by Tahir Shah
At eight o’clock Gokul found me, propped against Elizabeth Barwell’s pyramid, wrapped in the pink nylon blanket.
“Did you sleep?”
“Like the dead.”
“Good, Sahib,” he brooded, “because Master waiting for you.”
As the taxi pulled to a halt outside the Alipore mansion, I found myself yearning for the cemetery. At least I could do what I liked there. For someone who had come to India in search of magical tuition, I was accomplishing very little. Hafiz Jan had taught me more in my attic bedroom twenty years before. I rebuked myself for not persuading the Pashtun to take me on at Burhana. As I contemplated the situation, Feroze strolled over from the veranda.
“Happy New Year! How was your evening?” he asked.
“Quite interesting. I’ve learnt all about Park Street.”
“Meet anyone out of the ordinary?”
“Not especially.”
As usual, Feroze wasn’t listening.
“Tahir, please follow me,” he said in a loud, exultant tone.
The Master had used my first name. I hadn’t realized he even knew it.
“Where are we going?”
Feroze led me into the mansion: a place which, until then, had been out of bounds. We ascended the winding teak staircase with its exquisite carved banister. Once on the first-floor landing, the magician slipped a brass key into the lock of a solid white paneled door. A click to the left and the door swung open.
I entered an ample lavender-walled chamber. The room was dominated by a spectacular mahogany four-poster bedstead, with plumped-up pillows, scatter cushions, and an embroidered eiderdown. For a man who had spent the night in a cemetery, it was a sight for sore eyes.
Opposite the bed stood a pine commode; its front panel hinging down to reveal a washbasin and miniature shaving mirror. Standing in the far comer was a rosewood davenport, inlaid with ivory marquetry and geometric lines. The room smelt of naphthalene mothballs.
“As a New Year’s gift you can stay in here,” exclaimed Feroze.
“I’m fine out there in the servants’ quarters,” I replied meekly.
“Are you really sure?” rejoined the Master.
“Well, if you’re pressuring me to stay here,” I said, bouncing my hand on the bed, “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
Feroze scoffed: “As far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to stay out there with Gokul!”
Without another word, I grabbed the key and followed the teacher downstairs. Had the reign of tyranny now come to an end? Would I at last be getting on with serious work?
I would have to wait and see.
“Show me your hands,” Feroze snapped once we had reached the study.
When my fists were presented before him, he observed them carefully, inspecting the skin between each finger. His piercing scrutiny took in the torn nails, the lacerated digits and bruised palms.
Sighing with a veiled hint of pleasure, he began to speak:
“It’s essential that when I tell you to do something, you do it – perfectly,” he said. “Only then can you progress as a student in the field of conjuring. Now,” he continued, “you have proved to me that you can obey … that you can be obedient.”
Feroze stood up and peered out the window in meditation, composing his thoughts. Rather than trying to drive me away, the trials of submission – as they were now being advertised – seemed similar to those employed by the Special Air Service. The British elite fighting forces adopt a regime of reduced severity. They begin training with the hardest exercises and work backwards. The approach serves to purge the stragglers at the first hurdle – hacking away the dead wood. Although damaged, perhaps beyond repair, I could rest assured. Like a sprightly young sapling, I was free from dead wood.
“Now that they’re over, can you tell me what relationship the ordeals bore to stage magic?” I inquired.
“You mean holding out the grape; digging with the teaspoon … crawling around for shells … all that?”
“Yes, all that … What relation did it have to the studies?”
The Master clicked his heels together and coughed.
“All that,” he quipped, “had nothing whatsoever to do with illusion or magic!”
“Then why did I have to go through it?”
Feroze’s face clenched tight with anger.
“Are you contesting my judgment?”
“Certainly not.”
“You say you want to learn about illusion and conjuring,” he blustered, regarding me straight on. “Before you learn anything … before we start work … there are some things that you should understand.”
“Of course.”
“You must remember that this is India. And in India, illusion is different from the version you find in the West.” Feroze paused to take a deep breath. “In India, illusion, magic, conjuring, sorcery – whatever you call it – is not a frivolous, whimsical thing. It’s an extremely serious matter. It’s a tool of incomparable capacity.
“Every day across this country,” the Master persisted, launching into a harangue, “people use illusory techniques for different reasons. Sadhus, healers and mendicants, mystics and astrologers, so-called ‘godmen’, and street entertainers: they all use stage magic. Some perform tricks to make an honest or a dishonest living. Yet through illusion, ordinary people realize their dreams of amassing astounding wealth and magnificent power.
“Remember what Europe was like two or three hundred years ago.” Feroze paused to unfasten his cuff-links. “People were superstitious. They believed in witchcraft, in magic, in miracles, and in all kinds of supernatural powers. Look throughout India today and you’ll find people with precisely the same beliefs. Pick anyone at random out there,” the magician motioned to the street, “pull a gold watch from thin air, and they’ll believe it’s real magic.”
Feroze was right. In the West we dismiss conjuring as mere sleight-of-hand. Everyone knows that a magician’s card trick is exactly that – a trick. But in India, simple feats of deception are enough to draw a following of thousands.
I have spent my life studying illusion,” said Feroze pointedly. “I have studied the effect of conjury on a man’s psyche; the intensity of a ‘miracle’ used in an Orissan village; and the power of the simplest trick seen by the pious in Varanasi.
“I have traveled through India’s most remote regions and its greatest cities: always searching for one thing.” Feroze stopped talking. He wiped a hand across his mouth. “I’m searching for those whose lives depend on deception: for those who conjure miracles for the masses!”
I leant back in my chair, watching as the sorcerer crossed the study. First he locked the door. Then he marched over to the bookshelf dedicated to Houdini. The shelf had been positioned at eye level. Or, rather, at nose level. Pressing his nostrils to the spine of the left-most volume, Feroze moved to the right, smelling each book in turn. As he sniffed, he tensed the muscles of his back, clenching his fists. He appeared to gain strength from the exercise. Only when he had smelt each book did he continue with his lecture.
“Now you have shown that you can follow orders,” he went on, “I am willing to go on to the next step. In due course I will teach you some of my techniques. It’s up to you to do with this knowledge what you will. When you have learnt from me, you may decide the material’s too powerful a tool ever to use. Only you can make that decision.”
My attention was distracted by the sound of two vehicles smashing together on the street outside. I peered out to have a good look, hoping that I might spy the carnage through the back hedge. Realizing that the blood and gore was out of sight, I swiveled round to face Feroze. But he had vanished.
The study’s door was locked from the inside. Its key was still in place. The two other doors leading from the room were also locked, as were the windows. I searched for a trapdoor, a secret lever … but with no success. The only possible clue lay beneath the Houdini bookshelf. Inky black and as thick as treacle, I found a pool of hig
h-viscosity engine oil.
EIGHT
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
“To be a great illusionist,” said Feroze definitely, when we had convened for work at six the next morning, “you must study the experts.”
“Which experts?”
“First, you must immerse yourself in Robert-Houdin and Houdini, Cagliostro and Kellar. Then there are the illusions of godmen, sages and sadhus – India’s own sublime conjurors – to be examined.”
Dressed in equestrian costume, replete with jodhpurs, knee-length riding boots, and a hound’s-tooth coat, Feroze motioned with a bull’s pizzle riding crop to a set of shelves.
“Those are the classic texts,” he said. “You must read them all and learn them. But before that, there’s much preparation to do. Preparation is what it’s all about!”
The Master had taken down a biography of Alessandro Cagliostro, the eighteenth-century Italian illusionist and mountebank. He held the leather-bound volume in his hands, caressing the tooled spine with his fingers as if it were a bejeweled reliquary.
“Before Cagliostro can become your confidant,” he hissed, “there are other studies to attend to … Before Cagliostro’s wickedness comes Houdini’s genius.”
The monologue was interrupted as Gokul knocked at the door with a tray of tea. Feroze pointed the riding crop like a saber at the manservant’s chest, and then at the coffee table. Shuffling to the table, like a child in its mother’s shoes, Gokul dispatched his load.
“During your studies,” said the Master in a calculating tone, “I’ll disclose shocking things. You may scream when I reveal the truth. But to discern any of the courses, you must grasp a single key point.”
“I will try to understand it,” I said willingly. “What is it?”
“One central element links all the greatest masters of stage magic and conjuring.” Feroze poured himself a cup of tea and breathed in the steam as if it were perfume. “Each of them recognized the crux of all magic.”
“What’s the crux?”
One had to wait for answers. Feroze controlled his material, rationing it at will.
“Nothing in illusion,” he went on, “is so important as the cross-fertilization of information.”
“What do you mean?”
Feroze swished an “F” with his riding crop.
“Harry Houdini’s maxim …” he roared. “Polymathic proficiency makes a magician!
“Your studies must include multiple areas – both theoretical and tangible. Mathematics, chemistry, the arts, and psychology.” Feroze paused to gulp his tea. “Then you have to grasp everything from beekeeping to doxology!”
“Doxology?” I replied, limply.
The magician rubbed his chin, troubled at my lack of rudimentary knowledge.
“Doxology,” he elucidated, “the study of hymns.”
Leaving no time to consider the importance of such an under-patronized area, Feroze continued with his discourse:
“It’s upon these foundations that a magician builds,” he said. “There’s no point in learning a trick if your mind isn’t sufficiently exercised and developed. Preparation forms the first part of your curriculum. Complete the groundwork and you can move on. The illusions themselves are the next section. Then …” Feroze said, stretching, “then comes ‘insider information’.”
“Insider information? What’s that got to do with magic?”
“Excelling in illusion,” explained the Master, “is all about learning secrets and applying them. Find out a man’s trade secret: first, you have unlocked his puzzle; and second, you have a chip of information which – somewhere down the line – you may be able to apply yourself.”
Feroze’s course seemed comprehensive, but I was startled at the lack of hands-on training. Wouldn’t it have been better to cut to the chase and get on with the tricks themselves? I had so many questions, but when I expressed them, the magician would simply scrunch up his eyes and answer with another question:
“How long is the course to be?”
“How fast do you learn?”
“How much do you charge for the tuition?”
“Did you pay your father for teaching you to swim?”
“Why do you always answer one question with another question?”
“Do l?”
* * * *
Work began at six each morning, with four hours of private study, mostly from terse scientific textbooks. As with the grim trials of the courtyard, much of the academic tuition appeared pointless. What illusionist needed to know the full Periodic Table, Linnaean terms for cacti, or Boltzmann’s Constant?
As the schedule developed, I started to learn more of Feroze’s abnormal nature. Never before had I met a man so preoccupied with time and detail.
Considering meals as an absolute waste of time, he permitted exactly twelve minutes for each one. Even then, he only picked at Gokul’s offerings, rarely eating more than a mouthful or two. Lunch was taken at five past ten. A period of four hours followed, in which I was instructed on a wide range of sciences and unrelated areas. These ranged from coin collecting to the monastic architecture of thirteenth-century France. Dinner was consumed at five past two in the afternoon. After dinner, I was left to tackle the ever-expanding list of assignments and readings.
The odd timings of Feroze’s life, and his senseless concern for minutiae, suggested he was a man haunted by an extreme condition of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Only a true obsessive would go as far as timing every feature of his day. A pocket-watch was always within easy reach of the magician’s hand. Sometimes I would catch him noting down times: how long it had taken him to drink his tea; to walk from the kitchen to the study; to read a chapter of text; or to peruse his post.
The rigid agenda for everything began to drive me mad. But what I was subjected to was nothing in comparison to the magician’s private regime.
Gokul, a devoted servant of many years, knew each of his master’s eccentricities. Laughing them off, he listed a handful of the many obsessions one morning.
“He likes everything just so. His bath always at forty-five degrees; always shaves with seven sweeps of blade; shirt buttons fastened with the left hand; shoes must be replaced each day; his toenails clipped on Wednesday nights; the clothes in cupboard are hung facing west; he stirs tea clockwise, and coffee anticlockwise; he never enters or leaves a room without pressing his thumb to the doorknob twice; and,” said the servant, smiling, “he cannot sleep unless window is left open exactly three inches.”
“Tell me, Gokul, what happens if any of these compulsions are forgotten?”
The servant jumped to his feet in a rare display of verve. Gaping at me, his face rigid with terror, he spluttered:
“No! No! Nothing ever is forgotten!”
* * * *
At first I was rather lackadaisical about my studies. Although challenging, the curriculum was a far cry from the misery of the courtyard ordeals. The cockroach-free room, with its soft bed and exquisite furniture, was a great improvement on the servants’ quarters. But self-assurance soon turned to consternation, as the monumental workload began to take its toll. Feroze appeared to have no idea of the limits of a human’s capacity for study.
Each day he piled dozens of treatises, books and heavy calfskin volumes before me. “Another one or two for your pile,” he would smirk, loading five more editions atop the great ruck of books. As I stacked up the publications, I perceived the awesome artistry of the magician. His was a plan of unscrupulous cunning: first lull the student into a false sense of security: then bury him in work. Not content with damaging my body, he was now preparing to injure my mind.
The days began to pass, and I found myself exploring new thresholds of knowledge. I was learning about all kinds of things. All kinds of things, that is, except for stage magic. When Feroze caught me secretly reading one of Houdini’s books, he vented his rage.
“Finished with your other studies, have you?” he said, snorting like a charging warthog. “We
ll, you’d better plough on with these!” Half a dozen volumes on environmental pollution were thrown at me.
“Why do I have to study all this garbage?” I protested.
“Learn to prepare your mind,” said Feroze with placid reflection. “Without a foundation, even the mightiest building will collapse.”
“But I just want to learn something about conjuring! That’s what I came for … to learn about magic!”
The Master gazed at his pocket-watch. He remained silent as the second hand wound round in miniature increments. Two minutes went by. I waited for the order of expulsion, recompense for my outburst. But it didn’t come.
Instead of exile, Feroze doubled the workload. Every hour, the routine became more Draconian. Anything but a perfect score was unacceptable. Work graded below this – considered by him as sub-standard – was ripped up in a new orgy of humiliation. In the few instances praise was meted out, it was so brusque that most people would have regarded it as a mild rebuke. “Life,” the teacher would say, inspecting his knuckles, “doesn’t recognize good and bad – just excellence.”
Only after three nights in the four-poster bed did I genuinely understand the true genius of Hakim Feroze.
Rather than a soothing berth for a weary head and dislocated spine, the bedstead was a foul accessory of persecution. On Alcatraz, penal offenders were afforded one luxury: each morning they would be given a piping-hot shower. But instead of being a gesture of compassion, the scorching showers had a more devious purpose. Had the convicts grown used to icy water, they would easily have been able to survive in the surrounding waters of San Francisco Bay. In the same way, the lavish splendor of the new bedroom was designed to weaken me. After the third night I resolved that, henceforth, I would sleep on the floor.
The disconcerting sleeping arrangements were only one of many peculiarities a pupil resident at the mansion was required to withstand. The ceaseless workload and stringent system of trials and exams, the strange meal timings, studies of fringe fields and dawn sessions … none was easy to get used to. But no idiosyncrasy of the household unsettled one as much as Hakim Feroze’s inexplicable feats. By “feats”, I don’t refer to conjury. I had enrolled to become proficient in that art, and was fascinated by it. Rather, I allude to the Master’s other abilities – some of which seemed to have a grounding in what can only be called the occult.