The Red Magician (3 page)

The door began to swing back and forth, although Imre had not turned the key in the lock. The Shabbos candles flickered. A glass of wine overturned, the stain spreading slowly through the white linen like a fist unclenching.

“Help!” said Arpad. Everyone in the room could hear his thin voice through the telephone. “Help! He's strangling me! I'm being strangled!”

The dinner table began to tremble. Silverware and china rattled like chattering teeth. The candles went out.

“In Heaven's name!” said Vörös. “What does he think he's doing?”

The door closed. Imre fumbled with the lock.

“Please! Somebody! I'm being strangled!”

Vörös ran to the door, pushing Imre out of the way. As the door tore itself loose from the frame once more, Vörös pushed at it with his shoulder. The door flung open. The presses became louder.

Vörös said one word into the din. The word sounded like breath, like wind, like the sea speaking to the sand. The presses stopped.

Arpad came to the door. He looked at the family, gathered around him like the crowd that gathers around a man feared dead, and fainted. Imre and Vörös together dragged him to the table.

Imre unbuttoned Arpad's shirt and peeled back the collar. He sucked in his breath in dismay. Standing out against the pale skin were deep red marks, marks like fingers.

“Somebody! Somebody get a doctor,” said Imre. “Sarah, wet a napkin and bring it to me. Stand back, all of you—he's fainted. You can look at his neck another time. Get back!”

Kicsi looked, horrified, at the red marks. Slowly she moved back with everyone else, as Sarah applied the wet napkin, as Arpad opened his eyes. She looked around for Vörös. She wanted to ask him if the word he had spoken was the holy and unutterable Name of God. But Vörös had gone.

2

Kicsi and her best friend, Erzsébet, sat in the attic. Several months had passed since Vörös had left, and summer had come and gone. Dust motes flowed like molten gold through a hole in the roof—a hole that no one had known was there and on which Kicsi and Erzsébet were speculating endlessly.

It was midafternoon. In the huge old house that contained her mother and father, three other children, a visiting cousin from Budapest, and friends and workers from the press who were always stopping by, Kicsi thought she had about an hour before anyone would think of looking for her in the attic. She sat against the wall looking at the old furniture, trunks of clothes and photographs, mirrors gone blind from the dust. Erzsébet stood up and looked through the hole to the street below.

“Maybe this is how Vörös left,” Erzsébet said. “Through the roof.”

“Don't be silly,” said Kicsi. “We were all on the first floor. He would have left a hole in every ceiling he passed through.”

“Oh,” said Erzsébet dully. The hot sun was making her sleepy.

“And besides,” Kicsi said, “someone would have heard him.”

“Oh,” said Erzsébet. She turned and sat down next to Kicsi. “There sure are a lot of people down on the street.”

“There are? Who?”

“Visitors for the rabbi's daughter's wedding, mostly. They're all looking at your house.”

Kicsi scowled.

“Well,” said Erzsébet, pushing up her glasses, “they want to see the house where the magician stayed, where he fought with the rabbi and won.”

“I wish they'd go away,” Kicsi said.

“I wish he'd never come,” said Erzsébet.

Kicsi looked at her sharply.

“Well,” said Erzsébet, “I wish he'd never taken the curse off the school. I hated going back. I hate Hebrew. I wonder if anyone really speaks it or if they're all just pretending.”

“I'll bet it was a tree,” said Kicsi.

“The hole?”

“Sure. A tree must've fallen on the roof.”

“Where's the tree now?”

“Oh,” said Kicsi. “I don't know.”

“No, it couldn't have been. Say—” Erzsébet broke off as another thought occurred to her. “Do you suppose the
rabbi
made the hole in the roof?”

“The rabbi? As part of the curse, you mean?”

“Sure. The rabbi, or one—you know—one of the demons.” She lowered her voice.

“I think you're right. The rabbi's curse. I wonder why no one noticed the hole before. I'm going to have to tell my father about it before the rains start.”

“What was it like?” Erzsébet said suddenly.

“What?”

“You know—being under a curse. Were you frightened?”

“No, not really.”

“Did you see any demons?”

“No, not at all. The only thing that happened was when the printing presses started. Oh, and a candlestick holder broke once.”

“And the hole in the roof.”

“And the hole in the roof.”

“And that's all? No noises, no strange voices?”

“No.” Kicsi was openly scornful now. “Why did you think there would be?”

“Well, my brother, he said—we have an uncle staying with us for the wedding, and my brother told him—well—that there were sparks when Vörös cast out the demon. Blue sparks, and red, and golden. And that the demon let out a shriek—you could hear it as far away as the forest—and flew up the chimney. And that Vörös spun around three times and flew away, over toward Palestine.”

Kicsi laughed. “No, it didn't happen like that.”

Erzsébet began to laugh with her. “Wait, you haven't heard the funniest part yet. The funniest part was that he said—my brother said—that he knows what he's talking about, because his sister's best friend lives in the house where Vörös stayed.”

They both laughed, Erzsébet louder than Kicsi. Erzsébet looked up at the roof. The light coming through the hole had almost disappeared.

“Oh, Kicsi, I'd better go. I'm going to be late for dinner.” They stood up and brushed the dust off their clothes. Kicsi lifted the trapdoor, and first she, then Erzsébet, climbed down the ladder.

Kicsi was almost glad to see Erzsébet go. She could not bear to talk of Vörös yet. For her the most important thing that had happened was that he had gone and might not be coming back. The rabbi had abandoned his feud with the school, and the friends of the family were coming back, sheepishly, to renew old ties, but Kicsi cared little for that. She felt that her heart had gone out of her, that never again would she feel so wholly and completely alive. She was thirteen years old.

They passed the library, and Kicsi remembered how Vörös had once sat there and promised to show her card tricks. Her cousin and Imre were talking behind the closed door. The cousin had come to the village for the wedding of the rabbi's daughter and was staying in the room Vörös had once used. He had been the rabbi's student before he and his family had moved to Budapest. Kicsi hated him thoroughly for daring to take Vörös's place and at the same time knew that he had done nothing to deserve her hatred.

“Wait,” Kicsi said.

“Wait for what?” said Erzsébet.

“I thought I heard them say my name. Wait just a minute.”

“Oh, Kicsi, I really have to go home now.”

“All right, go. I have to hear what they're saying.”

“Good-bye, Kicsi,” said Erzsébet.

“Good-bye,” Kicsi said absently.

“The rabbi certainly knows how to stir up this old sleepy town,” the cousin was saying. “I've never seen so many people here at one time.”

“We have people here from as far away as Russia,” said Imre. “The rabbi's a very famous man. Though we've had our differences in the past—”

“He's a strange man,” the cousin said. “I remember when I was studying with him. One of the students disagreed with him on some point of Talmudic law—I can't even remember what it was now—and the rabbi threw him out of the classroom. Just like that. And he never let him back, either.”

“He likes to think he is responsible for everyone in the village—for what they think and how they speak and what they do,” Imre said. “The village is terribly isolated. Old László wanted to start a newspaper once and asked me if I'd print it, but the rabbi was against it and László gave up the idea.”

“Then how do you get news here?” said the cousin.

“Well, the radio. On good days, when the signal makes it over the hills. The rabbi really doesn't allow anything else. He's had too much power, with no one to challenge him, for too long.”

“Isn't that what your guest tried to do—to challenge him? I wonder how many people are coming to the wedding just because they heard that story.”

The cousin had wanted to hear the tale of the rabbi and Vörös ever since he had come to town, but Imre had forbidden everyone to talk about it. Because the cousin was staying with Kicsi's family he had been asked many times by those in the village for his opinion of the two magicians and had had to pretend to knowledge with quiet nods and winks and a general air that he would tell more if he could.

“My own daughters will be marrying soon,” said Imre, changing the subject.

The cousin sighed. “How will you ever find husbands for all three of them?”

“I don't think that will be much of a problem,” said Imre. “Magda already has a suitor—a very respectable young man—and as for the rest of them, well, I suppose I can arrange something when the time comes.”

Kicsi felt her heart pounding. I don't want to be arranged for! she thought wildly. Will Vörös never come and take me away?

“It'll be hard arranging for a husband for Kicsi,” said the cousin, as though the force of her thoughts had driven them through the thick wooden door. “She seems to hate everything and everyone.”

“Kicsi?” said Imre. “Why do you say that?”

“She certainly has something on her mind,” said the cousin. “I can't even get her to say hello to me.”

“You have to treat her very carefully,” said Imre. “This is a difficult time for her now.” He paused. “You were talking before about the strange traveler who stayed with us for a time.”

“Yes,” said the cousin. Kicsi could almost hear him move forward in his chair, so eager did he sound to hear the story. She moved closer to the door.

“I think Kicsi fell in love with him,” said Imre. “She's always had that love of distant places, exotic people. I think she expects him back, and she will be very disappointed. The man has gone away for good.”

“But was he a real magician?” said the cousin.

“No, I don't think so,” said Imre. “Just a man who had traveled widely. Please don't mention this to Kicsi. In time, I hope she'll get over it.”

Kicsi was furious. How dare he tell that unfeeling oaf of a cousin that Vörös was not a magician? And that he would not be coming back?

She ran to the room she shared with Ilona, the next oldest sister. The big gray cat had gotten on the bed again, and she dropped him to the floor without noticing where he landed. Slowly she reached her hand into her pocket, feeling like her oldest sister furtively taking out a pack of cigarettes when she thought that no one was looking. She took out a pack of cards. Her father printed them, and she had taken a set without asking (though he would have given them to her if she had asked) the last time she was in the plant.

She shuffled through the cards, wondering how one did card tricks. Pick a card. Now I will tell you the card you picked. Did Vörös read minds? Did he know she was waiting here for him? She felt lost, cold and alone in the big stone house. Surrounded by her family, she felt separated from everyone. How much longer could she go on like this, listening at doorways, slinking through the old drafty house, turning into a ghost, into wind?

She fingered through the cards without seeing them. Kings, queens, diamonds, hearts fell to the floor to land beside the cat. When would he return to her?

That night she had a dream. There were groups of people, caravans, coming over the distant hills to the wedding. There was a man among them, a tall man with hair the color of a wheat field. She knew that he had been badly hurt once in a soccer game and had had three teeth knocked out. A long scar ran across his upper lip, and to hide it (for he was very vain) he had grown a mustache of the same wheat color as his hair. He had worn the mustache for years. Now they had promoted him, and they had told him that he must shave it off. He had not wanted to, but he had done it, because he had always done as he was told. The scar, he was surprised to see, had faded over the years to a thin, barely noticeable line. He fingered his bare upper lip as he walked along the roads, proud and happy to be a part of a great and worthwhile plan. He was coming over the distant hills, coming with an army at his back, coming not for the wedding, but to destroy—to destroy—

Kicsi woke up suddenly. The sheets were drenched in sweat. She moved cautiously, glancing at her sister in the next bed, an indefinite shape in the moonlight. Good, Kicsi thought. She hadn't screamed in her sleep. She twisted in the bed, trying to get comfortable, trying to remember the shape of the dream. The man had smiled and his mouth had been black, toothless. Is he coming to destroy us? she wondered. Not all people from distant places mean us well, she thought, and turned over a final time and went to sleep.

She did not remember the dream in the morning, but something—a sense of restlessness, of people moving across the borders—stayed with her through the day. She avoided Erzsébet after school and walked along the gravel-paved streets of the town, winding through a maze that seemed to be drawing her deeper and deeper, in toward its heart. She passed the synagogue, passed Erzsébet's house, where her father the doctor practiced, passed the graveyard, and came to the outskirts of the town, where the old forest stood. She had been warned about the forest with tales of ghosts and demons, but she stayed a while and watched the green and orange leaves shifting in the sunlight and listened to the tall trees rustling in the wind, endlessly passing along the old secrets. Then she retraced her steps and came at last to the rabbi's house.