The Red Magician (20 page)

Kicsi was able to see the rabbi now, leaning on his cane, standing in the middle of an empty circle. The dead had turned on him, and they were closing in.

Vörös reached out suddenly with his hand. His fingers closed over something, and when they opened again Kicsi could see the red ball caught within his palm. The other balls in the circle closed in to fill the gap.

He strode into the mists. Light from the ball fell upon the dead, turning them the color of blood, giving them the look of life, of health. One of the dead laughed, a high, awful sound, and the illusion of life was broken.

“Here,” Vörös said to the rabbi, giving him the red ball. “Take this. Quickly.” The rabbi took it gratefully, saying nothing. The light dimmed for a moment, then shone out again.

Vörös turned to the dead. “You,” he said. “Stand back. You will stand back.”

The terrible laughter came again. Vörös turned quickly toward the sound. A young woman with an upraised sword came toward him. She had a gaping wound in her side. “Stand back,” said Vörös. “Do you think your ghostly sword can touch me? Stand back. You shall not harm him or me.”

The woman came forward. Her sword cut through the air in front of her, and the dead moved from her path.

“I know you,” said Vörös with amazement. “I fought with you against the same oppressor, many, many years ago. I understand your pain. I feel your death blow. I can help you sleep again. Listen to me, Shoshana.”

Vörös began to sing, a slow, soothing melody. The woman dropped the point of her sword. She sank toward the ground.

From another part of the mist the archer moved suddenly, stringing his bow. “Vörös!” the rabbi called. “Look out!”

Vörös said three sharp words and the string of the bow snapped, wrapping around the archer's fingers. He cried out in pain and fell back.

More of the dead were moving now, coming toward Vörös in groups of three and four. “I cannot hold them all,” said Vörös. “I need your help.”

“My help?” said the rabbi. “I have no help to give. My powers are gone. You told me that.”

“Don't be a fool,” said Vörös. “You should not believe what a man says when he is fighting for his life.”

The rabbi laughed. “I can give you their names, at least,” he said. “Perhaps we can hold them together.”

“We can,” said Vörös. “We will have to.”

The dead surrounded them. Kicsi could see a shape wearing a golden crown and a long cloak full of holes. The woman with no head was there, as was the skeleton with the jewels on his fingers. They fell upon Vörös and the rabbi like waves upon tall rocks and retreated, fell and retreated, as one by one Vörös or the rabbi sent them back to their uneasy sleep. Sometimes Kicsi could see only a white swirling mist, with red light staining the center like blood. Sometimes she could see the two magicians standing clear of the mist, resting for a moment until the dead closed over them again.

The woman whose hair and clothes streamed with water came toward them. Her face and hands were blue, and her eyes glistened like marble. “I was a small sorceress in my day,” she said. “I dealt mostly in death by drowning. I can still remember a few tricks. First I will put out that fire you have there.”

Water drenched the rabbi's hand. The light of the red ball flickered and died.

“We have no water here,” the woman said, “which is unfortunate. But I can make you believe that you are drowning, that water is filling your lungs, that you cannot breathe …” She spoke on and on. Her voice was a trickle of water, a brook, a river, an ocean.

The two men stood gaping at her. Their eyes opened and closed, and their hands clutched at the air around them. Vörös felt his way toward the rabbi, slowly, as though moving against a strong tide.

“Soon you will cease to struggle,” the woman said, “and the tide will take you. You will have no worries then. It is very pleasant to surrender yourself to the water. I know. I did it myself.”

The rabbi stood without moving. Vörös reached out and took the red ball from his hand, and the light blazed forth once again. Vörös opened his eyes and looked at the woman.

“Return to the lake in which you were drowned, sorceress,” he said. “We will not listen to you here.”

The woman seemed to grow taller. Her hair shone like a waterfall. Then she swayed slowly, rippling like a river, and was gone.

The mist thinned to a network of roots, to small webs, to nothing. Vörös and the rabbi were left standing alone on the gravel roads of the village, saying nothing, facing each other. It was almost morning.

“I—I do not know what to say, traveler,” the rabbi said. “You saved my life.”

Vörös said nothing.

“I was wrong, then,” said the rabbi. The wild light was gone from his eyes. “You did not want to kill me.”

“No.”

“And you did not kill my daughter.”

“No,” said Vörös. “I did not.”

“I misunderstood you,” the rabbi said. “For a magician, that is a very dangerous thing to do.”

“It is over now,” said Vörös. He held the red ball awkwardly. “We can forget it. It does not matter.”

“No,” said the rabbi. “It matters. I know now that you did not kill my daughter. And I know who did kill her. I—I have always known. It is a knowledge from which I have been trying to hide since she died, but I can run from it no longer. I am trapped here at the end of my road. You did not kill her, traveler. I did.”

“You!” said Vörös, but the rabbi raised a hand.

“Let me speak,” he said. “Did you think that you were the only one who could see the future? I too saw the flames and the furnaces, and I knew that I was given this sight to warn my people, to prepare them for the dangers to come. But I did not believe.” The rabbi sighed, leaning forward against his cane. He looked like a weary old man now, nothing more. “You, traveler, you have been around the world and have seen what people can do to each other. I have only been in one small village. I did not believe that such cruelty could exist. I ignored the warning.”

He paused, took a deep breath. “Then you came, stirring up the people, sounding the warnings. I hated you then. I believed that if we could only forget about the horrors they would not come to pass. In many ways, as you know, I am a stubborn old man. I sent you from the village.

“But the horrors came anyway. I was in a neighboring town, visiting a colleague of mine. I had gone for a walk, and when I returned I found that they had arrested my wife and were soon to arrest me. I did not know what to do, what to think. I changed into a wolf.

“I spent a year in beast's form, existing like a beast. I lived from one day to the next, from one meal to the next, not worrying about the world, the future. I knew that my wife and daughter were dead, but I could have saved others, as—as you did, traveler. But I did not. I could not face the world or my cowardice.

“And then I found you. I blamed you for everything then, because I could not blame myself. I was crazy—crazy with unhappiness—” He bent his head, his shoulders shaking with his grief. “You did not kill her, traveler,” the rabbi said. “I did. I could have done something.…”

“No,” said Kicsi. She stood up from where she had hidden and came forward.

Vörös turned to her. “Kicsi!” he said. “Stay back. Please.” Ha, she thought, almost pleased. I have never surprised him with anything before.

“No,” she said. “I—I have something to say. You are wrong, rabbi. You did not kill your daughter. And it does not matter now if you could have done something to save her or not. To talk about what might have happened is useless. You can think about what might have happened, turn it over and over in your mind until you can't think of anything else. You can plan your revenge or—or suicide. But none of that can change the past. The dead—your daughter and my parents—they would want us to go on. To live.” She was crying now. She wiped away the tears angrily. “Do you understand?”

“No,” the rabbi said. “I cannot understand. I am an old man, and a stubborn one. It does not seem right to me, as it does to you, that so many people should die and that we should say only, ‘Ah, well, but that is the past. There is nothing we can do about it now.' It is a terrible thing, a thing beyond my understanding. All my life I have lived with things I can understand—my family, my village, my traditions. And now, at the end of my life, I am faced with something I cannot accept or understand. I don't—I don't know what to do. There is nothing that I can do.”

“No, I don't mean that,” Kicsi said, nervously. She had never spoken back to the rabbi before, and she was not sure of what she would say to him. “I don't mean that we should forget or—or do nothing. I mean that—well—You knew my parents, rabbi.”

The rabbi nodded.

“And Aladár, Erzsi's cousin?”

“Yes, slightly.”

“They are dead now. And I—I wanted to die too, because—I don't know if I can explain this to you—because I knew that I wasn't as good as they were. It didn't seem fair that they should die and I should live.”

“But that—that's nonsense,” the rabbi said. “Of course you should live.”

“I know. I know that now,” said Kicsi. “But don't you see? You're doing exactly what I did. You blame yourself for something that was not your doing.”

The rabbi looked at Vörös. “She is very wise,” he said. “Have you been teaching her?”

Vörös smiled. “No,” he said. “She has come to her wisdom by herself. I am very proud of her.”

“It will be hard,” the rabbi said, not looking at Vörös or Kicsi, “to give up my vengeance. It has occupied my mind for so long. I will have to start thinking about the world again, and about my dead. I see now that I must give it up, this foolish idea I once had. But what will I do now? Where will I go?”

“Why don't you stay here?” Vörös said. “People will be coming back someday. There will be a community here again, though not as big as it was before. They will need a rabbi, someone to lead them, to help them get settled again.”

“No,” said the rabbi. “I can never lead anyone again. I do not understand the world, and I can't pretend to the villagers that I do. They will be asking me questions for which I do not have the answers.

“I think,” the rabbi said slowly, “that I would like to find the answers. That I would like to travel the world, and to learn. To become a student again, as I was when I was younger. Why did my daughter have to die? I understand now that you are not to blame, traveler, and it may be true, as this young woman has said, that I am not to blame. But I would like to think that there was a—a reason for her death, and for the deaths of so many other people. It may be that there is no answer. It may be—it is likely—that I shall die before I find it. But I cannot accept that her death, so young, had no meaning. That is something I cannot understand.”

Vörös nodded. There was pity in his eyes. “I wish you luck, rabbi,” he said.

“Thank you,” said the rabbi. “
Sholom aleichem
. And good-bye, Kicsi. I will always remember your words.” He walked away, his feet making no sound on the gravel-paved road, and merged with the shadows. They were never to see him again.

Kicsi felt suddenly tired. She yawned and leaned against the gatepost. Just before she closed her eyes she looked up and saw the juggling balls circling over her head, crowning her with precious jewels. Then she fell asleep, and did not wake even when Vörös lifted her in his arms and carried her away.

10

Invisible, she walked through the rooms and corridors of the house. Outside it was bright afternoon, and things were clearer than they had been last night. She saw that much of what she had seen the night before was real and not part of the rabbi's illusion. Furniture had been moved around or exchanged to make room for all the soldiers staying in the house. She reached out to touch a vase and her fingers went through it. Vörös had told her that that would happen.

That morning she had talked to Vörös, telling him that she wanted to see her house for the last time. “I can make you invisible,” he had said.

“No, I meant—Maybe I could get through the back door again.”

“I wouldn't try it. Not during the day.”

“You could … make me invisible?”

“Of course,” Vörös had said, smiling. “Don't make any noise, though. They'll still be able to hear you. And you won't be able to touch anything. If you wanted to, you could walk right through the walls.”

Now she looked at the solid walls around her and decided she did not want to try it. If she walked through them she would feel even more like a ghost come back to haunt the scenes of its former life. She went down the back hall and into the kitchen.

“Don't tell me you didn't see it,” one of the soldiers was saying. “All kinds of bright lights and strange shapes, right outside the front window. I thought for a moment we were under attack again, but there wasn't any sound. Strangest thing I ever saw.”

The other soldiers laughed. “I swear to you, I didn't see a thing,” one said. “I must have slept right through it.”

“And Pavel had some kind of fit last night,” the first soldier said. “I don't really know about this place. I've been talking to one of the villagers, and he says there used to be a rabbi here who could—well, they called him some sort of magician. And the woods are supposed to be haunted. All right, laugh! Still, I'll be glad when we're posted somewhere else.”

Kicsi smiled at that. The fat gray cat came into the kitchen, and one of the soldiers fed it scraps from the sink. It jumped into his lap and began to purr loudly. So the cat had survived too, Kicsi thought. She felt a kind of sadness that it had found another life apart from her family.

She went on into the dining room. The huge dining table was set out as though for company. She remembered the last night that they were all together, the Passover night more than a year ago, and she began to cry, softly, so the soldiers would not hear. It was the first time she had cried properly for her dead.