“Welcome back! Please . . .” He held the passenger door open while Jeremy squeezed inside, then raced around and climbed behind the wheel. “How was your flight?” he asked as they pulled away from the curb. “It must have been very tiring.”
“Actually I like long flights. Plenty of time to practice . . . Kazu,” he said (pronouncing the name ka-ZOO), “did you go on a diet or something?”
“No, not . . . Recently I’ve been . . . under the weather.”
“Oh. Hey, sorry to hear that. Feeling better?”
“Much better, thank you. The doctor said it might have been stress, from overwork.”
In fact the doctor hadn’t known the cause of his condition. When asked if anything had been worrying him, the only thing Kazu could think of was the book he’d been working on, a translation into Japanese of a mammoth English work on sleight of hand. “Well that’s probably it, then,” the doctor had told Kazu, and then his wife; but it was only a guess, and Kazu was reluctant to blame magic for the terrifying collapse. (Besides, the two-year project was nearly finished. Why would he be experiencing anxiety now?) Whatever the cause, it had been an ordeal. He’d thought at first it might be the flu. Lethargy, headaches, a desire to stay curled up in bed under the covers . . . He couldn’t think clearly; he couldn’t work. The world receded, but at the same time he’d felt an excruciating raw sensitivity: light, sound, even his favorite music—every stimulus had become a spear. He spent days sealed in his room, where he wouldn’t have to face his wife or son. For the first time in his life he didn’t want to read books on magic; he didn’t want to practice or even think about it . . . The medication the doctor prescribed seemed to help; it made him less anxious, at least, about whatever was happening to him. The doctor told him this was a sign of recovery. Even now, though, he at times found himself moving tentatively, as if housing a fragile, spiked object in danger of shattering at any moment . . .
“Well,” Jeremy was saying, “at least you lost some weight, right? You look good, man!”
Which meant what? That there had been something wrong with the way he looked before? To change the subject Kazu said: “Could you, ah, find your way here all right? The Tokyo subway system is very difficult for foreigners, I think. Even Japanese—”
“Oh, no problem. Until I got here: I step off the train, and it’s like: I can’t tell if I’m in a subway station or a shopping center. No exits, stores everywhere, people rushing around . . . Pretty amazing.”
“Ah yes, the station is connected to a department store. Very famous. You can find anything there. Even magic tricks.”
All magicians, in Kazu’s experience, had a story about how they’d first been “bitten by the magic bug.” And Kazu had told his own story so many times he’d become an expert at the telling. When he was eleven, shopping with his mother at this same department store, he’d passed a magic counter. Inside the glass case sparkly cylinders, rainbow ribbons, and silver rings were arrayed in a shimmering display. The demonstrator suddenly handed him something: a red ball, the size of a marble. Kazu was told to drop it into a little plastic box on the counter. Then to put the lid on. Then to snap his fingers. The man smiled, removed the lid, and . . . the ball was gone. That moment was the first time in his life Kazu had felt genuine wonder. He’d bought the trick, of course, and later another, and another; and his life in magic had grown out of the desire to share with others the wonder he’d experienced that first day at the department store . . .
“I can’t say I ever felt that,” Jeremy said when Kazu had finished. “Wonder, I mean. I saw something on TV and thought it was kind of cool, so I went to the library and found a book. The Expert at the Card Table. That’s how it started. The language was so old-fashioned, I could barely read it. I liked the diagrams of the hands, though. Very sort of clean and . . . clinical, you know. Like a manual. Then I realized how much I liked practicing. Not performing, just practicing. It could have been guitar playing or whatever. It just happened to be magic.”
“Well. I must say congratulations.”
He felt Jeremy looking at him.
“On your download.”
When they first met, Jeremy had been largely unknown beyond the arcane world of technical card work; now it seemed that everyone in the magic community knew his name. This sudden fame was the result of a single trick, performed and explained by Jeremy on a downloadable video. From what Kazu could gather, his current lecture tour was mainly an excuse to promote the download, available on one of those websites featuring tricks with names like “Destruction” by scowling young magicians garlanded in chains and tattoos, the entire package designed to convince adolescent males that card magic could be cool, cutting-edge, even dangerous, like some kind of extreme sport. Jeremy’s own trick was typical of this new brand of magic: brief, striking, and ultimately pointless—a flare shot randomly into a night sky. Magic reduced to the length and depth of a TV commercial, aimed at audiences with stunted attention spans. Kazu was nonetheless unaccountably excited to see Jeremy again. He had met and sessioned with legends; there was certainly no reason to be awed by some flash-in-the-pan talent, or swayed by all of the inane web chatter surrounding him. He refused to believe he was starstruck. He was probably just looking forward to the chance to teach the boy a thing or two about what really mattered in magic. A way to pass on something of value to the next generation. For most of magic’s history the means of transmitting secrets—from mentor to select student—had been as treasured and clandestine as the secrets themselves. Books were published, but crucial details and preferred variations were often held back, having been judged too good to be revealed. In the darkest booths of bars (it seemed to Kazu that most of the greatest magicians he’d known were alcoholics), in twenty-four-hour cafeterias, on hotel room carpets, cards elegantly spread over stains and cigarette burns, aging nondescript men passed along what really mattered to those they had judged worthy . . .
Kazu had proven his own worthiness over the course of a twenty-year career serving as interpreter for magic’s most respected names when they lectured in Japan. He also acted as unofficial guide, taking his guests first to an extraordinary little yakisoba restaurant known only to locals, then on an exclusive tour of Tokyo magic shops, and, finally, to a crafts store, where the foreign magicians spent giddy hours rummaging through boxes of rare items destined to be reimagined as props and gimmicks. He could see how grateful they were to be shown a Tokyo they would otherwise never have known existed. And he was more than repaid for his efforts with the “real work”: sleights, subtleties, and tips that had never seen print and were intended to remain sub rosa, all of it recorded by Kazu in crabbed detail in a notebook he shared with no one. Kazu was proud of his reputation as able guide and interpreter; but he was, above all, proud to be recognized among the cognoscenti as a discreet keeper of secrets. And so Kazu despised the way Jeremy’s generation was transforming the art of magic into a commodity to be bought and sold and openly traded like anything else.
He was surprised, then, when Jeremy said:
“Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous, if you ask me. All this attention over one trick. I don’t get it. Personally, I’ve never downloaded a trick in my life.”
They’d reached Kazu’s public housing block. He turned reluctantly into its maze of parking lots: he’d never invited a foreign guest to his home before, and this home was nothing to be proud of . . .
“Like I said, I read books,” Jeremy was saying. “Always have. That’s how I learned everything I know.” Everything I know: coming from a twenty-year-old, the remark made Kazu want to smile. “Learning from a video—what does it lead to? A thousand clones out there, doing exactly the same thing, right down to the patter.”
Kazu parked. “Besides,” Jeremy continued as they walked along the path, “most of those tricks only look good from one angle: in front of a webcam. View it from anywhere else and it’ll flash like crazy, exposing ev
erything. I include my own trick.”
Kazu laughed. This was exactly how he’d always felt about these tricks intended to be “performed” for a camera from the safety of a bedroom by boys his son’s age, boys whose voices hadn’t even changed yet, the probably pimpled head out of frame, and the result then proudly revealed to the world on a YouTube screen followed by an inevitable barrage of brutal posts from other kids who couldn’t do any better.
“Obviously, that makes it seem like I’m some kind of sellout. And I’m not going to pretend I didn’t do it for the money.”
“Ahh, here we are, Jeremy-san.” They’d reached his building’s battered elevator. “Please, please, after you.”
He nodded, distracted, and stepped inside. “But the way I see it—I realize this sounds like pathetic self-justification, but here goes: that download I made was full of proper crediting. Every last move. Something I insisted on. I had to fight to get it included, but my feeling was it might encourage some of the kids who watch these things to turn off the computer, pick up a book, and discover something. You know?”
“Mmm, yes,” Kazu said absently as he took out his keys. He was thinking about his apartment, shabby even after the thorough cleaning he and his wife had carried out to prepare for their guest’s visit. But more than the apartment, it was Mariko herself that worried him. He had made it clear that she was not to speak to Jeremy in English. Although she and Kazu had been English majors together in college, she hadn’t spoken the language since graduating, and he could only imagine what her skills must be like after all this time. She’d been instructed to let him translate if she had anything to say; this way there would be no chance of her embarrassing herself. In any case, he and Jeremy would be busy with their session, and she wouldn’t need to do much beyond providing refreshments. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little nervous . . .
“Please, come in,” Kazu said, slipping his shoes off. He was relieved to see that Jeremy knew enough to follow suit. In the kitchen, Mariko was at work on a cake. She stopped and quickly wiped her hands on her apron, ready for a handshake. But Jeremy had already started jerking his head floorward in a clumsy bow; changing his mind, he straightened, waved vaguely, and said: “Hi . . . Sorry to barge in and, you know, steal your husband for the afternoon.”
“No, Jeremy-san, no need to apologize,” Kazu said. “She’s used to it. My Japanese magic friends, they come over all the time. Sometimes our sessions go on so late they end up staying overnight!”
“Oh, right. A magic widow.” The term—which Kazu had always hated—was a common joke among magicians, referring to the way wives were “widowed” by their husbands’ lifelong obsession. “You have my condolences,” he said to Mariko, smiling.
“He apologizes for intruding,” Kazu said to her in Japanese.
She smiled back at Jeremy. “Tell him to make himself at home.”
In the living room, Kazu had already placed two cushions on the mat, and on the coffee table two fresh packs of cards. But Jeremy, sinking cross-legged onto a cushion, immediately produced his own deck and began a series of intricate cuts, shuffles, and flourishes.
“Wonderful, Jeremy-san!”
Jeremy paid no attention. These, Kazu realized, were merely his warm-up exercises.
Mariko brought in tea. “Ask our guest if he likes chocolate cake,” she said as she set down the cups.
“My wife is wondering if you like chocolate cake. Her hobby is baking desserts.”
Jeremy squared the cards precisely on the table. “Yeah? Oh, I love pretty much anything sweet, so: yeah.” He offered her a shy thumbs-up.
“What a relief!” she said to Kazu. “Tell him how happy I am. How I can’t make sweets these days because of your diet.”
“You can make sweets. I’ve told you that. It’s okay once in a while for me to eat something I actually like. Besides, today’s a special occasion.”
Ever since his collapse, Mariko had been strictly regulating his fat and sugar intake. When the doctor first suggested a change in diet, she’d taken it personally, grumbling about what she saw as criticism of her cooking, but she’d also partly blamed herself for her husband’s condition, and set about modifying the dishes she prepared. Kazu, at the time, didn’t even notice. He was barely eating anyway, his appetite for food gone along with his appetite for everything else he loved. It was only after he started feeling better that he became aware of how scrupulously his favorite foods had been excised from every meal. When he looked in the mirror he barely recognized himself now. He might have been a bit ample before, but there had been color in his cheeks; he’d looked hearty and well fed. Now he was gaunt, insubstantial, pale skin draped sagging across bones like oversized clothes. It was that much worse, therefore, when his father-in-law clapped his hands delightedly at the sight of the new Kazu, his mother-in-law exclaiming with a wicked laugh that he looked handsome for the first time since she’d met him. This made him want to immediately devour a deep-fried pork cutlet with an ice cream sundae for dessert . . . Ever since their engagement, Mariko’s parents had opposed her marriage to what they saw as an eccentric amateur magician barely making ends meets with his obscure translation work. Mariko had stood by him over the years, only complaining when his magic purchases got out of hand; recently, though, she’d been dropping comments about how they needed to start considering their son’s college education, just four years away, not to mention their own eventual retirement. His work, translating instantly-out-of-print books for a handful of magicians, was simply not bringing in enough, even when supplemented by his part-time job at a bookstore. And so the way she’d beamed at her parents’ reaction to the transformed Kazu had felt like a betrayal, like she’d finally joined with them in rejecting the man she’d married, favoring instead this underfed successor. As he recovered, Kazu had wanted nothing more than to return to his old self; but Mariko kept going on about how good he looked, as if hoping that with his new, stripped-down frame would come a new husband and a new life. She wasn’t so brazen as to openly suggest that he change careers, but she’d begun using the doctor’s words against him: his lifestyle had been unhealthy, she would say; this might be the perfect time to make changes for the better . . .
“I can have cake,” he said with finality to her stony face, trying at the same time to keep his voice neutral so that Jeremy wouldn’t think anything was amiss.
“Shall we begin, Jeremy-san?”
As Jeremy went over the tricks in his new lecture, the first thing Kazu noticed was that there was no gazing at the hands this time; he used misdirection now, executing moves while looking elsewhere. Kazu played the part of an ideal audience member, gasping and applauding at all of the appropriate moments. He knew what Jeremy was doing, of course: the sleights might have been impeccable, and the presentations diverting, but each time Kazu’s keen gaze burned through it all to the essential structure, as conspicuous to him as the charred frame of a house on fire. Kazu had seen and read so much magic by this point in his life that he was nearly impossible to fool. So when he dutifully noted down Jeremy’s explanations, his murmurs of appreciation—“Oh, I see; yes; now that’s clever!”—were mostly a courtesy; nevertheless, the methods were often ingenious, and Kazu had to admire the boy’s imagination.
Long after he’d finished with the material scheduled for the lecture, Jeremy was still going strong: trick after trick after trick . . . But when would Kazu have his chance? He was impatient to perform—it would be the first time since his illness. During a session, taking turns was standard etiquette: each magician might try to outdo the other, but always while respecting the fundamental balance of back-and-forth. Jeremy, though, seemed prepared to go on all afternoon. Which wasn’t to say that Kazu found it all boring. There was no question that Jeremy had grown as a performer: the daunting sleights were still in evidence, but judiciously embedded now in complete routines; and while there was still something missing i
n his performances—he attempted suave polish, for instance, when what you wanted from someone his age was playful enthusiasm—this was nevertheless a far cry from the disturbing introvert of three years before. Kazu began to feel that the pieces he’d chosen to show Jeremy that day, solid tricks culled from his library, were pedestrian and overfamiliar. They had been intended as object lessons in how even the simplest magic could be effective if one focused on presentation. This was something he’d learned during his year in America, ostensibly there to continue his English studies after college, but really on a pilgrimage to meet the great Robert Ormea. Under his tutelage, Kazu had come to recognize that skill was only part of any successful performance, and that a magician was almost always better off concealing rather than flaunting it. “Don’t forget,” Robert was fond of saying, “basically, when all is said and done, people do not like magic. Who can blame them? Nobody likes being made to feel stupid. They have to be fooled into enjoying being fooled. And that’s where entertainment comes in.” Kazu had hoped to pass this wisdom on to Jeremy; but since they’d last met, Jeremy had obviously managed to figure it out for himself. So what should Kazu show? After all of this boy’s inventiveness, it was embarrassing to think that he had nothing of his own to offer; but Kazu’s magical gifts had always been critical rather than creative. Whatever he showed, it needed to be something special, something Jeremy wouldn’t already have seen . . .
“Jeremy-san, have you heard of the FBC?” he blurted, to his own surprise.
“FBC. What’s it stand for?”
“FBC is—Well, first, first I should explain how— It’s an amazing story, Jeremy-san! I’m sure you know Robert Ormea?”
“The name.”
The Involuntary Sojourner Page 2
