Night Magic (31 page)

Emily gasped, then held her breath, suddenly aware of what Michael planned to do.

The crowd was growing restive, as was Jason, who glanced at his grinning, expectant friends. “A big, mean dog,” he said.

“Show us,” said Michael, folding his arms and appearing to grow taller, bulkier.

Jason threw his head back, opened his mouth, and howled, very lustily, very convincingly:
“Ow-ooooo!”
Some nearby dogs paused in mid-romp and pricked up their ears. The howl lasted a long time; Jason’s face was brick red when he stopped. He shook his head savagely and took a step backward. “Hey!” he yelled at Michael. “What was that?”

“You want to be a dog, right?”

Jason shook his head again. “Yes! I mean no!” He stepped closer to Michael, who still stood with his arms folded, unmoving.

“Which is it?” Michael asked imperiously, staring into the young man’s eyes.

“I’ll be a dog, you’ll be a bone,” Jason growled.

“You first,” Michael said with a sneer.
“Be a dog.”

At once Jason flung himself to the ground and began to scurry about on his hands and knees, barking and snarling, his tongue hanging out, his eyes fearsome and wild. He nipped at the heels of a few people in the audience, narrowly dodged a kick, backed off with a strangled growl, and loped to the fountain, where he lifted one leg clear of the ground and stood in a three-point stance, looking off into the distance, panting hard. His friends followed him, but he barked fiercely at anyone who approached.

Michael’s face was radiant with elation. “Any other volunteers?” he asked the audience. He glanced invitingly at the people nearest him.

A large-breasted, broad-hipped girl with braided hair and big brown eyes said timidly, “I’ve always thought of myself as feline.”

Michael watched the movement of her gum-chewing jaws for a second. “Are you sure you don't mean ‘bovine’?” he asked, looking intently into her eyes. “Don’t you really want to
be a cow?”

“Moooo,” she replied, her eyes glazed over, and she plodded away, chewing contentedly, to a shady spot where she could scratch her behind against a tree.

People in the by-now large crowd applauded; some laughed nervously, not sure if what they were witnessing was a put-on, something funny or something monstrous.

“Anyone else?” Michael said urgently. “Who’s next? Step right up.”

“Stop, Michael! Please.” Emily approached him. “This is ugly. This is terrible! Please stop.”

“Oh, Emily, come on. These people are having fun,” he said. “What’s the harm?”

A few more people approached him, one by one. A girl wearing a ponytail went clip-clopping off, the bit between her teeth and the reins hanging free. A big gorilla turned away, beating his chest and making threatening displays. A shy-looking turtle crept under a bench, pulled his shirt over his head, and froze.

Then two little boys came up to Michael, brothers, each of them pulling one of their father’s hands. “Come on, Dad,” the older boy pleaded. “Can we? Can we?” And the father, reluctant, hesitating, uneasy, but not wishing to deny his children the possibility of validating themselves through a life-enriching experience, gave in. “I suppose so,” he said with a groan.

“Monkeys!” the brothers shouted together, jumping up and down. “We wanna be monkeys!”

“If you want to be monkeys,” Michael said, bending down over the two of them, “then you should just
be monkeys.”

Off they shot, piping gibberish to one another, heading for a tree with low branches.

Next, three young people, members of three distinct races, stood in a row before him: obviously NYU students, despite the fact that one of them was carrying a book. They couldn’t quite make up their minds—they hated to give preferential treatment to any one species over another—so he left them huddled together, bleating sheepishly, and stepped back to admire his work.

He had succeeded. He had penetrated the will of another—of several others—comprehended it, conspired with it to control its owner. Rejoicing in his power as never before, transported by success, Michael raised his arms to the skies like an athlete celebrating a victory. But as he savored his triumph, shaking his clenched fists above his head, happily surveying the misbehaving animals, he noticed something he hadn’t foreseen, something strange and wonderful, as if it were a confirmation of the irrestible force of his will: the phenomenon was repeating itself. Transformations were starting to occur unbidden, spreading from one person to another like a contagion.

Over by the fountain, Jason and his friends tumbled together in a desperate, roiling pack, biting and snapping at one another, growling like demons. An amphibious couple, half in and half out of the water, performed a frenzied alligator dance across the rim of the pool. A large black man, sleek and powerful, bellowed a pantherish roar at some young white girls, who fled before him like frightened gazelles. Panhandlers sat on their haunches and begged, with dangling forepaws and lolling tongues. A kangaroo family leaped about wildly; the terrified baby bounced and jolted in the pouch slung across its father’s chest.

Michael stood at the center of all this whirling action, his exultation gradually changing to alarm. The park was literally turning into a zoo—but where was the keeper? He saw what was apparently a bull, thick-necked, heavy-shouldered, red-eyed, snorting furiously and pawing the ground. Michael moved toward him, speaking all the while: “Stop! That’s enough!
Be a man!
Stop! It’s over!” But the bull lowered his head and charged, forcing Michael to jump aside in order to avoid being gored. His eye caught Emily’s; she was kneeling on the ground, sitting on her heels with her hands on her thighs, rapt in utter amazement. From the welter of emotions inside her, one was beginning to emerge and dominate: fear. Michael gestured helplessly and had time to shout “I can’t” before the thunder of hooves announced the bull’s return charge and he once again had to dive out of harm’s way.

A pretty woman lay on her side on the ground, suckling a baby at her breast; both of them were purring loudly. Michael tried to speak to the mother, but she hissed at him and scratched his outstretched hand. He straightened up and turned away, only to confront penguins on the march, a group of eight all dressed in black and white and waddling in a column toward the fountain. Michael stood in front of one teenaged girl, grabbed her shoulders and yelled for her to stop, but her terror-stricken eyes looked through him and he released her to waddle on. He clapped his hands to his temples, felt his sweat-drenched hair, and covered his eyes.

When he removed his hands, three representatives of the New York Police Department were bearing down on him. “What the hell’s goin’ on?” one of them demanded roughly.

Michael managed a weak smile. “It’s a jungle out here,” he said.

“You tellin’ me,” the cop replied, bared his teeth, and charged yipping at a couple of black cats, one male and one female, who were mating frantically beside a bench, yowling and screeching in concert. The other two officers began to chase one another around the fountain, barking furiously.

The whole park was an uproar, uncontrolled bedlam, paradise inverted; these were the beasts of the apocalypse, chaos was come again. Violence and pain were everywhere, people were bleeding from bites and scratches. Every now and then an animal emerged from the tumult and presented itself to Michael, as though seeking help or instructions, sometimes pleading inarticulately, half-human, half-feral faces twisted by agony and terror. But soon they would gallop, trot, bound, crawl, slink, slouch, creep, leap, or bolt away, back on their driven, unfathomable rounds. Most of the animals were quite ready to be humans again, but something prevented them, something unimaginable. This wasn’t a trick. This wasn’t a game. Something was wrong—enough of their faculties were intact to tell them that. Panic was spreading among them.

Panic gripped Michael’s heart too, as the full realization of his powerlessness to undo what he had done came over him. He gasped as a frog hopped past him, eyes bulging, thighs pumping;
“Rrib-it, Rrib-it,”
said the frog, and plunged into the fountain.

Michael sprinted after him. The pool was a foaming, seething turmoil of splashing water and thrashing animals. Many were vomiting, several were struggling for air as though drowning. Horrified, gagging, Michael started pulling animals bodily out of the pool.

Emily was still on her knees, too dismayed and frightened to move; she was conscious only of mortal danger and of her will to survive it. She put her hands on the ground, trembling to the marrow of her bones, the hairs on the nape of her neck standing up like fur. She had become pure instinct, a small machine that processed sensory information and acted upon it without reflection. Her nostrils dilated as she sniffed the air, and then the fear finally propelled her to her feet and she was running fast, fast as a vixen; she felt the wind sting her eyes as she darted to the arch, through the arch, across the street—her instinct identified the honking, squealing cars as a lesser danger than what was going on in the park—until she came to a sudden, joint-rending stop and found herself, her conscious, human self, looking up into Wurlitzer’s disdainful single eye.

“Tally-ho, my dear,” he said merrily as he shuffled past her. She leaned breathless against a building, watched him cross the street and pass under the arch.

Michael was in the fountain, standing in the now filthy water and hauling two drowning ducks by their collars to the side of the pool. With mighty heaves he draped first one and then the other over the rim. He was crying now, shattered, desperate; one of the ducks, quacking insanely, slid back into the water, and Michael began to slap and buffet him. Pausing for breath, he looked toward the arch and saw the lean somber figure of his master standing under it, arms akimbo, calmly pondering the shambles before him. Then, still looking around thoughtfully, he threaded his way between two rampant lions, past a suffocating python, a herd, and a couple of packs, toward the fountain. Halfway along he finally looked directly at Michael, who stood dripping and cringing in the pool, each hand propping up a draped, heaving, weakly quacking duck.

The master was near enough to speak. Fierce laughter glinted in his eye as he said, “Saint Francis preaching to the birds, I presume?” Then he lifted his chin, raised his arms, and shifting slowly from his hips turned from left to right as if taking his unheeding audience into his strong embrace.

The uproar subsided, ceased. All through the park, the cries of raging animals gave way to human groans, human coughing, human lamentation.

The master somewhat gingerly helped Michael out of the pool, then pulled out a handkerchief and, with a grimace of distaste, wiped his hands.
“A
little learning is a dangerous thing,” he quoted. He stopped, glowered, seemed to expect a reply.

None came. Michael hung his head and plucked debris from his drenched clothing.

“A truly abominable display,” the master went on, “the inevitable result when imperfect knowledge joins forces with presumption.”

Unable to meet the master’s eye, Michael remained silent, save for his rattling chest and compulsive sniffling. The tears came again, and when his eyes were blinded by them he felt capable of looking up. “I’m sorry,” he quavered.

“As well you might be,” the master said, but his voice was softer, and Michael’s blurred vision registered what might have been an avuncular smile. “On the other hand,” he concluded, gesturing vaguely toward their surroundings, “I must observe that you’re making good progress. Your technical abilities are quite, how shall I say it”—he contemplated the erstwhile kangaroo family, who lay together in a tight clutch on the pavement nearby—“impressive.”

The master paused, and both of them considered for a time the pitiful spectacle of the park. The dozens of people still in the fountain clung wearily to its rim, wheezing and choking, too dazed, too exhausted to recapitulate evolutionary history by dragging themselves out of the primeval slime and onto dry land. Elsewhere, the ground was littered like a battlefield with bodies—some writhing, some twitching, some flat on their backs, gazing confusedly at the bright sky, the emerging leaves of the trees. Only Michael and the master, of all the bipedal primate mammals in Washington Square Park, stood erect.

Sirens wailed, jarring discordantly with the keening of the former animals. The master bestirred himself, made the negligent hand movement Michael had come to recognize as his manner of bidding farewell, and took a few steps toward the arch. He turned once and said in his most sepulchral, most sardonic tones, “A little more discipline, and who knows what you may be capable of.” Then he made his departure, moving with that odd, shuffling gait, leaving Michael alone among the wreckage he had made, shaken, devastated, covered with shame.

And exhilarated.

“SO IF I STEP inside, will I disappear?” Emily asked, eyeing the open Chinese cabinet.

“Not unless you want to,” Lena answered with a smile.

They were backstage, readying props and equipment for the imminent and much-heralded reopening of the Little Cairo Museum of Wonders. This event, eagerly awaited by a public whose numbers had steadily increased during the six months of Michael’s association with Wurlitzer, promised to do justice, and more than justice, to the spectacular metamorphosis that the theater itself was undergoing. Nearly a month of renovations had transformed the old place, and at least on its newly glistening surfaces (whatever might have been the case in its more hidden recesses), nothing dingy or shabby remained. Fresh smells pervaded the auditorium and offstage areas—paint, varnish, polish, virgin upholstery, disinfectant soap, filtered circulating air.

The most satisfying result of Emily’s partially successful attempt to attach herself to the tiny troupe at the Little Cairo had been her growing intimacy with Lena. Despite large disparities in their ages and outlooks, the two women were sympathetic, compatible, mutually appreciative, each having tacitly recognized the other as a fellow passenger on the same strange boat. Now Lena was padding about in her curled Turkish slippers, folding costumes, checking mechanisms, oiling hinges and grooves, adjusting screens. Emily, fascinated as always by the cabinet, was not being much help.