The Manual of Darkness (17 page)

It was a tempting figure. For the first time Grouse began to believe he might recoup his money with interest, and in doing so heal his wounded pride. His mind immediately began trying to work out the mechanics of how Psycho moved and how to get the automaton to choose and present the appropriate card when requested. Magnets, maybe? Some hydraulic mechanism. Perhaps Maskelyne had managed to hide a cable connected to it in spite of the transparent glass cylinder. Grouse did not move from his seat and spent the twenty-minute interval racking his brains.

When the curtain rose once more, there was a round, three-legged table in the middle of the stage bordered at the back and on both sides by a thick black canvas screen. After a moment, Maskelyne appeared at the back of the stage. In his left hand he held a box by a bronze handle. In a tone intended to be comical he told the audience that, given Mr Cooke’s frequent blunders when repairing the automata, there was nothing for it but to cut off his head. As he spoke, he moved towards the table and placed the box on it.

‘I am reluctant to pass up this magnificent opportunity to demonstrate for you one of the latest advances in science,’ the magician went on. ‘Because today, ladies and gentlemen, the simple presence of a part of the body of someone who has passed away makes it possible to summon, for a brief moment at least, that person’s spirit.’ As he said this, he removed the front section of the box and stepped to one side.

Inside the box was Cooke’s head, completely dishevelled as though the man had indeed been decapitated after a brutal fight. There was even a trickle of blood on the neck. At first, Cooke’s eyes remained closed. Then slowly he opened them and glanced to either side as though he had just woken up and did not know where he was. Maskelyne immediately engaged him in conversation.

Though his mind was still preoccupied with Psycho, Grouse began to feel a genuine curiosity about what was happening onstage. This truly was magic. Cooke’s body could not possibly be hidden beneath the table as he had first suspected because you could still see the black screen between the three legs of the table.
He had to force himself to turn away from the stage. He had come to the Egyptian Hall to recoup his money and avenge a slight, and the information he needed to do so was not to be found up there but might well be waiting in the wings or in the flies. He apologised to those sitting next to him and crept out into the aisle. When he reached the hall, he quickly found the door he was looking for: it was the only door that was locked. As the levers of the lock fell to his picklock he thought of Maskelyne and smiled sardonically: pure science, ladies and gentlemen, the only marvels you will see here …

He found he had to grope his way along a dark corridor but he knew he was headed in the right direction because as he advanced Maskelyne’s voice grew louder. At that moment, he was encouraging the audience to ask Cooke – or rather his head – any question they liked. Grouse finally came to the end of the passageway and found a small room next to the stage. He glanced around and recognised the shapes of the musical automata covered by tarpaulins. The only unexpected object was a strange cylinder more than three feet tall topped by a headboard covered in tubes which ran down to the ground then disappeared through a trapdoor. Farther away was a table strewn with papers, tools and small contraptions he could not make out in the half-light. And at the foot of the table was the leather case. Open. Fearing that the magician might hear his movements, Grouse peeked through the curtains to see what was happening onstage. The magician approached the table, closed the box and picked it up to carry it away. In the thunderous applause that followed there were shouts for Maskelyne to perform the trick again. He set the box on the table once more and went to the front of the stage to deliver his last words to the audience. Seeing that the show was almost over, Grouse crept over to the leather case and fumbled blindly inside it, all the time listening carefully to what Maskelyne was saying: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately the march of science, though sure, is slow. Though the day has not yet come, it cannot be long before we triumph over death completely.’

All that was inside the case was a book. Grouse cursed silently, then took it out and slipped it into the waistband of his trousers. Disappointed, he crept back to the curtains in the hope that, from
this privileged position, he might discover where and how Cooke’s body had been concealed.

‘For the moment,’ Maskelyne went on, ‘the charm by which I am enabled, as you have seen, to revivify the dead lasts but fifteen minutes. That time once expired, not only does the mind vanish, so too does the head wherein it was contained, in accordance with the words of the Bible:
dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
.’

As Maskelyne said this, he opened the box once more, lifted it up so that the audience could see it was empty and, as he blew into it, a small cloud of dust appeared.

The ovation was so deafening that Grouse was able to run away without worrying that the magician might hear his footsteps.

C
areful with that or you’ll burn yourself. Don’t look at the sun. Come over here right now. Close your mouth when you’re eating. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Don’t tell lies. That’s not how you ask for something. Don’t drag your feet. If you don’t know, ask. Don’t make fun of people. Don’t sit so close to the TV. Make your mind up. Aim at the bowl when you do a wee and don’t forget to flush. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Look at me when I’m talking to you. Don’t shovel your food. Don’t talk back to your elders. Knives are not for playing with. Don’t waste water. Sit up straight. Don’t leave everything to the last minute. Don’t play with your food. Stop biting your nails. Wrap up warm, it’s cold out there. Don’t slurp your soup. Tidy your room. Don’t use dirty words. Didn’t I tell you to tidy your room? Is it too much to expect a civil answer? Be on time. Blow your nose. Answer me when I talk to you. Don’t pick your nose. Do your homework. Look me in the eye. Don’t leave your stuff lying around. Polish your shoes. Don’t interrupt when the adults are talking. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, tidy your room. Turn that music down. Do as I say. Don’t be home late, darling.

In spite of the frustrations, in spite of the tedium, the constant need for patience, in spite of the fact that no one did a hand’s turn and she was constantly wearing herself out, trying to do everything in what little time she had before she had to go back to work so she could support her son, Víctor’s mother managed to write for him, in clear, neat writing, the one true book about life. A text that made no mention of the loneliness she must have felt, of her helplessness, of the silent grief that scarred her. An instruction manual filled with slip-ups and crossings-out, with uncertainties
and second thoughts, with rejections and capitulations, but all dispensed with enough love to look after her son until he felt the need to set off and find new instructions elsewhere. Anywhere: at university, at work, on the curious island he returned from every Tuesday afternoon with that gleam in his eyes. Afterwards he’d shut himself away in his room to practise without so much as a word. Don’t call them tricks. Don’t ask how it’s done. Don’t raise your eyebrows. You hold the pack like this. Sing that song for me.

Later, when Víctor was old enough and wise enough to begin to write the story of his own life, his mother learned to be a passionate, even critical reader, but one prepared to accept that the only instructions she could now offer had to be couched in parentheses, or followed by a question mark. Just because you’re earning a lot of money, don’t think that means you’ve got life all figured out. Magic isn’t everything, son, you have to do other things. Isn’t it about time you got yourself a girlfriend and settled down?

Víctor still has an image of his mother sitting in the front row, on the day of his first performance in Barcelona. He remembers the mental short circuit, the four interminable seconds of silence, before he addressed the audience with the words that would one day be famous: ‘My father died when I was seven years old’. Truth be told, at that moment, he would have liked to say: ‘My mother is here. Look at her. She brought me this far. Everything I know, I owe to her.’ But he carried on with his monologue as it was written, focused on his work, did not look at her or even think about her again until afterwards, in the dressing room, when they hugged each other and did not say a word. And after that, everything that happened, happened, and Víctor began to go off on world tours and whenever he came home, never for more than a few days, his mother would hone her instructions: You need to eat more, you’re looking very thin; relax for a while, I don’t understand why you have to work all the time; I hope you wrap up warm when you’re over there; words that were now no more than footnotes in someone else’s story, or an epilogue, since they were her last words, almost her last. Though no one suspected it at the time, her heart would not go on beating for much longer.

‘My mother died when I was twenty-six years old,’ Víctor says aloud. ‘Her heart was always too big. She left me the house where I still live, an instruction manual for life which over time has proved to be quite useful and, according to my neurologist, a lottery ticket in the game of darkness.’ It would make a good opener for future shows, he thinks. He imagines the curtain rising to reveal him, as always, standing alone in the middle of the stage, his hands balled into fists. He opens them and in his right hand he holds a heart. A living, beating heart that is too big. Because that was what did it. Those were the words Galván used on the phone, too big, you have to cancel the show and catch the first flight back, fuck the tour, you’re coming home now, she’s in a coma, she can’t hold out much longer. It’s not uncommon, the cardiologist told him later, the heart grows too big and each beat requires twice as much energy.

Víctor sat with her in the hospital for thirteen hours straight, as though by doing so he could somehow make up for the long absences of recent years. He did not even leave her bedside to get a solitary bite to eat. And at some point, he realised that she was dead. There was no death rattle, no choking, no spasm, nor were there any last words. Having checked that the weak, erratic pulse of her last days was gone, Víctor pulled the sheet up over her shoulders and went to find a nurse, utterly unaware of the symbolism of the gesture, the belated homecoming of a mantra he had heard a thousand times: wrap up warm, son, it’s cold out.

He picks up the remote control, but before the parade of images begins, he decides to move his chair six feet away from the TV screen. He turns down the sound so he cannot hear the voice. Nobody is going to say anything he doesn’t already know. He places a hand over one side of his glasses, covering his left eye to avoid any interference. He doesn’t want to miss anything. After the opening credits, the screen is filled by a vast expanse of untilled land with only a handful of weeds blown by the occasional gust of wind. This is a scientific documentary, there’s no big budget, no special effects. In fact, there is only a single camera fixed on this general shot and another which will give a close-up of what comes next. Suddenly, from several different points, a black torrent streams out of the ground. At first there are two or three puddles
of darkness, but soon almost the entire surface, the whole screen, is black. You need a sharp eye, or, like Víctor, to know the film by heart to realise that what you are seeing is ants. Dozens, hundreds, thousands. This has been shot on the day they reproduce. Or rather not a day, since reproduction takes barely fifteen minutes.

As a result of a genetic command whose trigger and means of transmission have not been wholly determined, a host of sterile females have decided, at this precise moment, not to be so any more. They swarm from the anthill in an explosion of wings so violent that it leaves them stunned, and they fall back to earth, the males throwing themselves on top of them, four, five, as many as eight for every female. Even in the close-ups, it is impossible to see clearly what is happening. The place looks like a war zone. The males become furious, they fight, they bite, and even after they finally manage to conquer a female in the briefest of thrusts, they still stagger about wildly, drunk on hormones.

Although there has been no change in their appearance which might alert the males to the fact that they have been fertilised, once the females have been impregnated, they are left alone. They have a short time to distance themselves by a few metres, dig a hole in the ground and establish a new colony, a task in which only a few will triumph. But before they do so, before they say farewell for ever to the light, they rip off their wings. If all goes well, the fertilised female ant, now a queen, will spend the rest of her life buried several metres underground and wings would simply be a hindrance. The first time he saw this part, Víctor found it so violent that he couldn’t stop trembling and had to hug himself as though someone were trying to rip off his shoulder blades.