Conjure Wife

by Fritz Leiber

  He grabbed her by the arm. “Listen, I’ve been patient with you about all this ignorant nonsense. But now you’re going to show some sense and show it quick.”

  Her lips curled, nastily. “Oh, I see. It’s been the velvet glove so far, but now it’s going to be the iron hand. If I don’t do just as you say, I get packed off to an asylum. Is that it?”

  “Of course not! But you’ve just got to be sensible.”

  “Well, I tell you I won’t!”

  “Now, Tansy —”

  10:13: The folded comforter jounced as Tansy flopped on the bed. New tears had streaked and reddened her face and dried. “All right,” she said, in a stuffy voice. “I’ll do what you want. I’ll burn all my things.”

  Norman felt light-headed. The thought came into his mind, “And to think I dared to tackle it without a psychiatrist!”

  “There’ve been enough times when I’ve wanted to stop,” she added. “Just like there’ve been times I’ve wanted to stop being a woman.”

  What followed struck Norman as weirdly anticlimactic. First the ransacking of Tansy’s dressing room for hidden charms and paraphernalia. Norman found himself remembering those old two-reel comedies in which scores of people pile out of a taxicab — it seemed impossible that a few shallow drawers and old shoe boxes could hold so many wastepaper baskets of junk. He tossed the dog-eared copy of “Parallelisms” on top of the last one, picked up Tansy’s leatherbound diary. She shook her head reassuringly. After the barest hesitation he put it back unopened.

  Then the rest of the house. Tansy moving faster and faster, darting from room to room, deftly recovering flannel-wrapped “hands” from the upholstery of the chairs, the under sides of table tops, the interior of vases, until Norman dizzily marveled that he had lived in the house for more than ten years without chancing on any.

  “It’s rather like a treasure hunt, isn’t it?” she said with a rueful smile.

  There were other charms outside — under front and back doorsteps, in the garage, and in the car. With every handful thrown on the roaring fire he had built in the living room, Norman’s sense of relief grew. Finally Tansy opened the seams of the pillows on his bed and carefully fished out two little matted shapes made of feathers bound with fine thread so that they blended with the fluffy contents of the pillow.

  “See, one’s a heart, the other an anchor. That’s for security,” she told him. “New Orleans feather magic. You haven’t taken a step for years without being in the range of one of my protective charms.”

  The feather figures puffed into flame.

  “There,” she said. “Feel any reaction?”

  “No,” he said. “Any reason I should?”

  She shook her head. “Except that those were the last ones. And so, if there were any hostile forces that my charms were keeping at bay…” .

  He laughed tolerantly. Then for a moment his voice grew hard. “You’re sure they’re all gone? Absolutely certain you haven’t overlooked any?”

  “Absolutely certain. There’s not one left in the house or near it, Norm — and I never planted any anywhere else because I was afraid of… well, interference. I’ve counted them all over in my mind a dozen times and they’ve all gone —” She looked at the fire, “— pouf. And now,” she said quietly, “I’m tired, really tired. I want to go straight to bed.”

  Suddenly she began to laugh. “Oh, but first I’ll have to stitch up those pillows, or else there’ll be feathers all over the place.”

  He put his arms around her. “Everything okay now?”

  “Yes, darling. There’s only one thing I want to ask you — that we don’t talk about this for a few days at least. Not even mention it. I don’t think I could… . Will you promise me that, Norm?”

  He pulled her closer. “Absolutely, dear. Absolutely.”

  3

  Leaning forward from the worn leather edge of the old easy chair, Norman played with the remnants of the fire, tapped the fang of the poker against a glowing board until it collapsed into tinkling embers, over which swayed almost invisible blue flames.

  From the floor beside him Totem watched the flames, head between outstretched paws.

  Norman felt tired. He really ought to have followed Tansy to bed long ago, except he wanted time for his thoughts to unkink. Rather a bother, this professional need to assimilate each new situation, to pick over its details mentally, turning them this way and that, until they became quite shopworn. Whereas Tansy had turned out her thoughts like a light and plunged into sleep. How like Tansy! — or perhaps it was just the more finely attuned, hyperthyroid female physiology.

  In any case, she’d done the practical, sensible thing. And that was like Tansy, too. Always fair. Always willing, in the long run, to listen to logic (in a similar situation would he have dared try reasoned argument on any other woman?) Always… yes… empirical. Except that she had gotten off on a crazy sidetrack.

  Hempnell was responsible for that, it was a breeding place for neurosis, and being a faculty wife put a woman in one of the worst spots. He ought to have realized years ago the strain she was under and taken steps. But she’d been too good an actor for him. And he was always forgetting just how deadly seriously women took faculty intrigues. They couldn’t escape like their husbands into the cool, measured worlds of mathematics, microbiology or what have you.

  Norman smiled. That had been an odd notion Tansy had let slip towards the end — that Evelyn Sawtelle and Harold Gunnison’s wife and old Mrs. Carr were practising magic too, of the venomous black variety. And not any too hard to believe, either, if you knew them! That was the sort of idea with which a clever satirical writer could do a lot. Just carry it a step farther — picture most women as glamor-conscious witches, carrying on their savage warfare of deathspell and countercharm, while their reality-befuddled husbands went blithely about their business. Let’s see, Barrie had written What Every Woman Knows to show that men never realized how their wives were responsible for their successes. Being that blind, would men be any more apt to realize that their wives used witchcraft for the purpose?

  Norm’s smile changed to a wince. He had just remembered that it wasn’t just an odd notion, but that Tansy had actually believed or half-believed, such things. He sucked his lips wryly. Doubtless he’d have more unpleasant moments like this, when memory would catch him up with a start. After tonight, it was inevitable.

  Still, the worst was over.

  He reached down to stroke Totem. who did not look away from the hypnotic embers.

  “Time we got to bed, old cat. Must be about twelve. No — quarter past one.”

  As he slipped the watch back into his pocket, the fingers of his left hand went to the locket at the other end of the chain.

  He weighed in his palm the small golden heart, a gift from Tansy. Was it perhaps a trifle heavier than its metal shell could account for? He snapped up the cover with his thumbnail. There was no regular way of getting at the space behind Tansy’s picture, so after a moment’s hesitation, he carefully edged out the tiny photograph with a pencil point.

  Behind the photograph was a tiny packet wrapped in the finest flannel.

  Just like a woman — that thought came with vicious swiftness — to seem to give in completely, but to hold out on something.

  Perhaps she had forgotten.

  Angrily he tossed the packet into the fireplace. The photograph fluttered along with it, lighted on the bed of embers, and flared before he could snatch it out. He had a glimpse of Tansy’s face curling and blackening.

  The packet took longer. A yellow glow crept across its surface, as the nap singed. Then a wavering four-inch flame shot up.

  Simultaneously a chill went through him, though he still felt the heat from the embers. The room seemed to darken. There was a faint, mighty roaring in his ears, as of motors far underground. He had the sense of standing suddenly naked and unarmed before something menacingly alien.

  Totem had turned around and was peering intently at the shado
ws in the far corner. With a spitting hiss she sprang sideways and darted from the room.

  Norman realized he was trembling. Nervous reaction, he told himself. Might have known it was overdue.

  The flame died, and once again there was only the frostily tinkling bed of embers.

  Explosively, the phone began to jangle.

  “Professor Saylor? I don’t suppose you ever thought you’d hear from me again, did you? Well, the reason I’m calling you is that I always believe in letting people — no matter who — know where I stand, which is a lot more than can be said for some people.”

  Norman held the receiver away from his ear. The words, though jumbled, sounded like the beginning of a call, but the tone in which they were uttered didn’t. Surely it would take half an hour of ranting before anyone could reach such a pitch of whining and — yes, the word was applicable — insane anger.

  “What I want to tell you, Saylor, is this: I’m not going to take what’s been done to me lying down. I’m not going to let myself stay flunked out of Hempnell. I’m going to demand to have my grades changed and you know why!”

  Norman recognized the voice. There sprang into his mind the image of a pale, abnormally narrow face with pouting lips and protuberant eyes, crowned by a great shock of red hair. He cut in.

  “Now listen Jennings, if you thought you were being treated unfairly, why didn’t you present your grievances two months ago, when you got your grades?”

  “Why? Because I let you pull the wool over my eyes. The openminded Professor Saylor! It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized how you hadn’t given me the proper attention, how I’d been slighted or bamboozled at conferences, how you didn’t tell me I might flunk until it was too late, how you based your tests on trick questions from lectures I’d missed, how you discriminated against me because of my father’s politics and because I wasn’t the student type like that Bronstein. It wasn’t until then —”

  “Jennings, be reasonable. You flunked two courses besides mine last semester.”

  “Yes, because you passed the word around, influenced others against me, made them see me as you pretended to see me, made everyone —”

  “And you mean to tell me you only now realized all this?”

  “Yes I do. It just came to me in a flash as I was thinking here. Oh you were clever, all right. You had me eating out of your hand, you had me taking everything lying down, you had me scared. But once I got my first suspicion, I saw the whole plot clear as day. Everything fitted, everything led back to you, everything —”

  “Including the fact that you were flunked out of two other colleges before you ever came to Hempnell?”

  “There! I knew you were prejudiced against me from the start!”

  “Jennings,” Norman said wearily, “I’ve listened to all I’m going to. If you have any grievances, present them to Dean Gunnison.”

  “Do you mean to say you won’t take any action?”

  “Yes, I mean just that.”

  “Is that final?”

  “Yes, it’s final.”

  “Very well, Saylor. Then all I can say to you is, Watch out! Watch out, Saylor. Watch out!”

  There was a click at the other end of the line. Norman gently put the phone back in its cradle. Oh, damn Theodore Jennings’ parents! Not because they were hypocritical, vain, reactionary stuffed-shirts, but because they had such cruel pride that they were determined to shove through college a sensitive, selfish, wordy, somewhat subnormal boy, as narrow-minded as they were though not one-tenth as canny. And damn President Pollard for kowtowing so ineptly to their wealth and political influence that he had let the boy into Hempnell knowing perfectly well he’d fail.

  Norman put the screen in front of the fire, switched out the living room lights and started toward the bedroom in the yellow glow fanning out from the hall.

  Again the phone jangled. Norman looked at it curiously for a moment before he picked it up.

  “Hello.”

  There was no reply. He waited for a few moments. Then, “Hello?” he repeated.

  Still there was no reply, He was about to hang up when he thought he caught the sound of breathing

  — excited, uneven, choked.

  “Who is it?” he said sharply. “This is Professor Saylor. Please speak up.”

  He still seemed to hear the breathing. That was all.

  Then out of the small black mystery of the phone came one word, enunciated slowly and with difficulty, in a voice that was deep yet throbbed with an almost fantastic intimacy.

  “Darling!”

  Norman swallowed. He didn’t seem to recognize this voice at all. Before he could think what to say, it went on, more swiftly, but otherwise unchanged.

  “Oh Norman, how glad I am that at last I’ve found the courage to speak where you wouldn’t. I’m ready now, darling, I’m ready. You only need to come to me.”

  “Really?” Norman - temporized in amazement. It seemed to him now that there was something faintly familiar about the voice, not in its tone, but in its phrasing and rhythm.

  “Come to me, lover, come to me. Take me to some place where we’ll be alone. All alone. I’ll be your mistress. I’ll be your slave. Subject me to you. Do anything you want to me.”

  Norman wanted to laugh uproariously, yet his heart was pounding a little. Nice, perhaps, if it were real, but there was something so clownish about it. Was it a joke? he suddenly asked himself.

  “I’m lying here talking to you without any clothes on, darling. There’s just a tiny pink lamp by the bed. Oh take me to some lonely tropical isle and we’ll make passionate love together. I’ll hurt you and you’ll hurt me. And then we’ll swim in the moonlight with white petals drifting down onto the water.”

  Yes, it was a joke all right, it just had to be, he decided with a twinge of only half-humorous regret. And then there suddenly occurred to him the one person capable of playing such a joke.

  “So come, Norman, come, and take me into the darkness,” the voice continued.

  “All right, I will,” he replied briskly. “And after I’ve made passionate love to you I’ll switch on the light and I’ll say, ‘Mona Utell, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’”

  “Mona?” The voice rose in pitch. “Mona?”

  “Yes indeed, Mona!” he assured her laughingly. “You’re the only actress I know, in fact the only woman I know, who could do that corny sultriness to such perfection. What would you have done if Tansy had answered? An imitation of Humphrey Bogart? How’s New York? How’s the party? What are you drinking?”

  “Drinking? Norman, don’t you know who this is?”

  “Certainly. You’re Mona Utell.” But he had already grown doubtful. Long-drawn-out jokes weren’t Mona’s specialty. And the strange voice, with its aura of exasperating familiarity, was growing higher all the time.

  “You really don’t know who I am?”

  “No, I guess I don’t,” he replied, speaking a little sharply because that was the way the question had been put.

  “Not really?”

  Norman sensed that those two words cocked the trigger for an emotional explosion, but he didn’t care. He went ahead and pulled it. “No!” he said impatiently.

  At that the voice at the other end of the wire rose to a scream. Totem, slinking past, turned her head at the sound.

  “You beast! You dirty beast! After all you’ve done to me! After you’ve deliberately roused me. After you’ve undressed mc a hundred times with your eyes!”

  “Now please —”

  “Corny sultriness! You… you lousy schoolteacher! Go back to your Mona! Go back to that snippy wife of yours! And I hope you all three fry in hell!”

  Once again Norman found himself listening to a dead phone. With a wry smile he put it down. Oh the staid life of a college professor! He tried to think of some woman who could possibly be entertaining a secret passion for him, but that didn’t lead him anywhere. Certainly his idea about Mona Utell had seemed a good one at the time. She w
as quite capable of calling them up long distance from New York for a joke. It was just the sort of thing she’d do to enliven a party after the evening performance.

  But not to end the joke that way. Mona always wanted you laughing with her at the finish.

  Perhaps someone else had been playing a joke.

  Or perhaps someone else really… . He shrugged his shoulders. Such an asinine business. He must tell Tansy. It would amuse her. He started toward the bedroom.

  Only then did he remember all that had happened earlier in the evening. The two startling phone calls had quite knocked it out of his head.

  He was at the bedroom door. He turned around slowly and looked at the phone. The house was very quiet.

  It occurred to him that from one way of looking at it, those two phone calls, coming just when they did, constituted a very unpleasant coincidence.

  But a scientist ought to have a healthy disregard for coincidences.

  He could hear Tansy breathing softly, regularly.

  He switched out the light in the hall and went to bed.

  4

  As Norman walked the last block to Hempnell the next morning, it struck him with unusual forcefulness just how pseudo was Hempnell’s Gothic. Odd to think how little scholarly thought that ornate architecture masked, and how much anxiety over low salaries and excessive administrative burdens; and among the students, how little passion for knowledge and how much passion, period — even though of a halting, advertisement-derived, movie-stimulated sort. But perhaps that was just what that fabulous gray architecture was supposed to symbolize, even in the old monastic days when its arches and buttresses had been functional.

  The walks were empty except for a few hurrying figures, but in three or four minutes the student body would spill out of chapel, a scattering tide of brightly-colored sweaters and jackets.

  A delivery van came gliding around the corner as Norman started to cross the street. He stepped back on the curb with a shivery distaste. In this gasoline-obsessed world he didn’t mind ordinary automobiles, but somehow trucks with their suggestion of an unwholesome gigantism touched him with a faint irrational horror.