The Islanders (18 page)

Of course, I saw nothing.

Shaken, nervous, a little frightened, I went swiftly down to find Jayr, who was working on the computer terminal in the office.

I said nothing, but collapsed into one of the spare chairs along the wall. I could not suppress a shudder, and I exhaled sharply.

‘Was it a silent ghost or a noisy one?’ said Jayr, without looking across at me. ‘Does it moan, dress in ancient gowns, carry its own head, make a breathing noise, clank long chains, or does it just hover?’

‘You don’t believe me, do you? There’s something out there. I’ve seen it twice now! It’s really bloody terrifying.’

I was regarding my forearms, bare because I always worked with my sleeves rolled up. All the hairs were standing on end.

‘Remember . . . this is a theatre. Everything that happens in a theatre is
real!
’

With the last word, Jayr turned in his chair, lowered his head like a hunting animal, and made a snarling noise, baring his teeth.

At the end of that day, walking back to my room along the usual streets, I caught sight of my bearded assailant. His tense, hunched way of walking was distinctive, and the moment I noticed him I was on my guard. I held back, watched him for a few moments until I was certain he could not see me.

He was ahead of me, striding along in the same direction and did not turn back to look. It was certainly him but because the weather had improved so much he was of course no longer wrapped up against the cold. On the contrary, he was wearing rather large and loose beach shorts, bright blue, and a yellow shirt that flapped behind him as he walked.

Just the sight of him made me nervous, so I stood quietly by the side of the road, half concealed by a shop canopy, until the man had turned off the main drag, entering a side street at the other end.

The tech crew finally turned up. As soon as they had settled in their lodgings, and familiarized themselves with the facilities in the theatre, my working life changed. All the routine chores around the theatre – cleaning, checking, aligning and repairing – were taken over by others. I was impressed by the professionalism of the crew: four men and three women, who in just two days had the theatre prepared and technically rehearsed in time for the opening night.

That first week’s bill was one of mixed variety turns. As the acts started to arrive at the theatre, roughly at the same time as the tech people, I was eager and curious to see them. The
Teater Sjøkaptein
was quickly being transformed from a cold, ill-lit and above all empty building into a place where a large number of people worked, bringing all the noise, companionship, squabbles, minor emergencies and sense of purpose that surrounds any group of people existing closely together.

Backstage, the building echoed with the noise of last-minute scenery building, lights being focused and calibrated, of tabs being raised and lowered, instructions shouted down from the balcony, and so on. Three musicians appeared, to provide the accompaniment. Meanwhile the front-of-house manager was hiring a temporary assistant to help with cleaning and preparing the auditorium, selling tickets and refreshments, and organized emergency medical cover for each performance. I was entranced by the sense of busy purpose, but my own working role was almost eliminated by these new people.

On our opening night I watched much of the show from the wings, but I soon wished I had not. The acts were of the most basic and unimaginative kind, the sort of live entertainment I had no idea was still being performed in theatres. The show was compered by a middle-aged comedian who specialized in off-colour jokes, which were offensive mainly for being so unoriginal and therefore unfunny. The acts he introduced included a juggler, an operetta duo, a ventriloquist, a trick cyclist, a soprano, and a troupe of dancing girls. By the end of the show I realized I was staying on only because of these dancers. I thought one of them was rather pretty and seemed to be encouraging me with several smiles flashed in my direction, although when I tried to speak to her she cut me dead.

After that first evening I wasted no more time watching these acts, and was puzzled but rather relieved by how much the audiences seemed to enjoy them.

We were expecting the Lord to arrive halfway through this first week. The morning of the day we were expecting him – we had had to make a space for him in our already crowded vehicle park behind the building – I was sitting with Jayr in the office. He was entering the week’s takings and expenses into the computer, while I sat idly by, rather enjoying the quietness.

A matinée performance was due that afternoon, but for the time being our temporary solitude was almost like those last days of winter.

‘Have you been seeing your ghost again, Hike?’ Jayr suddenly said, without turning away from the computer monitor.

‘Not since the last time.’

‘Are you sure?’

I had long wished I had concealed my earlier reactions from Jayr, as he had been teasing me repeatedly about my sightings of the ghost.

I stayed silent.

‘I thought you might have noticed what’s behind you,’ Jayr said. ‘That’s all.’

Of course I turned to see, and to my surprise and (for an instant) horror, that impassive mask-like face was right beside me, lurking behind my shoulder. I could not help it: I leapt to my feet, startled, turning to get a better look.

‘Hike, this is Mr Commis, our star turn the week after next.’

Standing next to my chair was the slight figure of a man dressed in a mime costume. He was clad from head to foot in some kind of soft, black, non-reflective fabric, hugging his skin. Only his face was clearly visible, and that was because it had been painted a brilliant, almost dazzling white. Every facial feature had been covered into blended invisibility, with stylized cartoons drawn in their places: he wore quizzically inverted eyebrows, a down-turned mouth, two painted black spots for his nose. Even his eyelids had been painted, so that when he blinked two stylized bright-blue eyes seemed to replace his real ones.

‘Commis, this is my deputy Hike Tommas.’

The mime leapt into action. With an exaggerated motion he swept a non-existent hat from his head, swirled it elaborately, then crossed it in front of his chest as he bowed. When he straightened he momentarily spun the invisible hat on an extended forefinger, then threw it up in the air, waggled his head from side to side as the hat curled through the air, and with a sudden diving motion managed to get it to land on the crown of his head. Smiling, he bowed again.

‘Er, good morning,’ I said inadequately. Commis the mime smiled briefly, then turned away and with an agile motion jumped backwards on to the surface of a spare desk, and crossed his legs.

A moment later he began to eat an imaginary banana, peeling it slowly with precise movements, then pulling away the pithy strings that attached to the side of the fruity flesh. He ate it with great attention, chewing thoughtfully. When he had finished he licked each of his fingers, then tossed the peel away so that it landed somewhere on the office floor.

He raised a buttock, mimed a long fart, then wafted away the smell with an apologetic look on his face.

A little later he sharpened an invisible pencil, puffed on the loose shavings from the pointed end to blow them away, then used it to evacuate wax from his ear.

When Jayr and I took some drinks from the coffee machine, Commis rejected our offer of a real one but suddenly produced an imaginary large cup and saucer, clearly full to the brim with a scalding liquid. He fussed over this, holding it gingerly, blowing gently across the surface, stirring it with an invisible spoon, tipping some of the liquid into the saucer so he could sip from that. He continued this performance until Jayr and I had finished our cups of coffee, then he put away his own cup.

When I tried speaking to him he made no answer (but cupped a hand behind his ear, pretending, I think, to be deaf). Jayr shook his head at me, discouraging me from what I was doing.

Later, Commis developed an itchy rash that appeared to travel all over his body.

He sat there and sat there, perpetually performing his imaginary feats.

Finally, not at all entertained by this self-centred behaviour, I decided to leave. As I crossed the office floor. Commis mimed intense fear and warning, shrinking back across the desktop in horror, pointing at the floor and imploring me with his eyes.

I could not help myself. I stepped carefully over the banana skin as I went into the corridor outside.

After that, Commis’s presence around the theatre was a constant. He was due to headline the third week of our season, so his early arrival meant that he was underfoot practically all of the time. I found his endless pantomimes aggravating but harmless, and did what I could to ignore him. However, he was always there, sometimes mimicking me, sometimes leaping out in front of me to show me a cat he was pretending to hold or a photograph of me he had just taken, or trying to involve me in his fantasy world by throwing balls to me, or trotting in front of me, pretending to open and close non-existent doors. He never once spoke, never emitted any kind of sound. I kept expecting that I might one day see him out of character, but as far as I could tell he appeared to be staying and sleeping somewhere in the theatre building itself. He was always there when I arrived and was still there after I left at the end of the day. I never did find out what Jayr knew of him, what their relationship was, if any. It was obviously more than Jayr said, perhaps even close or intimate, but I was not that interested and did not enquire.

I realized that my work at the
Sjøkaptein
was now only marginal, and by agreement with Jayr it was to finish soon – in fact I was due to leave at the end of the following week, before Commis started his run of performances, when I would be paid off.

My final task before I left was to lend whatever assistance the Lord would need when he arrived. I was nervous about this: my weeks at the
Teater Sjøkaptein
had shown me that a professional interest in stagecraft was one thing, but a sympathy with the people who trod the boards was another.

The Lord’s self-generated advance publicity was not for me a sign that he and I were going to work together well. However, to my surprise it turned out that in life he was a quiet, almost invisible presence, apparently shy and self-effacing. For instance, when he arrived in Omhuuv he let no one in the theatre know, so none of us realized at first that he was there. He and his female assistant had been waiting patiently in the foyer for so long, unobtrusively sitting in the chairs at the side, that one of the ticket office staff eventually went to ask if they needed any help.

When we finally saw him costumed and made up for his show he became impressive and extrovert, with an entire repertoire of theatrical gestures and loud and sometimes amusing remarks, and exuding endless confidence in his own powers.

His main illusion, with which he concluded his performance, was a set-piece which to the audience looked transparently simple, but which required careful and exact technical preparation.

He called the illusion ‘T
HE
L
ADY
V
ANISHES
’.

The effect seen by the audience was of a bare stage, backed by curtains, and dominated by a large, metal structure made entirely of steel rods. This consisted of four slanting legs, and a heavy cross-member across the top, strong enough to bear weight. The audience could see that this was the full extent of the apparatus: there were no curtains, no trapdoors, no hidden panels, just a skeletal steel structure standing in the centre of the bare stage. While performing the trick the illusionist could pass around and through and behind the structure and be seen at every moment. He would then produce a large chair, and this would be connected to the cross-member by a rope and a pulley.

His female assistant – transformed from a mildly attractive woman in her late twenties into a dazzling vision of glamour by her scanty costume, flowing wig and make-up – would sit in the chair, and be blindfolded.

As the small band in the pit played suspenseful music, with an insistent drum-roll, the magician would laboriously turn the handle of a winch, and the chair and Lord’s assistant would rise towards the apex of the immense structure, twisting slowly. Once she was at the top, the illusionist would secure the rope and utter trance-inducing words. The assistant would slump in the chair, as if hypnotized. He then produced a large gun and aimed it directly at her! As the drums reached a climax the magician fired the gun. With a loud bang and a flash of light the chair would come crashing noisily down on the stage, its rope trailing behind it. The lady assistant was no longer in the chair, and indeed had vanished entirely.

The method was both much simpler and more complex than anyone in the audience would imagine. The illusion was achieved by a combination of stage lights and a mirror. Or in this case a half-mirror. Or in reality, a pane of clear glass, the one I had obtained for the Lord from the next town.

The glass was attached to the front of the metal scaffold. Because of the way the lights were shone on it, and with the assistance of more lights concealed behind the front struts, the glass was entirely invisible to everyone in the audience. Everything that happened inside the apparatus, or behind it, was completely visible. When the young woman was winched to the top, everything that could be seen was actually happening: she was really there, in the chair, and suspended from the cross-member.