Michael stood watching him as his halting steps carried him down the hall and through the door to his room. Then Michael walked back past the living room, said good night to Lena, who didn’t hear him, and left the Wurlitzers’ apartment.
At the foot of the stairs that led up to his quarters, he stood still for several minutes, lost in thought. He should, he knew, take things in order, starting with what he had seen, with the evidence of his senses. And what had he seen? A funeral parlor, where a heterogeneous group of people, apparently led by the master, had engaged in some kind of communion with a corpse. The gathering had been joyless, the people curiously aloof from one another; the master, their leader but not their friend, had like each of them seemed isolated, separated from the living and drawn to the dead. And so he is, Michael thought; lately he showed contempt for everything alive, his conversation was filled with death…But then what had happened tonight? The ritual, for that’s what it was, had gone on for what seemed an eternity. There had been no high point, no epiphany—or if there had been, then Michael had not been aware of it. Yet when it ended, if that’s what had happened, a dead man was a corpse no more, but lay there in…what? A state of sleep? Whatever it was, his part in the ghoulish ritual over, the master had left, and now claimed absolute ignorance of all that Michael had witnessed. Why? Could the whole thing have been an illusion? Michael thought of the gray, naked corpse, the ghastly moaning of its adorers, the waxy, powdery smells in the room—all unmistakably, unforgettably real, as real as the master, with his ostentatiously dry shoes and umbrella, his questions about the weather, his coy allusions to bilocation.
Michael gripped his hair in two handfuls and pulled from sheer frustration. What could it mean? That the power he sought was somehow linked with death, that night magic entailed the clasping of cadavers as well as the performance of miracles? Well, if it came to that, Michael admitted with a shiver of horrified recognition, he would probably be willing to embrace any number of dead strangers.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Incident in the Garden
THE DAY AFTER THE strange, almost surreal visit to the funeral parlor, Michael was restless, moody, unable to concentrate on his work, even peevish with Lena and sullen when the master inquired, with his usual edge of irony, if anything was bothering him. That afternoon he called Emily to apologize for running off so abruptly the day before. He got her answering machine, however, so he limited his remarks to a brief apology. He had really wanted to talk to her—he needed to discuss the events of the previous evening with somebody.
In the evening he went to his room and sat alone, awake in the gathering dark, listening to the dim voices from Lena’s television, the sound of the master moving through his dreary apartment, closing and opening doors. I’m above it all, he thought, and this made him smile, although he wasn’t sure why. He stayed there, his back against the wall, listening and waiting until the whole building was quiet and still. Later he woke up; he was listing sideways, about to hit the floor. He was stiff from sitting. Unable to stand, he crawled to his bed and pulled the blanket over his face, as he had done as a child, gratefully.
In the morning, he found Wurlitzer in the theater, crouched over the wind machine for the Tempest Illusion, his head tilted at an angle so that he could scrutinize the control panel with his one good eye. As Michael approached, he unfolded himself creakily, dusting off his inevitable black jacket with impatient flicks of his arthritic fingers. “You don’t look well,” he said, with such sincerity that Michael felt a moment of alarm for himself. “You haven’t slept.”
“I slept,” Michael said coldly. Then, because the master continued to survey him with an expression of concern, he looked away, toward the empty theater, this narrow, overwrought world which seemed to him at the moment perfectly devoid of magic, and added, “I’m just restless.”
“As well you might be,” the master agreed. “You’ve been working too hard. I’ve been working too hard. Let’s take the day off and go find something really interesting.”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. His thoughts turned to the grim scene at the funeral parlor. What would it be today, the city morgue? Perhaps a dissection at the medical school?
“Nothing morbid,” the master said, reading his thoughts, as usual. “I want to go to the Cloisters and see the unicorn tapestries one more time. Have you ever been there?”
“No,” Michael admitted.
“A fascinating place, a park, a castle, full of artistic wonders. The sun is shining today, the trip will do us good.”
Michael agreed, though somewhat warily, and after breakfast at the coffee shop they boarded the IND at the Forty-second Street station. The master sat hunched over in the crowded subway car, his long hands dangling between his spread knees, his head lolling loosely on its long neck, his lips moving silently as though reciting some prayer or incantation. Today he had foregone the black patch in favor of the glass eye, and his pate was covered with an incongruous plaid cap.
Hanging on to the strap, Michael tried to imagine the master’s body unclothed; without his rumpled black suit, his tieless white shirt, he would appear somehow obscene. These items were as essential to him as the vestments of a priest, the uniform of a policeman, an English barrister’s robes and wig: emblems of office.
They got off at 190th Street, and followed along behind a group descending the long incline toward the Cloisters, the part Italian, part Spanish monastery that Rockefeller money had brought from Europe and reassembled stone by stone in that part of Manhattan. The structure seemed nevertheless entirely indigenous to the promontory on which it sat, overlooking the Hudson River. A tree-lined esplanade led past dozens of benches, where city dwellers, hungry for sunlight, fresh air, and the sight of grass and trees, sat squeezed together shoulder to shoulder, four or five to a bench; Michael and the master walked past them, eventually reaching the steps that led into the museum.
Inside, the exhibits were set out in lofty, uncluttered spaces. As he and Michael moved from one to the other, there was little that did not attract the master’s roving eye. They had purchased a catalogue, and he read aloud snatches of descriptions, pointing items out to Michael, and adding bits of his own polymath knowledge. Then he led the way into a room on whose walls hung enormous tapestries, marvels of splendid design and workmanship, featuring fantastic unicorns, fanciful snow-white beasts with delicate equine features and noble carriage, proudly displaying their long, spiral horns. The old man gazed at them for a long time; Michael was impressed by his frank, unfeigned admiration.
At last the master turned to him with a look of unwonted serenity. Nor was that the only distinction; when he spoke, his voice seemed to have taken on a kind of noble gravity, without any trace of his habitual irony or cynicism. “Unicorns are truly magical animals,” he said. “They show the imagination working at its purest and most delightful. No one ever saw one, yet everyone believed they existed; faith in them produced nothing but pleasure, and they inspired such charming works as these. Our own magic is rough and crude in comparison,” he concluded, shaking his head regretfully.
When they had seen all the rooms, and the master showed signs of fatigue, they went down to the lower level and out into the Trias courtyard. As they opened the small wooden door and stepped outside, Michael thought they had suddenly moved backward in time. A quadrilateral arcade with carved pillars supporting graceful arches surrounded a well-proportioned fountain, where colorful spring plantings had been set out between gravel walkways. There was bright light, and dark shadows, and a sudden air of tranquility. The fountain splashed softly into its basin, music could be heard from concealed speakers, a quartet of clear, harmonizing voices raised in Gregorian chant, and it was not difficult to imagine monks at their prayers, or a brother walking the arcade with a breviary in his hands, murmuring glories to God.
They moved from the courtyard into the adjoining garden, which faced southwest to the river. Two elderly ladies with sequined glasses and b
lue hair marveled over a statue in the center of the quadrangle, while beyond the surrounding wall, amid books and papers, a group of students was gathered on a grassy slope within the enclosure formed by a small orchard of dwarf apple trees with bright new leaves. One of the students pointed a camera at the George Washington Bridge, which could be seen through the branches. Out on the Hudson, with the Jersey Palisades for a backdrop, a solitary sloop beat its way upriver, the wind filling its sails and setting it spanking.
Michael turned to discover that the master, in order to get out of the freshening wind, had gone to sit on a stone bench in a protected corner of the garden. With evident enjoyment he sat quietly absorbing the chanting voices, his fingers laced over a crossed knee, his lips forming the O shape that was habitual with him when he was thinking. The pair of women drifted over to the wall, nodding and pointing, but the master’s eye remained on the statue they had been viewing.
The figure was life size, rough hewn from gray stone, and encrusted with spots of dark, moist-looking mold. The bearded face was mantled in a heavy cowl, the form draped in loose-fitting robes whose voluminous folds lent grace to the bulkiness of the work. One hand clasped a tome to the chest, the other held the ends of a cord serving as a belt from which depended a simple crucifix. Under the beetling forehead, with its heavy, patriarchal brows, the eyes stared blankly, the head turned to one side as if the statue were looking out to the river.
Michael took a seat on the bench beside the master, and they sat wordlessly for a time. Then, abruptly, the old man began to speak, recalling a monastery in Greece where, while traveling with his friend and colleague, the roguish Christatos, he had seen a similar statue in an equally inviting garden. “The monks invited us to dine and spend the night. After a midday meal that seemed anything but ascetic, we went into the garden, a place not unlike this one: colonnades, fountains, and several carved statues, one, in fact, something of a brother to the one you’re looking at now.” He nodded toward the statue and paused to light his pipe. “The pride of the monastery, however, was a small gold ikon of the Virgin, specially revered because of its miraculous powers. Christatos expressed a pious interest in this ikon, and we were edified by an account of the various occasions on which it had wept real tears. Interesting, is it not? You see how little new there is under the sun. An ikon—a Rembrandt—it is all the same, is it not?”
He paused again—for effect, Michael was sure—puffing his pipe and giving a scratch or two, looking up to where some birds shot across the roof into the plane of sunlight that was already moving into shadow. Michael waited to learn the connection between the miraculous ikon and the equally miraculous “Saskia in Tears.”
“Well,” the master continued at last, “as a token of gratitude for the monks’ hospitality, Christatos arranged that we would put on a little magic show in the garden and devoutly requested that the holy ikon be carried there to bless our undertaking. Somehow he persuaded the abbot to accede to his request. Our alfresco performance was an impromptu affair, since we had no props, but we did well enough with silks and coins and such sketchy materials—as you know, real magicians can work under any circumstances.
“The good brothers admired our efforts quite thoroughly, and finally, as the sun was beginning to set, Christatos announced a special treat for them: we would demonstrate the true efficacy of their gold ikon. He directed their attention to the statue at the far end of the garden, enclosed in a circle of yew, light enough to see, but melting all around into shadows. With elaborate apologies he borrowed the ikon from the abbot, who had stood there clutching it to his bony chest the whole time, and held it up before him. He adjusted the angle so that the fading rays of the sun reflected off the ikon and cast a golden beam onto the drab face of the statue. All eyes were on it as it turned its shoulder ever so slightly and inclined its head in a most quizzical manner, as if saying, ‘Why are you so surprised, you little Greek monks? I am stiff in my neck joints and must give them a creak or two.’
“This remarkable demonstration set the brothers abuzz, and they leaped to their feet to view the miracle more closely, but by the time they could inspect it the statue had resumed its original form and nothing could make it budge. Then there arose a debate among the monks as to the nature of the miracle: had Christatos’s wizardry induced those particles of stone to shift themselves, or was it truly the miraculous power of the weeping ikon? But the outcome of that debate is another story, and so is the fate of the ikon, which, as you must have guessed, Christatos had managed to spirit away during the confusion.”
The master sagged and sighed, moving his shoulders around in his coat and recrossing his knees. Michael looked around the garden and saw that everyone else had gone; they were alone, and the master had stopped talking, but it was clear that the lesson was not over. “When did this happen?” Michael asked.
The master emitted his melodrama-villain’s chuckle. “Long ago, my boy, long ago. Let us say some time before you were born.” This pronouncement seemed to amuse him, and he chuckled still more fearfully.
“Okay. And you actually saw the statue move?”
“I did.”
“The same way the people at the Metropolitan saw the Saskia cry?”
“Something like that, perhaps. There is always the possibility of hypnotism, or mass hysteria, though I confess I myself find it doubtful.”
“Did it have something to do with the beam of light? The sun reflecting on the ikon?”
“As we know, the sparkle of gold had misled many a man; perhaps the monks were even as simple as they professed to be. Perhaps it was their faith that believed the ikon wept and the statue articulated its joints. A miracle, or magic—who can say? The miraculous is always magical, and the truly magical is ultimately miraculous, but which came first? And what do such deliberations reveal except the extent to which our thoughts are circumscribed by language? I’ll ask an easier question: are you expecting that statue to move?”
The customary sardonic edge, returning to the master’s tone, cut through Michael’s reverie and made him aware that he had been staring at the carved stone figure for some time. And that somewhere in the back of his mind a struggle was taking place between his boundless aspirations and his certainty that they were impossible dreams.
“The need for belief is part of the essential nature of man,” the master continued. “He must, with all his heart, believe in something. If you wish that a statue should move, even that one, if you believe it is possible, I say to you that such a thing can be done, for as I told you I have seen it myself. What I saw was, perhaps, not a holy miracle, but a question of Christatos’s ability to attune his audience to his magic will. The ordinary man wills that he shall not believe, the magician wills that he shall. Which is stronger? It is a question of belief, the magician’s against the ordinary man’s. Like every other human being, you have much to learn, but there is little else that I can teach you. You have been a most satisfactory student; if I could be sorry, I would be sorry to leave you, but let this be our last formal lesson. I am tired now. I’d like to rest for a little while before the darkness finally falls.”
He fell silent at last, slipped his pipe into his pocket, and leaned back against the wall behind the bench. Michael recapitulated the story while it was still fresh in his mind, but he soon gave up any attempt to determine how much of it might be objectively true. The master’s little anecdotes and parables contained their own nuggets of truth—it was a question of digging them out.
He glanced back at the old man. His lids were closed, he had turned up his collar against the late afternoon chill and appeared for all the world to be dozing. Yet Michael doubted it; he was waiting for something that was yet to happen, some little event that would put its seal on the day. The sun had dropped behind the rooftree, spreading a heavy shadow across three quarters of the garden. The air smelled new and green, the hopeful fragrance of spring, though experience showed that such hopes were often nipped in the bud.
Something propelled him to his feet, then induced him to movement. He went and leaned over the wall, gazing out across the water. It was gray, going to black, and looking cold. There were lights: a large boat was moving downriver, buildings on the Palisades showed yellow windows, headlight beams moved slowly across the span of the bridge. The wind was rising, tugging at the young untested leaves of the apple trees. The outlines of low-lying objects—certain hedges, the newly manicured gravel path—were beginning to blur, and the gray stone of the statue had gone blue in the twilight.
The garden lay deserted, the courtyard empty. Everyone had gone, and the place had taken on a melancholy air. In the dark of the arcade it seemed there throbbed mystery, even frightfulness. Michael felt a deepening pang, wishing he were laughing with Dazz, wistfully imagining he was doing street mimes and looking for an Equity job, not doing a magic act and living in the house of a strange and perhaps mad old man. The thought of Emily crossed his mind like a promise of salvation. What did the master want from him? What was the purpose he was being trained and molded for?
He felt isolated and frustrated and stymied, like a man nearing the top of a high mountain only to discover that his joints ache, he can’t breathe, the view isn’t all he’d hoped, and the way of descent is obscured. Whatever strange capabilities the master possessed, whatever Michael had managed to glean from him, suddenly seemed to have no merit. What was this power he sought so desperately, and what would he do with it should he attain it? Heal the sick? Raise the dead? Make statues move? Such notions were the leftover pathetic dreams of a lonely boy, fantasizing about controlling a world in which no single element responded to his will. Fine for a boy, but for a grown man? He had exercised that coveted power in some degree, had felt it surge through and out of him, and yet he had no idea of its limits, no sense that he could ever wield it with total mastery; unlike himself, it was inexhaustible. A vision of the fiasco in Washington Square came to him, the howling and the flailing, his despair at having freed some savage thing he could never recapture or tame again. Could he ever control his power, if indeed it was his, or would it always control him? If a magician makes his audience believe a statue can move, who moves the statue, the magician, or his believing audience? The master was just preparing him to be subject to many masters, never to be his own. And what profit had the old man had of his own power? He was cut off from everything alive, he embraced corpses among strangers, his mind was fixed on death. Rightly considered, the magic will seemed to include the will not to an enhanced, fuller life, but to death, to the chaos and disorganization of death. In an agony of doubt, Michael imagined the master offering him a large cup brimming with some bitter-smelling liquid and instinctively turned away his head.