Kaytek the Wizard
Page 6
On his way back from school he searches.
Or rather he doesn’t search, he just looks around. Because if you have magical powers, you find things without searching.
He’s walking along at a normal pace, not fast and not slow. He walks straight, then in a zig-zag. At first calmly, but then he starts to have doubts.
It hasn’t worked.
Maybe try in the evening?
There are spells that only work at midnight. Before the rooster crows thrice.
He’s done his homework assignments. He reaches for his cap.
“Antek, where are you going? It’s late. Your dad’s on his way home from work.”
“I’ll be back in a minute. I’ll be just a moment.”
Outside, the street lamps are already on.
It’s muddy.
A tram goes by. A car lights up the street and rushes past.
I want to find one.
Let me find one.
I order. I command.
One little zloty, be found!
And he found one, in a very strange way.
He was on his way back, so they wouldn’t be too upset at home.
It was so strange, when he’d already given up hope.
He’s on his way back, thinking: tough. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then next week.
Suddenly a car comes along, and he sees something shining in the mud. He bends down, and it’s a coin – next to the street lamp, on the very edge of the sidewalk, almost hanging over it.
Fifty groshys – that’s half a zloty.
“Good for us!”
He breathes on it for good luck.
“That’ll do.”
And he rushes home as fast as his legs can carry him.
Then came his second try.
He wanted to find money in the street, but he found it on the stairs, but only five groshys – you need twenty of those to make a zloty.
It was only a five-groshy coin, but it was a new one, shiny, just like gold.
Even before now Kaytek had occasionally found something or other. He’d lose an eraser, then he’d find a pencil, he’d lose a pen, and he’d find a pencil sharpener.
Kaytek loses things, and so do others. Because things can fall out of your pocket while you’re running, or slip out of your schoolbag.
Or the grown-ups throw things out. They throw out things that might come in handy: a piece of string, a box, a small bottle, or a movie theater program.
But that’s quite another matter.
The third time, it was different.
By now he was feeling discouraged and wasn’t looking at all. He was hurrying to get to school, thinking: “No means no, I won’t find any more money.”
When suddenly . . .
I want to find a hundred zlotys! he thinks.
Because what does he have to lose?
And straight away, at the next corner store, right by the steps, he picks up a whole zloty, and next to it there are two fifty-groshy coins. So altogether that’s two zlotys.
“So maybe I should demand more?” he thinks. “Maybe there’s a chief wizard who’s bargaining with me?”
Then it occurs to him for the first time that even a wizard has his own bosses and authorities. He is not independent. There are some secret commands.
Well, then? He has two zlotys. He goes to school feeling happy.
He meets up with his pals. He proudly tells them about the money and shows it to them.
He doesn’t sense any trouble brewing.
Because lately various things have started disappearing at school: breakfasts, books, some gloves, and a scarf have all gone missing.
Kaytek has even tried to expose the culprit using magic, because it’s a nasty business. But nothing came of it.
And now suspicion has fallen on Kaytek himself, as if he’d taken the money from another boy.
That day the teacher is collecting the outstanding contributions to pay for the missing breakfast. And one boy is crying because he had two zlotys but they’re gone – someone has stolen them.
“Where did you have them?”
“In my schoolbag. No, not in my bag, in my pocket.”
“Maybe you lost them in the street?”
No. They were here. He had them in the cloakroom. He put them on the windowsill.
“Which of you has some money?”
The boys take out their money and show the teacher. One boy has ten groshys, another has thirty, yet another has two foreign coins.
Kaytek immediately comes clean.
Where did you get two zlotys?” asks the teacher.
“I found it in the street.”
The teacher gives Kaytek a nasty look.
She takes the two zlotys and asks the other boy: “Is this yours?”
And he says: “Yes, it’s mine.”
Then the other boys cut in, saying: “He’s lying, miss. It’s not his at all. He didn’t have any money. He was just pretending to cry.”
Kaytek calmly looks the teacher in the eye. The other boy is red and confused. Until he stammers: “Mine was a whole two-zloty coin, two zlotys in total. Not separate.”
“I can give it to him,” says Kaytek. “He can have it.”
The teacher doesn’t know what to do, and the boys are urging Kaytek: “Don’t give it to him, you dope. Look at him, the cheat. He says he had it on the windowsill, in his pocket, and in his schoolbag. He had different coins, but he says it’s his. He’s been found out, the wise guy! He’s lying. He never had it at all. He’s always cheating. Kaytek showed us outside that he’d found that money.”
Kaytek shrugs.
The teacher thinks for a while.
“Tell me, where did you find it?” she says.
He tells her what happened. He doesn’t say anything about the spells, of course.
“So you’ll give it to him?”
“He can have it, if he says he lost it. It’s not mine, after all.”
And the other boy takes it. His hands are shaking. And now he’s crying for real.
Once again, it’s all so strangely complicated.
“Maybe magic power gives to one and takes away from another?”
Because it was like that before, too.
He wants to try it a different way.
He wants to do a test, to see if he can transfer his magic spell to someone else.
So he gives a command for Mom to find a zloty.
And Mom comes back from town and tells a weird story:
“I found five zlotys. So I looked around to see who lost it. And I saw an old guy looking for something. So I asked him. He was overjoyed, the poor old boy. It was his.”
It came out so weird.
It’s all in such a pickle you can’t get your head around it.
Kaytek found a pocket knife and some crayons.
The pocket knife was lying in the middle of the street. It was lying there so obviously, but no one had seen it and picked it up.
It was just as if it was waiting for Kaytek.
It was the same with the crayons – a whole new box of them, and just when the teacher warned he’d give them a bad grade for the semester if they didn’t have crayons.
Even if it wasn’t magic, no one loses a whole new box of crayons, do they?
Then the pocket knife went missing. He left it on the bench, and after the recess, it had gone. Maybe someone took it, though he asked the janitor and the other boys.
Or maybe it just disappeared on its own?
Once again, who knows?
Two more of Kaytek’s spells worked out in the street. One time he pushed some little girls into the mud.
It was like this:
He’s walking along, on his way home from school, lost in thought.
There was a good reason why wizards used to live in isolated towers or in the last cottage at the very edge of the village. Maybe they hide in the forest, or at the bottom of the sea?
Kaytek himself can tell that his thoughts take shape most easily when he’s down by the River Vistula, far from the city, among peace and quiet; or in the silence of night, when he’s lying in bed.
So on his way home from school he’s thinking about it all, turning it over in his mind. And suddenly, there in front of him, are three little girls.
They’re taking up the entire width of the sidewalk, laughing, pushing, and fooling around. They won’t let him get past. If they were boys, maybe he wouldn’t have noticed, but girls! That makes him even wilder.
It’s raining.
Go splash in the mud! he thinks.
And at once they’re lying in it. All three of them. They’re filthy dirty, covered in mud.
“Serves them right,” he thinks. “That’ll teach them to cause a scene!”
The second time, he spilled a saleslady’s apples.
He knows her from way back – she’s always sold her apples here. Sometimes he used to buy from her.
He doesn’t like her because she’s rude to kids. She never lets them take a look, or choose, or haggle.
At once she says: “Are you going to buy it or not? All right, go to the Jew instead.* Go somewhere else – don’t buy anything here.”
True, sometimes the boys are annoying too.
Kaytek comes by with a pal. He looks and sees the woman is dozing.
Make her do a cartwheel, he thinks
And in an instant, she does!
She grabs at her big basket of apples to stop herself, but she and the basket end up on the ground.
The rascals are laughing.
“The old girl’s drunk!”
She isn’t even bruised, but she is embarrassed.
“That’s the first time that has ever happened to me. Like some drunk! People are laughing. It’s so embarrassing! Twenty years I’ve been trading. Year in, year out, spring, summer, fall, and winter. That’s the first time – such a disgrace!”
She very nearly bursts into tears.
Kaytek feels sorry. He pities the old woman.
He tells his pal to keep watch and make sure no one touches any of the spilled apples while he picks them up for her.
“Thank you, boy, thank you, my dear. Here, take a nice big apple for your kindness.”
And she thrusts an apple into his hand, but it’s a wormy one.
His pal makes a joke of it, but Kaytek is upset.
“Did I really have to start it up with the old woman?” he thinks.
Until one day he managed a spell that was permanent. Every evening it kept repeating. Once again, it wasn’t of any great use, but it was important proof that Kaytek really did have magic powers.
It started late one night.
At home.
In silence.
Kaytek is lying in bed and he can’t get to sleep.
He can hear his parents and Grandma breathing in their sleep.
He’s not afraid, but it’s unpleasant being the only one who’s not asleep. A person feels all alone in the darkness.
Suddenly the floor creaks, as if someone were walking around. There’s a knocking sound in the wardrobe, or behind it, as if someone were prowling about.
Until finally he feels like having a bite to eat.
If only there was something under my pillow, a bar of chocolate or something else.
That’s all he thinks. If he added any other words, he must have forgotten them.
And at once he hears a rustling noise, as if a mouse were scratching under his pillow.
He reaches under the pillow – and there it is!
A little bag. He doesn’t open it at once. Why be in a hurry? He just feels it with his fingers and tries to guess what’s inside.
Until he boldly opens the bag.
He tips the contents onto his hand – nine chocolate candies with fillings, nine big raisins, and nine almonds.
He counts them. Should he eat them or not?
He tries one.
It’s sweet and tasty. They’re just the same as the regular ones they sell in the stores.
“Why nine?”
He eats up eight of each kind, and keeps the rest to examine in the morning. The paper that the bag is made from seems stiff.
He wants to store them in his pocket because the chocolate will melt under his pillow. So he sits up and reaches for his pants. And makes the chair rattle.
“Is that you, Antek?” says Grandma, who has woken up.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I was.”
But in the morning, his pocket is empty.
And after that it’s the same every evening: chocolate candies, raisins and almonds.
He has tried them out and knows they’re not poison. He wants to offer them around. He leaves three, and says: Let them remain. Don’t let them disappear.
And next morning they’re still there. They haven’t gone. So he offers them around.
“Where did you get them?” asks Mom.
“My pal gave them to me.”
“Eat them yourself.”
“I’ve had some. I have a toothache.”
He doesn’t like fibbing, but what could he do?
Another spell kind of worked, and kind of didn’t.
He really wants to have a watch.
He’s often thought it would be good to have something useful instead of the little bag. But he’s afraid to spoil things by being in a hurry.
Until one day he managed it.
Once again, everyone else is asleep.
He says some phrases in Egyptian or Arabic. He says the spell and . . .
Instead of candy let there be . . . .
At once there’s the familiar rustle under his pillow, and the low ticking of a watch.
He hears it, reaches under the pillow, and starts laughing.
“Oh, how generous.”
There’s a watch, and also the little bag.
“Antek, is that you laughing?” says Grandma.
“Yes. I had such a funny dream.”
Grandma’s pleased he’s not moaning in his sleep or gnashing his teeth. She doesn’t ask any more questions.
But in the morning the watch was gone.
He tried this way and that way for several evenings in a row, but only the candy appeared.
Maybe it was better like that.
Because now he could see that it wouldn’t work, so he calmed down and could get to sleep quicker.
And he was very, very tired by now.
At home they have noticed that Kaytek has grown sad and is looking haggard.
He’s lost his appetite. He doesn’t play in the yard much. And he’s not sleeping well.
He used to wolf his food down like anything. Bread, cheese, dumplings, potatoes or ravioli – you name it, he ate it.
“Where does all the food go in the boy? He eats well but he’s thin as a rail.”
He used to read the paper to his grandma and play checkers with his dad. Now he’s not eating and he keeps excusing himself from everything, saying he has a headache.
“He must be sick. We must go to the doctor.”
Kaytek was worried.
What if the doctor realized he was a wizard? Doctors know Latin. Maybe they teach them Latin so they can make spells to cure illnesses and remove enchantments in a dead language?
Well, off to the doctor they went.
/> The doctor tapped. He listened. He examined Kaytek’s throat. He told him to have his teeth treated by a dentist. He examined his eyes. He weighed up the facts. He said he was pale and prescribed some drops. He said Kaytek was growing.
He was wrong – he didn’t realize.
These tricky thoughts won’t let Kaytek rest – they’re stopping him from eating or sleeping.
Because he is a wizard.
For a long time he didn’t believe it. Now he’s certain. His dream has come true.
But it’s a tricky profession. A tough line of work.
A dangerous occupation.
Because if you make a mistake doing something ordinary, it’s no big deal: you can put it straight. But if you make a mistake doing a magic spell, you could lose your life.
Kaytek became sure of this after a terrible spell involving a tram.
Kaytek is walking down the street. Nothing’s up, he’s just walking along.
He’s looking at the numbers on the trams. That number is even, that one is odd; that one divides by five, that one doesn’t.
He’s looking at the people and the stores. There’s a dog sitting by the gate. Kaytek stops, calls the dog over, and strokes it.
Another tram goes by at full speed.
He turns around to see the number.
And suddenly he thinks: Make me turn a somersault in the air and stand on the roof of the tram.
There’s a wind – a force – a power, something that throws him upward. Now he’s in the air, head down. He straightens up, and he’s standing on the roof of the tram.
A woman screams. Someone on a balcony raises their arms in the air. The dog starts to howl. A driver cries out: “Hold on or you’ll fall off!”
Kaytek sways, and is about to grab onto the wire. And at the very last moment he remembers there’s a high-voltage electric current running through it.
It’s like lightning. That’s how they kill prisoners on death row in America.
Kaytek falls over. He rolls. There’s a roaring noise in his ears. He’s going to fall off. Just in time he thinks: Make me somersault to the ground!
Once again he spins in the air. And he’s standing on the sidewalk.
The rubberneckers crowd around him. A policeman is approaching.
Kaytek runs for it.
Panting for breath, he only stops three streets away.
He straightens his clothes and wipes the blood off his grazed hands with a handkerchief.