The stage is small and the lights too bright and close. I can feel their heat – uncomfortable and immediate. My volunteer suffers alongside me. A matt of perspiration distils to a nervous bead of sweat, exploring the curve of her forehead in a tentative foray. Her top struggles to maintain her chest. Her pug nose is raised. She wears a smile to cover the embarrassment of standing before the crowd – to show that she wants to take part; to demonstrate her willing to join in. We all want to tell the world that we’re here to enjoy ourselves. No one appreciates the slur of being labelled a killjoy.
From my jacket pocket I withdraw a deck of cards. With a flourish I strip them of their plastic wrapping. My hands are raised high before the audience. My head turns to acknowledge the front tables. My eye contact is constant. My smile warm; my voice reassuring.
I announce that this is a brand new pack.
I ask my volunteer to inspect. She concurs with my assessment.
Everyone likes a puzzle, you see. Everyone’s quite willing to suspend their disbelief. We all would like to be amazed.
Flexing the cards in my palm, I tell the room this is nothing other than an ordinary deck. Fifty two players, four whole suits: four Jacks, four Queens, four Kings. You could buy them from any shop in the country. I shuffle the cards with an obvious dexterity. The volunteer watches my hands; the crowd watches my hands - they listen to my voice as I explain. Across a six inch gap, I launch the pack from one palm to another. There is a satisfying thrip as they motor through the air. The volunteer now smiles more genuinely. Her composure remains alert but a wry slump in body language begins to denote the growth of a relaxed demeanour. She is entertained. I can tell these things, you know. I have an eye for them. I will see the details which you ignore.
I ask the volunteer to cut the pack and as she obliges my gratitude is disarming; the praise I heap on her accomplishment over-generous. Following this, she no longer focuses upon my hands. No, she looks at my grin – my show business smile. She looks at my teeth and lips and slowly up to my encouraging eyes. At this angle, with the stage lights so fierce and alive, the front tables cease to exist. The busy bar at the back disappears. The room inbetween has fallen away. I gather the deck once again in my hands and an image of Helen arrives in my mind.
Abracadbra. Hocus-pocus. Alakazam.
Fanning the playing cards like a peacock in fear, I spread them before my volunteer.
Pick a card, I tell her. Any card.
She chews her top lip in a devious contemplation: conscious she must choose independently; eager to confound any expectation I may possess.
The cold, hard, tedious reality, of course, is that her choice will not matter. There is no choice. Not really. Not here. Not anywhere. Certain people – in certain situations - have no choice at all. Even when staring at the whole, tempting, wide-open pack. Some people are in thrall to fate, to guidance; to the set path they find themselves to have fallen upon. Just like my volunteer. Just like Helen.
She reaches out with podgy thumb and forefinger to pick from just left of the centre.
My hands are sleight. My hands are swifter than the human eye.
We all want to see something that we cannot believe.
We all long for magic. We all wish for a miracle.
I look away, theatrically shielding my eyes, begging my volunteer to refrain from showing me her card, backing away as if it were a tremendous flame. From my pocket I produce a black marker pen and wave it towards her. Under my instruction she signs her card and returns it to the fold of its siblings. I make the crimp as I fold the pack and proceed with a Hindu Shuffle. I tell her I’m burying it in the deck. She listens to my voice, she watches my eyes. My hands are discreet. The movement is delicate and tender, like a doctor’s bedside manner, like the medics who crept around Helen’s room on that last day: occupied and purposeful yet gentle and unhurried. The understanding complicit that although the process was underway and irreversible, all parties should be seen to be making every effort possible. It’s all about show. It’s all about the distractions we generate to make the rest of the world forget what’s actually happening; to occupy our thoughts while we sit and wait for the inevitable.
I give the volunteer my thanks and, from the small table at my side, take a top hat. In my left hand I hold the rim with the crown facing the floor. In my right I prepare to palm the crimped card. I toss the pack a foot in the air. Momentum holds the cards together before gravity crashes them down and nearly apart. I catch them in the hat just as they break and roll the rim as if swilling water around a bucket.
I ask my volunteer if she believes I could pick blindfolded her card from the mixed pack in the hat. She shakes her head and tells me she doubts it very much.
So do I, I reply, quick as fox. What does she think I am? A magician?
The audience laugh politely. They do think I’m a magician, you see. That’s the joke.
But I’m not. Not in the true sense of the word. And I’m not a magician because real magic doesn’t exist. I’m a cabaret conjurer. Third on the bill at seaside theatres. A warm up act for the working mens’ clubs. This isn’t magic. This is practice and graft. This is skill and learning. This is merely a trick. Real magic has left the world and real magic will never return, no matter how hard we wish, no matter how greatly we pray.
I remember being perched on the edge of the chair in the hospital room. The soft hum of the machines. The smell of antiseptic and finality. Helen lay slipping away before me and the miracle I wanted never arrived.
Then would you believe, I announce aloud, the question now thrown open to the audience whose chicken-in-a-basket meals will be served as soon as my act draws to its close, that I could catch blindfolded the card from mid air?
The audience growns a no. They say they do not believe but, of course, in their hearts and minds, they do. It’s an act. We build up suspense. The audience plays their part. The whole room pulls their weight. Everyone does what’s expected.
At the time, the doctor explained that it wouldn’t be long and all they could do was try and ease the pain. I was told to wait and be there for her. Our daughter was trying to get a flight in from America. It looked unlikely that she’d manage to get back before it was too late.
We all have a script to follow. We all have our set role in the performance.
I forage a blindfold from my trouser pocket and hand it to my volunteer, wondering if she’d be kind enough to oblige one further time. I stand stock still as she walks behind me and reaches up on tip toes, those holiday-camp-fed fingers tying the cloth in a tight knot at the back of my head.
She asks me if it’s ok.
Who said that? I blurt, faux-alarmed.
The audience laugh. They’re with me now.
I was with Helen when her breathing slowed - a ghastly, heaving sound - and all the magic and medicine in the world wouldn’t make it right again.
I launch the cards from the hat in an explosion of suits and characters. As the pack descends across the stage I thrust my arm into the air with a fake snatch. The palmed card passes to my fingertips. The movement is fluid. The action nimble. The effect runs quicker than the eye can truly see. I stand, arm outstretched and holding the card aloft.
Is this your card? I ask my volunteer, tugging the blindfold away from my eyes.
Yes, she says, recognizing the scrawl across its face as her mark. The audience begin to applaud, aware that dinner is now imminently within their grasp.
I thank my volunteer and wave my hands in front of each other to complete the show with a vanish. A little something extra to bring the house down. A small addition to wet the appetite of the vacationing crowd. The card disappears into thin air. The volunteer gasps.
Magic, you see.
Up close and right between the two of us, she thinks that this is real magic.
But real magic has gone; as vanished as the card. Real magic like falling in love, like meeting someone for that first time and knowing you’ll be with them until they’re forced to leave. Real magic like the smile they can give you. Real magic like holding them close and realising that this is where you want to be. And it’s real because there is no illusion. There is no set up or gimmick. There is no sleight of hand or redirection of the eye. It’s real because it cannot be explained. No science, no book, no teacher can ever enlighten us to its reasons. Nothing in this whole, entire world, can ever tell us why.
I thank the audience.
I bow my head.
I walk to the wings and leave the stage.
NORMAN MAILER
JOHN LYDON
WOODY ALLEN
MARTIN AMIS
THE CLASH
ELLIOT SMITH
CHARLIE KAUFMAN
BILL HICKS
ARCADE FIRE
CASABLANCA
PETER COOK
BILL NAUGHTON
BRET EASTON ELLIS
J.P. DONLEAVY
JOY DIVISION
DOUGLAS COUPLAND
DUSTY SPRINGFIELD
NIRVANA
THE GODFATHER
