Magic, page 5
And so it turned out. She had not been married more than six or eight months, when she came to me, with a white, pinched look about her. “Greetings, Euphrosyne,” I said, heartily, “and how is dear Alexius?”
She looked about as though to be sure of not being overheard, and said, “Away on one of his business trips, thank goodness.” Her lips quivered and, finally, with a sad wail, she threw herself at me.
“What is it, my dear?” I said, resuming the stroking ploy that I always found gave so much pleasure—and perhaps to her as well.
“It’s Alexius. For a while, cash was enough. We spent freely and we enjoyed ourselves. It seemed we didn’t have a care in the world, and then, somehow, he began to change. He began to hint that marriage entailed—love. I tried to laugh it off and said, gaily, ‘Cashiers live on cash alone.’ As the weeks passed, however, I found he was growing more insistent, and it dawned on me that I had married a secret lovaholic.
“It was like a disease, Uncle George. Until last week, we had been sleeping in twin beds, one on one side of the room, one on the other, with a heavy piece of furniture in between—like any normal pair of newlyweds would. And then I suddenly found a—a—a double bed in the room. He said that twin beds tended to estrange a couple. And now, Uncle George, I can’t even call my bed my own, and when he gets into my bed, his hand touches mine sometimes. In fact, it keeps crawling toward me. I can’t imagine what sick cravings may be overcoming him. Would you know, Uncle George?”
“Do you think, Euphrosyne dear, that you might grow to like the touch of his hand?”
“Never. He seems to be so warm all the time, and I’m always delightfully cool. I don’t want all that male heat. I told him so and he said that I was a cold—Well, I can’t tell you the other word but it begins with a ‘bi’ and it ends with a ‘tch.’”
“I think,” I said, “I can puzzle it out.”
“Do you think, Uncle George, that he is no longer in cash with me? After all, you can’t call your cashmate, with whom you’ve been spending together for half a year, a cold you-know-what and still be in cash.”
“There, there, Euphrosyne. How long will Alexius be away?”
“It’s a long trip. He’s got to tour the southwest. He may not be back for a month.”
“Leave it to me, then, dear, and I will think of something to do.”
“I know you will,” she said, her charming little face looking up at me trustingly, “You’re family.”
It seemed to me it was a case for Azazel and I called him up. He appeared on the usual shelf I had fixed up for him at eye level. He was, as usual, unprepared for the call-up, and, as usual, he caught my eye without warning and let out his usual piercing squeak. He claims he always reacts in that fashion when he comes unexpectedly face-to-face with a horrible monster, though why he should squeak when he sees me, he has never explained.
He seemed a little redder than usual, as though he had been engaged in some exertion, and he did have an object in his tiny hand that looked like a BB shot. Even as he squeaked at the sight of me, he was still lifting and lowering it rhythmically.
He said, “Do you realize that you have interrupted me in my setting-up exercises?”
“Sorry!”
“And what good does that do? Now I’m going to have to miss my exercises for today. Just skip them. How I am to keep in shape I simply don’t know.”
“Why do you have to miss them, O Grand and Exalted Ruler of the Universe? Can’t you go back to the instant at which you left and continue with your exercises?”
“No, that’s too complicated, and I don’t need your foolish advice. I’ll just skip them. But let me ask you a question—”
“Yes, Your Puissance?”
“So far, you have interrupted me in games of chance—when I was about to win. You have also interrupted me when I was in the process of receiving various honors, when I was taking showers, when I was engaged in complicated rituals with certain fair members of my species. How is it that not until now have you interrupted me at my daily exercises? If you must interrupt me, that is the time to do so. Make sure you do it again.”
And he put down the BB shot and kicked it to one side. I gathered he was not fond of his daily exercises.
“What is it you want this time?” he asked sourly.
I told him the tale of Euphrosyne and Alexius Mellon, and he made little tch-ing noises with his tongue. “The old, old story,” he said. “Even on our world, the misguided follies of youth create untold unhappiness. —But it seems to me that this Euph—Euph—or whatever her name is, need only join with her mate in his vile and perverted desires.”
“But that’s what’s wrong, O One of Infinite Might, she is a pure and unsullied damsel.”
“Come, come, you have just committed an oxymoron. At least, you have if the damsels on your world are anything like the damsels on my world. I have encountered, in my time, an incredible collection of cold zybbuls—and by zybbuls, I am referring to female domestic animals—”
“I know what you mean, Overpowering One, but what do we do about Euphrosyne?”
“Actually, it strikes me as simple. Since she objects to male warmth—Can you bring me a photograph of her or an article of clothing—something I can focus my energies on?”
I had, as good fortune would have it, one of her more revealing photographs, at which Azazel made a dismal face. It didn’t take him long, however, to do whatever he had to do, and then he departed. I noticed that he left his BB shot behind him. As a matter of fact, I have the BB shot in my pocket and I will show it to you as proof of Azazel’s existence. —Well, I don’t know what you would consider “real” evidence, to use your phrase, but if you don’t want to look at it, I will continue.
Two weeks later, I met Euphrosyne again. She looked more miserable than ever and I feared that, whatever it was that Azazel had done, he had only made things worse. And Azazel never consents to modify anything he has done.
“Has Alexius come home yet?” I asked.
“He’ll be home on Sunday,” she said listlessly. “Uncle George, has it seemed to you to be cold lately?”
“Not unseasonably so, my dear.”
“Are you sure? I feel it so, for some reason. I just sit around all day shivering. Underneath this heavy overcoat, I’ve got my warmest suit and I’ve got nice warm underwear under that and I’ve even got woolen socks over my panty hose, and heavy shoes over that, and I’m still cold.”
“Perhaps you’re undernourished. A nice big bowl of navy bean soup would warm you up miraculously. And then, if I were you, I would get into bed. Turn on the heater in the room, and pile on the blankets and you will be as warm as a beach on a South Pacific isle.”
“I don’t know,” she said, wrinkling her adorable nose and shaking her head. “It’s when I’m in bed that I feel coldest. My hands and feet especially seem lumps of ice. When Alexius gets back, he won’t want to get into bed with me, I’m so cold. That will be one good thing,” she added darkly. “He’s going to find out I’m really a cold what-he-said.”
Two more weeks passed and there was a knock on my door; a happy knock if ever I heard one; the rat-tat-tat of a blissful knuckle. I was engaged in some complicated mathematical maneuvering in connection with some equine statistics, as I recall, and I was not very pleased at the interruption, but when I opened the door, in whirled Euphrosyne, virtually dancing.
I gaped. I said, “What it is, Euphrosyne?” And, trying to account for her ecstasy, I added, “Has Alexius left all his cash with you and run away?”
“No, no, Uncle George, of course not. Alexius has been home for a week, that dear good man.”
“Dear, good man? Do you mean he has gotten over his lovaholic tendencies and has returned to the blissful enjoyment of cash?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Uncle George,” she said, her little chin held high. “All I know is that the day he came home, I got onto my side of the bed and I was colder than ever. I was blue and shivering. And then he got into bed on his side and it seemed to me that I could feel his warmth at a distance. I don’t know how he managed it, but his body seemed to exude a delightful heat that just washed over me. Oh, it was bliss.
“Naturally, I just moved toward the warmth. He was like a magnet and I was an iron filing. I felt myself slide toward him and, in fact, I slammed into him and threw my poor cold arms about him. He let out a fearsome shriek at the touch of my cold hands and feet, but I wasn’t going to let him go. I held on more tightly than ever.
“He turned around to face me and said, ‘You poor thing. You’re so cold.’ And he put his sweet, warm hands on my icy back and passed them up and down. I could feel the warmth of his hands through my nightgown, up and down, up and down. Uncle George, I just slept in his arms, happily. I never had a better night, and in the morning I hated to have him get out of bed. I’m afraid he had to fight me off. ‘Don’t go,’ I said, ‘I’ll get cold.’ But he had to go.
“And it’s been like that every night. Such happiness. In the warm arms of my warm Alexius, Uncle George, it seems to me that even cash has lost its importance. There’s something so cold about cash.”
I said, “Hush, child,” for I found that shocking.
“No, I mean it,” she said.
“Tell me, dear,” I said, “with all that hugging and touching and warming, did you—” I paused, unable to find words for the shameful thoughts that crossed my mind. After all, I am old enough to have plumbed the wickedness of the world.
“Yes, I did,” she said, proudly, “and I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it. Oh, moralists can talk all they want about cash being the greatest of God’s gifts to men, and they can say that ‘love is the root of all evil,’ but I say that love is the warmest thing.”
“What will you do in the summer?” I challenged her.
“So I’ll sweat a little,” she said, and I knew she was lost beyond all redemption.
I never knew a marriage as happy as that of Euphrosyne and Alexius Mellon. They were warm every night, sweating a little in the summer, and they had two children eventually.
And Euphrosyne changed completely. She was no longer in the least afraid of men, or suspicious of their motives. In fact, she welcomed their motives and took to speaking in a very depreciating manner of any of them who seemed imbued with an Old World courtesy.
She dressed in such a way as to attract the attention of the males and did, indeed, attract them in large numbers.
She confided in me, later on, that out of sheer curiosity, she had attempted to warm herself on one or another of them, but after the fifteenth or sixteenth attempt—she admitted she had lost count—she had given up. None of them had the heavenly warmth of Alexius.
She is a little petulant about the matter, and complains that love, unlike cash, should be shared; and that love, unlike cash, can only be increased by giving freely. She kept on saying that even though I reminded her that cash, shrewdly invested, would bring in large profits.
And so she remains with Alexius and if that is not a happy ending, what is?
“It sounds to me, George,” I said, “as though Euphrosyne is probably very unhappy at not getting any pleasure out of illicit relationships and finds herself monogamous as a matter of force through Azazel’s interference, rather than of choice.”
“As I said,” said George, “she is a little petulant at the failure of her experiments, but what of that? A little unhappiness is a trifling payment for the achievement of morality. And,” he added, “when the folly of love lifts from her wearied body, which it does, now and then, there’s still cash, always cash, always cash. As, for instance, when I tell you that I can use a five-dollar bill for a few days.”
The few days have also lasted all of George’s life, but I gave him the five dollars, anyway.
THE TIME TRAVELLER
“ACTUALLY, I KNOW SOMEONE MUCH like you,” said George to me as we sat in the lobby of the Café des Modistes, after having consumed a more or less gracious repast.
I was rather enjoying the opportunity to do nothing, in defiance of the deadlines that awaited me at home, and I should have let it go, but I couldn’t. I have a profound appreciation of the uniqueness of my character. “What do you mean?” I said. “There is no one like me.”
“Well,” admitted George, “he doesn’t write as much as you do. No one does. But that’s only because he has some regard for the quality of what he writes and is not of the opinion that his lightest typographical error is deathless prose. Still, he does write, or rather did write, for some years ago, he died and passed on to that special spot in purgatory reserved for writers, in which inspiration strikes continually, but there are no typewriters and no paper.”
“I yield to you in your knowledge of purgatory, George,” I said, stiffly, “since you embody it in your person, but why does this writer-acquaintance of yours remind you of me, aside from simply being a writer?”
“The reason the resemblance burst in upon my inward eye, old friend, is that, while having achieved worldly success and wealth, as you have, he also complained continually and bitterly of being underappreciated.”
I frowned. “I do not complain of being underappreciated.”
“Do you not? I have just spent a tedious lunch listening to you complain at not receiving your full and just desserts, by which, I suspect, you do not mean horse-whipping.”
“George, you know very well that I was merely complaining about some of the reviews I have received lately; reviews written by small-minded envious writers-manqué—”
“I have often wondered: What is a writer-manqué?”
“A failed writer or, in other words, a reviewer.”
“There you have it, then. Your comments reminded me of my old friend, now no longer with us, Fortescue Quackenbrane Flubb.”
“Fortescue Quackenbrane Flubb?” I said, rather stunned.
“Yes. Old Quackbrain, we used to call him.”
“And what did he call you?”
“A variety of names I no longer remember,” said George. “We were friends from youth, because we had gone to the same high school. He had been some years ahead of me, but we met at meetings of the alumni association.”
“Really, George? Somehow I had never suspected you of a high-school education.”
“Yes, indeed, we went to Aaron Burr High School, old Quackbrain and I. Many’s the time he and I sang the old alma mater song together, while tears of nostalgia ran down our cheeks. Ah, golden high-school days!”
And, with his voice rising into a non-musical quaver, he sang:
“When the Sun shines on our high school,
With its golden hue;
There, above our loved Old Cesspool,
Waves the black and blue.”
“Old Cesspool?” I said.
“A term of affection. Yale is known as ‘Old Eli,’ and the University of Mississippi is ‘Ol’ Miss’ and Aaron Burr High School—”
“Is Old Cesspool.”
“Exactly.”
“And what is ‘black and blue’?”
“Our school colors,” said George, “but I am sure you want to hear the story of Fortescue Quackenbrane Flubb.”
“There’s nothing I want to hear less,” I said.
Fortescue Quackenbrane Flubb [said George] was, in middle life, a happy man; or, at least, he should have been a happy man, for he was blessed with all anyone could reasonably want.
He had had a long career as a successful writer, turning out books that sold well and were popular and, despite that, books that were spoken of highly by those writers-manqué who call themselves reviewers.
I can see from your face, old man, that you are about to ask me how it is possible for a man to be a successful writer, and to have a name like Fortescue Quackenbrane Flubb—and yet remain completely unknown to you. I might answer that this is evidence of your total self-absorption, but I will not, for there is another explanation. Like all writers of even a minimum of sensibility, old Quackbrain used a pseudonym. Like any writer with a modicum of feeling, he didn’t want anyone to know how he made his living. I know that you use your own name, but you have no shame!
Quackbrain’s pseudonym, of course, would be well known to you, but he had made me promise, once, to keep it an inviolate secret even after he had passed on to his typewriterless purgatoriality and I, of course, must honor that promise.
Yet old Quackbrain was not a happy man.
As a fellow alumnus of dear old Burr, he confided in me. “Of what use is it, George, that money pours in on me in a never-stinting spate? Of what use is it that my fame is worldwide? Of what use is it that I am treated with the utmost consideration by all and sundry.”
“Quackbrain,” I said solemnly, “I believe that there is good use in all this.”
“Bah,” he said, “possibly in a worldly sense; possibly in a mere material sense. Yet it leaves the soul untouched.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” and here he struck his chest a resounding thump, “the burning memories of youthful snubs and spurnings remain unavenged and, indeed, forever unavengeable.”
I was thunderstruck. “Surely, you did not receive youthful snubs and spurnings?”
“Did I not? At Old Cesspool itself. At Aaron Burr High School.”
“But what happened?” I said, scarcely able to credit my ears.
“It was in 1934,” he said, “I was a junior then and beginning to feel the divine flow of inspiration within me. I knew that someday I would be a great writer and so I signed up for a special writing class that old man Yussif Newberry was giving. Do you remember Yussif Newberry, George?”
“Do you mean Old Snarley Face Newberry?”
“The very same. It was his notion that by calling together such a class, he would have an untapped well of talent from which he could draw written gems that would fill the school’s literary semiannual magazine. Do you remember the magazine, George?”
