Night Magic (36 page)

Backstage, too, a certain amount of tension was charging the air. Emily, holding herself unnaturally rigid while Lena added some final touches to her sumptuous Chinese princess costume, seemed apprehensive and nervous; ever since the revelations concerning the fate of Michael’s predecessor, the sight of Wurlitzer and Michael onstage at the same time filled her with dread. The thought that this show was to be their last appearance together did nothing to allay her uneasiness, and she frowned at herself in the mirror as she watched Lena pin a single orange-pink hibiscus into the thick hair above her right ear.

Lena too was nervous, though for a different reason: it was already 7:25, and she hadn’t seen Max since shortly after lunch, if that was what she should call the cup of coffee and the single dry biscuit that were all he had consented to swallow. When she reproached him for being so careless of his health, he had smiled and said, almost tenderly, almost as though he really pitied her, “Poor Lena, so determined to keep me alive. What difference can food make to me now?” The memory of these words echoed like a knell in her brain, summoning up images she couldn’t bear to contemplate.

“You look splendid, dear,” she said bravely. It was, after all, true: Emily was a vision of grace and beauty, her richly embroidered satin robe perfectly complementing her shiny black hair, her pale face, the natural dignity of her carriage. Lena raised an affectionate, slightly trembling hand to Emily’s long braid. “Our magicians are lucky to have so beautiful an assistant.” She looked distractedly at the big wall clock and said in a worried voice, “I do wish Max would come.”

Michael, too, though sitting patiently in his dressing room, wished that the master would come, that this most anticipated of nights would finally begin. His outward calm masked a small but tenacious component of misgiving that had nothing whatever to do with stage fright. Never before had he felt so confident in his abilities, so extraordinary in his powers, so fully in control, as he did this evening. In their fanatical preparations and endless rehearsals, he and the master had left nothing to chance: every movement in the show was choreographed, every syllable weighed, every gesture measured, every effect planned. Profoundly conceived, thoroughly orchestrated, the show could not fail. Nor could he. No, the tiny needle of uncertainty that was attempting to prick his concentration had its origins elsewhere. In Washington Square, perhaps, or in those hallucinatory minutes in the funeral parlor, or in the locked room in the basement, or in that incident at the Cloisters, or in the thought of Emily’s unshakable love—for each of these elements conspired against his ambition. His decision was taken, there was to be no turning back, he would walk the path he had chosen, for better or worse. Tonight would be a great triumph, with more and greater triumphs to follow, even to his heart’s content. But not unalloyed, apparently, not without some risk, some tinge of regret…

The master’s patent-leather gaiter-shoes rang on the iron steps that led down to the backstage area. Michael rose to his feet, quickly checked the mirror; everything was in order—the perfectly fitting black silk tuxedo, the snow-white, tastefully ruffled shirt, the slightly oversized black bow tie. He stepped through the door and joined Emily and Lena. The wall clock read 7:29.

Striding purposefully, straight and tall, the master swept toward them. Over his formal attire he wore a midlength black cape, lined in scarlet satin, flaring out behind him like a blaze. The Eye of Horus, at the end of a long golden chain, bounced gently against his chest. He looks healthier, thought Lena, touching her breast. I can feel his power, thought Michael, filling his lungs. Why isn’t he wearing his eye patch? thought Emily, wincing.

The master came to a halt and briefly surveyed his little troupe with his single eye, shifting it rapidly from face to face. Its lively glitter contrasted queasily with the murky dullness of its glass counterpart. At length he spoke, in his hollowest tones: “Good evening. I see that everyone is ready and eager to begin, as am I. This will be a memorable night.” He turned to Michael. “Shall we take our places?” And, not waiting for a reply, he addressed Emily: “Tell the sound booth we go on in sixty seconds.” Then, to everyone’s surprise, he stepped toward Lena and embraced her. “Wish me luck,” he said, spun on his heel, and walked into the wings.

From the very first moment, the master’s farewell performance proved to be a spectacular presentation, the grandest of finales. The master and Michael, entering from different sides of the stage, bowed simultaneously to the audience as the processional fanfare that opens Handel’s
Music for the Royal Fireworks
filled the air; then, with the music mounting and bursting around them, pouring into the auditorium from the brand-new, state-of-the-art computerized sound system, they began to juggle a set of brightly colored balls, plucking them from nowhere and throwing them higher and higher while gradually approaching center stage. Soon the two of them were facing each other from a distance of just a few feet, and what seemed like a dozen glowing balls, each a different color, were spinning through the air between and above them, passing from one to the other of their four flashing hands, soaring impossibly high, until at length, in perfect coordination with the swelling music, the balls began to explode in the air above their heads, each vanishing in a flash and cloud of smoke that matched its color, replaced at once by another and another as new balls appeared at the magicians’ fingertips, flying and flashing, some of them sailing out over the audience and exploding there, the air dense with multicolored smoke and heavy with sweet fragrances, until finally the last two spheres, apparently bigger than the others, rose together as one and detonated simultaneously with the loudest, brightest burst of all, and then the master and Michael stood shoulder to shoulder, bowing to the applause through the pall of vivid smoke.

There followed a series of dazzling routines with knives, crockery, and Chinese linking rings, the last handled so skillfully and intricately that the crowd began to shout as each level of complexity was overtopped by the next. Impossible though it seemed, the two magicians, the aged and the youthful, were equals in dexterity, coordination, and quickness of reflex. Michael had long since come to realize, not without some chagrin, that the master’s initial clumsiness, which he had found so embarrassing and patronized so gently, had itself been an act, part of the snare laid to catch his own tender feet. Those two gnarled hands were as sure as his young, smooth ones, that single eye saw more than both of his.

Their exertions left the audience, though not themselves, nearly exhausted, so the magicians passed from these strenuous demonstrations to a bit of comic relief. They roamed about the stage to the sugary strains of Respighi’s
The Fountains of Rome,
touching spots at random with their magic wands; from every spot a thin column of colored water spouted forth. Occasionally one of them stooped and, picking up a waterspout that spewed on undisturbed, moved it to another location on the stage. The fountain routine ended with the two of them standing near the footlights as a rainbow of water droplets glistened over their heads.

After the applause had died down, the two magicians clapped their hands together, and the music changed to a long, ethereal sequence of Chinese flute melodies, arranged, performed, and recorded on tape some weeks earlier by Emily. The master and Michael stepped apart and gestured downstage, where two objects not previously visible now stood: on one side, an enormous copper cauldron, suspended from a tripod by a stout metal chain and hanging over a pyre of firewood neatly stacked and ready for ignition; and on the other side, a long table, draped in a delicately embroidered silk cloth and bearing the recumbent and apparently slumbering Princess Chang Li, known outside the magic world as Emily Chang. Michael moved to her side, catching along the way a large, seamless metal hoop that came flying from the wings. With a nonchalant flick of his wrist, he snatched off the tablecloth and tossed it aside; the table vanished as well, but the princess, supine, rigid, as motionless as a corpse, remained. Michael made several passes with the metal hoop over her body, using the levitationist’s time-honored method of demonstrating that suspension has no part in his mystery, and soon, at his commands, the lovely princess was floating above the stage, higher, lower, left and right, her body unflinching, her expression of marmoreal calm unchanged.

As she drifted there, the master busied himself with the cauldron, igniting the firewood below it with a gesture of his wand. The leaping flames soon brought the cauldron’s contents to a bubbling boil, and the old man, his features intent and menacing in the glow from the fire, began to extract from the smoking pot a seemingly endless series of the most heterogeneous objects: silk scarves, flags of all nations, vases filled with flowers, a mountainous coil of rope; a large cooked turkey, steaming on a platter, and a large live turkey that ran gobbling into the wings.

Meanwhile, the princess was sailing above their heads, higher and higher, until finally she rose to the flies and vanished from sight. At that precise moment, Michael and the master approached the boiling cauldron, reached deep inside it, and extracted—the princess herself! They set her down—alive, awake, unscathed, smiling—near the footlights, and the three of them bowed to a storm of applause.

When the performers turned once more to their work, the audience could see that the boards had been cleared of all their former encumbrances—cauldron, tripod, fire, scarves, ropes, flowers, flags, fowl. In the center of the stage now stood the Chinese cabinet, its lacquered surfaces glistening darkly, its four carved legs like griffin’s talons, its ornate double doors closed. The music changed again—to a brooding, elegiac quartet by Shostakovich, the outcry of a soul in torment—the stage lights dimmed, and the mood of the show and of the audience grew somber and somehow ominous. Many of those present, when they later tried to describe their experiences, said this was the particular moment when they began to feel that something terrible, something tragic, was going to happen.

The princess stood demurely aside as the master and Michael each grasped one of the cabinet doors and opened them wide, displaying the empty black interior to the audience. Then they turned to the princess, gesturing, indicating that she should climb inside; she refused; their gestures became more insistent; she refused again and started to walk offstage, but a simultaneous sign from her two tormentors froze her in her tracks. They seized her stiff body as though it were a board, thrust her into the cabinet, and shut the doors. The cabinet began to shake almost at once; they opened the doors, but found it empty. Michael stepped inside. The master closed the doors, opened them, and Michael stepped back out, perplexed; the princess had vanished. Then, standing on either side of the cabinet, the two magicians began to open and shut the doors rapidly, revealing, in quick succession, a gesticulating Chinese demon, a skeleton clutching an orange-pink hibiscus between its teeth and dancing in time to the dirgelike music, a vase filled with orange-pink hibiscus, a water tank in which floated a large fish, the skeleton again, two gesticulating demons, and a vase filled with wilted flowers. They opened the doors a last time, and a flood of water came gushing out, but inside the cabinet stood the princess, deadpan and dry. She bowed and exited at once, moving with swift little mincing steps, leaving the master and Michael to acknowledge the applause.

After it died down, the diabolical shrieks and squeaks that signal the beginning of the “Witches’ Sabbath” from Berlioz’s
Symphonie Fantastique
could be heard. The magicians stared at their audience for a few seconds; then Michael stepped aside, gestured, bowed, and the master, his red-lined cape flaring behind him, climbed into the cabinet. At once the stage was flooded with light from what appeared to be a ring of fire suspended several feet above the cabinet. Quickly, Michael yanked the doors open, but there was nothing there, and in one balletic movement he faced the onlookers and flung his arms upward toward the fiery ring, through the center of which the master, sitting cross-legged and dressed now in flowing white robes embroidered with ancient Egyptian symbols, floated as though seated on an invisible cloud; he clasped a long rod in his hand, and on his breast the Eye of Horus and its golden chain glinted in the bright glow of the flames. Slowly, gracefully, he descended to the stage and stood beside his young apprentice to receive their public’s excited acclaim.

Michael stepped away, abandoning the spotlight to the master, who leaned on his rod and glared appraisingly, mockingly, at the applauding audience. His usually pale face was flushed, and a look of terrible exaltation burned in his single eye. Different music began, primitive, sinuous, chthonic, like something played on instruments made of bone and hide before the dawn of what is referred to as civilization. He cast down his rod upon the stage, stooped, and picked it up; some people cried out, for he was holding an extremely long and madly wriggling snake. He flung this down in its turn, it clattered woodenly against the boards, and when he stooped and straightened, it was a rod again. He repeated these actions several times, moving closer and closer to the footlights as the barbarous music thundered louder, his grin growing more and more ghastly, the snake larger and more furiously wriggling with each successive transformation. He stopped at the edge of the stage, shook his rod, and waited.

He did not have long to wait, for screams began to erupt from the back of the auditorium, screams at first mingled with exclamations of disgust or disbelief, then turning into expressions of unadulterated primeval terror: a squadron of long, thick, garishly colored snakes, perhaps a dozen or more—though some who attended the show later claimed there were hundreds of them—was slithering along the floor of the theater toward the stage. Some were using the aisles, others making their way under the seats and between or over the feet of the audience. A few of them wrapped themselves briefly around ankles or ramped up the sides of the chairs, raising their wedgelike heads between the seat cushions and flicking out their forked tongues, but these quickly recovered from their confusion and returned to the pursuit of what appeared to be their single purpose: reaching the stage as soon as possible. The throbbing music was overlaid by piercing shrieks as people leaped to their feet, shoving, hopping from one leg to the other, climbing onto their seats, where they gaped and swayed; a few brave souls tried to kick or stamp on the serpents, but their feet rebounded as if from automobile tires.