World of Wonders

by Robertson Davies

  “I was inspired. Inspired by you, Ramsay, you may be surprised to hear. You remember your trick in which you pretended to eat money, though one could always see it in your hand as you took it away from your mouth? I did that. I popped the quarter into my mouth, chewed it up, showed Willard that it was gone, and that I had nothing in my hands. I could do a little magic, too, and I was eager to claim some kinship with this god.

  “He did not smile. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Come with me, kid. I got sumpn to show ya,’ and steered me toward a back entry of the tent which I had not noticed.

  “We walked perhaps halfway around the fairground, which was not really very far, and we kept behind tents and buildings. I would have been proud to be seen by the crowd with such a hero, but we met very few people, and they were busy with their own affairs in the agricultural tents, so I do not suppose anybody noticed us. We came to the back of the barn where the horses were stabled when they were not being shown; it was one of the two or three permanent buildings of the fair. Behind it was a lean-to with a wall which did not quite reach to the roof, nor fully to the ground. It was the men’s urinal, old, dilapidated, and smelly. Willard peeped in, found it empty, and pushed me in ahead of him. I had never been in such a place before, because it was part of my training that one never ‘went’ anywhere except at home, and all arrangements had to be made to accommodate this rule. It was a queer place, as I remember it; just a tin trough nailed to the wall, sloping slightly downward so that it drained into a hole in the ground. A pile of earth was ready to fill in the hole, once the fair was over.

  “At the end of this shanty was a door which hung partly open, and it was through this that Willard guided me. We were in an earth closet, as old as Deptford fair, I should judge, for a heavy, sweetish, old smell hung over it. Hornets buzzed under the sloping roof. The two holes in the seat were covered by rounds of wood, with crude handles. I think I would know them if I saw them now.

  “Willard took a clean white handkerchief out of his pocket, twisted it quickly into a roll, and forced it between my teeth. No: I should not say ‘forced’. I thought this was the beginning of some splendid illusion, and opened my mouth willingly. Then he whirled me round, lifted me up on the seat in a kneeling position, pulled down my pants and sodomized me.

  “Quickly said: an eternity in the doing. I struggled and resisted: he struck me such a blow over the ear that I slackened my grip with the pain, and he had gained an entry. It was rough: it was painful, and I suppose it was soon over. But as I say, it seemed an eternity, for it was a kind of feeling I had never guessed at.

  “I am anxious you should not misunderstand me. I was no Greek lad, discovering the supposed pleasures of pederastic love in a society that knew it and condoned it. I was a boy not yet quite ten years old, who did not know what sex was in any form. I thought I was being killed, and in a shameful way.

  “The innocence of children is very widely misunderstood. Few of them—I suppose only children brought up in wealthy families that desire and can contrive a conspiracy of ignorance—are unknowing about sex. No child brought up so near the country as I was, and among schoolchildren whose ages might reach as high as fifteen or sixteen, can be utterly ignorant of sex. It had touched me, but not intimately. For one thing, I had heard the whole of the Bible read through several times by my father; he had a plan of readings which, pursued morning and evening, worked through the whole of the book in a year. I had heard the sound as an infant, and as a little child, long before I could understand anything of the sense. So I knew about men going in unto women, and people raising up seed of their loins, and I knew that my father’s voice took on a special tone of shame and detestation when he read about Lot and his daughters, though I had never followed what it was they did in that cave, and thought their sin was to make their father drunk. I knew these things because I had heard them, but they had no reality for me.

  “As for my mother, who was called hoor by my schoolmates, I knew only that hoors—my father used the local pronunciation, and I don’t think he knew any other—were always turning up in the Bible, and always in a bad sense which meant nothing to me as a reality. Ezekiel, sixteen, was a riot of whoredoms and abominations, and I shivered to think how terrible they must be: but I did not know what they were, even in the plainest sense of the words. I only knew that there was something filthy and disgraceful that pertained to my mother, and that we all, my father and I, were spattered by her shame, or abomination, or whatever it might be.

  “I was aware that there was some difference between boys and girls, but I didn’t know, or want to know, what it was, because I connected it somehow with the shame of my mother. You couldn’t be a hoor unless you were a woman, and they had something special that made it possible. What I had, as a male, I had most strictly been warned against as an evil and shameful part of my body. ‘Don’t you ever monkey with yourself, down there,’ was the full extent of the sexual instruction I had from my father. I knew that the boys who were gloating over the bull’s testicles were doing something dirty, and my training was such that I was both disgusted and terrified by their sly nastiness. But I didn’t know why, and it never would have occurred to me to relate the bull’s showy apparatus with those things I possessed, in so slight a degree, and which I wasn’t to monkey with. So you can see that without being utterly ignorant, I was innocent, in my way. If I had not been innocent, how could I have lived my life, and even have felt some meagre joy, from time to time?

  “Sometimes I felt that joy when I was with you, Ramsay, because you were kind to me, and kindness was a great rarity in my life. You were the only person in my childhood who had treated me as if I were a human creature. I don’t say, who loved me, you notice. My father loved me, but his love was a greater burden, almost, than hate might have been. But you treated me as a fellow-being, because I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you to do anything else. You never ran with the crowd.

  “The rape itself was horrible, because it was painful physically, but worse because it was an outrage on another part of my body which I had been told to fear and be ashamed of. Liesl tells me that Freud has had a great deal to say about the importance of the functions of excretion in deciding and moulding character. I don’t know anything about that; don’t want to know it, because all that sort of thinking lies outside what I really understand. I have my own notions about psychology, and they have served me well. But this rape—it was something filthy going in where I knew only that filthy things should come out, as secretly as could be managed. In our house there was no word for excretion, only two or three prim locutions, and the word used in the schoolyard seemed to me a horrifying indecency. It’s very popular nowadays in literature, I’m told by Liesl. She reads a great deal. I don’t know how writers can put it down, though there was a time when I used it often enough in my daily speech. But as I have grown older I have returned to that early primness. We don’t get over some things. But what Willard did to me was, in a sense I could understand, a reversal of the order of nature, and I was terrified that it would kill me.

  “It didn’t, of course. But that, and Willard’s heavy breathing, and the flood of filthy language that he whispered as a kind of ecstatic accompaniment to what he was doing, were more horrible to me than anything I have met with since.

  “When it was over he pulled my head around so that he could he see my face and said, ‘You O.K., kid?’ I can remember the tone now. He had no idea at all of what I was, or what I might feel. He was obviously happy, and the Mephistophelian smile had given place to an expression that was almost boyish. ‘Go on now,’ he said. ‘Pull up your pants and beat it. And if you blat to anybody, by the living Jesus I’ll cut your nuts off with a rusty knife.’

  “Then I fainted, but for how long, or what I looked like when I did it, I of course can’t tell you. Perhaps I was out for a few minutes, because when I became aware again Willard was looking anxious, and patting my cheeks lightly. He had taken the gag out of my mouth. I wa
s crying, but making no noise. I had learned very early in life not to make a noise when I cried. I was still crumpled up on the horrible seat, and now its stench was too much for me and I vomited. Willard sprang back, anxious for his fine trousers and the high polish on his shoes. But he dared not leave me. Of course I had no idea how frightened he was. He felt he could trust in my shame and his threats up to a point, but I might be one of those terrible children who go beyond the point set for them by adults. He tried to placate me.

  “ ‘Hey,’ he whispered, ‘you’re a pretty smart kid. Where’d you learn that trick with the quarter, eh? Come on now, show it to me again. I never seen a better trick than that, even at the Palace, New York. You’re the kid that eats money; that’s who you are. A real show-business kid. Now look, I’ll give you this, if you’ll eat it.’ He offered me a silver dollar. But I turned my face away, and sobbed, without sound.

  “ ‘Aw now, look, it wasn’t as bad as that,’ he said. ‘Just some fun between us two. Just playing paw and maw, eh? You want to grow up to be smart, don’t you? Want to have fun? Take it from me, kid, you can’t start too young. The day’ll come, you’ll thank me. Yes sir, you’ll thank me. Now look here. I show you I’ve got nothing in my hands, see? Now watch.’ He spread his fingers one by one, and magically quarters appeared between them until he held four quarters in each hand. ‘Magic money, see? All for you; two whole dollars if you’ll shut up and get the hell outa here, and never say anything to anybody.’

  “I fainted again, and this time when I came round Willard was looking deeply worried. ‘What you need is rest,’ he said. ‘Rest, and time to think about that money. I’ve gotta get back for the next show, but you stay here, and don’t let anybody in. Nobody, see? I’ll come back as soon as I can and I’ll bring you something. Something nice. But don’t let anybody in, don’t holler, and keep quiet like a mouse.’

  “He went, and I heard him pause for a moment outside the door. Then I was alone, and I sobbed myself to sleep.

  “I did not wake until he came back, I suppose an hour later. He brought me a hot dog, and urged me to eat it. I took one bite—it was my first hot dog—and vomited again. Willard was now very worried indeed. He swore fiercely, but not at me. All he said to me was, ‘My God you’re a crazy kid. Stay here. Now stay here, I tell ya. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’

  “That was not very soon. Perhaps two hours. But when he came he had an air of desperation about him, which I picked up at once. Terrible things had happened, and terrible remedies must be found. He had brought a large blanket, and he wrapped me in it, so that not even my head was showing, and lugged me bodily—I was not very heavy—out of the privy; I felt myself dumped into what I suppose was the back of a buggy or a carry-all, or something, and other wraps were thrown over me. Off I went, bumping along in the back of the cart, and it was some time later that I felt myself lifted out again, carried over rough ground, and humped painfully up onto what seemed to be a platform. Then another painful business of being lugged over a floor, some sounds of objects being moved, and at last the blanket was taken off. I was in a dark place, and only vaguely conscious that some distance away a door, like the door of a shed, was open, and I could see the light of dusk through it.

  “Willard lost no time. ‘Get in here,’ he commanded, and pushed me into a place that was entirely dark, and confined. I had to climb upward, boosted by him, until I came to what seemed to be a shelf, or seat, and on this he pushed me. ‘Now you’ll be all right,’ he said, in a voice that carried no confidence at all that I would be all right. It was a desperate voice. ‘Here’s something for you to eat.’ A box was pushed in beside me. Then a door below me was closed, and snapped from the outside, and I was in utter darkness.

  “After a while I felt around me. Irregular walls, seeming to be curved everywhere; there was even a small dome over my head. A smell, not clean, but not as disgusting as the privy at the fair. A little fresh air from a point above my head. I fell asleep again.

  “When I woke, it was because I heard the whistle of a train, and a train-like thundering nearby. But I was not moving. I was wretchedly hungry, and in the darkness I explored Willard’s box. Something lumpy and sticky inside it, which I tried to eat, and then greedily ate it all. Sleep again. Terrible fatigue all through my body, and the worst pain of all in my bottom. But I could not move very much in any direction, and I had to sit on my misery. At last, a space of time that seemed like a geological age later, I felt movement. Banging and thumping which went on for some time. A sound of voices. The sound of another whistle, and then trundling, lumbering movement, which increased to a good speed. For the first time in my life I was on a train, but of course I didn’t know that.

  “And that, my friends, is the first instalment of my subtext to the memoirs of Robert-Houdin, whose childhood, you recall, was such an idyll of family love and care, and whose introduction to magic was so charmingly brought about. Enough, I think, for one evening. Good-night.”

  (5)

  When I made my way to bed, some time later, I tapped at Eisengrim’s door. As I had expected, he was awake, and lay, looking very fine, against his pillows, wearing a handsome dressing-robe.

  “Kind of you to come in and say good-night, Dunny.”

  “I expected you’d be waiting up to see what your notices were.”

  “A disgusting way of putting it. Well, what were they?”

  “About what you’d expect. Kinghovn had a fine sense of the appearance of everything. I’ll bet that as you talked he had that fair all cut up into long shots, close-ups, and atmosphere shots. And of course he’s a devil for detail. For one thing, he wondered why nobody wanted to use the privy while you were left in it for so long.”

  “Simple enough. Willard wrote a note which said ‘INFECTION: Closed by Doctor’s Order’, and pinned it to the door.”

  “Also he was anxious to know what it was you ate when you found yourself in the curious prison with the rounded walls.”

  “It was a box of Cracker-Jack. I didn’t know what it was at the time, and had never eaten it before. Why should I have included those details in my story? I didn’t know them then. It would have been a violation of narrative art to tell things I didn’t know. Kinghovn ought to have more sense of artistic congruity.”

  “He’s a cameraman. He wants to get a shot of everything, and edit later.”

  “I edit as I go along. What did the others say?”

  “Ingestree talked for quite a while about the nature of puritanism. He doesn’t know anything about it. It’s just a theological whimwham to him. He’s talked about puritanism at Oxford to Ronny Knox and Monsignor D’Arcy, but that stuff means nothing in terms of the daily, bred-in-the-bone puritanism we lived in Deptford. North American puritanism and the puritanism the English know are worlds apart. I could have told him a thing or two about that, but my time for instructing people is over. Let ’em wallow in whatever nonsense pleases ’em, say I.”

  “Did Lind have anything to say?”

  “Not much. But he did say that nothing you told us was incomprehensible to him, or even very strange. ‘We know of such things in Sweden,’ he said.”

  “I suppose people know of such things everywhere. But every rape is unique for the aggressor and the victim. He talks as if he knew everything.”

  “I don’t think he means it quite that way. When he talks about Sweden, I think it is a mystical rather than a geographical concept. When he talks of Sweden he means himself, whether he knows it or not. He really does understand a great deal. You remember what Goethe said? No, of course you don’t. He said he’d never heard of a crime of which he could not believe himself capable. Same with Lind, I suppose. That’s his strength as an artist.”

  “He’s a great man to work with. I think between us we’ll do something extraordinary with this film.”

  “I hope so. And by the way, Magnus, I must thank you for the very kind things you said about me tonight. But I assure you I didn’t especially mean to
be kind to you, when we were boys. I mean, it wasn’t anything conscious.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t. But that’s the point, don’t you see? If you’d done it out of duty, or for religious reasons, it would have been different. But it was just decency. You’re a very decent man, Dunny.”

  “Really? Well—it’s nice of you to think so. I’ve heard dissenting opinions.”

  “It’s true. That’s why I think you ought to know something I didn’t see fit to tell them tonight.”

  “You suggested you had been editing. What did you leave out?”

  “One gets carried away, telling a story. I may have leaned a little too heavily on my character as the wronged child. But would they have understood the whole truth? I don’t after fifty years when I have thought of it over and over. You believe in the Devil, don’t you.”

  “In an extremely sophisticated way, which would take several hours to explain, I do.”

  “Yes. Well, when the Devil is walking beside you, as he was walking beside me at that fair, it doesn’t take a lot of argument to make him seem real.”