Read The Spirit Cabinet Online
Authors: Paul Quarrington
The Spirit Cabinet (40 page)
Preston sighed, and said words that he knew weren’t true so much as easy to speak and difficult to deny. “Because of the Collection.”
Over the course of the next couple of hours—when they weren’t arguing with varying degrees of ferocity—Preston related the handful of facts he possessed about the Collection’s history. Some
of the information was scholarly, reflecting his former position of curator. He knew, for example, how Ehrich Weiss had managed to get his hands on the Davenport Spirit Cabinet—he’d gotten it from Ira and William D. themselves. Houdini, thirty-five years of age and the most famous man on the planet, tracked the brothers down to an old folks’ home in Sprucefield, New Jersey. There he found them, withered and pale, unrecognizable except for their trademark long moustaches, although the moustaches were white and wispy and contained only a few hairs. The Davenport brothers had never heard of Houdini. Their fellow inmates had—they pestered him for autographs and even pilfered a restraint jacket from supplies and persuaded Houdini to don it and then escape from it. He gave a thrilling exhibition of writhing and bone-bending, although the old folks hadn’t really been able to fasten the straps with much conviction. But Ira and William still didn’t know who Houdini was. They were friendly enough—they seemed to have been expecting
someone
to show up—and they answered all of his questions as best they could. Houdini gave them some money, a little money, and a few days later added the huge, hideous cabinet to his burgeoning amassment of magical books and curios.
Preston related all this in a voice flat and uninflected. He was aware that he was infuriating Miranda; he was aware that both her tone and her colour were raised. “Now, many people wonder why, if it were such a prize, Houdini would include the Spirit Cabinet with the stuff he sold to Edgar Biggs McGehee.”
Miranda protested that she was not, in fact, one of those people.
Preston smiled slightly and continued nonetheless. “I think it was part of the deal with the Davenport brothers. Yeah. Part of the deal with the Spirit Cabinet is that you
have to get rid of it
. It has to be passed on.”
Miranda gathered up more things, the small things she had
brought to make the ancient room seem more like a home. She had ceased to yell, but had taken up instead an incessant, boiling mutter. The word
asshole
cropped up often.
“You see,” explained Preston, spreading his hands didactically, “the reason that Eddie McGehee put the Collection up for auction is …
he had to
. It was in his grandfather’s will. The Collection had …” A part of Preston’s mind registered the fact that Miranda was vanished. Here, then, was an illusion that Preston could pull off every bit as well as the old man. Preston the Magnificent had done it more often, true, making all of his ditzy lovers disappear, capping his career with the vanishing of his wife, making her materialize days later in a wooden box, her wrists stitched and the seams hidden by cosmetics. “It was in Edgar Biggs’ will,” he repeated quietly. “The terms were really quite specific. Within a certain time frame—and really, there was only latitude of a week or so—the Collection had to put up for auction. It is part of a plan …” Preston began moving around the empty room. He enunciated clearly and drew large sweeping arcs in the air, as though trying to illustrate arcana to people sitting far away. “It is part of a plan put in place a long, long time ago. That is really about as much as I know. I myself …”
The easel rose up in his path. Preston, drawing a deep breath, rounded it to take a look at the abandoned portrait.
“I myself,” he finished, “did not look at any of the books.”
In the painting, much of Preston was cloudlike and amorphous. His belly, for example, was simply a large suggestion rendered out of flesh tones, the edges vague and ill-defined. It was hard to tell where Preston began and shadows ended. Bits of him, though, were finished with photographic precision. His eyes, for example. They were darkened by the overhang of a large, furrowed brow, but Miranda had carefully added tiny slivers of light. Miranda had also finished the mouth, which was lifelike without being particularly realistic, because Miranda had fashioned a
smile. More than a smile, really, a grin, a real shit-eater. Preston scowled, as if to show his portrait what it ought to be doing.
And Miranda had completed the hands, the hands that lay open in the naked, fuzzy lap. Sitting safely in the cup of the hands was an egg.
“Preston,” says Miranda, “is damaged goods.” She lies on the huge circular bed beside Rudolfo and stretches, because the Bod is bored and needs a tiny bit of activity
.
Rudolfo never used to dream at all, and now everything is a dream. Miranda’s story seems to him like a fairy tale, the sort of thing a mother might tell a child, so he searches for meaning and moral. “Everybody,” he says, “is damaged goods.”
“I don’t consider myself damaged goods.”
“Hoo boy,” sings out Rudolfo. “You got it bad.”
“Plus there was this thing,” says Miranda with a touch of urgency, “this thing that looked like it was always going to be there, this thing about the Collection.”
“Ja?”
“See, when we did the Sub Box in the Show, Jurgen and me, something would happen. I mean, I did what I was supposed to do, I jumped down, slipped in the false back, up into the sack, I did all that—hey, I’m the best box-jumper in the city—but something else was going on. Something I can’t really talk about. And it made me think, you know, that maybe … maybe there was …”
“Magic.”
“Sure. But Preston says it’s no good if there
is
magic. Preston says that what’s special about human beings is that they make magic.”
“Good point.”
“I wanted to
know.
Preston always hated me a little bit for that. And he wouldn’t tell me. So I guess I always hated him a little bit. So we split.”
Rudolfo notices a bird struggle out of one of the small holes in the
door of the Spirit Cabinet, a bird he does not recognize. He suspects it has not been seen before
.
“Yeah, but now you go do a nudie show.”
“Topless.”
“So is not like you make big step forward in life. Is like you go backwards because you feel like shit so you treat yourself like shit.”
“When did you become insightful?”
Rudolfo laughs lightly. “Everybody is damaged goods. Everybody got bumps and dents
, ja?
But sometimes two people fit together, and the bumps go into the dents, and you have a whole thing like a potato.”
“Okay, listen, maybe I didn’t have the best motives when I first went to Preston, maybe I just wanted to get close to the magic … if it was really there, he would know … but, I mean, I got involved. Okay? I got connected. But Preston … like I say, damaged goods. Sometimes it’s not just bumps and dents, right? Sometimes it’s like the heart gets squeezed smaller and smaller. Maybe Preston just doesn’t have any room in there for anybody else.”
“Preston? Preston got heart like a fucking ham hock. He got room for everybody. He got plenty of room for you.”
“What do you know about Preston?”
Rudolfo closes his eyes and tries to remember. “He tried to show me something once. I put my hand over the card, and he said that I had to believe, some little thing in me had to believe, that when I take my hand away …”
“What the hell is that?”
“Remove my hand, I mean.”
“No, listen.” Miranda sits up on the bed, wraps one of her hands behind an ear. “What’s that?”
“Oh,” says Rudolfo, because he hears it always, “is the doorbell. I made it to play
La Bohème.”
“No, no, no. Listen.”
Rudolfo does listen, then, and realizes that the chimes are silent. But then he hears a distant roar, full of hiss and cackle
.
Miranda’s nose twitches, and in an instant she is off the bed, racing for the door. “Fire,” she whispers. “I’ll go see where it is. You stay here. I’ll be right back.” Miranda disappears
.
Rudolfo pulls himself off the bed languidly. He is not surprised at the pronouncement; indeed, he realizes vaguely that he has spent a year turning
das Haus
into a tinderbox. He has not attended to the pumps and sumps; the moats, goldfish ponds and swimming pool have all dried up. The desert has claimed the land that the mansion sits upon; dry winds have wrapped around the brickwork like tendrils of ivy
.
Rudolfo pauses before the Spirit Cabinet. Light leaks from the cracks in the woodwork, a light so strong and pure that even these tiny slivers of it cause him to squint
.
He cocks his head, because he can hear music. Not
La Bohème,
something else, something he has not heard for a very long time. Perhaps it is simply an illusion, perhaps there are whistles and rhythms wrapped within the fiery roar, but Rudolfo thinks he can recognize a German folk song
, “Du, du liegst mir am Herzen.”
Jurgen always loved that song. Rudolfo always hated it, of course, and hates it even more at this instant, because it forces tears from his eyes
.
Chapter Twenty-sevenThe last public performance ever given by Jurgen and Rudolfo proceeded like this.
The crowd was ushered into the showroom at the Abraxas Hotel, and although ushers and usherettes tried to corral them toward the little seats and flip-top tables, almost everyone save the very elderly ignored these, preferring to press as close as possible to the stage. They crammed their bodies together without fear or embarrassment, haunches to buttocks, breasts to backs. It was therefore possible to get far more people into the showroom than was legal.
The showroom soon grew unbearably hot. People shed jackets and sweaters; they loosened buttons; one or two stripped down to fairly presentable undergarments.
The Show began abruptly, without fanfare. The house lights neither dimmed nor brightened, they simply remained on, casting an industrial glare over the goings-on. Music leaked quietly from the speakers. It was nothing by Sturm and Drang.
The night previous, Jurgen had appeared suddenly by the
huge, circular bed. Rudolfo had been sleeping, although none too soundly, and with Jurgen’s arrival he rolled over and his eyes fluttered open. Jurgen was naked and glowed. Rudolfo could hear little hisses and spitting noises, beads of sweat exploding upon the surface of Jurgen’s white skin. Jurgen, though motionless, was not still; his outline in the darkened room quivered. Rudolfo saw that his penis had all but disappeared. It was as small as a three-year-old’s, and his testicles were nowhere to be seen.
“Hi,” said Rudolfo, too tired to be surprised or terrified, tired enough to be enormously and endlessly sad.
“Hi,” said Jurgen. “I want you to change the music for the Show.”
“Oh.” Rudolfo folded himself up until he was ready again for slumber. “All right.” He closed his eyes.
The air around him suddenly grew chilled, and charged somehow, as though the heavens intended to open momentarily and drop huge rocks of ice upon them. Rudolfo opened his eyes and saw Jurgen floating down upon the mattress. “I’m very tired,” Jurgen said. His eyes were open, empty and silver.
“
Ja
, you go to sleep now.” Rudolfo reached out and placed a hand on Jurgen’s chest, except it fell through and came to rest on the sheets. He withdrew the hand, snugged it up against his own breast. “Good night,” he whispered.
“Sweet dreams,” said Jurgen.
“Oh …” said Rudolfo as he tumbled again into troubled slumber. “I don’t dream.”
But he did that night. He dreamt many, many things, so many that in the morning he couldn’t believe that he had slept for just one night. He’d dreamt his whole life, a strange version of it, anyway, with new endings and altered circumstances. He dreamt of the walk-in closet in Bern—his mother Arnold and her artist friends rampaging drunkenly just beyond the closed
wooden door—but instead of his crib being surrounded by plush, stuffed animals, the closet was filled with a menagerie of breathing creatures. He dreamt that he woke and stumbled out of the closet, rubbing sleep from his eyes with tiny, clenched fists, and there in the apartment was a man with a moustache like a chimney-brush and an air of distraction. The man was by the walls on hands and knees, scratching away with a pencil. “You know,” he said, catching sight of the little boy with the albino leopard clutched to his breast, “I think I fucked up here.”