THE BLACK MAGICIAN

      I NEVER HAD any fear of my father's magic until the night when I stretched out my arm between his victim and the power of his curse. Such indifference came naturally to a boy born in the burial city, where countless charms were daily employed to provide an easy life after death. My father's powers meant no more to me than those of a painter who spends his life copying good-luck sayings in bright, clear bands of pictures around the coffins of the dead. To be sure, a high brick wall had been built to conceal our rooftop from the neighbors, and on some mornings I had found a heap of ashes up there and a strange, sweet smoke in the house. I slept soundly in those times and had no idea that quiet forms used to steal past me on nights when the moon was full, groping carefully for the ladder to our roof. Later on, when pain kept me awake, I often heard them, and I even learned to distinguish by smell between the trades to which Father's invisible customers belonged.
      I had always lived in the burial city, and it was a commonplace to me that every craft there was connected in some fashion with the service of death. A clean scent of wood shavings must mean a coffinmaker. A whiff of dried smoky earth would be a potter fresh from taking a tall funeral jar or a batch of little glazed amulets out of his oven. A stuffy smell of dried flax clung to the weaver, who made coarse linen wrappings to swathe the bodies of the dead. These and many other such workmen held no special terrors. It was on nights when more sinister people felt their way up the ladder that I needed to cover my ears against the sound of muttering, and to roll my head in the rushes until I could hear nothing but the beat of my heart and the heavy throb of blood in my injured arm.
      On these bad nights I smelled out gravediggers from the slave gangs up in the hills, possessors of strange secrets about hidden rock tombs where rich men lay buried with their treasures. These people were dirty, sweaty, and frightened, since to be caught outside their quarters meant death. With them mingled the sickly odor of embalmers, who were all known to be corpse robbers, and whose dreadful trade had bred in them a contempt for the vengeance of the dead men they despoiled. Most terrifying of all to me was an occasional clean, fresh smell of Nile weeds and water, betokening a priest who must wash his whole body in the river three times a day. When such a man, brought up amid magic, came to need spells from Father, I felt as though the spirits floating in the incense grew strong enough to stifle me.     

     Strangely enough, in the daytime Father was not a particularly sinister figure. He slept a good deal, and when I saw him in the evenings, he seemed usually just a little drunk. I never knew anybody who could consume so much beer as Father, especially when the moon began to wane and the house was full of offerings earned by his magic on the roof. At these times there was a rivalry between my parents, Mother rushing off to market with what she could snatch, and Father ambling gently away with what he could hide to pay the brewer of beer. Thereafter until his credit ran out, he would spend the greater part of his waking hours in the beer shop, coming home in the cool of the evening, slightly mellow and in good humor for play. For all his great size, Father had extraordinarily neat fingers and had modeled me a clay doll with jointed legs, a cat arching her back, and a duck with her ducklings behind her and her beak cocked proudly in air. On the occasion when my story starts, he had made me a crocodile with a jaw that would open and shut realistically at the pulling of a string.
      "Come on," he said when we had tired of watching it gobble up the sort of people we disliked.
      I picked up the crocodile and followed him happily, knowing that we were off to Hapu's workshop in search of paint. Old Hapu made little models of houses, granaries, boats, servants, and other important possessions that a man might want to take into the next life with him, but could not actually be walled up in his tomb. He and Father had a real interest in toys, and whenever I got a new one, we used to take it over and decorate it in Hapu's workroom. Old Hapu always said his overseer would never miss a little paint. He might have felt differently, had he known that when he was doing gilding, tiny crumbs of gold would disappear under Father's agile fingers and would find their way eventually to the beer shop when supplies at home were low.

      Old Hapu was not working, which was unusual, and he looked ill. His small wrinkled face had fallen in somehow and had taken on deeper lines. He scowled as we appeared in the doorway and put up his hand in the gesture that is used to ward off the evil eye. "Leave me alone, Yuf the Magician," he said in a low hissing tone, glancing around at the corners of the little workshop as if he thought his dolls might possibly overhear. "Go away and leave me alone before I make trouble."
      Father laughed scornfully, putting his hands on his hips in a swaggering fashion. "You are going to be rich," he said, “and work for yourself instead of for the temple. Why should you make trouble?"
      “I tell you –“
      "Now look here," said Father wearily, "how often do I have to repeat that nothing can possibly go wrong. The Mayor of this city will take his cut, while the officers of justice and the armed guards who police the Valley of the Tombs will all have theirs. As for the slaves in the gravedigger gangs, they are afraid of me." He touched a little green amulet which he wore around his neck and smiled.
      “I am frightened too," said Hapu, whose hands were shaking. “I am afraid for my own skin. Look here!" He pushed aside the light bench on which he did his painting and showed Father a small jagged hole bored through the wall. "Can you see where my wretched Syrian servant lay listening as I made arrangements to dispose of the gold when it should come? Does it surprise you to hear that he has fled?”
      "Not in the least," said Father firmly, though I could see that he was somewhat startled nonetheless. "If he had asked us for a share of the treasure we shall steal from a dead king's tomb, we would certainly have killed him. He is welcome to try and see if he fares any better with the Mayor."
      "He has not gone to the Mayor," cried Hapu in a sort of subdued scream, curving his hands into claws and shaking them before my father's face. "He has gone over the river to Thebes, whose governor is jealous enough of our Mayor to take the story to Pharaoh. This robbery was your scheme, Yuf the Magician. Now since you are so clever, tell me why I should not hurry after my servant and save my own neck by confessing what I know."
      Father made no answer to that, but he slid his big hand quietly across the workbench and picked up a knife which Hapu generally used for slicing his little paintbrushes out of strips of reed.
      Hapu skipped nimbly behind the bench and stood there, his hands resting upon it as though he were preparing to dodge a blow. "Do you think I am such a fool," he babbled hastily, "as to enter into a plot with Yuf the Magician and make no provision against sudden death? Too many others have made that mistake, my friend. If I die violently, a letter will go to the Governor over the river to tell him the name of a brewer of poisons who has customers from the very palace of the king."
      "You know too much to die, Hapu, maker of models," said Father quietly, putting down the little knife in the exact spot whence he had taken it up. "Though you shall not die, however, you shall often wish you had. Send my name over the river if you dare, for I too have friends in the palace, and I think you may soon discover that my arm is long." He turned away, striding down the street so fast that I had to run after him, clutching the unpainted crocodile tightly in my hand.
      Mother met us with a torrent of scoldings because when she had safely departed for market, Father had taken her purchases of the previous day and swapped them for beer. "You good-for-nothing, lazy, thieving rascal," she yelled, lunging for him with her broom. Father brushed her aside like a buzzing fly and went straight to his magic box, which lay along the inner wall.
      Father's magic box was of battered but stout wickerwork, and it was always tied with a thong of leather and sealed over the knot with a wax impression of the curious green amulet Father wore about his neck. Never before had he opened it in front of me, and I tiptoed as close as I dared to get a view of the contents by the light of our sputtering lamp. Like everything else about Father, it was prosaic enough at first view. There was a brightly burnished copper bowl with strange signs scratched upon it, and a knife of a dark metal called iron, which was very rare and came from the north. There were a few jars of evil-smelling liquids, a bowl of a dark brown, crumbly substance which I knew was incense, a very big, blackish lump of wax, and several pieces of wire. Father pushed these aside and began feeling in the bottom for various little packets wrapped in fragments of linen, many of which I had seen and examined before.
      One of the unexpected things about Father was his friendship with barbers, which was the more surprising in a man whose favorite economy was to shave himself. Every time that the full moon came round, Father gave away some part of his earnings to barbers, though as a rule the first thing that I knew about this was that one of them would slip a small package for him into my hand. Father never made any secret to me about the fact that he was collecting hair, and when I asked him why he wanted it, he laughed and said openly that it was good to have some sort of power over people with whom one had business dealings. Hair was very important in the making of magic, and I wondered very much what sort of thing Father would be able to do with Hapu's.
      Father took out the wax and began to knead a small lump of it within his palms. When it was warm enough, he pressed it upon the sign which he wore on his breast, took it off again, and held it out to me. "Here, boy," he said, "take that down to the brewer of beer and tell him that I need a black dog to sacrifice this night around moonrise, and that he must not fail."
      Mother snatched at the seal. "Let me go for him," said she. "Did you not promise the boy should be brought up as other boys are?"
      Father put out his hand and detained her. "Does one night make him a magician?" he asked. "This rite must be secret, yet you know very well that no woman can hold the bowl for me."

     I think the first moment in which I felt dread of my father’s magic came when I took a squirming black puppy into my arms from the hands of the brewer of beer. It was so very small to leave its mother, and I had to keep dodging my head from side to side as it tried to lick my cheek. “It is ten days before full moon,” the man had grumbled. “Tell Yuf I was not ready, for such dogs are hard to find."
      I nodded and started to walk back rather slowly, for I was wondering if the little dog would very much mind what must be done to it on our rooftop that night by the light of the moon. The little dog did mind, and I was glad when Father tossed its limp body into the shadows and took from my hands the copper bowl in which I had caught its blood. The moon was small, but myriad stars like blazing eyes crowded rank behind rank in the mysterious sky, as if their owners were staring silently at our piteous sacrifice. Father rose to his immense height and raised the bowl so that a little wind might carry the smell of blood to unseen nostrils. I crouched by the fire and scattered incense, whose green smoke coiled about Father's limbs, making his head and hands dimly visible as though a great way up in the air.

      A little log flaring on the fire was casting strange shadows. There was an indistinct mass behind Father, a small crouching lump beside me, and a flickering shape like a dancing man by the little wax image of Hapu, which Father had modeled to the sound of spells, kneeded with the old man's hair, and moistened with the blood of the sacrifice while it was warm. The round shoulders, thin neck, and peering little head of the doll were so like old Hapu that I thought of him and myself together as shriveled to pygmies, while Father had reached into the heavens and spoke with the watchers behind the stars.
      Far away up in the smoke, Father called aloud on the fearful name of his demon. Its howling sound went echoing off into the dark and disappeared, as though swallowed up in the distance by a host of listening ears. Away in the eastern hills, a jackal made answer. Father poured a dark splash from his bowl to the ground, and called once more.
      I got up, shaking, to my knees and lifted Hapu, for the time had come when I must hold the old man while Father did to him the things he wished to do. The incense was all burned away, and though smoke still hung in the heavy air, I could see Father's face come down into the firelight, glowing coppery red and dreadfully streaked with the painted marks which were the signs of power. Father's hands were red as he thrust the point of his thin wire between the coals. His mouth was black as he called on the little wax image by the warmth of the blood and by the hair kneeded into its breast to be Hapu indeed.
      I held Hapu, lest he struggle, while Father brought the red-hot point of his wire very slowly toward Hapu's cheek.
      Hapu said nothing, but a wax tear of agony gathered in his eye and started downward. Suddenly I felt I could bear no more. With a cry, I threw Hapu from me, and felt the sting of the burning wire across my forearm as I moved. Father roared like the demon himself, and with that I screamed, got clumsily up from my knees, and made a rush for the ladder leading into the warm, friendly darkness of the house.
      I thought that devils were behind me, and so they may have been. I only know that something caught my foot and that I came rolling down the whole length of the ladder and hit the ground with a fearful crash. I remember hearing my arm snap under me, but the rest of the night is a confusion of lights and pain and sobbing until I was wearied out and could cry no more.
      Then passed a long period of pain, during which I noticed little, save that the full-moon sacrifices went on as before, though there was talk of the gang lying low until trouble died down. Father left the house most nights, but was cautious about appearing in the streets before dark. I would not go out myself, even when I grew stronger, lest the street boys jeer at me for being a cripple when they saw my useless, twisted arm. Father and I would sit together for hours in absolute silence, he drinking his beer, and I scratching moodily on the earthen floor with a pointed stick. I had my own thoughts, and they seemed to fill my days. I did not wonder about Father's, except when he looked at me for very long, as he would sometimes do when my strength returned.
      Mother busied herself with the affairs of the house, and she would scold over trivial matters in her usual way. Never would she address any special word to me until the evenings when Father had sauntered to the doorway, looked up the street and down, and glided out like a cat who had business in the dark. Mother would come over to my mat, feel my head, and offer me some water. Then she would sit crosslegged beside me telling long tales of Memphis and her life there when she was young. They were always the same, these stories of her father, the artist in the temple of Ptah, of her brother, and the workshop where they lived. She would describe the wharves of Memphis, the market places, the streets, as though these things had some importance in her mind. I might listen, or I might fall asleep. She never asked me if I cared to hear these details or suggested, except on one occasion, they were my concern.
        It was on a hot night when my arm was aching worse than usual that I made my first effort to be rid of her tiresome repetitions. "What do I care about artists?" I told her pettishly, “one-armed and good for nothing as I am?"
"The best apprentice that my father had was a one-armed man, “ she answered swiftly. "It is dexterity, not strength that matters in his trade." 
I sulkily answered nothing, for I was half drowned in self-pity and preferred to think of myself as useless rather than to be aroused. Mother showed me a little amulet which she always wore, made of twisted gold wire and green glass beads. "For the price of a thing like this," she said deliberately, "any boatman would take you down to Memphis, son.”
      I simply sat there in silence until she sighed and took back her little charm, but on mornings when Father regarded me too closely, I used to find relief in picturing the streets of Memphis in my mind. I was sunk in helpless apathy which might have lasted forever, had not action been forced on me at last from either side.

      One morning when I woke up, I found paints and reed brushes set ready for me, and beside them a little boat delicately modeled in baked clay. It was a copy of the most beautiful boat I had ever seen, the funeral barge of the Pharaohs, which was used to bear the coffins of dead gods over the river to their secret tombs in the hills. I could see the lotus flowers on stem and stern bending gracefully inward, the canopy of tiny palms, and beneath it the coffin carved with a dead man's face, his hands crossed peacefully. I reached eagerly for the paints, remembering the silver flowers, the gorgeous colors, and the gold. All morning long I sat absorbed in the delicate work, though I never said a word to my father, from whom I knew the present came. Still, I turned myself around so that he could see what I was doing, and he glanced across and smiled a little as he used to do at my playthings many months before.
      Mother came bursting in from the street carrying a jar of water, which she put down in such a hurry that it splashed over the floor. "They have arrested the brewer," cried she before she had fairly got back her breath. "Four men came to take him away last night. I told you so!"
       Father calmly dipped his long reed into the beer and took a pull on it. "I know you did," said he.
      "There is a curse on this tomb robbery," cried Mother frantically. "Who are we to open a sealed rock chamber and take out treasures in which a king's spirit rejoices after death? First Hapu, and now the brewer! We shall all come to an evil end." She wrung her hands and hunched herself together as though in pain.
      Father shrugged his shoulders with perfect indifference. "The brewer will talk, of course," he admitted, "but what of that? He knows the names of the guards who have been bribed and of the men who hollowed out the secret passage, but someone will see that he dies before he can confess too much. The Mayor must make some examples, but he still wants his portion of the treasure later on. Meanwhile, he protects me because I am to help him lay his hands on it."
      "Can he not find other agents?"
      "He may." Father hitched himself round on his mat a little so that he could lean back against the wall and look up into her face. "I have been thinking about that," said he, "but I have been waiting, for I did not want to escape without the gold." He glanced quickly at the doorway and lowered his voice. "We closed the secret passage with a rock when the Governor of Thebes began to make inquiries. It took six men to shift it, for we wanted to be sure that no one of us could enter and steal until things were safe for all. I have been sitting here many long months and wondering about that stone."
      "Why?"
      Father turned his head toward me and fumbled on the ground beside him for the hollow reed through which he drank. "We were hurried, and the rock was heavy to shift. It did not fit completely, so that we covered it with rubble and loose stones.”
      "Well?"
      "I have been thinking that a small boy might wriggle through into the passage," said he.
      I took my hand from the little boat, knowing now what Father intended to gain by playing with me. Mother rushed forward to my defense. "You swore that you would not use the boy again," she cried hastily, putting herself between us. "Have you not done him enough harm as it is?"
      "It is but for once, and this is not magic. Think of all the gold which we may never see without his help."
      "I am thinking of all the times that you have promised to leave the boy alone."
      "I follow my demon," said Father, "and what he bids, I do. If the child is a fitting instrument, I will never leave him alone."
      There was a deep silence in the house. Father had shut his eyes to close the conversation and stretched his long length out against the wall. Mother went over to the water jar, lifted it wearily, and took it in to the back room where she used to prepare our food. Presently she came back and stood watching me at work, shuffling with her foot in the wet patch where the water had spilled. When she went away, I saw on the ground beside me her little amulet. As I went on painting, my hand moved steadily, though I understood her sign. We had been waiting, Father and I, each thinking his own thoughts through long months of silence. Now the end had come for both of us because I was strong enough to do what I must do. I got up with the little boat in my hand and sauntered quietly over to view it in the patch of sunlight by the door.
      Father's eyes were still shut, and he was breathing heavily, though more because of the heat than because he was really asleep. Still, I had been very quiet and he looked drowsy. I slipped out over the threshold and dodged round the corner of the street. It was in the middle of the day when the heat of summer is fiercest. A few dogs lay in patches of shadow, while here and there a shopkeeper lay dozing under an awning, keeping a sleepy eye on his wares. No one took notice of a boy, unless it was the beggars who sat by the walls on the shady side with their empty bowls beside them and their red eyes blinking hopefully at the sound of passing feet. I ran for my very life through the baking city, with my father's last toy and my mother's last present clutched together in my hand.