The Magician's Lie (23 page)

“Yes,” I answered and hoped it would be.

***

We tried it first in Baltimore. It was somewhere we could put up posters, create mystery, pay people to whisper. We spread a rumor someone had been killed in a rehearsal. We spread a rumor it was as dangerous as the Bullet Catch, as fatal as Parisi's Chainsaw Folly. We spread every rumor we could to guarantee a packed house for opening night, and we got exactly what we wished for.

I'd never felt more powerful. I'd designed and performed dozens of illusions, but they were all some form of pageantry, turning the most prosaic items into flowers and ribbons and flames, embracing the lush impossible. I was the undisputed queen of creating opulence from nothingness. Nothing like this: savage and beautiful, with all the artifice of stagecraft stripped away. Nothing else had put me alone on a stage with the object of my actions, just the two of us, in which I could have complete victory. In a way, it was like Adelaide's performance of Lady to Tiger, but instead of the physical form of a tiger, I took on the spirit of one. Instead of a delicate grace, I had a strong grace, a grace to be feared.

Frankly, I liked being feared for a change.

I had begun as a dancer, and a dancer's allure was as a creature too light for the earth. My new allure was as a creature too dangerous for it. Jeannie outdid herself with a striking black gown, beaded and spangled all over, to suit me up like a modern witch, both graceful and grim. Unfortunately the gown turned out to be her swan song as my wardrobe mistress, as she was called home to Abilene to care for her mother, who'd taken ill. An unwelcome surprise, but I couldn't begrudge her. I would miss her terribly, but the excitement of the Halved Man swept me along, carried me forward.

The old act had incorporated many things—fire and beauty and mystery and magic—but this was the first time we reached out into the seats to take our audience by the throats. This was the first time we made them afraid. And as strange as that was, as unexpected as it was, they found that they liked the feeling.

I raised up the long bright knife and plunged it into the center of the coffin. The man cried out. Then I laid down the knife and picked up the saw, which I heaved back and forth with obvious effort, leaning my whole body into it to emphasize how heavy it was, how hard to move. The man howled as I sawed.

The audience howled along with him.

With a flourish, I spun half the man away, leaving the other half in place. Some nights, I left the head and shoulders behind, some nights, the legs and feet. The audience seemed to embrace both possibilities. No matter which half went where, they cried out in unison, disbelieving. They sucked in all their breath and let it all out like a single breathing person all together. The shock and the terror and the shared impossibility made a single fantastical creature of them. I made a creature of them.

I spun the second half of the man off the stage after the first, clouds of smoke filled the stage, and I pointed with a terrible, straight finger toward the center of the front row. There a young man with a head of bright blond curls stood and opened his white shirtfront to expose a line of fresh red blood across the center of his waist. I clapped twice, hard, two sharp noises like gunshots. He wiped away the blood from his skin with the palm of his hand. He wiped again with his other hand until the blood on his stomach was gone, the flesh clean and unbroken underneath, turning so all could see. He was identical in every way to the man I'd cut in half, but whole again.

Of course, earlier in the act, they'd already seen that the twins were part of the company. They knew there were two of them, identical blond things with cherubic faces and teenagers' lanky frames. They saw one and started looking for the other. They felt smart, thinking they were too smart to be fooled.

When the twin sprang up, as an unexpectedly whole person, the audience was suspicious. “Impostor!” they called. “It's the other one!”

And in the next moment, his brother sprang up at the back of the theater. Everyone looked back and forth between the two twins. The second one pulled aside his shirt to show a waist as unmarred as his brother's. They both turned to one side and then the other, giving the audience a good look, from the cheap seats on down. Someone had been torn apart and made whole again, but it was impossible to tell who. They were both flawless.

Then the audience shouted “Brava!” and “Amazing!”

The twins took their perfectly synchronized bows, moving as one. Then I took mine.

And the theater erupted in applause, long rippling waves of it, until the echoes threatened to deafen us all.

The headline in the
Sun
read “Woman Magician's Spectacle Divides Man, Dumbfounds Audience. Who Is This Amazing Arden?” There were other headlines, less flattering ones, but the
Sun
's I clipped from its page and tucked away for safekeeping. I wasn't given to keeping mementos, but this felt like a worthy occasion.

It was an immense success, the Halved Man. It was like and yet unlike what everyone else was doing. It created a stir. There had already been press about my unfeminine business, but it multiplied a hundredfold. Some said I was possessed by the devil. Some said I should be stopped before I hurt someone. A preacher in Conestoga gave a sermon about the killing of a man by a woman being the sign that Armageddon was upon us, and he called for my destruction, so we had to have a police guard for a couple of weeks, but all that meant was more attention.

The twins were ecstatic. Not content to simply take turns, they drew straws every evening to determine which of them would be the one in the box, and the excitement of this ritual brought the whole company together to lay bets and play favorites every night. They were all involved. Contessa, née Doreen, snuck down into the audience and watched, even though she had to be onstage for the next illusion. She couldn't help herself. When the knife took its first plunge into the coffin, there was always a bloodcurdling cheer of joy, and I knew it was hers, because it happened in every town.

The audience cheered and booed and whooped and cried, and when it was all over, they threw more flowers than they'd ever thrown before. It was amazing how their enthusiasm changed everything. The show seemed brighter, smarter, faster. All of us in it seemed more beautiful, more clever, more alive. The new energy affected every member of the company. I could see the difference clearly.

In short, everyone was happy but Clyde.

1904–1905

The Ring in Danger

He gave me a ring, of course. Maybe he thought that's what I really wanted. It wasn't. I wasn't holding out for a bauble, some kind of material proof of his commitment. It shocked me that he thought that might be what I required. Then it shocked me again that I assumed I knew his reasons. It's amazing how well you can know someone, how much you can love them, and still not really know what it is they're thinking.

The ring was lovely and simple. A gold band with a gemstone channel-set into it, very thoughtful, since it wouldn't catch on my clothes while I was performing. It was a light blue stone, but when I looked at it carefully, it seemed to me to have a kernel of brown inside it, almost like my half-brown eye. If he'd searched to find something unique that reflected my own uniqueness, it was a touching and wonderful gesture. But I didn't ask him about it. I couldn't. If I asked about the ring, he would take it as an invitation to talk about the proposal, about whether or not I might accept. I wasn't done thinking yet. I was afraid to talk at all to him until I knew what it was I was going to say.

I didn't know what to do with the ring, so I stuck it to my chest with a bit of spirit gum to keep it close to my heart. When I put on my first dress for the evening's performance, in a spangled blue gown I knew flickered gorgeously in the gas spotlights, I dressed right over it. Between the spirit gum and the tight fabric of the undergarment, I thought it would be safe.

My emotions were affecting me more than I wanted to admit. It was too much at once. My brush with death at the Iroquois. The horror of Ray immediately afterward. Regrets and uncertainties I couldn't silence. Worst of all, the volatile situation with Clyde, who I needed as my rock. Everything was coming unmoored.

I could almost hold myself together. I knew every moment and every action so well, I only needed to let my body find the memory to carry me forward. We got through Light and Heavy Chest, Woman on Fire, the Magic Milliner, one bit of business after the next. But three-quarters of the way through the act, at a crucial moment of stage patter where I stood alone on the stage, things began to fall apart. I found myself reaching for a coin that, for the first time, wasn't there.

Had anyone else been on the stage, I could have motioned to them for help. We had a set of prearranged signals for exactly this type of situation. But I was alone, with no one there to assist and a mind as blank as an unpainted canvas.

My choices were to invent a way out or to walk off. I invented a way out. It was all I had been thinking of for days, this ring, and while I didn't usually do any ring illusions, I remembered the name of one I'd seen in Adelaide's old notes. It was all I had to help me. I used it.

I reached into the front of my dress, freed the ring, and held it high to catch the light.

“The Ring in Danger!” I cried.

First I made it vanish inside a dainty flowered handkerchief, a simple palming with a misdirect, and it reappeared in the spot over my heart again. I strung it on a flowing crimson scarf, then cut the scarf in tiny pieces and brought it whole from my pocket, with the ring still threaded over the fabric. I used the spare charge up my sleeve from Woman on Fire to make it appear to melt in a burst of flame then pretended to find it intact in the most unlikely place, in the sock of a man in the fifteenth row, nowhere near the aisle.

The illusion was a success, but I felt no pride, only a flat and hazy relief.

After the act, I went to Clyde. I took off my sparkling gown and stockings and corset and underdress and hung them neatly so they didn't wrinkle. I removed every layer, down to the bare skin. I still felt the wound on my thigh, but I knew what I felt was invisible—while I hadn't healed, my body had. I scratched away the patch of spirit gum on my chest and left an angry red streak in its place. I tugged the ring off the finger where I'd kept it after the illusion and held it in the palm of my hand. I lay down next to him on the bed, raised myself up on my elbow, and gazed into his face.

He looked at me and said, “You have an answer for me, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“It's not going to be the answer I want, is it?”

“I don't think so.”

“Go ahead and say it.”

“Beloved, I'm not going to marry you now,” I said.

He lay back with his eyes closed, his head against the pillow, and said, “I was afraid you'd say that.”

“I love you more than anything else in the world.”

“I know.” He reached out and stroked the side of my face. The feeling of his fingers against my cheek shook my resolve. He was offering me a kind of certainty. The chance to know that no matter where we were or what we did, that I had a person who loved me that much, who always wanted to reach out for me. Proof, or as close to it as one could ever have, that we believed this love would last. Linking just the two of us, forever.

But I couldn't. It was a trap. He might not mean it as one, but that's what it would be. I had no second sight, no magical power to see what life would bring, but all the same, I could clearly see our future. We were too strong-willed to be locked together in marriage, a permanent institution. If we tried to hold each other too close, it could destroy us. On some level, we would never trust each other. I was no longer trustworthy, and neither could I believe it of him. Even with the best of intentions, one of us would do the other wrong. It was only a matter of time and chance which one of us it would be. And if we married, my property would be his. My money would build his theater, whether or not I wanted it to. I hated to think that entered into his decision to propose, but I couldn't be certain it didn't.

And I couldn't say any of that out loud.

Tentatively, I told him, “The timing just isn't right. Maybe we can talk about it after this tour's over. It's only a few more months.”

His jaw tightened, tensed. “Fine. I suppose. I just wish we didn't have to do everything your way.”

“We don't have to.”

“Yes, we do,” he said. “I have suggestions, I make recommendations, but we always end up squarely where you want to be.”

“And is it so bad?”

“No, darling. I'm happy,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it, or was trying to. “But I think sometimes we could be happy if I got my way too. It would just be different.”

“I'm not ready for different.”

“All right.”

“Can't we just keep things the way they are? For now?”

“Including your new trick, I suppose.”

I said, “Yes. I'm not going to back down on that, I think you know.”

“I was afraid you'd say that too.”

“And it's not a trick.”

“Let's go to sleep.”

***

The fame of the Halved Man grew. Some audience members were still shocked by the boldness of it, but more and more of them bought tickets because of, not in spite of, the illusion. We got more coverage in the papers, higher billing on the posters, more attention in every regard. Even the people who hated it couldn't stop talking about it. They might even have been talking the loudest. And for every minister or temperance crusader who complained that the Halved Man was a travesty and a sacrilege, there were two or three more citizens who wanted a front-row seat for the hubbub.

To stoke the flames, I decided to make the illusion even more shocking. I did so with the help of our prop assistant who had staged dozens of battles at a Shakespearean theater in Philadelphia and knew all there was to know about fake blood. Eagerly we worked out the best position and the best moment. At the next performance, the blade of the saw pierced a thin membrane, and bright red blood seemed to pour from the severed body, completing the illusion that a man was dying right onstage in front of the audience's wide, hungry eyes.

And as dark and disturbing as the Halved Man seemed to the world, it made me happy. It made me regain my joy in performing. The fear that had crept back into my life was banished. I could enjoy the applause again, revel in the audience's amazement. When I bowed low and heaved the blade of the saw through the cabinet, I was fully the Amazing Arden, without even a trace of the Ada I had been. Afterward, once I had shown them I had full dominion over life and death, I raised my arms and drank in their admiration. I'll admit I enjoyed the power. I think anyone would. Suddenly I was an overnight success, half a dozen years in the making.

I even got a card from Adelaide. She didn't sign it. She didn't need to. She only wrote, “
Well
done. —A.
” and I knew I had finally brought myself up to her standard. She was, at last, truly proud of me. That gave me a warm thrill of satisfaction I sorely needed while the other person I most cherished was deserting me inch by inch. Seething. Pulling away.

***

In New Haven, Clyde and I finally had the fight we'd been spoiling to have for weeks. He'd signed me up for a very close-in circuit, New York and Connecticut and New Jersey only, never more than a three-hour train from New York City. The show was starting to command high prices, the kind of numbers that had seemed out of reach when we conceived our plan, what seemed like a lifetime ago. He wanted to make the particular people who ran this circuit happy, for business reasons. It was a favor to them. It was also easier on me. I didn't ask him which reason weighed heavier.

Clyde was preoccupied with business in New York, and he didn't say exactly what, but I was fairly certain I knew. He was talking with investors who might help him build the Carolina Rose. If he built the theater, it would be time to bring me back to New York as we'd agreed. If I became his headliner under exclusive contract, the act would still be mine in name but his behind the scenes. He had swallowed his pride for the time being, because I was so inflexible about the Halved Man, but I knew he wasn't truly at peace. He went along because he had to. There was a distance about him, a tension in his muscles. We made love as usual, and his motions were the usual motions, but he didn't look into my eyes, and I knew exactly what that meant. He hadn't forgiven me.

What made it even more evident was the mark he made in my book. While paging through my copy of
As
You
Like
It
, I found that he'd turned down the corner on a single page and underlined a short passage with a few sharp strokes of the pen. I expected it to be the line about fleeting the time carelessly, but it was another mention of Arden:

Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travelers must be content.

In New Haven after the act, I climbed into the railcar, traded my silk gown for a cotton shift, and poured myself a finger of brandy. My body ached. It didn't look it, but the Halved Man was an intensely challenging physical illusion. It wasn't just about the speed and the gestures, which so many of my illusions were. Raising and lowering the knife with precision required very careful control, and the saw itself was remarkably heavy. I was starting to think maybe I should reengineer the opening, so instead of pushing the box into place myself, I'd have one of the assistants push it, but I was reluctant to cede even that much control. My complete power over the box was one of the things that made the illusion so remarkable. I had designed it without spectacle on purpose. There was nothing else to look at but me, the box, the man inside, and the weapons I would use to cut him apart.

There was a noise at the door, and I started, but then recognized the sound of the key turning in the lock, and since only one person had that key, I raised my brandy to welcome him with a smile.

“I wasn't sure you were coming tonight,” I said.

“I wasn't sure either,” Clyde said. “But here I am.”

I raised my lips for a kiss, but he didn't respond, and I knew he had something to say.

“Tell me,” I said.

Without preliminaries, he said, “I want you to stop doing the Halved Man.”

I laughed.

“Don't laugh!” he said, wounded, angry. “I'm serious.”

“I know you are! I'm sorry. But it'd be ridiculous to give it up now. This is what we've worked for all this time. Enough success to give us our dreams.”

“I don't like the trick,” said Clyde.

“Don't call it a trick.”

“It's a trick,” he said, sitting down on the bed, resting his head in his hands. “More than anything else you do, it tricks people. It makes them think something other than what they want to. Your illusions, the rest of them, they make people believe in a better world. This trick makes them believe in a worse one.”

“I'm not changing the world. The world is what it is.”

“I think it upsets people.”

“They love it!”

“
You
love it. Maybe too much.”

“What are you saying?”

“It scares me,” said Clyde. “To be honest? I'm a man, and to see you cutting a man in half, it makes me worried that you might want to do that to me.”

Fortified by the brandy, I decided I needed to answer him. There was something that had been tickling the back of my brain, another reason the illusion appealed to me, and it was another part of the truth. I couldn't just tell him the Halved Man was meaningless. I couldn't tell him what Ray had done to me or what I'd done to him. But I could tell Clyde the alternate meaning, the one that was his anyway.

“Now don't be scared by this,” I said, “but in a way, I do.”

“How do you suppose I could not be scared by that?” he shouted, springing up.

I sprang up too, holding my hands up, barely noticing when the empty brandy snifter fell on its side. “No, no, no. I don't want to harm you, not at all. If anything ever happened to you—it would wreck me. I love you more than my own self. Believe me.”