But he’d kept it together.
Like any true saint would.
Remember St Simeon–on whose bizarre example that particular Challenge was based? (Okay, so I didn’t, either, before I read Blaine’s book.) This was a man who spent 37 years on top of various pillars (circa AD 389–his cable reception was much better up there), a man who, as a matter of course, went 40 days–the whole of Lent–without even the tiniest morsel of edible sustenance. And why?
Why? Because he was fucked up. That’s why. He was a nut-case. A fanatic. Because–and this really is the bottom line–just like Blaine, he simply loved to do it.
Oh yeah (I nearly forgot), and because he used personal suffering ’as a vehicle for interpreting Christ’s Teaching’.
What? You think Christ didn’t go through enough himself?
I mean why the hell didn’t he just go that extra mile, huh?
Glass in his shoes, perhaps.
You know, now I actually come to think about it, the quality of sound on the i-Pod does seem a little too compressed. Boxed up. Flattened out. Smaller.
Have you noticed that?
And here’s another thing: now that I actually have all this choice, I find that I just keep on hankering after the same short selection. Time and again. Ad infinitum.
Which is terribly disappointing.
Ideologically speaking.
Home.
At last.
I quietly let myself into the house, tiptoe through to the kitchen, and am not a little surprised to discover Jalisa, sitting alone at the table–wrapped up in one of Solomon’s Oriental robes (which is way too big for her), drinking a mint tea and reading the Blaine book.
‘Don’t you find that Blaine story quite amazing?’ she says, not even glancing up (as if I’ve been standing there, all night, just waiting for her observations).
‘Which one?’
‘He’s a six-year-old kid, travelling alone to school on the subway. It’s a very straightforward journey, just two stops. And he’s playing with this bunch of tarot cards, which he loves to perform tricks with…’
I suddenly remember.
‘Yes,’ I take over, ‘and these two old women take an interest in the cards, so he shows them a trick or two, but his hand slips at one point and he accidentally drops them–’
‘The train stops suddenly,’ she interrupts (the story fresher in her mind), ‘and they fall on to the floor. But by the time they’ve gathered them all together, he’s missed his stop.’
‘So he panics.’
‘But then the women get off the train with him at the next station, take him over to the other side, catch another train back, walk him to school, and explain to his teacher why he’s late…’
She glances up at me, then down at the book again. ‘He says that this experience taught him how much–even at such a young age–his magic affected people.’
She smiles. ‘But what it actually taught him, was how magic was a useful device for making people care for him. Magic placed him in jeopardy, and then magic seemingly pulled him through again.’
She closes the book and puts a hand up to her eyes.
‘I think I caught conjunctivitis off the dog.’
‘What? That’s ridiculous.’
She sighs. ‘I caught it off a cat before…’
‘Well in that case, maybe Jax caught it off you.’
She gives this possibility some serious thought.
I pick up the book myself and turn to an image towards the back.
‘Did you see this?’
I point to a photo (a still, taken from a local woman’s home video) of the top of Blaine’s casket, which was taken during the Buried Alive stunt.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘A black cross. The woman who took this says that it appeared above the casket and just hung there, at all times, throughout the week that he was buried.’
Jalisa stares at it, her expression incredulous.
‘He goes on to say,’ I continue, ‘in the text, how he planned to get buried on Good Friday, that his birthday fell on Easter Sunday that year, but then they finally decided to delay the whole thing until the religious holidays were over.’
She rolls her red eyes–they are very red, actually (Hmmn. Must remember what mug she’s been drinking that tea from, and avoid it like the plague in the morning).
‘I love the way,’ she grins, ‘that he never makes any kind of overt statement. He leaves those imaginative leaps to the reader–or the spectator. He just presents all this quasi-religious information as if it’s by-the-by, pure coincidence, stuff that simply happens…’
‘Because please let’s not forget,’ I lecture sternly, ‘that Jesus Christ was a master magician; turning one loaf into a thousand loaves, the water into wine…’
She chuckles, ‘And didn’t Jesus also get slated in his time?’
‘They crucified him in the press, apparently.’
‘Ho ho,’ she ho-hos.
I do a little curtsy.
‘I was fascinated,’ she continues, ‘by all that stuff, early on, about the “magic room” he saw in his dreams.’
‘Me too.’
‘Blaine says the room stopped appearing to him when he got to an age where he realised that depending on the “props” of magic wasn’t the way to go. That “real” magic wasn’t about boxes with false bottoms in them, it was something more true, more “grown up”, more powerful…’
She slowly shakes her head.
‘You’re not buying that?’
‘No. Why? Are you?’
I shrug.
‘He wants us to believe that all the magic he does now is real,’ she says. ‘But I find it difficult to accept that this “magic room” of his childhood wasn’t actually a belief in real magic. Children are credulous. They’re full of wonder. For a child, anything is possible. I can’t help feeling like the adult Blaine has cleverly flipped the meaning of his dream inside out…’
‘So why did the magic room disappear from his dreams, then?’ I ask the Oh Wise One.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ She throws out her hand, dismissively (accidentally loosening the folds of her robe). ‘The room disappeared when this terrible realisation finally dawned on him that magic was an illusion. It disappeared when he realised that there was no such thing as real magic. Only a clever combination of cunning, luck and manipulation. I mean he openly states himself that the psychology of magic is the same as the psychology of a small-time con. Magic is just a combination of pre-planning, deception and a powerful ego.’
I ponder this for a while.
‘You think he’s in denial, at some level?’
‘At some level, yes. He has to be. Otherwise it wouldn’t work. I mean he makes a big deal in the book about how all the greatest magicians were people who “played the part” of someone with supernatural powers. But what does that actually really mean? Because anyone can play a part, but then it’s still fundamentally just play…’
She sighs. ‘The fact is that it’s this playful gap which Blaine is most interested in. It’s what he exploits. It’s where his power resides. His strength, as a performer, lies in this confusion. But he calls it “mystery”…’
She pauses, perhaps slightly confused herself, now. ‘I mean he talks a great deal about “belief” in the book, as if a person having the innocent facility simply to believe without questioning is something magical, something wonderful, as if a person’s at their very best when they’re truly “open”, truly “vulnerable”, but I keep on wondering exactly what they’re believing in. What lives in that gap between appearance and fact? You can call me cynical, but I’m not entirely convinced that it’s necessarily a good thing…’
She glances up–for confirmation–observes my goofy smile, quickly glances down, bellows, ‘You shit!’ and frantically grapples with those loosened folds of fabric.
Now that’s the kind of gap a man can believe in.
Of course I wouldn’t dream of loo
king
Far too much respect there.
Although, for the record: very dark nipples.
And much fuller than you might initially imagine.
Okay. Let’s all just forget I said that, eh?
Sixteen
Something strange and disturbing happens en route to work. I’ve just crossed Tower Bridge (on the left-hand side, with its view of the east and Canary Wharf), have jogged down that (now) infamous curving stairwell (the site of my first, late-night encounter with the green-hoofed Aphra), have turned a sharp right (in order to facilitate an early-morning trip to the Shad Thames Starbucks), when I espy Hilary (sans headcloth), crouched over (hunched), a few yards along from the embankment wall.
My instinct is to saunter on by, but then I remember Punk’s Not’s comments of the other evening and think better of it. I walk over. He glances up, sees it’s me, but says nothing.
‘What the hell’re you doing?’ I ask him.
‘Moth,’ he murmurs, pointing.
Eh?
I peer down. Good God. He’s right. The most spectacular moth. About five inches in diameter, subtly coloured–but magnificently patterned–in a range of dark chocolate browns, subtle fawns and pale creams. Fluffy torso. Two fantastic, golden antennae.
But something’s wrong. I pull in closer and see that someone’s cleverly stuck it on to a wodge of yellow bubblegum.
‘Oh Christ. Who’d do that?’
Hilary shakes his head.
‘It’s quite exquisite,’ he says, then adds (in case I was in any doubt), ‘I really love moths.’
I take a step back. ‘D’you know what kind it is?’
‘Nope.’
‘D’you reckon it’s indigenous?’
He shrugs. ‘Could’ve come in on a boat, I guess. One of the big cruise ships which travel around Europe and dock here at the Tower.’
He stares at it some more, plainly quite mesmerised.
‘You stand guard,’ I tell him, ‘and I’ll go and buy a bottle of water so we can try and wash some of that gunk off.’
He waits. I go to get the water (and two coffees. And two buns. Aw).
Then we commence our heroic battle to save the moth.
The moth is very obliging. And it’s still quite gutsy (quite lively, too), which we both construe as a positive sign.
Hilary gently holds on to its abdomen and the tip of one large wing as I slowly pour some water on to the gum surrounding its leg area. Once a small pool of liquid has been created around it, Hilary gradually tries to pull it free.
The moth struggles, impressively, to kick its legs clear. But the gum is stuck thoroughly to its belly and to the pavement below.
At this critical point, Aphra turns up.
‘What the hell’re you doing?’ she asks, placing her bag of Tupperware down on to the cobbles.
‘Moth,’ Hilary says.
I don’t look up. I look sideways. I see that she’s wearing a ferocious pair of orange-patent-leather winkle-pickers which render her feet almost a third-again as long. She leans over.
‘Yuk,’ she says.
‘Someone stuck it down on to the pavement with a piece of gum,’ I murmur (in that blank yet heartfelt tone especially favoured by the doctors on ER).
Hilary, meanwhile, has trotted off to find some kind of pointed implement–an old nail, a stick–so that he can flip the gum away with it.
‘Good night, was it?’ I ask her, my voice slightly jaundiced-sounding (why, I’m not entirely sure).
‘Have you ever noticed how terribly Hilary stinks?’ she asks. ‘Like old sweat and shit and Bovril?’
I flinch (I mean, is the poor bastard even out of earshot?).
I point to her shoes. ‘Been auditioning for pantomime, have we?’
She snorts–almost a guffaw (now that’s a result).
I glance up at her, half-smiling. She’s inspecting the moth again. ‘You know, that isn’t gum,’ she says, matter-of-factly, ‘that’s its guts.’
‘What?’
Hilary returns bearing the dried stem of a dead flower.
‘Aphra thinks that goo might be the moth’s intestines,’ I tell him.
He crouches down and begins to poke around.
‘Oh fuck,’ he says, his voiced hushed in horror, ‘I think she’s right. I think it is.’
We all recoil and then stare at the moth some more.
‘But they’re so yellow,’ I say, ‘and so sticky. And it still seems so alive…’
‘There is something quite amazing…’ Hilary begins.
Then Aphra kicks out her winkle-pickered foot and slams it down on top of it. Once. Twice. She performs a small pirouette.
‘Dead,’ she says (with some satisfaction), casually inspecting the sole of her shoe which is now smattered in moth-goo. She grabs my bottle of water and splashes it over. She scrapes the shoe clean on the side of a nearby bench.
She inspects it again.
It’s pristine.
She uses the remaining water to wash the side of the bench off (so Public Spirited of her), then hands me the empty bottle back.
Hilary stands up.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I suppose that’s that, then.’
‘Poor moth,’ I say.
We both inspect the spot.
‘Blaine had a restless night,’ she informs us, ‘and woke slightly earlier than usual this morning. But he seems in pretty good spirits, just the same.’
Then she chucks me, fondly, under the chin, nods towards Hilary, grabs her bag, and Arabian Nights it off down the cobbles, apparently without a care.
‘So compassionate,’ Hilary says thickly.
‘I bought you some coffee,’ I say, ‘and a bun.’
‘Thanks,’ he says, staring down, once again, at the small stain where the moth used to be, ‘that was nice of you. But I ate earlier.’
Earlier? When? At fucking dawn?
So I take them to Bly, at work, and pretend I bought them for her, instead.
She glugs down the coffee, then inhales the bun, after.
(Oops. Quick burp.)
The girl’s dependable like that.
But is that obnoxious ginger really her natural hair colour?
In fact I’m so relieved by her cheerful straightforwardness that I start telling her about what I perceive as being the shortcomings of i-Pod…
‘“Holidays In The Sun”’ she suddenly screams. ‘The Sex Pistols!’
Okay.
So just…
You know.
Sitting at my desk.
Doing some work.
Suppressing my yawns.
Then at 10.17 my phone rings.
‘Bring the book back,’ a woman’s voice demands.
‘Pardon?’
‘The Spencer. The book. Bring it back.’
It’s her.
‘But I’m at work.’
‘I don’t care. Brandy needs it. He wants it now. So bring it the hell back.’
Approximately twenty minutes later, and I’m standing in the hospital foyer trying to persuade a porter to spirit that troublesome tome upstairs for me, when that dark, pretty, older, angry woman from Aphra’s flat rolls up and taps me on the shoulder.
I turn. I start-
Eh?
Oh fuck.
Ambuuush!
She then grabs me by the arm (while the porter watches on, in astonishment) and drags me outside (Good. So now he has me down as some kind of child killer) on to the handy raised walkway which connects the hospital to the train station (Yup. Just what this situation lacked; that fascinating element of physical jeopardy).
‘So try and explain this one,’ she hisses, shoving me up roughly against a wrought-iron railing (Ow!)
‘There is no explanation,’ I answer (I mean can you think of one?).
‘That just won’t do,’ she growls.
‘Well it’s gonna have to,’ I say firmly (Hey. Where’d this impressive core of moral certainty suddenly spring up from?).
She just stares at me, in disgust.
‘Who are you, anyway?’ I ask (not a little indignant).
‘His First Wife,’ she snaps (with capital letters- like she’s happily betrothed to the American President). ‘And who the hell are you, for that matter?’
(Huh? Didn’t I introduce myself to this bitch once before?)
‘The prick,’ I respond (with that charming streak of self-deprecation I’m now so legendary for), ‘who was dumb enough to give you his phone number.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ she says haughtily, ‘but I just don’t get your sense of humour.’
‘That’s because I wasn’t actually being funny,’ I tell her.
(If I was, though, it’d be an entirely different matter.)
‘Now you’re starting to scare me,’ she says.
(Oh God, not this again).
‘You scare easy,’ I murmur.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You scare easy,’ I say, but louder, this time.
‘What are you?’ she squeaks, jabbing her index finger into my shoulder. ‘Some kind of stalker? A weirdo? What do you want? What’s your agenda?’
‘All I want,’ I tell her calmly, ‘is for you to leave me the fuck alone.’
(So it’s only a Muji shirt, but I happen to be quite fond of it.)
‘What?’
She looks incredulous.
‘One,’ I say, ‘I think you’re crazy. Two,’ I add, ‘I think you should stop phoning me. Three,’ I continue swiftly, ‘I haven’t warmed to you particularly, so four,’ I climax, ‘I think we should avoid each other.’
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