The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  That book, he says, is now entirely perplexing to me. It took me ten years to write it. Did I tell you that? I started it in Italy, during the war, when I was still relatively young. At the time I had—or I thought I had—a clear sense of how to proceed, of what form it would take. I felt as though I were standing on a mountaintop, looking down on the valleys and forests through which I would pass in the days to come. Straightforward enough, it seemed. But of course it’s very different when you’re inside the dark wood, beset by briars and quicksand, distracted by meanders, fearful of wolves and brigands and god knows what else, unable at any given moment to see more than a few feet ahead. By the time I finished it I had forgotten largely why I’d begun, what I had wanted it to be in the first place, why I’d been interested in it at all. I don’t mean to be evasive, or to flatter you, when I say that you have a better sense than I do of what it’s about.

  Stanley opens his mouth to reply, but Welles is off again, speaking in a torrent, rising from his seat, leaving his empty beerbottle on the table. He seems eager to forget what Stanley just confessed. The whole house shifts and groans as he crosses the deck.

  It wasn’t just my conception of the book that changed, he says. It was my belief about writing itself, about what it means to write. As I said before, I abandoned early on the notion of poem-as-incantation. I adopted instead a scarcely less romantic theory that poetry is a sort of lovemaking—a series of gestures designed to produce in another a release, an orgasm, an egoless rapture—and hopefully also some corresponding pleasure in oneself. But I eventually came to realize that this analogy is not apt. Because the pleasure of the other is deferred, you see. And because it happens at a distance. The experience is not shared. You evidently derived some pleasure from my book, and I am gratified by that. But by the time it found you, I had moved on to other concerns. So I am forced to conclude, with Flaubert, that the urge to write is essentially masturbatory. Onanistic. These are hardly new metaphors, of course, but they are rich, and worthy of contemplation.

  Welles is at the rail again, leaning on his elbows. His slippered foot taps the base of the woodstained slats. Stanley can tell that he’s not done yet, so he waits, drying his face with the yellow sleeve of his new shirt.

  For me, Welles says, it’s like shitting. It really is. To pretend otherwise is stupid. Shit is fertilizer, of course. And shit is prima materia. But to the shitter, it is simply shit. Properly construed, the distance of which I spoke between the writer and the reader—the deferred pleasure—is no impediment to the success of a poem. The poem depends on it, in fact. I imagine, to my great chagrin, that you are learning this even now. You read my book, and in some way it excited your imagination. But when you found its author, you discovered him to be a fat bourgeois, a pompous blowhard, and you realized that he is—as the expression goes—full of shit. The book cannot help but be diminished by this encounter. How much happier for you if I had remained a mystery! How much better if the book could go on existing only as you’d imagined it! Isn’t it the case that the works which most move and inspire us are the most formless—the most irredeemably fecal—that we stumble upon? Because they leave to us the task of completing them, of wringing meaning from them. Because, in so doing, we always encounter ourselves. Their degraded chaos resolves gradually into our own image, projected and made strange. It is ever thus. The reader—not the poet—is the alchemist.

  Stanley’s nose and throat are clear now. The night smells sweeter and sharper. He can’t remember the last time he cried like that. Not when his father died, or his grandfather. Maybe when his dad left for Korea. Even then it was only later, alone, when nobody could see. What I want, Stanley says, is to get inside your book. All the way in. I want to tear it apart. I want to know everything Crivano knows, whether you know it yourself or not. I want you to tell me how to figure it out. Where to get started.

  Welles turns around, folds his arms, leans back on the rail; it creaks and bows with his weight. For a second Stanley thinks he’ll fall through, but he doesn’t. Welles fixes his eyes on the deck, creases his brow in half-interested concentration, like he’s trying to recall the names of old friends from grade-school.

  Then he slips a hand inside his cardigan, into his shirt’s breast pocket, and comes out with his pipe. You’ll have to do a lot of reading, he says. The Corpus Hermeticum, of course, in its entirety. Also the Picatrix, and the Tabula Smaragdina. Plato and Plotinus, in order to situate the tradition in proper context: Crivano certainly would have read both of them. Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola are major figures. Who else? Abulafia, I suppose. Llull. Reuchlin. Trithemius. Agrippa. Cardano. Paracelsus, certainly. You may wish to explore John Dee and Robert Fludd, as well, although they were contemporaneous with Crivano, and he would not have been aware of them.

  All that stuff is old, Stanley says. Right?

  Quite. Crivano, remember, was active in the waning years of the Sixteenth Century. I should warn you that many of the key writings I mentioned may not be available in reliable English translation, but only in Latin, or in various German and Italian dialects. Some may not be widely available at all.

  Is there anybody who does this sort of stuff now? Magic, I mean?

  Welles has withdrawn his tobacco tin from his trouser pocket; he’s slowly packing the bowl of his pipe. When he’s finished, he lights it, tamps it out, and packs it again, aerating it with a needlelike tool.

  Oh yes, he says. People still do it.

  Stanley stares hard at his face. The treefrogs are almost deafening; they sound like the string-orchestra piece that was playing downstairs when he and Claudio first arrived. Who? he asks. Who does it?

  Another match flares, tripled in Welles’s spectacles, and a stinking cloud rises over his head. Here in Southern California, he says, you can locate them without a great deal of effort. You can readily find Theosophists and Rosicrucians, as well—along with adherents of Dianetics, and the New Thought, and the Science of Mind—although I do not recommend that you do so. In fact, seeking out contemporary practitioners of magic is probably unnecessary. As I discovered when I began my own research, they will find you soon enough.

  But talking to ’em is a waste of time, you’re saying?

  Once you have a sense of the tradition, Welles says, it will be easy for you to tell who is a charlatan, who is simply insane. There are some who are knowledgeable and serious, I suppose, but they tend to keep to themselves. Also, their interests seem to accrue around industrial abstracts and pulp science fiction, rather than musty alchemical treatises left over from the Renaissance. I worked with one of these fellows at the Aerojet Corporation, believe it or not. Jack Parsons was his name. I had no idea what sort of strange mischief he’d been engaged in until 1952, when he somewhat carelessly blew himself to kingdom come with a large quantity of fulminate of mercury. Evidently Jack spent years of evenings and weekends performing magical rites, literally trying to summon the Whore of Babylon and spawn the Antichrist. This gentleman was one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mind you. So, yes. People still do it.

  There’s a strain in Welles’s voice, a false note, but Stanley can’t think of the right question to ask to decipher it. He’s still feeling shaky, pissed off at himself for cracking up. That list of names you just gave me, he says. I’m not gonna remember it. Could I maybe get you to write ’em down?

  But of course. Of course. It would be my pleasure.

  Stanley picks up his beer and finishes it. His gut turns queasy as the last of it goes down. You probably think I’m a damn fool, he says. Don’t you? For wanting to do this.

  Welles takes the pipestem from his mouth, slowly shakes his head. Not at all, he says. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is a difficult time for you, I can see that. I don’t know you well. But I have confidence in you. I believe in you. And I—Synnøve and I—would like to help in any way we can.

  Stanley’s tearing up again, though he’s not sure why, not sure if it’s real or fake. He thi
nks of an armed robbery he was on a couple years ago where he and his team all wore gauze Halloween masks: he remembers how it felt to hold a pistol on the humiliated nightwatchman, to look him straight in the eye and know that he could see nothing but the crude face of a weeping clown. Stanley feels that same way now—powerful and ashamed—only this time the mask is inside him, and he can’t control it.

  I gotta be straight with you, Mister Welles, he says. I don’t think about myself the way you think about yourself. About the reasons why I do things, I mean. There’s never really been a time when I didn’t know what to do, or at least have some idea. So I’ve never had to stop and just think. Sometimes I feel like it wouldn’t be bad for me do that once in a while, but I’m not even sure how. And it’s starting to scare me. Because lately I feel like I’m turning into something, and I don’t know what.

  Welles is silent, puffing rapidly. Soon the pipe has burned to ash. For what it’s worth, he says, I am not worried about you.

  It ain’t specifically me I’m worried about, Mister Welles. It’s everything else. I just don’t always feel like I belong in this world.

  A deep chuckle rises from Welles’s gut. I daresay I know that feeling, he says.

  I guess you’re about to tell me that I’m gonna grow out of it.

  You might. Though I sincerely hope that you do not.

  He steps forward slowly, then grips Stanley’s shoulder in his thick-fingered hand. It’s a cheap and stupid little world, the one we’re given, he says. Don’t fucking settle for it. Go out and make your own.

  He straightens, puts the pipe back in his teeth. Now, he says. Did you remember to bring the book?

  Yes sir. Downstairs, in my coat.

  Well, run and get it. I’ll be writing out that list I promised you.

  As he descends, Stanley can hear Synnøve somewhere nearby, singing wordlessly to herself, but he doesn’t look around. He opens the hall closet, pulls The Mirror Thief from his pocket, mounts the stairs again.

  Welles has turned on the desklamp; it glows under its opaque green shade. As Stanley approaches, Welles lifts with a flourish the page he’s written and hands it over. This will keep you busy for a while, I’ll wager, he says. May I?

  Stanley gives him the book, takes the page. He looks it over in the dim light: a long column of strange names, uniform and equidistant, as if plotted with a ruler. The handwriting is neat, but cramped and peculiar, and he knows he’s going to have a hell of a time making sense of it.

  When Stanley looks up again Welles has the book open on his desk, a fountain-pen in his hand. He’s motionless, wearing a confused expression. Oh yeah, Stanley says. I guess I forgot to tell you. Somebody already wrote in my copy. Like I said, I got it second-hand. I never been able to read the message.

  Welles begins to laugh. It’s a funny laugh: a little hysterical, then joyless and forced. Ah, he says. This is beginning to make sense. Where did you say you found this, again?

  The Lower East Side. It belonged to a thief who got sent off to Rikers.

  What was his name? Do you know?

  Stanley shrugs. Everybody called him Hunky, he says. I never met him.

  Hmm, Welles says. Then I suppose you got it—let’s see—third-hand, at the very least. Here, I’ll read it to you. Dear Alan—ah, good, I see I misspelled that—I salute your naked courage. Yours respectfully, Adrian Welles.

  Oh, Stanley says.

  I gave it to a poet who came through town two summers ago. A young self-styled visionary. Blake, by way of Whitman. Larry Lipton, I think, had invited him to come down from San Francisco. During the reading he had an altercation with someone from the crowd, and to demonstrate—something, his sincerity, his commitment, I don’t know what—he disrobed completely. It struck me at the time as a rather impressive gesture.

  Welles closes the book, sits to open a drawer. You know, he says, this copy is rather the worse for wear. I’ve got one here in my desk that’s essentially untouched. Let me replace—

  Stanley puts a quick protective hand on the book. If it’s all the same to you, he says, I’d just as soon keep the one I got.

  Welles’s eyes track up Stanley’s arm to his face. Something in them seems slightly wounded. Then he smiles.

  When he rises, he’s holding a metal ruler. He sets it down, fishes a razorblade from the top drawer. Opening the book again, he slips the ruler inside and cuts out the inscribed page with a single swift motion. Stanley tenses for an instant, about to spring, to seize Welles’s arm. Then he realizes that he doesn’t care. He’d rather be rid of it.

  Welles flips to the preceding page, uncaps his pen again. As the nib scrapes the paper, Stanley’s eyes drift across the room: the mountains of books, the arsenal desk, the great barred door. After a moment Welles blows across the ink to dry it and puts the open book in Stanley’s hand. I tried to be more forgiving with my penmanship this time, he says. Can you read it?

  Sure, Stanley says. Most of it.

  It’s a quotation from Roger Bacon, the Thirteenth-Century English magus.

  Okay. What’s it mean?

  Welles caps the pen, turns off the lamp. It means I’m glad I met you, he says. Very glad indeed.

  Welles picks up his pipe and steps toward the french door again, but Stanley doesn’t follow him. He stands next to the desk, holding the book, staring into space. Thanks for everything, Mister Welles, he says. Really. But it’s time for me to go.

  Back downstairs, as he’s pulling on his jacket, Synnøve does her best to get him to stay—there’s a murphy bed in my studio, she says; I promise it’s quite comfortable—but he exits as quickly as he can, accepting a peck on the cheek, giving her an awkward hug. Wait! she says. Did you want to take your fish-buckets?

  Oh, Stanley says, those aren’t actually mine.

  Welles walks him down the path to the gate. What shall I tell your friend when he and Cynthia return? he says.

  He’ll know where I am. You don’t need to worry yourself.

  Welles offers his hand. Stanley takes it, and Welles pulls him into an embrace. Stanley is suspended for a moment, his ear against the man’s chest, breathing in his spicy smoke, hearing the roar and rumble of his chambered interior. Then Welles releases him.

  As he steps from the curb, Stanley turns. Oh, Mister Welles? he calls.

  Yes?

  When we first met on the beach, a couple nights ago, you said something to me. What was it?

  Welles walks away slowly until he reaches the stoop. Then he turns and leans against a wooden column. I don’t think I recall, he says.

  It was in another language, Stanley says. You said it twice.

  Welles is a featureless silhouette against the open door. His wife stands behind him, looking sleepy and sad. Two points of light appear in his spectacles. Stanley can’t tell where that light is coming from.

  I’m sorry, Welles says. I must have enunciated so poorly that whatever I said sounded foreign. I’m sure I spoke only English. And that badly, it seems. My apologies.

  Stanley nods. Okay, he says. Goodnight, Mister Welles.

  Goodnight, Stanley.

  On the way to the boardwalk, maybe two lots down, Stanley passes an overgrown yard with a cat in it. The cat has something in its mouth: a sandy fishhead, trailing scraps of viscera. It watches him with glassy green eyes.

  Stanley clenches his jaw, aims a kick at the cat’s skull, then pulls it at the last second. The cat hunches, flattens its ears, and tears off through the grass, darting under the porch. Stanley’s vision is blurring again; a tremor gathers in his throat, and his breath comes heavily.

  He looks over his shoulder at Welles’s deck, just visible through a spearpoint row of juniper trees. There’s a dark shape on the rail that must be Welles, though Stanley can’t tell if he’s watching or not.

  You’re a lying sack of shit, Stanley hisses through his teeth.

  46

  When Stanley wakes the next morning in the squat on Horizon Court, Claudio isn’t ther
e. Stanley sits up, wipes his eyes, looks around. Wondering if maybe the kid knocked at some point and he didn’t hear it. Then he remembers last night—Cynthia and her frog flick, Synnøve and her murphy bed—and he knows exactly where the kid is.

  He flops down again, pulls up the blanket. Trying to get mad, not quite managing it. The kid is soft; of course he’d take the bed. Can’t blame him for that. Stanley’s not even sure why he was in such a hurry to leave Welles’s place himself. Partly because he was embarrassed by his waterworks performance, sure. And partly because the talk had quit paying off. But there was something else: an uneasiness he can’t name, a sense of something compromised or put at risk. Trying to pin it down just makes Stanley sad, and being sad always makes him tired.

  It’s late morning before he wakes again; he’s not sure how late. Still no Claudio. He’s starting to feel like he’s made a bad bet: bankroll too small, number taking too long to come up. He shoves away the blanket, brushes his teeth, drinks from his father’s canteen. The list of names Welles gave him is still in the breast pocket of his new shirt; he finds it and flattens it on the counter in the front room, then looks at it from time to time while he gets dressed. It may as well be in Chinese. Sometimes it’s hard for Stanley to say just what he crossed the country to find, but it goddamn sure wasn’t this. Welles has ducked him again, shifting shape like some wiggly undersea thing, leaving Stanley in the usual cloud of ink.

  He thinks of the long walk he took with Welles the night they met, and all the gobbledygook the guy spouted along the way. What if it was all intended to put Stanley off the scent? What if the secret wasn’t in Welles speech, but in his steps, in the path he took over the filled-in canals? Stanley thinks of a word he saw on a streetsign that night, a word he keeps seeing: RIALTO. What does it mean? In The Mirror Thief it’s a place, a neighborhood in the book’s haunted city—not the same as this city, but not completely different, either. The word points toward something. What?