesn’t cross to the left side of his face.”

  “Boy,” she said, “you know your onions.” She fingered the small, light-colored cysts on her face.

  “I’d like to get your family history,” Mr. Moorhead told her. “Your parents, your grandparents, your brothers and sisters. Blood aunts and blood uncles, their children.”

  She nodded.

  “Are we talking about a large family?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And you people are from—?”

  “Poland.”

  “Much history of cancer?”

  “No C-A-N-C-E-R,” she said.

  “Heart disease? Stroke?”

  “Counting Mack?”

  “Mack was your husband,” Moorhead said. “He’s not related.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Diabetes?”

  “No,” she said.

  “There’s a high incidence of diabetes among Polish Jews.”

  “Not by us,” she said.

  There was no abdominal pain; there had been no cirrhosis, no anemia, no arthritis, no asthma, no back pain.

  “Gallbladder? Gallstones?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Convulsions? Colon difficulties?”

  “Feh!”

  There’d been no pulmonary history, no pleurisy, no pneumonia.

  “What about depression?”

  “All in your head.”

  “How about gonorrhea, how about syphilis?”

  “Say,” she said, “who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “Diverticulitis.”

  “Knock on wood, no.”

  He asked about edema. She shook her head. He asked her about gastroenteritis. She shook her head.

  “Microcephaly? Hyperplasia? Hypocolemia? Hemoptysis? Syncope? Ischemia or transient ischemic attack syndrome?”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  Mr. Moorhead put down his pencil. “We are talking about a large family, you said.”

  “Oh,” she said, “enormous.”

  He picked his pencil up again. “Vascular dysfunction?”

  She shook her head. As she did when he asked her if anyone in her family had ever had hemorrhoids or palpitations or varicose veins or vertigo or an infection of the urinary tract. As she did when he asked about scabies or hepatitis or lupus or Parkinson’s disease.

  “Tuberculosis, poison ivy?”

  “Out of the question.”

  As, it turned out, it was all out of the question: hernia and obesity and rectal bleeding and hyperthyroid and blisters and osteoporosis and renal failure and senile dementia and paresis and paresthesia and effusions of the pleurae and vaginitis and thyroid. Disease itself was out of the question, and all pathologies.

  But still she has her complaints. Which Moorhead, dispirited and out of touch with his own theories, who can’t even summarize them now, who can’t say why he needed photographs, the old gemütlich formal sepia poses and black-and-white candids, only halfheartedly hears.

  “Well,” she says, “you’re English. Socialized medicine, the National Health. Didn’t I live after the war two years there? When my papers came through in five months? And I could have gone anywhere? The whole world to choose from? But stayed on to finish my pronunciation studies, my enunciation lessons? And don’t forget, I already knew a little English. Enough to get by. But how can a Jew get by with an accent? A yid, a mockie, a hymie, a kike. So this is my fear, doctor. What’s upsetting me so. It could come back. The accent. Sometimes I hear it. So vut if dere’s trouble? Vut den? Vut vill be? Vut den vut vill be?”

  “Please,” he says. Moorhead presses her again. “Please, I beg you.”

  “Nu,” she says, “he begs me. He begs me, de docteh.”

  And, on the waters behind the Contemporary, Colin Bible, his spirits revitalized by prospects he has brought about himself—it’s neither immoral nor a particularly big deal for someone who negotiates with the sick, up to here in other people’s pain and disease, to seem to take on an aspect of exceptional health, this bonus of well-being, this juxtaposed by-contrast aura of splendid, shining, booming energy, his scale immortality a perk, like loose change snapped up after the show by ushers, say—toodles about Bay Lake looking for a port of call. Mary Cottle waits with the children at the marina. She gazes out as if to sea, her eyes peeled for Colin’s tiny speedboat.

  “’Scuse me, if a poor death-blemished lad might ’ave a word wif da nice healfy lady.”

  “I’m sorry, Benny, are you talking to me?”

  “Well, only tryin’, you might say. Only makin’ the odd modest effort.” He winks at Mudd-Gaddis. He winks at Rena.

  “What is it, Benny? If something’s on your mind, be good enough to say what it is, please. I’m a bit browned with your indirection. Goodness, boy, you talk just like an informer lately. You do. You really do. Like a copper’s nark. All these light kicks and promptings. I only speak like this,” she adds, “because I love you.”

  “Oh, aye,” says Benny, snorting, “browned.”

  “Are you out to ruin what may turn out to be the loveliest day we’ve had here?” Mary Cottle asks, almost as if she knows what he’s talking about.

  “It puts me in mind of a song, all this,” Benny says. “‘It does, Benny?’” he says. “Yar, it really do,” he answers himself. “‘Go on,’” he says, “‘sing it. Sing away, Ben boy.’” “I’ve no voice.” “‘Go on,’” he insists. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” “‘We want Ben-ny, we want Ben-ny,’” he chants. He cups his hands. “‘Were that the song then?’” he calls through them. “Nah,” he says, “that were just the softening him up.” “‘The song, the song,’” he demands. “Right, then,” he says, “which it goes something like this.” He looks toward Mary Cottle. “‘Ί cover the waterfront,’” he sings.

  Mary Cottle is right about the day. At least about the weather. It’s 80 degrees. The humidity can’t be a quarter that. There is the breeze of dreams. Slapping confidence like balm on their skins. The sky’s a perfect blue. The clouds are like topping.

  “Ahoy, ahoy,” Colin says conversationally up at them from the Water Sprite.

  “What’d you find out?” calls Benny Maxine.

  “Mate,” Colin tells Benny softly, glancing toward the chap in the rental booth, “would you be so kind as to avast your voice there? Would you have the good manners to dim the running lights on your mouth?”

  “What do you think?” Noah asks. “Do you think we’ll be able to do it?”

  “Oh, will we, Colin?” Lydia asks. “Will we?”

  “Well,” Colin says, “if you’ll give me a minute to discuss with the admiral there”—he indicates the young man at the boat rental—“I’ll get back to you.” He hops out of the little speedboat and wriggles out of his life jacket.

  “Listen,” he tells the guy, “I don’t want the tykes to hear me.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “That’s why I’m talking low like this.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You read about these little’uns?” he asks. “The Seven Dwarfs with Snow White over there.”

  The fellow—he’s still in his teens, Colin judges, and a looker—glances in the kids’ direction. “Read about them?” he says.

  “Don’t stare, man!”

  “Was I staring?”

  “People do, you know. That or look away. One or the other. Well, we don’t know how to deal with celebrity, do we? We’re not that much at home in fame.”

  “Are they on television?”

  “They’re on the news.”

  “Really? The news?”

  “Not so loud.”

  “What did they do?”

&
nbsp; “They haven’t quite managed to do it yet.”

  “When they do,” the boat-rental kid says, “what will it be?”

  Colin lowers his voice still further. “Well,” he says, “they’re going to die.”

  The young man nods. “Yes,” he says sadly, “we get a lot of that here.”

  “Not at this concession! Not in these numbers!”

  “No, I guess not here so much.”

  “There you go,” Colin says.

  “What have they got?”

  “The little blue babe?” He moves his eyes in Janet Order’s direction.

  “Yes?”

  “That’s our Janet. You play a musical instrument?”

  “Sax a little.”

  “The reeds in her heart are shot. Her valves and stops are queered.”

  “And the heavy girl?”

  “Forty pounds of tumor.”

  “Gee.”

  “This”—he indicates Bay Lake, he indicates the sunshine, he indicates the blue sky and the lovely day—“would be unusual? Even for around here, even for Florida, am I right?”

  “A little unusual.”

  “I’ll be bound, ‘a little.’ Well,” Colin says, “and the lump- faced kid is Benny Maxine. Benny’s dying of his baggy great liver and his sizey spleen. And little Tony Word and wee Noah Cloth of leukemia and osteosarcoma. Those are your nagging cancers of the blood and the big bad bones.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “That’s how it is,” Colin says.

  “Awful.”

  “The other little girl is Rena Morgan. Rena is our cystic fibrosis.”

  “And the old-looking guy?”

  “Charles Mudd-Gaddis. Charles can’t tell you whether it’s Tuesday morning or 1066. Not enough oxygen to his brain and belly button, to his organs and toenails.”

  “Really?”

  “The Bible tells you so.” The concessionaire looks at the children and shakes his head. “Don’t stare,” Colin says.

  “Sorry.”

  “So I promised them this treat,” he says, taking his voice so low the young man has to strain to hear him. “Well, to tell you the truth—they never said this, they’re too polite—I think they’re a little burned out on all the rides and exhibits, on the hi tech and brass bands. I thought a little time on the water, a little fun in the sun, you see what I mean?”

  “Sure.”

  “Right. We’ll take two of the Sprites. We’ll take the Sunfish and one of those motorized pontoon boats.”

  “We don’t rent to anyone under twelve. Even with an accompanying adult they’re not allowed to drive. I’m sorry.”

  “Your passport please, Benny,” Colin called. “Rena, yours? Benny’s fifteen. Rena’s a teenager.”

  “But these kids are dying,” the boy objected.

  “They’ll wear life jackets.”

  “Really, mister,” the young man said. “I mean, I don’t see how I can do this. I mean it’s irresponsible. Suppose something should happen? I mean, it could. Something could. They start up with each other, things get out of hand and they capsize. I mean, something awful could happen.”

  “You’re right. It would be better if you closed the shop while we’re out. Not lease your other boats. I mean, the heavier the traffic, the more likely something bad could happen.”

  “Not lease my boats?”

  “Well, that’s part of the treat too, you see. To let the kids have the lake to themselves, to fix it so that for once—look,” he said, “you’re a native, right?”

  “A native?”

  “A native, a local. You’re from around here.”

  “From Orlando.”

  “All right. You’re this local native Orlando boy. Tell me, how many days do you remember out of your whole life when the weather’s been like this? Did I say weather? This isn’t weather. This is Nature. How many? A dozen? Less? Could you count them on two hands? On one? I’m twice your age and don’t recall any. All right, I’m not from Orlando or even from Florida, but I’m no stranger to the planet. I go on holiday to the sun coasts. I’ve been to Mediterranea. I’ve come back tan. But this, this is a special dispensation. This is God’s odds.” And now his voice is not lowered. The children can hear him chatting freely about their deaths, about the great disappointment their lives have been to them, about what he calls the day’s miraculous reprieve—time’s and temperature’s deliverance. (Because he’s flirting. He doesn’t have to speak to him like this, doesn’t have to mention their deaths or speak their names, doesn’t have to bring up the day’s rarity or say anything about not renting the other boats. Because—there’s nothing in it for him; he wants nothing from this looker but his attention—he’s flirting, waving his fine and fetching fettle like a braggart’s flag. Because he’s in high humor, has what he hadn’t known he’d come for. Because he is flirting, floating the raised, willful waftage of his spirit. Flirting with the boat-rental boy, with Mary, even with his doomed and helpless charges.)

  In minutes they are arranged in the boats. Colin is in a Sunfish with Tony Word, Benny in a Sprite with Lydia, and Mary Cottle and Noah Cloth are in a second Sprite. Rena Morgan is to drive Janet Order and Charles Mudd-Gaddis in the pontoon boat. The young fellow at the boat rental has agreed to close his booth and rent no more boats.

  Colin, who looks like a good sailor, is. Somehow he maneuvers the sailboat between the two small speedboats and steers beside Rena’s blocky, raftlike launch. He keeps them all in line with his high spirits, towing them with his extraordinary cheer.

  “Men,” he calls to Rena and Lydia, to Charles and to Tony, to Benny and Noah and Mary Cottle and Janet Order, “it’s dear old Dunkerque all over again! Hail Britannia, how about it?” he roars. “Hail Britannia.”

  (It’s like having money to spend. Like being a customer. Yes, like having an advantage over the clerk who serves him; and his decisions and his whims, still in reserve, are like having the clerk’s commission in his pocket. Alternately yielding and withholding at will, this is his flirtatiousness, his playboy’s devil-may- care airs on him like perfume.)

  And leads his strange armada to Discovery Island. Surveillant. The expert here. Signaling their distance, instructing them to cut their engines while he, working with nothing but air—it isn’t strong or concentrated enough to offer itself as wind—seems to take on their stalled and idling energies, to play the Sunfish like a surfboard, his arms and his shoulders, his body and head shifting and busy as a boxer’s.

  “Over there,” Benny Maxine says, turning the key in the little boat’s ignition and looking toward the dock.

  “Use your head, Ben,” Colin says. “We can’t berth there.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s where the boats come in to drop off the tourists. It won’t do. It’s bespoke.”

  “Ooh,” Benny says, “which way then?”

  “To the other island.”

  Ignoring the macaws and cockatoos, the ibis and rheas, ignoring the trumpeter swans, the cranes and white peacocks, ignoring the flamingos and pelicans, ignoring the eagles, they are towed by his chatter and cheer and make land in a cove like the underedge of a key where Colin Bible supervises their disembarkation, still pitching his mood at them as he helps them out of the boats. “And ain’t it?” he asks again. “Ain’t it old Dunkerque? Ain’t it in a way? What was the dear old Dunker anyway if not just about the grandest last stand and evacuation of all time? Talk about your quality time, talk about your finest hours. Am I right? You know it.”

  “Where are we, Colin?”

  “Shipwreck Marsh, Janet, it’s called on the map.”

  “I wonder if there’s snakes,” Noah says.

  “Snakes don’t bother you,” Benny says, “if you don’t bother them.”

  “They say that about everything. Sharks and tigers and rabid dogs.”

  “It’s true. That’s why they say it.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I been on outings. Before I was sick.
I went to just dozens of rambles.”

  “‘Before I was sick.’ That’s rich. ‘Before I was sick.’ When would that have been?”

  “You don’t think I ever was healthy? You want to bet me? You want to?”

  “Congenital. You’re congenital.”

  “Oh, I’m congenital? I am?”

  “Congenital and chronic.”

  “Did you hear that, Colin? She says I’m congenital.”

  “And chronic.”

  “Did you hear that, Miss Cottle?”

  Mary Cottle, downwind of Janet and Rena, takes a smoke from a fresh pack of East African cigarettes and lights it.

  “You suppose I could have one of those?” Benny asks.

  “Strictly speaking, Ben boy, you oughtn’t to smoke.”

  “The nerve,” Lydia Conscience says. “After the way he spoke to her before.”

  “May I please?”

  “Certainly not,” Mary Cottle says.

  “Shipwreck Marsh,” Rena Morgan says. “It’s not very pretty.”

  “It’s quite suitable,” Colin Bible says.

  “I think it should do,” Janet Order says.

  “For our purposes.”

  “But it’s not very pretty.”

  “Unspoiled,” Colin Bible says, “it’s unspoiled.”

  “Just what does that mean, Colin?”

  “That the landscapers haven’t been by yet. To put the macaws and cockatoos into the trees. The ibis and rheas. The trumpeter swans.”

  “Well?” Mary Cottle says.

  “Well what?”

  “I was thinking of our famous purposes.”

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “Where’s the fire?”

  “If I’m old enough to die,” Benny sulks, “I’m old enough to smoke.”

  “It looks like a marsh.”

  “It looks like a shipwreck.”

  “That stuff isn’t sand. Is that stuff sand?”

  “It’s some kind of cement, I think.”

  “The basic building blocks of life.”

  “This place must be crawling with poison ivy.”

  “Poison sumac.”

  “Deadly nightshade.”

  “Bloody pokeweed.”

  “Leaves of rhubarb.”

  “Seeds of castor.”

  “Whoever ain’t game let him go back to the boats.”

  “Charles?”