by Paul Theroux
Just a second ago he had been talking about going into hiding in the farthest corner of the USA and dictating his life story, This Is My Body, to me. Then the food cart rattled past. Then he told me to buckle up. Then I heard him snorting. Then I got worried again.
‘How come?’
The air blasted across the side windows making the muffled blowing noise of a vacuum cleaner, but the plane was steadier than the Airstream trailer had ever been.
‘You’ll see.’
Millroy seemed cranky. He had been agitated ever since Boston, but why? I’ve come back from the dead, he had said, and I can prove it. He was always doing that, and it was true once again. When he disappeared by the roadside in Woodstock the policeman got cross and asked me for my ID. I knew I had none but I pretended to look. What? There it was, slipped into my little wallet, by Millroy’s magic, proving I was eighteen, while the truth was that I was fifteen going on sixteen. My thumb-print and photo were a perfect match. How had he done it without my knowing? And I had a chunk of money, too.
‘I can’t hold you, son.’ The policeman twisted his face, looking piggy.
He watched me leave on the Rutland bus to Boston while he guarded Millroy’s trailer. I sat and sucked my thumb. The man in front of me on the bus cranked his seat back and removed his hat. Bald. Mustache. Millroy – with his finger to his lips: Not a word. The next thing I knew we were on this airplane. I had not realized you could fly eight hours westward and still be in America.
During the airplane meal he had grumbled like indigestion and he pushed the tray with his fingers when it was handed to him. I half expected him to use magic – melt it, set it on fire, turn it into a rats’ nest.
‘Take it away.’
Saying that, he pinched the handle of the metal fork and made it curl like a fiddlehead and then dropped it with a clatter onto the tray.
‘Meat fumes,’ he said.
He was talking generally to whoever would listen in the seats around us, the people who looked so uncomfortable jammed between their armrests.
‘Grease and meat fats in the air can be inhaled into the system. Kind of a slipstream effect, as toxic as cigarette smoke. No one realizes this. Listen, breathe through your nose.’
From the movement of his mustache I knew he was pressing his lips together, and then he went on snorting, reaming his system with air, cleansing himself, while still grumbling and wheezing.
‘Tighter,’ he said, tapping his finger on the buckle of my safety-belt. ‘People have been known to hit the ceiling of these planes and sustain severe neck injuries, whiplash and so forth, during turbulence.’
The sun never shone brighter than through the window of an airplane, I was thinking, and this plane whooshed without any shake whatsoever. Flying cross-country on a clear day you saw every great thing in America, as the pilot told us: the Great Lakes, the Mississippi river, Grand Canyon, Lake Havasu, the mountains of the west, Los Angeles like a bowl of brown smoke, and then the blue Pacific under high racing clouds.
‘It’s wicked calm.’
I was eating some melon balls we had brought. We also had sacks of beans and grains, Ezekiel bread, barley cakes, figs, cheese and honeycombs. We had wine. We had almonds.
Millroy was not eating anything, only staring with gleaming dark glasses at the metal meal cart and the newsreel of a ship on its side leaking oil on a lovely coastline.
But what do I know about turbulence? I thought. This is only my second airplane flight in my whole life. And I did not know where we were going – I knew Millroy would keep me safe, so what was the point?
He was disturbed and when Millroy was cross the world was deranged, and so I tightened the buckle. From his look of concentration, like a man squinting into a mirror, I knew he had taken control of all his bodily openings. It was the meat fumes. He had sealed himself within his body. When he managed this he could survive, even underwater, for hours. You could bury me alive.
I was glad that I did not need the seatbelt. The plane was steady in the clear air. Yet just the thought of being so high in the sky in this big metal tunnel frightened me, because after all, what held it up? I felt worse when I saw the sign Use Seat Bottom Cushion for Flotation.
Millroy seemed to be smiling. But no: he was sealed in, all his openings shut down like valves against the fumes of the meat fat from the steaming dinners that were being handed out by the men and women in blue uniforms. The carts were rattling in the narrow aisles. Millroy was not smiling, he was expelling.
‘Enough,’ he said, without opening his mouth, and he began to tremble.
As he did, the rounded inside of the plane started to shake, the doors of the overhead compartments, the squeak of flimsy plastic under stress.
Millroy’s jaw was wobbling and a moment later the plane did the same, with a sudden similar tremble, and then it tipped and seemed to slide at a clumsy slanting angle. A plinking sound came out of the loudspeaker, and lights flashed, and the newsreel jumped off the screen and onto the wall of the plane, to the sound of clattering cabinets and hatches.
The captain has turned on the seatbelt sign. Please return to your seat and make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened.
Mine was already buckled from five minutes ago. I looked up at Millroy, because of the coincidence, but he was staring straight ahead through the dark goggles of his glasses. And his mustache made a mask for his mouth.
‘I’m scared,’ I said.
He had no understandable face, yet his mask gave him an impassive look of wisdom. To anything you said he would reply I know that. And without a facial expression he seemed indestructible.
‘Honest,’ I said.
The worst part of this big bumbling plane was not the hardness of its shakes but the way the small children first began to cry and then the older women to scream. Behind us, jerking in his seat, a frightened man was muttering filthy words to himself.
It was as though Millroy was blowing this wild rumble of air out of his mouth and tipping the plane, with his breath alone.
Long groans of terror and frank barks of fear filled the plane and scared me all the more.
I could only calm myself by looking over at Millroy, as he sat still, looking ahead, like a strange rigid prophet with wiggles of magic coming out of his head.
The windows had gone dark as though we had dipped underwater, and bright scraps of cloud flew past like misshapen fish darting in shoals. We bumped and rolled again, buffeted by winds that were tearing at the wings, and I got sick feeling the whole plane twist.
Another screech in the back sounded like a terrible accident in a kitchen, with airplane crockery smashing onto the floor and a tinkling of knives and forks.
I had taken my earphones off. I had been listening to music on Skytracks, but my not concentrating on the pitching of the plane made it seem to pitch much worse.
The plane was now falling sideways, and there were streaks of light at the windows, fleeting yellow rags of cloud, and lightning – not jagged bolts but large soupy flashes that seemed to drown us in their sickly glare.
An old worried woman began to yell in a foreign language. I saw another sign, In Case of an Emergency Use the Life Vest Under Your Seat.
Millroy saw me staring at his face.
‘What’s wrong, angel?’
But he knew I wanted him to protect me and hide me from this misery of fear.
‘I’m wicked scared.’
‘Why?’
‘That I might die.’
‘Is that so bad?’
He shifted in his seat to hear me better and I had the idea that he was very interested in my answer.
‘What if I went to hell?’
‘Hell is empty,’ Millroy said. ‘All the devils are here.’
This is the captain speaking. I don’t know where this weather came from. We’ve tried a new altitude but we can’t seem to get around it. So ke
ep your seatbelts fastened and when I find some smoother air I’ll turn the seatbelt sign off.
It was not a frightened voice, but it was a bewildered one, vibrating with doubt, as the metal meal carts clanged and the doors overhead flopped open, spilling clothes and bags into the aisles.
Millroy’s head was rigid and fearless and upright and looked commanding.
In the meantime, I’m going to ask the flight attendants to suspend the dinner service.
Was Millroy nodding or was his head moving with the movement of the plane?
Anyway, the airplane still shook. It had seemed like a big rocketing bus when it had hummed in the calm air, but now, the way it jounced, it seemed weak and wobbly, like a thin bendy balloon that might burst at any moment.
I reached over and took Millroy’s hand, hoping to feel better. His mustache moved, perhaps a smile, though his hand was like a piece of metal, hard, and no warmth in it. It made me afraid but I could not let go. His hand had closed over mine and now he had a good grip. I did not feel any better. The way he held me made me think that he might change my hand into a banana or a spoon or a claw, and if I raised my arm I would poke myself in the eye.
My silent crying throbbed along my arm, and Millroy felt it, and he looked at me as tears ran down my cheeks.
Did he know the reason, that it was not just the storm battering this airplane, but the unexpected violence of his magic? I knew that Millroy’s eyes were black behind his dark glasses, but I wondered why.
The plane when it was pitching seemed so small and light and breakable, and the passengers moaned when it rose and fell, and especially when the whole aircraft bellywhopped through the shuddering air.
Millroy held my hands too tightly for me to be able to wipe away my tears, and I began to resent him for making the storm. I suspected that he had done it out of spite, because of the meat fumes from the meal (chicken breast) and the poisonous airplane food.
‘Not only that,’ Millroy said, reading my thoughts.
Then it was also to gain control of the passengers, the way he had done with his bodily functions – first shaking them up, then stirring them, then getting a good grip.
He could see my tears and feel the terror in my fingers, and I could barely breathe to take in air enough so that I could let out a scream.
There came a sudden squawk.
Please do not walk in the aisles. Keep to your seats, with your seatbelts securely fastened. It’s kind of rough out there, sir!
The ‘sir’ was Millroy, who had gotten up and was walking down the aisle to the front of the plane, just the way he had always entered the show tent at the Barnstable County Fair, with everyone watching.
Sir, the captain has told everyone to take their seats.
Millroy, in his sunglasses and purple skullcap, stood without moving, commanding everyone’s attention, even the ones who were moaning in fear.
He put his fingers into his mouth and drew out a glittering stick. If this was all an illusion it was the greatest one I had seen him perform, because there he stood, while the plane nose-dived and seemed to be on the verge of crashing.
Reaching past a terrified man and woman in matching flower-print shirts, he leaned over to a port-hole window and picked off the plastic cover, and the glass. As the outside air poured into the plane with a sound like furious marbles, he tossed the glittering stick out and at once the plane steadied – lurched straight as though he had it on a leash – and the air went calm. He wiped the glass back onto the port-hole window with the flat of his hand.
You expected applause. But in the sudden stillness and fan-like hum that followed, the passengers were too shocked to do anything except gasp for breath. They had seen that this strange man had stopped the storm. I alone knew that he had started it too.
Millroy did not speak – he gestured, his hands indicating That’s that, and then See, nothing in my hands – nothing up my sleeve, and finally, with his Day One finger, Be very careful.
He took his seat again. Nothing more happened. No more food. No more movie. No service. Passengers kept their seatbelts fastened after the warning light was turned off, and even the flight attendants stayed seated and buckled up – maybe out of fear or maybe because of what this strange man had done. They were in shock. If only they had known who he was.
Holding their breath, they watched him when he got up to stretch, every eye in the plane on him, pleading and grateful, but wondering who he was. If he had revealed himself they would have recognized him as Millroy from The Day One Program, and they would have been confused. He was famous and he was in disgrace. But he kept his hat and his sunglasses on, and the passengers were afraid, as though at any moment the plane would tumble once more.
‘Don’t make the plane go nuts again, please,’ I said.
A boasting sound came out of his mouth. I had the idea that he wanted me to be amazed. Had he made that wicked storm for me?
He took my hand. His fingers were stiff and cold, and hardly seemed human. All this time and I did not know Millroy’s hand felt like this, and he now seemed like a stranger, so far beyond me, with such unpredictable power, I could not connect myself to him.
He had never touched me before like this. The dull cold pinch of his fingers made me afraid, and I started to imagine again that he might do something to my hand – make it into a stabbing fork – when he suddenly dropped it.
We were in blackness, slowly passing a mountainside of twinkling lights. We landed. We hurried through a terminal of fresh flower-smelling air and damp heat and brown laughing people in rubber sandals, and boarded a smaller plane that was drenched in deodorant. That was a short flight, and our next airport was smaller and damp, smelling of rain and cut grass and crushed flowers and a sharp whiff of seasalt in the air that reminded me of the Cape.
Millroy had not said a word, only pointed me in the right direction. He was in a rush to arrive, always a restless traveler, hating public restrooms and the dangerous stink of other people’s food. And I knew he was tired, having exhausted himself in the storm he had whipped up, his first magic in – hey, where were we?
‘Still in America,’ he said, reading my mind again.
‘What part?’
‘Hawaii. The Big Island.’
His first magic on the Big Island. And there was more.
40
Millroy had led me the same night into a large shadowy house by a sloshing sea. He did not say a word, and yet I could feel his hot breath on my bare shoulder and I could hear the juicy sound of his swallowing.
‘Mind turning on the light?’
I sounded like a little old lady fretting in the dark.
‘You’re over there,’ he said softly, jerking the light-pull on the floor lamp and pointing to an open door.
That night and afterwards we heard laughing and yelling from the blue bungalow down the beach, our nearest neighbor. And sometimes there was plinking music, played too loud. Just as often there were rackety screams, a drawn-out wailing, two or three people howling together like dogs behind a fence. It was too real to be television, but they had one of those, too. You knew when the television was on because it sounded like too many people trapped inside a tin box. There were also rattling drums. There were hymns in another language.
There was singing and a ukulele song:
Manuela boy, my dear boy, you no more hila-hila
No more five cents, no more house, you go Aala Park hia-mo-e.
Papa works for the stevedore, Mama makes the leis,
Sister goes with the haole boy, brother goes au-wana.
There was more laughter.
Two weeks of it. When your neighbors are as loud as that, you talk less yourself.
Meanwhile, we lived as father and son at the edge of the black cliff on this Hawaiian island that was wrapped in air, in the middle of bluey-green sea.
‘Am
erica,’ Millroy said. ‘Are you in any doubt that God placed his hand on this country?’
He was shouting because we were so near to the sea, and he had to raise his voice when the surf was up. The blue waves swelled out of the flat ocean in long straight rows and rolled roughly forward, whitening as they steepened and hovered and dumped themselves onto the beach, adding another rib of sand to the shore, and a second later snatching it back with another wave.
The beach sand was coal black and gravelly, smooth pellets of broken lava the color of the old volcanic flow on the hillside behind our house, big cliffs of black cinders that had tumbled to the beach and been smashed into black gumdrops and beads.
It rained most nights, and in the daytime the road and the foliage steamed in the sunlight. Dolphins plopped and played in the sea, below our front porch. We heard them gasp and take sucking breaths, we saw them toss themselves in the air. Our palm trees rattled, the lower fronds thumped like brooms against our walls, and sometimes a big splintery brown frond dropped onto our tin roof. The cockroaches flew with a papery flutter, and the cane spiders scuttled with no sound at all. Heavy mangoes dropped to the damp earth like a punch in the stomach.
There was always a smell of flowers – orchids and jasmine, bougainvillea growing in long whips of pink blossoms, hibiscus blooms bigger than lilies. Millroy knew all their names.
‘Nasturtiums,’ he said, stuffing first the orange flowers and then the round leaves into his mouth. ‘You could live on these. Plumeria. Naupaka.’
Rats flicked around the eaves and mice nibbled holes in the screens. The birds were loud, as talkative and friendly as the people. The little birds made a scrape like a Zippo that won’t light, some of the whitest birds had long beautiful tails, and others looked like black kites. Small pale lizards they called geckos chirped like birds and left droppings like jimmies all over the table.
