The Red Magician (19 page)

“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 possibly 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.

The rabbi began to speak. Mist washed around him, began to take on form. Kicsi heard the rabbi speak Vörös's name, his true name—Gershon, the stranger. She thought she could see in the mist old women and young boys, men in fancy furs and hats and men wearing farmer's clothing. She saw people dressed in ancient armor, carrying swords, and skeletons with jewels winking on the bones of their fingers. A shape with no head held the hand of a small boy wearing tatters. A muffled sound, of sword against iron, of sighing, came from the figures.

She knew them, the dead from the synagogue. She should have warned Vörös. She remembered a day long ago, standing in front of the synagogue with Aladár …

“These are the unavenged dead,” said the rabbi. “They have been killed in wars or in pogroms. Some have been killed so long ago that only they remember the name of their oppressor. They came to the town foretelling catastrophe and I bound them to me. They will do as I say now. If I tell them to avenge themselves on you, they will.”

Vörös nodded. “Then they are very much like you, rabbi,” he said. “You want your revenge, and because there is no one else, you will avenge yourself on me.”

“No,” said the rabbi. “Because you killed my daughter.”

“I did not kill your daughter, rabbi.”

“You did. Just as surely as if you sent her to the furnaces yourself. Why did you speak the words of evil omen at her wedding if you did not want her dead?”

“I was—I was not myself. I saw the deaths coming, and I wanted your people to be warned.”

The rabbi said nothing. He leaned against his cane and looked down at the road for a moment. Vörös turned and took a step back, toward his pack. Fire leapt from the ground, singeing his coat. “You lie!” said the rabbi, looking up at Vörös from under his bushy eyebrows. “I will listen to your tales no longer.”

The dead stirred at the sound of fire. Behind her, Kicsi felt, without seeing it, Vörös's pack.

“All right, then,” said Vörös. “Perhaps there is someone else I can reason with. You, over there. From your looks I would say you lived and died over a hundred years ago. What is your quarrel with me?”

The man in the mists that Vörös pointed to said nothing.

“Do I look like the man who killed you?” Vörös asked. “What is your business here?”

“Fire killed me, traveler,” said the man. His voice was thin and whispering, like a broken teakettle. “They came in the night, on horseback, setting fire to our houses, stealing our cattle. I was powerless against them. All my life I have felt powerless, and never so much so as at the moment of my death. And when I kill you, I will feel power for the first time. After that, I can sleep peacefully.”

The rabbi fell back into the mist of the dead. “I have followed you across Europe to kill you,” said the rabbi. “We waste time, talking like this.”

Fire flew out toward Vörös from among the dead. He caught it in his hand and sent it back, and it disappeared into the ranks of the dead. Another flame, from another place, came toward Vörös, and again he sent it back.

“Where is he?” Kicsi heard him say. “If I could see him, I might—He is playing with me.” Again Vörös tried to step back, and again he was whipped by fire.

“You're mad,” he said. “All of you, you're all mad. I did not kill her!”

“Do you think that that matters, traveler?” said another of the dead. Water streamed from her hair and clothes. “We want blood. We have waited long enough.”

Vörös took a deep breath. He stood very still and began to speak. The mist lessened, and the rabbi seemed to stand forward, a blurred black outline. Vörös let his breath out slowly, gathering strength. He raised his hand.

The mist enfolded the rabbi, wrapping him around like a cloak. Laughter rose from the dead, a dry muffled sound like stones rubbing together. Vörös dropped his arms.

The dead moved again. Kicsi watched as the mist turned to shapes of people, each one crying for revenge. She saw a tall man on horseback, an archer, a woman holding a candle. Something behind her called to her, called strongly, but she could not move her eyes.

The man on horseback sent a flame out toward Vörös. Vörös caught it quickly and sent it back, and it disappeared into the mist. His face twisted with pain. He was panting, and sweat ran into his eyes.

“Stand back!” Vörös called, and the power in his voice was such that the dead waited, restless. “What will you do after you kill me, rabbi?”

The rabbi looked at the road again. It seemed to Kicsi that he was confused for a moment, that he was considering the strange events that had led him back to his village to kill a man. He was very tired.

Finally he looked up. “That does not matter,” he said. “What comes afterward is none of your concern.”

The dead moved forward again, covering the road, crying aloud in fierce voices. Kicsi could hear them only faintly, as though they were calling to her from beneath the water.

They were very close to Vörös now. When they kill him, she thought, will they come for me? She felt, much stronger than before, that she should turn around, that there was something very important that she had forgotten to do. She looked over her shoulder and saw Vörös's pack.

Then time seemed to stop for her, to remain poised between one stroke of the pendulum and the next. Two voices argued within her head like Rachel and the gray-haired woman arguing over her life long ago.

Save him, one said.

Why should I?

Why? You care about him.

No, I don't. I don't care about anyone but myself, and I want to die. That's all I care about.

You cared about Ali, once.

Y—yes, I did. What about it?

Ali would want you to save him.

Ali is dead.

Ah, and you want to join him. You think you can be as heroic as he was, simply by dying. But it doesn't take courage to die. That's easy. It takes courage to live. Ali had that courage.

Ali would—would want me to live?

Ali would, and so would your parents. Your family. Do you honestly think they would want to see you die?

M—maybe not. But I want to. I want to die.

That isn't true. You don't want to die, not really.

I—I don't?

No. Why did you run?

I ran because—because Vörös forced me. Because I had no choice.

Certainly you had a choice. You didn't have to stay with Vörös. There was nothing he could have done to keep you with him. You want to live. You want to, but you don't think you have the right.

That's right. What have I done? I don't deserve—

Done? You have done nothing yet. But no one deserves their life. It is a gift, given to all. It is not for you to decide whether or not you deserve it. But if you want a chance to prove yourself, that too is given to you now. You can save the life of someone you love, so that he does not die like Aladár. There has been too much death. He who saves a life, it is as though he saved the entire world.

Then time started again, the pendulum began its downward stroke. Without thinking, Kicsi knew what she had to do. She opened the pack and felt along the necklaces and amulets and herbs until she found a small leather bag tied with a ribbon.

She held the bag in her hand, then lifted it and threw it toward Vörös. Pain lay open her head, her stomach. A darkness that was not the night came and claimed her. She fell to the street.

She wondered, when she opened her eyes, who had won. Vörös, probably, since the dead had not come for her. But the rabbi and Vörös still stood and faced each other. Her eyes had closed for only a few seconds.

The dead moved forward, rippling like clouds across water. And Vörös still stood against them, black, not moving. Then she saw that he held something in his hands. A leather bag.

Vörös opened the bag and poured its contents into his hand. There was a ruby red as the core of fire, a sapphire blue as the depths of the sea, a diamond white as the stars fused together. He threw the ruby into the air, and it expanded, became a red juggling ball. The other stones followed it. Soon he was balancing seven balls in the air.

Kicsi almost laughed. Of all the things he could have done, this was certainly the least expected. And yet he looked so fine standing there, his face changing colors as different colors shone upon it, that she knew he had done the right thing, the thing he had come to the village to do. Many years later, when she would think of him, she would remember him standing like that, a strange mixture of the familiar and the unexpected. She felt a great love for him. She knew then that she was going to live.

The mist had stopped. The light of the balls fell on the faces of the dead, turning them blue, red, green. Their mouths were open, and they called for revenge in languages living and dead.

“You have said, rabbi,” Vörös said, “that you know my name. That is true, but it is also true I know yours. You have said that I do not have my pack. That is no longer true, as you can see. And you have said that your magic is stronger than mine because we are in your village, and your magic comes from the strength of your people, the people of the village. But, rabbi, where are your people? The village you knew is gone, rabbi. You have no magic left.”

The rabbi remained hidden among the dead. Vörös let his hands fall to his side. The balls continued to circle, but slower now, moving with the heavy grace of planets circling the sun. Kicsi could see Vörös's face as it became orange, blue, red.

“Do you hear me, rabbi? You cannot kill me. The source of your magic is gone. Look.”

A picture appeared within the circle of the balls—a picture of the town as Kicsi and Vörös had seen it earlier that day. Houses were deserted, left open. Strangers walked in the streets. Vörös showed them the synagogue, another deserted house. Its paint was peeling, and many of the windows were gone. Dirt piled up in the courtyard.

The picture changed as they looked at it. They could see the inside of the synagogue now. Rows of chairs had been ripped out, as well as the ornamental fence dividing the men and the women. The ark was open and the Torah was gone. Wind blew in through the open windows.

“Where is your congregation, rabbi?” said Vörös. “Where are your people?”

The mists flowed back. “Dead,” said the rabbi softly.

“Where is your village now, rabbi? Where is the center of your life?”

“Gone,” said the rabbi. “I am powerless.”

Kicsi felt the mist begin to move, to re-form itself. She knew what had happened then. The rabbi had listened to Vörös and had believed him. He had lost control over the dead. And the dead, sensing his nearness, had come after him for their revenge.