The Manual of Darkness (29 page)

‘Well, well, it seems the presence of our illustrious guest has frightened the spirits themselves.’

One or two spectators laughed, but most shifted uneasily in their seats. A magician’s worst nightmare is not when an illusion goes wrong, it is when it does not go at all. When nothing happens for several moments. The audience’s suspension of disbelief depends on the magician’s ability to explain what is happening, to interpret each event before the next one occurs. Any break in this fragile narrative thread can ruin that rapport. There was no booing, but coughing and whispering indicated that the audience’s uneasiness was spreading. Kellar did what any magician with a minimum of experience would do under the circumstances: he ploughed on, trusting in his ability to improvise.

‘Let’s try it again, but perhaps this time I shall go in with him.’

He asked Furness to bind his hands and had the two volunteers check the knots. Then, he invited the investigator to step into the cabinet with him. As soon as the doors were closed, Kellar whispered, ‘What the devil is going on, Eva?’

Almost blindly, Grouse reached out and put the hood over Furness’s head and tipped the bag of flour over him. His other hand was still covering Eva’s mouth, but she bit him and managed to free herself. Grouse could not suppress a cry but he managed to ward off her blows as she tried to grab the shears from him. As they struggled he felt the blades snap closed on something hard and thick. The blades fell to the floor of the cabinet with a clang. Even Furness, through his deafness, heard the howl that suddenly rang out, startling the volunteers, who were standing outside the
cabinet, and Kellar’s assistants waiting in the wings, the entire audience and possibly those walking past the theatre.

Kellar brutally pushed the mirror closed, opened one of the doors and leapt out on to the stage, blinking against the light. He had no idea what he was about to say. In their confusion, some of the audience burst out laughing: logically, they had expected him to emerge with his hands untied. The magician managed to play on their expectations. Slowly and deliberately he opened the other door and asked Furness to step out. There was a gasp, followed by thunderous applause – the trick was even better than they had expected: without untying his hands Kellar had managed to place a hood over Furness’s head and cover him in flour. The magician bowed deeply, then turned to the audience:

‘All that remains is for Dr Furness, who is renowned for his honesty in such matters, to tell us whether he sensed the presence of a spiritual force inside the cabinet.’ Kellar turned to the journalists. ‘Take off the hood.’

Furness, shaking his head in puzzlement, asked Kellar to repeat the question. Then he turned to the audience and said:

‘I felt a force, certainly, but it did not feel very spiritual.’

‘In that case, I can ask only that my assistants remove the cabinet,’ Kellar gestured for them to do so as quickly as possible, ‘and carefully guard its secrets.’

Hearing these last words, the assistants knew what was being asked of them. As soon as the cabinet was out of sight of the public, they opened the doors. Inside, they found Eva Kellar in hysterics. Though clutching her hands to her belly and doubled over in pain, she was still kicking out at Peter Grouse, who was virtually turning somersaults to avoid the blows. The assistants joined in but Grouse tried to ward them off, shouting that they should forget about him and take care of Eva, who had suffered a serious cut.

They helped Eva out and locked the intruder in the cabinet while one of the assistants took her to the nearest hospital, fearing she might bleed to death. The other stood guard over the cabinet, awaiting Kellar’s instructions. Sitting in the darkness, Grouse patted himself and withdrew the small, wet object stuck to his left buttock. He did not need any light; his sense of touch immediately
recognised the skin, the nail, the blood, and he knew that it was part of Eva Kellar’s thumb.

Kellar concluded the performance with four hurried illusions, dispatched the audience and marched into the wings incensed, threatening to strangle his wife and demanding an explanation for this sudden fit of incompetence. The assistant attempted to explain what had happened but the magician interrupted him, demanding details, which finger, which hand, what weapon, which hospital, how and with whom. Then there was an uncomfortable silence. Grouse pressed his ear to the door of the cabinet, trying to work out what was happening outside. He heard only a murmur, a whispered conversation, words exchanged that undoubtedly concerned him. He heard footsteps retreating and then, from the door, Kellar’s last instructions to his assistant:

‘The same hand, all right? The same finger. Exactly the same part. Not an inch more. Then take him to the hospital. Let nobody say I am not a just man.’

When the doors finally opened, Peter Grouse knew what awaited him and could see no way of avoiding it.

H
e remembers the cold, but he cannot quite remember what city they were in. It was fifteen years ago. Names come back to him: Dresden, Oslo, Vancouver. Nor can he remember what they were celebrating: a good review, perhaps, though they never paid the critics much heed; or perhaps the however many hundred performances of
Espectros
. Whatever the case, it was the early hours of the morning and they were on their way back to the hotel. They walked with their hands in their pockets and the collars of their coats turned up. He thinks he can remember that the pavement glittered with frost and, if he concentrates, he can see, can almost feel, their misty breath. They had been walking in silence for some time, their elation giving way to a quiet sense of satisfaction.

Galván was telling him that if he thought he had made it to the other side of the line of fire, he was mistaken; that he should not let himself be blinded by praise; that to rest on his laurels would be to run a terrible risk. Víctor listened politely; the speech fondly reminded him of Galván’s lectures long ago, but he did not really take notice until – as usually happened in these lectures – Galván’s vague moralising resolved itself into a specific conclusion: he needed to come up with a new show. Something bigger, more ambitious. He had to come back across the line of fire so that he could pass through it again, or better still, dance amid the flames until he was burned. He had to take up the baton passed on by the great magicians of yesteryear and, in doing so, pay tribute to them. And one more thing: he would have to do it alone.

Víctor stopped walking and Galván stopped and stood next to him. This, he remembers. The silence gradually absorbed the echo of their footfalls. The maestro looked him in the eye and told him
he was not abandoning him. He still believed in him, believed in his ideas and in his ability to execute them to the most exacting standard. He was sure the new show would be a triumph and it was because of this that he had to take a step back. He cut short Víctor’s protests, promising he would help him devise the new show and support him in the workshop, that he would be with him through rehearsals and was even prepared to direct the Barcelona premiere. And he was not about to give up his fifteen per cent, he said jokingly. But when it came to going on tour, he would stay at home. ‘Look at me, Víctor, I’m too old for this. I can’t keep travelling halfway around the world with holes in my lungs.’

It had been difficult for Víctor to get used to working without Galván. His missed his company on tour, and his advice after the obligatory rehearsals when he arrived in each new theatre. But most of all he missed the maestro’s presence in the moment just before his first performance in each new town. Standing in the middle of the stage, waiting for the curtain to go up, he felt a terrible emptiness in the pit of his stomach, a mental weakness which he could only rise above by constantly repeating the first words he would say when the curtain rose: ‘My father died when I was seven years old.’ He had said the words so often now that they no longer reminded him of death; quite the reverse, they were like a rebirth. Something magical about to begin. And a second later he forgot about the maestro and did not think of him again until the time came to leave the stage and, waiting in the wings, listening to the roar of the applause, he thought of Galván and murmured: ‘This is my tribute to you.’

In following his advice to pay homage to the greats, Víctor ensured that he numbered Galván among them. The maestro was the bridge, the invisible thread that made it possible, during the two hours of uninterrupted performance, to move effortlessly between the nineteenth century and the present, between wonder and admiration, between the ‘it’s not possible’ and the ‘yet it is’. Furthermore, Galván’s name still appeared next to his on the posters and the programme. Víctor had not forgotten how much Galván had contributed to the text, not only through his initial comments but more importantly when the two of them had sat down together in the workshop and begun turning this idea for a
show into a script that could be performed. He still had the text in a drawer somewhere, in a red folder with the word MORTAL written on the cover, for that was the name of his new show.

There is no point looking for it now since to read it he would have to hold the pages two inches from his face, cover his left eye and trust his right eye to work properly for several minutes, something it has not done in the past two weeks. Besides, he is sure he can recite it from memory. In Spanish and English. He performed it in theatres the world over for five years. It is like a favourite song not heard for some time. He says the first words aloud, convinced that he has only to throw open the floodgates of memory and the rest of the words will fall into place:

‘My father died when I was seven years old. One day, I came home and found him lying dead on the floor. His body was there but he was no longer inside. Simple as that. Or not so simple. I remember there was music playing. The same music that is playing now.’

At this point, the
andante
from Bach’s first violin concerto would begin to play. Víctor would fall silent, allowing the tremulous chords to spill out over the audience. He even remembers how long he had to pause: eight bars, almost thirty seconds in most versions at standard tempo. During rehearsals, Galván had thought it was too slow, but in performance, with the musicians in one corner of the stage and Víctor standing alone in the spotlight, it was dramatic, all eyes were fixed on him.

No one is looking at him now, no one but the ghosts of the past. Four ants are crawling across the surface of the terrarium but, unless some evolutionary mutation has produced a miracle, they cannot hear him. He is alone here on the terrace, leaning on the railings and through force of habit his tone is slightly dramatic, his voice is barely audible:

‘My father loved music. At home, there was always music playing. Once, when we were going out, I asked him why he was leaving the music on and he said, “For the spirits.” My father was a scientist. I doubt he believed in spirits.’

Science and magic. It had been Galván’s idea to mention Martín’s profession. Before he goes on, Víctor throws his arms wide as he used to do onstage, indicating the void.

‘I don’t give them much credence myself. And yet, a long time ago, magic not only gave me hope they might exist, it seemed to offer the possibility of seeing them, of communicating with them. Today, I realise that all that exists is what we can see.’

At this point, the music would drop to an almost inaudible pianissimo so the audience could hear the creak of wood as the cabinet appeared from the back of the stage without anyone seeming to push it.

‘A hundred years ago, a cabinet just like this toured the world, leaving astonishment in its wake. Inside was a mirror, an ordinary pane of glass whose reflection …’

Víctor stops, thinks for a second, then begins again, ‘… a mirror, a pane of ordinary glass whose reflection … No, a pane of glass, whose …’

He thumps the railing and curses. There is no sense in carrying on. A single hesitation, a single misplaced word, has shattered his confidence. The echo lingers in his mind not of his own voice, but of Galván’s during the first rehearsals: ‘Fluidly, Víctor, fluidly. Think about water. All you need to do is let it flow.’

And he was water. Rushing water. For two whole hours he unleashed wild torrents only to have them ebb and then evaporate to the amazement of the audience. Galván had told him to be ambitious, and from the start, he had done just that. A chamber orchestra onstage. A battery of technical resources which had taken them two years of preparation in the workshop, he and Galván working side by side, to create precise replicas of nineteenth-century props and mechanisms.

It was a brilliant idea. It seemed to be simply a matter of recreating the finest moments of the golden age of magic. Onstage, Víctor practised every variation of the Davenport cabinet; he presented exact copies of Maskelyne’s automata; performed conjuring tricks using the methods of the great innovator Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin; sawed a woman in half using the techniques of Horace Goldin; floated above the audience as Kellar had done; decapitated his assistant on a table exactly like the one Stodare had used; became invisible like Tobin; at the climax of the act, he had a member of the audience fire a gun at him and caught the bullet in mid-air, uttering the very words used by William
Robinson, who died onstage the day the trick went wrong. This was the list of great moments which he and Galván had agreed upon in long discussions during which the maestro refused even to allow Houdini’s name to be uttered.

Each time Víctor opened a performance, Martín Losa’s death served as a hinge to open a new door. Again and again, the tale returned to spirits, to the conflict between science and magic, moving it forward, giving it narrative drive, ensuring that the show did not simply become a succession of illusions. But the brilliance of the idea was that it only appeared to pay homage. Onstage, Víctor presented illusion after illusion, never forgetting to mention the name of the person who had invented it, the person who first performed it. Then he revealed the secret of the illusion. Not only did he tell the audience the mechanisms which made the illusion possible, he invited them onstage to see for themselves and then take it apart. The mirror that had served to hide the body of the decapitated man was smashed to smithereens, a pair of shears cut through the cables that had made possible the mysterious levitation.