The Magic Kingdom

by Stanley Elkin

  (Now the cat has his tongue because this queen has once again kindled the disparities, stunned and bewildered him by the Mutt and Jeff arrangements of the world, the absolute unapartheid provisions and tableaux he so yearns for and dreads, the surreal displacements of his heart.)

  “What I want,” he begins carefully, “what is needed—”

  “May I go with them, Ma’am?” It’s the little boy. He’s seated to Eddy’s side and slightly behind him, one leg comfortably crossed over the other, swinging freely, at once as poised and at ease as an assistant brought back in an illusion. “With Mister Bale and the sick children? The little dying boys and girls? May I, Ma’am? May I? To Disney World? On their dream holiday? Oh, I hope so. I hope I may! There’s nothing to do in the palace.”

  “Disney World? Dream holiday? What’s Clarence saying, Mister Bale?” asks the Queen.

  “Well, that’s my idea, Your Majesty. What I was leading up to. They’re terminal, you see. One little fellow is in the last stages of progeria. That’s a sort of premature old age. Charles Mudd- Gaddis. He’s only eight but he already wears bifocals and suffers terrible constipation. He’s feeble, of course, but he has all his faculties. He’s very alert. Really. He’s sharp as a tack. We should all be in such shape at his age.”

  Queen Elizabeth stared at him.

  “What I mean—” Bale breaks off helplessly to watch the Queen, who has opened her purse and begun to rummage through it as if looking for her compact, a handkerchief, her car keys.

  “Continue, please, Mister Bale,” Her Majesty says.

  “Well,” Eddy says, “there’s this eleven-year-old girl in Liverpool who’s already had a hysterectomy. They should have been tipped off by the hot flashes, but even so they wouldn’t have caught it in time.”

  The Queen has found what she’s been looking for. “Yes?” she says when Bale pauses.

  “I know the names of almost all the terminal children in England, Ma’am,” Eddy tells her, “and who would qualify for the dream holiday—who would benefit, I mean. Twenty thousand would do it.”

  She takes a checkbook and gold pen from her purse. The checks are imprinted with her image and look rather like pound notes. Bale notices that they’ve already been signed; only the amount and name of the payee remain to be filled in.

  “Of course there are lots of arrangements to be made,” Eddy says nervously. “I mean I’ve got to decide whether to remove my mourner’s band in the presence of the children. There’s plenty that remains to be worked out.”

  She is writing his name on a check. “You will be wondering why I am never without my handbag. Very well, Mister Bale, I will tell you. You having shared so much with us,” she says slyly, barely glancing at him. “We clutch it this way because of the muggers,” she says, and tears the check out of the book and hands it to him. It is for fifty pounds. “Don’t cash it,” she says. “Show it round. The money ought to come pouring in. When you have what you think you need you may send the check back. You needn’t deliver it personally. Just put it in the post.”

  “It isn’t for keeps, Your Majesty?”

  “Nothing is for keeps, Mister Bale.”

  “You want it back? Fifty quid? You want it back?”

  “Does the pope shit in the woods?” asked the Queen of England.

  2

  He put his staff together like a collection, like partisans, like a crew in a caper. And liked, even as he recruited them, to think of them that way, something faintly illicit about what he could not really think of as trained specialists so much as a band or gang, some troupe of adventurers, a rash ring of the madcap, spunky-emboldened, stouthearted, suspect. Bale’s lot: his soldiers of fortune, his heart’s highwaymen. Though this was a ruse, a bit of deception he had got up for his own benefit, something Foreign Legion, if not about their bona fides then about their character, left over in his head from a time he had gone to films. Almost telling them when they agreed to join him in his venture—thinking of it as “venture,” too, “operation,” “undertaking,” the code words more satisfying to him than the “dream holiday” label the press had taken up—that they’d have to put by the hard stuff till they’d pulled this one off, that if he so much as smelled anything stronger than tea on their breath they’d be thrown out quicker than snap, and a severe warning that they’d have to lay off the birds—this last to a male nurse who’d tended Liam at the London Clinic and was almost certainly a poof. And nothing on the side, he would have warned: no private swindle, no skimming the cookie jar, no dipping into the private stock. One smutch on the escutcheon and out, he wanted to say. When they got back to England, he wanted to say, could barely keep himself from saying, they could do as they pleased. He was no parson himself; no one had elected him pope. They could go on a bender or fish pox in the stews, he didn’t care. They could bash up old ladies or belt cripples about. (This to Nedra Carp, a woman who, briefly, had been Prince Andrew’s nanny. He hadn’t thought of bringing a nanny, just the private pediatric nurse and erstwhile casualty-ward physician—a pediatrician—he’d met when Liam had been a patient at Queen Mary’s in Roehampton. He had the idea when he saw the woman on television. The children would like that, he thought, having the hero of the Falklands’ personal nanny.) Oh, yeah, he wanted to say, they could talk low bosh or play the berk. They could turn bloody kosher as far as he was concerned, but one smutch, one, and he’d have their guts for garters and their bones for toothpicks. They’d never work with terminal kiddies again, not while Eddy Bale drew breath! And hard cases, bullies and killers from the bottom bins, psychopaths, sociopaths, enemies of the people, enemies of God! Bale’s private fiction: Bale’s desperado wheelmen and demolitions experts, his lookouts and strong-arm guys pitched against the human! (Almost telling them this rubbish, his own low bosh almost out of his mouth, a strange wickedness on the tip of his tongue, all he could do just to mask it at the last moment in the sober turns of his conversations with them. Because I am mad. Am I mad?)

  Actually the group was practically blue-ribbon, worthy as the blue-ribbon cash he had put together after the Queen had given him his seed money.

  Colin Bible, the male nurse from the London Clinic, is a tallish, decorous, handsome man, his appearance in his impeccable hospital whites and almost slipperlike shoes oddly nautical, not so much jaunty as vaguely languorous, like the summery deck clothes of actors on private yachts in films. He has that same spoiled, fine blond hair and would look windblown, Eddy imagines, in sealed rooms. And a quality in his expression of some just-disturbed petulance, ruffled as his hair and as suddenly smoothed back, as if he is obliged to welcome surprise guests. Colin had been his son’s favorite, breezy with the boy, exaggeratedly swish, his broad effeminacy laid on as an accent in a joke and designed, Bale and his wife were certain, to give the boy the impression that it was to Liam alone he spoke this way. It was Bible who insisted, even in the last week of Liam’s life, that the boy required exercise and, when the doctors left—the technicians from Radiology to photograph his bones, from Hematology to draw his blood, from Nuclear Medicine to inject him with substances they would subsequently read tracings of on big, complicated machinery—he would pop into the kid’s room, look comically round to see if anyone was left (managing in quick strobic glances to give the impression that even Ginny and Bale were gone, who were always there, who in that last week did not even return to their flat except to change into fresh clothes, even then never going back together, the one fetching for the other and, in the last days, not going back at all, taking their meals not in the Clinic’s small coffee shop, or even from the vending machines, but ordering from the hospital kitchen, paying the same inflated prices—“They don’t make their money,” Ginny once joked, “on the operations and tests. They make it on the goddamn lunches and dinners”—choosing their next day’s meals from the same menu the Clinic’s dietician showed their dying child), and call out, first conspiratorially, then loudly, “Walkies, Liam. Walkies, walkies!”

  (
“Colin says I mustn’t invalid myself,” Liam tells them, back, breathless, in bed.

  (“You’re overextended, darling,” Ginny says. “You must save your strength.”

  (“What for?”

  (“It’s just gone three,” his father says. “Where have you been these past twenty-five minutes?”

  (“Colin took me to stand by the window. We looked out on Devonshire Place.”

  (“Oh? What did you see?”

  (“The traffic,” Liam says. “We counted two Humbers. There were Bentleys and Jags. Colin calls them doctor’s cars. Morris- Minors, of course, and Ford Cortinas and Anglias. We saw ever so many Vauxhalls and Daimlers. And Colin says he saw a Hillman-Minx with its top rolled back in the phaeton position. I missed that one.”

  (He knew he was dying. He might have been talking about birds spotted in nature. He knew he was dying. He would have known this if he hadn’t the evidence of his decaying body. The doctors had spoken guardedly when he’d asked if he’d ever leave hospital again. He knew he was dying. There was the pathetic testimony of his parents’ vigil, their soured, close-quarters breath, Bale’s stubble and the careless erosion of his mum’s makeup. So he knew he was dying. Colin Bible had told him so. “It’s only traffic down there, kiddo,” the man had said. “They’re just cars, not kangaroos. If Lord and Lady Muck let me, I’d have you off to Kew Gardens or Regent’s Park zoo. We could pop by Madame Tussaud’s for a look-see. Most of that lot’s goners too, Liam.” Liam shuddered. “What, you’ve seen ’em then? Ozymandias, Ozymandias, hey, kid? They look a grave and gray bunch now, I grant, but I’ll say this much for ’em. They done their time, they done their time and they put on a show, the villains no less than the heroes and courtesans. Every mum’s son, every dad’s daughter. All the ancient and modern personages. Not one eager to die and, except for the crazies, p’raps, not one even willing. Not because they didn’t know what they was getting into but because only a crazy don’t appreciate what he’s getting out of. So that’s what you have in common with the moguls and presidents, Liam. Everybody wants to live. We all love the sunshine and we all love the rain. Only the nut case thinks life is hard. Hard? It’s softer than silk pajamas.”

  (“My life is hard.”

  (“Oh? Then you’re the one don’t mind dying.”

  (“Yes. Yes I do.”

  (“There you go then.”

  (“I’m twelve years old,” Liam said.

  (“Yes, and you weren’t always sick. You’ve kicked the football in your time, I’ll be bound. You’ve jumped into the header.” Liam smiled. “Sure. And I’ll bet you the baby you know how to swim, that you’ve been to the baths, maybe even to the sea itself. Maybe even to Brighton.”

  (“And Blackpool.”

  (“Brighton and Blackpool! And you tell me life is hard. Oh, yes. I believe you but thousands wouldn’t!”

  (“One time, on the pitch, I was bowling and knocked the bails clear off the stumps three times running,” Liam remembers.

  (“You were a bowler, were you?”

  (“It wasn’t a regulation cricket ground. Something me and my mates set up on the common.”

  (“You’ve done it all,” Colin Bible says.

  (“I never did,” he tells him quietly, and looks at his nurse. The boy is tired, wishes the man would help him back to his room. On these occasions Colin rarely brings the child’s wheelchair. He carries him when he’s too weak to walk and sets him down on the hospital’s deep window ledges. “I never did those things.”

  (“What things, Liam?”

  (“That the ancient and modern personages did.”

  (“That was my surprise,” Colin says.

  (“I won’t live long enough to do just even ordinary things. I’ll never have my own bed-sitter.”

  (“That’s not so much,” Colin Bible says. “What, a bed-sitter? There’s less there than meets the eye. They’re all moldy and dank, with patches of lino on the floor that never match. I think the Council has rules against it.”

  (“I always wanted to live in one,” the boy says. “That was my idea. To rent a bed-sitter and put my shillings in the electric fire. What surprise?”

  (“Well, you know, Liam, you really are a personage.”

  (“What, I am?”

  (“A modern personage but a personage all the same,” Colin tells him. “Maybe the most famous young personage in England.”

  (“What, because I’m going to die, you mean?”

  (“Your picture’s been in News of the Day. You’ve been on the telly. They’ve written about you in all the papers, even the Times. Just everyone knows you. You’ve been a poster boy. Famous people pray for you. Girls write for your autograph. They know you listen to Terry Wogan. They call him up and he dedicates songs to you. One Sunday in the flat my friend and I were listening to ‘Melodies for You’ and we heard your name. ‘I know him,’ I said. ‘You know Liam Bale?’ he asked. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘he’s my patient.’”

  (“I never did anything brave. The pain doesn’t count. When it hurts I cry. I whine and I whimper. You’ve heard me, Colin.”

  (“You’ve been to Madame Tussaud’s, Liam,” Colin Bible said. “It’s not all Monty and Lord Nelson and Christ on the Cross. You’ve seen the noted criminals, you’ve seen the film stars. Of course you’re a personage.”

  (“Madame Tussaud’s?”

  (“Well, that’s what we’ve been talking about, isn’t it? That’s my surprise. I can’t absolutely guarantee it, of course, but my friend is one of their top artists. He’s Artistic Director, actually, and makes most of the decisions about who’ll be showcased. When he heard I actually knew you he was very excited. He’d already made some marvelous sketches that he took from the papers. ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if Liam even wants to be in your waxworks. Not everyone would, you know, Colin.‘—my friend’s name is Colin, too.—Well, he said he’d respect your wishes in the matter, of course. He doesn’t have to. He’s Artistic Director, and you’re a public personage. Even if you weren’t, once you’re dead you’d be in the public domain anyway—I think that’s the law—so he can pretty much do as he pleases, though he promised he’d respect your wishes. I said I’d check with you, Liam. Personally, I think it would be flippin’ lovely, but it’s your decision.”

  (“Madame Tussaud’s!” Liam says. “Me in Madame Tussaud’s! That’s a stunner. I mean, no boy wants to die, but that’s a stunner. I can almost see the expression on my mates’ faces when they see me.”

  (“Well, you know, Liam, I told Colin I thought that might be the way you’d react when I told you. He’s very good, Colin is. He doesn’t make the actual molds. Those are done in France, mostly, but he does the preliminary sketches and determines the poses.”

  (Liam’s face goes suddenly pale. Colin Bible grabs him from the window seat and carries the boy to a bench, where he lays him down gently. He raises his pajama top, warms the metal disk with breath from his mouth, and puts it against the child’s skin. Liam starts to say something. “Shh, shh,” the nurse says. “All right then,” he says in a moment. “I want to take your pulse.” Which is rapid but not alarming. He places a thermometer under Liam’s tongue. Again the boy tries to speak. “Liam, please, you’ll snap it in two. Then we’ll both be at the Madame’s.”

  (“Uh ojesh,” Liam says.

  (“In a minute,” Colin says. The color has returned to Liam’s face. “Not even normal,” he scolds. “All right, Liam, what was that all about then?”

  (“The poses,” Liam says, “the poses!”

  (“All right, the poses. What about the poses?”

  (“Not in a hospital bed! Sitting up in a chair, maybe, but not in a hospital bed! When you said that about the poses—”

  (“Was that all that was? Sure,” Colin says, “I’ll tell Colin. He’ll have you in a chair. Reading, perhaps, or watching the telly. Looking out the window, seeing things far away or counting the Humbers. Don’t worry, Liam. It will be as grand as any effigy there. Colin�
�s a good friend. He’ll do all of us proud.”

  (And these are almost his son’s last words, the ones Bale had held back from the journalists when they’d turned out on the wet and nasty evening of Liam’s last day, the words he’d hardly heard, could barely make out, when Liam pulled his father close, speaking from the fearful, terrible ecstasy of his dread: “Mamtooshawfsh.”

  (“What, Liam? I’m sorry, son. I don’t understand.” Carefully, silently, signaling Ginny beside him, almost as if she is some Chief Inspector asked in a soft gesture to pick up an extension to hear a message from the kidnappers. “I’m sorry, Liam. Calmly. Calmly.”