Millroy the Magician by Paul Theroux
Viewing figures went up when people began to write in to Millroy saying that they were losing weight. For the first time in their lives they felt well and were happy. They had spirit. They even experienced a sense of holiness.
Testimonials, Millroy said. He read these letters on the show, about people finding health and strength through God’s food. He showed snapshots they sent in: ‘Before’ (black-and-white, sulky, shadows, old clothes) and ‘After’ (bright colors, smiling, sunny, stylish).
‘They don’t know what to make of it,’ Millroy said. ‘The Day One program is unclassifiable. That’s the secret of our success.’
It was peculiar, he said.
To me it was all Millroy the Magician – the real Millroy, the man I knew, everything except his doubts and his bad dreams.
It was food, it was prayer, it was recipes, it was the Book. It was diet and holiness and trips to the restroom. It was sermons on roughage and bowel transit-time. It was mirrors. It was snapshots. It was occasionally Millroy’s puke-o-meter, the stomach pump for plunging food out of your guts to examine for degradation and digestion. Now this egg is taking an awful long time to break down, he might say, poking shreds of rubbery white. It was checks with the emission gauge to monitor corrupt breath. Often it was magic.
It brought people to the Day One Diner, and so when the program became a success, so did the diner. Now, all the people who came to the diner were eaters. They believed, they came almost every day, they made us feel that we were like little holy folk and priestesses, doing something special by dishing up Day One food.
Around this time, a stranger showed up and said to me, ‘My name is Orlo Fedewa,’ and handed me his card. ‘You probably have never heard of me.’
Probably?
‘I run a charitable foundation that aids underdeveloped countries.’
No tie, hairy hands, a beard and long hair parted in the middle. There were flecks of barley soup clinging to his mustache. He had also eaten a whole order of Ezekiel bread, some honey and a cruse of yogurt.
‘I wonder if it would be possible to have a word with Doctor Millroy,’ he said. ‘I feel he has the answer.’
All I could think of was, Is he calling himself Doctor again?
‘I’ll have to ask. Mind taking a seat?’
This man’s nervousness made me confident.
Millroy was in the back, talking on the telephone, saying, ‘There is no point in a Day One program for Chicago unless we also open a Day One facility –’
Using sign language, slashing and pointing, and mimicking with my mouth, I indicated to Millroy that a man outside wanted to see him. Meanwhile, Orlo Fedewa had crept up behind me and was waving at Millroy himself.
Millroy beckoned him in, and so I went out and bussed the lunch tables.
Pretty soon after, Orlo Fedewa hurried past me so fast I thought Millroy had socked him in the jaw.
‘He wanted me to preach Day One overseas,’ Millroy said. ‘Supposedly it would be a benefit to have overseas people in the program.’
He stared in the direction the stranger had gone, and I had no idea what all this meant until the next Day One show.
The Stars and Stripes hung on a flagpole behind Millroy.
I have seen overseas, he said. Overseas is small and dirty. Never mind where overseas, because overseas is just one place. It is outside America.
How he got that flag flying in the studio was magic.
Overseas people eat bad food and gorge themselves on fat and die young. Overseas people squat in hideous cold toilets or in the elements and hurry their bowels – their eyes popping. Overseas kitchens are black with soot. Overseas people hardly wash. They have flat feet, corrupt breath, rotten flesh, no muscle tonus. They cook, I grant you that, but they cook swill – innards and blood and pigmeat, thick sauces, strangled animals, beasts that died of old age they stuff into their mouths.
Was it my imagination, or did he flash little picture bursts on the screen of starving Africans and meat-chewing mountain men and beer-guzzling Germans and greasy little people from Europe eating dead birds?
I have seen their narrow streets and chipped sinks. I will never go overseas again. I will never have to. Overseas is overpriced, overwhelming, over there. It is riddled with opportunistic germs. Overseas is a health risk. I have been there for you.
The flag was still flying and a low howling chorus of America the Beautiful could be heard behind Millroy’s voice.
God has placed his hand upon America, he said. This is the Promised Land. It will happen here.
The show was not much more than this message about overseas, and yet it was one of the most popular editions of Day One. Millroy was loved for it. He was asked to repeat this message of Overseas is cold and dirty. He seemed surprised that something so obvious to him made him so popular. He gladly said it again. And he was not just saying it to Orlo Fedewa. He was saying it to all of America.
Overseas people cannot change what they eat or think or how they live, he said. America is receptive to my message. Yes, there is a Second Coming. It is you, reborn with health and strength, coming back to live for another century!
After that, the phone began to ring and Millroy was discussing syndication and re-broadcasts, and branches of Day One diners – in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, St Louis.
Often I heard his voice from the back office saying, I can make America regular once again.
26
I was walking down Boylston Street in a drizzling rain with some fish in a bag and saw Vera Turtle coming towards me. Before I could hide in a doorway she recognized my face and made a move, as though to snatch me, just for fun.
‘Hey Jilly,’ she said, and looked me up and down.
It was strange to hear a name that did not seem like mine anymore.
She wore a skirt and a plastic raincoat and appeared to me the way people always did when I saw them away from where they belonged – unreal.
The bag of fish was flopping against my leg as I fidgeted.
‘Bet you got somethun good in that bag.’
I told her fish.
‘So you’re livun around here, Jilly?’
The way she repeated my name made it seem as though she was testing me.
‘Sort of. How’s Dada?’
‘He got laid off at the fillun station. He does supermarket security. He’s on nights. I’m up here pickun up his chest X-rays’ – she lifted the official yellow envelope stamped Mass General – ‘otherwise he can’t get his insurance. How about a hot dog?’
‘I don’t eat hot dogs.’
Just my saying that surprised her so much she looked stunned, and her face seemed to open and shut, as though she could not think of another word to say.
‘Cup of coffee?’ she said at last.
‘Makes you hyper.’
‘Coke?’
‘Junk drink.’
‘Cheese danish?’ She was smiling.
‘It’s not mentioned in the Book.’
‘Anythun?’
‘I’m not hungry, Vera.’
I was thinking that she appeared unreal, too, because I had begun to think of this part of Boston as my world.
‘And I’m pretty busy,’ I said.
‘I wish I was,’ she said. ‘And your Dada’s a wreck.’
That made me sad, the way she was so truthful about her regrets, and how nothing had changed for her or Dada. She set off, walking towards the bus station to get back to the Cape, and as soon as she turned the corner I had the feeling that I was safe in my own world again.
When I got back to the Day One Diner carrying the fish, a man went through the door with me. He had rain on his face, pasty skin, plastic lips, socks falling down around his white ankle-bones, wet boiled eyes, adam’s apple going like a yoyo, and he tripped over someone’s foot but did not care, because he was calling out in a loud voic
‘You’re out of your mind!’
He sounded frightened. His arms were stiff at his sides and his fists were pale. It was a small diner, so this was a sudden interruption, with everyone listening.
Millroy just smiled. Some of the students who had been eating went over to the man and clamped their hands on him, until Millroy made a gesture meaning: Don’t hurt him.
‘Leave me alone,’ the man said, whimpering a little and shuffling backwards, but when he reached the door he screamed again, louder and less frightened, ‘He’s out of his mind!’
Then his face was at the window, his twisted lips, shouting against the glass like a big fish gasping in a fishbowl.
‘We are reaching a very wide public,’ was all Millroy said, and the students and the rest of the customers resumed eating. When he saw me with the bag of fish, he said, ‘Anything wrong?’
I said no, but I was thinking about Vera Turtle, and Dada – how they were like strangers now, how I was a stranger to them.
Two days later, another man came in fast, panting as he looked around, and he yelled to Millroy, ‘So you know more than God? You think you’re better than Jesus?’
He left in a hurry when Millroy made a move towards him – Millroy was fast, he was strong, his eyes burned, he had magic, he looked like a wizard.
Always check out their shoes and the way they walk, Millroy said. Mental cases usually neglect their shoes, and they tend to stumble. Always examine their fingernails.
‘He’s a cynical manipulator and a control freak,’ a man said another day, but this man had been eating. He stood up and spilled a glass of fruit juice to get attention. ‘This is a distortion of the Bible – belittling the scriptures, with just another foolish diet. Jews are backing him in it to destroy Christianity – you bet they are.’
‘That’s a spazz,’ Berry said, when he spotted bitten nails or worn-out shoes. He and Willie wanted to chase these people, but Millroy said no – it was enough to single them out, and the law was on our side. Or: ‘He’s angry. He sells antacid and he knows I’m putting him out of business.’
Millroy was right about the shoes. Screamers wear strange things on their feet. Sometimes you could tell people were unstable from the way their laces were knotted. They used string. Their footgear looked trampled. They walked uncoordinated, dragging one foot, or else off-balance, glancing back, loose eyes, rigid fingers, as though someone might be following them.
‘You have monstrous faults,’ a man with wild hair screamed at Millroy, and then began to sob. He carried a cat, like Floyd Fewox. The cat looked unconcerned. An eater helped him out the door.
‘A Harvard man,’ Millroy said. ‘An ardent bedwetter. Or else a retailer of slimming aids.’
The hair was as important as the shoes and the walk – not enough hair, or too much, or the careful way it was combed, as though by another person, or else piled up or stuck down, sometimes looking slept on, sometimes transplanted. And there was Smoker’s Hair, dry and dead before its time, not enough blood reaching the follicles.
Those were the people who hated Millroy, but the ones who said they were devoted to him could sound just as crazy.
‘This man is my angel,’ a man said. He had all the clues – collapsed shoes, off-balance walk, sideways hair. ‘This man saved my life.’
Food in his mouth, dirty fingernails, boiled eyes – they were obvious. But others were invisible – quiet, neatly dressed, maybe a little too attentive and breathing in gasps. You did not know anything until they spoke up, and then you knew everything.
‘Take me,’ a woman said to Millroy. She was clean but she was heavy and she sighed when she took a breath. ‘Help me. I belong to you.’
Then she was crying softly in a grieving way and no one wanted to look at her.
‘You’ll see this customer to the door, Rusty?’
He was busy on the phone saying, ‘You want an awful lot for your dime. And you have Smoker’s Voice –’
Millroy then vanished as I guided the weeping woman out, trying not to touch her.
After all this, a man named Ed Veazie – he passed out his printed card – paid for his meal one morning (barley cereal, mint loaf, melon balls) and asked to see Millroy. The man was out of breath from eating too fast – that was also a sign: ‘Stress or psychic instability, extreme impatience, watch out,’ Millroy said. ‘You rarely find a mental case with good digestion.’ But this customer had a gentle smile, he said please and thank you, he looked grateful, and he promised not to take up too much of Doctor Millroy’s time. He carried a briefcase and an umbrella. Whackos never had umbrellas, Millroy said, which was why you could always spot them in a rainstorm. They were wet and they would end up shouting at you.
Still, I hesitated until Millroy passed the cash register. The man muttered, Could I have a quiet word? There is something I would very much like to verbalize.
Millroy rolled his eyes at me on the word ‘verbalize’ and then invited Ed Veazie into the back – he knew the man was not violent, he could see straight through someone’s eyes, into their brain, their heart, and he knew the contents of their stomach bag.
Some minutes passed, Millroy and the man inside his office.
‘I want you to hear something,’ Millroy then called out. He was speaking a little shriller than usual, as though not listening to himself. He was motioning to the Sons and Daughters. ‘Come on in, people – you too, Rusty.’
Ed Veazie swelled a little, grew fatter in the face, seeming optimistic and pleased with himself. But Millroy was making soft snoring noises. I could tell by the sound of his breathing that he was impatient, that he was a little angry, that he was listening hard.
‘Go on, Ed,’ he said.
His friendliness worried me because in the past week we had had so many crazos coming into the diner, and Millroy was cautious around strange adults, particularly large piggy-faced men like this one.
‘Tell them what you just told me.’
Ed Veazie’s eyes moved back and forth very quickly, but his head stayed motionless.
‘Who are they?’
And the way he said it made me feel strange, as though I did not belong here. That thought had never occurred to me, but this man was looking at us all with a sour doubting expression, and the way he said Who are they? made me realize how different we were – young, inexperienced, out of place, and maybe he was thinking what other people said, Why aren’t they in school?
‘These are my Sons and Daughters,’ Millroy said.
‘Big family.’ But Ed Veazie was not impressed.
‘I sometimes think that the children of America are my family.’
Millroy’s eyes blazed at Veazie as though daring him to laugh at this.
‘Okay, kids,’ the man said.
Millroy breathed up and down, snorting through his nose, gargling air in his mouth.
‘I was talking to Doctor Millroy here about the marketing potential of the diet.’
Diet was a word Millroy hated even more than the word kids. He said ‘diet’ was misleading and made you think only of weight loss, not of health. Food program was the expression he preferred. He blinked and still breathed hard.
‘You’re selling one big package that includes God, food, weight control and regularity.’ Veazie began to smile in a horrible hungry way. ‘I mean, who else has wrapped up Christianity and slimming? This is a dynamite product. Laxatives and scriptures and weight control. We are talking salvation in all senses. All it needs is to be packaged right and sold.’
He hesitated, wondering whether we understood what he was saying.
‘Television is a huge selling tool. I was telling Doctor Millroy that concepting this was a stroke of brilliance. He’s combined The Hour of Power with Body Shaping. But a concept is only the beginning. Marketing will bring it to fruition.’
Hesitating slightly, Veazie laughed and said, ‘Money.’
Saying the word money he sounded hungry and his mouth filled with spit. He swallowed and went on.
‘You could pretty much name your price. There’s a ton of money to be made – I mean, no end to the kind of cash flow you could create with a product like this.’
He was still swallowing as he spoke of money, and he paused and gulped before he could go on.
‘You mentioned merchandising,’ Millroy said.
‘Sure thing. I see tape, I see print, I see air-time, I see franchises. Plus, there’s clothing. You could do a whole complete line of Day One fashions. Can you imagine what a Day One logo shop would gross? We’re talking about buying Chinese tee-shirts for a buck, printing for twenty cents, and retailing for fourteen ninety-five. Look at the Hard Rock Café – all the money’s in the merchandising – your tee-shirts, your baseball caps, your jackets. Stick a Day One logo on it and sell it.’
The smile-like shape on Millroy’s mouth was an expression of pain, and because Millroy was motionless he looked like a statue of a man who caught his finger in a door or else had a sudden freezing pain from a jolt of electricity.
‘But you need money’ – he gulped again – ‘and to raise capital on the strength of an idea you’ve got to have credibility and forward planning. I’m not saying you’re not bankable, but when was the last time you leveraged a buy-out on a loan for three million dollars? I’ve been there, and I can tell you we need to craft a proposal, design a brochure, and pitch some banks for the money.’
He swallowed more spit, he nodded at the Sons and Daughters, he smiled, he swallowed again.
‘That’s where I come in,’ Ed Veazie said.
Turning to smile at Millroy he saw that Millroy was launching himself out of his chair, and as Ed Veazie started to rise, Millroy snatched the man’s coat and dragged him the rest of the way, and tipped him, and marched him backwards towards the office door, with his nose against Veazie’s face, and snorting through it.