No Great Magic

by Fritz Leiber

  III

  Sound a dumbe shew. Enter the three fatall sisters, with a rocke, a threed, and a pair of sheeres. --Old Play

  My sleeping closet is just a cot at the back end of the girls' thirdof the dressing room, with a three-panel screen to make it private.

  When I sleep I hang my outside clothes on the screen, which is pastedand thumbtacked all over with the New York City stuff that gives mesecurity: theater programs and restaurant menus, clippings from the_Times_ and the _Mirror_, a torn-out picture of the United Nationsbuilding with a hundred tiny gay paper flags pasted around it, andhanging in an old hairnet a home-run baseball autographed by WillieMays. Things like that.

  Right now I was jumping my eyes over that stuff, asking it to keep melocated and make me safe, as I lay on my cot in my clothes with myknees drawn up and my fingers over my ears so the louder lines fromthe play wouldn't be able to come nosing back around the trunks andtables and bright-lit mirrors and find me. Generally I like to listento them, even if they're sort of sepulchral and drained of overtonesby their crooked trip. But they're always tense-making. And tonight (Imean this afternoon)--no!

  It's funny I should find security in mementos of a city I daren't goout into--no, not even for a stroll through Central Park, though Iknow it from the Pond to Harlem Meer--the Met Museum, the Menagerie,the Ramble, the Great Lawn, Cleopatra's Needle and all the rest. Butthat's the way it is. Maybe I'm like Jonah in the whale, reluctant togo outside because the whale's a terrible monster that's awful scaryto look in the face and might really damage you gulping you a secondtime, yet reassured to know you're living in the stomach of thatparticular monster and not a seventeen tentacled one from the fifthplanet of Aldebaran.

  It's really true, you see, about me actually living in the dressingroom. The boys bring me meals: coffee in cardboard cylinders anddoughnuts in little brown grease-spotted paper sacks and malts andhamburgers and apples and little pizzas, and Maud brings me rawvegetables--carrots and parsnips and little onions and such, andwatches to make sure I exercise my molars grinding them and get myvitamins. I take spit-baths in the little john. Architects don't seemto think actors ever take baths, even when they've browned themselvesall over playing Pindarus the Parthian in _Julius Caesar_. And all myshut-eye is caught on this little cot in the twilight of my NYCscreen.

  * * * * *

  You'd think I'd be terrified being alone in the dressing room duringthe wee and morning hours, let alone trying to sleep then, but thatisn't the way it works out. For one thing, there's apt to be someonesleeping in too. Maudie especially. And it's my favorite time too forcostume-mending and reading the _Variorum_ and other books, and forjust plain way-out dreaming. You see, the dressing room is the oneplace I really do feel safe. Whatever is out there in New York thatterrorizes me, I'm pretty confident that it can never get in here.

  Besides that, there's a great big bolt on the inside of the dressingroom door that I throw whenever I'm all alone after the show. Next daythey buzz for me to open it.

  It worried me a bit at first and I had asked Sid, "But what if I'm sodeep asleep I don't hear and you have to get in fast?" and he hadreplied, "Sweetling, a word in your ear: our own Beauregard Lassiteris the prettiest picklock unjailed since Jimmy Valentine and JimmyDale. I'll not ask where he learned his trade, but 'tis sober truth,upon my honor."

  And Beau had confirmed this with a courtly bow, murmuring, "At yourservice, Miss Greta."

  "How do you jigger a big iron bolt through a three-inch door that fitslike Maudie's tights?" I wanted to know.

  "He carries lodestones of great power and divers subtle tools," Sidhad explained for him.

  I don't know how they work it so that some Traverse-Three cop or parkofficial doesn't find out about me and raise a stink. Maybe Sid justthrows a little more of the temperament he uses to keep mostoutsiders out of the dressing-room. We sure don't get any janitors orscrubwomen, as Martin and I know only too well. More likely he squaressomeone. I do get the impression all the company's gone a little wayout on a limb letting me stay here--that the directors of our theaterwouldn't like it if they found out about me.

  In fact, the actors are all so good about helping me and putting upwith my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that Isometimes think I must be related to one of them--a distant cousin orsister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I've checked our faces sideby side in the mirrors often enough and I can't find any strikingfamily resemblances. Or maybe I was even an actress in the company.The least important one. Playing the tiniest roles like Lucius in_Caesar_ and Bianca in _Othello_ and one of the little princes in_Dick the Three Eyes_ and Fleance and the Gentlewoman in _Macbeth_,though me doing even that much acting strikes me to laugh.

  But whatever I am in that direction--if I'm anything--not one of theactors has told me a word about it or dropped the least hint. Not evenwhen I beg them to tell me or try to trick them into it, presumablybecause it might revive the shock that gave me agoraphobia and amnesiain the first place, and maybe this time knock out my entire mind or atleast smash the new mouse-in-a-hole consciousness I've made formyself.

  * * * * *

  I guess they must have got by themselves a year ago and talked me overand decided my best chance for cure or for just bumping along halfhappily was staying in the dressing room rather than being sent home(funny, could I have another?) or to a mental hospital. And then theymust have been cocky enough about their amateur psychiatry andinterested enough in me (the White Horse knows why) to go ahead with aprogram almost any psychiatrist would be bound to yike at.

  I got so worried about the set up once and about the risks they mightbe running that, gritting down my dread of the idea, I said to Sid,"Siddy, shouldn't I see a doctor?"

  He looked at me solemnly for a couple of seconds and then said, "Sure,why not? Go talk to Doc right now," tipping a thumb toward DocPyeskov, who was just sneaking back into the bottom of his makeup boxwhat looked like a half pint from the flask I got. I did,incidentally. Doc explained to me Kraepelin's classification of thepsychoses, muttering, as he absentmindedly fondled my wrist, that in ayear or two he'd be a good illustration of Korsakov's Syndrome.

  They've all been pretty darn good to me in their kooky ways, theactors have. Not one of them has tried to take advantage of mysituation to extort anything out of me, beyond asking me to sew on abutton or polish some boots or at worst clean the wash bowl. Not oneof the boys has made a pass I didn't at least seem to invite. And whenmy crush on Sid was at its worst he shouldered me off by gettingpolite--something he only is to strangers. On the rebound I hit Beau,who treated me like a real Southern gentleman.

  All this for a stupid little waif, whom anyone but a gang ofsentimental actors would have sent to Bellevue without a secondthought or feeling. For, to get disgustingly realistic, my mostplausible theory of me is that I'm a stage-struck girl from Iowa whosaw her twenties slipping away and her sanity too, and made the dashto Greenwich Village, and went so ape on Shakespeare after seeing herfirst performance in Central Park that she kept going back there nightafter night (Christopher Street, Penn Station, Times Square, ColumbusCircle--see?) and hung around the stage door, so mousy butopen-mouthed that the actors made a pet of her.

  And then something very nasty happened to her, either down at theVillage or in a dark corner of the Park. Something so nasty that itblew the top of her head right off. And she ran to the only people andplace where she felt she could ever again feel safe. And she showedthem the top of her head with its singed hair and its jagged ring ofskull and they took pity.

  My least plausible theory of me, but the one I like the most, is thatI was born in the dressing room, cradled in the top of a flattheatrical trunk with my ears full of Shakespeare's lines before Iever said "Mama," let alone lamped a TV; hush-walked when I cried bywhoever was off stage, old props my first toys, trying to eat crepehair my first indiscretion, sticks of gr
ease-paint my first crayons.You know, I really wouldn't be bothered by crazy fears about New Yorkchanging and the dressing room shifting around in space and time, if Icould be sure I'd always be able to stay in it and that the same sweetguys and gals would always be with me and that the shows would alwaysgo on.

  * * * * *

  This show was sure going on, it suddenly hit me, for I'd let myfingers slip off my ears as I sentimentalized and wish-dreamed and Iheard, muted by the length and stuff of the dressing room, the slowbeat of a drum and then a drum note in Maudie's voice taking up thatbeat as she warned the other two witches, "A drum, a drum! Macbethdoth come."

  Why, I'd not only missed Sid's history-making-and-breaking QueenElizabeth prologue (kicking myself that I had, now it was over), I'dalso missed the short witch scene with its famous "Fair is foul andfoul is fair," the Bloody Sergeant scene where Duncan hears aboutMacbeth's victory, and we were well into the second witch scene, theone on the blasted heath where Macbeth gets it predicted to him he'llbe king after Duncan and is tempted to speculate about hurrying up theprocess.

  I sat up. I did hesitate a minute then, my fingers going back towardmy ears, because _Macbeth_ is specially tense-making and when I've hadone of my mind-wavery fits I feel weak for a while and things areblurry and uncertain. Maybe I'd better take a couple of thebarbiturate sleeping pills Maudie manages to get for me and--but _No,Greta_, I told myself, _you want to watch this show, you want to seehow they do in those crazy costumes. You especially want to see howMartin makes out. He'd never forgive you if you didn't._

  So I walked to the other end of the empty dressing room, moving quiteslowly and touching the edges here and there, the words of the playgetting louder all the time. By the time I got to the doorBruce-Banquo was saying to the witches, "If you can look into theseeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which willnot,"--those lines that stir anyone's imagination with their veiledvision of the universe.

  The overall lighting was a little dim (afternoon fading already?--a_late_ matinee?) and the stage lights flickery and the scenery still alittle spectral-flimsy. Oh, my mind-wavery fits can be lulus! But Iconcentrated on the actors, watching them through the entrance-gaps inthe wings. They were solid enough.

  Giving a solid performance, too, as I decided after watching thatscene through and the one after it where Duncan congratulates Macbeth,with never a pause between the two scenes in true Elizabethan style.Nobody was laughing at the colorful costumes. After a while I began toaccept them myself.

  Oh, it was a different _Macbeth_ than our company usually does. Louderand faster, with shorter pauses between speeches, the blank verse attimes approaching a chant. But it had a lot of real guts and everybodywas just throwing themselves into it, Sid especially.

  * * * * *

  The first Lady Macbeth scene came. Without exactly realizing it Imoved forward to where I'd been when I got my three shocks. Martin isso intent on his career and making good that he has me the same wayabout it.

  The Thaness started off, as she always does, toward the opposite sideof the stage and facing a little away from me. Then she moved a stepand looked down at the stage-parchment letter in her hands and beganto read it, though there was nothing on it but scribble, and my heartsank because the voice I heard was Miss Nefer's. I thought (and almostsaid out loud) _Oh, dammit, he funked out, or Sid decided at the lastminute he couldn't trust him with the part. Whoever got Miss Nefer outof the ice cream cone in time?_

  Then she swung around and I saw that no, my God, it _was_ Martin, nomistaking. He'd been using her voice. When a person first does a part,especially getting up in it without much rehearsing, he's bound tocopy the actor he's been hearing doing it. And as I listened on, Irealized it was fundamentally Martin's own voice pitched a triflehigh, only some of the intonations and rhythms were Miss Nefer's. Hewas showing a lot of feeling and intensity too and real Martin-typepoise. _You're off to a great start, kid_, I cheered inwardly. _Keepit up!_

  Just then I looked toward the audience. Once again I almost squeakedout loud. For out there, close to the stage, in the very middle of thereserve section, was a carpet spread out. And sitting in the middle ofit on some sort of little chair, with what looked like two charcoalbraziers smoking to either side of her, was Miss Nefer with a stringof extras in Elizabethan hats with cloaks pulled around them.

  For a second it really threw me because it reminded me of the thingsI'd seen or thought I'd seen the couple of times I'd sneaked a peekthrough the curtain-hole at the audience in the indoor auditorium.

  It hardly threw me for more than a second, though, because Iremembered that the characters who speak Shakespeare's prologues oftenstay on stage and sometimes kind of join the audience and evencomment on the play from time to time--Christopher Sly and attendantlords in _The Shrew_, for one. Sid had just copied and in his usualstyle laid it on thick.

  _Well, bully for you, Siddy_, I thought, _I'm sure the witless NewYork groundlings will be thrilled to their cold little toes knowingthey're sitting in the same audience as Good Queen Liz and attendantcourtiers. And as for you, Miss Nefer_, I added a shade invidiously,_you just keep on sitting cold in Central Park, warmed by dry-icesmoke from braziers, and keep your mouth shut and everything'll befine. I'm sincerely glad you'll be able to be Queen Elizabeth allnight long. Just so long as you don't try to steal the scene fromMartin and the rest of the cast, and the real play._

  _I suppose that camp chair will get a little uncomfortable by the timethe Fifth Act comes tramping along to that drumbeat, but I'm sureyou're so much in character you'll never feel it._

  _One thing though: just don't scare me again pretending to workwitchcraft--with a virginals or any other way._

  _Okay?_

  _Swell._

  _Me, now, I'm going to watch the play._