He flipped over onto his hands and knees and in doing so brought his eyes within a foot of the Grotto wall. There was just light enough to illuminate the marks and scratches there. This time his shock was so great that he could not help speaking aloud. “Fuck shit,” he said—for inches away were the cyphers and runes that had troubled him so as a toddler, those made by Albert Einstein upon the walls of the walk-up at Kramgasse 49.
Rudolfo was up on his feet in a trice. He’d already persuaded himself that what he’d just seen was a trick of the imagination. He was so determined to rid his mind of the image (which floated eerily across his field of vision, like the afterimage left by a flashbulb) that he crossed over to the mechanical man, made a kind of bow and said, “Hi, baby.”
The automaton’s hand again began to jerk back and forth. It was, Rudolfo realized, waving. Rudolfo raised his own hand, spreading the fingers, and moved it back and forth like the baton of a broken metronome.
Moon’s other hand suddenly appeared before Rudolfo. Clutched between the wooden fingers was a deck of cards. They were odd cards, longer and more slender than those that Rudolfo was used to. The design on the back was a simplistic representation of the night sky, a black background adorned with six-pointed stars and a large sliver of moon. As Rudolfo looked at the cards, the machine’s hand snapped, and instantly the deck was spread and fanned into a perfect semicircle. Then the hand raised the deck and then lowered it slowly, and Rudolfo understood that he was to pick a card, any card.
He reached forward, placed his fingertips on a card and then cannily moved them to the right, digging out a card from within a denser grouping. He was smugly pleased with himself, until he flipped over the card and saw that he’d drawn the two of hearts.
Moon’s jaw clacked open and the machine began its soundless laughing. Rudolfo yanked the cards out of the wooden hand and flipped them over, sure that every one would be a two of hearts, that this was some elaborate trick rigged by the increasingly odd Jurgen Schubert. But the cards were different and randomly ordered. Moon continued to laugh with silent clockwork glee.
“Shut up, facefuck,” whispered Rudolfo, and then he spun about, alarmed at a rustling at his back.
A huge patch of shadow floated toward him. “We have to find his secret,” whispered Dr. Merdam, the whiteness of his eyes gleaming brightly. He tore the top book from the first pile he came to. He threw back the leather cover and took the ends of some brittle pages between his fingers. There was a little poof and a small mushroom cloud and then his fingertips were covered with dust.
“What secret?” demanded Rudolfo.
“The secret of dissubstantiation. The secret of corporeal evaporation.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He only weighs fifty-eight pounds,” whispered Dr. Merdam.
“You don’t want that secret, Doc.”
“Yes, I do. It is what I dream about. Weightlessness.”
“Doc, Doc. Don’t say this.”
“I’m a massive blob of protoplasm that’s gone out of control. I’m huge and heavy and the Tony Anthony mental exercises are exhausting. I suffer headaches. I’m addicted to no end of prescription drugs. I long for nothingness.”
“You’re not fat, Doc. You just got big bones.”
Dr. Merdam picked up the next book, held it at arm’s length and focused on the gilt letters on the cover. “La Magie assyrienne.” Merdam lifted his sad eyes and translated quietly. “Assyrian Magic. Sounds hopeful.”
“Besides,” said Rudolfo, “is just trick.”
There was a buzz and a click and Moon swivelled about, one of his wooden hands bumping into Rudolfo’s shoulder. Rudolfo was not really surprised to see that the whittled fingers held a new deck of cards, blue-backed Bees. He obediently withdrew a card, flipped it over to note that it was, in fact, the two of hearts, and tossed it away.
“Trick?” echoed Dr. Merdam. “It’s no trick, my friend. My scales are accurate to within a hundredth of a pound.”
“Yeah, yeah. But magic is making assumes.”
“Assumptions?”
“Sure. Your scales say fifty-eight, you assume that Jurgen losing weight.”
“He must indeed be.”
“No, no, Doc,” said Rudolfo, waving a finger in the air. “He just not being affected by gravity.” As he spoke these words, it occurred to him—in a burst that left him flushed with adrenalin—that if Jurgen were no longer with Dr. Merdam, he was very likely on his way back to the Grotto. “Erps,” gasped Rudolfo, and he took hold of Merdam’s soft elbow and tried to spin him about. “We got to get out of here.”
But it was too late. The light from the corridor—which spilt in through the huge irregular circle left by the remote-controlled boulder—was filled suddenly by a silhouette. Jurgen folded his hands upon his hips and turned his head slowly back and forth.
“So, Jurgen,” said Rudolfo, surveying the Grotto with an air of idleness. “Have you ever thought about renovation?”
Jurgen remained silent, causing the other men to stir uneasily on their feet. He was dressed in his robe, filthy and soiled, indistinct in the gloom; all Rudolfo and Merdam could make out was his dark outline. They watched him raise his arms; the material from the robe rolled down to collect at his elbows. His forearms glowed like neon.
“Uh-oh,” came a small voice. Rudolfo turned to look at Dr. Merdam—Merdam turned to look at Rudolfo. They realized that neither of them had uttered “uh-oh,” and both glanced then at Moon. The automaton had raised both its wooden hands to cover glass eyes.
There came a long whine, like the sound of a crone keening at the funeral of a child. The papers strewn about the Grotto—pieces of parchment, broadsheets advertising Ehrich Weiss, the “world’s greatest mystifier and self-liberator”—stirred and rustled on the floor. Then they lifted into the air, borne by the wind—for it was a wind that was howling—and began to whirl above the heads of Rudolfo and Dr. Merdam. The towers of books shook, trembled and toppled. The leather covers flew open and the pages flipped from front to back and made little drum rolls.
Jurgen remained in the doorway, blocking the one avenue of escape, moving his arms like a symphony conductor.
“Okay, Doc,” Rudolfo said quietly, “we better be going now.”
Dr. Merdam exploded toward the doorway, his four hundred pounds accelerating so quickly that he’d achieved maximum velocity by the time he hit Jurgen. Rudolfo never saw, quite, what happened, because Merdam’s bulk plugged the opening as tightly as the remote-controlled boulder. Then, with a long sucking sound and a clownish pop, the doctor was through. He executed an elegant pirouette, trying to decide which way to go, then disappeared.
Rudolfo moved toward the doorway.
“Don’t go.”
Rudolfo turned around slowly. He was actually hoping that the words had come from the fucking wooden doll, even though that was a fairly horrifying prospect. But he’d recognized the voice.
Jurgen sat behind the small schoolboy’s desk, his square brow propped on a luminous hand. His eyes pored over the pages of an ancient tome while his fingers deftly and rhythmically turned the pages. “Don’t go,” he repeated. “Stay a while. Read a book.”
“I can’t read,” sighed Rudolfo. “You know I can’t read. If I could read, I don’t know if I would read. Maybe I would. Sometimes I want to. But the fact is, I can’t read.”
Jurgen looked up then, and smiled gently. For a moment his aspect changed. The glowing abated, briefly, and flesh tones, mottled by fever and spackled with illness, returned. His dark eyes suddenly filled with emotion, at least, Rudolfo was fairly confident he could see emotion back there, trapped and restless, like a big cat in an iron cage. “Rudy,” said Jurgen quietly, and then his eyes deadened and his skin became incandescent and he looked down at the book once more.
The intruder in the Grotto—who wears a black bodysuit and a balaclava, large spectacles balanced on the blunted nose and pinching the flattened ears—has m
ade a few discoveries. The automaton, for example, when set into motion, surveys the circle of books and ends up facing a particular stack. The machine then produces an ancient playing card, always a spot, never a face; that number is counted off in the stack and reveals the book to be looked at and investigated. At least, that’s the theory the intruder has come up with, although—he pauses momentarily and wonders at a loud, long sound that must be distant thunder, yet seems to come from within the bizarre mansion—the practice doesn’t yield much in the way of results. One book tends to refer the quester to another book, that book to yet another, and while each might have some small kernel of information, the accumulation of knowledge is infuriatingly slow. The intruder had been hoping there was one book, one ancient volume, that held the key, something that could be stolen.
He hears someone clear his throat, a dainty “ahem” such as a librarian might come up with if a patron were absent-mindedly drumming a pencil on a tabletop. The intruder turns away from the books and there, in the hole that serves as the Grotto’s doorway, stands that fucking ghostly tiger.
Samson roars, a very long roar, because it feels good—the mouth-expansion, the way his jaw muscles and tendons stretch to the point of pain.
The intruder jumps. The spectacles pop away from the mask and tumble to the floor.
Samson steps into the cave and begins to circle. He lifts and drops a paw, carving up the air into thick slices.
The intruder pulls off his balaclava, desperately relying on the fact that he is world-famous. “Look,” says Kaz, “it’s me.”
Samson, of course, roars even more loudly now, because he hates Kaz, wouldn’t even eat him with a side of fries. He snakes his head forward, trying to bounce candlelight off his fangs, trying to make them glisten.
“Aaagh,” says Kaz, a sound that is almost hidden by the gaseous bubbling erupting from his backside.
Samson chuckles lowly, but immediately becomes fearsome once more. Roar, snap, swipe, roar snap-snap, swipe, man, you never really forget this stuff.
Kaz shrieks, so high-pitched that Samson winces, and then he lights out for the doorway. Samson wheels around and takes after him, but only for a few steps. Kaz disappears down the hallway. Samson tilts his head and listens—in a few seconds comes the sound of glass shattering. Kaz has driven himself through a plate-glass window. This sound, in turns, terrifies the small marauders inside das Haus, and Samson can hear them scurrying, the footfalls fast and frantic. Then all these sounds disappear.
He wanders over to sniff at Moon. Perhaps his nose brushes some button or switch—Samson has no sensation—but suddenly the Grotto is filled with the grainy, hushed sounds of clockwork. The mechanical man begins to laugh with silent mirth. Samson lifts a paw and bats the automaton off its perch. Moon tumbles to the ground and, being made of old wood and rusty metal, cracks into many pieces. Samson swivels his backside, then sprays a little stream of steaming piss all over the pile of lumber.
It seems as though, after all those years of timidity, Samson is now nothing but rage. He circles about the Grotto knocking over stacks of books. The stacks in turn knock over the candles, and the two lie together on the floor, old paper and flame. Samson knows what that means. But he does not leave the Grotto. Instead, he sniffs about and locates the remote control. He takes it into his mouth, bounces it about until his left incisor comes to rest on the button marked ><. He bites down and sets the huge boulder in motion. As it rolls to block the entrance to the Grotto, Samson calmly begins to chew. There are a few sparks and electronic hisses.
The rock falls into place, stopping the hole forever.
Chapter Twenty-six
Within a few days, Miranda had crowded the sleeping quarters at the George Theater with lumps of clay, blocks of wood, easels, canvases and acrylics. And, although it had taken her a few hours, she’d persuaded Preston to sit for a portrait. And, although it had taken her a few additional hours, she had gotten him to pose naked. He now sat on a wooden chair, his hands resting open on his lap, although they twitched restively quite often, eager to cover his crotch. “Why,” he demanded, “am I butt naked?”
“On account of I have a theory,” said Miranda. Her palate was crowded with pigment; to approximate Preston’s skin tone she found it necessary to combine almost all of them, even Royal Purple and Flaming Magnesium. “You see, a real magician wouldn’t wear all those fancy clothes. Fancy clothes—tails or whatever—are just saying, look, I’m hiding stuff every-frigging-where. Right? So a real magician—at least, this is my little artistic conceit—would be starkers. Now sit still.”
“I am sitting still.”
“Your eyes. They’re, like, pulsating.”
“Anyway, I’m not a real magician.”
“I see.” Miranda took a step backwards and appraised her painting. It wasn’t too bad. She was determined to capture her lover faithfully, so it would be a long time before she’d rendered every wen and maculation. She dabbed her brush in burnt umber and started in on his belly.
“I’m just a carnival huckster.”
“Okay. Sit still.”
“That’s all I am. A charlatan and a mountebank.”
“You seem to be labouring under the impression that we are debating this point. You are a carnie, I am a carnie. Now, shut up and sit still. I am trying to immortalize you.”
“I just, I just—” Preston took a deep breath, which caused the fat on his belly to roll.
“Shit,” scowled Miranda. “Now look what you’ve done.” The freckles and moles were suddenly realigned, the constellations had changed.
“I just want to make sure you understand that.”
“Right.”
“Because it quite often makes no sense to me.”
“What’s this now?”
“You and me.”
“How so?”
“Because I’m fat and ugly. And you’re flawless.”
“Preston, we’re sitting here in Las Vegas, where dice are getting rolled every second of every day. So I don’t know why you haven’t learned by now that almost everything is chance, happenstance, which includes the nature of our physical beings. So I’ve got the Bod and you’ve got, you know—” She gestured both at Preston and at her painted rendition of him. “Anyway, our bodies have been doing what bodies were designed to do. No problem there. At least, very few problems.”
“Huh?”
“Baby, just let me paint. I don’t like talking so much.”
“You always change the subject.”
“What fucking subject?”
“You know.”
“I do not know. I don’t change the subject. I respond. One sentence leads to another. The focus of our conversation shifts.” Miranda’s hand jerked and scraped a gash of clown-cheek red across Preston’s painted belly. She threw down her brush. “Fuck.” She raised the back of her hand and wiped at her face, leaving behind a wide smear of colour where there had been a tear.
Preston remembered a certain morning, long ago. The memory slept like a drunk in an old rooming house, buried beneath the threadbare blankets of memory, snoring and shaking the walls.
This conversation with Miranda jarred it awake—his eighth birthday party. He’d managed to assemble quite a collection of children for the party, a truly impressive number considering he had no friends. His mother fed them hot dogs, chocolate cake and huge goblets of cola. After the feast, before Preston was allowed to tear into the little pile of gaudily wrapped presents, there was entertainment.
Preston the Magnificent appeared suddenly, in full performance gear—a morning suit, puffed cravat, shoes so polished they gleamed and blinded. The children were transfixed by his hair, which was pomaded into an unlikely monolith of curls and locks. “Behold before you,” he said, “a world-traveller, only newly returned to these shores. In my journeys, I have studied fakir miracles, both great and small, in the private chambers of Mohammedan rajahs! I have studied the art of levitation in Tibetan lamaseries! And I, alone in t
he Occident, am tutored in the secrets of the greatest wizards civilization has thus produced, the fabled Cingalese!!”
“Hi, Dad,” muttered little Preston. This was not the scheduled entertainment. There was supposed to be someone named Sniffles the Clown. What little Preston didn’t know (it would be years before his mother told him) was that his father had confronted Sniffles outside, sending him away with idiosyncratic gestures clearly designed to convey rudeness. Preston the Magnificent also hurled verbal abuse upon Sniffles and his ilk, decrying the craft of clowning as “sheer, mindless bumbletry.” Then he attended to his hair, sharpened the points of his moustache and descended upon his son’s birthday party.
Preston didn’t know why he was dreading this performance—he’d spent months bargaining for it. What good was having a dad who was a magician if the guy wouldn’t even do magic at his own son’s birthday party? But his father had demurred, waving his beautiful, delicate hand in the air. “Nay, nay. I labour upon the proscenium or I labour not at all.”
Preston had begged, but his father was obdurate, indeed, lived his entire life in an advanced state of obduracy. “I shan’t, boy. Beg not. It lacks dignity.”
So Preston settled for Sniffles, resigned himself to the buffoon, and was inexplicably panicky when his father showed up in the clown’s stead.
For a while, things went very well. Preston the Magnificent pranced about the dining room herding balloons, which he then pricked with a long needle. The rubber would explode to reveal some little treat, an ice cream cone, for example, a chocolate bar or a bottle of soda. The children applauded tirelessly. Then, once everyone had received a treat (“Give them something to stick in their orifices,” Preston the Magnificent advised his son years later), he moved on to stagier effects. He produced eight silver rings, banged and clanged them to illustrate their solidity, and then made the rings form links and chains. He blew upon the metal and the rings seemed to melt into and out of each other. The children didn’t enjoy this illusion so much, mostly because there was no payoff involved, but they did applaud and those who had mastered the art placed dirty fingers in their mouths and whistled.
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