Conjure Wife

by Fritz Leiber

  “Those experts at the top table are awfully quiet,” called Gunnison with a laugh. “They must be taking the game very seriously.”

  Witch women, all three of them, engaged in booting their husbands to the top of the tribal hierarchy.

  From the dark doorway at the far end of the room, Totem was peering curiously, as if weighing some similar possibility.

  But Norman could not fit Tansy into the picture. He could visualize physical changes, like frizzing her hair and putting some big rings in her ears and a painted design on her forehead. But he could not picture her as belonging to the same tribe. She persisted in his imagination as a stranger woman, a captive, eyed with suspicion and hate by the rest. Or perhaps a woman of the same tribe, but one who had done something to forfeit the trust of all the other women. A priestess who had violated taboo. A witch who had renounced witchcraft.

  Abruptly his field of vision narrowed to the score pad. Evelyn Sawtelle was idly scribbling stick figures as Mrs. Carr deliberated over a lead. First the stick figure of a man with arms raised and three or four balls above his head, as if he were juggling. Then the stick figure of a queen, indicated by crown and skirt. Then a little tower with battlements. Then an L-shaped thing with a stick figure hanging from it — a gallows. Finally, a crude vehicle — a rectangle with two wheels — bearing down on a man whose arms were extended toward it in fear.

  Just five scribbles. But Norman knew that four of them were connected with a bit of unusual knowledge buried somewhere in his mind. A glance at the exposed dummy gave him the clue.

  Cards.

  But this bit of knowledge was from the ancient history of cards, when the whole deck was drenched with magic, when there was a Knight between the Jack and Queen, when the suits were swords, batons, cups, and money, and when there were twenty-two special tarot, or fortunetelling cards in the pack, of which today only the Joker remained.

  But Evelyn Sawtelle knowing about anything as recondite as tarot cards? Knowing them so well she doodled them? Stupid, affected, conventional Evelyn Sawtelle? It was unthinkable. Yet — four of the tarot cards were the Juggler, the Empress, the Tower, and the Hanged Man.

  Only the fifth stick figure, that of the man and vehicle, did not fit in. Juggernaut? The fanatical, finally cringing victim about to die under the wheels of the vast, trundling idol? That was closer — and chalk one more up to the esoteric scholarship of stupid Evelyn Sawtelle.

  Suddenly it came to him. Himself and a truck. A great big truck. That was the meaning of the fifth stick figure.

  But Evelyn Sawtelle knowing his pet phobia?

  He stared at her. She scratched out the stick figures and looked at him sullenly.

  Mrs. Gunnison leaned forward, lips moving as if she might be counting trump.

  Mrs. Carr smiled, and made her lead. The risen wind began to make the same intermittent roaring sound it had for a moment earlier in the evening.

  Norman suddenly chuckled whistlingly, so that the three women looked at him. Why, what a fool he was! Worrying about witchcraft, when all Evelyn Sawtelle had been doodling was a child playing ball — the child she couldn’t have; a stick queen — herself; a tower — her husband’s office as chairman of the sociology department, or some other and more fundamental potency; a hanged man — Hervey’s impotence (that was an idea!); fearful man and truck — her own sexual energy horrifying and crushing Hervey.

  He chuckled again, so that the three women lifted their eyebrows. He looked around at them enigmatically.

  “And yet,” he asked himself, continuing his earlier ruminations, in what was, at first, a much lighter vein, “why not?”

  Three witch women using magic as Tansy had, to advance their husbands’ careers and their own.

  Making use of their husbands’ special knowledge to give magic a modern twist. Suspicious and worried because Tansy had given up magic; afraid she’d found a much stronger variety and was planning to make use of it.

  And Tansy — suddenly unprotected, possibly unaware of the change in their attitude toward her because, in giving up magic, she had lost her sensitivity to the supernatural, her “woman’s intuition.”

  Why not carry it a step further? Maybe all women were the same. Guardians of mankind’s ancient customs and traditions, including the practice of witchcraft. Fighting their husbands’ battles from behind the scenes, by sorcery. Keeping it a secret; and on those occasions when they were discovered, conveniently explaining it as feminine susceptibility to superstitious lads.

  Half of the human race still actively practicing sorcery.

  Why not?

  “It’s your play, Norman,” said Mrs. Sawtelle, sweetly.

  “You look as if you had something on your mind,” said Mrs. Gunnison.

  “How are you getting along up there, Norm?” her husband called. “Those women got you buffaloed?”

  Buffaloed? Norman came back to reality with a jerk. That was just what they almost had done. And all because the human imagination was a thoroughly unreliable instrument, like a rubber ruler. Let’s see, if he played his king it might set up a queen in Mrs. Gunnison’s hand so she could get in and run her spades.

  As Mrs. Carr topped it with her ace, Norm was conscious of her wrinkled lips fixed in a faint cryptic smile.

  After that hand, Tansy served refreshments. Norman followed her to the kitchen.

  “Did you see the looks she kept giving you?” she whispered gaily to Norman. “I sometimes think the bitch is in love with you.”

  He chuckled. “You mean Evelyn?”

  “Of course not. Mrs. Carr. Inside she’s a glamor girl. Haven’t you ever seen her looking at the students, wishing she had the outside too?”

  Norman remembered he’d been thinking the very thing that morning.

  Tansy continued, “I’m not trying to flatter myself when I say I’ve caught her looking at me in the same way. It gives me the creeps.”

  Norman nodded. “She reminds me of the Wicked —” he caught himself.

  “— Witch in Snow White? Yes. And now you’d better run along, dear, or they’ll be bustling out here to remind me that a Hempnell man’s place is definitely not in the kitchen.”

  When he returned to the living room, the usual shop talk had started.

  “Saw Pollard today,” Gunnison remarked, helping himself to a section of chocolate cake. “Told me he’d be meeting with the trustees tomorrow morning, to decide among other things on the sociology chairmanship.”

  Hervey Sawtelle choked on a crumb and almost upset his cup of cocoa.

  Norman caught Mrs. Sawtelle glaring at him vindictively. She changed her face and murmured, “How interesting.” He smiled. That kind of hate he could understand. No need to confuse it with witchcraft.

  He went to the kitchen to get Mrs. Carr a glass of water, and met Mrs. Gunnison coming out of the bedroom. She was slipping a leatherbound booklet into her capacious handbag. It recalled to his mind Tansy’s diary. Probably an address book.

  Totem slipped out from behind her, hissing decorously as she dodged past her feet.

  “I loathe cats,” said Mrs. Gunnison bluntly and walked past him.

  Professor Carr had made arrangements for a final rubber, men at one table, women at the other.

  “A barbaric arrangement,” said Tansy, winking. “You really don’t think we can play bridge at all.”

  “On the contrary, my dear, I think you play very well,” Carr replied seriously. “But I confess that at times I prefer to play with men. I can get a better idea of what’s going on in their minds. Whereas women still baffle me.”

  “As they should, dear,” added Mrs. Carr, bringing a flurry of laughter.

  The cards suddenly began to run freakishly, with abnormal distribution of suits, and play took a wild turn. But Norman found it impossible to concentrate, which made Sawtelle an even more jittery partner than usual.

  He kept listening to what the women were saying at the other table. His rebellious imagination persisted
in reading hidden meanings into the most innocuous remarks.

  “You usually hold wonderful hands, Tansy. But tonight you don’t seem to have any,” said Mrs. Carr. But suppose she was referring to the kind of hand you wrapped in flannel?

  “Oh, well, unlucky in cards… you know.” How had Mrs. Sawtelle meant to finish the remark? Lucky in love? Lucky in sorcery? Idiotic notion!

  “That’s two psychic bids you’ve made in succession, Tansy. Better watch out. We’ll catch up with you.” What might not a psychic bid stand for in Mrs. Gunnison’s vocabulary? Some kind of bluff in witchcraft? A pretense at giving up conjuring?

  “I wonder,” Mrs. Carr murmured sweetly to Tansy, “if you’re hiding a very strong hand this time, dear, and making a trap pass?”

  Rubber ruler. That was the trouble with imagination. According to a rubber ruler, an elephant would be no bigger than a mouse, a jagged line and a curve might be equally straight. He tried to think about the slam he had contracted for.

  “The girls talk a good game of bridge,” murmured Gunnison in an undertone.

  Gunnison and Carr came out at the long end of a two-thousand rubber and were still crowing pleasantly as they stood around waiting to leave.

  Norman remembered a question he wanted to ask Mrs. Gunnison.

  “Harold was telling me you had a number of photographs of that cement dragon or whatever it is on top of Estrey. It’s right opposite my window.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

  “I believe I’ve got one with me. Took it almost a year ago.”

  She dug a rumpled snapshot out of her handbag.

  He studied it, and experienced a kind of shiver in reverse. This didn’t make sense at all. Instead of being toward the center of the roof ridge, or near the bottom, it was almost at the top. Just what was involved here? A practical joke stretching over a period of days or weeks? Or — His mind balked, like a skittish horse. Yet — Eppur si muove.

  He turned it over. There was a confusing inscription on the back, in greasy red crayon. Mrs. Gunnison took it out of his hands, to show the others.

  “The wind sounds like a lost soul,” said Mrs. Carr, hugging her coat around her as Norman opened the door.

  “But a rather talkative one — probably a woman,” her husband added with a chuckle.

  When the last of them were gone, Tansy slipped her arm around his waist, and said, “I must be getting old. It wasn’t nearly as much of a trial as usual. Even Mrs. Carr’s ghoulish flirting didn’t bother me. For once they all seemed almost human.”

  Norman looked down at her intently. She was smiling peacefully. Totem had come out of hiding and was rubbing against her legs.

  With an effort Norman nodded and said, “Yes, they did. But God, that cocoa! Let’s have a drink!”

  7

  There were shadows everywhere, and the ground under Norman’s feet was soft and quivering. The dreadful strident roaring, which seemed to have gone on since eternity began, shook his very bones. Yet it did not drown out the flat, nasty monotone of that other voice which kept telling him to do something— he could not be sure what, except that it involved injury to himself, although he heard the voice as plainly as if someone were talking inside his head. He tried to struggle away from the direction in which the voice wanted him to go, but heavy hands jerked him back. He wanted to look over his shoulder at something he knew would be taller than himself, but he couldn’t muster the courage. The shadows were made by great rushing clouds which would momentarily assume the form of gigantic faces brooding down on him, faces with pits of darkness for eyes, and sullen, savage lips, and great masses of hair streaming behind.

  He must not do the thing the voice commanded. And yet he must. He struggled wildly. The sound rose to an earth-shaking pandemonium. The clouds became a black all-engulfing torrent.

  And then suddenly the bedroom became mixed up with the other picture, and he struggled awake.

  He rubbed his face, which was thick with sleep, and tried unsuccessfully to remember what the voice had wanted him to do. He still felt the reverberations of the sound in his ears.

  Gloomy daylight seeped through the shades. The clock indicated quarter to eight.

  Tansy was still curled up, one arm out of the covers. A smile was tickling the corners of her lips and wrinkling her nose. Norman slipped out carefully. His bare foot came down on a loose carpet tack. Suppressing an angry grunt, he hobbled off.

  For the first time in months he botched shaving. Twice the new blade slid too sharply sideways, neatly removing tiny segments of skin. He glared irritably at the white-glazed, red-flecked face in the mirror, pulled the blade down his chin very slowly, but with a little too much pressure, and gave himself a third nick.

  By the time he got down to the kitchen, the water he had put on was boiling. As he poured it into the coffeepot, the wobbly handle of the saucepan came completely loose, and his bare ankles were splattered painfully. Totem skittered away, then slowly returned to her pan of milk. Norman cursed, then grinned. What had he been telling Tansy about the cussedness of things? As if to prove the point with a final ridiculous example, he bit his tongue while eating coffee cake. Cussedness of things? Say rather the cussedness of the human nervous system! Faintly he was aware of a potently disturbing and unidentifiable emotion — remnant of the dream? — like an unpleasant swimming shape glimpsed beneath weedy water.

  It seemed most akin to a dull seething anger, for as he hurried toward Morton Hall. he found himself inwardly at war with the established order of things, particularly educational institutions. The old sophomoric exasperation at the hypocrisies and compromises of civilized society welled up and poured over the dams that a mature realism had set against it. This was a great life for a man to be leading! Coddling the immature minds of grown-up brats, and lucky to get one halfway promising student a year. Playing bridge with a bunch of old fogies. Catering to jittery incompetents like Hervey Sawtelle. Bowing to the thousand and one stupid rules and traditions of a second-rate college. And for what!

  Ragged clouds were moving overhead, presaging rain. They reminded him of his dream. He felt the impulse to shout a childish defiance at those faces in the sky.

  A truck rolled quietly by, recalling to his mind the little picture Evelyn Sawtelle had scribbled on the bridge pad. He followed it with his eyes. When he turned back, he saw Mrs. Carr.

  “You’ve cut yourself,” she said with sweet solicitude, peering sharply through her spectacles.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “How unfortunate!”

  He didn’t even agree. They walked together through the gate between Estrey and Morton. He could just make out the snout of the cement dragon poked over the Estrey gutter.

  “I wanted to tell you last night how distressed I was, Professor Saylor, about the matter of Margaret Van Nice, only of course, it wasn’t the right time. I’m dreadfully sorry that you had to be called in. Such a disgusting accusation! How you must have felt!”

  She seemed to misinterpret his wry grimace at this, for she went on very swiftly, “Of course, I never once dreamed that you had done anything the least improper, but I thought there must be something to the girl’s story. She told it in such detail.” She studied his face with interest. The thick glass made her eyes big as an owl’s. “Really, Professor Saylor, some of the girls that come to Hempnell nowadays are terrible. Where they get such loathsome ideas from is quite beyond me.”

  “Would you like to know?”

  She looked at him blankly, an owl in daytime.

  “They get them,” he told her concisely, “from a society which seeks simultaneously to stimulate and inhibit one of their basic drives. They get them, in brief, from a lot of dirty-minded adults!”

  “Really, Professor Saylor! Why —”

  “There are a number of girls here at Hempnell who would be a lot healthier with real love affairs rather than imaginary ones. A fair proportion, of course, have already made satisfactory adjustments.”<
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  He had the satisfaction of hearing her gasp as he abruptly turned into Morton. His heart was pounding pleasantly. His lips were tight. When he reached his office he lifted the phone and asked for an on-campus number.

  “Thompson? … Saylor. I have a couple of news items for you.”

  “Good, good! What are they?” Thompson replied hungrily, in the tone of one who poises a pencil.

  “First, the subject for my address to the Offcampus Mothers, week after next: ‘Pre-marital Relations and the College Student.’ Second, my theatrical friends — the Utells — will be playing in the city at the same time, and I shall invite them to be guests of the college.”

  “But —” The poised pencil had obviously been dropped like a red-hot poker.

  “That’s all, Thompson. Perhaps I shall have something more interesting another time. Good-by.”

  He felt a stinging sensation in his hand. He had been fingering the little obsidian knife. It had gashed his finger. Blood smeared the clear volcanic glass where once, he told himself, had been the blood of sacrifice or ritual scarification. Clumsy — he searched his desk for adhesive bandages. The drawer where he remembered putting them was locked. He opened it and there was the slimbarreled revolver he had taken from Theodore Jennings. The buzzer sounded. He shut the drawer, locked it again, ripped a strip of cloth from his handkerchief, and hurriedly tied it around the dripping wound.

  As he hurried down the corridor, Bronstein fell into step with him.

  “We’re pulling for you this morning, Dr. Saylor,” he murmured heartily.

  “What do you mean?”