by Paul Theroux
I put my small bag down on the sofa. Millroy was glad, he swelled a little.
‘Eat something,’ he said.
I was hungry from all the stress, yet a niggling suspicion, even if it was unfair, kept me from letting him feed me. I served myself – melon pulp, nut meats, warm bread buns – while he watched.
‘I need you,’ he said, ‘so that I can go on living.’
I felt conspicuous, licking the sweet strings of melon pulp from my lips.
‘I would sicken and die without you. But didn’t I tell you that together we can live for two hundred years?’
That made me feel worse about wanting to go. I simply thought, I’ll go tomorrow for sure.
All that day in that house by the sea I watched Millroy. He was like Dada had been the day before his gallstone operation, like anyone facing surgery or getting on an airplane, thinking about his life and what was going to happen next – like a statue, suffering in his own stony way.
I knew we were both thinking the same thing. He had made magic. It was in his head, all this supernatural power. Just standing barefoot in a pair of shorts in an ordinary room he had worked miracles. I had seen everything – he knew that I was his witness.
Now he looked sad, with streaky shadows on his face, his features heavy from all his pondering. Maybe he was also a little baffled – he must have had doubts, and he knew I was frightened. He remained silent and still, like a small bird on a cold branch.
Towards dusk he began to stir, he moved through the house. His padding feet made me cautious. He always moved as though he hovered a few inches from the ground. I kept away from him, watching him from a corner of the room, near a window where more birds twittered and clacked, settling for the night.
‘Magic is the power to see. That’s brilliant,’ Millroy said. ‘But a magician sees everything. That’s painful.’
He was looking away from me, speaking through the open door, as though at the open ocean.
‘I have this gift. If I use it I am taking a risk. If I don’t use it I’m neglecting my gift.’ He looked sad. He said, ‘And there are limits to bewitchment. I can impress you or frighten you, but I can’t make you love me.’
At this mellow time of day, early evening in Puna District, the wind died, the sea looked carbonated, and it seemed as though the whole world was holding its breath to listen.
‘I know my magic makes me seem like a foreigner, or an exile,’ he said. ‘That’s why this lovely country matters so much to me.’
In the distance where the water met the sky a shadow surfaced from the ocean and sealed the horizon in a streak of darkness, the first stain of night.
‘And there’s natural magic in the real world. The miracle of life, muffin.’
Bursting from the silence, from the small wooden houses hidden by trees, there was children’s laughter, and he might have been thinking the same thing – that his program might have caused it.
‘There is birth,’ Millroy said. ‘No magician on earth can give life.’
I said nothing, but his fixed attention made me squirm. He was staring straight at the back of my head.
‘Don’t you agree, angel?’
I wanted at that moment to be doing something easy, like washing dishes in warm soapy water.
‘Sounds good.’
I also guessed it might be a long night, and so I went outside while the sky was still pale.
In his blue shorts, barefoot, Millroy left the creaking porch and crossed the grass to the edge of the low cliff. He walked down the cut-lava steps to the beach, now at its blackest because the sand was soaked by the incoming tide.
Raising his arms – For my last trick, he used to say – he sent a tremble like a thrill through the water, and a split appeared and widened to a pie-wedge of air where the sea had parted. Exposed crabs scuttled sideways and small fish flopped among the sea urchins, and black seaweed was pasted flat to the wet sand.
Millroy stepped into that airy corridor he had made in the green sea, and the walls of it quivered and then all the water closed over him.
He bobbed to the surface some distance out, then plunged into the oncoming waves, kicking hard, swimming away. He tossed his head in the foam and I half expected him to stand up and stride across the water’s surface, like a wizard in air. But he went on swimming smoothly, sliding like a fish. He slipped onto his back and spouted water, and then it was as though he were taking a bath, the ocean speeding him on, until he stopped and slapped it.
It was bad when I saw him swimming away. It was worse when he was struggling. Then he sank – and there was nothing left, not even his waterbug ripple on the water, and he took the rest of the glimmering daylight with him.
44
With Millroy gone it was night and I was alone and lost. I kept watching because I had nowhere to go. Just behind me some palm trees in a windblown clump were holding a conversation – so it seemed to me – and the wind stiffened and made their fronds even more talkative.
‘Quit it,’ I said, as though at unkind kids.
At the edge of this island, under a hula moon, I stared at the water, while ragged smoke-trails of cloud drifted across the sky. I had recently thought about leaving Millroy for good. I had never imagined Millroy leaving me. Then, off he went, splashed out to sea, while I dropped to my knees and crouched like a monkey on the black sand beach in the dark, among the chattering palms.
Wait – not chattering now, the wind had dropped just a moment ago, the palms had gone silent, their fronds were motionless. Was it something I said?
The moon was now wrapped in smoky clouds and its faint light hardly showed on the water. The wind had died, the palms had been quieted, but night had gathered around me so close and so dark it was as though I had been crammed into a small damp box.
Instead of speaking, I turned my face to the clouds and made a wish for the moon to shine, and for moonlight to be loosed across the surface of the sea.
It happened just that way, the clouds traipsing off and the powerful light releasing me. Had another wish of mine been granted? First the wind, then the moon – I was breathless. It was the sort of unexplainable magic that Millroy had once worked. Or was it a coincidence?
Lit by the puddly moonbeams, the rough sea seemed more dangerous, deeper and surfier, with a chop like miles of tumbling rocks.
I got up and stood before the dumping waves and raised my arms, and silently commanded the water to be stilled. There came a simmering in the sea, like a pot of water going off the boil, and then a flattening and a gasp, as the water, laced with tiny puckering bubbles, settled in a hush and shone with the reflection of new moonlight, like a black mirror.
I stepped back amazed. This was almost too much for me, the sense that I might have Millroy powers. I insisted to myself that it was something I misunderstood, but all this while, testing it, I was nervous, and felt exposed, as though I was being fooled by the world.
I was hesitant to try again, but facing a calm sea in the stillest air I had known on this island, I knelt again and watched for Millroy. In the five hours until shivery midnight I doubted everything that had happened. How could it be magic? It was my imagination, just nerves, because I was alone, because Millroy was gone.
It was not myself I worried about, but that good man. I was all right. In his splashing departure and the rising of the moon, I had felt strengthened in a way I had never known before. It had nothing to do with physical health. It was something else, beyond confidence, a spirit that was like a light blazing within me. My whole being brimmed with a queenly sense of peace and power, as though I contained an enormous secret that tonight I had begun to understand. It was the simple truth that there was no death. So there was nothing on earth to fear.
Suddenly, I wanted Millroy to know that, and I yelled so hard that my shrill voice clapped against my ears and I could not remember what I had said even an instant later. The force of m
y scream had startled me. I stayed there with my fingers in my mouth for the longest time, listening, feeling mocked by the squeezed and distant echo that sounded so merry. It was Millroy’s name I had yelled. I had never spoken it before.
I did it again, calling out all my wishes and hopes in that one word, his name. And saying it again, it was easier, like a chant. I saw a distant motion in the sea, like a wrinkle in a rug. I yelled again and the moonlight broke and separated on the water.
Someone far off was splashing, beating the moonlight, more like a dog than a fish, he was so clumsy and tired, the way the creature thrashed, as though the water was an obstacle, snagging his arms and legs, trying to drown him.
He lifted his head and roared as he made the beach, flopping forward and flattening himself on the sand. Then he stood up, streaming with water that flickered, dripping moony brightness.
I was so glad to see him I could hardly draw air into my mouth. He started towards me and stumbled – he was unmistakably a man. It was Millroy, somewhat smaller, even shy, and a little pale. I wanted to touch him to make sure that he was real.
My touch steadied him. He stood straighter. My hand did not seem so small in his. There was no pressure from his fingers. I hesitated to hold on, not knowing what he would say. He staggered and, needing my help, he put all his weight against my hand to keep himself from falling. Regaining his balance, he thanked me in a soft breath that was a sigh of gratitude.
As we climbed the rocky steps that led from the beach to the cliff-top, we heard loud interrupting voices. We looked up and saw the clumsy sweeping beams of fishermen’s flashlights, three of them, with shadowy people behind them.
I had the idea that they were the police, come to take him away. But no.
‘Uncle, come’ – it was a young and frightened voice – ‘my granny just now get very sick.’
Millroy waved them away with his wet hand.
‘You can do something?’
‘I’m awfully sorry.’
This was a new voice – Millroy’s without magic, apologetic, with extra syllables of hesitation in it.
‘Please come.’ The voice behind the other flashlight was stronger than Millroy’s and more insistent.
Millroy must have been shaking his head – I could not see. I had turned away from the blinding glare.
Although they had been rejected the men did not go away. They seemed to grow more curious, and bolder, almost threatening. Black night had deepened around us like a pit.
Unafraid, the men ignored Millroy’s murmur for them to leave us alone, and went a few steps nearer to him. They saw something I could not see.
‘Uncle.’
The word was spoken more in surprise than in sympathy, but they said nothing more.
A spirit within me shimmered – fearless hope and a feeling for them. I realized that I knew something they did not know.
‘Go home,’ I said to them. ‘Your granny is all right.’
And I had a vivid sight of the old woman sitting up in bed, restored to health and smiling, her dark eyes shining, her pretty shawl thrown over her lampshade, the fringes of it dangling, and long black shadows jumping on the planks of the wall.
‘She is waiting for you.’
The men with flashlights hurried away, whispering loudly.
Millroy turned to me and then the pale moonlight struck him. There were tears shining in his eyes and beginning to flow – that was what they had seen. It had touched them to see this famous fugitive weep, a sad man with wet cheeks. They knew that magicians never cry. His tongue went blort and he began to weep.
Only I knew the reason for his tears. Now he was no stranger to me – and he knew I was not afraid. I had never loved his strength, but I loved this man deeply for his weakness.
He said, ‘You’re happy.’
‘Wicked happy.’
‘You saved me, angel.’
It did not matter. I wanted him to say I love you so that I could say it back.
Instead of saying it, he kissed me, lightly at first, more like a whispered word, as though he thought I might be afraid and pull away. When I did not move he kissed my upturned face again, pressing harder. And in that moment I grew even stronger, all the strings of my muscles in my arms and legs were quickened by this kiss – drawn tighter as his lips parted. Then I knew what to do, how to kiss him in my way.
Long ago at the county fair I had wondered what it must have been like when Millroy had changed that girl into milk and drank her. Now I knew.
I clung on to him, whispering Carry me, and I gave him the strength to lift me. He hoisted me, still kissing me, in his adoring way. And even so, half devoured, I yearned for more of this glory. His kisses pierced my body and filled me with light.
Never mind that they were still hunting him all over the island, nor that one night they would locate him in our house by the sea. We would be holding each other as they knocked and rattled the doorknob. But these days he was not afraid of anything, and neither was I.
Let go, angel. I won’t be long.
Never mind that they would detach him from me and make him famous all over again. Never mind that it was another national misunderstanding. Time would pass, but he was truthful, and he always kept his promises. It was not magic but love that made me patient.
Never mind, Millroy would come back to me – back to us.
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published by Hamish Hamilton 1993
Published in Penguin Books 1994
Reissued in this edition 2011
Copyright © Cape Cod Scriveners Co., 1993
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978–0–141–97162–9
