by Ram Sundaram
The argument had ended with that very accusation, with his son insisting that the reason they had never met eye to eye, was because he lacked the imagination to truly see the world.
He paused in his work and mopped the sweat off his forehead. He wondered if his son had been right. In the dream he’d been mentally restrained, left unable to visualise the reality he desired. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was also true of his real life. Was he lacking in imagination? And more importantly, was this shortcoming affecting him negatively?
He glanced down at the patio floor he had just laid out: a large square, built with hundreds of tiny tiles. Four sides—four equal, perpendicular sides: a perfect, boring square.
“I can do better,” he told himself, and frowned in concentration as he tried to envision a more imaginative and distinctive shape. It was a simple task, he told himself: all he had to do was imagine a fun and creative design for his patio. Simple really, nothing to it…
He grew thirsty and went to reach for the beer, but then held himself back. “I won’t even take a sip until I come up with an idea,” he told himself, feeling that the addition of a clear incentive would prompt the wheels in his mind to start spinning rapidly.
He sat on the ground and stared at the bottle of beer, while his mind worked tirelessly to conjure up an original, imaginative idea for a patio structure. In a small corner of his mind, he thought it funny that his reality had taken on the nature of his dreams.
To his immense astonishment, a pink slip floated down by his side. He picked it up slowly, in utter disbelief. On the paper was written: Pete’s Patio Designs: When you feel you’ve run out of ideas, call Pete’s Patio Designers! He crumpled up the flyer with disgust.
Imprisoned within reality’s dream, he stared longingly at the beer…
V
Reflection
I was six years old when I announced to my father that I wanted to be a magician. He responded by offering to show me a magic trick that would turn me black and blue. Then, turning his angry glare back to the newspaper, he said, “No son of mine is going to play Houdini for a living.” Thirty years later, I was about to go on stage for my 1000th performance. The bruises on my body had healed long before my first performance, but the scars on my memories still remained. I didn’t blame my father for what I had become, though I certainly didn’t credit him for it either. I was what I was because of my own choices.
A psychiatrist I had been assigned to a few years back attempted to attribute every one of my “flaws” to my turbulent relationship with my father: my anger, my excessive drinking, and even my womanizing tendencies. She said that though he’d passed away several years ago, his shadow still loomed over me and said it always would. I chuckled wryly as I remembered her asinine conclusions and wondered how such an absurd field like psychology could be considered a science. I hated my father, perhaps more than he hated me, but his shadow, along with the rest of him, was six feet under. The scars I wore from our time together were nothing more than reminders of a nasty childhood; but the scars weren’t wounds—they didn’t bleed.
I checked the clock above the dresser—I had a few more minutes before my cue. I scrutinised my reflection in the antique cheval mirror. “A thousand performances,” I said to myself, with a sly grin. “No one ever gave you a chance of even going past a dozen.” But then the grin slowly left my face, “Least of all your father,” I added.
The silence was deafening.
An intimidating air of expectation hovered over the entire theatre, as the spotlight fell upon him, standing in the middle of the stage, alone but for a single, ordinary prop.
“Behold,” he said, gesturing to the orange bucket. Picking it up, he turned it over in his hands so that the audience could see there were no false bottoms, tubes, pipes or any machinery attached to it. It was quite simply a plain, unremarkable orange bucket that he would perform magic with. He spat once into the bucket, covered it under a white sheet, and then muttered an incantation while twirling his wand over the sheet in clockwise circles. When he was finished, he glanced at the audience for a moment, to further intensify the anticipation, before removing the cloth with a grand flourish. The bucket was filled to the brim with water.
The resounding applause filled the theatre with an overwhelming sense of achievement, as he bowed and received due praise from his spectators. But even as he raised his palms to modestly quell their appreciation, a gurgling noise rose from the bucket. At first he ignored it, but then he noticed several people shifting in their seats to look past him, their eyes wide with awe and alarm. Slowly he too turned to look behind.
A dim silhouette rose from the bucket, its shape transforming steadily as it emerged into the air. It took on the form of a man, a man he knew and recognised very well: his father. He moved forward, entranced by this inexplicable occurrence. His father stood with his feet submerged in the water, still blurry and see-through, but his identity was unmistakable. His eyes screamed with disapproval as he pulled a gun from within his jacket and aimed it at his son.
A shot fired and the audience screamed in horror.
A magician’s life, like the trunk he carries with him from show to show, is full of secrets. And these secrets, if exposed, would not only reveal the workings of his tricks, but would also reveal the workings of the magician himself, whose very existence is a trick. But I knew, as I checked my appearance in the mirror, that my own secrets were safe. I had paid my dues in life, and this was the time to enjoy what I had earned.
These few minutes before each show were my favourite moments of the entire night. The anticipation was at its highest point, as was my confidence. After working hard to practice my tricks again and again, these final few moments before the performance were about relishing the prospect of undeniable success. It was a moment when I could reflect upon my existing accomplishments and be proud of what I was now about to achieve.
Standing before the floor-length mirror, I deemed my appearance decent enough—still, it never hurt to look perfect, so I took a brush to my jacket in an effort to make it spotless. It was then that I noticed something odd: the man inside the mirror, identical to me in every detail, did not brush his jacket as I did. I frowned at him, but he did not frown back.
“No,” I sighed heavily. “Why’re you doing this to me now?” I tried to ignore the aberration and straightened my tie. The tie in the reflection remained crooked.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I hadn’t had a drink in years, I was certain of that. My mind couldn’t have been playing tricks with me, not now, not so close to the show. I told myself that there had to be a reasonable explanation. In fact, I forced myself to believe that when I opened my eyes, everything would be normal and my reflection would behave normally.
My eyes opened, but the man in the mirror still had his eyes shut.
“Damn you!” I cried, kicking my dresser in anger.
I felt like this had happened before, but it hadn’t. I had seen strange things when I’d been drunk, but nothing like this and definitely nothing when I was sober. So if it wasn’t alcohol that was producing these visions, what else could it be?
My gaze fell upon the divorce papers I’d received that very morning, a parting gift from the cheating wife that had left my side over a year ago. Next to the papers was a bottle of gin. I had carried this bottle with me from show to show for many years now. It was still full and the seal hadn’t even been broken, though there had been many times when I had contemplated succumbing to its temptations. But the fact that I hadn’t lapsed in my self-control was precisely why I carried it with me wherever I went. It was a reminder of the sacrifices I had made and the demons I had vowed to evade. I turned back to the mirror.
In the reflection, the bottle of gin was half-empty.
“No, don’t do this,” I begged, falling to my knees, but I wasn’t sure who I was pleading
to—maybe it didn’t matter. I could hear the applause of the audience from the stage, just above my dressing room—the show was starting. My manager was introducing the programme now. I only had a few moments before my cue. I had to get myself together… I had to…
He was the best magician in the world. He believed that… he had to. Underneath all his doubts, his weaknesses and his lack of any confidence, there lurked a stash of self-belief that was paramount to his success. He needed to borrow from that stash now, to regain lost ground; and perhaps most importantly, he needed to become the magician he knew he could be.
A cabinet stood on the stage. It had been raised about three feet from the floor, so that the audience could see there were no trapdoors leading beneath it. Similarly, apart from the strings that held it suspended in mid-air, there was nothing else touching the roof of the cabinet. It was now rotated in a full circle for the audience to get a good look all around it, and learn that it was quite simply an unremarkable wooden cabinet. He now opened the door and showed the audience the inside of the cabinet. He stepped in and ran his hands along the back and side panels, to show them that these panels were smooth and devoid of any mechanical rigs or features. Then he finally leapt out and asked if they were satisfied. Without waiting for an answer, he closed the door and pulled out his wand. He aimed it at the cabinet and muttered an incantation. He then tapped the door with his wand and pulled it open with a flourish.
His lovely assistant stood inside, clad in conservative clothing (conservative in length, not in style), which elicited a lot of howling and whistling from the men in the audience. He helped her down from the cabinet, closed the door, and allowed her to take her bows, while he stood smiling behind her. But then the cabinet door flew open again, and this time there was a couple inside, kissing passionately. The audience, thinking this was part of the trick, began applauding and whistling even louder. But he knew it wasn’t a trick, at least not his own. The woman in the cabinet was his wife, and the man kissing her was his brother.
Slamming the cabinet door shut, he set it on fire, disregarding the commotion this caused among the audience, and ignoring the screams that came from within.
The funny thing was he didn’t even have a brother…
I paced in front of the mirror, but my reflection stood still, with his hands behind his back, grinning at me with a kind of perverse amusement. I tried to ignore him, to focus instead on getting myself together, but my mind kept throwing obstacles in my path.
It had been a little over a year since my wife left me, but the pain still lingered. Why was I thinking of her now, I wondered? I had more pressing concerns than her adulterous nature, a label she would have been quite offended by, for it had never been proven that she’d had an affair. Instead, it was my apparent unfaithfulness and numerous scandals that she’d pointed her finger at when filing for a divorce. But I’d always noticed the way she’d looked at other men, not just strangers, but even my friends and colleagues. They were looks of admiration, of desire, and of approval… none of which I had earned from her in all our years of marriage.
The psychiatrist had met with me again a few months ago, by court order. She had told me that in addition to the scars left on my character by my father’s abuse, I was also suffering from abandonment issues. According to her, these issues were a direct result of my mother running out on our family when I was a child. Apparently my impending divorce had now further exacerbated the condition. She said that I felt emasculated by my wife’s rejection and that it’d hurt my already weakened self-esteem even further. I’d told her that she was daft and that it hardly took a medical degree to realise a cheating wife would hurt the husband’s self-esteem. I had stubbornly maintained that I’d made my peace with my wife’s rejection, and that I wasn’t suffering from any sort of psychological issues. The sessions had ended and I had returned to my life, untreated. Watching my reflection stare coldly back at me, with the kind of hostility only a stranger could express, I began to wonder if there had been any truth to her conclusions.
I stared at myself in the mirror, at the tired, gaunt face, wan complexion, and dishevelled hair. My eyes were hollow, practically lifeless, and there was a defeated expression on my unshaven face. Unshaven… I felt the smooth contours of my own freshly shaven chin… this wasn’t me. This man in the mirror definitely wasn’t me—he couldn’t be me. Was I hallucinating? Or worse, was he a real person? What if there had been a schism in my existence, splitting me into two different halves. What if my reflection was a different person altogether? I took a deck of cards from my breast pocket; good, he was doing the same thing. We both shuffled the cards deftly and then split the deck; we held up the top card on each deck for the other to see: I had the three of hearts, while he had the ace of spades.
I threw the deck at the mirror and cursed him. He was still holding onto his deck, eyeing me smugly. “Don’t do this to me…” I implored of him.
He shrugged, as if my plea meant nothing to him.
I turned away from the mirror.
I thought practising another trick would calm my nerves, so I chose a short but effective routine. I pulled a white silk handkerchief from my right sleeve; then I pulled a blue silk handkerchief from my left and tied the two together. I displayed them to an imaginary audience with my left hand, and as I did so, I pulled a third handkerchief out of my breast pocket with the right. This third handkerchief was made out of red silk and so was the most striking of the three. Keeping both hands separate, I tossed the joined handkerchiefs and the single red one into the air, and caught them both in a flourish with just my left hand. Grabbing either end with either hand, I revealed all three handkerchiefs joined together, with the red one tied in between the blue and white. I imagined the theatre erupting into tumultuous applause, and this eased my anxiety.
I turned back to the mirror.
He seemed to be waiting for me. When he had my attention, he repeated my trick, but with five handkerchiefs, all shown to be distinct pieces, and all tossed into the air at once. The effect was astounding, for five separate pieces of cloth rose clearly and yet fell as one single strand of five fabrics, knotted together. I gazed, dumbstruck by his impossible feat. He smiled at me smugly and I noticed that the defeated expression on his face had vanished, replaced instead by a look of arrogance I had often glimpsed in myself
“We should be working together as one,” I told him. He said the words with me, adopting the same gestures and facial expressions that I did, and yet when we finished, he stepped back and shook his head. I collapsed onto the floor and tore at my hair in frustration. Why had my own reflection suddenly turned against me?
There was a knock at the door and my assistant Amelia’s beautiful face peered into the room. She scanned the room cautiously, before finding me huddled on the floor; her lovely eyes couldn’t mask either the shock or the sudden revulsion she felt.
“Are you all right?” she asked, dropping down to my side rather hesitantly.
“What’re you doing here?” I said, sitting up and leaning against the dresser.
“You missed your cue,” she informed me. “Charles had to promote the singing group ahead of you. So you have another ten minutes before you’re supposed to go on again. In the meanwhile, he asked me to check on you.”
I felt a prick of disappointment, because I’d hoped that she had come in here out of her own concern for me. Amelia was quite beautiful, in many ways the most beautiful woman I had ever beheld. She had an innocent, virginal quality that I found irresistible. I wondered if it was this very innocence that kept her from realising my feelings for her. Many of the assistants before her had succumbed to subtler advances, but Amelia had obliviously (or else skilfully) evaded my every determined effort to win her affection.
She peered at me closely now, her expression hard to fathom. “You look ill,” she said, sounding more critical than worried. “Are you sure you’r
e up to this tonight?”
I glanced at the mirror. My reflection was kissing Amelia passionately. He had one hand on the small of her back, while the other caressed her long, black hair. I felt a new surge of bitterness towards him, coupled with poisonous envy.
“Are you okay?” she asked, a look of clear disgust on her face.
I managed a watery smile and a weak nod. “I’m fine. I’ll be out soon.”
She wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t linger either. “You have a few minutes before your cue. Call if you need anything. We’re just down the hall.”
I nodded. As she closed the door behind her, I felt the emptiness within the room grow stronger, until it slowly began to suffocate me. I realised that beneath the façade of carefully practised routines, my life was in shambles. I had lost my wife, had been shunned to this small theatre in a corner of the city, and I no longer had the charm to win the affection of beautiful women. The frustration reduced me to tears.
He tossed a notebook, with a small pencil attached, into the audience. An old woman in a large hat caught it. He asked her to write down a single word and then return it to him. A few seconds later, the notebook made its way back onto the stage and into his hands. He read the word to himself and then called out his assistant. Amelia strode out onto the stage, looking stunning as usual. A few whistles and howls came from the audience, followed by embarrassed laughter. Amelia indulged them with a quick smile and a wink, before a solemn look of concentration came upon her features and she closed her eyes.