The Magician's Wife (22 page)

Lambert, master of his audience, knew the precise moment when he must resume. In a pre-arranged signal, he held up his ivory-tipped baton as if to examine it. At this, on cue, Colonel Deniau rose from his seat and came to the steps below the stage, turning to face the audience. He spoke in Arabic.

‘What is spiritual power? The Koran tells us it is a gift that Allah grants to holy men and women in gratitude for their devotion. It is the gift of miracles, the gift of lifting the curse from a woman who was barren, of delivering from his enemies a prisoner who was in chains, of cooling the bullet wounds of the injured and, the greatest gift of all, the gift that makes men in battle invulnerable to the bullets of an enemy. This last gift, you have been told, will be granted to the Mahdi, the chosen one of God, who will lead your armies to victory over us. But what marabout has this gift? What marabout has proved it before your very eyes?

‘I say no one. No Mahdi has risen among you. But here on this day, our marabout will show that he, guided by God, has been granted this power.’

Emmeline, standing in the shadows, heard this, her cue. She picked up the morocco-leather case containing the two cavalry pistols which her husband used in his performance, and came out at the rear of the stage.

Lambert, who had been standing at the centre of the stage, now walked towards the audience. He paused, his eyes searching among the massed faces in a way which held their attention. Then, speaking quietly, he said, ‘As I have demonstrated in Algiers I am invulnerable because I possess a talisman which protects me from all harm. No marksman can injure or kill me.’ He now looked down directly at Bou-Aziz. ‘Bou-Aziz, I ask your help to prove my claim.’

Emmeline saw the marabout look up at her husband and again felt the strange attraction of his gaze. He spoke in Arabic to his daughter, who said, ‘My father does not kill.’

At that, a tall heavily built Kabyle sheikh wearing an ochre burnous stood and walked towards the steps leading to the stage. He spoke in a slow guttural French. ‘You wish to be killed? I will help you.’

Lambert signalled him to mount the stage. When he did, Lambert turned back to Emmeline, gesturing to her to come forward. Obedient, she opened the pistol case as he had taught her to do and showed the two cavalry pistols to the audience. She then went up to Lambert who took one of the pistols from the case and offered it to the Kabyle sheikh.

But the sheikh shook his head and putting his hands into his burnous pulled from a sash two pistols of a similar type. ‘Now, my marabout,’ he said. ‘Choose one of
my
pistols and we will load it and I will fire at you. You have nothing to fear. You said in Algiers that you possess a talisman which can ward off all blows. Let us see this talisman and witness its power.’

Emmeline, holding the unwanted pistols, waited, confused, watching Lambert who looked directly at the sheikh, then, nodding as in agreement, handed his own pistol back to her. She saw Deniau, sitting in the front row of the audience, rise in his seat, alarmed. And now she knew that the pistols she held had been in some way tampered with and that if her husband failed in this ultimate test of power on which the success of the journey depended, his mission would be aborted and his pride destroyed. She saw Deniau come forward as if to mount the stage and halt the proceedings. But Lambert signalled him to wait.

He turned to the sheikh and reaching into the air produced, as if by magic, the small, many-faceted glass orb, which glittered in the sun.

‘This is the talisman you speak of,’ he said. ‘With it, I am invulnerable. But I have decided not to use it today, when I stand before the marabout Bou-Aziz, who many of you believe is the Mahdi, the chosen one of God. Today I wish to show you that my power is greater than that of any talisman. Take the talisman.’

The Kabyle sheikh reached to take the glass orb offered him. But at once it disappeared from Lambert’s hand.

Lambert smiled. ‘Look in the fold of your sash,’ he said.

The sheikh slid his fingers into his orange silk sash and, astonished, took from it the small glass ball.

‘Guard it well,’ Lambert said. ‘I must explain that to do without the talisman I must now retire and spend six hours in prayer. Tomorrow morning, if you will permit me, I will return to this place and prove to you that I am invulnerable, even without my talisman. It will be proven when you fire your pistol directly at my heart in the presence of these sheikhs and marabouts.’

He turned to the audience and addressed himself to Bou-Aziz’s daughter. ‘Tomorrow, at dawn, I shall be ready. Will you ask your father to do me the honour of attending?’

Touching her father’s arm, Bou-Aziz’s daughter spoke to him in a low voice. At that, Bou-Aziz rose, gathering the folds of his green robe around him. He turned to his daughter who took his arm. In an electric pause, watched anxiously by the Arab and Kabyle leaders, he nodded his head in agreement, then, frail and slow, made his way towards the archway which led out into the streets of Milianah. At once, in a hubbub of talk and movement, the audience began to disperse, glancing back at Lambert who laid down his baton and walked out of sight into the wings. Emmeline followed, still holding the pistol case. She saw that Lambert’s face was wet with sweat and that he held his fists at his sides, tightly clenched as though to prevent himself from trembling.

Footsteps sounded on the stage behind her. Deniau greeted her with a nod, then said to Lambert ‘What are we going to do now? Couldn’t you have persuaded him to use your pistols? No one can see they have been tampered with. Why didn’t you try?’

‘A magician must honour his promise,’ Lambert said. ‘Even if it means that tomorrow I will be killed.’

Emmeline saw that Deniau was not concerned for her husband. His voice, his face, showed anger and frustration. ‘And if you are killed, everything we’ve planned will be lost. Tomorrow you must use your own pistols. I will make an announcement. I will say that you have been insulted and that anyone in the audience is free to examine your guns and satisfy himself that they are not false.’

Sweating, tense, Lambert sat on the solitary chair beside the electric levers which controlled the heavy box. He put his head down as though he felt faint, then said, ‘I can’t go back on my promise. I said I am invulnerable. If I am invulnerable, how can I refuse to use the sheikh’s pistol? Charles, I have spent my life before an audience. The audience is like an animal. If you fail to dominate it, it will turn on you. Today by dispensing with my “talisman” I made them feel my power. Now I must prove it. I have a slim chance of doing that, the glimmer of an idea which I must work on before morning.’

‘What is this idea?’ Deniau asked.

Lambert did not answer. He sat, his head bowed as if deep in thought.

Deniau turned to Emmeline. ‘Do
you
know what it is?’

‘She knows nothing,’ Lambert said. ‘Come, Emmeline. We will go back to our rooms now. Bring the pistol case with you.’

‘But this idea,’ Deniau said. ‘If you won’t tell me what it is, tell me, at least, how I can help you?’

Lambert forced a smile. ‘I must not be disturbed at my “prayers”. Make sure of that, will you? Send supper up to our rooms. And remember, if I fail the government of France must provide for my wife. I entrust her to your care, Charles. She will need your help.’

She folded the Arab veil and put it on the mirrored table. Lambert stood, impatient, by the flimsy door of the dressing room which he closed and locked as they went through the wings and out on to the stage. Deniau, who had preceded them, waited at the foot of the steps and now as she followed her husband across the square, going towards the archway which led up to their rooms, Deniau took her arm, delaying her. Lambert did not seem to notice. He walked quickly, not looking back, disappearing into the shadows of the colonnade.

At that, Deniau put his face close to hers and whispered, ‘You mustn’t let him do this. What if he’s killed? It’s pride and foolishness. You must make him use his own pistols. Do you realize that by this time tomorrow you could be a widow? Besides, it’s not just his reputation that’s at stake, it’s more than that. Please, help me?’

‘Help
you
?’

‘I mean . . .’ He paused and smiled guiltily. ‘I mean, help
him
. Look, you’ll be with him now, you must find out what it is he plans to do. I’ll come to your rooms later. Perhaps you can slip out for a moment and we can talk?’

‘Emmeline? Emmeline?’

She looked up. Lambert stood on the balcony overlooking the courtyard. ‘Come along! I need that pistol case!’

‘I’m coming.’ Ignoring Deniau she hurried under the archway and up the stone steps leading to the second floor of the fort. Her husband was already standing by a table in the sitting room and when she entered he held out his hand for the pistol case and sat down, opening it and removing an object which she did not recognize.

‘Fetch me one of those candles,’ he said. ‘And matches. And pray that this will work.’

‘What are you going to do?’

He put the object on the table, then looked up at her. She saw that his face was pale and drawn. ‘Something I haven’t done before. Dangerous. When I prepare an illusion I rehearse every move over and over again to make sure it’s perfect on stage. But tomorrow there will be no rehearsal. I will be working with a savage who wants to kill me and with this.’

He looked again at the object on the table. ‘This is an ordinary bullet mould.’

He stood, went to his writing case and took out a card, bending up its four edges to make it into a trough. He then melted down a piece of candle wax and placed it in the trough. He made a sort of lamp black by running the blade of a knife over the candle and mixing the result in with the melted wax which he then poured into the bullet mould. ‘This is the difficult part,’ he said in a half-whisper as he turned the mould over to allow the portion of the wax which had not yet set run out, leaving a hollow ball in the mould. He did not succeed.

‘How many candles do we have?’

She went into the bedroom, counting. ‘Seven – no – eight.’

‘Good. Bring them here. I will need to practise. I must have a perfect hollow wax ball which looks exactly like a bullet.’

‘So there will be a trick,’ she said. ‘A false bullet?’

He did not answer. He bent over the table, as she had seen him do hundreds of times in his atelier, shut off from her, engrossed, patient, perfecting his art.

‘You said there’s a danger. You could be killed.’

Again, he did not answer. She sat on the divan, watching him. He could be killed. And for what? Why has it come to this?

‘Henri, did you hear me?’

He was now fashioning his third wax bullet. ‘It’s still not right,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘But it’s better. And with luck and application it will be better still. It must seem like a lead bullet when I hold it up. I must practise – practise. It must be done very naturally, a simple holding up of the bullet so that both the sheikh and the audience can see it. That will be the moment of risk. These desert people have keen eyesight. It must be perfect.’

‘What are you talking about? Henri, you’ve made your fortune. You’re famous. You said you wanted to settle down, to live a normal life at home in Tours.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘I know you want a child. We could try again.’

‘Nonsense. That has nothing to do with it.’ She looked at him, stunned.
I know you want a child. We could try again
. After all these years, at last I managed to say it, to blurt it out. I never thought I could. When I think of the times I lay awake at night feeling guilty, knowing that it was up to me to urge him to try again. But now when I say it, he doesn’t even notice. Doesn’t he care about us? What
does
he care about? His career, his fame, his inventions, his ‘posterity’.

‘Well, what about your inventions? You tell everyone that your mechanical marionettes are the finest ever made. Are you going to ignore all that to play a trick on some African sheikh? Tomorrow morning, you could be killed and for what? To please the Emperor? To help him conquer another part of Africa? Don’t you see? Deniau has tricked you into this. But, to be fair to him, even Deniau is telling you to use your own pistols and not risk your life.’

Carefully, he poured the melted wax back into the cardboard trough. It was as though she were not in the room.

‘Henri, you say you love me. I know I haven’t been everything you wanted, but
do
you? Tell me the truth.’

Now he was decanting the melted wax into the bullet. He nodded his head, as if remembering something. ‘That’s it. I can draw blood from my thumb. An English magician showed me how, some years ago when I performed in London. The second bullet filled with blood will have to be more solid than the first one.’

‘Henri!’

He looked at her. ‘Darling, this has nothing to do with the things you’re talking about, the ordinary things, love, marriage, children. I was put on earth for more than that. Perhaps to be here in Africa and tomorrow at dawn to confront this challenge. Because I am Lambert, because I have been given these gifts, I can’t refuse it. If I do, shame will dog me for the rest of my life.’