Chapter XXI- Deep Magic
When the night cast its glittering net over Loompa Land and the glow of the lamp-flowers smouldered into flickering embers, the magic deepened.
Oompa-Loompas emerged from their huts wearing necklaces of bone-white beads and evil smelling incense to drive bad spirits away. They kneeled on woven mats dyed with the blood of the snozzwhanger and around Willy Wonka, wove fortifying spells. They sung undulating songs of strength and power, long forgotten by their brothers who had moved to the surface world. And all day and night they stirred and murmured over a bubbling pot of liquid gold. Now it was heaved outside, to absorb the darkness of midnight.
"How long will it take?" asked Charlie.
The tribesman brewing the antidote signed the gesture that meant, three.
"Minutes? Hours?"
The tribesman shook his head. Days, he signed.
"Will he… will he last that long?" Charlie managed out.
The tribesman signed what amounted to, If he is strong.
For three days, Charlie kept vigilance.
On the first day, Wonka continued to murmur. Names. Fragments. He sat up abruptly, drenched with sweat, shirt sticking to him like a second skin, and declared to everyone in the hut, "You're all lolly-gagging nincompoops!"
Afterwards, he slumped down again, completely silent. Uneasily silent, until the medicine man whispered incantations over him and said, "He has withdrawn into his spirit to prepare himself for the pain."
On the second day, Wonka didn't speak, didn't even move. Though his eyes rolled beneath their lids and his fingers clenched, unclenched against his palms.
The medicine man said, "He has withdrawn into the land of dreams, to prepare himself for his birth."
"Birth?" said Charlie. "What birth?"
"To be born again," the medicine man said, "first you have to die."
The word was almost a squeak; "Die?"
"We die and are reborn many times in our lives. I have died a dozen times and been reborn a dozen more. Each time you lose a little of yourself, and gain much more."
Charlie didn't understand. He hadn't slept for two days and did not intend to, but could not help himself. His eyes began to drift, his thoughts came loose from their moorings and wandered, and the sandman cast over the boy his scented shroud of dreams.
Charlie Bucket dreamt he was at the circus. Inside the sideshow tent, full of squawking parakeets and parrots, the pungent smell of too much life cramped into too little space, and the tinkling tune of calliope. Incinerating spotlights were set on the stage, which was empty; barring a top hat perched on a stool. In the audience were rows and rows of chairs, all vacant except for his own, and, a long way away, another boy. He was sat on the edge of his seat, beside himself with excitement as though he were watching the greatest show on earth. He had the largest, most outrageous braces Charlie had seen in his life.
The boy said, "This is the best part. Not the vanishing act, but the reappearing. Anyone can make themselves vanish. Even I can. It's easy. It's not even magic. Just a trick. It's the reappearing that's difficult."
Charlie wondered if the boy were talking to him, but he didn't even glance his way. Instead he leant further forward in his seat, waiting eagerly. "Any moment now…" he said.
On the stage, the magician's hat sat on the stool. Everything was still.
"Any moment…"
The boy's patience was astounding. Minutes, hours, days passed. Seasons changed, and the birds fell from their perches and died. Still the boy waited, in such a state of nervous excitement that Charlie began to feel a little embarrassed for him.
After many years, when the dust coated the stage like snow, the boy slumped back. He sighed the saddest little sigh you ever could have heard.
"It's embarrassing, isn't it?" he said. "When the trick goes wrong. When the magician slips and you realise it's not magic. It's just a trick."
To Charlie's surprise, the boy began to cry. He cried into his fists, so sadly, so pitifully, that Charlie stood up and said, "Hey, don't worry. You said it yourself; it's just a trick."
But by that time the boy, too, had vanished.
And when Charlie awoke, his back and neck stiff from sleeping on the hut floor, it was the third day.
On the third day, Wonka broke his silence. But instead of fragments, he began to tell stories. He told them in a strange voice, clearer somehow, somehow younger, without the peculiar tics of his accent. Gone was the gunna's. Woz's were gone by the wayside. It was his truer voice.
He was lying silently, surrounded in a circle by Charlie, Doris, and many of the Oompa-Loompas, when suddenly he said, as though he'd been speaking for a long time but had only just began talking; "—That when I was very little, I had a goldfish called Peppermint. When I tried to feed it sweets, it died. I was distraught for weeks."
Everyone was quiet for a long time. Someone made a noise that was half way between a laugh and a cough. And then the medicine man said, "These words hold deep power."
Wonka was silent for a long time, and then he said, "My father was a magician. When my mother left, he burned all his spell books, because he didn't believe in magic anymore, and became a dentist."
After a long while; "Teeth can't hurt anybody. Not in the way that matters. They can't make you lose faith in yourself. There is nothing magic about teeth."
A few seconds later; "My world was so small. To me, the universe was held in the confines of a single boiled sweet."
The caww caww of the kuka birds. And, after everyone had stopped paying attention; "I needed to find an heir."
Immediately after; "—She taught me that the universe exists not just around us, but inside. My mother held a deep and ancient power. She could look at things and see them, exactly as they were. One day we went walking. She stopped in the garden, and she said, The universe exists inside this tree trunk. We went a little further, into the street, and she said, The universe exists inside this lamp post. We went further still, further than we usually went and into town. We stopped outside a candy shop and she said, The universe exists inside a single boiled sweet."
He said; "Chewing gum I hate the most."
He said; "But then I remembered the sour gum balls weren't finished. I dropped everything and rushed to the inventing room. It was a miracle I regained consciousness. Later, I made myself forget."
He said; "I had forgotten what she had told me. I hadn't meant to. But it was too painful to look back and I erased it, without realising I was erasing important things too."
He said; "I hadn't thought about my childhood for years."
Then; "For those years, the moon had completely disappeared from the sky. I asked my mother why it had gone. She said, It was lonely. I asked, did it not have the stars to talk to? She said, The stars and moon might look close, but it's an illusion. She said, Willy, remember this. The world is full of illusions."
That night, Charlie dreamt of the boy with braces again. This time, they were standing together under a moonless sky, outside a massive glass castle. It had towers as high as the sky and a huge portcullis, glass flags frozen in mid-wave.
Charlie said, "What is this?"
The boy said, "This is the Castle of Illusions."
"Are you going inside?" asked Charlie.
"Yes," said the boy. "The universe exists inside. But…" he faltered, "I've been looking for days, and I can't find the front door."
"You want me to help you look?" said Charlie.
"Would you?" said the boy.
The two of them searched together. They saw many doors, which became walls, portcullises that closed on them, and windows that shut. The Castle of Illusions kept changing. The towers became great chimneys. After a while, Charlie noticed that the castle had changed into the factory.
In desperation, the boy banged on the factory walls. "Let me in!" he said. "You never let me in. You're so selfish!" He fell down to the dirt and put his arms around his knees. He sniffed, and fought away tears. "Nobody likes a cry baby," he said, as though they were words he had been told many times. When he'd regained his composure he stood up and dusted himself off. "Thank you for helping me look," he said to Charlie. "Nobody has ever helped me before. But it's no good; I've been looking for a way in for years…" He asked, "What's your name, by the way?"
"Charlie Bucket. What's yours?"
"Willy." Very shyly, "Would you like to be friends?"
"Sure," said Charlie. Willy beamed.
"You said the universe was in there," Charlie said, looking back up at the castle. "What does it look like?"
Willy smiled enigmatically. For some reason, it looked familiar. "A boiled sweet, of course," he said.
When Charlie woke, he realised Wonka was speaking.
"—What my father didn't realise was that I had stolen his deck of cards. I performed tricks for money on the streets and made just enough to get by. When the authorities chased me, I vanished. My braces frightened people so most of the time, I stayed invisible, and made friends with all the invisible, unseen creatures in London. London is a city with many layers, most of them unseen. But I was restless, and later, a travelling circus came to town and I ran off to join it. I became a lion tamer. But the handlers were all cruel men, so I became friends with the lions. When I was sleeping, one of the lions unlocked his cage with a toothpick and padded over to me in the dead of the night. He had huge awful teeth, and he used them to carefully, gently, bite off my braces. I became an aerialist and travelled the world. I learned how to fly. I joined a motorcycle gang. I gambled my way to the top and became a millionaire and lost it all in a single game of blackjack. To repay my debts, I became a world-famous boxer. I beat every single opponent but the night before the big fight where I was due to box a kangaroo, I was press-ganged into the navy.
"I was taken to the other side of the world, but the moment I was left alone I became an albatross and flew away. As I flew back to England, I saw a dozen wars and hundreds of deaths. I saw people falling in love, marriages and burials, the spring of youth and the nature of man. I stayed as an albatross so long I forgot how to be human. A little girl caught me and put me in a cage but I learned to forgive her when I saw that her parents kept her in her own cage, only a little larger. When I remembered how to forgive I remembered how to be human. I broke the cage and her mother screamed and attacked me with a frying pan; of course I had forgotten that people aren't born with clothes! Afterwards I went to an old candy maker and asked him to apprentice me. He asked me why he should, and I told him, Because the universe exists in a single boiled sweet. He smiled at me with a twinkle in his eye that told me he was a wizard, and led me inside. He showed me all his inventions; sweets that could sing and chocolate that could whistle. He put his arm around me and said, Son, the world has changed a lot since the universe could exist in just a boring old boiled sweet."
Abruptly, Wonka stopped. Everyone stared in amazement. But Doris made a disbelieving noise and announced, "What a loud of mumbo-jumbo! I know for a fact he worked as a shoe-maker during that time."
Still, a thought was beginning to take root in Charlie; that even if facts were facts, it didn't necessarily mean they were true.
Finally, the antidote was done. The molten gold had turned blue; black; and then silver. It splashed around in the cauldron though no one touched it, diving into the air and back into the pot like jumping dolphins. An Oompa-Loompa hurried into the hut and signed, It's ready!
From the huge cauldron, a single bottle was filled and corked. As Doris and Charlie sat anxiously by his side, the medicine man pinched Wonka's nose and tipped it into his mouth. They waited. Doris was particularly restless. She kept saying things like, "Why isn't it working yet?" and "Why isn't it doing anything?" Her negativity began to infect the whole room. Charlie clasped Wonka's hand tightly, so tightly it hurt. Despite the humidity, Wonka felt unexpectedly chilly. Finally, Doris stood in a rush and exclaimed, "I knew it wasn't going to work! I knew it! We were too late. This was a stupid idea from the beginning!" She ran from the room. Charlie leant over Wonka so nobody would see the tears prickling at his eyes. It occurred to him that what Doris had said might be right. Suddenly, the pull that was keeping him in the room was gone. For the last three days, he had barely moved. He hadn't been able to leave Wonka for more than a moment. But now, there was nothing keeping him there. Doris was right; Wonka was dying, he wasn't coming back. And he couldn't bear to sit there any longer. Now he felt a pull tugging him out of the room, to somewhere else, anywhere else. There wasn't anything for him there any longer. He ran from the hut.
On the sisal bridges, Doris was no where to be seen. The deafening heat of Loompa-Land pressed down upon him, forced him down. The whole weight of the world pressed on him, and he curled into the tightest, smallest ball he could. He wished he could disappear.
He wasn't in the state of mind to notice anything, so he didn't- could not- hear the clink of bone-beads and the crackle of the medicine man's charms like burning tinder. He said, "I can't see you very well, but I know you're there. May I sit with you?"
Charlie felt like his throat had been plugged. He didn't trust himself to speak, but he looked up and nodded. The medicine man sat down next to him, his tiny legs dangling off the side. He lit up a cocoa pipe and smoked it. They sat like that for a long time. Charlie wasn't ready to speak yet, and the medicine man understood this.
It wasn't until much later that Charlie asked, his head still buried in his knees, "Where did you learn to speak English?"
The medicine man exhaled a mouthful of thick, chocolaty brown smoke. "I lived at the factory once, a long time ago."
More silence. More smoke. His words still muffled between his knees; "You came back?"
"Yes," he said. "I came back."
"Why?"
"I began to forget who I was."
Charlie looked up. His eyes were red around the rims.
"I feel you are confused. Let me try and explain…" the medicine man said. "When the magician arrived here, he looked on our race with pity. He looked at all the bad things here in the Underland and not the good."
Grief made Charlie more honest than he would ordinarily be. He said, "There's something good?"
The medicine man laughed. A powerful booming laugh, which startled the boy after so much silence, and coming from such a small, wizened old man.
"I know you're sceptical," he said. "The upper world is full of such scepticisms. Nobody believes in anything unless they see it with their eyes. They don't realise that eyes can lie just as well as any of the other senses. That is why magic, true magic, is dying there. In your world, magic is no more than a trick. Those of us who moved there began to learn this way. As did I. The woman, Doris, is one of the worst. She has thrown away everything she once knew, even her name. She believes only in the power of fact."
"But," said Charlie, "everyday animals try to eat you."
"There are many things far worse than death," the medicine man said. Before adding, "I see you do not understand. It's alright." He grinned a toothless smile. "These are just the ramblings of an old man. Put it from your mind."
"I don't understand though," Charlie said. "Mr Wonka did this to your village, yet you still help him." This was a bad idea—as soon as he mentioned Mr Wonka, his eyes filled with tears again. He sunk back into himself. The medicine man did not notice.
He said, "The magician's intention was to help us. An ill-founded intention, based on pity. But not an evil intention. We who live close to the bowels of the earth can look into the spirits of all living things, and his spirit is not an evil spirit. It is damaged, yes, and malaised, yes, but not evil."
Charlie wasn't particularly listening. He said, "I think I keep dreaming about him, when he was my age. What does it mean?"
The medicine man stopped puffing. He looked at Charlie, for the first time seemed to truly look at him. And from the frown on his face, it seemed as though what he saw troubled him.
He said, "Have a puff of this."
Charlie said, "I don't want to."
"Have a puff," he said more sternly. "It'll make you feel better."
Reluctantly Charlie took the pipe and inhaled.
The medicine man said, "What exactly are you to him?"
Charlie broke into a coughing fit. The medicine man banged him on the back.
"So I see," he said.
"I-m—studying- to-to be a, a—" between coughs, choking on his own words. The medicine man banged his back harder. "a- candymaker, with him!" Finally, the coughing subsided, but he was still rather breathless; "He's my mentor. And— and my friend too."
"And your lover as well?" the medicine man said shrewdly.
It's unable to say to this day whether the hacking coughing fit that followed was a result of the cocoa pipe, this question, or both.
But the medicine man was quite serene. When Charlie had stopped coughing, he said, "Your paths have been woven together in inescapable fate since the day you were born. The manner of the path you forge together, however, is up to you." Then he said, "I see it now. He is waiting for you in the land of dreams. There is some inner confrontation inside him—that's why he has been entering your dreams. He needs your help."
Immediately, Charlie's whole demeanour changed. He sat up straight, the light in his eyes returned. He said; "You mean there's still a chance he can come back?"
"In escaping the pain, he strayed too far into himself. Unless you have complete confidence in who you are and the nature of your own being, you will be captured by questions that you cannot answer. Encircled by your own circular thoughts. Trapped by your own irregular logic. He is cured and there is nothing physically wrong with him. But unless someone calls him back to his body, he will die."
Charlie jumped up. "I'll do it. I'll do anything to help Mr Wonka. But how do I enter the land of dreams?"
The medicine man chuckled. "How do you think?" he said, and Charlie began to feel very sleepy.
He sunk back down, and as he was drifting said, "It's funny… When I first saw the Oompa-Loompas I thought you all looked the same."
The medicine man replied, "You know, I used to feel the same way about tall people too." And Charlie felt the old man's chuckle on the wind as he drifted into the land of dreams.
To be continued.
In the next chapter;' The Land of Dreams' Charlie enters Wonka's consciousness, the amazing fab-tabulous theme park, Wonkaland! We meet Wonka's mother and delve deeper into his shady past. Perhaps we'll learn more than we want to. After all, who trusts a man that never shows his hands?