William Kotzwinkle
The Magician
The magician stood in the alley outside the cabaret, breathing the night air. Under the light of the stage door sat his wife, sewing a silver button on his evening jacket. A sturdy, buxom woman, she cut the thread with her strong teeth, then stood and held the jacket out.
The magician turned and stepped toward her lightly, a magician's walk, pointed toed across the stones, through the mist rolling in from the river, as a ship edging out to sea sounded its mournful horn.
"The horns of Tibet," said the magician. "You hear them down the mountain passes, invoking the Buddha."
"Yes, darling," said his wife, holding out his jacket, smiling patiently.
The night is hypnosis, he thought, not daring to look in her eyes, for he would go tumbling into them. From within the cabaret came the sound of a trumpet; in the stage doorway his wife's eyes were wickedly bright, and he could not resist.
"Please, darling," she said, for he hadn't much time before his act, but she let him fall, until she could feel him inside her, rummaging around in her old loves, her flown and tattered past. What a strange one he was, always exploring around inside her with those eyes of his, peering into the dear dead days of a woman. It was bizarre play, but she let him, for some men demanded much more, and it was more painful in the giving. That was the way of the waterfront, where strange men came ashore. Into their arms she'd fallen, for she loved a sea story, and their dark songs. But then along he'd come, the top hatted magic one, and she had said so here you are at last, which was all a magician needed, some portentous note to thrill him for an age or two. So they'd married, and he was still looking around inside her, and he has plenty more to see, she thought, before he grows tired.
She broke the spell, waving his jacket at him. He fumed gracefully, plunging his arms into the sleeves, noticing at the same moment a wandering couple coming out of the mist on the avenue an elderly man in evening dress, singing to himself, on his amt a young woman in high-collared cape, with her hair cut short, like a boy. As the lights of the cabaret appeared to them, the young girl began to plead, "Oh, may we stop here? They have a magic show!"
"Yes, yes," said the old fellow, continuing on, in deep tremolo, his song, "O du Liebe meiner Liebe. "
The magician watched them move out of the lamplight and pass under the awning of the cabaret.
"Yes," said the magician's wife, handing him his top hat, "she's very beautiful."
"Now, my dear," said the magician with a laugh, "you know me better than that" He tapped his hat and kissed her on the forehead. Women were so quick to suspect a man it made one blush. "Come, old girl," he said, giving her his arm, "I feel a good show brewing."
The dancing girls kicked their bare legs in the glow of the footlights, scattering balloons over the smoky stage, then disappeared into the wings amid applause and the rattle of dishes. Three drunken pit musicians struck up a tinny fanfare; one of the dancing girls returned, holding a gilt-edged sign bearing the magician's legend.
His wife kissed him on the cheek and he made his entrance, coming out onto the stage from the wings. Removing his white gloves and top hat, he signaled to the light bridge.
A spotlight swept through the audience, illuminating the tables, and at the magician's direction stopped amid a setting of sparkling wine goblets and dessert dishes, on the table of an elderly man in evening dress. His companion, a young woman, tried to withdraw from the smoky beam. The magician came to the edge of the stage.
"Please," he said, holding out his hand, "will you assist me?"
Seeing the girl's reluctance, the audience began to clap. Her escort helped her from her seat. She walked toward the stage, smiling nervously. In her short cropped hair and cape she looked like a beautiful schoolboy.
The hypnosis began slowly; the magician, asked her questions, relaxing her with small talk, at the same time flashing in her face the brilliant stone from his ring, playing its reflection over her eyes like a miniature spotlight.
They stood in the middle of the stage, he smiling confidently, she looking fearfully into his fierce, piercing foxeyes. She would not let herself be hypnotized, that was that, she would resist.
He stepped closer to her, touching her wrist lightly with his fingers. Her face was purple in the spotlight, her dark eyes like windows, and he could not resist slipping through them, into her hidden dimension.
The center of his forehead tingling, he passed through the delicate veil; there was her youth and its tender longing, there her childhood and its delight, here her infancy in white, and finally the darkness of the womb in which she had slept He started to surface, then saw a light in the darkness, and he plunged through this still more delicate veil, into her most secret self. Down he went, through the gloomy ruins, where her antique past was kept, and long-dead shadows chased.
Standing still as a stone on the stage, the young woman heard distant voices, as if calling across the water. Something had happened, a magic show, how odd she felt, as if in a dream.
Through the labyrinth he tracked, into the depths of her soul, where her spirit was hidden away in its meditation. As in the rooms of a museum, he passed the relics of her former lives a nun's veil, a gladiator's net, a beggar's tin cup.
Suddenly a figure appeared, a priestess, highborn, by the sea, of luminous and beautiful body, in the hallway of a temple hauntingly familiar to him. In gold braided sandals and a necklace of shells she walked by the sea and he who walked beside her.
The young woman and the magician stood motionless on the smoke filled stage, she floating on the waves of the trance, he agasp with a recollection.
"I loved you on Atlantis," he said with trembling voice.
Instantly the waves enveloped her, her mind swam, she was under. There was a city with waving banners. She stood inside an ocean shell and felt the water on her feet. How sweet it was upon the beach and he who danced upon the waves
No, he thought, pulling back from her, but he could not stop his descent, for they were ancient lovers.
A thousand lives have I loved you, she said, seeing clearly in the mirror of her heart the chain of their love.
Struggling in the tidal wave, he turned to the audience. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, tonight I would like to perform for you a most daring feat of magic!" With trembling hands, he lifted the girl and placed her between two chairs. She lay stretched out in the air, stiff as a board.
She saw now, worlds were tucked within worlds, memory was vast. She came down a river and there on its banks she saw him dancing in a loose gown. She lay in the river on stones as omens reared in the sky a procession of elephants in gold harness, and he, dancing, brown-skinned, an African prince.
"Now then," said the magician, snapping his fingers, "bring on the box." He held to the edge of a chair, trying to pull himself together.
Two of the dancing girls came out, carrying a large wooden box, which they placed between a pair of sawhorses.
"The subject is in deep trance," said the magician, raising one of her arms in the air, where it remained motionless, until he lowered it again. He noticed her eyes fluttering, and through the brief slits he saw the Orient, shining. So, he had beheaded the Boss of Tu Shin for her, and, he saw this quite clearly, placed the head on a pole in the Boss's garden.
Covered in fans, she saw in a mirror pool, sparkling, the eastern world. Oh yes, elegantly had she performed, serving the warrior. Then, changing, she was gone. The snowcapped mountains melted and she was in the lowland. Sitting in the door of a temple, legs folded, was a yogi, thin as paper, eyes flashing in exaltation. Devastated by his gaze, she surrendered and became him.
"As you will notice, ladies and gentlemen=" The magician lifted the lid, his forehead pounding. So he had loved her there, too, in the incense of Benares the sacred city, in the seventy nine positions. " the box is empty."