The Magician

by Sol Stein

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  The room was dark except for the thin sheets of moonlight coming between the slats of the Venetian blind. Ed Japhet lay atop the bedspread, his eyes closed, fully dressed in the tuxedo that had been rented for the occasion. One hour more and he’d be onstage. His arms at his sides, he had bade his muscles go limp, one limb at a time, the way some of the great magicians were reported to have done before every performance.

  His body felt relaxed now, but the circus of his mind resounded with the orchestrations of rehearsal. Each trick had had its turn before the mirror in his parents’ bedroom, again and again. Much of the patter he was planning to use had fixed in his memory, though there was always the hazard of being in front of people with a suddenly blank mind. He ticked off the crucial gestures, the misdirections he would use to deflect the attention of the audience at each critical time.

  Ed thought of himself as a part of a tradition he had come to know during the course of his thirteenth year; while browsing in the public library at the beginning of a ten-day Easter recess, he had found a shelfful of books he had not known existed. He discovered that the term “magi” went back to Babylon and Media, that it then meant “august” and “reverend” and was the word the learned priests used to describe themselves. Among the Persians, Ed found, the magis were the keepers of the sacred objects, and from these they divined the future, not through hanky-panky, but largely because these ancient magicians had a knowledge of the powers of nature superior to that of the people around them. They were the wise men, and their influence was unbounded.

  Ed read of the struggle of knowledge and ignorance, light and darkness, good and evil, and how the ministers of old became in time the wandering fortune-tellers and quacks, the sleight-of-hand artists and conjurers who, instead of advising kings and princes about their most important transactions, entertained or merely fooled.

  He pleaded successfully with the librarian to let him take the best of these books home, though they were only for reference, and he gorged himself the way a glutton consumes the meal of his dreams. He neglected the history paper he was supposed to complete because he kept thinking of Thomas Jefferson as a magus and the politicians of today as tired vaudeville performers, doing their thing for the thousandth time. Ed had hated the magicians he had seen at school and in shows. Having lost their sense of surprise, their hands darted gracelessly, their chatter became mechanical. A magician, Ed felt, needed to believe anew that each trick really worked, just as the audience did. Like life, in magic there was always the unpredictable.

  *

  His father, seeing no light under the door, came in on tiptoe. He turned on the small desk light rather than the overhead in order not to startle him.

  “I thought you might have fallen asleep.”

  “No,” said Ed, “just resting.”

  “I feel awkward about this.”

  “About what?” said Ed, raising himself from the bed.

  “Well,” said Mr. Japhet, “I’d like to see the show.”

  “You’ve seen all these tricks.”

  “It’s just that it’s different in front of an audience.” Mr. Japhet examined his fingernails. “I mean, if you were playing football, you wouldn’t mind my coming to the games.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “All a player sees is the crowd. When I do a show, I see people’s faces. In fact, I fix on one or two and talk to them. If you were there, I’d see yours, and it’d make me nervous.”

  “Doesn’t Lila’s being there make you nervous?”

  “She’s going to sit way in the back.”

  “I could sit back there, too.”

  “Oh, Dad, the prom isn’t for parents.”

  Mr. Japhet touched the inside corners of his eyes, then rubbed the bridge of his nose as if he had been wearing uncomfortable glasses. “Well,” he said, wanting to try again but not able to, “I’ll drive you down and pick you up afterward.”

  Parents shouldn’t have feelings like that, thought Ed; they have a job to do.

  Rescue came in the form of his mother, moving briskly through the door, saying, “Your tux’ll get all wrinkled.”

  Ed got up from the bed and slowly turned around for her inspection. He had thought of the possibility of wrinkles and had lain down in a way that he thought would do no damage.

  “I guess it’s all right,” said Mrs. Japhet. “I’m sorry I won’t be there to see your act. Are you going along, Terence?”

  “They only need a few teachers as chaperons, and they’re all assigned,” said Mr. Japhet.

  “You’ll drive him, won’t you?”

  “I’ve been chauffeuring him for sixteen years,” said Mr. Japhet, leaving the room. “It’s too late to stop,” his voice trailed after him.

  “He’s in a good mood,” said Mrs. Japhet thinly. “Never mind, are you all packed?”

  Ed nodded, and glanced at his watch. Better get cracking.

  *

  It had snowed in Westchester that morning and all day long the day before. The main roads had been cleared, but the side streets were car traps, and now it was snowing again. Better allow plenty of time in case they got stuck. The school hired a professional orchestra for the prom every year, and two years ago had even had a professional magician, who was clumsy. This was the first time the main act would be performed by a student. He didn’t want to goof it. Or be late. There were two suitcases full of apparatus to unpack backstage, and he didn’t want any help from anyone who might see something he wasn’t supposed to see.

  His father helped him get the heavy suitcases into the car. Ed himself carried the brown one, which had the big pitcher in it, the only thing that could break easily. He was glad he had thought to put his tux pants inside his boots because the snow was high.

  The starter didn’t catch at first. It took a half-minute till it turned over in the cold. The waiting seconds brought back the stomach jump he had lain down to get rid of. His mouth felt dust-rag dry. He took the tiny breath sprayer out of his pocket and shot twice into his mouth.

  “What’s that?” asked his father, now easing the car out of the driveway, which had not been shoveled out too well.

  “Nothing,” said Ed, pocketing the spray.

  Once they got on Route 9, everything was okay. He reminded his father to turn off to Holbrook Road so he could pick up Lila.

  She was standing just inside the front door of her house, her face visible in the pane of glass. Ed got out of the car as she came down her walk, her dress buffeted by the swirling wind.

  As she slid into the front seat next to his father, she said, “Hi, Mr. Japhet. I appreciate your picking me up.”

  His father just nodded. It wouldn’t have killed him to say something.

  Ed got in. It was a tight squeeze. Lila seemed anxious not to sit too close to Ed’s father, as if she was afraid their legs might touch.

  She and Ed therefore sat very close, but didn’t talk. The windshield wipers swept two half-moons out of the fast-falling snow. Through them they peered at the road and the white lawns on either side. The wind whistled through the right-front vent window, which had never once closed air-tight since they bought the damn Dodge. He wished his father would hurry some.

  *

  The grade leading to the lit-up school stretched for a quarter of a mile ahead of them, the road an almost continuous chain of cars moving slowly, each afraid to come to a complete stop in case it had trouble getting started uphill again in the hard-packed snow. The last quarter-mile of inching along seemed so slow. Ed kept glancing at his watch, hoping he’d have enough time to prepare.

  “You’re making me nervous,” said his father.

  It was hopeless to get out and walk the distance with the heavy suitcases. Now, however, the cars started moving at a somewhat faster pace, and they could see the tiny figure of the policeman at the head of the line, trying to keep the unloading cars moving. That was the bottleneck. Thoug
h their windows were raised, they could hear the good-byeing and helloing.

  “We could get out here,” Ed said.

  “It’ll only be a couple of minutes more,” said his father. “The suitcases are heavy. I’ll help you backstage with them.”

  “No, it’s okay, I’ll manage. You can’t leave the car here, it’ll just block traffic.”

  He could pull off the road right there and not tie up anything, and he’d have the satisfaction of helping you, you are a shit, Ed Japhet.

  When the car stopped, there was some honking, as if it weren’t the star of the show but just some kid getting out. Lila ran for the doorway alone.

  Mr. Japhet helped Ed get the suitcases out as fast as possible, the cop yelling at them to hurry-up-you’re-holding-up-traffic, and then Mr. Japhet was back behind the wheel waving good-bye, which Ed didn’t see because he was already lumbering toward the door, one suitcase in each hand, feeling the sweat in his armpits and hoping he wouldn’t look a mess for the show. Where the hell was Lila?

  A kid he didn’t know held the door open for him, obviously wondering what the suitcases were all about. Well, he’d know once the show got started.

  Around the corner in the hallway Ed put the cases down, looked at his hands as if he expected instant calluses instead of just redness, then dusted the snow bits off his shoulders, like dandruff, except wet.

  Lila, suddenly standing close in front of him, gave him a quick kiss on the lips. Nobody noticed.

  “Good luck,” she said, showing her crossed fingers to him.

  He abandoned her there, telling her to get a good seat not too much on the side, and headed for the back of the gym, one suitcase in each hand, like Willie Loman. He didn’t feel like the star of the show, that was for sure.

  Backstage, he was greeted by Thin Lips, Mr. Fredericks, the faculty adviser.

  “Mr. Fredericks,” he said, trying to make his voice sound like one professional talking to another instead of a student to a teacher, “it’ll help a lot if I can set up in private, I mean, none of the students around, okay?”

  “Understood,” said Mr. Fredericks. He showed Ed the two tables he had asked for.

  “Just before I’m supposed to go on, this here, the first table, needs to be put out on the left side of the platform, with no jiggling, because there’ll be a pitcher of milk on it, in addition to other things. It wouldn’t be too good for me to do that myself—I mean, carry it on. They shouldn’t see me until I appear.”

  Mr. Fredericks smiled that shitty smile of his.

  “The second table,” Ed said, “should go toward the back, against the curtains, so I have to turn around with my back to the audience to take anything off it. That’s very important.”

  “Sure,” said Mr. Fredericks. “I’ll put them out there myself.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean for you to carry—”

  “Quite all right. Pleasure to help.”

  Maybe he wasn’t so bad.

  Ed had left himself barely enough time to arrange his things from the suitcases onto the two tables. On the first was a quart-size pitcher of milk, a folded tabloid newspaper, a piece of soft clothesline, his mother’s good scissors, and a brown paper bag.

  On the back table he carefully arranged the material he needed for his pièce de résistance. Then he took his three-by-five cue card out of his pocket and went over the items one by one. He turned the card over, closed his eyes, and repeated the cues from memory. It wasn’t like doing a magic show for a little kid’s birthday party for five dollars.

  Mr. Fredericks came over to say that the lights in the gym were being lowered. He could hear the scraping of the folding chairs, which would be gotten out of the way later for the dance.

  “Are you ready?” asked Mr. Fredericks. “Roberta’s number takes three and a half minutes.”

  Roberta Cardick was the ice-breaker. She would take the head off the mike, as usual, and sing as if she were making love to it. Roberta, a senior, was good, but she was no Janis Joplin, and the kids had all heard her lots of times. Still, she’d put them in a good mood for him.

  “I’m going to introduce her,” said Mr. Fredericks. “All set?”

  Ed wanted to say, “Anytime,” casually, but what came out was a dry, barely audible, “Yes.”

  He watched Roberta. Sideways, her tits seemed even bigger than from the front. She was singing something new, and they loved it, you could tell.

  Never mind. When Roberta came off to wild applause, he held up an approving thumb so she could see. Then Mr. Fredericks carried the tables on carefully.

  Ready or not, thought Ed, here I come.

  Chapter 3

  Lila, her back straight, sat on one of the wooden seats way in the rear of the gym, between strangers, isolating herself. When she shrugged her shoulder-length auburn hair out of her vision’s way, the toss of her head and the movement of her long neck were barely perceptible, the slight sway of her beads just touching the very top of her breasts.

  Other students seeing her at that moment might have thought of her as aloof, when in fact she was consciously arranging herself to be alone amidst an audience, to watch as if she were the sole spectator. If asked, she would not deny the pleasure she felt at her escort’s being the star of the evening’s events.

  Mr. Fredericks was just then carrying the second table on. The buzz in the audience turned to a breath and then to silence as Ed appeared, looking so different. Was it the distance, or the tuxedo he wore? Or just the way he strode onstage and, with the slightest nod at Mr. Fredericks, touched his hand to his forehead in a salute to the audience that greeted and put them in their places at the same time.

  “Ladies…gentlemen…anachronisms…” Ed said, looking directly at the cluster of teachers standing against one wall. A titter, a ripple, and, finally, restrained laughter.

  “I want to thank the English teacher who taught me the meaning of ‘anachronism,’” he said, and the laughter continued.

  “Fellow students, future dropouts, members of the post-alcoholic generation, what lies in store for you is not rational—just pure and simple magic that we can all understand!”

  All that applause, and he hadn’t yet begun his first trick.

  “Over here,” he said, “I have a sheet of ordinary newspaper, filled with advertisements, comic strips, help-wanted ads, and half-truths.”

  He rolled the newspaper into a simple cornucopia, and, holding it with his left hand, with his right picked up the brimful pitcher of white liquid.

  “This, as all you Four-H Club members know, is full of the milk of human kindness.”

  Ed tilted the pitcher and let the milk pour slowly into the cornucopia. A few drops trickled out of the bottom of the paper cone, and he set the now half-full pitcher down so that with his right hand he could twist the bottom of the cone and fold the end up tight. Then he resumed pouring. There was a hush in the audience.

  Ed looked up. “I learned this trick from my first milkman, Mrs. Terence Japhet.”

  Laughter fluttered through the gymnasium as Ed finished pouring the last drops of milk into the cornucopia, set the pitcher down, and carried the cone gingerly over to the edge of the platform.

  With a sudden motion he tipped the paper cone toward the girls in the first row, who shrieked, but it was empty, and as he crushed the paper cone the foot-stomping started. He held up a hand for silence and said, “As every student knows, the milk of human kindness has completely disappeared.”

  As the laughter and applause became tumultuous, he noticed for the first time that Urek and three members of his gang were sitting next to the girls, up front in the first row.

  * * *

  COMMENT BY FRANK TENNENT,

  ED’S BEST FRIEND

  Urek and his gang run this school the way the Mafia runs parts of the United States. I saw a kid go over to the apple machine and let his fifteen cents show one inch before he put the money into the slot and got a whack on the wrist from Urek that’d send the dough
flying. It’d be scooped up in seconds by the others. Once I saw this girl, real innocent, pick up one of the coins and try to hand it to the kid who dropped it. One of Urek’s greasers took her wrist and said “Thank you” before he took the coin away.

  Student gym lockers used to be free until Urek started renting them out at two bits a month for protection—you know, if you paid up, your locker was protected, and if you didn’t, your combination lock got hacksawed, which cost a buck and a quarter to replace, and anything usable inside was missing. I told Ed it just didn’t make economic sense to fool with Urek. Ed paid $5.75 for that tempered-steel lock the guy in the hardware store said couldn’t be hacksawed through. It’s true, it couldn’t, but can you imagine how burned Urek and his friends were every time they passed Ed’s locker? I pay my two bits a month; it’s cheap. I tell you, Ed and I walk home together because we’re on the same block, but if ever the pack came on him on the way home, I’d haul ass out of there.

  I’m not his best friend. I’m a senior, and he’s a junior. It’s just that on our block we’re the only teen-agers except for a girl. I play first-string football, and he doesn’t even like sports. When I go off for a game, he says, “Oh, you’re going to be an American”—some crack like that.

  Ed can defy Urek all he wants to, just so he leaves me out of it. I told him, and he said, “Okay, just get to a phone and call the cops.” Now, you know the cops can’t do anything about people like Urek, there’s always a gang like that, whether you’re in school or got a business somewhere, don’t you read the papers?

  COMMENT BY MR. CHADWICK,

  THE PRINCIPAL

  Yes, I know about the locker-room business, and I don’t know how to stop it. If I issued another edict, it would have the same effect as the first: nothing. We never see them taking money from the students. Not one has ever been caught sawing through a padlock, though there are always reports of these things happening. I can’t let the police enter the school premises. What could they do, anyway? They haven’t been able to stop the Mafia’s garbage-collection activities in the area, and that’s much more serious because several gang members have actually been found dead in Westchester, and there’s been no fatality at the school as yet. I mean, we’re a long way past the age when you could encourage boys to masturbate less and eagle-scout more. We believe more than a third of the children in school smoke pot or take amphetamines. How do you stop all that? What would you do in my place? I’ve got less than two years to go to retirement. That’s my solution.