The Red Magician

by Lisa Goldstein

  Kicsi no longer felt frightened. She knew where she was now. This was the real world that lurked beneath the other one like a skull beneath skin, the world of death. She sat still, waiting for the darkness to take her. Beside her, though she could no longer see him, she heard Vörös speaking slowly, with effort.

  The cracks began to close. Something about the secret darkness called to her and she stood up. The floor buckled beneath her. She reached for a rail to hold on to, but the darkness took it first and she jerked her hand away. A small crack opened at her feet and she looked down into it. It widened suddenly as though reaching for her. She prepared to jump.

  “No!” said Vörös. “It’s me you want, not her! I can escape your illusion, but she can’t!”

  The other voice laughed. “I know. It was only a warning. Here, I take back my illusion.”

  The train returned. Around them people were reading, sleeping, talking to each other as though nothing had happened. At the end of the car a man was asking two elderly women for their papers. He had white hair and a bushy mustache.

  Kicsi watched the old man warily as he came up to them and asked for their papers. Vörös patted his pockets and the pieces of paper formed beneath his hands, papers that identified them as an importer from Czechoslovakia and his daughter. The old man nodded and continued down the car.

  After he had gone Kicsi began to tremble. She realized then that she had been waiting for another illusion like the last one, for another chance at death. She could not sit still. Thoughts chased themselves around and around inside her head. She reached for a newspaper that someone had left behind, but it was in a language she did not understand. The hours passed slowly.

  Then she heard someone shout the name of her village, and shout it again, as if the crier wanted to make sure that there had been no mistake. She had known the village was near the border, but she had not realized that they would be coming to it soon. A few people around her stood and reached for their suitcases.

  It was evening when the train pulled into the station. At first, as they disembarked, Kicsi thought that nothing was different. But as they walked into the center of the town she could see the small changes. The graveyard was overgrown with weeds, the windows in the synagogue and in some of the houses were smashed. Everything looked older, shabbier.

  She was not prepared for the people. At every corner she thought she saw someone she knew—István or Lászó or Sholom. But as she came up to them they always turned into someone else, strangers. Everyone she had known was gone. She felt a terrible weariness.

  She sat down on a corner bench. Soldiers were everywhere, laughing, talking, stepping out of houses she had once known. A duck walked down the main street; no one had stayed to care for it. She watched it without curiosity. She was beyond surprises.

  Vörös, sitting next to her, said softly, “What do you think?”

  She said nothing.

  “Kicsi?” said Vörös.

  “Go away,” Kicsi said.

  “What?” said Vörös.

  “You heard me. I said go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You know why. You know everything, don’t you? All I want to do is die. That’s all. And you won’t even let me do that.”

  “Are you angry because of what happened this afternoon?”

  She turned to him suddenly. “Of course I’m angry! It would have been so easy. I could have jumped, and it would have been all over. It would have been so peaceful then.”

  “I couldn’t let you die.”

  “‘I couldn’t let you die,’” she said, mimicking him. “Tell me, do you ever say anything else? And I suppose you expect me to be grateful. You expect me to thank you.”

  “I don’t,” said Vörös, but she did not hear him.

  “You know,” she said, “when I was younger I idolized you. You know that, of course. Now I can’t understand why. You don’t mean anything to me anymore. When I woke up, in the camp, I didn’t even remember who you were.”

  “That isn’t true,” said Vörös quietly.

  “What do you mean, it isn’t true? I didn’t recognize you. I remember that.”

  “You didn’t recognize me the second time you saw me,” said Vörös. “But you knew quite well who I was the first time.”

  “The—the first time?”

  “When you were lying by the road. After they had given up hope. You looked at me and told me who I was.”

  “I did?” She frowned. “Something—I remember something now. I was feverish, and I said something silly. I said—wait—” She thought a minute. “I didn’t recognize you at all. I said you were a stranger.”

  “That’s right,” said Vörös. He paused, as if he waited for something from her.

  And then she knew. He was the stranger, the exile, the one who traveled without a home. She had not known what she asked when she had asked long ago to be taken with him. She had not known how much he had envied her and her family as they sat to dinner, or went to the synagogue, or did a hundred ordinary daily tasks. The recent pain she carried with her—the pain of living without a home, without a family—he had carried for a long time, maybe for all of his life. She felt herself opening to him like a flower—the beginning of spring after a long winter. But she could say only, “I spoke your name there, by the side of the road. Your Hebrew name is Gershon—the stranger.”

  Vörös nodded.

  Close—very close—a wolf howled.

  9

  “Quickly,” said Vörös. “Run!” He grasped Kicsi by her hand.

  “What? Where are we going?” She stood. The wolf howled again.

  “Come on!” Vörös said urgently. “Don’t you understand? He knows my name. I am as good as dead. We must get to your house and to my pack.”

  “Oh,” said Kicsi. Somehow—she did not remember how—they had started walking, and then running. The roads seemed longer, and darker, and turned in unexpected places. She stumbled against an unlit lamp post and sat down.

  “Get up,” said Vörös. “Please. We have to go on.”

  “No,” said Kicsi. “You go. I—I’m not well yet. I’m not used to running.” She rubbed her sore foot. “Go on without me. I’ll only be in the way.”

  “No,” said Vörös. “I need you.”

  “Need me? For what? Are you still trying to watch me, to make sure that I don’t kill myself?”

  “No. I need you for something. I don’t know what, but I think that it would be good to have you by my side.”

  “All right.” Kicsi stood up slowly. “Let’s go.”

  They walked on. They could barely see in front of them. Houses and trees seemed to move, to block their way. The road twisted like a river.

  “I don’t like it,” said Vörös, moving his hands along a fence. “He is playing with us. The whole village is under his spell.”

  “I’m so tired,” said Kicsi. “Can’t I rest for just a little bit?” She leaned against the fence. It seemed to twist itself under her. “Look,” she said, pointing to the sky. “He’s put out the stars.”

  “Please,” said Vörös. “We have to go on.” They started off again. The village curled itself around them like a cat. Every step seemed to take minutes, hours, years. The street flowed away from them, and they could not catch up.

  “How much farther is it?” said Kicsi.

  “I don’t know,” said Vörös. “I don’t know where we are.”

  “I feel like I’ve been walking around in circles.”

  “We may have been,” said Vörös. “I don’t know.”

  Tiny pinpoints of light gathered by the side of the road. “Wolves’ eyes,” said Kicsi. She shivered.

  “Don’t stop,” said Vörös. “Don’t look at them.”

  “They’re … terrible,” said Kicsi slowly. She wanted desperately to stop, to sit down. The eyes, bright and cold, watched her pitilessly.

  “Look!” said Vörös suddenly. “There’s
Erzsébet’s house.”

  “No,” said Kicsi wearily. “It’s another illusion. Her house had a tree in front of it. And the curtains were a different color. And the door wasn’t brown, it was—” She saw the tree stump under one of the front windows and stopped. “Are we—I guess this is—Well, if this is Erzsébet’s house, then our house—my house—must be very close. We’re almost there.”

  They started to run. The points of light that were wolves’ eyes fell away from the roadside like falling stars and followed them. Kicsi saw something that looked like a skeleton caught above them in a tree, but Vörös grabbed her and pulled her forward. “Don’t stop!” he said, panting, and she ran on behind him. Her side burned with each step.

  The wolves drew closer. She felt a sharp pain in her ankle and then a trickle of something moist and warm. Her shoe grew slippery with the blood.

  “Almost—there!” said Vörös. “I see it—up ahead.”

  And then, with no sense of how they had gotten there, they were in front of the house. The wolves fell back. “He is playing with us,” Vörös said again, grimly.

  “What can we do?” said Kicsi. She stopped, felt the bite on her ankle carefully.

  “Do? Nothing. We have to go on.”

  Together they looked at the house. A sign with Russian letters stood outside the door, but otherwise nothing had changed. A man in uniform sat on the front doorstep, leaning casually on his rifle.

  “I don’t know if we can get past him,” Vörös whispered, but Kicsi was saying, “Come. I know another way. This way.”

  Kicsi led him around to the side of the house and unlatched the gate carefully. She held it open for him, then followed him into the backyard. No one challenged them. “What is it?” Kicsi whispered. “Why are they here?”

  “Quiet,” said Vörös. Then, very softly, he said, “It is because of the printing presses. They have taken your house over as their headquarters.”

  “Oh,” she said. They walked quietly across the backyard, past the woodshed, and up to the back door. Vörös tried the door. It was unlocked. “At last,” he said. She could almost see him smiling, there in the dark. “A piece of luck for us.” He slid the door open and they went inside.

  Once inside it was difficult to tell which were the changes made by the soldiers and which created by the rabbi. Corridors sloped away from them and seemed to end at different rooms than they had before. Furniture had been moved around or broken and new furniture brought in. Everything looked much smaller.

  “This way,” Kicsi whispered. She felt, suddenly, that she did not need to guide them, that the pack itself was calling to them from behind the bricks where she had hidden it so many years ago.

  “Go on,” Vörös said.

  The dimly lit hallway stretched impossibly long before her, and she took a step forward. Suddenly she remembered a dream she had had a long time ago, a dream where she had come home from school and started to greet her mother and father only to find that she was in the wrong house, that she was about to walk up to strangers who had turned from their evening meal and were looking at her with curiosity. She could not go on. This was not her house. She could not intrude here.

  “Go on, Kicsi,” Vörös said, reassuring her. Very strongly now, she felt the pack ahead of her. She touched the wall with one hand and began to walk.

  As her eyes got used to the darkness, as she followed the cunning twistings and turnings of the corridor, she began to hear the noises of the house. Ahead of her, in the living room, men were singing and laughing. She could hear the thump of a dice cup and the hoarse voices of the soldiers rising after each turn, and she felt a sudden unreasoning anger that these men were using the table her mother had cleaned and polished so often. Then she remembered where she was, and the anger passed.

  Someone was humming tunelessly in the kitchen. She followed the sound. The walls shifted suddenly. “Here,” she said, stopping in front of the hall outside the pantry. “This is where I hid it.” The feeling that they were near the pack was very strong now.

  Vörös knelt and began to pry out the bricks. “Pavel!” someone called from the living room. The steady rhythmic thump of the dice cup had stopped. “Pavel, we need some more sugar for the tea. More sugar, please!”

  “Of course!” the man in the kitchen called. Then softer, to himself, he said, “More sugar.” Kicsi and Vörös could hear him stand up, could hear him as he came out to the pantry. The walls flowed around them and closed in. They had no place to run.

  They stood. In the distance they could hear Pavel begin to hum again, and then stop. He turned a corner and stood before them, a squat young man with a few days’ growth of beard. “What are you doing here?” he said.

  Vörös walked over to him and pushed him lightly in the chest. He fell against the brick wall and slid to the floor. “What are you doing here?” he repeated, but Kicsi could see that his eyes had closed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Can’t you—make him stop?” Kicsi asked.

  “No,” said Vörös. “I can’t.” He returned to the wall and pried out one brick, then another. A space wide enough for Kicsi’s hand opened up. From the living room someone called again, “Pavel!”

  “Hurry!” Vörös said.

  Kicsi felt behind the brick wall for the pack. For a minute she could not find it and panic took hold of her. Then she touched it, lifted it out, held it in her hands. As she looked at it, she felt for the first time that she had come home.

  “What are you doing here?” Pavel said again.

  “Here,” Kicsi said softly. She passed the pack to Vörös. “Let’s go, quickly.”

  Someone from the living room called, “Pavel!” and swore. “All right, then,” the man in the living room said. “I’ll come get it myself!” Kicsi heard him start toward the kitchen. They turned and ran back the way they had come.

  Kicsi felt time, place, memory fold over and become confused. She was not in her house at all now, but in Erzsébet’s; she was in her house again, but Aladár was watching her put away the pack and saying, “Maybe everything you’ve told me is true.” Corridors beckoned, each one a different path toward a different future. She could not find Vörös. Without the pack to guide her she was lost within the maze of her own house.

  She chose one corridor and began to walk. There was her bed with the goose feather quilt neatly tucked into the sides—but what was it doing in the hallway? There was the lamp she had loved as a child, with a beautiful woman’s head at its base, but the shade was gone, and one of the bulbs was out. And whose couch was that? Erzsébet’s family had had a couch like it once, but it had been red, not green … Things floated toward her and drifted away. She felt, stronger this time, that she was dreaming. There was nothing to hold on to. She clenched her fists.

  “Vörös,” she whispered. She gathered courage from the sound of her voice and said, louder, “Vörös!” There was no answer.

  She tripped against something and looked down. She had stumbled against one of the bricks that Vörös had taken out of the wall. Had she truly gone anywhere at all? Or had she stayed in the pantry and imagined it all? Near her Pavel sat propped against the wall. His lips moved, but he made no sound.

  “Pavel!” someone called from the kitchen, the same man who had called to Pavel before. It had taken him an eternity to go from the living room to the kitchen. “What happened to you? Where are you?”

  His footsteps sounded nearer. The thump of the dice cup came louder, like heartbeats. Desperately Kicsi opened the door to the kitchen and looked inside. She saw smoke and ashes, and the outline of barbed wire. The sound of the dice cups became the clatter of machine guns.

  She gasped and closed the door quickly. “Pavel!” the man called. “I can’t see you. Something’s happened to the lights …”

  She turned. Something moved at the edge of her vision, and she turned again. The fat gray cat, the cat that Sarah had stayed to feed, came toward her.

  The cat could not possi
bly still be alive. Yet it continued to walk toward her, brushing against her legs. She could not feel it against her. It walked down the hall to a point where three corridors converged and without hesitation chose the left one.

  Kicsi followed it. She came up behind it and called to it, but it ran lightly away from her. It turned a corner, and Kicsi recognized with a start the back hallway. The cat walked up to the back door and was gone. Kicsi did not see it go. She opened the back door and stepped outside.

  The night was as dark as the inside of caves. She breathed in the cold air. “Vörös,” she whispered. “Vörös, where are you?” For the first time she felt real fear, as she wondered what would happen to her if the rabbi found her without Vörös.

  “Over here,” someone whispered, and, very dimly, she could see the outline of a black coat. “Step over this way. The gate’s over here.”

  Carefully, Vörös in front, they went across the yard toward the gate. Vörös unlatched the gate and stepped through. Kicsi followed a few paces behind him. Suddenly Kicsi heard Vörös stop and gasp aloud. Before them, where there had been only empty road, stood the rabbi.

  He was thinner than Kicsi remembered, and taller. His gray-black hair streamed out behind him. A light shone in his eyes, a light that was not a reflection of the stars, which had been put out, or of the lamps, which had not been lit. Kicsi crouched near the gatepost.

  He lifted his hand. The pack flew out of Vörös’s hand and landed without a sound a few feet away, near Kicsi. Vörös took a step back.

  “You are a dead man, traveler,” said the rabbi.

  “Yes,” said Vörös.

  “You are a dead man,” the rabbi went on, as though he had not heard Vörös speak, “for three reasons. I know your name. You no longer have your pack. And here, where I have lived all my life, my magic is stronger than yours. My magic comes from the people and the strength of my village. That is a strength you do not know.”

  “Yes.”

  “So.” The rabbi stepped back slightly. Kicsi could see them both clearly then—two figures dressed in black, facing each other without speaking. Why doesn’t he do something? Kicsi thought.