Wizard of Washington Square (2 page)

David scratched D. Dog’s head. “If that’s all true,” David said at last, “where is the Wizard now? And what does he look like?”

“He’s…” Leilah began, when the small black door in the side of the Arch began to open slowly. David stared as it moved inward and a cave darker than midnight appeared.

From behind the door, into the sunlight, stepped the weirdest little man David had ever seen. He had a long, silky white beard that was parted slightly off center and flowed down to his waist. He was no taller than a four-year-old. He wore a robe of inky blue and a pointed hat that sparkled with stars. The stars weren’t just painted on and they weren’t rhinestones, either. David could see that they moved, floated in the blue-black space of the hat as though it were a window opening on a night sky.

“How do you do,” said the little man to David in a voice full of apologies. “I’m the Wizard of Washington Square.”

David meant to say “How do you do” back, but he just stood there with his mouth open. Even D. Dog was too surprised to bark.

“H
OW DO YOU DO.
How
do
you do,” said the Wizard. David thought he was terribly polite. Perhaps too polite. And David, not being very polite himself, didn’t trust that. But the Wizard was so sincerely sad-looking, David forgot his distrust and put out his hand.

“I’m sorry, my boy, but I can’t shake your hand. If I take your hand, we might both be whisked to goodness-knows-where. That’s the trouble with magic, you know. There’s no containing it. It does what it wants.”

“But I thought,” said David, “that magicians were the masters of magic.”

“Oh, no. You’ve heard wrong,” said the Wizard. “Magic is supreme. It belongs to itself and no other. Only He is Master of Magic.”

“He?” said David and Leilah together.

“The Master Mage. The Wonderful Wizard. The Nameless One.”

“Does he really not have a name?” asked Leilah.

“Of course he has a name,” said the Wizard. “But if we spoke it now, it would call Him to us. And if we called Him for no reason, we’d be vanished! Or even worse.”

“What could be worse?” said Leilah.

“Many things,” said the Wizard mysteriously.

“Well, what is his name?” asked David, who sometimes got stuck on one track.

“It’s—oh, but if I told you, that would be the same as speaking it, wouldn’t it?” said the Wizard. “Or would it? I can never remember. I never remember
anything.
That’s why I’m here, you know.” He gestured to the park.

“You mean here in Washington Square?” asked Leilah.

“No, I mean here in America. They don’t believe in magic in America,” said the Wizard. “So only second-class magicians are sent here. And oh, I am so very second-class, I’m afraid.”

“That’s pretty silly,” said David. “If no one in America believes in magic, then to convince them, you should send first-class wizards.”

“The
very
point I made. The very point!” said the Wizard excitedly. He began to jump up and down. Then he suddenly stopped, shook his head sadly, and said, “But I was voted down. They said it would be a shame to waste good wizards. They said that only the American
children
believe in magic, and only a few at that. The rest see too much television. Ruins their imagination.”

“We don’t have a television set,” said Leilah proudly. “My father would rather have us read books.”

“Oh, capital. Capital,” said the Wizard. “And do you read?”

“Well,” admitted Leilah, “we spend a lot of time at the neighbors’.”

“Borrowing books,” said the Wizard eagerly.

“Watching television,” said Leilah.

David stifled a giggle.

“Oh dear, oh dear” said the Wizard. He looked as though he were going to cry.

David couldn’t stand to see anyone cry. Especially a wizard. So, for once in his life, he was tactful and polite. “Tell me all about wizards,” he said. “I
really
want to be convinced.” He wasn’t sure why he said that. After all, he had been the only person in the matinee performance of
Peter Pan
on Wednesday who hadn’t clapped for Tinker Bell (including his older sisters, who were usually above such things).

The Wizard’s face lighted up. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I’ll tell you all about—” He looked around suddenly as a rubber ball splatted onto the Arch above his head. “But we can’t talk here of important things. It isn’t private enough. I know—why don’t you come inside with me?” And, with a wide sweep of his hand, he gestured them into the blackness of Washington Square Arch.

David went in after the Wizard. Leilah followed right behind, holding tightly to David’s shirttail. D. Dog shivered at their heels. He didn’t seem too happy about the whole visit, but he certainly wasn’t going to be left behind.

As the four of them cleared the doorway, the door shut behind them with a
clang.

It took a few minutes for David’s eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. It wasn’t completely black, because Japanese lanterns were hung at odd intervals along the stone hallway.

“In the Old Country, we use wooden torches,” explained the Wizard. “But there is such a shortage of trees in New York City, I have to make do.”

“It’s very pretty,” said Leilah hesitantly.

“It’s very dark,” muttered David, who was already beginning to regret his politeness and his desire for adventure.

After a few steps, the hallway curved to the left and began to spiral gently downward. There were no stairs, but the stone walk sloped at a slight angle and kept turning and turning left. At each turning was a lantern. As David and Leilah passed, the movement of their bodies caused the lanterns to sway, making colorful, eerie shadows dip and dive along the wall.

David put his hand out along the wall to guide himself. The peculiar angle and turning left all the time were making him slightly dizzy. He was right-handed and so he was feeling very off-balance. The wall was cold and slightly damp. It was covered with patches of something crinkly and velvet to the touch.

“Moss?” thought David, and at that moment Leilah leaned forward, tugged at his shirttail, and hissed to him. David turned his head slightly, trying to keep the Wizard’s swiftly moving figure in sight.

“How can there be moss inside Washington Square Arch?” she whispered.

David realized that Leilah had been leaning against the wall too. It made him feel better. So he answered in a voice that sounded braver than he actually felt. “I think” he said, “that we are no longer under the Arch. Did you notice, we’ve stopped going down. It’s mostly flat now.”

“No,” Leilah admitted. “I guess it happened too slowly.”

“Well, it
is
flat now,” said David. “I think we’re under the fountain. Way under. And that might account for the dampness and the moss.”

He had no sooner said that when they came around a final turn. The Wizard was nowhere in sight. The tunnel suddenly widened out and where it widened there were three different roads, each marked with a lantern. There was a sign on each of the branches. On the right the sign said
TO THE DRAGONRY
. On the left was
TO THE IRT
. And in the middle was a sign that said
TO THE WARREN
. There was also a sign pointing back the way they had come that read simply
WORLD.

“I’d rather not go to the dragonry,” said Leilah. “We might be eaten.”

“Well, the warren sounds like a place to get lost in,” said David. “Guess we’ll have to go to the irt, though it does sound ferocious.”

“Silly!” said Leilah with a giggle. “That’s a subway. The I-R-T.” She pronounced each letter separately. “It stands for Interboro Rapid Transit.”

“Well, how was I to know?” said David. “I’ve only lived here a week. To the warren, then,” he said. “I’d rather get lost than eaten.”

D
. DOG GAVE THREE
short staccato barks and ran through David’s legs. He raced down the middle tunnel, the one marked to the warren. Just as he reached what must have been the end, a door opened and David and Leilah saw light. Bright yellow light.

They ran quickly after D. Dog and reached the open door together. They peered in.

“Well, and what took you so long?” the Wizard asked.

David and Leilah stood at the entrance with their mouths wide open. Inside the doorway was another world.

The Wizard sat in a large velvet-cushioned oak chair in front of a tremendous table. The table was as long as a large door and had nine sturdy legs, each ending in a claw. One claw clutched a wooden ball and, at odd moments, it would suddenly roll the ball to another leg. Then that claw would snatch the ball and stand very proudly on it. In this way, every few minutes, the table would take on a slightly different tilt. Each time the game began again, all the beakers and bowls and pitchers and jars on top of the table—for the table was littered with glassware and crockery—would jangle and clank. But, surprisingly, nothing was ever broken.

The Wizard seemed unaware of the moving table and sat, with his legs crossed, on the velvet-cushioned chair.

On the wall behind the Wizard was a large tapestry. It seemed to be woven of glistening thread. Yet it was like no painting or tapestry David had ever seen. Though he could never quite catch them moving, the figures of the tapestry were in new and different positions every time David looked. When he stared directly at the tapestry, there was absolutely no movement at all. But the minute he looked away, from the corner of his eye he seemed to see a blurred, frantic scurrying.

“You’ll never catch them,” said the Wizard to David. “And it’s best not to try.”

But whether the Wizard meant the table legs or the tapestry figures, David didn’t know. So he started to walk over to look at the tapestry more closely, and nearly bumped his head on a large object that jutted down from the ceiling. It had two handles and an eyepiece.

Leilah, who hadn’t left his side, whispered, “That must be the periscope.”

“Then I was right,” David whispered back. “We
are
under the fountain!”

The Wizard shook his head. “Not fair,” he said. “Not fair at all. Most impolite. First you stand and stare as though you had never seen a wizard’s warren before, and then you whisper in company.”

“But we never
have
seen a wizard’s warren before,” began Leilah apologetically.

“Oh, yes. I forgot,” said the Wizard, a little sadly. “I’m always forgetting. I’m always forgetting, especially, that I’m in America.”

“Maybe you’re wishing that you weren’t in America,” said Leilah. “That could account for the forgetting.”

“I doubt it,” said the Wizard. “I doubt it very much. I even forget things I want to remember—like spells and incantations. And when I remember how to start them, I forget how to make them stop.”

“How very sad for you,” said Leilah.

“Maybe you could take a correspondence course to improve your memory,” said David. “I’ve seen some advertised in magazines.”

“I once tried,” said the Wizard, “but the postman never knew where to deliver my mail. So he dropped it in the wastebasket near the Arch. I didn’t beat the garbage truck to it in the morning. Somewhere in New York City there is a garbageman with an excellent memory. But not me. Not the Wizard of Washington Square.” And he began to cry, with his head on his arms on the tilting oak table.

David and Leilah looked at each other uneasily.

“Well, we’ll just have to help you, that’s all,” said Leilah. “Won’t we, David?”

David shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea how to help a second-class wizard. He didn’t even know how to help a first-class wizard, though he doubted that a first-class wizard would need any help at all. Instead, David bent down and held on to D. Dog’s collar, for the terrier was trying to grab the wooden ball from one of the table’s claws.

The Wizard looked up, took a handkerchief from the air, and wiped his eyes with it. Then he snapped his fingers, and the handkerchief disappeared.

David wondered how a second-class wizard could do such a thing:

As though he had read David’s mind, the Wizard answered. “I can do simple things, like prestidigitation, but—”

“Presti—what?” asked David.

“Prestidigitation. Sleight-of-hand tricks,” said the Wizard. “It comes from
presto
meaning nimble and
digit
meaning finger.”

“Oh,” said David, “I see.” But he didn’t.

“Magicians are presti-whatchmacallits,” explained Leilah.

David’s eyes lighted up. “Oh, magicians,” he said.

“Magicians! Bah!” said the Wizard.

“Why
bah
?” asked Leilah.

“Magicians are imitators, not creators. They are fakers. They make tricks to fool your eye. But that is all it is, trickery. What I do—when I can remember how to do it—is real.”

“You mean you really made that handkerchief disappear?” asked Leilah.

“Certainly,” replied the Wizard. “But a magician would make it disappear
up his sleeve
.”

“Well,” said David, “if you can’t make it as a wizard, you could always be a first-class magician. No one would ever figure out your tricks.”

“I would rather be a
third
-class wizard than the best magician in the world,” said the Wizard. His eyes were fierce. David was sorry he had ever spoken.

“Is there such a thing as a third-class wizard?” asked Leilah quickly.

“No, I’m the lowest there is. So low, in fact, that I have to live in a warren.”

“That’s pretty low down,” agreed David.

“It is. It is,” said the Wizard. “Wizards prefer high towers with vast views. Now, my tutor, the great Greywether, had an imposing tower on the Welsh Pembroke coast. His weather spells were world-famous. But wizardry fell on bad times for a while in the British Isles. He was forced to rent his tower to the Crown for a lighthouse. Since the war, though, he’s made a comeback. He even has the support of a local coven.”

“Coven?” the children asked together.

“Witches.”

“Oh,” said David, nudging Leilah. But Leilah seemed to believe it all. And it did seem a bit odd, the table and tapestry and all. Perhaps, David thought, it would be a good idea to find out more about this wizardry business before dismissing it. Just in case.