Kaytek the Wizard

by Janusz Korczak

  Kaytek is in his third year at school now, but he’s never had a good friend for long. There are very few really decent ones. Because they just pretend to be. They’re toadies.

  And that’s because they’re afraid. They’re quiet out of fear, because at home they get shouted at or beaten. That type tells the most lies.

  Kaytek has learned to fib and pretend too. You can’t admit to knowing too much. If the grown-ups understood better, things would be different.

  Kaytek says: “I don’t know what they want from me.”

  Although he knows perfectly well.

  He says: “All lies, from beginning to end.”

  Although there is some truth in it.

  They say: “He hit the boy so hard he couldn’t move afterward.”

  “How come he couldn’t move? I didn’t kill him, did I?”

  “He almost broke his arm.”

  So you’re supposed to answer not just for what you really did, but also for what could have happened.

  Of course, there are some serious boys, but they’re stuck on themselves.

  They’re either the silent type, or the touchy kind.

  At once they say:

  “Lay off.”

  “Stop that.”

  “Get lost.”

  Kaytek’s in the third grade at school.

  But there are non-stop complaints here too.

  When he joined the first grade, the teacher praised him.

  “You can read already. Who taught you?” she asked.

  “I taught myself.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “It’s not hard at all.”

  He sat in the front row.

  And then it began:

  “Sit up straight. Don’t fidget. Don’t talk.”

  And again:

  “Don’t fidget. Sit quietly. Don’t play with your pencil. Pay attention.”

  The start of the class is easy. But then it gets harder and harder.

  When will the bell finally go?

  The teacher tells them something interesting. She gets awfully riled if they interrupt. She starts to get so mad you don’t want to listen any more.

  At home you’re allowed to lean against the table while Dad is telling a story, you’re allowed to lean against the bed while Mom is telling a fairy tale, and lean against a chest while Grandma is reminiscing about the past.

  At home you’re allowed to bend and stretch, and ask a question if you don’t understand.

  But at school if you want to say something you have to put two fingers in the air and wait.

  Well, all right. There are lots of kids in the class and the teacher can’t talk to you separately because the others will start to make a noise. And that’s a terrible drag.

  “Well, Antek?” asks his father. “How did you get on at school today?”

  “Humph.”

  “What’s up at school?”

  “Nothing.”

  He doesn’t even like talking about school much.

  The teacher moved him to the fourth row by the window.

  But you’re not allowed to look out of the window.

  In the front row his neighbor was quiet, but the kid in the fourth row keeps pestering him, tugging the back of his ear. It doesn’t hurt, but what’s his game?

  Kaytek tries telling him to stop, and at once the teacher says: “Don’t turn around.”

  “What if I have to?”

  “Go stand in the corner.”

  “But you don’t know the facts,” mutters Kaytek.

  “Leave the room.”

  Until finally they send for his father.

  “What have you been up to?”

  “I had a fight with a boy. He started spreading it around that I’m called Kaytek.”

  “Because it’s true – that’s what they call you.”

  “So what if it’s true? The yard at home is one thing, school’s quite another.”

  “You should have explained that to him.”

  “And how. Sure he’ll listen next time.”

  “You mustn’t fight.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, Antek, you’re making a bad start. Oh, Antek, I’m going to lose my patience . . .”

  At the school office the teacher does a lot of complaining.

  “He doesn’t do as he’s told. He behaves badly to his classmates. He asks for trouble. He bad-mouths the others.”

  His father is worried.

  “You have to make an effort.”

  He does, but what of it?

  It’s all right for a few days, but then there’s another fuss.

  Someone sits in front of Kaytek and jogs him with their elbow; not him, but his exercise book.

  “Get your arm off,” says Kaytek.

  “Why should I? It’s not illegal,” says the kid.

  “Just you wait – I’ll get you after the bell.”

  “Gee, I’m so afraid.”

  Kaytek just pushes him a little, but the boy knocks his elbow against the inkwell and spills the ink. And lies about it too.

  But the teacher doesn’t believe Kaytek.

  The other guy gets away with it, but Kaytek doesn’t.

  Kaytek does make an effort.

  All for nothing.

  If he’s quiet in class, he’ll make trouble in the recess.

  Until eventually his anger gets the better of him.

  And then it’s not worth making an effort any more.

  And he can’t always restrain himself when something tempts him or a joke occurs to him.

  So one time Kaytek got bored during arithmetic.

  Even the teacher was looking at his watch and waiting for the bell.

  What can I do to make the lesson end sooner? thought Kaytek.

  He jumps up on the bench.

  “Eeek, sir, there’s a mouse! In the hole by the stove.*** You can still see its tail.”

  The teacher falls for it.

  “You should be ashamed. A big boy like you, afraid of mice.”

  The whole class starts laughing. Just to suck up to the teacher.

  “He’s afraid of mice. He’s yellow!”

  Kaytek gets down from the bench and says:

  “Phooey! There wasn’t a mouse, I was just kidding.”

  “There was one too,” they say.

  “Then you look for it, in the hole by the stove.”

  They take a look; there really isn’t one.

  He thought the teacher was sad, so he was just trying to cheer him up.

  But the teacher was annoyed.

  At once he started writing a note to Kaytek’s father.

  Only the bell saved him.

  They say he’s a clown.

  It’s not true.

  He reads a lot, and he does some serious thinking, and asks smart questions in class. But his classmates don’t respect him for that at all, only for the nonsense.

  * * *

  *Some Polish homes used to have holy pictures with a light or a candle burning in front of them.

  **See Translator’s Afterword for more about Kaytek’s name.

  ***Buildings used to be heated by large stoves, even in classrooms.

  Chapter Three

  The world is strange and mysterious – A magical clock – Kaytek taught himself to read

  Kaytek likes anything fun.

  He likes things that are hard.

  But most of all he likes things that are mysterious.

  The first mysterious fairy tale his mom told him was about Little Red Riding Hood.

  From this fairy tale he found out there are wolves. Wild animals.

  He saw a wolf in a picture. It looked like a dog.

/>   After that he saw a wolf in an iron cage.

  He wanted to put his hand between the bars; he wanted to try. But his mom wouldn’t let him.

  Another fairy tale was about Sleeping Beauty.

  This time he found out there are fairy godmothers.

  The third one was about Cinderella.

  The fairy godmother touched Cinderella with her wand and the poor little orphan girl changed into a princess.

  Later on, Kaytek saw a real magician’s wand.

  It was at a show in the park.

  The man struck the wand against some water, and the water changed into wine.

  Then the man cut up a handkerchief and put the pieces in a hat. He tapped the hat with his wand and said: “Hocus pocus.”

  And the handkerchief was whole again.

  Kaytek’s dad says those are magic tricks.

  “But how’s it done?”

  Kaytek is very curious to know.

  “Mom, tell me a fairy tale,” he asks.

  It’s the story of Puss in Boots.

  In the one he heard earlier a wolf talks to Red Riding Hood, and in this one a cat talks to the miller’s son.

  “Can you really talk to a cat?”

  Mom says it’s just a fairy tale.

  Grandma says hermits talk to animals.

  Dad says there are talking birds. They’re called parrots. And Grandpa used to have a talking magpie.

  Then Kaytek heard a parrot speaking human phrases.

  Kaytek thought golden fish were only in fairy tales, but all of a sudden he saw some in a store display.

  Truth and fiction are all mixed up in fairytales.

  So maybe there really is a magic lamp that can summon up a genie?

  Kaytek wants to have a lamp like the one Aladdin had.

  There are so many different wonders in the world.

  The grown-ups know, but they refuse to explain.

  Grandma says Helenka appeared to her after her death. But Dad doesn’t believe in ghosts.

  Grandma says you can read a person’s future in their hand.

  “When I was a young girl, a Gypsy told me everything that would happen.”

  “Gypsies tell lies,” says Dad. “They fool people.”

  Kaytek wants to know what’s going to happen. But his father doesn’t like Kaytek to be told mysterious things because he has trouble falling asleep, and when at last he does, he has bad dreams and talks in his sleep.

  That’s strange.

  How can you sleep and talk all at once?

  And there are even people who actually walk in their sleep.

  They actually walk!

  That sort of person gets out of bed on a moonlit night, goes out the window and onto the roof. He has his eyes closed, but he can see, and he doesn’t fall off the roof.

  Kaytek has forgotten what the strange name for them is.

  The world is strange and mysterious.

  Why is that? His father was once a little boy, Grandma used to play with dolls, and Mom had a grandmother too.

  Isn’t it strange that Kaytek will grow up and be a dad as well?

  It’s hard to understand it all. One thing already happened, but long ago. Another thing has yet to happen in the future. And a third thing’s going to come about one day, but far, far from now.

  There are faraway countries where the people are black. The children are black, and so is the teacher at school.

  Kaytek once saw a black man in the street, but he wasn’t a cannibal.*

  Grandma says there are eyes that can cast spells; if you cast the evil eye at someone, they fall ill.

  Dad says that’s not true. But Kaytek once saw a man who had a glass eye, a real eye made of glass.

  Dad says there aren’t any wizards, but there are Indian fakirs. You can bury them in the ground and they go on living. Dad read about the fakirs in a newspaper.

  Sometimes even the newspaper tells lies.

  If only Kaytek could know everything entirely for sure.

  He thinks the world was more interesting in the past.

  Where there are now houses and Warsaw, there used to be forests and marshes, and bears.

  Robbers used to hide in the forests.

  There were knights.

  There were kings wearing crowns.

  Six white horses pulled the king’s golden coach.

  There was something to look at.

  The Tatars were always invading. They took people prisoner. They kidnapped children and sold them to the Turks as slaves.

  There were magic clocks.

  At Grandma’s house there was a magic clock. It was big and it hung above a bureau. Grandma’s parents had that clock. They didn’t live in Warsaw.

  “Tell me about the clock, Grandma,” asks Kaytek.

  “Your father gets mad if I frighten you, and then you have bad dreams.”

  “Just this one time, please, Grandma. I know it already anyway. And I’m not scared, am I?”

  “All right then, the clock was old, very old.”

  “It was gold,” Kaytek prompted her.

  “No, not gold, but gilded. Made of wood. And gilded. It was carved.”

  “And there was a hand on the clock, and under the hand there was a key,” says Kaytek.

  “Yes, that’s right. The clock face with the numbers was below, and the hand and the key were above them.”

  “And the clock didn’t work,” says Kaytek.

  “It didn’t work and it didn’t chime. No clockmaker knew how to repair it. It just hung on the wall, biding its time.”

  Kaytek moves up closer.

  “Was it big?”

  “As big as a picture. It hung above the bureau.”

  “And was the hand big?”

  “As big as yours.”

  “So go on,” says Kaytek impatiently.

  “Well, so there hangs the clock, it doesn’t go and it doesn’t chime. But whenever some misfortune was going to happen in the family, the hand took hold of the key and the clock chimed, striking the hour.”

  “What time? Twelve o’clock?”

  “No, I can’t remember. I was young then, and your mom was little. She didn’t have any teeth yet.”

  “And then what?”

  “One time the hand took hold of the key and the clock struck the hour of Grandpa’s death. One time it chimed just before a fire. And the last time, I saw it and heard it myself.”

  “Did it ring loud?”

  “Just normally, like any clock.”

  “And did the hand hold the key for a long time?”

  “What can I tell you? I can’t remember.”

  “Did the fingers move?”

  “I don’t know, Antek.”

  Kaytek has forgotten a lot of things too – he can’t remember when he himself was little.

  “Grandma, please tell me how the robbers poisoned King.”

  “I’ve already told you so many times before. We had two dogs. King was a young dog, and Fido was old and wise.”

  “He was a good watchdog,” adds Kaytek.

  “He was a wise and faithful dog.”

  “And the robbers threw them some poisoned sausage,” prompts Kaytek.

  “That’s right. But Fido knew at once. He sniffed the sausage, barked, and didn’t move.”

  “Oh, Grandma. What about the doctor? That’s a funny story.”

  “It is and it isn’t. Your mother was sick. So Grandpa went to fetch the doctor.”

  “Fido was on his chain.”

  “That’s right. He was a strong dog. He could have mauled a stranger.”

  “But he broke free of his chain.”

  “He did, and he jumped up at the doctor.”

  “Who opened his umbrel
la.”

  “Yes. He leaped onto the trash can and opened his umbrella.”

  “And Fido ran for it.”

  “Wait, don’t be in such a hurry. So Fido tucked in his tail and jumped down. Then he stood there like an idiot whining for help.”

  “He must have thought the umbrella would start firing?”

  “Who knows what a dog thinks.”

  Kaytek yawns. He’s not sleepy, but he is getting tired.

  “It was funny,” says Grandma, “how that great big dog ate out of a wooden tub with a little kitten.”

  “With Kitty?”

  “No, Kitty was before that.”

  “So please tell me the story, Grandma.”

  “All right then. We put some food into the tub for the dog, and the kitten was there in a flash. She wasn’t hungry, she just came to tease. And Fido sat waiting for her to take what she wanted. But then he started getting impatient. He was annoyed and tried to push her away with his paw. And then she spat at him. How we laughed!”

  Grandma is laughing now, although it all happened long ago.

  Kaytek is laughing too, although he didn’t see it happen.

  “Tell me about the rats, Grandma.”

  “But then I’ll stop.”

  “All right,” Kaytek agrees.

  “Well then, our cottage was old, but it was clean. There were no vermin, no mice. But we had a nasty neighbor. Our cottage was here, the fence was here, and his old shack was right next to it.”

  “He was a drunk,” says Kaytek.

  “A drunk and a troublemaker.”

  “He beat his wife.”

  “He did. So your grandpa and I were sitting there together. Grandpa was reading a book, and I was sewing. We were sitting on the small porch outside the house. It was like a little veranda.”

  “With a wild vine growing on it.”

  “That’s right. Your momma and uncle were already asleep. In those days children went to bed earlier. So there we sat, each of us doing our own thing. It was quiet. When suddenly there was a shout: ‘Help, someone, help!’ Grandpa didn’t do anything yet, he just listened. But then that man’s wife, the neighbor’s wife, shouted: ‘Help! He’s going to kill my child!’”

  “And Grandpa jumped up.”

  “In a flash, Antek. Your Grandpa was made of strong stuff. He was good, but also fair.”