The Spirit Cabinet (6 page)

“I don’t care,” answered Jurgen, turning away.

“Yeah,” said Rudolfo, flaring both nostrils. “I can see that.”

Jurgen had not been entirely honest when he told Preston that his first book had been
The Secrets of Magic Revealed
, written by Preston’s father, the Magnificent. True, his journey toward professionalism had started when he’d pulled open that cover and read:
Never reveal the secrets in this book
. The reading itself had been slow and laborious, because the book had been translated into High German, and Jurgen had his difficulties with languages. (He also had his difficulties with mathematics, sciences and anything to do with geography or history. It was Jurgen Schubert’s well-kept secret that he was a dim-witted boy. He was handsome and could work hard, and he’d learned that a sober, silent industry was often confused with intelligence.) Fortunately,
The Secrets of Magic Revealed
was full of photographs, black-and-white images of a huge set of hands. These hands were pale and delicate, the nails filed into beautiful crescent moons. They were photographed from every angle, and Jurgen found it thrilling to see the secret photographs, the ones that showed the coin nestled between the second and third knuckles, the playing card bent and cupped in the hollow of the palm.

Jurgen had learned almost everything from that book. He learned the sleights and passes, shifts and manipulations. And whatever information Preston the Magnificent left out, he gave directions to its location, the wonderful Erdnase card book, for example, or the classic
Modern Coin Magic
by J.B. Bobo.

But, technically, it had not been Jurgen’s first book. His first book had been
Houdini on Magic
.

Jurgen had found the book while hiking. Though there were no true forests anywhere in the vicinity of Bremen, only spare outcroppings of diseased trees and moonlike shelves of slate and granite, Jurgen often tramped away into the countryside. He had a vague sense that there was a romantic rightness to this, which he got not from poetry, but from some paper placemats he’d once seen in a restaurant. The placemats showed a strapping blond German youth all decked out in hiking gear, his upper body criss-crossed with leather straps. The lad’s legs were thick with muscle and dressed lightly with golden hair. Jurgen hoped, actually expected, to encounter this creature sometime on the trails. An even more compelling reason for his hiking had to do with the overcrowding back at his own house. The house was tiny to begin with (Jurgen would realize one day that he could fit his entire childhood home into the trophy room of
das eindrucksvollste Haus im Universum
) and the Schubert family grew as if by cell division. His mother was usually both pregnant and nursing, his father was frequently announcing a visiting relative, the elder daughters were constantly getting married and their feckless husbands were never working and the elder sons would disappear briefly and then return with their own burgeoning broods. Jurgen was a middle child, but what he was in the middle of was a vast sea of humanity. This is why he loved to lace up his hiking boots.

The boots were actually street shoes into which he’d forced long, thick laces, twisted and ribboned into complicated outdoorsy
knots. Lacking not only
lederhosen
, but shorts of any kind, Jurgen hacked off the legs of some faded flannel pants and then rolled up the bottoms to reveal the entire length of his pale blue thigh, blue because the rolled-up pant leg cut off the circulation below his groin. He crossed two small belts over his chest, cinching them so that they, too, were biting and painful. He found a hat which he managed to persuade himself was Tyrolean. The one good thing about his home was that strange articles of clothing were easy to find, especially accessories, materializing suddenly in odd places and remaining unclaimed. Ties stayed hooked over newels for months, sweaters languished on the floor and hats grew like buds on the furniture. This particular hat had been purchased by Jurgen’s brother Oscar, who originally thought that it made him look like an American gangster, before realizing that it was far too large and made him look like the thing he least wanted to be, a country bumpkin. Jurgen, even at a very young age, had a head so large and blocklike that he had to take hold of the brim of this hat and tug it down over his brow. The hat made Jurgen look like an American gangster, and he could never understand the looks of mistrust he received when he’d tramp into restaurants for a cup of coffee.

Jurgen would sometimes hike from dawn until well past dusk, consulting his compass dutifully and recording his route in a small notebook. He would record landmarks and town names; sometimes he’d jot down his impressions of the same:
nett
, he would write,
sehr nett
. When he returned home, Jurgen was often surprised—not
really
surprised, not after the first few times—to find that no one had noticed his absence.

It was a day of no particular distinction, neither sunny nor cloudy, hot nor cold, when Jurgen came across
Houdini on Magic
. It was lying in a pile of dead and dried leaves the same colour as the cheap parchment used to bind the book. He would never have noticed it except for the light hitting the tarnished gilt of
the cover’s lettering, sending up a reflection that crackled with something like electricity. Jurgen hurried over, imagining that he’d stumbled upon a cache of gold or gemstones. Instead, he found the little book, the paper burned by time. As soon as he lifted it, the sunlight ceased to play upon the leaf, and the lettering, although ornate and curlicued, looked very plain indeed.
Houdini on Magic
. He almost tossed the book away. His arm actually moved, his wrist cocked and then snapped. Jurgen was never sure why his fingers never let go. The fingers themselves decided they wanted to hold on to the book, so Jurgen pulled it back in and opened it, mildly curious.

He’d heard of Houdini before, of course, but realized at that moment that he had no idea what Houdini actually did. This struck him as wondrous, that this man could be so famous, almost without reason. He was simply
famous
. Jurgen’s heart began to ache for fame, for elevation above all the people, a thousand times higher than the shitty little hills that surrounded Bremen. Here, apparently, was how Houdini had accomplished it:
by magic
.

He took the book home and hid it in his drawer. He waited until, one afternoon, there were no cousins or brothers, either natural or in-law, hanging about the bedroom. Then he opened the book and read:

This man escaped from paper bags?

Jurgen reread the words, confident that he’d misread, been misled, but Houdini was clear on the point: he climbed inside a
paper bag seven and a half feet long and then freed himself. Where did they have such bags, wondered Jurgen, and why?

He flipped more pages.

Jurgen read on, if for no other reason than he liked eggs.

Oh, this was more like it. Houdini described an effect whereby a chosen card is torn up and then found, miraculously restored, inside a fresh chicken egg.

This would make them take notice, thought Jurgen, this would surely silence the riotous breakfast table.

Jurgen could compel the members of the Schubert household to do absolutely nothing. He turned more pages.

Jurgen read on.

One stormy evening, Jurgen Schubert assembled his family in the parlour. He hadn’t selected the night because of the tempest; in fact, he was a little annoyed with it, as if God were trying to steal his thunder. The Schuberts crowded in, the parents and Oma claiming the spring-poked sofa, others squatting on the floor, the smaller children perching on the credenza and woodbox.

Jurgen appeared suddenly and startingly, more out of
nervousness than showmanship, and announced the advent of the Cingalese.

His family loudly demanded to know what
um Himmels willen
he was talking about.

“The Cingalese,” repeated Jurgen, realizing that he’d been wondering about this himself, just what exactly a Cingalese might be. He knew why it was necessary for there to be one, because of the eyes—

Reminded of the wonder he was about to achieve, Jurgen waved his hands at his clan and hushed them sternly. Remarkably, they hushed. For years to come, Jurgen would wonder why he was only able to control audiences when he was rude. When he tried to be cultured—in accordance with Preston the Magnificent’s “Magician’s Pledge”—people were disdainful, even disorderly. But when he stared at them with cruel eyes, his black lids quivering with rage, they pushed back into their seats and silently begged him to continue. (It was Rudolfo who understood all this, if not to explain it, then to capitalize upon it.)

“Ah!” exclaimed Jurgen, fanning his hand behind his left ear. “I hear the Cingalese approaching!”

Jurgen ran into the kitchen to get ready.

He had managed the donning of his costume in as little as one minute and forty seconds, but that night, full of nerves and jittery as he was, it took four times that long. We can use the interlude to meet Little Ha-Jo, who was to assist Jurgen with the illusion.

At that exact moment Hans-Joachim had no idea of this, because he was suckling at his mother’s breast and, besides, Ha-Jo had no idea of anything. He was eighteen months old, still bald and vaguely bluish, the latest addition to the Schubert clan. Houdini had called for the levitation to involve a baby, so that’s how Jurgen was determined to proceed, but if Houdini had been able to see Little Ha-Jo, he probably would have suggested using
another child, perhaps even one of the smaller adults. Jurgen was not fully aware of the monstrousness of his baby brother, although many would have been alerted by the fact that Ha-Jo was transported not in the years-old perambulator, but rather in a souped-up wheelbarrow, cushions strapped to the metal sides.

In the kitchen, Jurgen pulled his head through the hole he had cut in an old blanket. The fact that the blanket was old hadn’t qualified it for selection; all of the Schubert blankets were old.
This
one had a pattern of zigzags and circles and looked, if not Cingalese, at least foreign. Jurgen placed a hat upon his head, a cone he’d fashioned out of thick black paper and adorned with little paintings of the moon and stars. He was not artistically inclined, and the paint had bled, little rivers of dirty white flowing from star to star.