The Magician's Wife

by Brian Moore

  And now, the coldness she had shown him last night came back like a wound. I turned against him and if he dies I’ll never be able to tell him that last night I was angry and arrogant and that, with all his faults, he is my husband, who has cared for me and in his way loved me, and without him I will be alone.

  The smell of ether wafted from the surgery as an orderly opened the door and came past her, carrying a tin basin in which she saw blood-soaked instruments. Ether: he is unconscious, his mind in limbo, no longer the servant of his will. What was it he said before he fainted?

  ‘Pretend! Pretend!’

  But could he still pretend?

  The surgeon, bearded, burly, with a squint in his right eye, came towards her, smiling, wiping his hands on a towel. ‘Madame Lambert?’

  She stood up. He offered his hand and she shook it.

  ‘Well, your husband was lucky. We have extracted the bullet. It entered just below his shoulder. There may be some nerve damage. Can’t say just yet. Have you seen Colonel Deniau?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I must find him and give him my report. Your husband is still under the ether. Ah! Here he is.’

  She looked back at the room marked SURGERY thinking that the surgeon referred to Henri. Instead, he nodded to her in farewell and went down the corridor to meet Deniau who had just arrived. They talked, and after a few minutes Deniau joined her. ‘Very good news, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even better, the doctor tells me we will be able to leave tomorrow.’

  ‘Leave?’

  ‘Back to Algiers. And put all this behind you. It’s been a very difficult time for you, I know.’

  ‘But how can we leave tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘Henri is ill.’

  ‘Our doctor tells me Henri is fit to travel. And the first stop in our journey, is, if you remember, just a few hours away. We’ll stay again at Ben-Gannah’s camp. The important thing is to get him out of here as quickly as possible.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he’s in no condition to start on a journey.’

  ‘Dr Laporte doesn’t agree with you. And he knows a lot about bullet wounds. I trust his judgement completely.’

  ‘Henri is still unconscious,’ she said. ‘How can you tell if he’s fit. Besides, I think it should be my decision, not yours.’

  ‘In the end it will be Henri’s,’ Deniau said. ‘He has been incredibly brave. We must capitalize on that bravery. If he rides out of here tomorrow morning the sheikhs and marabouts, the whole of Algeria in fact, will know that once again he has proved he is invincible. What happened today will add to his legend. My dear, don’t you realize we’ve won? Henri has succeeded in everything he set out to do. Because of him there will be no jihad. Because of him, your friend Bou-Aziz has been discredited. We mustn’t let anything spoil this triumph.’

  ‘Bou-Aziz discredited?’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Ah!’ Deniau looked at her. ‘Well, of course, you know him better than I do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You spoke to him the day before yesterday in his zawiya. What did you talk about? I’m curious. Did you urge him not to declare a holy war?’

  She did not answer.

  ‘This land is filled with spies,’ he said. ‘We have them too. We call it military intelligence. Let me make a suggestion. If you help us now, I mean, help us get Henri away safely, then in return I promise you I won’t mention to him that you visited the zawiya.’

  ‘He knows. Now go away. Please?’

  At that moment, the door of the operating room opened and her husband was wheeled out on a trolley. He was unconscious, his body covered by a white sheet. She got up at once and leaving Deniau walked beside the trolley, looking down at the pale unconscious face. The trolley was wheeled into the small intensive-care room where Jules had died. As the orderlies pushed it into place against the wall, she saw Deniau signalling to her from the doorway.

  ‘Please, Emmeline. I won’t disturb you. Look – I’m sorry for what I just said. Forgive me. Let’s stay friends. I’m not your enemy.’

  She did not look at him. ‘But you are.’

  She sat down by the bedside. When she looked again, he had gone.

  She lost as she knew she would. When, two hours later, Lambert woke, he was drowsy, weak and nauseated by the ether. But his first question was: ‘Did they see me? I fainted, didn’t I? But I was inside the yard at the time?’

  She reassured him. She told him about the operation and its success. And then, when she mentioned what she termed as ‘Deniau’s mad idea to leave tomorrow’, she no sooner said the words than he sat up on the trolley with a strange half-gasp of triumph.

  ‘Well, that means I’ve done it, doesn’t it? Despite what happened, the Arabs still believe I’m invincible. Of course, Charles is right. The thing to do now is ride out in triumph as we always planned to do. Get away from here, the sooner the better.’

  Shortly before dark, Deniau and Hersant came to see him. When they entered the sickroom she moved away from the bedside, but stood in the rear, listening to what was said.

  After congratulations and praise, Deniau told him: ‘Henri, we’re planning to leave tomorrow. Did Emmeline tell you? I know she’s against it but – ’

  ‘No, no, she told me and I agree completely with your idea.’

  ‘I’m glad. It would be a pity to spoil things. Besides, the doctor thinks you’ll manage quite nicely as long as you don’t use your right arm. Well, of course, you can’t use it just now, can you? But you will ride with a cloak over your shoulders. They won’t see the bandages.’

  ‘And we’re planning to ride out at dawn,’ Hersant said. ‘There won’t be many people around at that hour.’

  ‘But the sheikhs will be told you’ve gone,’ Deniau said. ‘And of course our friend the former Muhammad b. ’Abd Allah.’

  They all three laughed. Deniau glanced back at her, then said, ‘I feel rather sorry for him. All this talk of a spiritual retreat won’t sit well with the Kabyle leaders but as he’s still the country’s leading marabout, they’ll have to accept it. And of course there’s a tradition behind what he said today, a hope of defeating us through prayer. That’s what he’ll now try to sell to the Kabyles. And he’ll succeed, at least, for a time.’

  ‘At least until summer,’ Hersant said and again they laughed.

  ‘I’ll send Dufour on ahead to give Maréchal Randon the good news,’ Deniau said. ‘Algiers will pass on the word to Louis Napoleon himself. We must see to it that Henri’s bravery is rewarded. Alas, the Emperor can’t give you his new medaille militaire, because that’s reserved for soldiers. But the Légion d’Honneur? Yes.’

  ‘The highest level of the Legion is what?’ Hersant asked. ‘Grand Cross?’

  Lambert sank back on his pillows. He seemed exhausted, but exhilarated as though he were drunk. ‘On any level,’ he said, ‘I’ll feel honoured. Vive La France!’

  They rode out through deserted streets, past shuttered market stalls, through the main gates, spurring their horses into a canter, the sun now floating like a kite in the sky as they passed up the road bordered by the temporary encampments of the visiting sheikhs. Children and barking dogs ran out to see them go: women watched from the openings of goatskin tents, while their menfolk sitting in a circle under awnings drank their morning coffee, glancing up with studied incuriosity as the Roumi troop, Lambert, Emmeline, Hersant, Deniau with his servant Kaddour and three camel drivers, switching the flanks of their heavily burdened beasts, left Milianah behind, their caravan growing smaller and smaller on the horizon.

  In mid-afternoon they reached the Moorish dwellings of Ben-Gannah who rode out with his son to greet them as before. Lambert dismounted stiffly, still concealing his injury. Refusing his host’s offer of coffee, he went at once with Emmeline to their room. There, she helped him remove his sweat-stained jacket and unlaced his boots so that he could lie on the divan. His arm was in a sling and when he
lay on his back in the bed, he tried to raise it. It fell back on his stomach. He turned his head to look at her and she saw his alarm.

  ‘My shoulder,’ he said to her. ‘It’s not so much pain as something else. My arm feels dead. When they changed the bandage last night, that surgeon said something about nerve damage. Do you remember?’

  ‘I remember that he didn’t seem worried. He said you were very lucky.’

  ‘But he did say something. He said they didn’t know yet.’

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s less than forty-eight hours since you were shot at. Of course, your arm doesn’t feel normal. Now, try to rest. The trip tomorrow will be more difficult than it was today. Remember the steep ravines on our way here? That’s my worry. How will you manage?’

  ‘We won’t be on stage then,’ he said. ‘I can let my guard down. Deniau’s servant will lead my horse.’

  But on the following day when, in the ravines, their horses stumbled and slithered in deep descent, the giant Kaddour took Lambert down from his horse and carried him through the most dangerous of the passes. And then, towards sunset as they at last approached Algiers, Deniau rearranged Lambert’s cloak and tunic, while Emmeline bathed his face and neck as he positioned himself for the ride into the city where Arab eyes would survey his passage. And, as always when he felt himself to be in the public gaze, Lambert displayed the discipline in deception that was the cornerstone of his skills.

  But the following evening when he was fêted and applauded at a reception given by Monsieur de la Garde, attended by all of the senior officials and their wives, Emmeline saw that something had happened to him. He, who had always been avid for approbation, now seemed restless and inattentive, anxious for the evening to end. At first she put it down to fatigue and his wound but that night as she helped him undress, he looked at her and said, ‘This is the end for me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I am a cripple now.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘No. The doctor who came to dress my wound this afternoon is Colonel Pouzin. He’s the senior medical officer in Algiers and Maréchal Randon’s personal physician. So his is the best possible opinion. I described my symptoms and he made some tests. There is severe nerve damage. I may be able to raise my arm to waist-level, or I may not. In any event, my career is over. I am crippled for life.’

  She looked at him, desperately searching for words of denial and comfort. But instead saw him as he once was when he entered a room, holding up his slender, graceful hands as if to show that nothing was concealed. Or standing on a stage, diverting the attention of his audience by quick skilful movements, his right hand holding his talismanic ivory-tipped baton to draw attention away from that other hand which would make the covert movement necessary to produce an illusion. That right hand, that right arm, now a dead weight at his side.

  ‘But your inventions,’ she said. ‘You told me you no longer needed to perform, you said you wanted to devote more time to your mechanical inventions, to your marionettes.’

  He took hold of his useless right arm, holding it carefully as he eased himself down on the bed. ‘Inventions? Who would remember me if I were merely a clockmaker? Who, when they watch a mechanical marionette perform its tasks on stage, asks who made it? No, they watch me, the magician, the man who can make people disappear, the man who can bring flowers and fruit endlessly from a cornucopia, the man who – why do I tell you, you’ve seen how people admire me, even fear me, you saw what happened here in Africa where I have managed to prevent a war! I am Henri Lambert, known throughout Europe as the greatest magician alive. And now because some drugged savage fires a pistol, my life is over.’

  ‘Your life is not over,’ she said. ‘You’re famous, you have money, you can work on your inventions. And you have me. You said I mean everything to you.’

  ‘You do.’ He looked at her and shook his head.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Do I have you? Or is that another of my illusions?’

  ‘Henri, listen – Henri?’

  But he turned his face to the wall.

  Two weeks later, the steamer Alexander sailed from the port of Algiers on its normal passage to Marseille. On the promenade deck Lambert stood with Emmeline, his left arm around her waist as they looked down at the dock where Monsieur and Madame de la Garde and Colonel Deniau smiled up at them. As the steamer’s siren hooted and the mooring ropes were slipped, those on shore waved in farewell. Instinctively, Lambert tried to raise his right arm in salute. But it fell back against his side. Emmeline looked down at Deniau and the others. She did not wave.

  The following year, in the summer of 1857, French armies under the command of Maréchal Randon and General MacMahon subdued the tribes of Kabylia, thus completing the conquest of Algeria by France.

  In the summer of 1962, Algeria officially declared its independence, ending the French presence in that country.

  BRIAN MOORE was born in Belfast. He emigrated to Canada in 1948 and then moved to California. He twice won the Canadian Governor General’s Award for Fiction and has been given a special award from the United States Institute of Arts and Letters. He won the Author’s Club First Novel Award for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Great Victorian Collection. The Doctor’s Wife, The Colour of Blood – winner of the Sunday Express 1988 Book of the Year – and Lies of Silence were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Six of his novels have been made into films – The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Catholics, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Cold Heaven, The Statement and Black Robe. Brian Moore died in 1999.

  By the Same Author

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  The Luck of Ginger Coffey

  An Answer from Limbo

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  I am Mary Dunne

  Fergus

  Catholics

  The Great Victorian Collection

  The Doctor’s Wife

  The Mangan Inheritance

  The Temptation of Eileen Hughes

  Cold Heaven

  Black Robe

  The Colour of Blood

  Lies of Silence

  The Statement

  No Other Life

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