Julian the Magician (Insomniac Library)

Julian the Magician

Other books in the Insomniac Library Series: Gwendolyn MacEwen, King of Egypt, King of Dreams

Gwendolyn MacEwen

Julian the Magician

INSOMNIAC PRESS

Text copyright © 2004 by the Estate of Gwendolyn MacEwen Afterword copyright © 2004 by Carol Wilson First published by Macmillan (Toronto) and Corinth Books (New York) in 1963. Insomniac Library edition 2004. Series editor Richard Almonte Interior design by Marijke Friesen All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5. National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data MacEwen, Gwendolyn, 1941-1987. Julian the magician / Gwendolyn MacEwen. (Insomniac library; 1) First published: Toronto : Macmillan, 1963. ISBN 1-894663-57-8 I. Title. II. Series. PS8525.E84J8 2004

C813'.54

C2003-907380-7

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative. Printed and bound in Canada Insomniac Press 192 Spadina Avenue, Suite 403 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 2C2 www.insomniacpress.com

TK« CANADA Cetmcn, FOR THE ART tata iji?

it Costtfcti. a*s A»T< »u CAMAHU DEPUIS 1917

ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL CONSEIL OES ARTS DC I/ONTARIO

For Mallory with love

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JULIAN THE MAGICIAN

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. . . turning himself towards the four corners of the world and saying "iao, iao, iao!.." iota, because the universe hath gone forth; alpha, because it will turn itself back again; omega, because the completion of all the completeness will take place. —from the Pistis Sophia

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one/the baptism

B ULLS up out of their rushes, bats' wings, bulls up out of rushes, bats' wings, bull's blood!... Absurd, yes—it sounded like a skipping-rope chant of devils; yet it sounded back and forth through Julian's covered ears—antiphonal, riotous, a sing-song of gallumphing spooks, who, when he stole a backward glance, looked just like the people, the townsfolk. Were they shouting it? No, they were clapping, yes—and waving their arms like windmills for him to come back. Somehow their collective shouts had merged in his mind, taken on regular syllables.... Bulls up out of rushes, bats' wings, bull's blood . . . The performance had been good, then. Too good. He'd had to slip out the back way to avoid that sea of bodies that was folding itself up onto the stage, ready to crush him with its love, its hideous worship. It occurred to him that they thought he was divine. Well, they were simple people with brains about the size of the seeds they planted in their fields; they were entitled to their hysteria. Still, when he had felt that post-performance chill, knew in a moment they 11

Gwendolyn MacEwen would be upon him, fingering his robes and clasping his wrists, he had gathered up his money and obscured his mouth with his collar as in coming sickness—dipped and turned; escaped. And the people had pushed in, covered the area where he had been standing, circling, suddenly aware of his absence. Some had left; others had remained in the hope that he would return. A young boy guarded the entrance to Julians wagon, but no one would have entered; no one would have thought to violate those sacred grounds. "Refuge?" remarked Anya in amusement. "Refuge again?" asked Anya, her big legs straddled between table and oven, her tongue cluck-clucking between the spaces in her teeth. "Only for a few minutes," Julian said, bunching up his long skirts to sit down. "I knew you were in the town," she said as she worried the loaf out of the oven, "but I didn't come. Deliberately didn't, I admit, my dear nephew... your fame overcomes me; I prefer to stay in my happy humble home than be recognized as a blood-relative to such greatness.... " "Bless you for it." Julians forehead folded; then brightened. "O that bread! Admit you use mandrake in it! Admit it!" "Pooh." "It's been a long time, Anya . . . I haven't had a chance to come. I've been touring the countryside. The people ..." "I know. The people worship you," said Anya, setting down the quivering loaf in front of him and sinking in a chair beside it. "And what's in that fat brain of yours, now? You only look at me like that when you want to make some comment." 12

Julian the Magician

"My fat brain has its advantages. Well-padded. It tells me that the people as well as worshipping you—frighten you." She sliced the bread viciously. Julian wiped some blond hair back from his brow as though it clouded his brain. "They believe me," he said after a time, his face twisting into a question mark. "Give me the end of the loaf, Anya . . . with lots of crust...." "And you question their belief? This is proof of the excellence of your craft, my boy! It's like my bread. Here," she said, handing him a slice. "It is not that simple. Bread is not magic." "Magic is your bread, nevertheless, Julian. Keep to the essentials, I tell you. Your art is sharpened as fine as this blade...." He tried to eat away her voice with the bread. A good woman—but altogether too basic, too solid, unwilling to see any of the marginal horrors of his profession. She congratulated him on the success he had attained. He did not want congratulations. He came to her to be able to sit and be sane for a while, and be in a silent sane place with the hysterical audience far away, brewing around his caravan like drunken ants; muted. "And the world's only blond magician!" she went on, inspired by her bread. "No wonder they love you, eh?" "True. I don't blacken myself... probably the only legitimate part of my act, after all...." "Yes, but your face, Julian! That's it! You have the features of a gypsy ... all that with blond hair!" "You forget I am a bastard, my dear aunt. My hair was your sister's birthright, and my features were the gift of her lover." 13

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen "We don't talk about that now." Anya cut more bread. "So be it. Yet I must credit that dirty little gypsy—I probably got my talents from him...." "Julian!" "A tease, Anya!" Julian was suddenly in good humour. "My dear old fat-brained aunt—I am the servant of the King of Darkness!" "Fish's wings! The country's full of kings of darkness. Your heart is as gold as your hair, my boy, and your art is devoid of any evil... it's a balm, not a poison." "Your size excels your wisdom, Anya ... but thanks for the bread." He began to leave, his cape wrapped tightly about the shoulders; it was cold, late winter. "You still the greatest magician since—" "I know who since. Good-bye, Anya... " "Since who, damn you? No Polish magician anyway...." "Not Polish...." Julians voice trailed through the door in a muted mumble. "Nazarene...." he murmured. But Anya had not heard. She shunted from table to oven, cluck-clucking between the holes in her teeth. The night was altogether too cold. A shame he couldn't manipulate natural elements as he could manipulate human logic and belief. Ancient magicians had a fine time—making the sun rise, inducing rain, assuring the appearance of the moon—but now the duties were more varied and uncertain, success hinged on the more doubtful aspects of human credulity. If success did not come, the magic-maker could sigh for the plight of the human race, its loss of mystical dignity and his loss of money; if success came, the magic-maker could take it with delicacy and restraint, keeping a good eye 14

Julian the Magician

on practicalities. Or he could double under the weight of his people's devotion if he were an unusually sincere magician with super-respect for his craft. And fear for its real power. Julian's shoulders were weighted. They were slim like the rest of him, slim and subtle. His wrists were quick, almost with a will of their own, quick and blue-veined. Only his mind excelled their speed. "You can induce belief. . ." his old teacher had said when he was still a boy, serving a magician's apprenticeship. "Suspended logic . . . there's your genius. You can suspend logic like a whale on a thread...." Julian remembered the words too clearly—his old teacher had been the first to prostrate himself before the blond boy with the gypsy's features. He had had no contemporaries; he had been delicately avoided by them, immersing himself in demonical literature from the age often—Boehme first, then back to Magnus in alchemy, Paracelsus and the rest. Alchemy began to bore him—science owed it a vast debt, yes—and science had become the big sister, too big now to allow anyone to make advances towards her bastard kin. He abandoned this line and fell into philosophy; emerged later sobered, but still unsatisfied. The human element wasn't there as he wished it. The human element. Myth. Folklore. Bible. Kabbalah. The Gnostics. The mystical Christ.... Here he found fancy parallels for his own ostracism—a self-imposed one. "Take heed, children, for the future of his company, for he is a sorcerer," said the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. "Shun and avoid him, and from henceforth never play with him—" So said the mothers to their children of the questionable Christ, so said the written mothers. Julian 15

Gwendolyn MacEwen absorbed it all in great bulk; his young mouth watered. He had the means now—all he needed was the practical apprenticeship, and this he got. He was a born magician. But the sorcerer's real art is obscured under the weight of action and reaction, play and response—this he learned quickly enough. The art becomes the means of inducing the state of suspended logic—whale on a thread, the teacher had said. The art was indirect, the magic a front, the art a frame. "Yes, yes, yes ... but the shadow of the greatest magician moves behind me. O, the shadow of the greatest magician moves behind me," he chanted to the wind at his face as he walked back to the wagons. "They believe me—so? Why equate myself with a master in my craft? Why equate myself at all?" Still, his greatest tour de force was the clay sparrows. The fifth century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew had it—a delightful story of the mystical Christ, where Jesus playing with children at the Jordan made seven pools of clay and passages to bring the water. One of the children shut the passages. "Woe unto thee, thou son of death, thou son of Satan" cried the Christ, and immediately the boy died. The boy's parents, grieved, informed Mary and Joseph. The Christ, not wanting to worry his mother, gave the dead boy a swift kick to the buttocks, saying "Rise, thou son of iniquity." After this, he took clay from the seven pools and fashioned twelve sparrows. Clay sparrows. "Fly!" he implored, picking them up in his hands. "Fly through all the earth and live!" Julian thanked the mystical Christ for supplying him with his most successful trick—clay and wing, clay and sparrow. No one knew where Julian hid the birds, and even those who 16

Julian the Magician had seen the trick performed a dozen times, still watched in vain for the subtle twist of wrist, the obscure something that would expose the method; none found it—sparrows flew from the clay, that was all. The magician himself began to wonder. It was a mile back to the wagons; the river was coated in thick ice. The low current was killed under the collar of late winter solidification; the current shackled.... "Still, I only use two birds in my act," the magician thought on. The river current was choked under the collar of ice. The magician's craft was obscured under the— "Of course, the more scientific types," Julian thought, "weren't at all hampered by exterior impositions. Galen, Vittruvius perhaps ... Hero perhaps, who knows? The scientific outlook . . . pooh pooh," he added, cancelling the idea. "Pooh pooh and bulls rushing out of their rushes...." The river was not allowed to flow under the collar of ice blocking its throat-pulse.... Much later the boy still stood, guarding the entrance to the magician's wagon. He straightened, smoothed his black hair at Julian's approach. Apprentice, guard of wagon, maker of meal, leader of horse, counter of money and assistant of act, Peter was Greek, Peter was prime worshipper of the blond magician in black. "Eat, sir," he said with an embarrassing shrillness in his voice. "Tomorrow is the big trick—" "I ate, Peter," the magician answered, wishing somehow that the boy weren't there. Idolization was to be expected from someone like Peter, but it brought curious goose-bumps 17

Gwendolyn MacEwen to the roots of his bright hair. Julian pushed aside the canvas flap and entered the wagon. Peter was disappointed; he enjoyed watching the magician eat, or drink, or get dressed—any of the things that earthly people take for granted . . . with Julian all this dissolved into ritual, fascinating to watch. "Soup?" He asked hopefully, sadly, jumping into the wagon behind him. "Perhaps," Julian thought, "I should urinate on him. Or vomit in full view to convince him I'm human." Peter would never be a magician until he learned to accept the essentials. He couldn't impress this fact upon the boy verbally, for Peter would have answered, "Mister Julian sir—you are the greatest of them all; your greatness sets you upon another plane," and smiled his thin smile, and so it would have gone. So the magician pulled out a bottle of brandy and took it to bed with him as though it were a woman, lovingly; drank, slept, dreamed innocent alcohol dreams as the dreamy boy assistant up front scrambled the horses over the winter night and the supply wagon brought up the rear.

"You juggle?" asked an early man, blowing his nose loudly in the cold morning. The village was levelled in sleep when they entered; this man only had been aware of the magician s early arrival, had sat watch for most of the night on the road—he, a fire and several presumed spirits. Now he trailed alongside the wagons, eyes fastened on Julian in an almost animal intent. "For relaxation only," answered Julian carefully. His sable eyes, startling and incongruous under the blond hair were 18

Julian the Magician cold, if brown can be cold. Peter brought the horses to a stop and began shouting orders to Johann and Aubrey in the back wagon. Food was brought out; the men ran about with yards of rainbowed paraphernalia for the afternoon performance. The sun was lemon ice, virginal overhead. "Juggling used to be a means of inducing spirits," Julian remarked blankly as the man collapsed into his handkerchief. He wished he would leave. "Performance at twelve. Come with your eyes on straight and your mind unhinged, my good fellow. Peter! Only the large plain canvas today... none of that hideous coloured business!" The man shuffled away reluctantly. But it had been worth it. Intercourse with a genius—ah, more than a genius, so they said ... he wanted to stay and get a good look at the magician, figure the blond hair and the cold dark eyes, assimilate them, but he had been colder than that sun, like lemon ice, virginal... Many appeared at noon. A successful performance lies either in very small or very large numbers—in between there is a vacuum, a certain number of working minds that is not conducive to group fascination—this much Julian had learned in his tours. Collective belief, mass hypnotism—this was what he longed for and feared most of all. The slow seduction and the post-performance hysteria when the power he generated left him, but would not leave its object—still he walked blithely into that fire, never learning from its brilliant scars. "Friends..." he begins, (were they his friends?) while Peter stands a foot behind, grinning from one end of the room to the other . . . "Friends . . . " he continues, making his usual speech, the subtleties of which no one can catch, nor are interested in catching. In the noon hush, noon being climatic, 19

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen catalystic, as Julian believes, his sustained voice reaches the audience's ears with a gentleness they never meet in their loud village. They are used to the sounds of the river, as in perpetual indigestion, the screaming of the land for attention, the iron screaming under the smiths hand, the trees screaming above the axe—and now the incredible control of this magician's voice. Something in his chiselled features, the almost transparent quality of his skin, reminds the women of their stubbled coarse husbands; something in the womanliness of that face reminds the men that their wives are hard, and the magician's voice is quieter, louder than the river. Julian produces rabbits. The people are accustomed to rabbits—in the winter they are killed for food. Julian produces an endless flow of coloured scarves. Scarves are abundant in the village—every woman has several; scarves are a necessity, not a delight. But they watch him; they cannot help it. The people watch the magician and he pleases them. No, he does not please them—he frightens them. A soft quiet fright, fright of kittens in a blizzard. Julian employs mirrors, boxes, screens, veils. And the people believe, because Julian lets them believe . . . he does not force, suggest, tease, prod—he lets them believe, he draws margins over which he knows their minds can jump, he unscrews hinges on all doors. The magician feels his power growing like a live foetus in his skull, and the knowledge of his power permeates the pores, the marrow; the sweet terrible knowledge pours through him like the worst wine, and then the sparrows fly from the clay: he is finished. There is no applause, no need for it. Soon they will begin to call for more, but he can't give it. Peter and Johann persuade 20

Julian the Magician

the people away and they submit, but the women look back carefully from the door and hope their scarves are straight. Julian is the most beautiful man they have ever seen—certainly more beautiful then their husbands, and even, as the most honest among them would admit, their sons.... They leave, not knowing what they have seen, but with an almost sacred delight within them that they have seen it. Peter, Johann and Aubrey clear away the muddle. The early morning man approaches the magician again. He has caught one of the sparrows; the other escaped. He holds the thing out to Julian. "May I offer my thanks, sir, for the finest performance I have ever seen. In—in these times when what is real is incredible and painful, it is good to be able to believe that which demands nothing of us—sir...." "My thanks," Julian says bluntly and turns away. "The sparrow, sir—" "Keep it if you wish." Delighted, the man almost crushes the clutch of feather and bone in his palm and leaves with it. Julian realizes he has bitten through his lip. The tooth had dug into the flesh harder than he realized; the blood-drop on his tongue sickens him. Something is wrong; a sudden nameless urge grabs him. "Peter—watch the wagons; I'll be back in a hour!" he shouts and begins to run lightly, but with purpose down a small street towards the river. Minutes later he scuffles down the easy slope towards the ice-checkered water. Slush and clogged mud quicken his descent. The desire for water is overpowering, the desire to immerse his body completely in it. It is still winter and the river is as cold as a winter virgin—but he must go in. 21

Gwendolyn MacEwen Water—the need for immersion. He strips his body bare, shivering on the bank in the pale sparse robe of flesh. For a time he watches the steady pressured float of smashed ice down the body of the black water—the current is being freed from its white shackles. He has forgotten his initial reason for coming, if there had been one, more of a suddenly acquired instinct, urgent and purging. The water bites his bare ankles and they blue in minutes; but it is good somehow; he steps deeper. The current is stronger now, but not dangerous. Some birds fly overhead, arching, knifing the cold sky, dipping, their long wings sure and lyrical above his head. Yes, the birds... he steps in further... the birds are fitting... the water belts his waist now... the bird, the mystical dove... 801 ... the dove descending.. .Alpha and Omega combined— the sum of their numbers... 801, the ineffable Name, the dove... Sure and lyrical the birds dip down towards the magician in the river.

"No," said the wild man, standing knee-deep in the water, his coat of camel's hair dripping and absurd. "I am not worthy to unlace the shoe of the one that follows me." And the next day that man came down to Bethabara and stepped into the river, and the wild man acknowledged and baptized him. The river was cold, purging about his waist. And a solitary dove descended.

22

two/water and wine

THE magician

returned at last. Peter rushed to him rabbitlike, adolescent tears in his quick eyes. Julian was tottering, clothes drawn around him like the wrappings on a mummy. He froze and burned alternately. At any other time, the opportunity of taking the magician's arm would have been a delight, but now Peter grabbed it with no awareness of the flesh-to-flesh contact. "Come inside quickly, sir!" "My name is Julian, Peter. Kindly call me Julian. . . ." He slumped forward as though each link in his spine had loosened. Peter somehow supported the precious weight on his knobby shoulders, edged him into the wagon. "Where were you? We were to leave an hour ago, sir. .. ." Peter sandwiched the magician between bed and blanket, held out scalding soup. "Swimming." "Swimming? With the river choked up with ice?" (He's teasing me; he treats me like a child....) "Swimming." Julian repeated, changing colour rapidly on the bed. The soup brought blood to his face—blotchy 23

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen patches of it. The boy leaned over anxiously like an artist over a bad canvas, waiting for the colour to blend, smooth out. Outside the horses pawed and snorted in the cold; the supply wagon was animated with the voices of the impatient Johann and Aubrey. "So slap the horses, Peter," Julian said wearily as though speaking from sleep, "I'm all right now; I went for a swim; don't fuss like a woman. . . " "But sir!" Peter did not like the look of the blotches. Someone had once told him that blotches were bad, in anything, wherever they were found—blotches in soup, blotches of live milk in tea; the milk not mixing with the water, but forming horrid cauliflowers of white, the blood not blending in the veins but bunching up, sick ... "My name is Julian. Kindly slap the horses; kindly call me Julian." The magician's head lolled drunkenly. "We've got a private show tomorrow—a wedding party. I must go and sprinkle charms over the couple, perhaps, or place devilweed and lizards in their bed for luck ..." Peter was stubborn. "I'm not leaving you alone!" His intense pindark eyes swelled from the pupils; a vein twisted in his small muscular throat. "Johann!" he screamed through the back flap to the other wagon. "Take these horses, will your}" Feet scuttled past them to the front; reins slapped against broad backs; the wagon jumped forward. Under his breath, which was a very large one, Johann cursed in his native Hungarian. He resented taking orders from a gutless little "girl," as he called Peter, whose sex he could knock off in a minute, rendering the masquerade exact. Still more he resented 24

Julian the Magician the affinity between Peter and the magician. He'd been with Julian longer than Peter, and felt if Julian had any ties they should rightfully be with him. Yet a time ago the magician had alluded in his delicate way to Johann's meagre ration of intelligence; the driver had threatened to leave then, but who could leave Julian after once being netted into that careful untouchable will? Like three watches on three chains, Peter, Johann and Aubrey were all attached to Julian's belt. If the watches rubbed edges, irritating each other, teasing up the blisters, nothing was to be done. "Ridiculous," said Julian. "We'll lose time without you driving up front." "I'm staying here. Your face looks like my mother's worst borsch . . . sir—with milk in it, I mean." Peter blushed; his own wit was distasteful, like the milked borsch. "Call me Julian, damn you!" This final exclamation exhausted him; he lay back feeling his face. "Please try and sleep, Julian, rest for tomorrow. . . ." The magician slept and the boy watched over him steadily, willing the blotchy underskin rouge to disappear. Lying there, Julian of the uncombed hair the colour of late hay, Julian of the forehead so smooth and wide an ant could ski down it, then take wing from the high eyebrow ridges; Julian of the olive skin, the chiselled nose, the curved lip, the eyes of gypsy—was to the boy a paragon of manhood, womanhood, sainthood and godhood. And Peter held the great stumbling love for him as the fever held the crowded blood under Julian's skin. Boy-love, inviolate love that permitted no gesture of Julian's, no word, no act to go unnoticed. 25

Gwendolyn MacEwen But the fever heightened after midnight. Julian began to mumble absurdities of doves and mystical numbers and incredible baptisms until the boy could no longer trace his line of thought, resigned himself to perpetual bathing of brow and accumulation of cover. Even in sleep the magician's forehead folded in layers as though housing some gigantic mathematical load, some equivocal voice in the skull that pushed its way down facial tunnels to the mouth. As nurse, Peter tried to halt the verbal flow; as apprentice to the magician, he still listened for each word and each smashed syllable, picking amongst them as though they were berries for some ultimate truth. "An avalanche," Julian was whimpering now and his shoulders jerked and tried to free themselves from some unseen weight upon them. "An avalanche of water and bird, O dove, dove ... Marcus? 801 801 801 ..." "Julian!" Peter dabbed the quickening sweat from his knotted brow, "Julian, please!" "Celsus!" roared the magician, and Johann peered through the front flap in surprise. "Go on," Peter said coolly, "he's having bad dreams ..." "I'm calling Celsusf screamed Julian again and tears escaped the closed eyelids. "Tell me he was a bastard . . . well I'm a bastard! And he was the best, the best, the—" "Julian . . ." Peter almost wept. The horses hooved on; it was the blackest part of night, the post-midnight void; still the horses hooved on towards the town. "So Mary slept with a soldier, Panthera? And my mother was seduced by a gypsy? So, so, so ..." The sweat ran rivulets down the creases in his brow. Julian was even more beautiful in his new fever; Peter could not help but see it. He wiped 26

Julian the Magician the sweat away, swaying gently with each sideways shift of the wagon. "A-ha! Alpha and Omega! That mystery is I, and I am that mystery. I am Alpha and Omega, the duality of existence, the attainment of completeness...." The magician's spasms were becoming more frequent, his whole body tried to heave upward, out of some ditch; he threw off the blankets. "Julian!" But Julian did not hear the command. "This is the way of it ... to the four corners of the earth, turn and say lao, lao, lao, lao ... say it, Magician ... Adamas, Sabaoth, Aberamentho . . . manifest yourself...." "Julian!" The command this time was loud, cutting. The magician's eyes wrenched open; he stared long at the boy's anxious face above him. "What's wrong?" asked Julian coolly. "You—you were having dreams... I had to wake you. The fever—" Rot. "Soup?" "No. How long have I slept?" "Not long enough . . . but the fever has subsided. Sleep again now...." "T*»

"

The wagons horsed into town at daybreak. Johann found Peter asleep on the floor beside Julian's bed, his hint of a body wired taut as violin strings, one hand clutching the corner of Julian's blanket. Johann grunted; organized the wagons. A pregnant cat had had nine kittens under the wagon; two were born dead. The rich velvet curtain used as a backdrop for 27

Gwendolyn MacEwen performances was found to have been ravaged by stowaway mice; one white rabbit was diseased and had to be killed to save the others, and two precious mirrors had been smashed by careless packing. A normal arrival. Work was heavy until noon. Julian, still foggy from the fever, had a strange half-smile pasted onto his face; he walked with something of a swagger, unusual for him. Trailing behind from wagon to wagon was Peter, worried as usual. "We'll cancel the performance, Julian? Tell them you're sick?" "My boy, am I a magician if I can't even control the whims of my own body?" Peter would have answered "Yes," but something hedged in the magicians eyes stopped him. (Best not to speak. Help. Keep watch on him. But say nothing.) The magician's regular black robe had been ripped and dragged with weeds from the river; today he wore an odd, loose-fitting thing that left his wrists and forearms bare. Peter inwardly questioned the virtue of such clothes—where in God's name would Julian hide the necessary materials for an act, if not in large, loose sleeves? But say nothing. Don't question. The door was open when they arrived at the big house in the centre of the town. Laughter flooded through—nuptial laughter, abandoned and high-keyed. "We won't knock," said Julian. "We'll just go in as befits those of our fair trade—from the greatest... to the least " They entered, sans paraphernalia, sans curtains, sans boxes, screens, mirrors—sans anything. (Mustn't question it, Peter bit his lip. Mustn't question it.) The laughter ebbed. "Friend!" Julian called with unusual gaiety to the nearest man. "Where is your host?" 28

Julian the Magician "Asleep!" Shouted the man back to him, then stifled an enormous guffaw. "He drank most of the liquor, lost the key to the wine-cellar and left us here to fend for ourselves!" He eyed the man in the strange robe and nervous boy at his heel like a puppy. "And who are you, sir?" "I am called Julian, sir ... I was invited to perform for these guests by the absent host." The man clapped his hands sharply. "Friends! The magician is here to perform for us! To comfort us at the end of our wine!" There was a general fanned-out wave of approval. "He is the magician Julian!" the man added, pleased to have been elected to introduce such a celebrity. Peter noticed Julian stiffen, then stagger slightly to one side. But he seemed to control himself well enough; the smile thickened. He could sense the excitement his name had created throughout the room; the women looked on him adoringly—a general uplifting of faces all about. "We are very fortunate to have someone of such great fame as yourself here to entertain us," the man went on. "Our host must have meant this as a surprise; none of us were aware ..." "Fame is distasteful to me, sir," remarked Julian with cutting simplicity, and the man became suddenly silent. "But the entertainment!" the magician cried, and crossed the floor in five wide strides. "He's so plain for a magician," one woman tittered to the handiest ear, "and blonde!" Peter followed Julian and whispered into that beloved ear, "Julian—no equipment, no curtains—what are you going to do?" 29

Gwendolyn MacEwen "No wine, did you say, sir?" Julian addressed the man again, an odd frightening light pouring into his eyes. (If his eyes had been open during the fever last night, Peter thought worriedly, they would have looked like that...) "Not enough wine to build a grape, sir," the man answered sadly. Julian swung his glance about him; then his eyes grabbed those of the bridegroom, focused there, riveted. The bridegroom was a thin nervous man of thirtyish, the sort that, if he didn't chew his nails, he played with spoons at meals or perhaps had a rabbit twitch at the nose-tip. In fact his nose twitched now, under Julian's iron stare; the eyes defied, then subjected him. "Would the bridegroom care for some wine?" asked the magician slowly, keeping the gaze locked, his voice stepping about one tone deeper than Peter had ever heard. The guests looked on, half-amused, half-uncertain whether or not they should be amused. The bridegroom nodded numbly in the affirmative, wringing his hands like dishrags while his twohour bride stepped coyly behind his almost shoulder. "Peter!" Julian ordered, without yet looking away. "Some water here!" Peter, afraid of that new light in the magician's eyes, listened and looked desperately for some sign, some symbol, some inflection in Julian's voice to convey a hidden instruction, but there was none. He simply wanted water. Perhaps Julian thought he knew this trick, but they had never done it together before. Becoming panicky against his better judgment, Peter brought a pail of water to Julian's side. What did he want him to do? Colouring? Slip some dye in quickly? Was he to 30

Julian the Magician dive into the cellar, straight through the floor and sneak up wine from below? How? He gave Julian an urgent nudge, trying to convey his despair. Julian did not seem to notice; Julian was beyond himself. Peter sweated freely. Oh, heaven . . . what a blow to the magician's fame . . . it was the fever, of course, but it was too late to stop him. Peter prayed, inventing an instant god to pray to. "The bridegroom wants wine?" repeated Julian, the two pairs of eyes still clutching together. Again the nod, the dumb affirmative. "How do you like it sir? Dry or sweet? White, or deep violet?" The bride whispered something to her husband and giggled. "Deep violet!" she piped. "He wants it deep violet!" (Julian, you have no dye with you, no colouring ...) "So be it." Julian leaned over the pail of water. "No!" said the bridegroom, suddenly, torn out of that gaze at last. "I want white wine!" He seemed afraid somehow . . . safer, white wine was safer, that's it. ... "Please, make it white wine, sir...." "So be it," repeated the magician. A disappointed murmur swept up the silence, then ended. Peter thanked God, then realized he did not believe in God and withdrew the invalid prayer. The magician looked down at the water, clamped his eyelids shut as the mouth worked of its own accord, the way it had during the night-fever. Then his head lifted; he shot a glance towards all eyes, filled a glassful of the liquid and took it to the bridegroom. (Oh, Julian . . . it still looks like water. Oh, Julian ...) 31

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen "Your wine, sir. White as a virgin—" Julian bowed before the bride—"and sweet as the heart of a cherry." Amidst a roomful of statues, the bridegroom lifted the glass to his lips; Julian's eyes were upon him, hard. He downed it at once, wiped his brow with a free hand, and handed the glass back delicately. "The best..." he stumbled.... "The best wine, sir—that I have tasted, sir ... in my life," he managed. The statues crumbled. "May I try it?" A big man asked and stepped forward. Julian smiled and held his hand out invitingly towards the pail of water. He was beyond himself; Peter acted quickly. "I'll get it for you, sir!" he offered boyishly, grabbed the nearest glass and started forward. Conveniently, a chair lay between him and the pail; he directed his right toe to the leg of it, swung forward and fell with great flourish. His arm contacted the side of the pail; it tipped beautifully, its contents washing the floor. The boy smiled to himself and got up. "Forgive me," he stammered, acting out his role like a professional. The big man tried to scoop up some of the liquid from the floor with his hands, but the slope carried it away quickly and the cracks sucked it up. He licked his fingers and could tell nothing from the taste of water and dirt. "Forgive me," Peter repeated, "I'm very clumsy at times—" The people shuffled and murmured amongst themselves, watching the beautiful magician. They believed; did it matter that only one person had tasted it? Peter inwardly congratulated Julian on his genius for selecting the perfect type of subject for his concealed hypnotism; the subject at this point looked ill. Julian, it seemed, saw nothing. 32

Julian the Magician They left in a flourish of hands lifted to them like so many flowers, women's hands cupped up towards Julian's face, hands clutching Julian's beautiful quick wrists. Julian, it seemed, saw nothing. The men managed meek smiles as the two cleared the door. Holding his wife's hand in a cold damp grip, the bridegroom watched the disappearing magician, then proposed a dance.

"But there is no wine, "said the woman, and spoke at the door awhile with a tall figure silhouetted against the sunwhite Cana walls rising behind. Presently she went to the slaves and asked them to do what this man wanted. "The waterpots," he beckoned. "The six waterpots, there, by the window ... fill them with water. " So the slaves filled them high and smooth to the waterline where you could see your face drowning in the water. "Take some to the governor, " he said and the servants shot him a pained look, but ran back with their errand. The governor drank, analyzed each drop until a smile of wine, a wine-smile, the sort of smile only the best wine can induce, widened his mouth. "Get the bridegroom," he said, and the servants ran. "Excellent!" said the governor and slapped the hollow between the bridegrooms shoulderblades. "Most hosts throw away their best wine at the beginning of a celebration, then dose out the worst stuff when all are too drunk to care, but you, my good man, have saved the best to the last...." 33

Gwendolyn MacEwen And the maker of wine, the pallid Galilean worker of wonder, sat in one corner, thinking of doves. The people believed his incredible craft, grew new respect for his kind of solemn magic and his disciples believed on him there.

34

three/the riverman

J ULIAN was laughing.

Peter wrung his hands dry in the afternoon. "You must rest, Julian ... it's the fever again...." "The baptism, my dear boy, is not cool, the baptism is of water and fire," Julian grinned to the top of the wagon. "Hence the fever...." Suddenly he flipped from back to side and eyed the boy brownly; Peter waited. "You fell deliberately," the magician said at last, a discovery rather than a reproach, "deliberately killed the wine ..." and his forehead folded with the knowledge. "Why?" he viced Peter's hand. "To save you from disgrace. If you'll pardon me, Julian ... I think maybe you go beyond yourself at times, lift the limits on magic—even your magic...." "Ahhh, a doubter of genius . . . this is good, doubting is good for a time." "I doubt nothing. I'm your apprentice, aren't I? My presence of mind can fill up for your occasional brilliant absence of mind ..." he added, knowing he was being teased, and determined to show some spirit. 35

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen "Poetic ... you should perhaps pursue literature and leave magic to its rightful rabbits, Peter...." "And perhaps your tongue would bring you gold bread and butter in the law-courts, sir." Julian laughed sharply. The boy's spirit pleased him, yet strangely, the magician's humour could not run the same length as the boy's. He sobered suddenly, masked his face. "Has the ice broken on the river yet, Peter?" More and more his statements became allusive and each word volleyed back to its unspoken genesis. Each sentence was a glass window through which you were to look and discover. Stained glass, thickly stained. "It needs warmth first—the spring," Peter said, trying to answer him in the same allusions, but it became a muddle in mind, a mishmash of reference and verbal connection which the boy could only half hope to move in freely. He swept some prodigal hair back from his forehead and sniffed. Already the wagons were pulling out, Johann begrudgingly taking Peter's driver-seat again. For a time the fever ebbed and Julian lay back in semisleep. Dark, curly, wired taut, Peter looked on and sighed. "You little Greek," Julian mumbled with a slight return to the old humour, "you love me all that much, eh?" Embarrassed, the boy joined Johann with the driving. "Greek twice-removed!" he called back through the flap, but Julian slept and did not hear him.

"Bullrushes, the stupid bullrushes . . ." murmured Peter, watching the brown cages stretch and draw along the riverbank 36

Julian the Magician in monotones of colour and the water behind a sluggish backdrop. The bullrushes hugged the river and the road religiously hugged the jungle of bullrushes, and the wagons hugged the road. The pattern would not alter for miles. "How is he?" asked Johann intimately and jerked his head in the direction of Julian. Peter didn't answer. Johann shifted his wide buttocks on the narrow seatboard and concentrated on the horses. "How is Julian?" he asked later more forcefully, angered that he who had followed the magician for years, weathered the weather, the whim, the distance that Julian created, now had to ask a freakish boy for news of his health. "Slight cold. Sleeping now." Peter answered, using the ultimate in word-economy. His eyes fastened to a down-swooping bird in front of the horses; night was elbowing in, insistent, widening. "We'll camp by the river?" Johann meant it as a statement, a decision, but to his annoyance an interrogatory note crept in of its own accord. "There's nowhere else ..." said Peter vaguely and edged the horses off of the road. "Start the fire, will you, Johann?" Grabbed by a dumb fear, the boy sprang back through the canvas flap; Johann and Aubrey shuffled about outside; the horses conversed. He didn't know what he expected to see in the wagon. Julian slept—peacefully, it seemed—with a smile sewed to his lips. But the posture was odd, somehow. The magician had flung back the covers in sleep and stretched his body to the point of pain. The long arms were spread like wings from the chest, the palms turned up; the chin fitted into the hollow between shoulder and collarbone. 37

Gwendolyn MacEwen A tremor shook the boy; he could not pin its cause. Tentatively he placed a hand on Julians forehead; the heat there was intense, generating from deep within. "Julian?" The answer took the form of an unconscious nod. "Julian? Can you hear me?" "Perfecdy, Peter. The fever clears me." Julian spoke from sleep and his fingers curled and uncurled over his upturned palms. Not understanding his own actions, Peter did not try to wake him. Instead he asked, "Julian—what did the bridegroom drink today?" "He drank... what he wanted to drink. I am the... Unhinger of Minds...." An ironic smile turned the magician's mouth. Something in the weird attitude, the absurdity of the scene compelled Peter to continue the questions. "Tell me you are only a craftsman," he whispered, leaning close to Julian's face until his lips scarcely touched the earlobe. The answer was long in coming; Julian had some labour pains in getting it out; he trembled. "Inside the womb ... of the art, my dear Peter . . . is a foetus, another art. The virgin craft ... expands, feeds the other...." "Are you afraid, Julian?" Now the magician's head thrashed back and forth and the beautiful hair, colour of late hay, obscured his brow. He seemed in the throes of a complete spasm, but only the torso could move; the legs and arms were pinned. "Let go of my arms, Peter! Let them go!" Frightened, the boy watched Julian's fingers curl and uncurl in silent agony over the palms. "Nothing is holding you, Julian ... you are free to move...." "I don't want to be divine . . . I don't want them to make 38

Julian the Magician me divine ... they force it, they force it...." Peter was frantic. He tried to take the magician's hands and release them from their invisible ties, but Julian seemed to have harnessed gravity and centred it in his two palms—they would not come away. Julian wept and struggled. Oddly, as the spasms heightened, the sleep deepened. Peter soon knew the futility of physical force. He gathered himself, took his hands away from Julian's body and commanded all possible power under his tongue. "Wake up! Julian!" The magician stilled somewhat, but his eyelids locked. Somehow his pain communicated itself to the boy; Peter winced. "Wake up! Damn you—wake up!" This broke the lock; Julian woke with the swiftness of silence after thunder, the silence of doves in a storm where doves transcend all thunder; doves are the pink knives of perfect silence; cleaving the noise, the madness. Julian stared at the dirty patterns on the canvas. "Gold . . . and FRANkincense . . . and myrrh ..." he began to chant in a slow minor key. His eyes, though open, had retired to some region at the back of his skull, leaving dummies in their places as they went. "Myrrh for the maglCian...." "Stop it!" Peter almost choked on his words. Julian turned over to look at him. "Have I plagued you, my dear Peter? If so I'm sorry... there's some alien . . . heat in me that demands...." "Stay here. I'm going to bring in food for us," Peter said softly and vanished out of the wagon. Outside the campfire fought the pre-midnight black. Sentinel owls peopled the trees, fireflies flew their crazy missions 39

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen between the rushes, crickets, bullrushes, frogs ad infinitum. Meat was being cooked, meat and deep earthy potatoes. It relieved Peter to scoop up the food into plates—there was something so basic and valid in its smell, its heat—something unquestionable and sound, solid meat and potatoes. He started back to the wagon. The atmosphere reached out a ringer and touched him at one point, a nameless quality there in the night, an element of smell or cold or sound arrested him in his tracks. He stopped; looked almost instinctively towards the river. It laboured through the black, still molasses-slow, the same river ... nothing seemed wrong. A figure tore at his left eye; he turned. "Julian!" He was running. Still wearing his long cumbersome robes, Julian was running with a peculiar terrible grace towards the river. "Julian!" Johann ran to Peter's side. "What is it?" "Oh . . . nothing. Nothing—I thought I saw an animal down there by the bank." "Oh, only that? Well, if it's a rabbit, catch it. We need more rabbits.... " Johann turned and left. When all was clear Peter darted down towards the riverbank. Julian was still in sight at least—his blond hair was all madness and bright under the black and a singular purpose seemed to motivate his stride now, feet from the water. Then he stopped, hunched over something—a log, a piece of darkness. A man. Peter housed himself in a clump of bullrushes and watched Julian, a silhouette against the moonwashed river. The other figure was trembling, heaving great drawn-out sobs 40

Julian the Magician while the riverbank rose up to meet his arched spine. Then he sat up, frightened and dishevelled, and his face turned to the magician's in a kind of litany. Julian was saying something to him, but Peter could not catch the words. It was low and soothing, and the magician's absurd hair fell forward as he spoke; windspell, moonwash; the figure quietened. Then Julian spread out his arms winglike, turned a full circle, touched his brow, touched the other's brow in an unknown ritual, and turned again. Peter wanted to scream. And the magician was feverish; he seemed to dance, or weave like some drunken Hassid from Vilna, like that mad Baal Shem Tov that Peter had heard about. Julian danced, O how he moved, manipulating the blackness somehow. The scene staggered, the light came in impossible waves, the focus was smeared.... Peter wanted to scream. But then the figure rose full height and the entire body was a visual litany, directed towards the magician. After a time it doubled, kneed, clutched the magician's thin legs with both arms and wept like a nightchild. Peter screamed. The figure stiffened; embraced Julian once more and ran off. Julian had heard nothing. In feverish mystical bliss he held gaze with the river; the river looked back, thick and pensive, but the river didn't care.

Bethsada at Jerusalem had five porches; to the left people flocked like sheep. The pool itself was crammed with cripples and epileptics, people living in a Sheol on earth. It was the season of 41

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen the angel—when a certain elected divinity visited the pool, stirred it, ejected a sort of heavenly elixir into its watched waters. Then the pitiful scramble would begin—-for the first man to immerse himself in those touched waters would be cleansed of his ailment. The sickman lay abed by the pool "You will be cured?" asked the robed figure, leaning. "I cannot get to the water first," he answered, and his body's nervous disorder made him shake, his bones like dice beneath the flesh. "Someone always horns ahead; takes the place before » me... Bethsada stank in the noon. Soon those waters would begin to stir, charged as with sacred semen from the phallus of the Almighty, and the race would begin. The robed mans hand was cupped gently upon the sickmans spikey shoulder. "Get up," he said. He looked incredulously at the sunclouded face above him. "Get up!" Two pinfired eyes pricked him. "Take the bed and walk away." What was impossible at Bethsada? Perhaps this was the angel after all, varying his mission. And this man letyou believe, somehow ... he let just one link slip in the mind, one link between reason and credulity.... The sickman got up and walked away. Through the sheep market and up the slow hill. And the Sabbath was shattered by the deed.

Peter approached the magician with the hesitance of an intruder. "You shouldn't be here by the river... it's too cold... come back to the wagon. The chill here feeds your fever ..." Julian's dance had slipped away. He was somewhat more

42

Julian the Magician controlled. "More things feed the fever, Peter . . ." his voice seemed to be squeezed through glass. "Eyes on me, blessings from men—sweet terrible blessings—blessings for a grace no man has—" He spoke as though he had never danced, as though he had come to the river for a stroll. "But you live beyond yourself, sir ... must." "With what limitations, my little apprentice? Don't concern yourself, I say ... feed me hot food and your innocent realist's gibberish ... but you can't arrest the fever ... it has roots where no one knows ... it grows like a red weed, like a giant poppy, like a weed with real blood in the leaves ..." Julian's eyes were bordered with red, even in the faint light. Moon shimmied along the waterline like the last shy chorusgirl on an empty stage. Beef-smell came from the wagon's smell of flesh and heat between the bullrushes, smell of meat and night-air ... Peter was thankful for the smell; it grounded him again, basic, solid. ... smell of the last bird descending in new divinity on the river, smell of a thousand bulls sleeping in their rushes.... "I wonder how," said Julian vaguely, "I could tease the bulls up out of their rushes...." "The red in your eyes would have tempted them by now if they were coming," said Peter, and took his arm. Julian was crying. An incongruous smile turned up to meet the tears running downward and ledge them. He walked head down, looking for himself under his feet. "Lubet, lubet..." he began to mutter disorderly, and shook his head. "Lubet?" "Lubet . . . the golden hunger . . . Jacob Boehme and the golden hunger..." 43

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen Peter nodded, not understanding. "Understand it thus, Peter . . ." and Julian seemed to be dipping into memory; his eyebrows furled. "The lubet is the free will, soaring to black or white, the manifestation in man, nature..." He spoke calmly now, and with discipline. Searching for the correct words, he quoted slowly: "Let the artist but consider... how he may awaken the dead and disappeared life which . . . lies hidden and captivated in the curse... .; and if he does—" "Go on," said Peter, fearing Julian's sudden silence. "... and if he does but bring it so far, it works of itself..." The last words were spoken with an awful reverence, with some kind of realization that Julian himself could not convey. His voice became a lisp; whenever he was disturbed, his voice lost its hard steady consonants, the vowels wanted to merge with the tongue-sounds, the diphthongs lengthened and the syllables ran together like water, like the river beside them. And then the riverman was behind them, pulling the magician's arm, wrestling with the wide sleeve of his robe. "Bless you," he stammered, and there were strings of weed and grass on his face. "I came to find you tonight and you have—" Peter tried to pull Julian away from him. " . . . cured me." The riverman doubled in servitude and pressed his filthy mouth to the magicians wrist, just over the intersection of the primary veins there, as though to suck out his very pulse. Peter pulled harder; Julian made no move either way. His lips trembled. "I'll tell the people of you, sir ... tell them to expect your 44

Julian the Magician coming . . . to bless you and your powers from God ..." "We are in a hurry," Peter interjected hastily. At last the riverman ceased his slobbering, shot Julian a last worshipping look and darted away. "From the very God, I swear . . ." his voice came back to their ears, muffled by the dampness and the distance. The two walked on back to the wagons. Julian's head was bent forward; he looked for himself under his shoes.

"Magic on the Sabbath!" cried the bearded rabbi and the group intersected the man in the clean cool robes. Bethsada was behind them, its cripples rotting as though already in death in the afternoon sun. "But I do nothing of myself," the man answered the little clutch of Pharisees who chattered like hairy pigeons. People passed by them, bearing high doves for sacrifice in the temple. "And I do not receive any honour from men," he added, standing to one side. The group discussed their white magician. To condemn or excuse, to charge a mere magician in terms of religious law or drop the matter altogether. The Jerusalem sabbath circled them around. They were perplexed; they pulled their beards for support. "I do not like his eyes," one said. "I do not like magicians..." "And I do not receive any honour from men," came the voice again. And Jerusalem sweated in the Sabbath sun. People passed them by, bearing high doves for sacrifice in the temple.

45

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four/waterwalk

"C/ROSS them! Cross them!" The

twigs lay parallel, two innocent lines. "Cross them!" And Julian took one twig and laid it at intersecting right angles to the other, high up. "No!" "Did you want me, Julian?" "No ... I mean, no cross ... I'm going for simple tricks from now on; glasses, mirrors, veils, numbers . . . all the standard repertoire of my trade, the dull routine of charm and chance given shots in the arm for certainty; adhere to the essentials ... am I right, Peter? Throw the twigs in for firewood, I say!" The boy uncrossed the sticks, broke them. "Our work in the town tomorrow, Julian ..." he began, querulous, hopeful, " . . . a nice neat show? No tag ends, no wine?" "Right. Tricks, mirrors, deceit..." "Not deceit! Induced belief... you taught me that!" "Have it your way . . . but boy, there's no limitation—you see that?" Julian bent over a book. "I believe you, in everything; I'm your disciple, after all..." The magician seemed to wince then—perhaps not a wince, perhaps a bug brushing his eyelashes. Still, he clouded. 47

Gwendolyn MacEwen Someone outside the wagon was singing about fat gay gypsies and snowmen in summer—it was Aubrey. Johann, restless as always, dug into Peter when the chance came, listened with extra ears for dregs of conversation between boy and master. True, there was no commerce between Julian and the others, if there ever had been any. Julian looked to Peter now, queer lights in his eyes, asking something, asking something. Aubrey had caught a field rabbit. "Look!" he cried, carrying into the wagon, white ears stuffed between fat fists, white body dangling absurd in a new civilization. It quivered as only rabbits can—a kind of pink electricity charging the quick pink eyes, jumping the quick pink nose, sensitive to the very pollen in the air, each flake of animation about it. "But it's not pure," said Aubrey in afterthought and put it on the table, crushing its ears underpalm. "Lots of flaws, see? Dirty tail as though he did his business on it, blotchy brown and grey on the back .. .we can eat it, I suppose ..." "We'll not eat it," asserted Julian with more solemnity and weight than the situation warranted. "We'll use it in the show, eh? Why the hell am I confined to white rabbits, anyway? Can't I employ impurities in the act, when the act is an impurity?" Peter began to interrupt—Julian barged on over him, trying, it seemed, to convince himself of something. "That's it! Brown rabbits, broken mirrors—I'll smear bull's blood on my clothes and tie a living bat around my head, let it flap flap, just for effect, and tie my shoes with rat's tails instead of laces, and wear human teeth around my neck ... O, think of it..." "Why do you have to bother about effect?" Johann put in quickly. "You just need to raise your little finger and the people hear bells. Why—" 48

Julian the Magician "Please leave, Johann. And keep the rabbit; eat it if you want—I don't care what you do with it." The wagon emptied. Johann spat largely when he got outside. "Something's happening to him," he muttered to Aubrey. "Anyway, kill the thing . . . we'll eat it ourselves." The wagon was naked in silence save for the sound of a centipede scuttling along the floor. Julian turned away from the overt worship in Peter's eyes; it was terrible. Yet for a reason beyond himself, he needed it. "I am a magician," he said, addressing the centipede. "You are more than a magician, Julian . .." Peter mooned the words, caressed them. "I am a magicianl" cried the magician, fighting the centipede, the boy and himself. "And I will wear bull's blood on my clothes and living bats in my hair! Tell me I am more than a magician; what is more than a magician?" "O, Julian . . . the riverman . . . what did you do there?" "Spit spittle! Made charms ... peed in the bullrushes!" "What did you cure him of?" "Phobia! All simple stupid phobia that plays on the body when it's through playing with the mind ... elementary nervous disorder . . . wipe the mind and the body follows ..." "But how?" "I drew out the bulls in the rushes! smeared their blood on my clothes! wove three circles! simple trickery, nothing more ..." "You're lying to me, you're lying to yourself." "Stop it!" "Something ..." Peter began and his mouth twisted oddly to form the words, "... almost christlike ... I don't know . . . " 49

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen "You're wrong—it's your youth, that's all. The only christlike thing about me is that I took my apprenticeship outside of my own country and Christ took his in Egypt where he acquired marvellous powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves... a wicked and God-hated sorcerer whose miracles were wrought by magic, not divine powers. Unquote— Celsus. Don't question what I am, boy ..." Julian ended with a flourish, but his eyes refused to look at Peter. "I don't question. This is my point," said the boy and brought on a charged silence. The centipede juggled its way up the table-leg and levelled out. "May you be drowned in magic manure," said Julian at last with a feeble return to the old humour. Then—"No! No—I am a simple trickster. I will not have anything else imposed on me!" "But you press belief onto others. It is their right to press something on you in return." The centipede bristled to the middle of the table. Julian hesitated, then brought his full fist down upon it. The knuckle of his little finger smashed it in the center of its body; it flattened, widened in a bloody circle, formed a red web. Julian regarded his stained fist. Curious blood colour, centipedes have, he thought—not quite red—hints of green and yellow ... Ashamed, Peter wiped the table clean. He had entered the dream now; no more could he save Julian from disgrace, be the stable element in the act. His value as the rigid partner was smeared, null and void. He had edged into the dream and the mystery; he must ride with it; add to the fever; grow with the intoxication of it. And his beautiful beloved Julian was alone to bear the weight of his own genius while his people 50

Julian the Magician threw him golden garlands until he screamed under the suffocating weight of a million flowers . . . O. it was incongruous and unfair ... and inevitable. "I'm going to paste stars and moons on my robes," said Julian with a sort of pitiful simplicity. "Charcoal my eyes and dye my hair and make myself look like a magician." "You can't do it," said Peter. Julian nodded and went to bed. The last gasp of winter chilled the air.

In the middle of the night a dream arrested him—not a violent one, but quiet, insistent. Dressing, still in half-sleep, he went down to the river and stepped onto a thin ice-sheet. He walked a few steps on it, smiled, and walked a few more. The unleashed spring current gurgled beneath his feet and carried the ice-sheet downstream a few yards. The magician smiled again, walked to the edge and stepped off onto the waiting bank. The ice broke in minutes and tumbled down the river in dices of white, but Julian was already halfway back to the wagon.

"On the water?" asked the man and whacked his camel vigorously. "Verily." "Where?" "Near Capernaum. So it is said by those that were in the boat—his followers..." "On the water?"asked the man again, and whacked his camel harder.

51

Gwendolyn MacEwen

In the morning winter had broken its bonds, lifted the cold white shackles. The joyous river like a girl come of age, ran its miles with new motive; the morning ached with a new heavy grace—the whole first spring mellow mild sugar morning; Peter looked for flowers. But there were none to get. Still, with incredible optimism, he came back with fistfuls of last year's devilweed preserved in a rocky crevice through the winter. "Shall we—" he asked of the early morning magician, "—go into town bearing devilweed? Speak, master, and I shall obey to the letter." And Julian with no recollection of the last night save a hazy gladness, as of a dream dreamt to the hilt, its contents forgotten, was in a rare mood. The fever had broken, along with the ice; he chuckled for the first time in days. "Not last year's devilweed, cluck! We'll enter bearing signs, mirrors, gloves of glass, diminutive moons, mystic thistles, frog's guts, rabbits and albino ants! Because magicians—" he added, biting off a hunk of black bread "—do not live by bread alone, anymore than people—" he continued, chewing vigorously "—live by magicians ..." Peter giggled. All was buoyant and riotous; spring slid their veins. Julian winked at him—the dark eyelid descending pushed away memory and previous fever. "You're so blond ..." said Peter spontaneously. "Your hair gets brighter and brighter—like the sun rising ..." "I must darken it to avoid attention. Though I'll bet we enter the village this morning with an ovation of dogs and chickens. But I'm happy to slide in unawares, do a show with 52

Julian the Magician the routine of washing a face—then leave, pockets full and mind empty." Julian stretched his body to the morning and reached for the robe Peter handed him. "You're lying, sir. But never mind." "Yes, I'm lying, Peter. And never mind. Ah well . . . my memory of the last few acts is blurred—blessedly blurred." "Yes," said Peter, fanning the pretense and starting the horses. The village was one human being. Its residents all sprang from more or less the same stock, were involved in more or less the same occupations, thought the same thoughts, formed such a closely-knit cloth of populace that they were, collectively, a singular person. It had its moods and pitfalls, skirted on all sides by flouncing farmland, prey to the whim of weather and soil, subject to the most excruciating labour pains in harvest-time . . . so that the villagers were likewise a people of supressed whimsy, of stifled gaiety and caprice that could collectively flare or collectively sleep. When unhinged, their emotions could distort and exaggerate, reaching unheard-of heights or depths, compensating for the drabness of daytoday grind. Naive, they were as innocent as the grain they grew, as rich as the first crop they wrestled out of the soil, as childlike as their own children. They were waiting at the outskirts of the village for the magician's arrival. The village idiot who had disappeared the night before, had come back strangely sobered in early morning and told them to expect the coming of a wonderworker, a man of God. Alarmed and puzzled at his sudden lack of shake, lack of slobber about the mouth, they gathered early to await the coming. 53

Gwendolyn MacEwen Julian peered through the front flap at the gathering as they approached. "They're mad," he muttered, but his front teeth dug into his lip nevertheless. Cries of welcome like salient arms rose out to greet the wagons. Julian sank back into his seat; the teeth dug harder; no blood came. The wagons stopped. A general shuffle. Peter was yelling his instructions to Johann and Aubrey; equipment banged and clattered; the horses conversed and the crowd screamed. No blood came. "They want you, it seems, Julian. Ready?" The boy's bright face lifted the magician's spirits somewhat. Julian pulled his cloak tightly about the shoulders, sucked in his cheeks and stepped out of the wagon. Blurs of colour, crazy kaleidoscopes of peasants' clothes— yellow and grain-brown and red, dotted kerchiefs, apple faces, blue trousers, striped peppermint skirts, no one approached him, but he could feel a myriad eyes tangle in his hair, his face, touching, reverent, searching. The pinpoint silence his appearance created was shocking. Suddenly he was hopelessly aware of his own arresting beauty—he could scream at the blondness of his hair, the startling depths of his impossible eyes, the arms hanging limply at his sides, hard and white, the outstanding blueveins at his wrist, the delicate strength of his fingers, the quick knuckles and loose joints. Feeling himself, alive and watched in every section, every corner of his being, he became loaded with the weight of it; he dulled blessedly for a moment and bowed his head. Even then, he was intensely aware of the hair falling over his forehead, aware, aware that every eye in the crowd was aware of the hair falling over his forehead, power in his slightest motion ... 54

Julian the Magician

The innocence and early virtue of the spring morning had been obscured, the quick delight of the black bread, the joking devilweed; the innocence was robbed him again; he had to fill his place. "We thank you all for the warmth of your welcome," he said, choking on the words, opening and closing his hands at his hips, squeezing up his toes in his shoes, pleased that that one motion was outside of their sight. The women nestled in the corners of his eyes gazed and smiled. One stepped forward on an impulse and caught him about the wrist. "Sir—" she said thickly, "I thank you for what you did for my son. I—I am a widow," she went on, and her red bandana fell from her head, "and—" He looked at her blankly. "My son, sir ... was sick, and you cured him." The riverman, Peter thought. But Julian didn't seem to remember. Politely, he accepted the woman's thanks, and she, her wide plum face beaming, bent and kissed his hand. Her idiot son stepped up behind and smiled foolishly, his face cleaned now of the weeds and dirt from the river, a curtain drawn over his eyes. Finally the two backed away into the crowd. The villagers were impressed beyond measure by the magician's humility. They were full of the glorious story of the river-scene and the divine cure in the bullrushes. Watch as they would watch, the idiot hadn't thrown a single fit since he'd returned. At last the people had the courage and inspiration to press forward and form a throbbing circle around Julian, their faces taking on the colours of their clothes, fusing and blending, red, yellow and blue. Tight and tighter. 55

Gwendolyn MacEwen A man with a bulbous nose and a cheek full of apples stepped out of the crowd. He seemed to be an official of the village; he coughed, spluttered and entered the inner circle. Nose twitching as in a state of perpetual itch, he shooed the people away and turned to Julian. "My name is Philip Korowitch, sir—and I apologize for the enthusiasm of the townspeople." His voice was gruff, he seemed to speak through wads of sandpaper. "I am judge and physician of this village—and no doubt the only sane man here today. They need coddling, these people ... they're children, you see ..." Philip Korowitch itched, bristled and pulled his red beard. Peter noticed he was deliberately keeping his gaze away from directly encountering Julian's. Briefly, he made plans for the performance. Briefly, as though anxious to have the thing over and done with, he directed them to the village hall. "Thank you," said Julian smoothly and smiled a little. Philip grunted and turned away.

56

five/Ivan

"T HE magician's function," said Julian later at an informal meeting with the town elders. "The magician's function ..." he began again addressing the warped dinner table under his left elbow, "... is to celebrate the ego." He paused for effect and to run his tongue over the words and the thick wine. Peter watched him concernedly—Julian had loosened his cloak, leaving a bare muscular throat under a sandy rustic shirt laced haphazardly at the top with strings of leather. Small beads stood out on the skin in the hollow dip between collarbones; the throat worked silently, undulated in easing the wine from mouth to stomach. "Whose ego?" asked Philip Korowitch, pulling his red beard that seemed to visibly grow by the minute. "Anyone's," was the slurred answer. "It takes a place normally occupied by small gods, large gods, etc. But the magician is basically the sole conscious agent in the course of things. All the elemental laws come under his hand; he manipulates; he controls... he is the true forerunner of every science, every religion ..." 57

Gwendolyn MacEwen Eyes eased over to Philip Korowitch, town physician, at this remark. He stiffened slightly, but the wine had barbed his tongue sufficiently to meet Julian on his own grounds. "Don't you speak of the magician of antiquity, sir? Surely the god-like powers of the magician belong in primitive societies, and only in primitive societies ..." "Who's to say where the primitive society ends and the enlightened society takes over, Mr. Korowitch?" retorted Julian, enjoying the physicians apparent intelligence. "O yes," he went on, "at some point the elements of magic were forked off into science and religion. The magician, the maker of rain, the manipulator of natural forces lost his power to the belief, firstly, that the course of nature was governed by unseen, yet conscious minds—hence religion—and secondly, that man himself had the intellectual capacity to tap the systems of these natural courses and bend them to his own ends—hence early alchemy, hence science, hence physicians . . ." Julian added with a wry smile directed to Korowitch. "But enlightened or not, people are still sheep, they still follow what their intelligence denies, but what their hearts accept without question. A man of science, of course, cannot accept where logic and reason play no part—where only immediate belief and inspiration are the motivating forces ..." "And trickery?" asked the physician, leaning over so that the sleeve of his shirt blotted wine from his untouched glass. "What can I say?" said Julian and tilted wine down his throat. "Trickery. Tell us about trickery... the magician of this age cannot believe he works in inspired patterns, he must know his own deceit." 58

Julian the Magician "Or his ambiguity, sir," answered Julian with sudden gravity. "Magic and mysticism can run parallel lines ..." "Trickery. Tell us about trickery." "My good man—do you believe what I do is mere craftsmanship, mere deceit?" "V Yes. " "Then, sir, you are right." Peter sat in silent agony at the magician's side. Julian was safer when he was withdrawn, he thought. Wine loosened more than his tongue. "I must leave soon," he stammered and got to his feet, but Julian pulled him down. "The only trouble with my apprentice," he remarked cheerfully, "is his deplorable disrespect for the truth. Peter sit down—this gentleman is about to say something." "Then I am right in supposing the predominant element of trickery?" a /"i 55 Correct. "And I am also justified in asking you to resolve that statement with the previous statement, sir, regarding the magician as manipulator, as taking the place of conscious, active agent in the course of things?" "You may ask me that, sir." "I am asking you that, sir." "Then I will answer that in this age when I refer to 'the course of things,' I refer to the courses of the human mind. I am not involved in rain-making, sun-rising or anything which suggests tampering with nature unless, of course, you consider the human mind as facile and tamper-able as sun and rain ..." "This is madness! You're confusing your subjects, sir!" 59

Gwendolyn MacEwen "What I accomplish, hinges solely on what is already potent and existing in the minds of those I perform for. My audience creates me, sir—over and over—I do not tamper with their minds, I merely open them a little, I do not force belief, I let them believe what they will. There is a very delicate distinction here, sir, which you with your analytical mind may find difficult to grasp." "I do not understand." "Of course not, sir. That's the beauty of it." "In this town, sir," said the physician with mounting annoyance, "I alone can lay claim to some degree of rationality. I was educated in the City; I act as physician and judge to the townspeople. Now—" "I congratulate you, sir, on your fine scholastic achievements." "Would you dare perform in the City, sir?" asked Korowitch, pleased with his own quick tongue. All eyes turned to Julian; Peter winced. But Julian was smiling a kind of oily smile, smile of the old fever. "Would Christ have healed in Rome, sir?" he asked, and drank more wine. The hour was late, and they were forced to spend the night in the physician's house. Treated with all the concern given to two rare eagle's eggs, they were nested in oceanic beds under mountains of quilts with a benevolent fire at the room's southerly end. Mrs. Korowitch, to her husband's disgust, pampered the magician to an extreme; he had made her eyes widen with wonder, so she said; he was a truly exceptional man. But the wine had brought back the fever in its arms like a bloody baby; Julian tossed in sleepless sleep. "Something's 60

Julian the Magician happening," said Peter out loud and sat up in bed. "Something's happening," he repeated and levelled out again, turning to one side so he could keep an eye on Julian. The fire hopped over the beautiful tossed face—a fire the colour of ripe carrots, drawing out Julian's faint olive colouring, heightening it. Mid-fever the magician spoke. Peter looked on in hopeless concern.

"Then if any man shall say unto you—Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false christs and false prophets and shall show great signs and wonders . . . "

But the following morning the fever had subsided; it was more of a nocturnal thing. The villagers had collectively— Philip's wife among them—urged that the magician stay and give one more performance that evening; under the iron suggestion, Peter and Julian stayed. "But please drink no wine tonight," implored the apprentice. "You have my word, Peter. It will be a magnificent performance." Oddly, Julian's very terrible open-ness in speech that had crept up lately, was the most enigmatic corner the boy discovered. Previously, the casual mystery, the self-enclosure had been unfathomable—naturally so. Now Peter ceased to fathom anything, only followed, worried, loved. The room filled; Korowitch sat in the front row, worrying his beard between two fingers. All had returned for this second performance; the women wore new colourful scarves, some of 61

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen their finest at that. "Ahh, he is beautiful, Marya ..." said one fat woman in the second row, and her eyes strayed down to the magicians exposed wrist, the beautiful blue crossing of the veins there. O, her son, her father and her uncome prince were on that stage for her now ... "I would produce rabbits," Julian began, cleaving the hush. "But I fear you are tired of rabbits ..." "Instead," Julian skipped on, "I will offer my services to any request from the audience, within or without reason." "Would you make a camel go through the eye of a needle, sir?" asked one thin man from the back row, embarrassed at his own daring. Julian smiled and his eyes lengthened. A strange trait— Julian's eyes never widened in surprise or excitement—they lengthened visibly. "What is your trade, sir?" "I am a merchant." "And well-clothed, I see. Then I understand why you want to see a camel go through the eye of a needle, sir ..." The people laughed; they did not know what else to do but laugh. (What does he want with heaven? muttered Korowitch inwardly.) "I—I am not a rich man, sir," stammered the thin man in the back row, and people laughed again. "But your buttons are gold. I can see from here," Julian remarked without malice. "Peter—bring me a needle, if you please." Peter brought him a needle. Julian held it in his left hand; looked at the audience. "Has anyone here ever seen a camel?" He asked. A collective "no" waved through. None of them had. 62

Julian the Magician "Well, my friends," Julian said, holding up a piece of thread for their inspection. "This is a camel." "It's a piece of thread, God damn you, magician!" roared Philip Korowitch in black wrath. "Have you ever seen a camel, sir?" "Pictures, man! Everyone knows what a camel looks like!" "Are you prepared to prove to me that this is not a camel, sir?" "Yes, of course!" "On the basis of what you have seen in pictures?" "Yes!" "Then you will not mind if I, in turn, prove you are not a physician on the basis that you do not resemble any pictures I have seen of physicians . . . sir?" "Dammim," muttered Korowitch and sat down. The crowd lost itself in laughter. Slowly Julian drew the thread through the eye of the needle. The women delighted in the twistings of that beautiful wrist, the subtle turn, the blue intersection of vein, like the thread itself—thin and strong.... He bowed. Applause snowed through the room. "Trickery," snorted Korowitch, and shook his head in disgust at the people's ignorance. "Are there any more requests?" Julian called out. A man stood up. A small man from the back. All heads turned. It was Ivan; they knew him well. "Cure me, sir," he said. He was blind. Two hideous black patches hid the sick eyes, as though confirming the blindness and killing even the stubborn half-light that might prick the deadest pupils. A hush cut the room; a heavy man called Carl was trying to pull 63

Gwendolyn MacEwen the blind man, his brother, back into his seat. The people kept silent in mass-pity. Ivan had been blind since birth and nothing could be done for him. The physician had long given up the case, and the townspeople treated the unfortunate with respect and restraint. His older brother Carl, was constantly with him, but now Ivan was tearing himself away from his clutch, and tapping his way up the aisle. They could do nothing. To stop him would be cruel; Philip Korowitch covered his face and sighed. All eyes turned to the magician. The blind man had gone up onto the stage and was standing at Julians right hand. Julian seemed to waver. (The sickness, thought Peter in panic, the sickness coming on ) "Cure me," Ivan mumbled, finding where Julian stood and taking hold of his arm. The black patches turned up to the magician's face like two swollen pupils. For a moment Julian seemed frightened; his own eyes were edged with red. The silence was too long as Julian wavered. The women twisted their kerchiefs; the men bit their lips. Julian was thinking of the river man; Peter knew it. The riverman sat in the audience, with his divine idiot face fastened on his redeemer. "Do you believe, I can cure you?" asked the magician, suddenly regaining his voice. "I believe there is sight in me, for I saw you as you drew the camel through the eye of the needle. I believe you." Ivan's voice was soft, reverent. Overcome, the physician got up from his seat and crossed the floor. "Ivan's been blind since birth," he informed Julian, trying to break the terrible tension and putting an arm across the blind man's shoulder. "Nothing can be done " 64

Julian the Magician

But Julian's stare was too much. The red rims, the pinpoint pupils . . . Korowitch moved away. Julian removed the black patches gently from Ivan's eyes; stopped—listening, it seemed, for something behind his ear. Then his movements became almost automatic—a re-play, a pattern previously followed; there was a new deliberation in what he did; he knew. Peter put a fist over his mouth to block a cry. Julian spat on the dirty floor; the people were in collective trance; no one moved. (Clay sparrows, thought Peter hopefully. He's only making clay sparrows....) But Julian was not making clay sparrows. Julian was rubbing the dirty spittle over Ivan's locked eyelids; no one moved. "Go to the river," he said at length, "and wash ..."

"Go to the pool of Soloam," the man said. "And wash." Jerusalem shivered in the coming dark.

"He will not come back!" Carl screamed from the back row. "You'll kill him!" Still—no one made a move to stop Ivan from stumbling through the door out into the night. Towards the river. Half an hour passed. The women twisted their scarves into knots; the physician wrung his beard; Carl seemed to weep. Yet no one moved away to find Ivan. Peter stood over the hunched Julian, unable to touch him. Horses whinnied outside; the spring night entered with its sounds, its smells. 65

Gwendolyn MacEwen Then a figure ran in the door and threw itself at the feet of the magician. It dripped with riverweed and grass. "I can see}" it screamed and attached itself to Julian's ankle. "I can see!" it said and turned itself to the people. "ALL OF YOU!" it screamed and the eyes ran tears and riverwater.

And the Pharisees asked the man how it was that he had regained his sight, and the man answered that he had put clay upon his eyes and washed them and he saw and—

"You are no magician, sir ... you are a man of God...." Ivan whimpered and clutched Julian's ankles so he could not move. Julian swayed back and forth, trance-like. Ivan got up and threw his arms as though to embrace the audience; round and round the riverweed circled. "A man of God!" he screamed. "Divine, divine ..." Peter waited for the crisis; it came soon enough. Quickly the audience was charged, sprang back into life, grinded like an engine in the cold, then gained volume, augmented, feeding the inevitable panic. "A man of God...." More people took up the shout, began to heave forward from their chairs towards their divine black-christ on stage. A small cry, the size of a simple start, escaped Julian; he backed away, his eyes like those of a frightened maddened rabbit, one of his own frightened maddened rabbits. "The back door!" called Peter, firm, yet panicky, and grabbed the magician's hand. "There's no time! The back door...." 66

Julian the Magician The horses waited for them in the yard. Julian mounted, weeping like a child. Peter mounted, kicked the ribs of Julian's horse with a force that could have punctured the flank; slapped his own horse, and the two bolted off. Julian looked back just once, scarcely able to see through the swollen eyes. The figures were far away, milling like insects around the house; their cries were muffled, but still the same . . . "A man of God! Divine, divine ..." they cried, looking for their black christ among the trees.

"Mad!" shouted the Pharisees. "He's possessed with devils!" "Magician! Sorcerer!" they screamed in righteous fury and picked up stones to chastise him for his blasphemy, chastise the white magician from Nazareth.

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six/Lazarus

B UT the horses somehow

got separated; Peter and Julian had been galloping in quick parallels—Julian just a thin minute behind the boy, when once he swung off in a wide frantic arc and crashed through a clump of dense trees. Peter heard the smashed branches, the sandpaper scrape of myriad twigs on the horse's broad flank yard after yard deeper. "Julian!" And he swung his own horse off to the right. But the broken patch had been sucked in, the point of Julian's entry obscured. The twigs crackled deep in the underbrush; there was no direction. Peter and his horse frenzied, ran circles in front of the trees. They tried to enter, puncture the tightness of bush, but it was futile. The underbrush area stretched too far in all directions to circle around it. Peter said another prayer to the God he did not believe in and went back to camp. That night Julian slept under a blanket of pine needles after eating nuts and wild berries like a true Essene. A skinny slice of moon held the sky on its shoulders, or maybe a fat black sky was holding a skinny moon on its shoulders—it was hard to tell. 69

Gwendolyn MacEwen Boehme spoke of a silver sickness, Julian thought,—well that's what the moon's got—a silver sickness, in which case it follows that it's the sky holding the moon up. Somehow this muddled him; there should be no ambiguity in nature, no bi-metaphor, one as valid as the other. So he settled down under the pine needles and directed his mind to a concept of unity, absolute unity. His own bloodveins stretched for the riverroots which...; all held silent communion; all were a part of; all tapped the latent elements of seed and death undertree, underroot. The world was a green cornucopia on God's banquet table, housing magician devilweed flower fruit horse and sparrow. The fever was high as the sick moon overhead. The needles pricked him and the pricks were good; the smashed twigs had scratched him and the scratches were good; the good blood from his face was good, the red skin-patterns, the gone horse. The fever, he thought, was also good. He must lengthen it. Peter hoped to find Julian back in the town. Early morning he started out against the wishes of the irate Johann who wanted to go along. Peter assured him he knew exactly where the magician was, and asked Johann to hold camp instead. Johann spit, and held camp. Half way to town Peter smeared dirt over his face and pulled his cap down tightly over his forehead. He wore old clothes—no one would recognize him. Though he made a wide search in the village, whistling, hands in pockets, eyes bent to every corner, Julian was not there. And there was an alien air in the village that morning; the people's faces were unusually taut, their eyes held a singular purpose, the merriment and wonder were gone. A premonition grabbed him; he followed a group to the town centre. 70

Julian the Magician As he approached the uneasiness thickened. A big absence of red and blue scarves. A predominance of black. No one smiled; no one was smiling there. "I say split up into groups of four or five men and fan out!" a man was hollering. "That's the only way we'll be successful...." "No! We'll all go to their camp in a bunch. He's bound to be there!" Peter shouldered closer in. The physician, he noticed, was standing off to one side of the circle, solemn as stone, twitching his red beard with a new fervour, as though pulling maggots from it. Eventually he spoke up and the noise dimmed. "Must we act like animals? Ivan's dead; our first job is to bury him. I personally am against any form of violence in dealing with the magician. He must be brought to trial and dealt with rationally...." "To hell with your rationality, Philip Korowitch!" It was Carl now, the dead man's brother. "Was there any in Ivan's death?" "I've told you—I haven't yet decided on the actual cause of death! Do you understand? I haven't decided?" shouted the physician. "I am not certain whether the blame even lies on what the magician did or did not do to Ivan!" Exasperated, Korowitch leaned against a wall and re-attacked his beard. Peter took his opportunity in the commotion that followed. "Excuse me," he began, approaching a handy woman to one side, "what's the trouble here?" The woman spat, did not bother to look at him as she answered. "You don't know? A rotten magician did it, a rotten magician practised his filthy pranks on Ivan, a blind man. Covered his poor dead eyes with his filthy spittle and mud 71

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen and sent him down to the river to wash . . . killed him, I tell you—killed him!" "O? Did this man, Ivan, drown then?" "No, you idiot! He came back, screaming something about being able to see, which, of course, none of us believed— none of us—and—" "An excellent magician, then, to work such wonders...." "Ha! Wonders! Ivan, the poor devil, probably only thought he could see ... that's no wonder...." "But the death? You said Ivan died " "I said Ivan was killed, boy! Yes. An hour later he dropped dead; dead. First he thrashed about like a lunatic; then dropped. Dead. Murdered, I tell you! I say search for him now!" Her voice rose to a scream. "Search for the bastard!" For a moment Peter remembered this same woman's face as it had been the night before. Front row. Red scarf. Lips curved; dreamy-eyed and blissful watching the magician on stage before her. Any other time it would be funny. But heads were bobbing up and down affirming her demand. The physician had lost. "But I tell you, I don't yet know the cause of death . . ." he piped up feebly. "I am the judge of this town! I demand attention " He got none. "We'll bury Ivan tonight..." spoke up Carl, acknowledged leader of the party. "Only after we've found the magician!" "Who's coming with me to their camp?" Five or six men bunched together to one side. Peter looked around for an opening. His eye caught a figure standing close to Philip Korowitch, whimpering like a spaniel. "But he cured me .. ." the man whined.... "Won't anyone listen ... the magician cured me " 72

Julian the Magician

The riverman. The river . . . a hope turned him and Peter went for his horse. It was noon. The townsmen had split up into search parties going to camp or bush; Peter was alone going riverward. He followed the hem of the water for miles, working back and back towards the baptismal point, that subtle bend where the fever had been born. Overhead the riverbirds circled and straightened, met in quick conference and dispersed; the river seemed to increase its speed by minute. Riding counter-river Peter felt its pull backward, as though it were trying to reverse his direction and draw him away from the magician. Now the sun was pulling the afternoon west. He had to be just ahead. Peter urged his horse through weed and bullrush. Finally the river curved; a bird screamed overhead. Julian was fifty feet away, dismounted, gazing at the river. Peter slipped from his horse and approached him. Julian was singing softly under his breath; his robe dragged with weed and slime; small cuts on the horse's flank bled freely. "Julian . . . ?" The song was cut off. Julian's gaze was fierce at first, then softened. "What do you want of me, Peter, my boy?" "You've got to come back... there's trouble in the town—" "O?" the voice was distant, ethereal. "And you want me to come back, do you, Peter? Well, well, where does my duty lie?..." "Ivan's dead. The people are after you." "Dead," said Julian and looked at the river. "Dead! There's no time... you've got to come back with me!" "Dead," said Julian and looked at the river. His eyes were ice under the fallen hair. "The death is no matter, but—" 73

Gwendolyn MacEwen "Come back! We've got to pack up and get out; already they're in the camp for you!" "Yes yes yes, but poor Ivan . . . it's no matter. There's a job to be done now. When do they bury him?" "Tonight. Do you understand? No time!" "Four days then ... only four days ..." Julian mounted his horse in cool grace. "What are you talking about?" Peter clutched the reins in frustration. "Are you coming with me?" "O no, my dear Peter ... I can't come yet. Wait for me in a few days ..." He started to wheel about. "Julian! For the love of God—they'll find you!" Peter stumbled sidewise to avoid the horse's hooves, still with hands on rein. Without warning Julian leaned and brought the back of his hand across the boy's face. Peter fell back, incredulous and frightened. "I'm truly sorry, Peter . .. but you must understand—I've only got four days ..." The horse bolted back along the riverbank. Peter rubbed his hurt face; he cried wildly for a moment, then started for his horse but it had wandered up the bank. By the time he'd found it it was too late to overtake him.

The villagers had raided the camp that afternoon, angered to tears at their inability to find their black christ. They left and went back to the village to bury Ivan. The service was gone through hastily and with little real conviction. An hour later all had left the fresh plot, even Carl, whose misery had been so channelled off into vengeance that there was no room 74

Julian the Magician for tears or remorse. Only the little riverman remained for a time afterwards, whimpering incessantly over the young grave "but he cured me . . . he cured me . . ." as though the corpse would hear him and rise to shake hands for their mutual redeemer. Finally he left, uncomprehending, wanting his mother. It was well past midnight when Julian found the graveyard; he dismounted. He smelled the new near flowers and followed their signal to the fresh grave. No wind moaned; no phantoms were breeding in the trees; no equivocal voices rose above the dovegray tombstones. (All necessary phantoms are housed in the mind, thought Julian—the trite graveyard and the comical casket are only handy symbols for the mind's housed horror, and that horror is born of the natural, not the supernatural....) Julian's lips were stained with berries and his beautiful eyes had fallen back into the skull, leaving dummies in their places. Quietly he scooped the turned earth back from the casket; quietly he wrenched the lid open.

"Lazarus," he said, "come forth . . . "

The men were leaving camp. "It's safer for him this way," Johann protested. "If he comes back here they'll find him . . . we'll go on and lay low at the next village until you can bring him there...." Peter agreed it was the best thing. The villagers had left the two wagons in shambles that afternoon. Julian's wagon was 75

Gwendolyn MacEwen overturned, his clothes stolen. The men repaired what they could and pulled out, leaving Peter to find the magician. The dawn was horning in when he arrived at the graveyard. It was empty. So was Ivan's grave. Peter followed the hoof-prints of Julian's horse out through the graveyard, back towards the river. "Lazarus—come forth!" The voice ploughed over and over through the bullrushes. Julian leaned over the shapeless shroud in the bright noonlight, following his three-word chant until it was regular as breath. Lazarus did not come forth. Julian screamed and pranced around the figure in feverish frustration like a child who wants candy and gets bread. Ivan below did not respond to the beautiful black christ and his supplications. Ivan slept, in genuine blindness, in genuine sleep. Julian danced and pranced and prayed above him, his hair hung with weed, his robe torn and spoiled with riverwater, one eye always to the river, the chant mechanical as breath. "Come back with me, Julian ..." said Peter, approaching softly. "Or I'll stay here with you until they come." "Three days!" Julian screamed in his direction and fell to the corpse s feet, shivering.... "You cannot keep him for three days. He'll rot." "Three days to raise the dead divine essence of life ... three days to uncover—perfection ..." Julian wept to the stiff feet under the shroud. "O, Lazarus, lazarus, lazarus ..." "But—" Peter began, trying to maintain control. "And you are the last of all to believe, my Peter. My first disciple who loves Julian so much.... I tell you he must be alive within three days ..." 76

Julian the Magician "Come with me to the next town. You'll be safe there to do your work. I promise." Julian looked dubious. Peter closened and placed his hands on the magician's shoulders, trying not to look at the figure below them. "Have you eaten?" "I need not eat." "Come to the next town. You can bring Iv—Lazarus with you and work there in peace, my Lord...." "Yes . . ." Julian smiled a berry-stained smile. There was berry]uice like blood on his robe; there was berryjuice like blood on his face; there was berryjuice like sweet blood on the clean white cloth below them. "Yes, I'm coming. . . ." He picked up Ivan tenderly and doubled him over the horse. "Here," said Peter, bringing a large blanket from under his horse's saddle. "Cover him with this, so no one will see. . . ." Peter mounted and led the way. "This way, my Lord," he said, and Julian followed. The journey was long and straight. Julian sang like an angel for many hours.

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seven /the last supper

IN Ivan's village night had fallen. And a shadow of evil had fallen—like a wide wing. Now in the dark towncentre Carl fired up the people again. A kind of hot justice took over. Philip Korowitch was verbally trampled underfoot. "Do you want me to leave you, then?" he roared to the crowd. "Who will deliver your babies for you, eh?" "The mothers, Philip Korowitch!" one woman shrieked in return. "Like before! They come out, a midwife whacks them and cleans up the mess!" The people yelled in glee—they were gaining a new sort of freedom, action was in their hands. And Carl, their right hand, could be cruel—and cunning. His intelligence was out of proportion to his compassion. "Wait!" he said, raising a hand. "I say we organize one group and ride off to the next village . . . the magician must be heading that way—there's nowhere else he can go—" "Yes, yes! And kill him there!" "No. We bring him back here. For trial...." Carl asserted and smiled. All eyes turned to Korowitch at this. 79

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen So he was caught; he had to accept their demands. Yet, he thought, a trial was good—it would sober them. And by that time surely he could come up with a convincing cause of death—something that would sway the guilt away from Julian. A little calmed, he nodded in affirmation and started to leave. "Why are you—" Carl spoke up, glancing about him to make sure all heard, "of all people, so hesitant in dealing with this devil, eh?" Philip said nothing, continued walking. "When he first came here you fought him more than all of us ..." Carl teased. Philip stopped but did not speak. "Are you afraid of him, Philip Korowitch, eh? Is that it? What does the man represent to you?" His words hung unanswered in the air; Philip disappeared through a door. "All right! I want five men and five men only!" ordered Carl. "Boris, Stefanne "

"It's all right," spoke up Julian suddenly with a bright reverence in his voice. "Lazarus has been raised—at last " "Yes, yes I think so, my Lord—see, the body is moving behind you " "No no no ... the body is no matter. Lazarus has been raised in heaven," said Julian and his face was a white mask of pure bliss. "I heard trumpets, trumpets unlike anything on this earth—mellow trumpets, delicate trumpets, yet intense—trumpets made of pure silver ... there, back at the curve of the road ... and I knew it was all right " 80

Julian the Magician "Yes—yes of course... Lazarus has been raised in heaven ... I think I heard trumpets too...." "Take his body, Peter. Bury it quickly by the river. Bury it happily, and with reverence, for Lazarus' true self, his pure silver essence has been lifted from its shackles of bone; it sings; I hear it singing...." Julian gazed at one fixed point as he spoke, his words shaped like hollow reeds, long and deep. The mud and weed in his hair had clotted to form a kind of cap on his head; he sat high. Sick, Peter dragged the corpse down the riverbank, scooped out earth for a makeshift grave. Then he filled it with weeds, bullrushes, earth and Ivan. The task was nauseous; he vomited several times when it was over, dragging out the last dregs from his stomach. For an instant he even thought of running back along the river, leaving Julian to fend for himself, but the idea was squashed as soon as it appeared. Julian— high and straight on his horse, up the bank—was beautiful. Julian was always beautiful. Julian was the Unknown . . . the wonder of the Unknown, the love of the wonder, the persistence of the love. An antique clock with silver hands; a handful of Devil's Paintbrush; apples; fog. Julian smiled down at the boy for the first time in hours when he returned to the horses. "Peter," he said almost painfully, and shook his dirty head in a huge wide sadness. From where he stood, Peter noticed that the moon was directly behind Julian's head. Julian's head was haloed; a silver aura. When he moved on ahead the halo slipped. At the camp fires flared; the men were restless and worried. Johann sat on the ground, looking blankly at his knees and crushing little ants underheel. 81

Gwendolyn MacEwen "When I return ..." Julian was saying joyously as the horses appeared ... "to my beloved disciples," he went on, dropping the reins and widening both arms as though to embrace them all... "I am happy beyond belief... your loyalty fans my heart with a warm flame " Aubrey laughed nervously. No doubt Julian had been drinking again. Best to humour him. "And when you return to us, O master—we rejoice in the most excellent pleasure!" he shouted. Peter dismounted and slipped over to Johann. "Watch what you say to Julian ..." he whispered quickly. "Tell Aubrey you must accept everything he does; no questions; no disputes of any kind—do you understand?" Johann nodded grimly. "Anybody follow you here?" "No. It's safe where we are—just outside of the town." Johann's eyelids blinked and twitched uncontrollably as though a piece of dirt had lodged under them. Peter led Julian into the wagon; Johann listened through the flap. "O and the blind shall see and the lame shall walk. . . ." Julian was chanting while Peter busied himself about the wagon. "Yes, sir—I think that Ivan really did see. He looked straight at that gold button on your cloak—remember? Everyone looks at that first " "Of course he saw, Peter. Faith made him see the gold button and the eye of the sparrow, and—" Suddenly Julian grabbed the boy's arm and drew him down in front of him until Peter was almost on his knees. "Peter, Peter—I can see something in your eyes—a question there ... ask me. Ask me!" 82

Julian the Magician But Peter said nothing. Julian was sick; God only knew when he would come out of it. He must not scream; he must not cry; he must not do anything to disturb Julian more. "I know what that question is! You want to know where the magician has gone, don't you? I'll tell you a story then—just a little parable—listen. When Paul went to the court of Sergius Paulus to preach, there was a wizard there called Elymas, meaning 'the wise.' His real name was Bar-Jesus—but that's a bit of irony you needn't worry about just now. Now this Elymas tried to turn Sergius away from Paul and his teachings... and for this Paul made him blind." Peter listened blankly; smiled nervously when it was over. "But you don't understand... in me are the three of them ... I am Paul and Elymas and Sergius... yes, that's it...." Again Peter smiled and changed the subject. "Johann and Aubrey are roasting venison tonight, Julian ... I saw it turning on the spittle when we came in... ." "O, so we have no wine, but the deer blood ..." "Yes—and I must tell you that we'll have to get an early start out of here in the morning to be on the safe side...." "Out? We must wait here, Peter. To run is to break the continuity . . . don't you see? I knew when we went to the town it meant my end. Ah, Ahhh now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this cause I came unto this hour...." "Yes, Julian." Johann had heard enough; he went back to the fire. The heat and the light made his eyes twitch even more. The master had gone away somehow. "Venison," said Julian, and they sat down to eat. 83

Gwendolyn MacEwen No one spoke. The magician had washed himself and put on fresh clothes; his hair was combed and disciplined though it had crept a ways down the back of his neck. His beard was blond—just a shade darker than the hair—a short beard, trimmed at close proximity to the flesh. Making strange caressive movements in the air, his hands seemed to be performing a ritual of washing, or of fitting silken gloves over the fingers. No one spoke; Johann studied his knees. Aubrey slit the deer expertly lengthwise. It had been cooked quickly and some blood still flowed from it. Excited, Julian took a wooden cup and held it beneath the gaping flesh to catch the drops. He smiled; every movement was ritual, performed with a dread reverence, an awareness of high symbolism. "The Pesach," he said, "but we have no bitter herbs—it is no matter. This—my beloved disciples, is the Passover extended and magnified and smashed with new significance " Johann and Aubrey looked at each other querulously; Peter put a finger to his lips to still them. "You do not see the irony of it?" asked Julian dreamily, pacing back and forth before the men, the cup nestled in his palm. "A piece of the highest symbolic irony ever left unnoticed by men of learning. The strictness of the Jewish law, that no blood of any sort ever be consumed by the body—a strictness arising from the fact that at one time blood was consumed in a primitive society . . . hence the law became rigid, to erase any memory of this kind from the people. "And—" he went on growing increasingly excited, "the most magnificent deed of all—Christ, a Jew, begging them drink of his blood, begging them smash the law to splinters, 84

Julian the Magician letting them return to a natural religious cannibalism where they could eat him, drink him, take the body of the deity into their own bodies! "It's brilliant, it's beautiful . . ." he went on, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of his own voice. "Now this—" he said, holding up the cupful of blood, "is not the blood of a deer, it is the blood of a lamb. Do you understand?" The men nodded blankly. "And you all must drink of this," he added, his voice growing quiet, tremulous, his eyes closing in a kind of litany. The fire seemed to draw him; he swayed. "Because it is now my body, "And my blood...." Peter eyed Johann and Aubrey in warning. The magician passed the cup around and the two men sipped. "The blood," Julian chanted as he passed the cup to them. "You drink the dear blood of the greatest magician who has ever walked the hills of Galilee, who has ever graced the steps of the one true Temple, who has ever gilded . . ." his voice rose to a painful height, addressing the far stars as audience, "and you can't follow me, any of you—where I go!" Peter's turn came; Julian softened and handed the boy the cup. "Peter—you love me so?" Peter nodded and drained the cup of its vile liquid, forcing down the nausea in his stomach. "You would die for me, Peter?" asked Julian in such a way that it was a statement rather than a question. Peter nodded again, sick, remembering the quick mudfuneral, the stench of the body. His bowels seemed to twist and groan in the sickness as though fat fish swam through them, fat fish with razor-sharp gills, forcing their way through the narrow passages, turning and twisting.... 85

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen "Then verily verily I say unto thee, the cock shall not crow until you have denied me three times!" and the magician forked up three fingers for emphasis. "No, Julian." "Yes, Peter!" "NO!" "Yes, my dear boy—yes yes yes ..." Johann hugged his knees and rocked back and forth. Aubrey ate his meat with diminished relish and dared to look up only occasionally. Now Julian was snapping his fingers— hard, so hard that the snap could have brought a bone out of position, or broken the beautiful blue veins in his wrist. Snapped once, then twice more. "Three times! You will deny me three times!" "Julian ... there is no reason. I won't do it!" "You will deny me three times!" Now it was not an accusation; it was a request. "You must deny me three times—do you understand, Peter?" The wild light in the magician's was so intense that the boy nodded in the affirmative to quieten him. "Come and eat now," he said softly, taking Julian's hand and persuading him to sit down. The men were tense; Aubrey was nervous that the villagers were going to re-invade the camp and Johann was inclined to believe him. He stole long glances at Julian and the boy, at the boy and Julian. "One of you will betray me," said Julian with a mouthful of meat. "To who?" asked Johann, pleased for an opportunity to say something. 86

Julian the Magician "—to the Pharisees, of course. To Caiaphas." The night thickened and the carcass of the deer smoldered and charred in its own ashes. Peter could not be sick, so he cried. "Do it quickly," Julian said, addressing Johann. "How dare you accuse me?" Johann jumped to his feet and threw the remainder of his meat into the fire. "I am not accusing you ..." But the man stomped off, crushed and angry; the tension in him had reached a peak, was now busy loosening all the bars of inhibition and doubt. The accusation had knifed him in more ways than one—more entered into the idle talk of madness than what met the ear or what came charging from the mouth. He left the camp with a vision glued to his mind of Julian's inhuman smile and Peter's sickened tears and the subtle invisible gold links joining the two of them. Links that could not stretch three ways—only two—from giver to receiver and back again; Johann was jealous. The magician's madness was a beautiful thing; he'd watched it augment, accumulate all its separate corners and components and angles. And he wore it well just as he wore everything else— Julian wore his madness well. Peter continued to cry, not caring what Julian thought of him. Perhaps he'd make no good magician then—no cunning and cold intelligence, but it didn't matter anymore. And Julian chanted on in low monotone beside the carcass of the deer his mad recitations: "I will not leave you comfortless... I will come to you . . . "—for I am the vine and you are the branches; He who abides in me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing...." 87

Gwendolyn MacEwen And Peter cried on, his sobs deeper and more drawn out, wrenched from the deepest, more tearless part of his body. "The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you...." Aubrey looked on at the crazy duet. The whole situation was a gross exaggeration, he thought. Obviously Julian was in some sort of trouble—but why the clamour when the magician was capable of the most stunning feats of mind and will? And didn't a mind the depth of his and a soul so polished as his and a cunning so complex as his, merit the odd rest, the least relapse from their strenuous duties? "In a little while you shall not see me and you shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice ..." The fire snuffed itself out and Peter's sobs were sublimated into heavy wet snorts. "I came forth, and I came into the world. O ..."

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eight/the betrayal

A ND so Johann shot himself through the bush that night in a red fury that matched his little red roan (the thing halfdoubled under his weight) and at length swerved over onto the road with purpose and direction the size of a pinhead and met on with the village gang headed by Carl. Someone shouted a "Ho!" and "He's one of them, Carl!" and in a fish's blink Johann was circled around with the avengers. Carl was tall and cruel on his horse, riding bareback and stiff—a singular mission folding his forehead and turning his meaty lip. "We're looking for a magician called Julian," he put forth in the same tone of voice as he would have used in saying, "We're looking for a hedgehog called Harry." "Are you one of the troupe?" "Perhaps," Johann's mind clipped ahead, "and perhaps not, sir. It is highly possible I am a simple gypsy...." Carl eyed him quickly and pursed his lips. "Hmmm. Then where is your tambourine, gypsy? And your people?" "Gypsies often travel by ones out of necessity, sir... and my tambourine is hidden in the seat of my pants; when the horse trots—O, the jingle—you wouldn't believe it, sir ..." 89

Gwendolyn MacEwen "Gypsies aren't quite so smooth-tongued ..." "I am an educated gypsy. May I ask if this mission against the magician is a legitimate one?" "More than legitimate. You can tell us where he is, and earn yourself a few dollars in the process, eh?" "I am from a band of gypsies who uphold the code of highest honour, sir. Why—" "Where is he?" He needed only just that after all. The decision was easy and clean, like a razor-incision. For a moment the knowledge of his own will's wings was intoxicating—a quick slice down some mental umbilical cord, a break, as from a womb. "Follow me back," he said. "I can get him outside of the camp for you...." It was only after the words had come, stoney and irrevocable, that small fingers aggravated his reason, his will. Even in treachery, he still carried out Julians demands. "You are a true gypsy," Carl snuckled. "Lead on, gypsy ... or is it really gypsy, eh? We've struck a bargain now, you needn't hide " "I have your word that you'll do nothing with the others? Just Julian " "Of course! Gypsy, we don't want the flock, just the shepherd "

Over the brook Cedron went the man whom some referred to as Nazareth's white magician, speaking high words, cutting lofty prayer in an enclosed garden like second smashed eden, with Jerusalem crashing its silent crash all around. His destiny was

90

Julian the Magician known as his right hand; the time was merely for waiting. Simon Peter knew it; he stood by a gnarled olive tree and tried to oust his own thoughts, watching all the while from bis left eye his master, genuflected low and low as though the earth itself had heaved up to meet his knees. Horses sounded somewhere nearby.

"The horses are even sleeping... shouldn't you rest yourself?" "Peter, my child, the hour is come—don't you understand? The most beautiful and dread hour when the flesh prepares to slip its wheel, when the mad wheel of the bones goes slower, when the cave of the body crumbles inward to its essence ..." Julian's eyes were glazed over, a deeper brown; they had forgotten how to blink. Peter swallowed a lump like sandpaper down his throat; it was heinous, weird, absurd—everything—and it was becoming more so the higher the moon got, the more the crickets scratched. "Julian—if you believe they're after you—we must run!" He tried to draw the magician to his feet. "Futile, my little fisherman, futile . . . I have the weight of the world on me and you believe you can pull me up?" Peter bit his nails in a kind of sustained, contained hysteria while the magician smiled and poked holes in the fire with a stick. Horses sounded nearby. It was only Johann. He rode in slowly, slipped from saddle and approached the pair cautiously. "Something funny outside camp," he stated briskly. "Come with me and check?" "Very well," said Julian, voice deep as the river. 91

Gwendolyn MacEwen "I'm coming too," said Peter. "My poor Judas . . ." said Julian suddenly, and followed Johann easily, lightly. After a few steps, Peter drew the magician to his side. "He's leading you to them, Julian ... are you blind?" "I'm well aware of where he's leading me, my boy," the magician replied in a voice as low as the riverbed. Under the shadow of a natural ridge six horses waited with their riders. Carl came forward first, softly, as though his horse had velvet hooves on fern. Johann had delivered his merchandise; he scuttled to the ridge and tried to extinguish himself in the mingled shadows. "You snake!" Peter screamed and reached forward, but Julian laid one hand gently on his arm; a touch with all the strength of an iron clamp; Peter stayed by his side. "You are Julian?" inquired Carl through the darkness. 1 am he. "We are asking you," Carl began, frustrated at his own inability to be violent, "to allow us to take you back to the village for trial... for the murder of Ivan Voegler." It was all he could do to mouth the words. Passive, passive, passive! His brother was murdered, and he could not even spit on this robed bastard! the irritation was intense. Julian's eyes were too cool in the semi-light, his face too intelligent, his arms too limp at his sides. His words, Carl's words, had been pasted one by one along his throat; they dropped like weighted feathers to the ground, meeting no opposition. Here was the murderer; mission accomplished. Julian stepped forward and laid a hand almost soothingly on the reins of Carl's horse. Involuntarily, Carl knifed the «T

92

1

"

Julian the Magician flank with his heel to ease the animal away. It whinnied; shied a few feet back towards the ridge. The men looked among themselves; no one moved. "Peter, get the horses," Julian said, turning to the boy. "No—I won't do it!" "I asked you to get the horses, Peter." A few twigs crackled under the animals' velvet hooves. Peter returned minutes later, sober, sick, with the horses. The man and the boy mounted. The group rode off quietly— all but Johann, who flung himself and his animal in the opposite direction, smashed through the bush and the vines, blessing each bead of blood the sharp branches drew, the arboreal havoc. Later he thought of the river. What had he heard of the river? a baptism. Julian coming up wet and feverish like a perfect gold fish from the water, Peter holding his arm just above the wrist, Julian weeping and laughing in the wagon; what of the river? Julian there, Julian emerging like a perfect gold fish, Julian getting deeper and deeper, Julian going stronger and stronger in the eye, perfect gold fish, quiet magical tiger. Julian. Had blessed the river. Hallowed it. And tonight a clean white Christian moon, pure, a moon like a lump of lard, an immaculate moon was taking a bath in the river Julian had hallowed. If you shut your eyes then the grey impurities on the moon were gone. If you shut your eyes long enough, all impurities were gone. And someone had to punish him; he had hoped that Julian would punish him, longed for it, but Julian had not. Julian had smiled at him as they rode out, smiled, smiled . . . 93

Gwendolyn MacEwen . . . he stepped into the water to be cleansed of the blood. Johann was a heavy man with the balance of a rubber ball and the buoyancy of a rock. And the current was swift.

"Julian ..." Peter whispered, "we can swerve off where the road bends . . . I'll give you the word . . ." the two horses rubbed flanks together, their sweat mingled. "Nonsense," answered the magician, not turning. "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" Peter eased away. There was no use then. "You have understood little, Peter . . . but you will. You must not miss the beauty of this ..." Julians voice seemed to be coming from the other side of the river. As they rounded the turn the morning sun was elbowing over the horizon. East, the village sprang up on its haunches like a little grey alley cat; blinked. The sight of sun spurred the horses towards home. "Jerusalem," said Julian and bowed his head.

It was as he'd feared then. They'd found him. Philip heard the dry thud of hooves outside on the street in the early morning and did not need to look outside. He hadn't wanted to rise at all that day—hoping somehow that if he stayed in bed the world would miraculously regulate itself as he wished. Fervently he wished that Julian would have had the presence of mind to escape Carl and his gang, be gone, vanish, drown, anything but allow himself to be found. 94

Julian the Magician But apparently the magician had had a presence of a different mind that neither Philip, nor the academy in the City nor the very God could fathom. Somehow, even in capture, the magician was triumphant; he could turn everything into triumph. Philip was nervous. He knew what must happen now— trial, talk, debate, the townspeople breathing down his neck as he carried out his professional duties, duties that suddenly he would have liked to heave out the door like a pail of slop. He needed to be steeled for what was to come; he did not relish the idea of facing the magician in the context of actual trial. Whether Julian won or lost, he always won. That was the way of it. Science refused to embrace it; science refused to embrace Julian . . . there was some other element, some subtle essential that had to be considered. And Philip had not discovered what it was. He rose, dressed and sat down at the table for breakfast. Wife brought him fresh eggs, milk and meat. Eyeing the food hopelessly, Philip drank a half bottle of whiskey instead. "Philip," Marya said as he stalled for time and combed his hair. "Philip, I think perhaps you should deal with him discreetly," Marya said as he plunged his head into a basin of cold water, "Because I have strange feelings about him— premonitions . . ." she went on as he dried his hair and combed it over again. "I actually dreamed, dear . . ." she continued as he pointed his beard, "that this man has a truly remarkable power; he may even be a man of God, dear—we don't know...." Philip looked at his beloved with what he hoped was amusement, and left the house. 95

Gwendolyn MacEwen Already the people were brewing about the jail. When the magician and the boy were brought in the women had surged forward en masse, expecting to see a murderer. To their anger and frustration they saw the same magician, the same beautiful creature who had dared to first enchant, then disillusion them. All had shouted and cursed as the men came into town, ready to spit their righteous venom on the man called Julian, ready to avenge him for daring to intrigue them (as nothing had intrigued them ever and as nothing would again), ready to set the balance against their previous gullibility, their selfdisgust at having fallen into his golden nets. But it was no god-damned murderer, no one they could cover with righteous spit. He walked high and terrible, eyes glazed in a splendid terrible light, strange precious madness all about him, tall, equivocal... and the people hated him for stopping their curses, blocking their rehearsed venom and took the nearest alternative— simply flooding him in an attempt to crush him collectively and snuff out his light like a candle, collectively, with no one person responsible. Seas of red and wild yellow; seas of wild red and yellow; seas of downy scarves pressing closer. Peter's ribs seemed to have met his backbone; he gasped. Julian did not move. Those closest to him had forgotten their original intention; they pulled his sleeves and his hair in an almost sensual hysteria... they touched him over and over with no intention to harm... just touched him ... and in the centre Julian did not move. Philip, fortified somewhat by the morning liquor, punctured the crowd. "Leave him be!" he shouted and managed a 96

Julian the Magician real degree of authority into his voice. "You're acting like a lot of savages! The trial is later today—now go home! All of you!" No one moved except a few people about the fringe of the crowd. Somewhere the riverman's voice was chanting again, "he cured me, he cured me . .." but no one could see where he was. "I said go home!" No one moved. Smiling, Julian moved to speak. "Go home, please. . . . Nothing is accomplished by all this . . ." he raised his arms high as though in ironical blessing. The crowd dispersed. "Mad," thought Philip and faced his prisoner. "Why do I have to deal with a madman?" Julian did not appear to be seeing him; his eyes looked beyond. "Mad. Mad—why must I deal with a madman?" Philip's irritating thought repeated over and over. "Sanity works like blinkers ..." Julian was saying, as though answering his thoughts to the letter. "Insanity is merely a word for exact vision...." Philip led the two into the jail, saw that they were closely watched and returned home to prepare himself for the trial with the remainder of the whiskey, and rum besides. The impasse would open, he thought, later.

Ir-Shalom, city of high peace, sat and blistered in her sun. A man waited to be tried according to the Pharisaic law for the collective accusations of sorcery, blasphemy, and fraud. Some saw him as a divine incarnation; others, as a piece of tinsel parading as silver, but all handled him with conscious or unconscious kid gloves—as they would a lamb. 97

Gwendolyn MacEwen Annas was more aggressive. Annas struck the man somewhere around noon. Around noon, in the ribs, Annas struck Yeshua, possibly Hamashiah, the lamb, the dove, Aberamentho, Adamas, Sabaoth, the human Alpha and Omega, the man, the thin and passive Nazarene magician. "The only reflection of myself," the man said, "is seen in the people who have heard me. The people create me and re-create me," the implication went. Disgusted, Annas sent him off to his son in law, the high priest Caiaphas. No one knew why the thin white magician from Nazareth did not defend himself like a man.

"It is a great shame, Peter," Julian was saying, "that I had so little time to work, after all." His voice was mellow now, and caressive. His hands caressed the iron bars up and down so they might have melted under the friction of flesh. "All I used were visual parables, when I wanted more—words, tongues ..." "Some have tongues, Julian. You have hands." "Boy, your wisdom overcomes me at times," Julian mumbled and turned to the boy. Peter was afraid when Julian approached him—there was a kind of sickly reddish dampness in his eyes, a liquid that could overflow any minute. "Peter ... Peter ..." Julian took his hand between his and pressed as though to stop the circulation there. "You'll continue my work after me ... ?" "Of course—of course ..." Peter did not believe their situation was so ultimate, so climactic, but best to keep Julian 98

Julian the Magician calm for now. Optimistically, even after the initial panic of the capture, the boy believed now that the bulk of the townspeople and Philip's death reports would clear Julian in little time. Julian was the centre and Julian was the pivot, and Julian now, in one of his most grotesque of acts, needed a different sort of support. "Of course . . . you've trained me well... but nothing will happen . . ." the boy repeated, frightened a little still at the intensity of Julian's eyes, the way they swam in their own fever. "You'll carry it on," Julian said once more.

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nine/the trial

ccj-p HE cause of death,"

Philip announced from his bench, "is simple shock. The heart was seized in nervous trauma; the bodily functions ceased instantly. Anyone of a number of things may have caused the seizure—especially to a man with Ivan Voegler's poor health. I propose it was due to the extreme excitement of the evening—an accumulation of tension." The judge swallowed and sat down, happy to have gotten over the professional hump and speak both with validity and discretion. His fear of directly accusing the magician had been easily side-stepped. "And," put forth Carl, standing in full view in the makeshift courtroom, "you surely can't leave it at that, Philip Korowitch. Every person present remembers the magician covering Ivan's eyes with his filth and sending him off to the river! The river, Mr. Korowitch, the cold river—the shock of the cold! The evidence is plain and clear; no trial is necessary. We hang him now!" Carl had the people's support. They swayed between love and hate, certainty and fear, yet they followed Carl's demand 101

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen en masse. Kerchiefs circled in approval. "Now, now! Hang him now!" A great urgency came over the people; the deed must be done swiftly, leaving no time for re-evaluation. "The effect was indirect!" Philip called back and calm settled for a moment. "You must all be aware of this—before any sort of penalty can be laid. Ivan's death was an indirect reaction to the magician's request. Ivan was not asked to immerse himself completely in the river; he was merely asked to wash his face, bathe it. Nor did the magician directly induce the state of dangerous excitement—Ivan himself requested the ... treatment... of his own free will. The cure, if it can be called that, was harmless and simple, and," he added, addressing Julian, "rather comically dramatic. Clay and spittle, indeed " Carl started to protest, but Philip silenced him. The red beard was pushed into a neat point between thumb and index finger. "Clay and spittle ..." he repeated. People whispered amongst themselves uneasily. Julian held Philip with a locked smile. "Christ," spoke up the judge, "used clay and spittle to give the blind man sight, did he not?" "Correct, sir," the magician answered. "I compliment you on your insight into strange parallels. Though, of course, your medical profession is an offspring of mine—hence, I well imagine, your possible occult ability ..." "Nonsense," spoke up Carl. "Is this a lecture room or a trial!" "So you see," Julian went on, not hearing him, "the clay and spittle merely symbolize an allegiance—certainly if the greatest magician of all used these elements with success, then—" 102

Julian the Magician "Blasphemy!" one woman shrieked. "Now he dares to call our Lord a magician! I say hang him!" "Madam," Julian replied, "if I recall correctly, you were one of the first people to dare to call me the Christ." His words dropped like sharp stones. No one spoke for some time. Then with utmost delicacy and control—a control which dumbfounded Peter, who only hours earlier had seen the magician in the heights of his fever—Julian spoke again. "None of you," he said, with a note of near pain, "wants my death in return for the death of Ivan. You want it in return for the death of your own belief. Why do you think I came here in the first? to show you what your separate minds will not show you " "You speak for a group of illiterates, magician!" Philip spoke from the bench, face red, draining itself into his beard. "And I am sole judge here—direct whatever you have to say to the court." "Then I want to say that I think you are deeply disturbed, sir—the fact that my profession, low as it is, can possibly stand as the forerunner to your profession is a great blow to your pride...." "Not at all! I credit alchemy with breaking ground for science...." "In theory, perhaps. But on a personal scale, you resent the fact that / am responsible for you, sir." "You're wrong, magician. I question only the motives behind deliberately playing upon the superstitions of an uneducated mass. I asked you once before if you would dare put on your little performances in an enlightened city...." "And I believe my answer was—would Christ have dared enter Rome? The testing ground, Mr. Korowitch, for any 103

Gwendolyn MacEwen religion, and human science, is not an academy—it is a section of common life...." Korowitch was mildly distraught; the trial was falling into redundant debate. Yet he could not stop it without tying up the magician's questions. "You're using phony symbols here— can't you be specific in anything you say, magician? Must you always allude to the least reliable sources? I have to take up your line of argument—and I do so with resentment!" "Sir, we are one of a kind, if only you would accept this for the time being. I manipulate the sources of nature by means of charms and philters—I, meaning the magician generally, his overall function—You manipulate them by means of analysis, experiment " "But to what end, magician? Therein lies the difference!" "Only in theory again. We both cure. I cure men's souls, let them glimpse a grand Unknown, let them recognize the possible breadth of their own interior senses. You cure their bodies." "He cured me! He cured me!" shot up the riverman from the back row. "The magician cured my body!" In a minute he was up presenting himself before the judge as human evidence. "Look, Mr. Korowitch—remember how my hands used to shake and refuse to obey me, eh? eh?" And he held out two warty hands, steady enough. "Was this a curing of soul, magician?" Philip resented highly the intrusion; no one spoke much of the riverman; no one quite knew. It was an inkblot on the judge's clean professional page. "Through the soul to the body, sir... besides—this was not a physical cure exactly. I gladly leave physical cures to you and 104

Julian the Magician your kind . . . this man's disability arose from purely mental causes. You were obviously aware of that. With his mind steadied, his body would naturally follow suit." "I think you confuse the issue...." "Not at all. Ivan's sight was restored because he believed I could restore it. Here is our difference again. The mystic believes all physical disturbances or inadequacies are merely reflections of spiritual impurities. The body is merely a context for the mind. The blood is a mansion for the mind, as Jacob Boehme wrote. My clay and spittle did not redeem his sight—they were only visual symbols, sensual parables...." "That's right!" cried the riverman. "He did nothing to my body... he just spoke, lay his hands on my head ... I remember all like velvet and fire and blue lights...." "Stop it!" the judge demanded. His beard shook; inwardly he admitted jealousy, even jealousy. Viced, two issues at stake, he could neither truly condemn Julian nor release him. Somehow he had to keep in sympathy with the people—his profession dangled from web-thread. "You might call it the casting out of devils, Mr. Korowitch...." "Who are you to speak so lightly of devils? The devil is your master, magician. Can the devil cast out himself?" Some of the people whispered with pleasure. Surely this was the final hook. But Julian looked worried—not for himself—but for the judge. "Surely, Philip, a man of science does not believe in any sort of supernatural power—least of all devils. Aren't you trespassing on my territory now, just as you thought I trespassed on yours?" 105

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen Philip was livid; how could he have been caught so easily? And how dare Julian address him by his Christian name? "I call for an intermission," he said and stepped down from the bench. "We will continue in one hour. Christ," he added, "is not on trial here."

The group re-assembled. Much of the talk was beyond the villagers' grasp, but they stayed out of necessity. The main issue was being blanketed in side-debate, yet something in them was slowly being exposed—a belief perhaps, a credulity— like a heinous loam-worm. They needed revenge. Despite the cause of Ivan's death they needed revenge. "Magician, I am a man of science," Philip opened up, "and also a Christian. I openly adopt your terms of discussion." He was in high style again—stimulated by whiskey and reference books. "Now then, can you resolve in your own mind, assuming that you follow 'the greatest magician of all, Christ,' Celsus' statement: 'Since then, these persons can perform such feats, shall we of necessity conclude that they are sons of God, or must we admit that they are the proceedings of wicked men under the influence of an evil spirit.' I question here your own claim to legitimate deeds, magician, not those of the Christ, to whom this passage was directed." "Firstly, I take Celsus positively, Philip. You take him negatively—but I'll go on. So yes, yes, I can augment that view. Matthew, quote: 'Many shall say to me in that day—In Thy name we have cast out devils and done many wonderful works.' And further, more from Celsus: 'He ... declares there will come unto you even others employing miracles of a 106

Julian the Magician similar kind, who are ... sorcerers '" "So . . . you testify against yourself, now?" "Not at all. Celsus thought Christ testified against himself when he suggested the possibility of magicians and sorcerers mimicking his own miracles. All three passages are right, and all three passages are wrong, Philip. As soon as we accept the reality that Christ's healings were early and superlative examples of the finest and purest magic—then the situation is clarified . . . it is a question only of motive behind these magical healings that is at stake—as you yourself mentioned earlier. Motives, and to what end the magician employs them " "Exactly! Exactly! And I say to the ends of evil, to the furthering of abortive arts. Magic is an abortive art—no doctrines as high as those of Christianity could possibly motivate it. Origen said that: 'No magician would teach such noble doctrines as those of Christianity.'" "True—of course it is said that in the court of Ephesus, the magicians burned all their writings for Paul's Christianity...." The magician's strange behaviour infuriated and frustrated Philip further—he didn't seem to be concerned with quoting merely for his own ends, he actually quoted from passages that the judge himself could have used against him. "And what about," Julian went on, smiling wryly, "the Moslem tale of the Jews who called Jesus an enchanter, son of an enchantress and were turned into pigs?" "Well, what about it?" "Nothing. A lighter note, that's all." "Julian, damn you ..." Philip began and nearly doubled to realize he had addressed him by his Christian name. Unbalanced, he sat back and mopped his brow. 107

Gwendolyn MacEwen "And for another lighter note, Philip... curious, Nicodemus has the Jews saying to Pilate 'Did we not say unto thee, he is a magician? Behold, he has caused your wife to dream—'" With this Julian looked full into the judges eyes and smiled deeply. Philip smothered a cry. Bluffing. He's bluffing. He couldn't possibly know about Marya. Forget it. "To get back," Philip eventually said, a little shaky, but turned to his last reference, "and I hope, to end this line of pointless discussion, I'll point out Clement's passage, where Niceta asks Peter: 'If he sins who believes those who work signs, how shall it appear that he also does not sin who has believed our Lord for His signs and occult virtues?' Whereby Peter answers that direct magic is bad, whereas Christian magic is for the good of humanity." "Motives again," said Julian dreamily. "Motives," said Philip. "Why do you ask me of motives," Julian said, and Peter beside him shuddered to see the old vague light coming into his eyes, his voice as though breathing a rehearsed speech, "when I've done nothing in secret. What I have accomplished is reflected in the minds of whoever has seen me work—ask them Philip!" His voice rose and he pointed to the villagers. "Ask them what I have accomplished! They know it " "Yet I say your motives are essentially evil! Yours is an abortive art—the bastard sister of science!" "Mother of science, Philip. Mother. And if you can point to any references to any evil I may have done, then you are free to do so ..." "But neither do you do any good!" screamed the judge, losing control. "You're an impostor, like all of your kind!" 108

Julian the Magician "But he cured me, he cured me . . ." wailed the riverman again in a voice like a hurt kitten's, holding up his hands for all to see. The room became a sudden shambles of voices. Carl tried to bring the issue back to his brother's death, but no one heeded him. "No sorcerer has ever claimed to be Christ! Origen said that—" Philip screamed above the clamour. "And none of them ever can!" No one except Peter noticed that Julian had sat down and was holding his head painfully in his hands. The boy leaned over him, clouded. Presently Julian looked up, eyes large in sadness. "It is a great shame, Peter ... I have actually defended myself... yet it does not matter ... my fate is known to me...." Peter nodded but did not believe. Julian was obviously winning the trial. It was only the old madness returning that made him speak so absurdly. Best to keep him silent now, before he went to the other extreme and actually condemned himself. After a collective pause, Philip straightened his beard and stood up. "I apologize for the length and confusion of this trial . . ." he began, aware that the magician watched him through curtained, half-open eyes. . . . "As for the original issue, Ivan's death—I find no reason to lay a penalty on this prisoner. My verdict is not guilty. I find no fault with him. It is out of my hands." He closed his book with grim finality and stepped down from the bench. Peter yelped with glee. Julian slumped forward. He appeared to be praying, while the people, who felt sick at having been 109

Gwendolyn MacEwen treated like children, sat in stunned silence. They were hurt; disappointed; no one moved. Suddenly a figure came through the back door, surveyed the room and announced in a solemn voice: "I was asked to go to Ivan's grave. And I went. And the body is gone." Carl smiled. Case won. "Is that good enough for you, Korowitch?" He shouted amidst a growing thunder. "Eh? Ivan's body is gone! Did you hear that, everyone? Eh?" "Hang him! hang him!" The cry went up unanimously. "We want his death! Bastard! Graverobber! Filthy swine!" Peter panicked and grabbed Julian's arm. But the magician was smiling. "You can't take the law out of my hands!" shouted Philip, knowing full well they would do just that. "You just said it was out of your hands, Korowitch!" "We relieve you of the burden, Korowitch!" "We know what justice is, Korowitch!" Carl was the first to get to the prisoner and clamp his arms. Yes, yes . . . his death! the people took up the slogan in mobmania, anxious, each one, to be instrumental in the magician's defeat. Julian still smiled as Carl clutched his arm. "Crucify me" he said softly. Some laughed. Others spat. Even in defeat he outwitted them; even in defeat he stumped them. All their belligerence was so much bull against subtle lamb. Peter howled like a baby and tried to throw himself towards Julian. "Wait." Carl held up a hand for silence. "The boy... what do we do with him ... does he deserve the same penalty?" 110

Julian the Magician Peter was determined to follow through to the last. He buried his head against Julian's chest and sobbed religiously. "Boy—if you have any real allegiance with this man, then you are likewise condemned. If you deny any connection with him outside of mere assistance and sentiment, then you are free. Are you connected with his profession? Were you involved in the taking of Ivan's body? Were you an accomplice to this man? Answer me!' Peter began to answer—the truth. He did not mind dying with Julian. The truth. But suddenly the magician's one free hand was circled around his neck, gently, yet forcefully pushing back the boy's head until it faced him. He would not do it, he would not do it. But Julian's wild eyes were saying over and over—deny me, deny me, just as he had said it the night before. A command—not a request. Peter fought with all will to break away. He wouldn't do it, he wouldn't do i t . . . there was no good reason . . . deny me deny me deny "I deny," he began, lips forming the words of their own accord.... "I deny it...." Julian smiled. It was done. Carl shoved Peter aside and led the magician out the door with the people glued on behind, waving and shouting as at a wedding. "You can't take the law out of my hands!" Philip said feebly as they went through the door. But they were. Peter stumbled along behind, clogged with pain and sob; he could do nothing.... Philip stopped flailing his arms, looked down and saw that his coat buttons were done up wrong; fixed them, and went home. Ill

Gwendolyn MacEwen "It's not my fault," he mumbled over and over as Marya brought him food and small comfort. She was detached. Her eyes were elsewhere. "It's out of my hands . . . I'm not responsible . . . they're a pack of children . . . they're a pack of savages," he went on, wringing his hands as in a ritual.

They dragged him up the little hill outside of the town. There was a sturdy tree there—good for an improvised gallows. In the half-light of sunset Julian was very beautiful—but his beauty spurred them on. Once he stumbled and fell onto the ground as though his shoulders had been weighted down, and lay there, long and lean in his strange white robes. "Crucify me, crucify me!" he pleaded just as the sun disappeared.

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ten/Golgotha

7N Jerusalem a man was washing his hands. Slowly, as in ritual. He is a magician; he has caused your wife to dream: someone had said to him earlier, but what matter? Long up the long Golgotha hill through the long turning Golgotha light, crawled the cross with the man beneath it. The cross, from a certain visual angle, moved of its own accord—a singular motivation in the hewn wood, the wood gaining character and sinew in itself from the will beneath. And so the cross crawled up Golgotha in the long light of early evening, when that light stretches and blushes, pales, rouges over and over until sleep. Few spoke; the panic was a quiet one; the massmania was stifled and sustained in frozen lungs and constricted throats. All hung in sunset suspension in the long drawnlight of Golgotha. History slizzled by, taking her notes quickly—in shorthand—the odd twirl or twist distorted by the swiftness of events—the text becoming aborted. Roman dice, drawn veils, rouged faces and an equivocal smile on the prisoner's face mixed in the long low light of Calvary. 113

Gwendolyn MacEwen Jerusalem slept on her golden whorish pillows below and a man was washing his hands, as in ritual. "Understand," someone wrote much later, "therefore in me, the slaying of a word, the piercing of a word, the blood of a word, the wounding of a word, the hanging of a word, the passion of a word, the nailing of a word, the death of a word...." And therefore stretched—a Y of flesh against a Y of wood, against a Y'as in truth and triumph—the poor white magician from Nazareth.

"What," asked Carl, leaning over the horizontal Julian, "did you do with my brothers body?" "Ivan's well. His spirit is alive in heaven; his frame lies by the river, marrying back with the earth...." "Scum!" Carl delivered a toe-jab to Julian's ribcage. "Where by the river?" "It does not matter...." "T 11 lell me." "No." "Tell me!" "No." Carl dispatched three men to look for the body. Julian was laughing; he was laughing softly. "Then how do you want it, magician? Gallows or cross? I don't care ... either way...." "Flip a coin!" Someone shouted gleefully. "Heads for hanging!" Heads for hanging, heads for hanging. Carl pulled out a coin. Flip;—heads. Flip;—tails. Flip;—tails. 1

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"Well? What was the first one?" "Two out of three . . . I'm doing two out of three!" "Start again; you're not concentrating." Heads for hanging, heads for hanging. Flip;—tails. Flip;— heads. Flip;—heads. "Well?" "Best out of nine . . . I'm doing the best out of nine." Last time. Flip;—tails. Flip;—heads. Flip;—tails.... "He doesn't hang." "Ahhhhh" "We crucify him. That's what he wants anyway...." "Why should we do what he wants?" Everyone screamed for justice. "Best out of fifteen. Go again!" "No. It's final." Julian laughed softly. Carl knew that even if he flipped another series, the coins would still obey the magician's will. Best leave it to chance. Even in their temporary mania, the people's guts rattled with the idea of crucifixion. Bloody—that's what crucifixion was. Too bloody. And even religious too.... "Cut wood," Carl commanded. No one moved. "I said cut wood. Get it done quickly!" It was nearly full dark now. Someone had made a fire. The women in the crowd looked at Julian lying in apparent bliss close to the earth and turned their heads away. Eventually someone ran back for an axe. "Nails!" shouted Carl after him. "Gotta have nails!" Peter had been tied to a tree to prevent his causing trouble. A dream. But dreams don't give you real sweat on the face and the real salt taste of it on the mouth. Where was Aubrey? Where was Johann? Aubrey could help.... 115

Gwendolyn MacEwen But Johann was sleeping in the river and Aubrey had salvaged what he could from the wagons, unhitched one of the team horses and ridden off towards a far city. "We'll free the brat after," someone said. "But let him watch first...." Axe and nails arrived. Tree cut. Beam over top. Secured firmly.

"I ain't going to do it," said one man and stepped away. "I ain't going to do it." "I ain't going to do it. You." "Just tie," someone suggested. "No need to nail." "Yes, just tie." "Just tie; no need to nail." They tied his feet and hands with leather strips to the wood; they stepped away. "You hoist him up." "V You." "You hoist him." Two men hoisted the magician and the cross. They propped it against a tree. Somehow they were disappointed— there really wasn't the least bit of excitement. The thing didn't even look dramatic. It looked just like a magician tied to a silly cross and propped against a tree. "How's he supposed to die?" someone asked. "Just hanging there " "Donno." "Carl—how's he going to die like that?" Carl wasn't quite sure. Something about stretched lungs, he thought; respiratory difficulty, and after a while, poof. From exhaustion etc. 116

Julian the Magician "I'll die," said the man on the cross. "Don't worry—I'll accommodate you all. . . . " "What do we have to do? Just wait?" The people eyed the cross from different angles. The play of firelight on the magician was just now beginning to introduce drama and poignancy into the scene. Yes, it was beginning to look as it should. Peter's head lolled from side to side. From their position, his eyes caught Julian on a three-quarter angle—Julian's profile, his right arm and his right leg only could be seen. "But it doesn't look right," one man protested, circling the cross. "Something's missing. We didn't do it right." "Shut up." Carl sat down by the fire and played with some unused nails. A few of the men joined him while the women stood off to one side in a bunch, whispering and watching Julian's face. "I hope he doesn't say anything," one said. "I feel funny. Hope he dies fast." "But how's he going to die like that? No blood. Doesn't even look like he's in pain...." "Hope he doesn't say anything ..." the woman repeated. They searched hard for the drama, the primitive beauty and after a time it looked better. Julian neither smiled nor frowned from his perch. He appeared to be sleeping. "Maybe we should give him water...." "You do it." "You do it." " You. " But there was no water to be had anyway. What about the robes? What about a piece of the robe to ward off evil spirits? "You cut some off." 117

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"

You do it. "You cut some." "Maybe it's better he should say something. Maybe he knows something; maybe he could tell us something " "Maybe." Peter screamed once from his tree. The women's heads turned. "The boy needs someone to look after him. Maybe after this is over I'll take him into my house with me " "No, I'll take him." "No, I will." Peter heard them and cried softly. He called Julian. Once. Twice. But there was no answer. Julian wouldn't answer him. "A man of God! He is a man of God!" a voice cried. It was the riverman, come up from the village where he had spent the last hours sobbing on his mother's lap. Slowly, he placed himself at the foot of the cross and touched his head to the ground. The crowd watched him silently as he prayed, wept and clutched Julian's ankles. No one tried to pull him away. Presently Philip and his wife arrived on the scene, like late guests at a dinner party. When she saw him, Marya screamed and ran back down the hill. "I want no trouble, Korowitch!" Carl put forth. "You'll get none," Philip answered and his voice was thick with liquor. He stood apart, for a time, watching the cross and the man on it, watching the riverman slobbering beneath the cross, watching the magician's stoney, peaceful face. He's won, he's still won, a voice repeated in the physician's mind. It's barbarous, it's absurd. They're all mad. They love him; they love him enough to kill him. 118

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Later Philip turned away. Some said they'd never seen the physician look so weary. Some said he'd cried, but it was probably the liquor and the firelight. Peter fainted at dawn. At dawn the magician raised his head once and said: "It is finished" and a long exhalation of breath emptied the lungs until the torso and the legs sagged between hands and feet. His body's thin weight was given over to the beautiful blue-veined wrists to support. It was time to weep now. Later they pulled him down and untied the leather strips. The women unanimously claimed the precious corpse and themselves dug out a little niche in the hillside to bury it. "A stone," someone said. "Put a stone over the opening." Peter was woken up out of his faint, freed and asked if he cared to take up residence with one of the villagers. Concentrating, he gathered a tongueful of spit in his mouth and carefully shot it in the woman's face, just to the left of the nose. Then he ran away. The group left the hillside in early morning silently. No one looked back to the new grave. The morning was a bright celestial blue and the river wobbled through its bed in perpetual boredom. Great things had surely come to pass. O surely in that village had great feats fallen and great feet walked. The people, each one, guarded in their hearts little boxes of things like gold, and frankincense and myrrh, little pictures of blue-veined wrists and careful knowing eyes, and the knowledge that they had dipped their fingers into divinity, each one, deeply. And three days later the sun rose.

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EPILOGUE...

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Notes from the diary of the magician called Julian, having been discovered by Peter the apprentice in the abandoned wagon shortly after the crucifixion. Actual dates are unknown as the magician, for certain esoteric reasons, headed the writings with such time-placements as "Day One," "Day Two" and so on, leading us to believe that his attitudes were basically fatalistic and that his years were allotted in portions and enclosed events not entirely unknown to him. Here lie, ink on paper, the blood, brain and soul of Julian the Magician. While we read this, he bargains for his soul by producing red rabbits for Lucifer and several clay sparrows for an audience of angels.

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DAY ONE

The most I must remember of today is pigs and apple blossoms. Truly on this wretched farm where pigs are as numerous as lice and apple blossoms as diffused and commanding as apple blossoms it is imperative that I keep to essentials. Of vision. Of all sense. Both pigs and apple blossoms have the triple quality of colour, smell and taste. It is a shame I cannot hear apple blossoms, for that would increase it to a fourfold. But side-issues enter. Mother sits by the window constantly while my vague cousins work the land. I think that even after twenty years she still feels that gypsy shoving me into her womb,* though of course I am being far too cruel. Passion is passion. She is disgusted with my decision to become an apprentice in so vile a profession as magic. So be it. Let her be kept in golden ignorance o f . . . (text obscure) ... and all the rest too. So slowly we build and work our wagons that . . . (text obscure) . . . and eagles result. * A clue to the date of this diary entry. Julian must have been a young man of 21 at least at the time of writing. All assumed dates, however, are relative, as we do not know his age at death.

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G w e n d o l y n MacEwen It is only a question of small time before I can leave for tours with Kardin*—whom I have chosen as teacher on the double account of performance and scholastics. Woe to the magician who loses sight of the theory and science of his profession and devotes himself solely to stupid rabbits and trickery. Woe to the actor. Woe to the silly slob who thinks magic is a glorified card-game! Woe to a pig like Cagliostro who shoved gold into a tube during an experiment where he claimed to "transmute" metal! Woe to all of them who lose the poetry of magic and stick to gluey doggerel and cow's verse. For Kardin I hold the utmost reverence; for his genius I hold the utmost respect. For his women I hold the utmost distaste, but that is no matter; he deserves distraction. Mother again. Back to her who shoves the bible in my face perpetually and informs me, as though were sprouting devilwings, that what I do is God's left hand working. His left hand! Dear mother mine—if God has hands, I'm not interested. Dear mother mine—what I do is a celebration of God, strewn out like seed, spun-about, girandoled God in the green world. Dear mother mine—dream of your gypsy until pigs grow wings and let your blond son be. A sort of apprenticeship is already served. Words. From Boehme to Bible and back again. And praise be to all the drunken scribes who brewed it. In the queerest and most lucky of intoxications, they laid a feast for magicians. And praise be the tall Coptic Gnostics who produced their playground for * Kardin, from what we can gather, was a highly erudite magician cum-alchemist, notorious in central Europe for experiments of the most disturbing nature and feats of magic regarded as vulgar and dangerous by his contemporaries.

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Julian the Magician the spirit,* complete with slides, circles and balances. O . . . (text obscure) . . . whether or not the slate is too muddled . . . possibilities. But there are the pigs and there are the apple blossoms. No need to distinguish, relate, elaborate, divide, or wallow in useless dogma with these two things. And tomorrow some more and so on ad infmitum until the known world fits a niche and all parts combine in brain and all colours blend in grace and natural chemistry. I give alchemy its due for a time. Must. Kardin will spoon me alchemy until my ears bleed sulphur and my spit turns to mercury and my excretion is pure salt. So I'll take it with grace and restraint—this alchemy of his. Open a mental apartment I can later fill in with things surpassing alchemy. Alchemy will not grab me wholly. Rather... (text unfortunately unreadable)... which is the true root and its sister which is more beautiful. So I can leave the farm and mother staring out at the moon at night, the moon at noon, the moon in the morning and seeing her lover's face drift black and happy there, and my vague cousins folding and unfolding the land like paper, and the licewide cows and the steady puppet bulls and the whole rotten mystical mess where I am called a joyous juggler and a magic madman, where my books gather hay-smell and mildew and an elementary drunken bible is pressed into my face like God's right hand where there is no hand, where in the wrong sort of hands, the Book is an ugly sandwich fit for no eating.' * Reference is to "Pistis Sophia," a Christian Gnostic writing with roots in Upper Egypt. Here enters lao. ^ Apparently home was not an appetizing place for Julian. We suspect internal difficulties other than those mentioned.

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G w e n d o l y n MacEwen O doves and mirrors. Kardin claim me soon. Nor will my born name be preserved. I change it as of now. Henceforth I am known as Julian the Magician, without gloss, without elaboration. Perhaps the name-changing is too dramatic a move for a magician's apprentice. Does it sound like stars and honey? Still, I think of names. Names. Names like those antique Hebrew names with levels of interpretation a hundredfold. Names enclosing names; names with the twists of vowels to give them souls; names with the turn of consonants to give them bones. Vowels, so the Zohar says, abide in consonants like souls in bodies. Souls in consonantal skeletons. I build my skeleton with a "J" an "L" and an "N." Behold the "J," a soft letter, implying jewel, implying jasmin, and the "L," a pensive letter, like running water, and the "N," a foot letter—direct, deliberate. Thus are the three natures made literal. Call them heart, mind and gut. Hence the three vowels. "U" is the beauty letter, the jewel, the heart. "I" is the pensive letter—note how it turns itself upon "A," which is the same biting letter, the same footed nature as "N." Note how the mind and the gut collaborate and the heart stands off, watching.* Enough of raging. I am a quiet man. While I write I endeavour to squash too much into too little. The page is thin, too thin—like the transparency of a fly-wing and the ink is too thick, made, it seems, from frog's blood and tree-sap. The quill has a mind of its own; it digs into the leaf without mercy while my mind, O my mind, is a restrained thing; would not under any conditions, involve itself in aggression. * This entire passage gives us an unparalleled glimpse into the early workings of the magician's mind. Perhaps here as nowhere else we can see the intellect and spirit uniting. 128

Julian the Magician Save quiet aggression. Erratum. Of course the mind of the magician must impress, indent, find its own doors into other minds, and if not finding them, it must make them anew. But the saws for those doors are velvet, O remember they are velvet, and the friction is almost nil. Velvet aggression against the soft silk of the brain. Surely this is not brutal. What remains, of course, is only the question of what must go through that door, and every magician will have a different delivery. Some deliver bees, others ashes, dandelion seed for irritation, dirt, powder, flea's feathers... O who knows what.... But I am not them and they are not I and spoons are not mouths. Such as I will deliver will be known. Day One I count as closing.* Quickly then let the farm recede and Kardin claim a ripe magician. I do not know how long the apprenticeship will last; surely I hope not overly long, for time claims more of me than Kardin will and makes its demands without measure. Each day, like the pigs and the apple blossoms, opens a new part of me, and with each new opening, another is in sight. The file runs down like mirrors facing each other creating through their union their infinity of children, each resembling the parents, each farther away in space and time, each in its separate removal, each demanding the milk of more mind . . . on and on until all things unite in large grace and the rains seeps for the last time into the leaf and the stone falls into rock and the ice moves into the sun ... without any loss of individual character, shape or substance, but with each piece of matter giving up its * This difficult sentence we can only interpret as metaphor. Day One of his life, perhaps. Day One closing on severance of mother and home and vague cousins. Julian was highly aware of the passage of time and its rise and dip of events. I suggest "Day" in this case stood for a number of years. 129

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen identity to a collective whole; a perfume-box that houses a million separate scents and allows none to lose distinction Mother sit by the window forever and see your gypsy in the moon. Bless him at least for the colour in me, bless him at least for pushing me into your womb, where the bats and the clouds and the bloodveins mingled, where I from that singing seed, willed being.* Be it known in all things—collective grace, continuity of sense, marriage of parts ... potential. Day One I count as closing. Closing on the bright night of the young star of the potential force of all things, I sign this entry as *

J.U.L.I.A.N. the *

magician

* Early evidence of the sense of identity and self-enclosure that was to make him later capable of both the height of humility and the range of active pride in which he moved as a magician.

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DAY TWO

Amber. The quality of amber. Daylong and nightlate I have looked upon things that enclose amber—beer, sun, magnolia, even magnolia, my own hair, honey, tanned caterpillars and found that after too much colour my stomach grows fluffy and vague. A certain nausea overtakes me (is it too much work?) at these times, my forehead swims in its own sweat and things like bees buzz under my eyelids—most annoying; then I realize that they too are amber and the system expands.* O and after times too long the amber itself is emasculated by its own being. I have failed in amber. I have failed in alchemy, so Kardin says, gloriously. Never has he seen such brilliant inadequacy, and he can only speak of me in negative and positive—superlatives. I work under him in golden subjection; his hair, so he claims, will be powder gray in exactly two years, and the thought of my genius succeeding * Did Julian include in his diary only that which was vital and significant at given times, or is this haphazarded arrangement of perceptions and smashed narrations an outcome of his highly occupied life and his lack of sufficient time to elaborate and connect? We do not know.

131

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen his is a delight above all rabbits. Though he looks with a dubious eye to my "human" alchemy,* all real doubt is lost in the floods of his admiration. He's a good sort, just a little blue, but a good sort.' None of my own respect for him has vanished, however; familiarity breeds only content. Kardin is baroque, like a Gothic column; he wears his elaborations well, yet underneath, the column is straight and strong. "You are a belief-maker," Kardin tells me. "Julian, you are a belief-maker and not a believer. This can be your fortune or your doom—however you regard it. People are going to come to you—you are a human magician, you are too concerned with the human mind for your own health. Watch it. Watch it." What nonsense! What danger in magic? Magic is the maker of the most pleasant dangers, it has no real destructive element "It will come from without," Kardin goes on to say, for all the world like some dazed prophet, "People worship easily, and worship is the most deadly emotion conceivable—when it is directed towards a man and not a god " gnud s'ylflt I can believe it in all instances save my own. Besides, it's unfruitful. What value to a fish-monger if his customers kiss his feet for convincing them his fish's guts are gold? "That's the trouble," says Kardin. "Your very truthfulness *! "I" The colour qualities recur without measure. We can only surmise Julian's basic interpretation of colour; he does not, anywhere in the diary, elaborate on their virtues. I Curious backward character to Julian's mind. 132

Julian the Magician

will overtake you, enhance your art in a way you will not want it enhanced...." ylf a fo gnud! Yet I must cite one instance. No, I won't cite this one instance. Yes—I will cite it. (bullrushes, by the way—I noticed this yesterday—are actually bulls' feces)—the instance is both bothersome and absurd. It could be the cause of my fluffy stomach. However, it was at Casseburg—a night of magnificent Kardin—when he ducked out in the middle of his performance screaming about some chemical concoction he'd left reacting in a closed test-tube. I merely stepped into the act and covered up for his absence. What did I do? O, rabbits or something—something painfully elementary and amusing. Rabbits, and a quick hypnotism on a jellyfish subject who could have gone into trance if I'd have cut his fingernail. What did I do? A sort of vague clamour came up after he regained his senses—naturally. The act was good; the audience was pleased. But what did I do, after all? Suspend him for a minute, control his reactions . . . why the rise of voices? the shouts? the forward surge? the subject at my feet mopping the floor with his hair? the hands? the voices, the hysteria.... Did I show him the Kingdom of Heaven? Less than that couldn't have brought on the madness. Did I show him the Kingdom? Absurd. I shuck the whole thing off like an old jacket. I shuck it off. Yes, I shuck it off and it is all shucked off and it was a freak scene—one which will not happen again. But good God—is my human alchemy, what I thought to be so innocent and experimental, carrying itself this far? 133

Gwendolyn MacEwen Reacting like the chemicals in Kardins test-tube?* hsibbur. hsibbur. Kardins test-tube, by the way, when he found it, had been shattered by a minor explosion. He was not the same for weeks after—apparently, so he claimed, three years of intensive study and analysis had gone into that test-tube— broken, broken by one stupid oversight of his. Eventually I persuaded him it was the fault of sulphur, sulphur being a highly whimsical and active element, plus the fact that he had overlooked the dangerous astrological zenith of the timeperiod he chose to perform the experiment. The moon too, I pointed out, is in its first phase—think of that test-tube as a woman, think of the menses, think of the womb of that test-tube building up, lining upon lining, and then—! You choose its menstrual zenith to perform your experiment! Really, Kardin!

Kardin, really! Such gross oversight! He agreed with me after a time—not without hesitation. "Julian," he said, "why in happy Hell aren't you an alchemist? I know why—you fail miserably in alchemy; you've proven that—yet if you can come up with such extraordinary insight as this—who would have thought? Of course, of course the menses, the menses...." So it was oversight and insight—a charming couple in a charming dalliance. His compliments were red and green and yellow for a long time after. * The handwriting in this paragraph was a strange backhand in the original manuscript. I have had to re-construct much of it.

134

Julian the Magician By the way, speaking of fingernails—I have the most amazing set. They grow at the most phenomenal rate, for one thing, and for another thing—they grow in natural contour— oval, consistently oval, with no corners. It is possible I am a woman—I have long debated it. However, my gender is no matter—my mind is decidedly bi-sexual; thus I can navigate in both female and male territory as freely as grass, and anticipate both female and male qualities in all things—with neither one blocked off in a singular blinker by an overabundance of one or the other. My work,* halted for a time by that ridiculous incident after the hypnotism, has finally been resumed. It occupies everything. I didn't realize ... (text obscure)... covered, its ... function is unknown and . . . sickness . . . Soon I must be leaving Kardin and his lovelies and his testtube and his blueness and his red and green compliments; I feel the need of solitude, contemplation, a vital area in which to work... but it means, of course, for money's sake, becoming a travelling performer and earning an existence from gullible villagers. The thought nauseates me; but starvation nauseates me even more. Hell, I will have to dig around the countryside like a magic hedgehog and juggle balloons for my bread ... O but what matter, after all? I will have time to work.^ So my area will be a circle, a circumference at least, running the hem of the country for food—ah well, the circle is good, the circular picture is good. Providence, Julian, has short fingers, but they're strong enough . . . and one doesn't fall into infinity by mere circles anyway.... * Throughout the diary, Julian never refers to the actual nature of this "work." It must have been mainly scholastic—we can only assume. "f O, the frustration of not knowing the exact work! 135

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen The work. It expands like rubber. It is too much—too little. What can it involve besides all of sand and sanity?* The notes pile like loaves of halfbaked bread; my head is the oven, my head is the oven.... Couldn't I be a gay Hassid and sign all these frightening discoveries over to him who made them? I am not a Jew; I cannot be a gay Hassid. I cannot dance up the steps of a temple with my hair in corkscrew curls and drip holiness like butter all around. I am a magician; therefore all riot must be quiet. I cannot dance, I cannot sing. If I danced up the steps of a temple I would bring the walls down over me. Temples would crumble at my coming. O, I am no iconoclast; call me a reconstructionist. Say I re-design. Call me a destructive reconstructionist; an inverted architect, but say I build, say I build. Kardin says I build but he doesn't know what I'm building. Kardin says I do drip holiness like butter, but he doesn't know about the bread or the oven.

AXIOM 1: Reverence is to knowledge like butter is to bread.

And here ends Day Two.

* Damn you, Julian—can't you tell us more? You can trust a diary, can't you? So vague—where are your notes? Why didn't Peter find your notes?

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DAY THREE

Blith ga reztrono, has eem noo halek ronom; kalooth kalooth, haara natzeem onboi ts oom oomvo.* And that's how I feel with regard to the sparrows now. Who would have told me that such a trick would grow so big? Not Kardin, certainly. The sparrows, the sparrows, clay ones, real ones—what innocence! what delight! what wings! I told him all about it afterwards—"The sparrows, Kardin," I said, "the sparrows fly from the clay like sparrows flying from clay—just like that!" And he nodded sympathetically—why sympathetically?—he nodded sympathetically and with restraint and said yes yes yes, how fine, and returned to his recent wife, his most recent test-tube. Somewhere at the back of it I saw real consternation. He's afraid of what I can do. So? Shall I become the teacher? Ego overtakes me, is it a vice? Binah, Binah, great water-mother, shekhinah of the upper sphere, light understanding, water, seawomb—enclose, balance. * An esoteric dialect which we have not been able to decipher. Its content and motive are yet unknown, but we are working on it. It has been included in the published diary for curiosity's sake.

137

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen I worry about lack of enclosure, lack of self contained self. I create then; must I pass myself around like pieces of weddingcake to do so? Must the creative whole be slit, split and sliced merely to manifest itself? No—the Tarot Cards say differently: beth, the letter beth, they say, is the magician. And the letter beth means "house." Then what does the magician house? The magician in the picture has a wand, a cup, a sword and a coin. Bravo. Fire, water, air and earth. The magician houses the four elements . . . but are they one or four? Is he one or many? The Book of Tokens says one. Bless that unknown Cabbalist. "My creative power," he says, "is the projection of myself and produces the semblance of another; But know, O Israel, that besides me there is none other. I only am the Knower and the Actor. That one I AM, whether alone and unmanifest or appearing in the multiplicity of created things " God bless him for that. Himself bless Himself. Then I am ONE. But an actor. Manifest. Saturn devoured his children, says Boehme. What is this? This has something to do with it, and I don't see. Saturn devoured his children Saturn devoured his children pigs eat their piglets Saturn devours his piglets pigs eat Saturn's children...... Blummish. The magician eats his parts. We eat our parts to form wholes. And the wholes are parts of a Whole and the Whole has all parts and no parts. IAOIAO IAO. Is the High Self going forth in manifestation. IAO is the disciplined lower mind. IAO is christ and I am iao.* * On the original manuscript the following passages were much obscured. I have omitted some of the purely unreadable lines here; it seems Julian went

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Julian the Magician

The experience with the woman* was uncanny. Karelin and his beer-bellied dames have nothing on this one. I set it down as an unnecessary record; let it go, flat and stupid on the paper like the woman herself—flat and stupid on the bed. An actress. Breasts like melons and a face full of apples. Even now I can see that face, the most unsubtle face a woman can have, the head the sort only to be seen with a pillow under it, the mouth all pulled and plumped with red, the cheeks blotched like a left-over palette, the eyes outlined as though to make sure they really were there on the face. Emphasized; features emphasized until they fell together in colourful oblivion . . . ah well, as I was saying, breasts like melons, legs like two Gothic columns, limbs altogether that would have made Botticelli vomit—so so unsubtle. So solid. Horses are solid, and cows. But never mind, the story. She waited for me after the performance, in the back alley like a whore, but then her very unsubtlety somehow expelled the idea that she could have been a whore. There was too much deliberation in her actions. "Mister Julian," she said, and took my arm. "Sparrows, I like sparrows." Fine, I thought. Fine, fine. But then the excitement in her voice heightened. "I like your performance!" she said with through some sort of literal trauma after the christ-iao line and was unable to straighten out his thoughts for some paragraphs. * The woman here is unidentified. 139

Gwendolyn MacEwen great weight, and tightened her hand over a vein. "Come home with me." She saw my doubt. "Is all right," she went on. "My man is home, come drink with us...." Rubbish. She knew it; I knew it. I went for the drink. What was that accent? Vaguely a taste of a hundred accents; I couldn't pin it. Oh yes, the old thing. Empty house and no man. This nameless horse throwing off her reins and bridle; it was field day at the track. Almost funny; I felt like a woman next to all that aggression. What was I to do? A glass of foreign flesh instead of wine. O—wine too, but thrown in as a secondary measure. Or as a love-potent. Stupid woman—did she think I was entirely foreign to potents? Did she think anything? Of course what was disgust in me became saintliness to her. Did she worship my denial of the flesh? Call me blessed and free from lust? "How did I do it," she asked. "How was it done?" Out of my repulsion I grew cherub-wings. It was absurd. "Madam," I said, "you're made for ten children. By all means have them. You're a big flower; find a bee. "Get pregnant by all means before your parts start dropping off like over-ripe fruit. You've got to use your attributes diligently; don't let them go to waste..." then I told her about unplucked apples and abandoned orchards and a harvest unharvested. And the poor nymph listened with three ears, thought all I said was mighty parable, heaven-inspired wisdom. When I left, flapping my angel-wings, she promised to do her utmost to become pregnant. 140

Julian the Magician I didn't sleep that night. It was her worship, I think ... her stupid unthinking invalid worship. I had unwanted cherubwings, so I pulled them off of my back. They hurt. They hurt. Poor nymph. Poor wings where you don't want them. Lily Limbo was her name, or something. I wrote a poem. Shall I set it down here? I felt very gay and quick one day; it is always the same. Those that are most weighted with woe and worry and wisdom can be the gayest and the quickest of all when the time comes. Not that the poem is gay and quick; it is the only one I shall ever write, I think. Acrostic. Thinking of writing it makes me gay and quick all over again. Kardin says that a magician can't afford to be gay and quick at any time. Quick, yes—but with sobriety. And he can't write poems—that is Axiom One. Here follows the poem: I saw three bulls Asunder in the rushes, 0 brown rumps and green stalks. 1 saw the rushes shift And the three bulls emerge Over the river. I saw with sickness that bull And rush were one and ever; Omniscience, living unity. Perhaps it is not good; who knows? The making of words is a fine party, kaleidoscopes and craze all around. Poets, I 141

Gwendolyn MacEwen think, are simply magicians without quick wrists. The only one I ever met was at a sort of a party that Kardin held. For me, I think. Only a few people came, fellow alchemists, other magicians, and this one poet. "Julian," he said in a muffly voice as though he had been drinking ink for supper, "what if I dedicated one of my poems to you?" "What if you did?" I replied. "Do you write poems about magicians?" "Occasionally. I am a mystical poet and fearfully misunderstood. Magicians are sometimes good subject matter...." "Why?" "They are likewise misunderstood." "O." I think I had drunk a lot at that point. I said something like: "And if you wrote a poem about me, then, and said in one line, for instance, that I have quick wrists ..." Yes? "What does it accomplish?" "Firstly I would not use such a platitude as 'quick wrists'..." "All right. Something else then. But what would it accomplish?" "It would establish that you have quick wrists." "But I have quick wrists. Why establish that? Will that make them quicker?" " " No. "Will that grow me another set of quick wrists?" " ' No. "Then why do it?" "Why do you write a diary?" he answered all muffly and vague. "And you do keep a diary...." U-17-

142

•>»

Julian the Magician There was more to it, but that's all I can recall just now, I forget even his name. Ah well, Kardin's house is stuffy; my room closes in. I must study.

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DAY FOUR

The strange spells I've been having lately tend to weaken me—my eyes mainly. Kardin says I read too much and too many letters cloud up the brain. I bury my head in books, he says, like a self-ostracized ostrich and it's no wonder the body rebels. But it's more than that; it's not the books; it's when I give a performance and the audience is too enthusiastic—they take something of me away each time. I can feel i t . . . sucking . . . draining . . . stealing.... "Forget it," says Kardin. "It's imminent success, it's the true magician's genius. Go with grace," he adds, for I'm leaving tomorrow....

And have left. The country is all spring and breaking ice. I've so far gathered two men for assistants. Aubrey, a nondescript fellow with a passion for rabbits and trayel and Johann, who I can't yet make out. He seems enthusiastic for the work and the money or lack of money involved and underneath that 145

Gwendolyn MacEwen mop of hair there may be an intellect. But his enthusiasm for the work is overpowering. I think he'd wash my feet hourly if I asked him, but then he's an assistant not a disciple.... ghoum rajh hibau Now as I write our little wagon stumbles over the countryside towards my first independent performance. My mind is as cluttered as tree; already I miss Kardin and the eternal test-tubes, even the beery women, even the stuffy room—there was at least a sort of security there; the world could wait indefinitely. "But, like a son," he said, "you've outgrown me. Go away; go in grace." So this is my singular exodus/from Mizraim to Canaan. From the sunny seclusion of pharaoh Kardin, through the tame wilderness of this country to Jericho and the first wall—then on. My mind is clearing; it could be the fresh air in through the wagon; I'll make rudimentary rules and plans to follow. I'll jot them down here: PLANS FOR THE MAGICIAN'S EXODUS: 1. Dread Yahweh has nothing to do with anything. If there is a Red Sea to split, I'll do it myself, and 2. no, this will not do, this listing. What I want is organization of a sort. I am a simple magician; I will earn bread and butter with my tricks, and tricks they are and nothing else. I embark on a simple uncomplicated profession as an entertainer. On no account will my studies and finds enter into the profession as such. They must be kept distinct, separate like two dots on a domino block— The Israelites. Uppermost in their minds was food. Uppermost in my mind is profession. Profession. Profession is why I apprenticed for so long. Profession is bread and 146

Julian the Magician nothing else. The Exodus is simple and uncluttered; from Mizraim to Canaan. As simple as red and white. Red Sea and white mannah. Red blood and white bread. I am a magician and nothing else. And the strange spells will stop. I will not allow stupid exterior things to affect me; I can be a success and not have to wallow under the slubble of the audience. I must discard my past discoveries, the damned IAO, the provocative mysticism, the sweet terrible books, the bright inspiration; I must keep to essentials. Essentials. I am not a rabbi and I am not a priest and I am not even a mystic. I am a magician. I am superficial. I am a performer. I keep to this then not even the people can sway me. Humility. The woman who thought I was working under divine powers—even she cannot make into what I am not. No one can. Nothing. I will not be augmented; I will not be deified—even Kardin was deified in a sense, with all his openmouthed admirers, but he kept to essentials afterall. "Genius, Julian," he said once—"can be your downfall... if you let it." Nonsense. I don't know if I can establish any real communication with my two assistants, or even if I want to. They're doing a marathon conversation between themselves just now up in front. They're too anxious for me to talk with them always—that's why I can't. I think they want to make sure I am real. God—do they think this is a privilege to be able to drive a flimsy wagon in all weather, to all places, under the most rotten conditions? Do they think it is a privilege to be able to work for Julian the Magician—when many times there'll be little money, not enough to buy a beer? 147

Gwendolyn MacEwen They think I'm asleep; they're discussing me; I'm not listening. The Hassidim have it, the Hebrew mystics. Recently we passed by a town where a group of them stay; bunched up in the high chant of their houses, their faces, some from the windows, all white and drawn and lovely. There's a certain delight under the brow-wrinkles, small fires in the dark eyes—like subtle gypsies, almost like subtle gypsies, but their knowledge is deep, pinpointed. Chants, dance, their houses are filled with solemn riot, stately at first, then fast and fast until their heels scoop out the air and their knees bend in a kind of quick genuflection of dance. They need not kneel; they need not kneel for Yahweh Himself claps and keeps time to the rhythm. All their cosmos and earth circle and stamp with the dance; quick and quick, their bodies write visual prayers, circular litanies. Their long robes swing and flap about their ankles; their high hats tilt on their heads; their palms do not sweat, closely together, shoved together in a foreign attitude of reverence, but clap, clap with increasing speed. They laugh; they touch each other's hands; their feet jumble together; their God dances and laughs with them! It quickens again. Their beautiful beards are shaken up with laughter; Yahweh grants them the perfect ecstacy; Yahweh unhinges their dance. O El, Adonai, Elohim, Adoshem, Yah, Yahweh of the mountain—tickle their ribs and oil their joints This is the Metaphor, the whole Metaphor. The fire in the bush was God; the dance of the Hassidim is God. Their bodies, their beards, their hands and their feet are God. 148

Julian the Magician All is.... That God is both the dance and the dancer.... I should not write this way. God has nothing to do with magicians.... But the Hassidim, the Hassidim . . . ! Consider their teacher, Israel Baal Shem, sworn into a one-man league against stuffy scholastics, pulling up God out of fields and flowers and plucking Him right in the people's laps. To Sheol with the barbed Book that only the learned could read! God is not in print—God is out of print, God is in the fields choreographing a dance! The idea intoxicates me; I want to leave the wagon and dance with them. Nowhere. For no purpose. But the music is the purpose; the dance is both method and purpose itself.... No, it's no place for a magician.... But the dance, the dance! The temptation to go is great. Already, even before I begin my profession, I feel the seed of a certain conflict deep down in the gut somewhere. A stupid way to begin. Resolutions are made; I can't go back on them . . . but there is so much else besides the magic. How can I live with them all? Is my study going to be such a provocative thing that— No. I need some air. After I complete this entry I'll go and sit with Johann up front of the wagon; that'll clear my head and kill the seed. It may be some time before I can write more... .*

* There is, in fact, an obvious time-lapse between Day Four and Day Five as we shall discover. Julian anticipated ail-too clearly the strain and frustration of the next few months (?) years (?). 149

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DAY FIVE

Finally I come back to the diary. The devil of diaries is that they omit more than they contain; I can wonder and pick the lesser of two evils, probably, but the real Diary, the wideas-world Diary remains in code, unrevised and unedited somewhere in the skull—God knows what weight a skull can house.... I try to balance. To balance for a minute, I put down a story here, a recent delight, which I made up in a mild moment for Peter. It heightened the day for me—this story. Peter, sitting folded like a piece of thin paper by the fire, looked up to me pleadingly and asked for a story. A story, he said, all about gods and things. The fire, he said, reminded him of things, old father-knee legends, half-remembered heroes and warriors all springing up Greek and coloured from his father's tongue. "Myths?" I asked. "Myths, things like that," he answered. "Then I'll give you a modern myth," I said in a crazy kind of compromise, between which two alternatives I could not guess.

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G w e n d o l y n MacEwen "What about?" he asked, and chewed some grass. "Gods. Gods and people." This is the story—as much of it as I can recall: The boy's name was Ernest and he was. A sort of dandelion optimism drove him to do it. I mean, one knows one is a weed, but one drawers the knowledge in the hope that any brash yellow will let him pass for flower. Ernest wrote poems with names like "When Night was in Flowerhood"; he was a boy of many colours. And his poetic career careened to unfathomable heights all within the one day of that particular poem. Day Number Two, for we measure all his time from the conception of that poem, or "PD." like "A.D."—or better still, "P.D. 2," Ernest was trumpeting off to pastures more golden. He began a relentless search for the great dead god Pan, fanning out over the whole countryside. He had two assistants and they split up to form a shifting, searching triangle of which Ernest was the apex. Actually Ernest had not the slightest interest in Pan. Ever since he'd learned the god didn't exist, his mythical flame had dwindled into puffs of grey vapour and down down into the down deep depths of modern logic sunk Pan, Ernest and the whole lot of non-existent gods. Nevertheless, Ernest had the presence of mind to realize that the only way to get back at Pan for his dreadful non-existence, was to hunt him down and tell him what he thought of the situation straight to his face. This he began to do. Ernest shifted the apex of the triangle. Being the apex of the triangle, all he had to do was move and he was shifting it. His assistants who formed the other two searching sides had by this time fallen in summer slumber under three dramatic oak trees. 152

Julian the Magician Ernest was alone. Then he heard the inevitable thin shrill piercing high etc. sound of reed pipes. Pan. Pan himself. Raising his left eyebrow to just that degree of arrogance and defiance, Ernest followed the ethereal music. It led him to the inevitable march (glade) and there, behold, lo and roses, sitting knock-kneed and pigeon-toed (goat-toed) on a tree limb was the non-existent god Pan himself. His eyes had an evil glimmer, rather like seeds in watermelons, except that the whites of them weren't at all red like watermelons, they were white, but the pupils were black and they were what glimmered. So as it was, the blacks (pupils) of Pan's eyes glimmered evilly like seeds in watermelons (white) and the surrounding atmosphere was, of course, tense with fabulous expectation. Pan was blowing something midway a Macedonian weddingdance and a minor-keyed anthem. It was beautiful, haunting and thoroughly mysterious. Pan finished and cut off one of his wayward toe-nails (goats have this trouble; the nails on their satanical hooves grow all directions) and eyed Ernest with eyes that glimmered like . . . (see two paragraphs back). Ernest said "hello" brashly (remember the dandelion) and burped superbly, disarming for a moment the arrogant god. "Hello," said Pan in a voice like lumber. Or rather, not like lumber—but wooden, hollow. As a matter of fact it sounded like one of his reed pipes—a wooden (lumber) reed pipe on a somewhat lower pitch than his reed (reed) pipe. "I've come to tell you face to face, Pan, that I'm thoroughly disgusted with your total lack of existence. Through the discovery of this, I was completely disillusioned early in 153

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen life. My entire series of myth-concepts were stripped away layer by layer to the bone, and consequently I am left with nothing. NOTHING." "I'm truly sorry. We gods are all out of print," answered Pan in a voice that was like . . . (see two paragraphs back). "Really I am," he added and studied his new lack of toe-nail (goat). "O, the horrors of being half and half," he added wistfully to himself. "Well," said Ernest, his mission accomplished, "thank you for your time." He turned to leave. "I'm terribly sorry," said Pan, distraught now. "Do try and reconcile yourself. Terribly sorry I don't exist, since it meant so much to you " "It's all right," answered Ernest and wandered up the glade (marsh), head hung low, Jo and the inevitable tear escaping his eyelids. "Terribly sorry we gods are all out of print," came the echo of the voice after him, high and haunting through the trees. " Terribly sorry, Ernest...."

There is the story. And after it Peter was silent for a long time. I don't think he approved, even though he'd been sitting rapt with attention all through the narrative. For, in his mild way, he accused me later of employing one quality which a magician should never employ—cynicism. I told him, of course, that there was no cynicism there; that negative is positive, that satire reflects tragic situations. But I didn't convince him. Not in the least. 154

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But that was a day of real delight. A light in a black ocean. Even now as I write, I try to hang onto the one thread of reality left to me—and that is Peter. The thread is thin. And Peter pulls his end like a quick fish on a line; it is difficult to keep it steady, it staggers. Slowly it unravels. I think of the pigs and apple blossoms back on the farm. Were they? Are they? Do I have to stretch my hand through time and space, and grab the snout of one of those pigs and squeeze and squeeze, trying to squeeze the reality out of it? That far? A pig? Or pick a fistful of those apple blossoms, then boil them in water and drink the solution, as if then the reality of the apple blossoms would be trapped in my body and unable to escape me? Need I do anything? Is a secondary reality fine enough? Is it? I am gone somewhere where the air feels as hard and as definite as lead in my nostrils, where I can scoop great hunks of it, mold it, eat it, sit on it, air. Where the objects in my vision are hot, cold, smooth, stubbly, velvet or sharp. Where my tactile fingers are eyes, ears, nose, fingers, where they create and define all at once, where I no longer know which comes first—the vision, or the tactile fingers.... I feel that I am sick too often, and I do not know what it is I do when I am sick. I wake with the memory of having put on a perfect and overpowering performance. I wake with the character I have played slipping me, going back. Only weeds and riverwater remain on my skin, my face, my hands. I cannot think. 155

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen Yet there are horrible moments of clarity, and though I scream for clarity, when it comes it is a thousand dragons too soon, all charging one direction. I shut them out; I do not want to know more. Then again the sickness, and it is all pink and hot, full of doves and baptism and rehearsed speeches. Then it is orange and hotter, rooms filled with orange butter . . . I slide on it, I swim through the orange butter as in a dream where the limbs are lead, but it is no dream. And again I scream for clarity. And again I cannot bear the face of it when it comes. The circle widens, widens, enclosing more than mere mind can grasp. Yet something in me grasps it, is able to see the parts, the implications... something. But back, back, to the orange rooms of butter and the orange buttered faces looking up to me like hot flowers from their chairs; horrible gardens. What is Julian doing? A secondary logic has overtaken me. An enclosed genius has come out of my skin and rules me, a genius and a will so sharp, so complete I cannot recognize it as my own. It is not my own. Things I know, deeds I do, miracles I perform, all stem from this foreign genius who is not me. But he is brilliant. I feel him speaking through my lips sometimes and I marvel at his speed, his intellect. I prostrate myself before him; he is complete. It continues. I give in and let him take over. And suddenly it is good, it is like sleep, to give myself over to him ... he only asks occupation, residence—and that I give. It is good. I am lying back on a pillow, feeling him move and 156

Julian the Magician breathe and think within and without me. Of his own accord. I do not prompt him. I need not. I rest and he works. He goes through the rooms of butter. He has the weight of my profession now and I am relieved. All the time he is working I sleep underneath his skin.... Sometimes he gives me hints of things ... I glimpse priests and temples and olive trees, strange worried olive trees, and suns and vines and sand. The sweet submission ... like falling onto seas of grass He works so hard. . . . I feel him groaning in the night. Often I wake to let him sleep. Now, for instance, I am awake and he is resting.... I must awake sometimes to let him rest . . . he needs it so badly. His brow is all curled and tossed with strain and worry.... the weight of his own genius pulls the blood in him into strange twisted shapes, like the veins of that olive tree. His hands are worn and tired and beautiful. He is the person I acted by the river. Now I am the actor who has submitted and let him become himself. The real character controls the stage and I, the inferior actor, sleep, wake, sleep, according to his demands. The servitude is not difficult, as you might believe. I am the apprentice to the greatest Magician. I worship him and let him occupy me as he wills and carry out his brilliant career with my flesh as his robes.... I must sleep again, for he is waking....

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DAY SIX

I remember pulling the camel through the needle and after . . . ? a little man at my feet, like a crazed tax-collector begging his dues. Clay—did I make sparrows, his name was Ivan, or ... Fool, it was Lazarus* And then the faces and the waiting and the waiting faces, for he had gone somewhere.... I cured his eyes. Listen to me. Then the screaming and shouting and Peter pulling me away to the horses, I don't know what I did that night.... It was Lazarus and the blind man in one. It is all very simple. Then I ran through the bushes, tangled, voices, away from Peter towards the river.... / ran tangled through the streets of the City, high and high, with voices rushing past me bearing high doves for the temple and the sandals of my feet wearing thin and fingers lifted up to my face— * Throughout the whole of DAY SIX, the handwriting changes regularly with each paragraph, as though two hands were employed alternately.

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G w e n d o l y n MacEwen It was the vines ... It was fingers lifted up to my face; they didn't mean to scratch me but the market was so crowded that even the lice were cramped on the dogs and the grapes were crushed by the apples and purple and red juice spilled out in the City like blood.... Soon I rested on pine needles by the river ... / rested in the house of a friend close to the temple... The air was heavy . . . The temple was crashing... inward... I don't know how long I slept... / slept just until early dawn. Peter came— A woman came telling me of Lazarus— —and told me Ivan had died —and when we reached Lazarus he had been gone four days. Bethany stank with his body. I remember—four days—I had to have his body. Four days. And yet he came forth. His soul awoke above him. And his body walked the earth. And Ivan's body was in the earth ... We gathered for the Pesach... Peter brought me to the camp ... And it was the time when the blood of the lamb turned the angel from the doors of the Israelites.... Aubrey slit the deer and blood fell.... But I am the lamb. They drank of the wine as they would drink of me— I passed the deer's blood to Johann, and Aubrey . . . and Peter. They drank at my command. 160

Julian the Magician Judas was among them, smiling. Johann. Judas. Judas was among them.... And the pleasure of his deed was stripped for I placed it upon him....*. Still the mind turns back on its hinges, like a door. I remember the farm, and the visit to old Aunt Anya .. . your bread, Julian, she said, and I remember her talking about magic and bread and giving me the most beautiful, the most perfect crust I have ever tasted. I could feel it, the bread. I knew it was real, it defined my throat, my stomach, and there was comfort there, in the tangible bread of my old Aunt Anya— You do not listen to me. I tell you there is nothing to remember but amber sand and stone walls against a hillside. Amber sun striking the walls, the provocative angle of sun on stone. The dull camels carrying the east to the west and the west to the east, the heavy pitchers, the Bedouins sometimes close to the town, the imperial scarlet of Rome. Rome. Rome—its legions scraping through the town like armies of red ants, the eagle born above them, the coins of the wolf. . .. I cannot remember all this. I remember Anya and the bread... You remember more. I am what you remember. The wolf, screaming wolf of Rome, Galilee and Judea forced to suck her teats like Remus and Romulus. * Since the diary was found in the magician's wagon, we can assume that all further events after the time of his departure from the camp must have gone unrecorded. 161

Gwendolyn MacEwen Nonsense. You have a screaming imagination. Your imagination is a mad she-wolf giving suck to anything that approaches it Then make me stop talking. I can't. You go on of your own accord. We are both awake, now. Neither of us sleeps to let the other one breathe. Who will gain control? Are we fighting for control? Yes. You can either go to sleep and let me take over, or— Yes? Or I can kill you; it's all the same.... How can you kill me? I'm giving you life—you reside on me like a parasite. If I die, you die.... It's the reverse now, magician. No!

Yes. No, I can account for each bone in my body, each inch of my skin. My hand moves when I command it to move. At this moment, I am sitting in the wagon writing, my hand forms the letters at my command. Outside the campfire snuffles and coughs; Aubrey is cleaning up the remains of the meal, and Peter is looking in anxiously at me from the front of the wagon. Why is he anxious? The boy is always anxious. He has fleas, perhaps. You re making a valiant effort. I credit you with that. But your indignation is in direct ratio to your fear. Come come, I've occupied you for months now—why the sudden fight? (text obscure) Then tell me again where you are.

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Julian the Magician I am in the camp, writing. The fire snuffles and coughs. Aubrey is cleaning up the remains of the meal. Peter watches me anxiously from the door. Now he's watching? You said before he was just looking in. No, he's watching. Tell me again where you are. I am in the wagon, writing. The fire coughs and snuffles. Aubrey is cleaning up the remains of the meal— What meal? The deer. What deer? The deer someone caught, Aubrey or Johann.... Where is Aubrey? Where is Aubrey? Can you remember nothing? He's gone to get them. Why? I told him. I'm winning you, magician! Tell me again where you are... a garden . . .

Gethsemane. What kind of trees are around you? O, olive, olive trees, mangled and stunted. They grow horizontally instead of vertically... curious things ... the way they grow you'd think they were terrified of leaving the earth, they go into painful contortions to stop themselves from going up, they twist themselves up, crush their limbs and veins in the effort, tighten their bowels about their torsos until they look like terrible black clowns.... 163

G w e n d o l y n MacEwen All this to stop from growing upwards? Yes, I think so. They are in great pain then, are they? Yes. And what is an olive branch? Peace. And what is an olive branch? Again. Peace. And where is peace? In you. You let me win, magician? So easily? Yes. You will not fight more? I will not fight more. How do the silk and velvet chains feel? Good. Good on my arms. It is complete. Would you like me to loosen them? No—I am already dead. The rest is yours—you have control. You wear me well.

Soon I must leave Gethsemane and the painful olive trees. The passionate garden is falling away, branch by branch. My knees ache. Almost I can hear horses.

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DAY SEVEN*

Like the seven ages, the seven days are defined, passed, defined. Now in the seventh sun of the same world, I await the final curtain. There is no need now to elaborate on events, for their coming is inevitable and rehearsed. Somewhere I feel cool and uncluttered—like the river to the side of the left eye. Peter like a poor little jewel, rants and rages in his quiet way over my fate. I can only look on and smile. I am tired. Does he expect IAO to turn itself back again? Does he expect Julian to resist? I can only resist from resisting and that is facile, like sleeping, after all, in the light of the seventh sun in the light. O and poor Philip and poor Carl—not knowing what good glad instruments they are all along; poor Pilate and poor struck Caiaphas, their hands all red and raw from trying to milk away all magic. The udders are iron—but they don't know. What magic do they want to milk but what I have put into them? * It appears that time was running short and DAY SEVEN was written immediately after DAY SIX.

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G w e n d o l y n MacEwen In the new day the clouds look fine. I cannot see them but they look fine, high and white and immaculate, taking their separate faces and forms by the minute and discarding them, taking new—change, variation where there is no change, no variation Lazarus, I call to you in heaven where you drink God's blood and eat wafers of sacred bone and climb, climb algum trees and twist about olive trees, where your spirit is as tall as the cedar and you are married to all things at once and your sight is as sharp as the eagle's inner eye where the clay broke away. There you represent me, knowing that all things are unknowable and in that lies their wonder. To strike then upon one knowledge, clear and sharp as a new blade—even a fatal knowledge, is therefore the supreme orgasm, the final fatal spasm of the self into self. Better than clay sparrows, better than gold grapes, better than the rabbits that run, even the most beautiful, in hungry circles of white and grey and pink-pearl. Life. Jumbly as a cauliflower. And death as smooth and uncluttered as a piece of jade. That there is no knowledge is the Knowledge. That the sperm on the wheel continues is the wheel and is the sperm. The river is its motion. The ox is its function. The eagle is its flight. The lion is its roar. The man is his realization. Pools of clarity and pull of elements. Introspection from without. 166

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The hand twice removed. The Israelites screaming Yahweh are Yahweh. You disbelieve? Then pick the pork from your teeth and listen. Instinct. Man is the unconscious agent of God's creative will. He pushes genesis. He is an instinctive Tool. He is the fingers of God. And I have become a conscious agent. Have dipped into my own divinity and found it warm. And thus did I approach the conscious state of deity within myself, Julian the Magician. I am therefore conscious God. And if anyone should negate what I say, let him inspect the wheel and find his own sperm upon it and call the wheel God and bow before it. As the LAO turns and the LAO turns back, it is both end and beginning and the green race between is the IAO. I am the IAO. The fingers must turn back into the hand; Julian the Magician who is Christ must complete Himself and enter the one knowledge which is death. And death is the lao.... And if anyone destroys what I say he must wait for all patterns to come the full circle. For on the third day the son must rise.

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G w e n d o l y n MacEwen Here ends the diary of Julian the Magician. Much was destroyed, and much, perhaps lost validity and meaning in an abortive text. Without time and location, we cannot place his figure anywhere in history. Perhaps it is just as well, for we are the rabbits and the fingers he speaks of. We do not know.

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Afterword Imagine publishing your first novel at the age of 21! What a source of achievement and pride. What an accomplishment. Furthermore, imagine working on that novel during years of upheaval. Gwen was 18 years old when our father died in 1960. His health had deteriorated over the years due in part to his abuse of alcohol. It was a very difficult time, I think more so for Gwen than for me. Dad had been her mentor, her sounding board and the strongest supporter of her determination to become a recognized author. He was always available to discuss her thoughts and plans and understood her so well. He introduced us both to the world of magic, with trips to the theatre to see such famous magicians as The Great Blackstone. Dad provided the beginning of Gwen's lifelong interest in magic, which is evident in Julian. Although it wasn't always evident to others, Gwen missed Dad terribly. Milton Acorn came into Gwen's life at a time when (I have always believed) she was searching for another 'father' figure to guide her in her career. She admired Milton as a writer and a free-thinker and of course Milton was extremely flattered by her attentions. They married in February of 1962; a brief ceremony at City Hall and a family reception at my home. Within a month or two our Uncle Charlie died. We had grown up in the home of Aunt Margaret and Uncle Charlie, and prior to her marriage, Gwen had been living with them again after they sold their house and moved into an apartment in the High Park district. Uncle Charlie was another difficult

loss, which came at a time when Gwen had already realized what a mistake her marriage to Milton had been; the marriage ended in Jess than six months. In August of that year, after the breakdown of my own marriage, I stayed with Gwen for several weeks on Ward's Island and together we began to rebuild our lives. Through all this, Gwen continued to devote herself to her writing—the result was Julian the Magician. Carol Wilson Barrie, Ontario, 2004

Suggested Reading Literary critics have been less interested in MacEwen's fiction than in her poetry. Among the small number of sustained engagements with Julian the Magician are Jan Hartley's two monographs, Invocations: The Poetry and Prose of Gwendolyn MacEwen (1983) and Gwendolyn MacEwen and Her Works (1984), Jane Kilpatrick's unpublished The Conscious Gods: A Critical Study of the Novels of Gwendolyn MacEwen (1972; can be accessed at the University of Toronto's Scarborough College Library), and Rosemary Sullivan's biography Shadowmaker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen (1995). Two articles—one by E.B. Gose, "They Shall Have Arcana" in Canadian Literature, 1964, 21: 36-45, and the other by Maria Luz Gonzalez, "El Camino arquetipico del heroe: el mago y el sumo sacerdote en las novelas de Gwendolyn MacEwen," in Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 1999, 39: 307-21—are also of interest.