Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

“Oh, what lovely candy!” Lydia Conscience says.

“I’m sorry. Would you care for some?”

She takes two jaggery toffees and a chocolate caramel.

“It’s positively shameless,” Lydia Conscience says. “I’m eating for two now.”

Though when she puts one of the sweets into her mouth she chews it without interest.

Mudd-Gaddis moves the box almost imperceptibly toward Tony Word. “How about you, old man? Unless the diet prevents, of course.”

“I’d love to, ta very much. It’s just that it would kill me.”

“Of course.”

“Though they look delicious.”

“Yes, I’m told they’re quite good,” Mudd-Gaddis says. “I always try to have some on hand for my guests.”

Tony Word nods, Lydia Conscience does.

“You have many guests then?”

The baggage! The little preggers baggage! Because suddenly he understands what this is all about.

How rich he must be!

And if it’s not a charnel house here then it’s because he, Mudd-Gaddis, must make it well worth their while for it not to be.

How rich he must be!

For all these poor relations to come trotting out here every Sunday — he feels himself in the country, Sussex, the Cotswolds — in their beat-up old Anglias and Ford Cortinas. And the ring business too, he understands the ring business. Which doesn’t have damn all to do with reminding him of his responsibilities. It’s semaphore, is all. Why the little light o’ love is only signaling. The fat baggage was just making her manners. She was telling him that the contraband she carries in her breadbasket was legal now, that she and the little wimp — surely he can’t be the father — were all conjugaled and properly wedlocked. She was only publishing the banns with those rings across her belly. And that question about his guests! So of course he understands what it’s all about. It’s a competition. To them he’s just the goddamn pools!

Still, you can’t be too careful. He doesn’t know what claims they have on him, though he’s certain they can’t be great. Charles. Not Pop, Granddad, Great-granddad, Uncle, or Cousin. But still you can’t be too careful. He sees he will have to continue to be rational, compos, polite, continue to chat them up, continue to endure them. So old, so old! They have some farfetched stake of relationship, but it’s a sure thing that however tenuous it may turn out to be it’s enough to get him committed — because you don’t get to be as wealthy as he is without knowing at least something about the law; a judge, one psychiatrist, and a neighbor’s kid could probably do it — and if they’re that greedy it won’t be any well-appointed palace of pensioners next time but the true and genuine charnel house itself. And something else. If he’s stashed, it was never any family did it to him. He has no family, only this attenuated bond of cousins, thinner than cheap paint. God knows why, but he’s stashed himself. He’s certain of it. He’s self and voluntarily stashed!

Old. So old, so old, so old, so old. (Sold, sold, sold.)

“I say, do you have many guests then, Charles?”

“Oh. Beg pardon, dear, the hearing isn’t what it used to be,” Mudd-Gaddis tells her. (Because they can’t commit you for deafness. He’s thrown them a bone. It’s the compos thing to do. And because he’s canny now whom great age, subtracting faculties piecemeal, has managed to add only this, his almost volitionless cunning, to a character that always before had been strong enough to despise cunning. Just as, when he’d offered what’s-his-name a confection, he’d taken none himself and automatically implied his dentures. Let them have deafness, let them have dentures. Let them see how far those will get them in Her Majesty’s Courts!)

“I say, do you have many visitors?” repeats Lydia Conscience, raising her voice.

“Now and then. The odd male, the odd female.”

“Benny Maxine?”

“Benny?”

“Maxine. The lumpy-faced Jewish boy.”

He does recall a lad with a puffy face and thinks he recollects the voice, persistent, wheedling. He acknowledges Maxine’s visits. But Jewish? Has he Jewish cousins?

“Janet Order?”

“Ye-es, I think so,” Mudd-Gaddis says. “Dark girl.”

“Dark?” Tony Word chimes in. “She’s all over blue as a bruise.”

“Well, my eyes,” says Mudd-Gaddis, anteing his vision, throwing that in with his ears and his teeth.

“Does Noah Cloth come? Does Rena Morgan?”

“Noah’s this finger amputee,” Tony Word reminds. “Has a digit missing on his left hand. And Rena’s nose runs. She’s this phlegm faucet.”

“My goodness,” Mudd-Gaddis says and wonders about his time-informed, incremented, evolutionated family. A lump-faced Jew, a female bruise, a hand-gimp, and a Niagara nose. Plus these two. A wimp, a wimp’s trollop. (And remembers now, has them sorted out. By their afflictions. And canny or no, believes he understands the real reason he keeps the box of sweets for them. It may be for no better reason than to please them.)

“Well, I must say,” Lydia Conscience says. “It’s no wonder to me.”

“What’s that, dear?”

“Why they’re not here today.”

“Yes. We thought we’d see them,” Tony Word says.

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?”

“Of course not. And you wouldn’t either if you’d been paying attention.”

“I pay attention.”

“Oh, yes,” Lydia Conscience says.

“I pay attention, I do.”

“To your diet.”

“I have to. You know that.”

Charles Mudd-Gaddis, who can’t bear to witness lovers’ quarrels, attempts to bring her back on track. “Why is it you’re not surprised they’re not here today, dear?”

Lydia Conscience looks from one to the other. Baffles seem to be hung about each of them in their common dream like curtains, like shunts and chutes, like traps in games, like all walled-off, buffered interveniency. They are discrete as people beneath earphones. None knows what the other is thinking. It’s like one of those round robin petitions where signature is arranged in a circle to confuse the order of signing. How can Tony feign surprise, how can Charles stage ignorance?

“Well, the buddy system,” she says. “They’re never buddies. Whatever happened to the buddy system?” she demands anxiously.

“The buddy system,” Mudd-Gaddis says.

“Boy/girl, boy/girl. It never had anything to do with rooms,” she says.

“Rooms.”

“Janet Order is off with Noah Cloth. Benny Maxine’s off with Rena Morgan.”

“I don’t think I quite…”

“Tony heard Noah and Janet plotting. And I knew Rena was up to no good. All that taffy and rose water on the nanny. The poor bitch is quite barmy. The ‘game room’ indeed! I can quite imagine what games those two are up to. Anyway, Benny Maxine is my buddy. I know his condition as well as I know my own. I was prepared for any contingency. Any contingency. Tony’s Janet’s buddy, Rena Morgan was supposed to be Noah’s. We were assigned. It never had anything to do with rooms.”

“Who’s mine?” Mudd-Gaddis asks.

“Oh, Charles,” she says brokenly, “you never had one. You couldn’t remember the symptoms.”

“You’re out of my will!” Mudd-Gaddis roars at them suddenly.

“Oh, Charles,” Tony Word says kindly, “were we in your will? That’s awfully sweet of you, old man, but don’t you think that’s a wee foolish? I mean, I’ve this nasty case of leukemia to deal with. I haven’t a chance of surviving you.”