The Spirit Cabinet
Read The Spirit Cabinet Online
Authors: Paul Quarrington
Praise for
The Spirit Cabinet
A Best Book of ‘99
The Globe and Mail
“Let it be said that Quarrington’s language is a consistent source of pleasure. With each succeeding novel, his command of comic tone is refined and deepened, to the point where even the most outlandish scenes are described with pinpoint economy and deadpan irony.…
The Spirit Cabinet
[is] a sort of twisted cousin to Robertson Davies’
World of Wonders.”
—The Montreal Gazette
“Quarrington’s bountiful and engaging vocabulary, his delicious facility for facetious irony, and, above all, the storyteller’s expertise, make
The Spirit Cabinet
a highly entertaining experience from the first page to the last.”
—
Books in Canada
“Sharply written and amusing throughout,
The Spirit Cabinet
is Quarrington’s most complete work to date.”
—
The National Post
“Quarrington’s rare comic gift has always been to combine the zany and the melancholy in his fiction and he manages to pull off that daring trick again in [
The Spirit Cabinet
].”
—
Quill and Quire
(starred review)
“One of the most charming aspects of
The Spirit Cabinet
is the unpedantic way Quarrington uncovers the history of the profession of magic.… The book’s structure is rather like a marked deck of cards: Only the dealer knows what’s coming next.”
—Eric McCormack
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2000
Copyright © 1999 by Fizzy Dreams, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, in 2000. First published in hardcover in Canada by Random House Canada, Toronto, in 1999. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Quarrington, Paul
The spirit cabinet
eISBN: 978-0-307-36409-8
I. Title.
PS
8583.
U
334
S
64 2000
C
813′.54
C
99-932504-3
PR
9199.3.
Q
37
S
64 2000
v3.1
“Never reveal the secrets in this book.”
P
RESTON THE
M
AGNIFICENT
(S
ENIOR
),
The Secrets of Magic Revealed
I’d like to thank Gabi Czech, who helped me with the German, and a host of magicians, from whom I learnt not secrets, but the nature of secrecy
.
The author is also deeply indebted to the Canada Council for the Arts
(
I mean I owe them a debt of gratitude. I’m not giving back the money
).
There are animals everywhere
.
They sprawl across the broadloom and furniture, all pale bellies and matted fur. Barbary doves and aracaris rest on the bookcases, feathers falling from them like raindrops after a bad rain. The birdshit on the floor is oily and oddly colourful
.
A rabbit thumps across the room, its legs stiff from disuse. The creature was once white, but shadows have turned it grey and taken the pinkness from its eyes
.
A Van Hasselt’s sunbird hides in the shadows. A mute swan hangs its head over a chairback and gives forth silent sighs
.
The largest of the animals lies on the sofa. There is a sliver in his paw and he sucks at it in a desultory way, but it has been there for weeks and he is only slightly determined. Mostly he watches the television, a huge Japanese machine that occupies the entire far wall, surrounded by a small artificial pond filled with mottled carp. Most of the water has evaporated, though—the fish lie on their sides, flapping fins arrhythmically, making little bubbles that pop weakly in the stale air
.
The largest of the animals—he is an albino leopard, snow-white but somehow still spotted, spackled by patches of light and dinginess—stretches, coughs up a furball, swats himself across the snout a couple of times
.
On the television screen, young Kaz, having just dismembered and reassembled a woman, shoots his arms heavenward and thrusts his pelvis back and forth
.
Rudolfo Thielmann enters the room at that moment, holding a scrap of meat in his hand. It is brown, almost spoilt. All of the animals
look at the meat for a long moment, but there are few healthy appetites in that room, in that house. One of the blond ringdoves squawks. Rudolfo mutters, “Fuck you, bay-bee,” and flips the meat onto the sofa
.
The meat lands near the maw of the albino leopard, whose name is Samson. He lashes out with his tongue, colourless and dry, but the meat is too far away. He tries a couple of huge snorts, hoping to draw the meat closer. Unsuccessful, Samson produces a mournful sound and refixes his eyes on the large screen
.
“Oh, look,” says Rudolfo, “it is that asshole on my television set.”
Words creep across the screen
:
THE WORLD
-
FAMOUS KAZ
,
THE WORLD
-
FAMOUS GALAXY HOTEL
,
THE WORLD
-
FAMOUS CONSTELLATION ROOM
.
Everything in Las Vegas is world-famous
.
Rudolfo himself was once world-famous, not even that long ago. It has only been a few months since he and Jurgen attended the auction
.
Rudolfo lies down beside Samson, stretching his naked body along the length of the white leopard. Samson stirs slightly. Rudolfo picks up the morsel of tainted meat and gently pushes it into Samson’s mouth. Many of the teeth are loose and Samson’s breath is foul
.
Rudolfo pulls weakly at the creature’s throat, coaxing the food down into Samson’s belly, which is bald in places and studded with colourless wens. The albino leopard sighs with what might be contentment, but then spits the scrap back up. The meat falls to the floor with a small, ugly sound. A spotted genet, skinny and vicious-looking, appears out of nowhere and drags it away
.
Rudolfo closes his eyes. Although he does not sleep, he dreams
.
Chapter OnePreston the Magnificent, Jr., (or, as he preferred to call himself privately, Preston the Adequate) stood outside the George Theater dressed in an old morning suit that had belonged to his father. Being a much larger man than Preston the Magnificent, Sr., he had only managed to do up one button on the slate-grey jacket. The lapels wowed over his girlish breasts; the jacket fell away on either side of his belly and the tails splayed. Despite the fact that he complemented it with sandals, exhibiting his oddly shaped and quite hairy toes, Preston felt that the suit lent an air of mournful dignity to the proceedings. He undermined this formality by glowering at people as they approached the George, his face warped by fury. Preston conveyed the impression that he could turn people away should he choose to, and might choose to do so violently. So people darted by him, ignoring the grunt that he meant as a greeting.
Once inside, the people would approach the glass box containing the ashen and improbably beehived Mrs. Antoinette Kingsley. Mrs. Kingsley shoved a crude little booklet at them,
sets of photocopied sheets stapled together. Then, still alarmed by Preston’s bristling, sorrowful presence outside, the people would seek refuge in the old theatre hall, which smelled like time kept too long in an icebox. They would look at the little booklet, a catalogue of the McGehee Collection, as compiled by Preston. The script was produced by an old and infirm typewriter. The letters refused to sit upon the straight line, each jumping or dipping according to whim. Some letters were truncated, ghostly patches of grey left behind where serifs had broken off the keys.