“No, I will not sit down! You invade my home, take over my life! And now you steal my act! This show must stop!”
“Sit down, old man,” Michael said, with a cold hatefulness in his voice that Emily had never heard before. “Your day is over. Senility and magic don’t mix.”
Wurlitzer sent his chair crashing against the wall, out of his way, and started marching toward the makeshift stage. One hand flashed inside his cloak and reappeared holding a gun. “This must stop!” he shouted again.
During this confrontation—Emily and Dazz later estimated that the whole thing took about ninety seconds, from beginning to end—the audience sat as though spellbound. Hardly anyone moved, though a few women screamed. Emily kept thinking dazedly, This doesn’t make sense, this doesn’t make sense…
All at once Samir lurched to his feet and stood in front of the platform, screaming at Wurlitzer in Arabic, wailing the words like a muezzin’s prayer. The old man barked an answer, clipped and hoarse, and Samir reeled backward, raising one hand to Michael’s table for support. At the same time, Gilbert burst from the group of standing onlookers across the room and began running toward Wurlitzer, howling like a banshee and brandishing a club like a policeman’s billy which, though no magician, he had produced from the folds of his clothing.
Michael screamed—Emily wasn’t sure to whom—“Don’t be a fool!” as the old magician pointed his pistol at Gilbert and fired, sending him spinning and sprawling. Michael yelled, “You lunatic!” and vaulted in one smooth, feline motion over the table. He jerked the long-stemmed rose—it was now a heavy baton with two white tips—out of the vase and threw it at the old man, who swept it clattering against the wall with his free arm and fired three more shots, very close together. The first one struck splinters from the table near Samir’s white-knuckled hand; terrified, he did a belly flop onto the platform and crawled behind the hanging tablecloth. The second shot propelled one candelabrum resoundingly to the floor; some guests near the front later claimed they saw the tablecloth catch fire. The third shot shattered the empty vase. The old man was running toward Michael now, only to be met by a barrage of heterogeneous objects—sticks, balls, knives, saucers—that Michael pulled, seemingly out of thin air, and hurled at him with both hands. Wurlitzer stopped and fired again. The impact lifted Michael off his feet, snapping his head like a whiplash and launching him onto the tabletop. He fell on his shoulder blades, flipped himself heels over head, and knelt on the table, smiling broadly, unnaturally. He held this pose for a long time, a maniac’s grin frozen on his face and a small, dark lump of something clamped between his teeth. Then he plucked out the object and held it up to the audience. “The bullet, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, sprang lazily off the table, and bowed, gesturing toward the master. He too bowed, standing to the left just in front of the platform. Smoke still curled up from the pistol in his hand.
As before, the audience was too stunned to recover quickly into applause. Dazz was the first to begin, followed at once by Miss Wales, and eventually the room was a tumult of clapping, which grew louder as the blur of events became clearer in the memories of those who had witnessed them. Emily, made uneasy in a way she couldn’t as yet describe, ventured a little generic applause, though by now Dazz and many others were shouting, stamping, pounding their hands together. Pandemonium broke loose when Samir, like Leporello after the devils have dragged Don Giovanni away from his supper and down to hell, crawled out from behind the tablecloth and looked about him with bewildered eyes.
Emily watched Michael as he stood unruffled, unsurprised, smiling a little, accepting the approval of his audience as though it were an unsatisfactory gift, a shirt the wrong size or a book already on his shelves. Then he held up his hands for quiet and stepped behind the remaining candelabrum. “Lights, please,” he said, and all the lights in the room were dimmed. Emily looked around for Wurlitzer, but he was nowhere to be seen; his chair lay where he had flung it. With the candlelight flickering on his face, Michael began to speak in a vibrant, compelling voice, another voice Emily had not heard before.
He talked concisely, eloquently, about the Celtic Halloween and the Christian All Hallows’ Eve, and about parallel celebrations on this date in other cultures, such as the Mexican dia de los muertos, when the dead return briefly to dwell among the living. On this night, he explained, the spirits of the departed seem to hover close by those they loved in life, and it was only fitting for the partygoers to think for a few moments about their own dead. Not, he said, as we normally think of those who have died, with sadness and regret; think of them as though they were alive, present, enjoying life as we are, still loving, still beloved.
As he spoke, the audience subsided and grew quiet. The air in the room was languid with their absolute surrender. His listeners were enraptured by his words, enraptured yet more by the images he called upon them to evoke from their memories and their imaginations. Emily, dazzled and afraid, felt that she too was falling under Michael’s spell, she who used to abet the spellbinder. Michael had undergone, she saw, some real transformation; power radiated from him, from his weaving, expressive hands, from the bright pallor of his forehead, from his exalted, effulgent eyes. Emily thought of her grandmother, dead now for a dozen years, who used to braid her hair for her when she was a girl and tell her Chinese fairy tales. She could hear that dear voice now, feel the gentle tugging at her scalp…
Christ, he’s doing it to me, Emily thought, feeling like Mary Magdalene—or Eva Braun. Michael had asked for silence, and the room was utterly still; everyone seemed lost in contemplation. “They are here,” Michael said. “They have come to greet you.”
A swishing, rushing sound, like the beating of many wings, filled the room, and for a moment Emily saw her grandmother’s face beaming at her while with one hand she stroked her hair. Vaguely, she noticed that many of the people around her were on their feet, some gasping, some sobbing; loud smacks, like hearty kisses, could be heard on all sides. Emily clearly recognized Samir’s ecstatic voice, shouting, “Syrie! Syrie!” and then the rushing sound came again, louder than before, rising in a crescendo and ceasing abruptly, harshly.
“Lights, please,” Michael said in his normal voice, then waited for them to come on, smiled coolly at his stricken audience, and bowed. The applause, when it finally came, was deafening.
Michael held up his hands for silence. Emily stole a glance at Dazz, who was absently daubing a tearstained cheek with his aviator’s cap. Michael began to speak, and she shifted her gaze back to him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, for my final demonstration, I need the assistance of someone in the audience. No, no, thank you,” he dissuaded a pair of young women sitting near the front. “I need someone very strong and very brave.” His eyes passed swiftly over the onlookers, came to rest on Gilbert, who was standing near the wall, apparently recovered from the effects of the earlier gunfire, but tense, wary, hostile. “Gilbert,” Michael said. “Come here.”
Gilbert gave him an incredulous look and folded his arms. A long moment of silence was broken by Samir, who struck his hands together and spoke in rapid Arabic. Snake-eyed and reluctant, Gilbert shuffled over and stood in front of the table.
Michael stooped quickly. When he straightened up again, he was holding what appeared to be a large iron weight, shaped like a giant flatiron and fitted with a metal handle. He swung it easily onto the table, where it landed with a shuddering thud. He moved around the table, carelessly picking up the weight as though it were an empty purse, and set it on the floor at Gilbert’s feet. “Gilbert,” he said, “you are a strong man, a proud man. Show us your strength.” With his foot, Michael nudged the weight several inches closer. “Pick it up.”
Glaring fiercely all the while, the tall Arab bent down and grasped the handle. A tentative pull, followed by a jerk, failed to budge the weight. Michael sarcastically urged him on; Gilbert straddled the thing, planted his feet, and pulled upwards with both hands. His eyeballs bulged, the veins in his n
eck swelled, his forearms flexed until they seemed about to burst: the weight did not move. Straining and sweating, locked in combat with an immovable object, Gilbert sank slowly to his knees, still clutching the weight, wrenching it with both hands.
Michael stood over his victim with an exultant, contemptuous smile on his face. A low moan, more like a whine, escaped from Gilbert’s lips; he continued to haul on the handle convulsively, but whether he still hoped to raise the weight or simply wished to free his hands no one could tell. His eyes, filled with hatred and fear, were fixed helplessly on his tormentor. Michael laughed out loud, nastily, shockingly. He’s enjoying this, Emily thought, and could no longer bear to look at his face. At last he said, “That will do. You’re not as strong as I hoped,” and gave Gilbert a slight push that detached him from the weight and left him sprawled in a sitting position on the floor. “The next time I’ll choose a better man.” Michael lifted the weight with two fingers, dropped it crashing onto the table, and gave Gilbert one last, disdainful sneer. “That’s all for this evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your attention,” Michael said, and stood bowing to the swelling applause.
Dazz was ecstatic, overwhelmed. “I can’t believe how good he is,” he shouted several times into Emily’s ear, a little breathless from his frenzied clapping. “He’s gonna make millions!”
Her thoughts were blurting at her, all she could do was blurt in turn. “But he’s hateful!” she yelled.
“How do you mean, ‘hateful’?” Dazz asked.
The applause had finally subsided, replaced by a babel of voices. People were standing in groups, talking excitedly. Michael basked at the center of a large and growing circle of admirers. Emily felt shaky, sad, and her distress increased at the thought that her reaction might be taken for jealousy. She determined to make Dazz understand.
“I mean hateful—rude, arrogant, unfeeling. You know he’s not really like that.”
“That’s just part of the act. People like to watch ego displays. He’s really good and he knows it. So what?”
“Oh, sure, he’s a great magician,” Emily admitted, “but it’s wrong to use talent like that. He just wants to control people. He reminds me of some tyrant. That old man has ruined him.”
“If you ask me, that old man has made him a star. I thought it was a bad move, going to live there, but God was I wrong. We are looking at major earning potential here.”
“Terrific. He’ll be a rich sadistic egomaniac.”
“Emily, don’t you think you’re being a little—”
“No, I don’t,” she interrupted him. “I know Michael. He hasn’t had an easy life, but he’s come through it gentle and kindhearted, so far. Maybe a little sad. But he’s not this sneering zombie we saw tonight, I know that. I’ve got to help him.”
Dazz rolled his eyes enormously, as though at the hopeless unreason of all womankind. “‘Help,’ as in ‘bitch at’?”
“As in whatever it takes. I want him back the way he was. I’ll beg him to let me play for his shows again. I’ve got to be with him.” She stood up suddenly. “I want him back,” she repeated. Ignoring whatever reply Dazz was making, she started pushing her way through the crowd around Michael.
It’s that old man, she thought. The Queer Duck. His “master.” As she drew closer, a young woman was earnestly confiding to Michael, “I love magic. I think I was a shamaness in another life.” On his other side, the blond Cleopatra Emily had noticed before, she of the honey-colored hair and heat-seeking breasts, said in a voice heavy with hope, “Do you do hypnosis?”
Emily backed away, unwilling to join this particular chorus. Why not go straight to the root of the problem? Let poor Michael continue his absorbing chat with the former shamaness, or hypnotize Cleopatra until she surrendered her asp; she, Emily, would confront the real cause of her misery, the real villain of the piece. She shoved her way free of the crowd and began searching everywhere for Wurlitzer.
She spotted him, enveloped in his black cloak, his face hidden by his slouch hat, hovering near the Egyptian tomb painting. Taking a deep breath, not at all certain what she meant to say, Emily began to cross the floor to where he stood. Her way was blocked by a smiling, uniformed servant who thrust a silver salver toward her. She took one of the elegantly printed, cream-colored cards that rested on it. The card read:
THE GREAT WURLITZER
(a.k.a. Merlino the Magnificent)
now appearing with
PRESTO THE GREAT
Little Cairo Museum of Wonders
Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays
7:30 P.M.
Emily gritted her teeth and approached the forbidding figure. As she did so, Wurlitzer turned and faced her. “Excuse me,” she said.
He stood tall, arms extended downward, hands gathering his cloak, condescending to her presence. “Ah, the flautist. You can no longer contain yourself. You must speak.”
“You’ve guessed my secret. Now tell me yours. What have you done to Michael?”
“‘Done’? I’m helping him realize his fine potential, as he desires me to do. Do you not find him improved? The show was not to your taste?”
“That wasn’t entertainment, that was abuse. Taking advantage of people.”
The old man shook his head, pitying her. “You have too little faith in the young man, my dear.”
“Maybe I do, if you mean those tricks work only on the credulous.”
“That is indeed what I mean,” he said sardonically. From the shadows beneath his hat brim, his bright eye caught and held her. Everything in her body seemed to stop—blood, breath, thought—everything but consciousness, revolving around that eye. Then she was free again, and he was cackling softly. “Only on the credulous, as you say. Yet you must admire his skill. He is a man of great talent, a superior man.”
“The superior man seeks knowledge, not power.”
“I’ve always considered the Wisdom of the East overrated.”
“All barbarians do.”
Wurlitzer nodded gravely, his lips pressed together, as if savoring her riposte. “What is it you want from me, my dear?” he said.
“I want to be able to spend a little time with Michael. I want you to let me work at your theater. You won’t have to pay me. I’m pretty good with scenery, I can work on costumes, I can provide musical accompaniment. I just want to be around him. You have nothing to lose, unless you’re afraid I’d distract him.”
Wurlitzer looked at her the way a chess master looks at the opponent he’s about to play blindfolded. “Nothing can distract him now.”
“Then he’s safe from me. Let me work for you.”
“He may have some views on the matter.”
“He’ll agree if you do."
The old magician pondered for a moment, then bared his teeth in a tight smile. “Why not?” he said. “We can always use a Chinese princess.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
THE ICY WINTER WINDS, becalmed at last, had burnished the air of the city into a transparent, vivifying brightness that seemed to irradiate every object under the sun, and Washington Square was teeming with living things welcoming the arrival of spring. Squirrels chased one another in dizzy spirals up and down the trunks of the quickening trees; pigeons lurched like windup toys along the ground or rose aloft in great flapping flocks; the statue of General Garibaldi commanded a squadron of sparrows; dogs romped and scented, overjoyed by the luxury of unpaved surfaces; a few bold cats, defying the dogs, cadged food or eyed the pigeons. Human beings of every age, size, race, and description loitered on the grass, sat on the benches, strolled about, gathered in groups to laugh or flirt or argue. Panhandlers drifted here and there, demanding, cajoling, or pleading, according to their nature or degree of desperation. A few drug dealers muttered their lists of available wares to anyone who came close enough. Guitars, harmonicas, a lone kazoo added a musical layer to the ambient sounds. Some of the men in the park had removed their shirts, ex
posing skin unwarmed by the sun for many months; there were even a few young women with bare breasts and defiant eyes. A couple of Frisbees floated lazily in the lucent air.
In the center of the park stood the great circular fountain. For years dormant and unused except as another place to sit and lounge, the fountain had been refurbished and brought back to life at the end of the preceding fall. Today the pump was turned off, but the brimming pool, its water as clear and fresh-looking as if it had just been piped in directly from crystalline springs high in the mountains, lay placid and dazzling in the noonday sun. Many people were sitting on the rim of the pool; occasionally someone reached, dipped, withdrew a hand, then watched the droplets, sparkling like tiny jewels, fall back into the fountain one by one. The great arch, not far away, dominated the scene, imposing, welcoming, somehow whiter than usual.
Michael and Emily strolled toward that gleaming arch on this bright day. Emily was, as usual, a step or two behind Michael, the better to watch him. And that was what she did now, she thought; that was what everybody did who knew him: they watched Michael. There certainly wasn’t any way to get close to him, to talk to him, to get his complete attention, though he seemed willing enough and friendly enough. She spent what spare time she had, which was admittedly not much, at his side, in the theater mostly, but sometimes on errands, or even upstairs in Lena’s sitting room, drinking coffee, while the old man, whom Emily thought of as a kind of shadow that had fallen over her life, fixed her with his glittering eye, his sardonic smile, and called her “dear Emily” or “our princess.” She hated him and he knew it, a fact that seemed to delight him. He knew also that she had to carry the burden of her hatred around in silence, because Michael would not hear a word against his master.
Now and then, when Wurlitzer’s imperiousness stretched the limits of endurance, she and Lena exchanged looks of consternation, but that was it. She had given up confiding her fears, her outrage, to Dazz, because he persisted in only one line: Michael had made a great career move. The old man was strange, he agreed, but Michael was a big boy and when he was ready, Wurlitzer would disappear like magic. “Think of him as away at school,” Dazz suggested. “Maybe you shouldn’t go down there until he graduates.”