Sleight of Hand

by Peter S. Beagle

  “That’s your magazine cover!” I interrupted. My voice sounded so loud in the hushed room that I was suddenly embarrassed, and shrank back into the couch where I was sitting with Sheila Olsen. She patted my arm, and the rabbi said patiently, “Yes, Joseph.” He continued:

  “—I see her sitting among them, grown now, as she was never given the chance to be. Child or adult, she always knows me, and she knows that I know her, She is never the focal point of the shot; she prefers to place herself at the edge, in the background, to watch me at my work, to be some small part of it, nothing more. She will not speak to me, nor can I ever get close to her; she fades when I try. I would think of her as a hallucination, but since when can you photograph a hallucination?”

  The rabbi stopped reading again, and he and Sheila Olsen looked at each other without speaking. Then he looked at me and said, somewhat hesitantly, “This next part is a little terrible, Joseph. I don’t know whether your parents would want you to hear it.”

  “If I’m old enough to be Bar Mitzvah,” I said, “I’m old enough to hear about a baby who died. I’m staying.”

  Sheila Olsen chuckled hoarsely. “One for the kid, Rabbi.” She gestured with her open hand. “Go on.”

  Rabbi Tuvim nodded. He took a deep breath.

  “She was born with her eyes open. Such blue eyes, almost lavender. I closed them before my wife had a chance to see. But I saw her eyes. I would know her eyes anywhere…. is it her ghost haunting my photographs? Can one be a ghost if one never drew breath in this world? I do not know—but it is her, it is her. Somehow, it is our Anoush.”

  Nobody said anything for a long time after he had finished reading. The rabbi blew his nose and polished his glasses, and Sheila Olsen opened her mouth and then closed it again. I had all kinds of things I wanted to say, but they all sounded so stupid in my head that I just let them go and stared at the photo of Sheila Olsen’s stillborn baby sister. I thought about the word still…. quiet, motionless, silent, tranquil, at rest. I hadn’t known it meant dead.

  Sheila Olsen asked at length, “What do Jews believe about ghosts? Do you even have ghosts?”

  Rabbi Tuvim scratched his head. “Well, the Torah doesn’t really talk about supernatural beings at all. The Talmud, yes—the Talmud is up to here in demons, but ghosts, as we would think of them…. no, not so much.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and tenting his fingers, the way he did when he was coaxing me to think beyond my schooling. “We call them spirits, when we call them anything, and we imagine some of them to be malevolent, dangerous—demonic, if you like. But there are benign ones as well, and those are usually here for a specific reason. To help someone, to bring a message. To comfort.”

  “Comfort,” Sheila Olsen said softly. Her face had gone very pale; but as she spoke color began to come back to it, too much color. “My dad needed that, for sure, and from Day One I couldn’t give it to him. He never stopped missing my mother—this person I never even knew, and couldn’t be—and now I find out that he missed someone else, too. My perfect, magical, lost baby sister, who didn’t have to bother to get herself born to become legendary. Oh, Christ, it explains so much!” She had gone pale again. “And you’re telling me she came back to comfort him? That’s the message?”

  “Well, I don’t know that,” the rabbi said reasonably. “But it would be nice, wouldn’t it, if that turned out to be true? If there really were two worlds, and certain creatures—call them spirits, call them demons, angels, anything you like—could come and go between those worlds, and offer advice, and tell the rest of us not to be so scared of it all. I’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “But do you believe it? Do you believe my stillborn sister came back to tell my father that it wasn’t his fault? Sneaking into his photographs just to wave to him, so he could see she was really okay somewhere? Because it sure didn’t comfort him much, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Didn’t it?” the rabbi asked gently. “Are you sure?”

  Sheila Olsen was fighting for control, doggedly refusing to let her voice escape into the place where it just as determinedly wanted to go. The effort made her sound as though she had something caught in her throat that she could neither swallow nor spit up. She said, “The earliest memory I have is of my father crying in the night. I don’t know how old I was—three, three and a half. Not four. It’s like a dream now—I get out of my bed, and I go to him, and I pat him, pat his back, the way someone…. someone used to do for me when I had a nightmare. He doesn’t reject me, but he doesn’t turn around to me, either. He just lies there and cries and cries.” The voice almost got away from her there, but she caught it, and half-laughed. “Well, I guess that is rejection, actually.”

  “Excuse me, but that’s nonsense,” Rabbi Tuvim said sharply. “You were a baby, trying to ease an adult’s pain. That only happens in movies. Give me your glass.”

  He went back into the kitchen, while Sheila Olsen and I sat staring at each other. She cleared her throat and finally said, “I guess you didn’t exactly bargain for such a big dramatic scene, huh, Joseph?”

  “It beats writing a speech in Hebrew,” I answered from the heart. Sheila Olsen did laugh then, which emboldened me enough to say, “Do you think your father ever saw her again, your sister, after he stopped being a photographer?”

  “Oh, he never stopped taking pictures,” Sheila Olsen said. “He just quit trying to make a living at it.” She was trying to fix her makeup, but her hands were shaking too much. She said, “He couldn’t go through a day without taking a dozen shots of everything around him, and then he’d spend the evening in his closet darkroom, developing them all. But if he had any more photos of…. her, I never saw them. There weren’t any others in the safe-deposit box.” She paused, and then added, more to herself than to me, “He was always taking pictures of me, I used to get annoyed sometimes. Had them up all over the place.”

  Rabbi Tuvim came back with a fresh drink for her. I was hoping for more cocoa cream soda, but I didn’t get it. Sheila Olsen practically grabbed the gin-and-tonic, then looked embarrassed. “I’m not a drunk, really—I’m just a little shaky right now. So you honestly think that’s her, my sister…. my sister Anoush in those old photographs?”

  “Don’t you?” the rabbi asked quietly. “I’d say that’s what matters most.”

  Sheila Olsen took half her drink in one swallow and looked him boldly in the face. “Oh, I do, but I haven’t trusted my own opinion on anything for…. oh, for years, since my husband walked out. And I’m very tired, and I know I’m halfway nutsy when it comes to anything to do with my father. He was kind and good, and he was a terrific photographer, and he lost his baby and his wife, one right after the other, so I’m not blaming him that there wasn’t much left for me. I’m not!”—loudly and defiantly, though the rabbi had said nothing. “But I just wish…. I just wish….”

  And now, finally, she did begin to cry.

  I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t seen many adults crying in my life. I knew aunts and uncles undoubtedly did cry—my cousins told me so—but not ever in front of us children, except for Aunt Frieda, who smelled funny, and always cried late in the evening, whatever the occasion. My mother went into the bathroom to cry, my father into his basement office. I can’t be sure he actually cried, but he did put his head down on his desk. He never made a sound, and neither did Sheila Olsen. She just sat there on the couch with the tears sliding down her face, and she kept on trying to talk, as though nothing were happening. But nothing came out—not words, not sobs; nothing but hoarse breathing that sounded terribly painful. I wanted to run away.

  I didn’t, but only because Rabbi Tuvim did know what to do. First he handed Sheila Olsen a box of tissues to wipe her eyes with, which she did, although the tears kept coming. Next, he went to his desk by the window and took from the lowest drawer the battered tin box which I knew contained his collection of lost keys. Then he went back to Sheila Olsen and crouched down in front of her, holding the
tin box out. When she didn’t respond, he opened the box and put it on her lap. He said, “Pick one.”

  Sheila Olsen sniffled, “What? Pick what?”

  “A key,” Rabbi Tuvim said. “Pick two, three, if you like. Just take your time, and be careful.”

  Sheila Olsen stared down into the box, so crowded with keys that by now Rabbi Tuvim couldn’t close it so it clicked. Then she looked back at the rabbi, and she said, “You really are crazy. I was worried about that.”

  “Indulge me,” the rabbi said. “Crazy people have to be indulged.”

  Sheila Olsen brushed her hand warily across the keys. “You mean, you want me to just take a couple? For keeps?” She sounded like a little girl.

  “For keeps.” The rabbi smiled at her. “Just remember, each of those keys represents a lock you can’t find, a problem you can’t solve. As you can see….” He gestured grandly toward the tin box without finishing the sentence.

  I thought Sheila Olsen would grab any old key off the top layer, to humor him; but in fact she did take her time, sifting through a dozen or more, before she finally settled on a very small, silvery one, mailbox-key size. Then she looked straight at Rabbi Tuvim and said, “That’s to represent my trouble. I know it’s a little bitty sort of trouble, not worth talking about after a war where millions and millions of people died. Not even worth thinking about by myself—nothing but a middle-aged woman wishing her father could have loved her…. could have seen her, the way he saw that strange girl who turned out to be my sister, for God’s sake.” Her voice came slowly and heavily now, and I realized how tired she must be. She said, “You know, Rabbi, sometimes when I was a child, I used to wish I were dead, just so my father would miss me, the way I knew he missed my mother. I did—I really used to wish that.”

  The rabbi called a taxi to take her to her airport hotel. He walked her to the cab—I noticed that she put the little key carefully into her bag—and I saw them talking earnestly until the driver started looking impatient, and she got in. Then he came back into the house, and, to my horrified amazement, promptly gave me the Torah test he’d written up for me. Nor could I divert him by getting him to talk about Sheila Olsen’s photographs, and her father’s notes, and the other things she had told us. To all of my efforts in that direction, he replied only by pointing to the test paper and leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. I mumbled a theatrically evil Yiddish curse that I’d learned from my Uncle Shmul, who was both an authority and a specialist, and bent bitterly to my work. I did not do well.

  I didn’t imagine that I would ever see Sheila Olsen again. She had a job, a home and a life waiting for her, back in Grand Forks, North Dakota. But in fact I saw her that Saturday afternoon, in the audience gathered at the Reform synagogue to witness my Bar Mitzvah. Rabbi Tuvim’s other students had all scheduled their individual ceremonies a year or more in advance, and I didn’t know whether to be terrified at the notion of being the entire center of attention, or grateful that at least I wouldn’t be shown up for the pathetic schlemiel I was by contrast with those three. We had a nearly full house in the main gathering room of the synagogue, my schoolmates drawn by the lure of the after-party, the adults either by family loyalty or my mother’s blackmail, or some combination of both. My mother was the Seurat of blackmail: a dot here, a dot there….

  The rabbi—coaching me under his breath to the very last minute—was helping me tie the tefillin around my head and my left arm when I messed up the whole process by pulling away to point out Sheila Olsen. He yanked me back, saying, “Yes, I know she’s here. Stand still.”

  “I thought she went home,” I said. “She said goodbye to me.”

  “Hold your head up,” Rabbi Tuvim ordered. “She decided she wanted to stay for your Bar Mitzvah—said she’d never seen one. Now, remember, you stand there after your speech, while I sing. With, please God, your grandfather’s tallis around your shoulders, if your mother remembers to bring it. If not, I guess you must use mine.”

  I had never seen him nervous before. I said, “When this is over, can I still come and look at your old magazines?”

  The rabbi stopped fussing with the tefillin and looked at me for a long moment. Then he said very seriously, “Thank you, Detective Yossele. Thank you for putting things back into proportion for me. You have something of a gift that way. Yes, of course you can look at the magazines, you can visit for any reason you like, or for no reason at all. And don’t worry—we will get through this thing today just fine.” He gave the little leather phylactery a last tweak, and added, “Or we will leave town on the same cattle boat for Argentina. Oh, thank God, there’s your mother. Stay right where you are.”

  He hurried off—I had never seen him hurry before, either—and I stayed where I was, turning in little circles to look at the guests, and at the hard candies ranged in bowls all around the room. These were there specifically for my friends and family to hurl at me by way of congratulations, the instant the ceremony was over. I don’t know whether any other Jewish community in the world does this. I don’t think so.

  Sheila Olsen came up to me, almost shyly, once Rabbi Tuvim was gone. She gave me a quick hug, and then stepped back, asking anxiously, “Is that all right? I mean, are you not supposed to be touched or anything until it’s over? I should have asked first, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Really. I’m so scared right now….” and I stopped there, ashamed to admit my growing panic to a stranger. But Sheila Olsen seemed to understand, for she hugged me a second time, and it was notably comforting.

  “Your rabbi will take care of you,” she said. “He’ll get you through it, I know he will. He’s a good man.” She hesitated then, looking away. “I’m a little embarrassed around both of you now, after yesterday. I didn’t mean to carry on like that.” I had no idea what to say. I just smiled stupidly. Sheila Olsen said, “I’ll have to leave for the airport right after this is over, so I wanted to say goodbye now. I guess it was all foolishness, but I’m glad I came. I’m glad I met you, Joseph.”

  “Me, too,” I said. We saw Rabbi Tuvim returning, waving to us over the heads of the milling guests. Sheila Olsen, shy again, patted my shoulder, whispered “Courage,” and began to slip away. The rabbi intercepted her deftly, however, and they talked for a few minutes, at the end of which Sheila Olsen nodded firmly, pointed to her big purse, and went to find a seat. Rabbi Tuvim joined me and went quietly over my Torah portion with me again. He seemed distinctly calmer, or possibly I mean resigned.

  “All right, Joseph,” the rabbi said at last. “All right, time to get this show on the road. Here we go.”

  I’m not going to talk about the Bar Mitzvah, not as a Bar Mitzvah, except to say that it wasn’t nearly the catastrophe I’d been envisioning for months. It couldn’t have been. I stumbled on the prayers, Lord knows how many times, but Rabbi Tuvim had his back to the onlookers, and he fed me the lines I’d forgotten, and we got through. Oddly enough, the speech itself—I had chosen to discuss a passage in Numbers 1–9, showing how the Israelites first consolidated themselves as a community at Sinai—flowed much more smoothly, and I found myself practically enjoying the taste of Hebrew in my mouth. If the rabbi could teach me nothing else, somehow I’d come to understand the sound. Not the words, not the grammar, and certainly not the true meaning…. just the sound. Nearing the grand finale, I wasn’t thinking at all about the gift table in the farthest corner of the room. I was already beginning to regret that the speech wasn’t longer.

  That was when I saw her.

  Anoush.

  Small and dark, olive-skinned, she was no magazine cover girl now, but a woman of Sheila Olsen’s age. She stood near the back of the room, away on the margins, as always. Sheila Olsen didn’t see her, but I did, and she saw that I did, and I believe she saw also that I knew who and how she was. She didn’t react, except to move further into shadow—she cast none of her own—but I could still see her eyes. No one else seemed to notice her at all; yet now and
then someone would bump into her, or step on her foot, and immediately say, “Oh, sorry, excuse me,” just as though she were living flesh. I tried to catch Sheila Olsen’s eye, and then Rabbi Tuvim’s, to indicate with my chin and my own eyes where they should look, but they never once turned their heads. It was very nearly as frustrating as learning Hebrew.

  I finished the speech any old how, and when I was done, my mother came out and put her father’s tallis on my shoulders, and everybody cheered except me. All I wanted to do was to draw Sheila Olsen’s attention to the shy, ghostly presence of her sister, but I lost track of both of them when the hard round candies began showering down on me. It was going to make for an uncertain dance floor – Herbie Kaufman’s Bel-Air Combo were busily setting up – but a number of my schoolmates were crowding onto it, followed by a few wary older couples. I was down from the little stage and weaving through the crush, tallis and all, pushing past congratulatory shoulder-punches and butt-slaps, not to mention the flash cameras – forbidden during the ceremony itself – going off in my face as I hunted for Sheila Olsen, frantic that she might already have left. She had a plane to catch, after all, and things to decide to remember or forget.

  I was slowing down, beginning to give up, when I spotted her heading for the door, but slowed down by the press of bodies, so that she heard when I called her name. She turned, and I waved wildly, not at her, but toward the shadowless figure motionlessly watching her leave. And for the first time, Sheila Olsen and Eleanor Araxia Bagaybagayan saw each other.

  Neither moved at first. Neither spoke—Sheila Olsen plainly didn’t dare, and I don’t think Anoush could. Then, very slowly, as though she were trying to slip up on some wild thing, Sheila Olsen began to ease toward her sister, holding out her open hands. She was facing me, and I saw her lips moving, but I couldn’t hear the words.