Rudolfo slowly raised his hand, the hair between his fingers glowing in the shadows. “Look, Jurgen,” he said softly, “look what it is.”
Jurgen focused his eyes, his lids tensing and setting like football players on the line of scrimmage. “What?”
“A grey hair,” whispered Rudolfo.
“So what?” raged Jurgen. “I’m old enough to have a few grey hairs.”
“If I had a grey hair, I hope you would pull it out for me.”
Jurgen grimaced, and then allowed his eyelids to relax. They fell and then lumbered back up, and the anger seemed to be gone from his eyes. He said nothing, an act of kindness. He glanced down and seemed to realize then that he was naked. He pulled a bathrobe across his shoulders and disappeared.
Rudolfo remained in the bed, biting at the tip of the tongue that had said such a foolish thing. Rudolfo Thielmann could never have a grey hair, having no hair whatsoever.
He’d had hair up until his tenth year, and then it had vanished. Rudolfo remembered it disappearing overnight, although many doctors and specialists had since advised him that this was unlikely; alopecia universalis, they said, usually takes three or four weeks to render the body utterly without hair.
But Rudolfo recalled it this way:
He came home from school. By this point he had proven himself to be a spectacularly poor student. This was largely due to his constant exhaustion, for he managed to sleep only an hour or so per night, kept awake by the desperate merriment of his mother’s friends. He had been held back in class many times, and now his classmates were six and seven years of age. Rudolfo towered above them, but, even so, he was the object of much bullying. Many of his tormentors adopted a morally superior stance, causing him pain on the grounds that his mother was a drug addict and a whore. Rudolfo had long ago given up trying to argue with them. For one thing, the children had no idea what any of it meant. Rudolfo, who did, conceded that it was to some degree true—his mother at least had some connection to these things—and so suffered his beatings in silence.
It was his daily habit to pass by the bear pits. The name Bern, of course, comes from Bären, bears. Bear was the first animal successfully hunted by the town founder, Berchtold V of Zähringen. Since the twelfth century, the creatures have been posted at the gates of the town, and the tradition of keeping this ursine sentry has continued. Today they abide in the heart of the grown city, in a square excavation at the end of a bridge spanning the River Aare. When Rudolfo was a boy the bears numbered four, two adults, two cubs. Each time he stopped by the bear pit, he would clutch the bars, pressing his face between them, and stare down at the rock ledges. He would purse his lips and make little sucking noises, which drew the attention of all the bears, the mother in particular. She would cant her head upwards and search him out, squinting. The mother always looked as if she half-remembered him, found something familiar about him but could not put her claw on it. Once or twice, she whined pitiably.
“Hallo, Mama,” Rudolfo would call. “Wie geht’s?”
On that day, the mother seemed distracted. She reacted to the noises, but only to execute what could well have been a yawn, opening her mouth and exhibiting her huge greyish maw for nearly thirty seconds. Then she rolled into the waterhole, because it was a hot day in August.
Rudolfo continued on his way, underneath the tower that marked the limit of the old city. It was nearly four o’clock, so he paused to watch the exhibition of the clockworks, automatons scurrying along the miniature parapets. Then he set off toward Kramgasse 49.
The silence surrounded him when he was still well away from the apartment, before he had set foot on the sidewalk or passed under the stone archway that canopied the front door. While it was quite true that he could, ordinarily, hear nothing from the street, Rudolfo was disturbed by this profound quiet. He pushed open the door at street level and his cheek was brushed by a tiny, cold wind. He considered running to get someone at that point, an adult who would take him by the hand and lead him away with kind and consoling words, but he knew no adults. None who cared for him, anyway. So he climbed the stairs slowly. It occurred to him that the silence was no such thing; it was sound that had always been masked by the furiously merry laughter of his mother and her friends. Like wind stirring in the belly of the piano or causing the curtain chains to knock against the wall. Rudolfo took the stairs two at a time, not out of haste, but because it was what suited his too-long legs. Sometimes he would step up and his legs would wobble, as unsound as those of a newborn colt.
The apartment door was slightly ajar, which spoke volumes to Rudolfo. He pictured his mother’s friends leaving in a panic, the whole opiated gang of them stampeding through the doorway at once. He looked through the centre pane of the door, trying to see past the edges of the small curtain. He saw a foot, his mother’s huge foot, pressed into a fuzzy slipper. This seemed unreasonable to him, that he should only spy a foot, not enough to turn around and run. He pressed his fingertips against the glass and pushed. The door sighed open. Then he saw enough. Even so, he descended the staircase with admirable calm.
Which is more than can be said for the local police, who with undisguised panic received the report that a boy was trapped in the bear pit. They flew about the station gathering up anything that might be used in the rescue: rifles, ropes, poles and billy clubs.
There was a crowd gathered around the iron railings, a curiously sedate gathering. They murmured, but in a very, very, sober-sided way, as though commenting on a scientific lecture. The reason for the orderliness of the mob, the police soon determined, was the domestic scene being enacted in the bear pit below. The cubs, almost fully grown at this point but still playful, were pushing each other into the waterhole. The father had situated himself in a corner, squeezing his furry fanny into a crevice so that he might sit upright. He held his forelegs in a curious manner; they seemed suspended in front of him as though by guywires, and this made their emptiness all the more apparent. These were paws waiting for a newspaper and pipe. And over on a small ledge, the mother was curled up and applying all of her maternal affection to a human child.
The police fired tranquilizer darts into the beasts. The crowd bristled; one or two even booed softly. After perhaps a minute the bears went down, the youngsters half-in, half-out of the stagnant water, the father with his jaw hanging open. The mother rolled onto her back, revealing that the human boy was naked and chewing contentedly on a piece of raw meat.
At the police station they placed Rudolfo inside a cell because they thought he might feel more comfortable, but also because everyone was a little afraid. The boy was, apparently, incapable of speech. He grunted and occasionally sent up howls of muddled outrage.
It was during that sleepless night—this is how he remembered it, with certainty and conviction, unswayed by the theories of professionals—that Rudolfo lost his hair. The dawn found him curled up in the centre of the cell, one eye closed, one eye warily opened, and all around him lay golden brown tufts. Every hair on his body had come out, his eyelashes riding to the ground borne upon his tears.
In the newspapers the next day, competing with the story of der wilde Junge, were reports concerning Anna Thielmann. Not about her death or the manner of it (which was in truth a little suspect) but the revelation that Anna Thielmann was a man. This was not in any way ambiguous. She, rather he, was anatomically intact, nothing added or subtracted, except for a little hair. Above the knee and below the neck Anna’s body was covered with tiny dark curls. Authorities then remembered that he/she had had a child, but when they went to look, found no one. In the meantime, der wilde Junge had been sent to live in a huge grey building. It called itself a vocational school, eine Berufsschule, but truly it was an institution that dealt with society’s young oddities by hiding them from view and pretending they didn’t exist.
Rudolfo climbed out of bed, grabbed the hairpiece from its stand and fixed it carefully on his slippery head. The wig made him look like he needed a haircut, an effect
that cost many thousands of dollars to achieve.
He found himself standing in the shadow of the hideous monstrosity, number 112 in Preston’s catalogue. Rudolfo did not know it was called the Davenport Spirit Cabinet, nor would he have cared.
The lefthand door was open. Rudolfo peered inside. The interior was rough unfinished wood, stained only by time. The single bench was cockeyed, tilted lamely toward the middle.
The albino leopard joined him, laying his pale snout upon the bench. He pulled back sharply, having gotten a whiff of something foul and decayed. The skin on the beast’s neck wrinkled up like an old dirty sweatsock.
Rudolfo left the bedroom and began to prowl around the mansion, Samson at his side.
He was reaching a few decisions. One, he and Jurgen needed some time apart. This display of petulance and irritability was only the latest in a series of similar outbursts. Actually, the series was one of disdainful glances and hard, dark silences, but it made Rudolfo marvel to think that all it took was a tiny little thing like a plucked hair to escalate one of these into a maniacal rage.
A lemur scurried underfoot, and squealed pitiably as Samson mashed it into the tiles. Rudolfo, lost in a thought, didn’t notice.
His thought was this: Jurgen was not without justification. Rudolfo was willing to shoulder a certain small amount of the responsibility. For example, he was reluctant to change the Show. Mind you, that was because it was damn near perfect, as any idiot could see, but perhaps there was some tiny tinkering that could be done—
And then Rudolfo had an idea. He wasn’t sure if he got the idea and then started whistling, or if some nether region of his psyche, the font of creativity, had caused his lips to purse and emit a tuneful flutter, which in turn gave him this wonderful idea.
The music. He could, he would, change the music. And he knew exactly what to do.
He rushed off to find Jurgen, and such was his excitement that he checked several of the other rooms—the Music Room (essentially, a large speaker with a sofa in it), the Trophy Room (where the three silver cups sat, laden with dust, the stands o’ermounted with tiny, naked swimming boys)—before reluctantly admitting that Jurgen was likely in the Grotto, his nose stuck inside the old and dusty books. So he descended the staircase—Samson heeling like a bulldog, although Rudolfo’s abrupt about-turns caused the leopard to go skidding into the occasional wall—and ran down the hallway.
The stone, the remote-controlled boulder, was rolled into place, blocking the entranceway to the Grotto. Jurgen had replaced the batteries, Rudolfo realized, which irritated him. It seemed like a great deal of trouble to go to, locating batteries in their huge house. Jurgen must have sent Jimmy out to purchase them, or demanded the same of Tiu, the housekeeper. But Jurgen had obviously found it important enough to block off the doorway that he was willing to undergo this battery-changing hell. Rudolfo snorted, and because his nostrils lacked cilia and filament, they produced a loud whistle that brought half a dozen animals running. Rudolfo knelt down to receive them.
The two didn’t actually speak until after that evening’s Show.
When they returned to das Haus, Rudolfo said, “We need to talk.”
Jurgen merely grunted. He did not turn to face Rudolfo, or even slow down, continuing steadfastly down the hallway toward the Grotto. The boulder was still in place—again in place, Rudolfo corrected himself—and Jurgen removed the sleek black remote control from somewhere on his person and blasted it. The stone creaked and rumbled and began to move.
“You see,” explained Rudolfo, “I’m having an idea.”
Now Jurgen spun around, and his eyebrows raised and bumped into each other. “Yeah?” Before Rudolfo could respond, Jurgen turned and nearly bolted through the newly made opening, which seemed barely wide enough to accept him.
Rudolfo took a step or two after him. He caught the wall on either side of the doorway and leant forward, so that his head stuck into the Grotto.
The books were still in teetery stacks, but the stacks had been shoved about until they formed a large, lopsided circle, in the centre of which Jurgen had positioned the wooden automaton. Jurgen approached the automaton now and—although Rudolfo didn’t see him press a button or throw a switch—activated the mechanical man. The doll began to hum and vibrate, turning slightly from side to side and raising, abruptly, its arm. A deck of cards was clutched between the shiny carved fingers. Jurgen plucked one of the cards, studied it briefly and then approached a stack of books. He counted down three, pulled out the volume quickly and returned with it to the little schoolboy’s desk, settling into the seat. Placing his elbows on the tabletop, Jurgen knuckled his hands and rammed them on either side of his head, pulling his crippled purpled eyelids up so that he might better read without interference.
“Yeah,” said Rudolfo, “I’m having a great idea.”
“Speak German,” snapped Jurgen, turning a page, eagerly following the words with a thick forefinger.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe the Show has been getting a little, um …”
“… dull,” Jurgen completed the sentence.
It was a damning word, eintönig. The one inheritance Rudolfo had from his mother was a delivery from dullness. What no one understood—not even Jurgen, Rudolfo reflected bitterly—was that Rudolfo was an artist, that he had been brought into this world to create. His Art was the Show. It could have been painting, or music …
Rudolfo suddenly remembered his inspiration. He smiled brightly and lifted a forefinger. “Bruckner’s Fourth.”
Rudolfo began to sing, by way of illustration, waving his hands before him to suggest motion and pageantry unfolding on an unseen stage. Jurgen glanced up briefly. “The Romantic,” he nodded, and then returned to the ancient tome.
Rudolfo’s hands stilled themselves in the air. How would Jurgen know that Bruckner’s Fourth was nicknamed “The Romantic?” His taste was decidedly more everyday, what Rudolfo characterized as “goatherding music.” Jurgen usually enjoyed listening to squat men strum guitars and squeeze accordians, plaintively bellowing about lost loves.
Rudolfo decided that he must have told Jurgen about it at some point; perhaps he had played the symphony one night as an overture to lovemaking. This would have been some time ago. “Yes, the Romantic, but,” said Rudolfo, loudly enough to make Jurgen’s square head pop up, “the Sturm and Drang version.”
Sturm and Drang was a duo, two dour, middle-aged heroin addicts. When they performed (which they did with merciful infrequency), they stood upon the stage dwarved by a towering monolith of speakers. They themselves hunched over racks of emulators and samplers, pressing down upon the tiered keyboards with the dispassionate propriety of pathologists. They had few fans, but were fortunate in that one of them was Rudolfo Thielmann.
“So here’s my idea. What we should do is—”
“—cancel the Show for a few days,” supplied Jurgen. “You go to Los Angeles and make the music. I’ll stay here and work.”
“Work?”
“I have a few ideas myself.” Jurgen glanced up and winked. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed, but it was impossible to say for certain. Jurgen was always appearing to wink, a spasm sending one or the other of his eyelids bouncing down and up.
“The only problem with that is, you don’t like to be alone.”
“I don’t?”
“No.”
“How do you know that?”
“You told me,” said Rudolfo, treading very carefully because he didn’t know exactly where he was. “You’ve told me that many times.”
“I don’t see how I could have told you that,” said Jurgen, “because I don’t know that. I’ve never been alone.”
There was some truth in that. When they met in Münich, Jurgen was living in a tiny apartment with several brothers and cousins. They slept three in a bed, two on a fold-out couch; there were always at least four of them up to various off-putting things in the single washroom, and for all these Schubert men, it was luxury. “B
ecause,” they’d say, “it’s so crowded at home.” And since then, Rudolfo reflected, he and Jurgen had been together. “Well,” he spoke aloud, “it’s not that great. Being alone. It sounds like it might be wonderful, but in the end, it’s just lonely.”
Jurgen didn’t appear to have heard. “You go to Los Angeles,” he said softly. “I’ll stay here.”
Rudolfo didn’t see Jurgen reach out and press a pad on the remote control, but he must have done, because the boulder shook and began to move. Rudolfo moved his head out of the way and the rock rumbled into place.
Chapter Eight
After performing the Cingalese Eye Levitation, Jurgen had immediately given up Magic, throwing away the cheaply bound Houdini on Magic and reapplying himself to other, more wholesome, interests. Soccer, for example. Jurgen was a talented footballer, and he took to the fields with a vengeance, playing with a grace and savageness not seen in many twelve-year-olds. His only weakness was that, occasionally, as he neared the enemy goal, his eyelids (still brilliantly purple) would flutter and fail, causing him to stumble and kick the ball well away from the net. Jurgen also took up swimming, joining a local aquatics club. The Sharks, die Haie—that was the name given to the division of young boys—met at five o’clock on alternate mornings. They stripped naked and dove into the warm, milky water. Jurgen swam laps with industry, vaguely aware that some portion of his mind was far away in another place.
Despite her having entered a higher level of feeblemindedness, it was Jurgen Schubert’s grandmother who rekindled Jurgen’s interest in Magic. He noticed that whenever he came home from school, Oma’s face would change. She was perpetually sitting on the sofa, her hands nested in her lap. She usually stared straight ahead, her mouth set in a light half-smile, as though expecting an old friend to arrive at any moment. An endless parade of Schuberts had no affect upon this expression. There could be a youngster with his head cracked open from a fall, there could be a near-naked young girl tiptoeing in to grab her nylons from above the kitchen sink, there could be a shiftless uncle drunkenly falling face-first onto the carpet, and Oma Schubert would remain placid and pleasant. But whenever she saw Jurgen, her eyebrows would fly up to mix with the wrinkles, her eyes would bug open and her mouth would shrivel into a tiny creased ring of wonder. “Der Zauberer!” she’d exclaim. “The Conjuror!”
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