The Manual of Darkness (52 page)

Víctor does not let go of Darius’s hand until they are inside the playground. Alicia and Irina remain outside, leaning against the wooden fence. The boy rushes off to the slide. Víctor stands in the middle of the playground and raises the hand holding the cane.

‘Is there anyone else in the park?’ He is almost shouting. ‘I need help.’

A young blonde woman goes over to him. She is carrying a small black child about a year older than Darius.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asks.

‘I’m blind. The boy isn’t my son. I was minding him at home but he was determined to go out …’

‘That’s fine,’ the blonde woman says. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Darius.’

‘Darius, come here.’ The blonde woman crouches down and draws the two children together. ‘Would you like to play with Yedne?’

‘Sorry?’ Víctor says. ‘Yedne?’

‘He’s from Ethiopia,’ the woman replies. ‘He’s adopted. Come on.’ She turns to the children. ‘Who wants a go on the slide?’

A great weight lifted from his shoulders, Víctor feels his legs give way. He sits on the ground at the foot of the slide. From the top, Darius counts to three in Romanian and slides down. Yedne follows him. As soon as they get to the bottom, they stand up and both of them rush into Víctor’s arms, convinced that that is why he’s sitting there. They fall backwards. Víctor lies still for a second or two, then roars, grabs for them and tickles them, rolling around with them, laughing wildly.

After ten minutes, they are all sitting around him. Everyone, including the blonde, two other women and their children. Víctor has taken three small rubber balls from his pocket and magically transformed them into one, then they multiply again, disappear up one sleeve and reappear out of the other. He puts one ball in his mouth, then takes it out, but then takes out another, and another, and another. There are five balls now, all different colours. The mothers clap and the children, who are too young to realise what is happening, laugh and wave. The excitement is contagious. Darius lets his mind wander for a minute, looking vaguely across the square, then shouts:

‘Mum!’

Without even looking at Alicia, Irina reacts immediately. She goes into the playground and sits on the ground next to her son and, as she hugs him, and kisses him, she puts her free hand on Víctor’s shoulder, apologises for being late and in her clumsy Spanish explains that she was rushing back to his place when she saw them here. Now she’s asking whether Darius has had anything to eat. Alicia moves away, walking backwards so as not to take her eyes off them. She clasps her hands together at chest height
and makes a little bow: thank you, Irina, thank you. She blows a kiss, turns and leaves, happy that the plan has worked, although she does not want to claim all the credit because it is time which causes amber to wear away, the same time that dictates that children in playgrounds all over Spain are no longer called Pedro and Antonio, but Darius and Yedne, the same wretched, obdurate time that one day forced Irina to take a train and cross the border with a baby in her arms, the time that now urges Alicia, demands, that she say goodbye to Víctor, because the day has come when her presence in the life of this bastard, this intractable genius who has made her life as difficult as he could, is no longer necessary.

S
ometimes it is better to say nothing and just watch. Even though she wants to ask him how he is feeling, even though she cannot help speculating about the effect Galván’s death will have on Víctor’s fragile spirit, Alicia realises that now is not the time to pester him with questions. But his apparent calm makes her suspicious, the stoicism with which he took the news. And especially his silence. She is still waiting for him to say something. His only reaction when he first heard was to ask her to help him find the leather case in the studio. Then, as he wiped off the dust, he said:

‘Right, let’s go …’

‘Go where?’

‘Where do you think? To the morgue, to his house, to wherever the vigil is. The daughter did tell you, didn’t she?’

‘What’s the case for?’

‘It was his. I want it to be buried with him. Or burned. Whatever.’

After that point he spoke only once, when they reached the street. He said he wanted to go by taxi. The driver, perhaps alerted by their silence or as a mark of respect because they were going to the morgue, made no attempt to engage them in conversation. In fact, he even turned off the radio. Víctor now pays him with a fifty-euro note and gets out without waiting for the change.

They check which room they need to go to, take the single flight of stairs that leads to the basement, convinced they are going to be met by a crowd, because in spite of the silence imposed by the surroundings, they can hear an almost solid murmur that must be hundreds of voices. This is not the time for demonstrations of independence. Víctor folds his cane. Alicia offers him her elbow and walks on ahead, clearing a path through the crowd. Each
group of mourners falls silent as they pass; someone breaks away from the group, comes over to Víctor and whispers in his ear words that Alicia can barely hear, but which she imagines are words of condolence over Galván’s death and happiness or surprise at Víctor’s presence at the vigil. Others simply hug him. Víctor responds to each of them with a polite smile, nodding constantly as though his head were on a spring, offering the occasional monosyllable. Then, when he decides it is time to move on, he gently squeezes Alicia’s elbow.

‘Thank you, Víctor,’ Galván’s daughter says when they finally reach the room. ‘Dad would have been happy that you came. He always felt you were like a …’

Víctor lets go of Alicia’s elbow and fumbles until he finds the woman’s cheek. He strokes it awkwardly.

‘What would have made your father happy,’ he interrupts her, ‘would be knowing that his prediction has come true.’

‘He never doubted that it would. Besides, Alicia has been keeping us up to date with your progress.’

‘I have a favour to ask you.’

‘Of course, what is it?’

‘I’d like you to bury this with him.’

He holds up the leather case and waits for her to take it.

‘What is it?’

Víctor raises his eyebrows, pulls at his shirt cuffs and clears his throat.

‘Well … it was his. Or rather, it belonged to Peter Grouse, but Mario gave it to me as a present, it must be …’

‘Peter who?’

‘Grouse, Peter Grouse.’

‘I don’t know who you mean. Anyway, it’s not important. If you think it had a particular value for
Papá
, I’ve no objection …’

‘I don’t know. I’m having second thoughts now. Maybe I should keep it to remind me of him.’

‘Whatever you think best. I have a favour to ask you too. I was thinking of organising a tribute to my father. In a couple of weeks, when things have calmed down a little. I’d like you all to come. His students, I mean, the magicians of Barcelona, the people who really mattered to him. And I’d like someone to perform an illusion
in his honour. Something simple. I thought maybe you …’

‘Where?’

‘At the museum.’ She takes a deep breath and smiles. ‘Well, I don’t suppose there will ever be a museum now. You know where I mean, where he used to give lessons.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Alicia all but jumps for joy, but Víctor immediately feels for her elbow and squeezes it several times as though trying to tell her something in Morse code. Now he does look nervous, or sad, or confused. She does not know what to call it. She decides to get him out of there.

‘I didn’t really know your father,’ she says by way of goodbye, ‘but I do know he was a good man.’

They make their way out, Víctor giving Alicia a little push, urging her not to stop every time someone tries to talk to him. They come to the foot of the steps. Alicia would like to stop here, ask him why he was suddenly so agitated, but Víctor immediately opens up his cane and starts up the stairs.

‘Stop, wait for me,’ she mutters. ‘Don’t you want to stay for the funeral?’

Víctor waits for no one. With a confidence that Alicia cannot allow herself to admire just now, he heads to the exit and walks towards the taxi rank. In the back of the taxi he sits next to her, the leather case at his feet, not uttering a word. Alicia respects his silence just as she did on the way there. What she cannot know is that Víctor is dealing with a double mourning. He is grieving for Galván, obviously. But also for Peter Grouse. Peter Grouse doesn’t exist. He has never existed. This is something Víctor has just realised in a painful flash. Peter Grouse was someone invented by Galván, a tool with which the maestro made his best students a prisoner of his plans. As always when we suddenly become aware of a lie, what most bothers Víctor is the fact that he did not realise it earlier. In his mind he goes through all of Galván’s lessons, their long chats, berates himself for his own foolishness. It was all a story. A fable filled with moral lessons. Every part of the story was an imaginary finger pointing out the path he should take, the scope of his ambition, the line of fire and how to cross it. But it was more than that: Grouse was a model even in trivial matters,
supposing of course that Galván believed that anything could be considered trivial when it came to magic. Curiosity. The way a magician should dress. Punctuality. Vigilance. Obsessive planning. Tenacity. Daring. The ability to improvise.

You’re an imbecile! A dupe! A blind man before he went blind. A deluded seer. Because not only did Víctor believe everything Galván told him. He saw it. He has spent his whole life seeing it. He has a perfect portrait of Grouse in his mind, can hear his voice, knows his tics, his habits, his every gesture. But it is not simply that he has been gullible – he gave Galván his imagination, his collusion, because Víctor had invested more effort and more care in developing the myth than the maestro did himself. Unquestioningly, without ever wondering how such an important figure in the history of magic could have left no written record, how it could be that, even in a library as comprehensive as that of Galván, there was not a single word written by or about him, not a document, not one miserable photocopied patent. Nothing.

He squeezes the handle of the leather case. I’d like you to have this, Galván’s voice whispers in his ear. This is so you can tie it to your wrist. If you lose it, I’ll cut your hands off. Who is Peter Grouse? A magician. I’ll tell you about him some time. You only had to feel the touch of cracked leather to believe, Víctor. A fabrication, a spirit conjured out of the cabinet of time. Are you going to get angry with Galván? Are you going to get annoyed because, like any good teacher, he gave you the exact tool you needed so you could decide who you wanted to be? Does that seem fair? You can hear his voice. This is a deck of cards. This is how you hold a deck of cards. This is you. This is you? That is something he never said. He didn’t have to say it, it was enough for him to create a model, a mirror in which you could see yourself and say: this is who I am, I am Peter Grouse, I am going to be the finest magician in the world, the finest in the history of magic. No one understands better than you that spirits do not hide behind mirrors, but appear on their surface.

You can’t say you weren’t warned from the very first day, when Galván put the copy of Hoffmann’s manual into your hands and asked you to read, and you read excitedly, until finally you stumbled over the Latin:
Populus vult decipi
, remember? People want
to be deceived. A good motto for a magician, he told you.
Decipiatur
. Then let us deceive them. And now you are more alone than ever. Galván is dead, Grouse is dead, and here you are. Mourning both of them. Walk, Víctor. Fulfil the predictions. Walk to your own grave. And let go of the leather case. Alicia is trying to take it so you can get out of the taxi. Next she will ask you who Peter Grouse is. It’s inevitable. She heard you talking to Galván’s daughter. Besides, the name is stamped into the leather. A magician, you’ll say. I’ll tell you about him some time. But Alicia will insist, you already know that. You will have no choice but to whisk her away to a chilly London afternoon and paint the picture of a modest, elegant pickpocket standing on a corner about to bump deliberately into a mysterious stranger who is carrying this same leather case. You will go through every incident, and when memory is not enough, or when Alicia raises doubts, you’ll invent something, you will do whatever is necessary to make sure Grouse does not cease to exist, because, now that you have been robbed of the blessing of innocence, it is time for someone else to take up the baton and go on believing in him. That’s only fair, Víctor. Do it well, it must be convincing. Perhaps you think that Maskelyne, with his falsetto voice and his pseudo-scientific pretensions, has more right to be remembered than Grouse? What about Kellar? Does the brutish Kellar deserve more faith simply because he left a record of his travels? Which is more real, the image of your father as a cockroach or the face of Peter Grouse, appearing on the poop deck of a ship heading for America? Are you really thinking of obliterating him? Is he not as real as that wasted light with which Bacall smiles down on you each morning?

Take Alicia by the hand, lead her through as many doors and mirrors as it takes, light a candle in a garret room in London so she can see the diagrams, the screws, the tools strewn everywhere, a pig’s innards, a hand moving through the air. Let her see the air, Víctor. The invisible air. That is the miracle. Listen to her, she wants to know more, wants to know what happens next. Tell her how he invented the thumb. Better still, show her. Don’t worry about revealing his secrets. Explain how it works. Tell her that this is where all the disappearing silk handkerchiefs go. Millions of thumbs that these days are not made of wood but of plastic.
She will say: it’s not possible. She’s seen it on television and she’s never understood how it was done. Tell her that this is proof that Grouse existed. More than that: that he still exists. That he is reborn every time a magician, with an innocent smile, holds up his empty hands to the audience. Linger over the details as you describe the dimly lit room where, in his later years, he used to give lessons to neophytes, to teach them the possibilities of this thumb, rhapsodise about the importance of this moment in the history of magic. And tell her that, from that point on, he never invented anything else. That from the moment he disembarked in London on his return from America he knew he had come to the end of his career as an inventor, realised that all that remained for him was the honest task of showing others how much he had learned, and charging them an appropriate fee for the privilege. It is not a bad ending. The thief becomes maestro. In doing so, you will honour both your dead.