Kaytek the Wizard

by Janusz Korczak

  “Out with it boldly.”

  “He said he’ll kill me if I don’t get them.”

  “So say it.”

  “They’re called ‘Dogsnout’.”

  And he covers his eyes with his cap.

  “Your master’s been drinking. Let him sleep it off.”

  “But he’s only just woken up.”

  “Are you from the countryside?” asks the lady.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You can tell at once – so timid. And they send a little kid like that wandering off to town.”

  “I’d better go now,” says Kaytek.

  “You must be hungry, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Here’s a bread roll. Take it, you poor little orphan boy.”

  And whether out of regret or tiredness, Kaytek’s eyes fill with tears.

  “Don’t be shy, take it.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  He hightails it out of there in a hurry.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “Oh . . . there’s a fly in my eye or something.”

  Finally they reach the last store, number twelve. It’s a laundry.

  He doesn’t want to go in because he prefers classier stores. But his pal insists.

  “Go on in. Don’t be afraid. It’s the last one.”

  He isn’t afraid. And he isn’t being cautious.

  “Excuse me, can you press a cat for me?”

  “A cat?” says the young lady in amazement.

  “Yes. A dead one. With a tail.”

  But he hasn’t noticed the young lady’s fiancé sitting by the door, who up and grabs him by the scruff of the neck.

  “Just you wait. We’ll press you. Pass me a hot iron, Frania.”

  He’s strong. He has a firm grip. He lays Kaytek across the ironing board.

  “Is this what you want? I’ll give you a stuffed cat all right!”

  Kaytek doesn’t try to break free, he just begs the man: “Please let me go.”

  Frania, the girl, takes pity on him.

  “Let him go, he’s just stupid.”

  “He’s not stupid, he’s a con artist – he’s just acting dumb.”

  “And I say you’re wrong. He looks like a good kid.”

  “I can explain,” groans Kaytek.

  “All right, so what’s with the dead cat?”

  Kaytek sees the door is open.

  Luckily he gave his schoolbag to his pal – that makes it easier to escape.

  “Just you wait! We’ll meet again,” the man shouts after him. “I’ll recognize you. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  His friend catches up with him.

  “Why did you run off like that?”

  “It was pretty clear I had to.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”

  “You never said I had to tell you. Give me my schoolbag. And go to the movie by yourself. Just be glad you didn’t come in there with me – you’d have been thrashed, you dope!”

  They go off separately, feeling riled up. It’s not Kaytek’s first fight.

  And not his first bet. Because Kaytek loves to make bets.

  One time at school they were talking about a soccer game.

  What’s better, a game of soccer or a movie? Swimming or boating? Riding a bike or skating?

  Kaytek says grown-up movies always end with kissing.

  “Come on, I’ll show you how they kiss,” says one of the boys.

  “Kissing a boy isn’t hard – you have to kiss a young lady,” says Kaytek.

  “What a wise guy – just you try and do that.”

  “You think I won’t? All right – I bet you an ice cream.”

  “OK, shake on it.”

  So along comes the final lesson.

  And the final bell. They pack up their books.

  Here’s the schoolyard, and the gate, and the street.

  “You guys follow me,” Kaytek tells the other two.

  And he goes off in front.

  But now he’s sorry he made the bet.

  He doesn’t want to pick on a little girl. It’d be a shame to do that because he’ll frighten her. Anyway, he said “young lady,” and that means a big one.

  How’s he going to do it? He walks along, looking around.

  He walks along, looks, thinks, looks, and waits.

  “Not that one. Or that one.”

  Never mind the ice cream, it’s just that it’s embarrassing to lose. He has to stick to his guns.

  Until finally, there they are.

  Two of them. Schoolgirls. And they’re older than he is. They’re laughing and chatting. They’re not in a hurry. One of them calls the other one Zofia.

  She says: “Listen, Zofia, next time you come over . . .”

  Kaytek doesn’t hear more than that. But now he has a plan.

  He signals to tell the boys he’s about to start. He crosses to the other side, gets ahead of the girls, turns around and walks straight toward them.

  He lets his head droop, as if he’s deep in thought.

  Just as he’s passing them, suddenly he stops and looks at them.

  “Oh! Zofia! When did you get here?”

  She stops and stares at him in amazement.

  And hop! he throws his arms around her neck and smack! he kisses her.

  Silly girl – she even leans forward. That’s how superbly it worked.

  Only then does she wake up.

  “Who the heck are you?”

  “Me? I’m Kaytek.”

  “Kaytek who?”

  “Kaytek no one, just a boy.”

  He licks his lips, as if the kiss was tasty.

  And runs for it.

  The girls stare in surprise, until finally they guess what’s going on.

  “Just you wait, you little scamp!”

  “What an impudent boy!”

  “How did he know my name?”

  That time Kaytek won with honors.

  He won with honors and got twenty groshys.

  They shared the ice cream equally.

  The third boy got some too, even though he didn’t deserve it.

  So that’s what Kaytek is like.

  Impatient. Bold. Head full of ideas.

  He was like that before he ever went to school.

  He was like that before he became a wizard.

  * * *

  *King John Sobieski (1629–1696) was the Polish king who defeated the Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. (All notes have been added by the translator.)

  **The zloty is the Polish currency.

  ***A groshy is a Polish coin – 100 groshys equals one zloty.

  Chapter Two

  Complaints about Kaytek – Scars – Antek or Kaytek? – He smokes cigarettes – A mouse by the stove

  There are endless complaints about Kaytek.

  “What a bothersome boy,” his mother sighs.

  “I’d never hit him, but if I lose my patience . . .” threatens his father.

  “He has a kind look in his eyes,” his grandma smiles.

  “He has a good head,” says his father.

  “He’s curious about everything,” adds his mom.

  “He takes after his grandpa,” his grandma smiles.

  But the complaints keep coming in.

  The building watchman says he threw a herring out the window onto the landlord’s head.

  “Did you do that?”

  “It’s not true.”

  Firstly, it wasn’t a herring, just a herring’s tail.

  Secondly, it wasn’t the landlord’s head, it was his hat.

  Thirdly, it wasn’t out the window, it
was through the stair rail.

  Fourthly, it wasn’t Kaytek, it was another boy.

  And on top of that he missed – the klutz.

  The watchman says Kaytek put out the lights in all the stairwells.

  “That’s not true. Not in all of them, just in one hallway. How does he know it was me? What if it was someone else? What if a girl did it, not a boy? Maybe it was a firefighter? There are firemen in Warsaw, after all.”

  The watchman says Kaytek rings the doorbell and runs away.

  “I do, yes, but at other gates. Never at ours. I once rang it, a long time ago.”

  “Why do you do that?”

  “Just because.”

  Because he wants to know if the bell is working. Sometimes because he’s bored. Sometimes because he’s annoyed that he has to go to school, while the stupid bell just sits there like a prince and doesn’t have to do anything.

  The watchman says: “He pried out a rock and dented the drainpipe.”

  That is a total lie.

  Kaytek even knows who did that.

  “I nailed together a sled, but I did it with a hammer, not a rock. And I leaned the board against the store cupboard, not the drainpipe.”

  He has a witness. He can go fetch the boy who lent him the hammer and held the board.

  Yet again they come and complain.

  “He broke a window. He threw a stone.”

  “I saw him running away. He threw it at a dog.”

  “It wasn’t a dog, it was a cat! It wasn’t a stone, it was a piece of brick! A completely different boy broke the window.” They had just run away together.

  Kaytek knows who did it, but he won’t tell.

  “Why can’t that lady look properly?”

  And even so, she still comes and complains, and says he has to pay for the window!

  It looks as if no one else ever does anything bad, as if it’s only Kaytek who does all those things.

  But there are worse kids than him!

  The people say: “If he didn’t do it, it was one of his pals.”

  So what? Is he responsible for all of them, or just for himself?

  One time, when he was little, before he went to school, he went for a swim in the river, leaving his clothes on the sand.

  He had his swim, and then he got out of the water. And in the distance he saw some rascals running away.

  They’d taken everything: pants, shoes, cap, even his shirt.

  A man took pity on him, wrapped him in his jacket, and took him home.

  And there was quite a fuss.

  So little boys can be thieves too.

  But Kaytek never touches other people’s stuff. He can’t stand thieves.

  He’s just had lots of adventures.

  When Helenka was alive, they used to jump down the stairs; from one step up, from two, from three, from four, and from five.

  He wanted to prove he could jump without holding the banister.

  And he did it – he jumped from five steps up. He’d have been fine, but he was wearing new shoes . . . with slippery soles . . .

  He had to stay in bed for a long time after that.

  Now the hair in that spot on his head never grows.

  Because of the scar.

  Kaytek has another scar on his leg where the butcher’s dog bit him.

  Because the boys said no one could pet that dog.

  “He’s a bad dog.”

  “I’ll try, I’ll be really careful. It might work.”

  He had tried being really careful. And it hadn’t worked.

  He once made a bet he could dash across the road in front of a tramcar.

  “You might trip. Better skip it.”

  “Why should I trip?”

  “You won’t make it.”

  “All right then, I bet you.”

  But the bet never happened. The tram driver slammed on the brakes and stopped in time, and Kaytek was escorted home by a policeman.

  He was forbidden to go outside for a whole week.

  Once he was left alone in the apartment.

  He wanted to surprise everyone by chopping firewood with an ax.

  That didn’t work either.

  That was how Kaytek got his third scar, on a finger on his left hand.

  But it could have been much worse. Next time he was left at home, he tried to light the gas-lamp in front of the holy icon,* but the curtain caught fire. Luckily, just then Grandma came home and put out the fire.

  Kaytek just has that sort of nature – he has to see and know, and then try for himself.

  Mom told him a fairy tale about Ali Baba.

  Ali Baba was the leader of the thieves.

  He was an Arabian bandit. There were forty of them. Ali Baba was the chief – the ringleader.

  The thieves had an underground cave in the forest. They called their cave Sesame.

  That was where they hid the treasure they had stolen. There were sacks full of ducats and gold and precious jewels and diamonds.

  There was a magic doorway into the cave.

  If you said: “Open, Sesame,” the door opened by itself.

  The fairy tale was very interesting.

  So that night Kaytek was lying in bed, thinking about hidden treasure.

  And then he asked his dad: “Is there really treasure?”

  Not in a fairy tale, but for real.

  Because when Mom and Grandma don’t explain things properly, he checks with his dad.

  “Yes, there is,” said his dad. “There were wars fought on our lands. The enemy went around burning and robbing the houses, so people buried anything valuable. Not so long ago it said in the newspaper they’d found a pot full of coins in a field.”

  His father said the government minister prints paper money because gold is too heavy to carry, so gold bars are kept hidden in cellars.

  Kaytek didn’t understand this very well, because it was too hard. Or maybe he was sleepy at the time.

  Well, I had better give it a try, he thought.

  All right. So that day he went into the cellar of the apartment building with Grandma to fetch some coal.

  You have to go downstairs, under the ground. And there’s a door and a long corridor. And there are various small doors, each leading into a separate cellar.

  Grandma lights a candle. Along they go, and there in the corner of the corridor stands a barrel.

  Kaytek hides behind the barrel.

  Grandma has put some coal in the bucket and she’s leaving. But Kaytek has vanished.

  “Antek! Antek!” calls Grandma.

  Where has the boy got to?

  But he’s crouched down behind the barrel, waiting quietly.

  Grandma thinks he must have gone outside already. So she padlocks the cellar shut.

  Kaytek is left in the dark corridor. But he’s not afraid. He wonders if he’ll be strong enough to lift a heavy gold bar.

  He looks in the barrel – it’s empty.

  He feels his way to the first door and says: “Open, Sesame!”

  Nothing happens. He feels his way to the second door and says: “Open, Sesame!”

  Again nothing happens.

  He walks up and down. It’s dark in there.

  He wanders about, searching. He doesn’t even know where he is any more. He just blunders about in the dark, in silence.

  “Open, Sesame!”

  But then he starts to cry. Suddenly he’s feeling scared.

  Because what if there are ghosts or rats in there?

  He was little then. It was before he went to school.

  He shouted, and banged his hand against the wall.

  He thought he’d never get out of there.

  “Momma, Grandma!”

  And he might really hav
e sat there for a long time, because Grandma wasn’t looking for him. It wasn’t exactly the first time Kaytek had been out in the street or at a neighbor’s house.

  He was starting to lose his voice.

  “Grandma, Dad, Momma!”

  But the people on the stairs couldn’t hear him for the clatter of their shoes. And Kaytek wasn’t standing by the door, but at the far end, somewhere near the barrel.

  Then along comes the mailman. He stops in the hallway and sorts the letters in his bag. And he hears something. He listens. What’s that? Someone’s shut in the cellar.

  Probably a kid.

  And he calls out.

  “Why didn’t you respond when Grandma called you?” they asked afterward. “Why did you creep behind the barrel?”

  He didn’t answer, not because he was afraid of being punished, he just didn’t want to. He had suffered enough already. But they were still laughing at him.

  “Oh, Antek, Antek, always up to something!”

  Kaytek’s real name is Antek. That’s what they call him at home.

  He became Kaytek out in the yard with the boys.

  Because one day he was standing by the gate smoking a cigarette.

  He drags on it and puffs, drags and puffs.

  And he’s trying to make lots of smoke. Because he paid five groshys for the cigarette, so he wants it to look neat.

  He could have bought chocolate, but a cigarette is more interesting.

  And along the street comes a soldier.

  He stops, looks and laughs.

  “Well I never!” he says. “Look at little Kaytek puffing away like a steam train!”**

  “So?”

  Antek was embarrassed and offended.

  And at once the boys were saying: “Kaytek! Kaytek!”

  They were annoyed because he wouldn’t let them have a drag. They were afraid to smoke themselves, but they envied him.

  And so that’s how it stayed: not Antek, but Kaytek.

  That’s how it is with nicknames. If you’re not annoyed, they usually forget about it and stop. But if you get riled, they use it all the more. Because they love to tease.

  At first Kaytek fought back – he wasn’t going to let them change his name. But how can one guy alone beat everyone else?

  What’s more there were two Anteks in the yard, so it was more convenient for one of them to be Kaytek. They’d know who was being called. Eventually he got used to it, but not entirely. And on the whole he didn’t like his playmates much anyway.