The Lord’s self-generated advance publicity was not for me a sign that he and I were going to work together well. However, to my surprise it turned out that in life he was a quiet, almost invisible presence, apparently shy and self-effacing. For instance, when he arrived in Omhuuv he let no one in the theatre know, so none of us realized at first that he was there. He and his female assistant had been waiting patiently in the foyer for so long, unobtrusively sitting in the chairs at the side, that one of the ticket office staff eventually went to ask if they needed any help.
When we finally saw him costumed and made up for his show he became impressive and extrovert, with an entire repertoire of theatrical gestures and loud and sometimes amusing remarks, and exuding endless confidence in his own powers.
His main illusion, with which he concluded his performance, was a set-piece which to the audience looked transparently simple, but which required careful and exact technical preparation.
He called the illusion ‘THE LADY VANISHES’.
The effect seen by the audience was of a bare stage, backed by curtains, and dominated by a large, metal structure made entirely of steel rods. This consisted of four slanting legs, and a heavy cross-member across the top, strong enough to bear weight. The audience could see that this was the full extent of the apparatus: there were no curtains, no trapdoors, no hidden panels, just a skeletal steel structure standing in the centre of the bare stage. While performing the trick the illusionist could pass around and through and behind the structure and be seen at every moment. He would then produce a large chair, and this would be connected to the cross-member by a rope and a pulley.
His female assistant – transformed from a mildly attractive woman in her late twenties into a dazzling vision of glamour by her scanty costume, flowing wig and make-up – would sit in the chair, and be blindfolded.
As the small band in the pit played suspenseful music, with an insistent drum-roll, the magician would laboriously turn the handle of a winch, and the chair and Lord’s assistant would rise towards the apex of the immense structure, twisting slowly. Once she was at the top, the illusionist would secure the rope and utter trance-inducing words. The assistant would slump in the chair, as if hypnotized. He then produced a large gun and aimed it directly at her! As the drums reached a climax the magician fired the gun. With a loud bang and a flash of light the chair would come crashing noisily down on the stage, its rope trailing behind it. The lady assistant was no longer in the chair, and indeed had vanished entirely.
The method was both much simpler and more complex than anyone in the audience would imagine. The illusion was achieved by a combination of stage lights and a mirror. Or in this case a half-mirror. Or in reality, a pane of clear glass, the one I had obtained for the Lord from the next town.
The glass was attached to the front of the metal scaffold. Because of the way the lights were shone on it, and with the assistance of more lights concealed behind the front struts, the glass was entirely invisible to everyone in the audience. Everything that happened inside the apparatus, or behind it, was completely visible. When the young woman was winched to the top, everything that could be seen was actually happening: she was really there, in the chair, and suspended from the cross-member.
However, at the firing of the gun (which by intention made a loud bang, emitted a huge flaming discharge and a cloud of smoke) two things happened simultaneously. Firstly, the lighting of the stage was switched. In particular the concealed lights inside the struts were turned off, and front lighting was increased. This had the effect of turning the sheet of glass on the front of the structure into a mirror. Because of the direction of the lighting, and the angle at which the glass was placed, it ceased to be transparent and now reflected an image of curtains (otherwise invisible to the audience) behind the proscenium arch. These curtains were identical to the backdrop curtains upstage, and lit appropriately. From the point of view of the audience, nothing inside the steel skeleton could now be seen. Meanwhile, in the same instant, the rope lifting the chair was severed by a small built-in guillotine beside the winch. This released the chair, so that it crashed down spectacularly to the stage with the rope snaking behind it. The assistant grabbed the cross-member with her hands and swung there out of sight. She hung on gamely with her hands, until the curtains closed on her and, out of sight of the audience, she dropped athletically to the stage.
All this was straightforwardly achieved, but it was also a technical challenge for myself, a stagehand called Denik and the lighting engineer. We worked for a morning and an afternoon, learning how to erect the frame (which Lord had brought with him in his property van), and arranging for the plate glass to be lowered from the flies then secured to the front of the structure. We aligned it with the hidden curtains and finally ran several repeated technical rehearsals, not only with assembling the apparatus but with the lighting cues. Although this was of course computerized, all the lights had to be set at the correct angles to achieve the desired effect.
Lord fretted over these preparations. The plan was that during a live performance, he would move in front of the main drop to perform small-scale magic, engaging members of the audience who briefly left their seats to walk up on the stage. While this was going on Denik and I walked on to the stage, behind the curtain, to lower the massive structure. We would secure it firmly, connect up all the concealed lights, run a brief test to make sure everything was working, then get out of the way to allow Lord to perform his climactic illusion.
We rehearsed it again and again.
During one of our final rehearsals, and entirely without our realizing it, Commis managed to find his way to the rigging loft. He somehow clambered across to where the dummy curtains had been hung behind the proscenium. When the technician threw the switch to change the lighting, suddenly Commis was in full view of the auditorium, apparently now mounted on the top cross-member, a manifestation instead of a disappearance, scampering to and fro like a caged monkey.
Jayr had walked into the auditorium to watch this, and he applauded.
It was the last straw. I marched off the stage, headed towards the office. I wanted to collect my stuff and walk out.
I don’t know how he did it, but Commis climbed down quickly from where he had been and hurried along the corridor behind me. He was still pretending to be a monkey, so he ran with a wide-legged waddle, his knuckles running along the floor.
I did something I was instantly to regret. Halfway along the corridor, I mimed opening an invisible door, passed through it, looked back. As Commis reached the door I slammed it in his face.
To my amazement he reared up in apparent pain and surprise, his face contorted as it collided with the invisible door, he tipped backwards and dropped like a felled tree. He collapsed in a supine position, arms and legs outstretched, completely motionless. For a moment I thought I had really hurt him, until I realized that the blankly staring eyes were the ones that were painted on his lids.
I wished I had not done that! I felt that I had somehow descended to Commis’s level of aggravating playfulness.
I went on to the office and stood there by myself, feeling confused but also angry, still not sure why the mime should provoke me so. After a while Jayr came to find me.
* * *
I did not after all walk out of the Teater Sjøkaptein. Jayr was unexpectedly sympathetic, but he explained Commis’s behaviour as the erratic actions of a highly tuned and sensitive artiste and told me I should be more tolerant of theatrical talent. We argued about that. I vented much of the irritation and frustration that had been mounting ever since I became aware of the man.
Finally, Jayr pleaded with me to stay until the end of the coming week, as the backstage work I was doing with the Lord’s apparatus was crucial, and he didn’t know if the technical rehearsals could be completed with someone else in the time that was left.
In the end I agreed and Jayr promised to keep Commis out of my hair. A mental image briefly tormented me: of Commis picking
over my scalp with his monkey fingers, in search of salty excretions. I stayed on.
The Lord’s first performance went smoothly. So did the second, and all the rest. Denik and I worked together well. The illusion was achieved every night and at the two midweek matinées.
Lord duly finished his week at the Teater Sjøkaptein and I helped Denik break his set, and carry the pieces of the dismantled frame to his van. The pane of glass was ours to keep, according to contract, and after Lord had departed Jayr and I briefly discussed what to do with it. Our options were few: we could give it away, or try to sell it, break it up and dispose of it, or keep it in the theatre somewhere. Jayr pointed out that we had been playing to almost full houses for most of the week, and if Lord wanted to make a return visit to Omhuuv in the next year or so the theatre would no doubt book him. If so, it would make sense and save time and money to retain the plate glass.
Accordingly, Denik and I put the sheet back into its harness of hemp ropes, and winched it up to the loft above the stage. There it hung, gleaming and deadly, swinging quietly like an immense blade whenever the scenery bay doors were opened and let in the wind.
* * *
I was now free to leave, so I packed my belongings, purchased a ticket for the long return journey on the circum-island bus, and then walked back to the theatre to say my farewells.
The conflict with Commis had tended to overshadow my last two or three weeks, and it took a conscious effort of will to appreciate that in fact I had benefited enormously from the experience. Even my negative feelings might one day serve me well, if a career in other theatres became mine. I was painfully aware that I was learning, that I had more to learn, that were still another two years of my course to run at the college in Evllen. Perhaps it was simply that as the least experienced member of the crew I had been subjected to a kind of initiation by the others. Thoughts on parting, probably too late. I still seethed with irritation.
I found Jayr straight away and he thanked me for the help I had given him over the weeks. I responded in the same way, acknowledging my debt to him.
Then I said, ‘Tell me about Commis. What was all that about?’
‘He’s always miming when he’s in costume, or rehearsing. You should have just played along with him.’
‘I did,’ I said. ‘Only a little. How well do you know him?’
‘No more than any of the other acts that come here. He’s been performing at this theatre for several years and has a huge following in the town. We’re almost sold out for next week.’
‘He lives here in the theatre?’
‘He rents a place somewhere on the edge of town, but when he’s performing he moves into the same dressing room – the smallest we have, at the top of the tower. He rarely goes outside the building. You’re about to leave – why don’t you go and see him? Say goodbye. He might even speak to you, if you’re lucky. He’s a different character when he’s not in part.’
‘All right.’
He seemed to make normal everything the weird little mime had done around me. I shook hands with Jayr, thanked him again, then before I could change my mind I ran up the spiral staircase that led to the highest level of the building. I had rarely been to this area in the past. I had done some cleaning of the dressing rooms when I first arrived, but otherwise there was not much need to go up there.
As I clambered up the stairs I could not escape the thought that he would probably realize I was on my way. Sometimes he seemed psychic in his anticipations of me. I half-expected a new trick: Commis would hide somewhere, then leap out on me, pretending to be a large spider, or would mime throwing a net over me, or some other foolishness.
Slightly out of breath from the climb I rapped my knuckles lightly on the door, staring at the shiny star attached to the panel, and the name written neatly on a card beneath it. No answer, so I knocked again. Reasoning that with a silent artiste like Commis it might be wrong to expect a spoken summons, I pushed the door open. Full of apprehension I went inside and switched on the light.
He was not there, so I backed out immediately. I had glimpsed the usual mirror and table, the familiar sticks and cakes of make-up, the folding screen, the costumes hanging on the rack. The only unusual feature of the room was a narrow folding bed, placed along the wall. His outdoor clothes were lying on it.
I switched off the light and closed the door. Then instantly I opened it again. I turned on the light.
His outdoor clothes included a yellow shirt, and bright blue beach shorts. Now I noticed, lying on a chair beside the bed, theatrical disguise: a bushy red beard, a droopy moustache, false eyebrows.
* * *
I returned to the backstage area and saw Commis was alone on the stage. I was in the shadows, way back in the wings. I believe he did not know I was there, because for once he seemed to be concentrating on his work. He was moving about the stage, blocking in his moves. He used a piece of chalk to make minute marks on the boards, then made a brief practice of his mime in those places. I saw him start to struggle with an umbrella in the wind, I saw him trying to remove a piece of sticky paper when it landed on his face, I saw him prepare to take a bath. He did this quietly and expertly, without apparent consciousness of an audience, or of a colleague he wished to torment with his endless tomfoolery.
His presence in my life always made me take actions I might later regret. I could not ignore the discovery I had just made in his dressing room, that I had without knowing it already met Commis several times, out of role. I felt I understood him for what he really was. I realized all that as I went to the access stairs, even through my seething anger, even as deep down I recognized that what I was intending was wrong.
I reached the rigging loft, I found the hemps that held the huge sheet of glass in its place, I loosened two of the ties. I left them just tight enough to hold the glass safely. Probably.
When I looked down at the surface of the stage, I saw, as I had expected, that Commis’s blocking marks were directly beneath the suspended pane of glass.
I went from the theatre at once, exiting through the scenery bay. I purposely left the largest door ajar, letting in a persistent draught. I felt frightened and guilty, but I would not, could not, return.
* * *
Outside the theatre, in the narrow streets of the town, the sun was shining and a brisk but pleasant breeze was coming onshore from the long fjord. There was still some time before my bus was due to leave, so I walked slowly by an indirect route, down to the closest wharf and then from there along a narrow lane that followed the shore of the fjord. I had never walked that way before and immediately wished I had. It was at a lower level than most of the town, closer to the water, and I could barely hear the noise of the traffic that passed constantly through the town.
It was a moment of symbolic liberation for me: I had abandoned if only temporarily the world of theatrical make-believe, of artifice and illusion, of light and shadows, mirrors and smoke, of people who played roles, who acted, who made themselves look and behave differently from their real selves.
The mime artiste was the extreme example of the common activity: his make-believe could never exist, even within the fantasy he created. Released from all that, I walked along the peaceful path, feeling the warm sunlight and being sheltered from the breeze, looking at the greenery of the spring’s new growth, the sudden flowers, the signs of a coming summer. I was thinking of home.
Then behind me, disruptive and insistent, came the sound of footsteps. Someone was hurrying along the path behind me, a quick pace, almost a run.
I glanced back and realized that my pursuer was almost upon me. I could see his small determined figure, the bright-blue beach shorts, the fluttering yellow shirt.
When he saw me looking back, he raised a fist and shouted, ‘I want words with you, pal!’
I suddenly realized how precarious my situation had become. I knew already the violence Commis was prepared to use when he was out of his role – here on the waterside path there were n
o houses in sight, there was no passing traffic, no other pedestrians walked along the lonely track. Just the trees and flowers, the deep and silent waters of the fjord.
I shouted no reply. I was genuinely frightened of the man, what he might be capable of doing to me. The guilt that was already in me deepened: perhaps he had already worked out the trap I had laid for him in the rigging loft above the stage.
I turned and ran, but behind me Commis started to run too.
I saw the path ahead: it showed no sign of coming to an end, of leading back to the main road, the houses of the town. It extended along the shore, at least as far as the next headland, created by the sheer side of a mountain as it met the water.
I was carrying some of my baggage, weighed down by it. Commis was closing on me.
Suddenly, I realized what I had to do.
I flung my bags aside and turned back to face him. He was now only a short distance away from me, and I saw him raising one shoulder, starting to measure his pace, just as I had glimpsed him doing that day he came skidding across the frozen ruts at me, felling me violently with a sliding tackle. I braced myself for impact, but in the same moment I lifted both my arms, strained at some imaginary weight, and raised a huge sheet of heavy glass between us.
I held it at the vertical, clinging to its sides, ramming it down against the loose gravel of the path, making a place where I could let it stand unsupported.
I leapt back and in the same instant Commis ran headlong into the glass. His body struck it first, but an instant later his head banged against it and he was thrown painfully backwards.
The glass collapsed down towards me, so I leapt back from it to avoid being struck as it fell. Perhaps it shattered on the stony surface of the path, but now there was nothing between Commis and myself.
He was standing away from me, turned to the side, slumping forward, holding his head in his hands. He kept moving one of his hands down to where he could see it, looking at the palm as if blood was pooling on it. He shook blood off the hand, emitted a low cry of pain. He pulled out a kerchief, mopped his brow, buried his nose inside it. His head was rocking up and down. I could see him breathing heavily, and just as once before I was momentarily convinced I had really injured him.
The Islanders Page 14
