Such was the case, based wholly on instinct and enlightened self-interest, that the aged outcast had constructed against Master Splendido. Then it followed that, instead of making himself the instrument of their reconciliation, the greatest gift Benjy could give to Mama Rose and Mr. P. was to save them from their natural son.
He slid from his chair and began a resolute if splay-footed approach to the stage, bent on a showdown with the wicked child. It would be a duel between conjurors, with Benjy summoning the array of powers he’d inherited as a veteran shretele. There was the ability to shape-shift and render himself unseen, though colitis and lumbago had taken their toll on those faculties. (The most he could command in the way of invisibility now was to make himself a bit blurry about the gills.) There was the talent of invoking mind-bending incantations in occult tongues, none of which he remembered, or calling on animal helpers, though even friendly dogs shied away from him these days. He could still sour milk at a glance and tie the hair of sleepers in granny knots, but such skills would be of little use here. So what was left but a sixth sense that had small value now that the other five were so severely impaired? By the time he’d managed to scramble onto the stage he realized that he was virtually unarmed. Regardless, Benjy — he owned the name now that its previous possessor had forfeited it forever — intended somehow to unmask Master Splendido for the imposter he was.
The cabaret audience was still in stitches over the mounting crescendo of the Padauers’ dalliance behind the curtain, so no one paid much attention to the diminutive newcomer who’d lately taken the stage. In the interim a dwarf vocalist had joined the musicians, integrating Mama Rose’s rapturous oys into a song whose refrain went “I wanna be an oy oy oyviator.” Busy conducting the whole cacophony, the hypnotist had also yet to remark the intruder; then, out of the corner of an azure eye, he did. He ceased the rhythmic waving of his hands and faced the shrunken atomy, removing his hat to make a sweeping bow.
“Paskudnyik,” croaked Benjy, “a thunderbolt in your pants if you don’t release from your spell these good people.”
Master Splendido seemed to welcome the challenge. He’d already withdrawn the tin doll from his deep pocket, but Benjy was much too shrewd to be seduced by her hoochie-kooch. He ignored the hypnotist’s injunction to “Watch Jemima dance” and instead looked the kid straight in the eye. He steeled himself to do … what? Maybe head-butt him in his kishkes, the beautiful boy, with his blue eyes flecked with gold like tiny fishes swimming in circles, the circles themselves spinning like pinwheels. Peering into them, the old hobgoblin, centuries old in fact and very sleepy, lost all consciousness.
“What looks here like a miniature Methuselah,” pronounced the hypnotist in the fullness of his authority, “is really a chicken.”
It would have been diverting enough just to leer at the little eyesore who’d dared to defy the child phenom. But to see him now as a docile subject dropped into a squat, beginning to cluck and flap his elbows like wings, sent the audience into an orgy of belly laughs and guffaws. That the hypnotist’s subject did actually manage to stay aloft for some seconds in his maniacal flapping only increased the general mirth. Then Master Splendido invited the spectators to toss any spare change they might have in their pockets and purses onto the stage. A hail of coins showered the ensorcelled Benjy, who, waddling awkwardly here and there, proceeded to peck at the scattered pennies and dimes; he paused just long enough in his foraging to raise his chin, shaking his head to facilitate the sliding of the coins down his gullet. So loud was his contented squawking, to say nothing of the peals of rooftop hilarity, that the symphonic climax of the couple behind the screen was drowned out. Nor was it observed that the man and wife had warily poked their heads through a gap in the curtains.
“He’s too gristly for roasting,” judged Splendido with respect to the chicken, “but he might make a tasty soup.”
He clapped his hands and a party of pygmy minstrels, stripped now to grass skirts with bones through their noses, carried out a large zinc boiler possibly commandeered from the cabaret kitchen. It sloshed over when they set it down on the boards, steam coiling out like hooded cobras. Then, pursued by the pygmies, the pseudochicken ran gabbling and squawking about the stage as aimlessly as if he’d lost his head. In the end he was tackled and bound hand and foot with lengths of rope, though he struggled in a welter of imaginary feathers. In the throes of his furious resistance, however, Benjy became dully alert to a fact of his trussed condition: how it was analogous to his plight on that memorable night some years ago when he was smuggled into the Padauers’ apartment. The realization was sobering enough to rouse him from his trance. An awareness of his present circumstance returned to Benjy as it had for his foster parents, whose tempestuous trifling had jolted them back into a consciousness of their whereabouts. Of course they had no recollection of what had happened or how they’d arrived at such a pass; nor did they recognize the author of the event as anything more than the puerile principal of the evening’s program — who, with the help of the near-naked minstrels, had hoisted their little Benjy above the cauldron and was about to drop him in.
This the Padauers could not abide. They hesitated only a moment, as if trying unsuccessfully to recall some unrelated issue, then shared a mutual shrug and, with their clothing still immodestly disarranged, charged forth from behind the screen. Mama Rose went teeth-first for the hypnotist’s tender calf while Morris grabbed his throat and a fistful of his golden locks with tenacious fingers. Taken off guard, Master Splendido lowered his hands to defend himself, leaving the unsupported weight of his victim to slump onto the crown of his hat, shoving the stovepipe over his ears and eyes. His assistants — their bare chests like saloon doors on spindle legs — backed away from the frenzied interference. In the succeeding fracas Benjy was left to tumble onto the planks, where he wriggled like a bug from a chrysalis as he shucked off his bonds. Besieged by the Padauers, Splendido had lost all pretense of his magisterial presence; blind now and powerless to fend off his assailants, he’d begun to bawl like the child he was. At length his whimpering incited his tribe to regroup and make an effort to come to his rescue. The aborigines that had already taken the stage were joined by the costumed strutters, all of them swarming over the couple who’d disabled their young headliner. Semi-recovered from his ordeal and seeing his family in danger, the self-liberated Benjy trotted headlong into the fray; promptly tossed out, he turned about and headed back into the scrimmage again undismayed.
The audience, having assumed that everything thus far was part of the act, were confused by the current turn of events. If they’d been previously well disposed toward the entertainers, they were dumbfounded now to the point of outrage. With the defeat of the Confederacy always fresh in their memories, it was not in their nature to sit idly by while Caucasians — albeit of Hebrew extraction — were torn apart by cannibals. However misguided their motives, a score of the diners abandoned their tables to storm the stage, some producing concealed weapons (such as a sword unsheathed from a cane) in the process. Standing beneath a pergola twined in artificial grapevines, the treble-chinned maître d’ signaled frantically to the waiters to intercede, while the waiters waved back in amiable helplessness.