The Trick

by Emanuel Bergmann

  “Do you think I could join your circus?” he asked timidly.

  Julia averted her eyes. It was important not too seem too eager.

  “I don’t know,” she said in a whisper. “I’ll have to ask the boss.”

  The boss was standing with some members of his troupe in the middle of the empty circus arena. He was not pleased. One of the tricks had not worked properly: the Princess’s appearance from the overseas trunk had drawn sniggering from the audience. That meant either that Conradi-Horster had screwed up, which was unlikely, or that the trunk had been placed at the wrong angle, and that some audience members had been able to see into the safe zone. Kröger was in the midst of yelling at his colleagues when Julia and Moshe approached him.

  “Liebling,” said Julia in her smoky voice, the voice that drove Kröger mad. And also Moshe. Julia had the slender, graceful body and delicate features of a dancer, despite her odd tendency to tramp about gracelessly. Her short blond hair was unruly, giving her a slightly impish appearance. She wore a white undergarment specifically chosen to accentuate her breasts, as well as tall rubber boots, because life in the circus was no picnic, and one was likely to step into all kinds of things. She had wiped the sweat, makeup, and powder off her face and was sucking lasciviously on a cigarette.

  “Liebling,” she said again.

  Kröger turned around and looked at her. “The audience saw you. In the trunk.”

  She shrugged, disinterested. “I did everything like I always do.”

  “I know, my treasure,” the Baron cooed. “It’s not your fault.”

  Up close, his brass mask gave off an eerie gleam. His makeup had blended with his sweat, becoming runny, and turned his face into something demonic. At last, Kröger noticed the boy.

  “Who is that?” he asked.

  Julia took Moshe’s shoulders and pushed him toward Kröger. “I found him behind the circus. He wants to join.”

  The Baron stared at the boy. He smelled of old stale sweat and schnapps.

  Moshe, terrified of the man, was breathing heavily.

  “Who are you?”

  “Sir!” Moshe called out. “I left my father to join the Zauber-Zirkus.”

  “Are you a Jew?”

  “I used to be . . .” Moshe said in a quavering voice.

  But Kröger gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Spare me. We’re circus folk. We’re all equals.”

  Moshe had never heard that before. “Really?”

  “Really. Can you shovel shit?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Do you see anyone else here?”

  “Are you really a baron?” Moshe asked tentatively.

  “In the theater,” Kröger said, “everyone is a nobleman. We are artists, and there is nothing nobler than art.”

  That made sense to Moshe.

  “Horst!” Kröger called out. An old man with a broom who was sweeping the bleachers looked up. “The boy here wants to know what you are!”

  “An artist,” Horst called back in a squeaky voice, then continued sweeping.

  “You see?” the Baron said. “The man who sweeps the floor is an artist. Everyone here is an artist.”

  Moshe could scarcely contain his excitement: “I want to be an artist, too!” he said.

  Kröger smiled and handed him a shovel.

  “Welcome, Maestro,” he said.

  A THOUSAND LIGHTS

  Max Cohn and the old man were sitting over roast beef sandwiches, french fries, and pancakes in a booth at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax Avenue. It was shortly after ten, but the place was still bustling. The room was lit in subdued shades of yellow and orange, which gave the old man’s skin a deathly pallor, and the seats were covered with brown fake leather. Small bottles of mustard and ketchup stood on the table in the midst of their half-eaten food. In the distance, Max could hear the clatter and hushed murmurs of other customers.

  Max was drinking Coke. The old man pulled the onions from his sandwich and put them on the table next to his plate, shaking his head disapprovingly.

  “Onions make me fart,” he declared.

  Max nodded.

  “They’re everywhere,” said the old man with an air of melancholy. “On everything.”

  Max took another sip of his soda. “Are you a magician?”

  The man ignored the question. He carefully lifted a slice of rye bread off his sandwich and peeked under it. An elderly waitress approached the table, sighing dramatically. A yellow apron covered her large, sagging bosom; her hair had been dyed bright red; and her lipstick was a dazzling shade of fuchsia. She leaned on the table with her left hand as she fumbled for her notebook.

  “My hip,” she said. “It’s just not getting any better.”

  “What’s with all the onions?’’ the old man said. “This is shit.”

  “Watch your language,” said the waitress. “There’s a kid sitting there.” And then she added, “Is there anything else I can get you gentlemen?”

  “Why always put you onions on everything?” the old man demanded, apparently unwilling to drop his line of inquiry.

  “People like onions. Normal people. You want coffee or something?”

  “Coffee?” the old man asked indignantly. “So I should stay up the whole night?”

  “I’m just asking,” said the waitress.

  Max found it odd that she didn’t lose her calm. He personally felt embarrassed by the old man’s behavior. But apparently, at Canter’s it was quite normal.

  “Bah! Coffee,” the old man said contemptuously. “Go away.”

  The waitress put the check on the table and left.

  Max repeated his question. “Are you a magician?”

  The old man shook his head. “No.”

  Max was confused. Did he have the wrong guy? But Luis, aka Wacky the Clown, had said that he had a bad left arm. That seemed to fit the bill.

  “Do you know the Hollywood Magic Shop? A guy named Luis?” Max asked.

  There was no reaction.

  He added, “Luis is amazing. He asked me to write down a vegetable—”

  “What, again with that stuff?” the old man said loudly. “Leave me already in peace.”

  “So you’re really not a magician?”

  “Look at me! Do I look like a magician? I’m an old man. I want to die! But no, you stopped me, you stupid boy!”

  Max opened his backpack and pulled out his record. “That looks like you.”

  The old man barely peeked at the record. He took a bite of the pancakes. His mouth full, he grudgingly said:

  “Yes, it is I.”

  “So you are a magician.”

  He shook his head. “No. I was a magician. I’m retired. Enough already.”

  “See,” Max started to explain, “I have a problem. And I was hoping you could help me.”

  “I don’t help people.”

  “It’s about my parents,” Max went on undeterred. “They’re about to get a divorce.”

  “Good,” said the old man. “You know why a divorce so expensive is?”

  Max shook his head.

  “Because it’s worth every penny,” Zabbatini said with a grin.

  Max could see the chewed-up pancake in the man’s mouth. Somehow, this conversation wasn’t going as he had hoped.

  “I don’t want them to get a divorce.”

  “And I want that my shit should smell like gold.”

  Max decided to make one last attempt. “On your record, there’s a spell. Eternal love. I was going to listen to it and then . . . well, use it, somehow. But the record is scratched. I thought, I was hoping . . .” His voice trailed off. Gathering his courage, he said, “I was hoping you could perform that spell, so that they’ll be in love again. So that Dad won’t leave me.”

  Zabbatini glared at Max
. He pointed his fork at him and said, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Max turned red and fought back tears. There was a silence.

  Then, Zabbatini said, “Carrots.”

  “What?”

  “The vegetable that you wrote down. It was carrots, no?”

  Max nodded, wiping away a tear. “How did you know?”

  “It’s always carrots. That’s what always everybody writes. Why, I don’t know. Stupid carrots.”

  Max smiled appreciatively, and Zabbatini indicated a bow. A brief smile flickered over his face, wiping away the years. He didn’t seem quite as unfriendly when he smiled.

  “Tell me about yourself,” Max said, hoping to seize the moment. “How did you come here?”

  Zabbatini looked at him, puzzled. “I walked. With you. I was hungry.”

  “No, not to Canter’s,” Max said. “America.”

  “Ah,” said Zabbatini. “I came with the U.S. Army.”

  “You were a soldier?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I was a prisoner.”

  Max was shocked. “Did you do something bad? Were you a gangster?”

  “Nonsense,” Zabbatini replied gruffly. “I was a Jew.”

  “Me too!” Max said, happy that they had something in common.

  “Back then,” Zabbatini continued, “it was not good to be a Jew.”

  Max nodded. His grandma had said something along those lines.

  Zabbatini told Max about the day of liberation. January 27, 1945. A day he would never forget. Zabbatini had been in a concentration camp, along with thousands of others. He was young and able to work, which helped him to survive. That, and a lot of luck.

  “Then came the Red Army,” Zabbatini said, and took another bite of his pancakes.

  “What?” Max asked.

  “What?” Zabbatini repeated dismissively. “The Russians!”

  In the last days of the war, Zabbatini had gotten dysentery. He had been lying in the barracks, in a weakened state. He had terrible diarrhea and was afraid of dying. If the disease didn’t kill him, the Germans would, the next day, during morning roll call at the latest. They would shoot him like a dog. But there was no more roll call. Zabbatini was lying there, feverish and whimpering, and when he lifted his eyes, he saw a man looking at him. A man in an odd uniform.

  “He looked Chinese,” Zabbatini said.

  “Chinese?” Max said. “I thought he was Russian.”

  “He was,” Zabbatini said. “A Soviet citizen, from Mongolia or God knows where. One of the New People. Russia is huge.”

  Max nodded.

  Zabbatini could see it all now, as clear as day. The smelly barracks, the wooden bunk, the big man in the uniform who winked at him. He had said only one word: “Tovarish.”

  “What does it mean?” Max asked.

  “It’s Russian,” Zabbatini explained. “It means ‘friend.’ ”

  At that moment, he had known that he was saved. A feeling of joy, unlike anything else he’d ever felt, had rushed through his body. The Russians brought him to a field hospital and gave him medicine, even some soup. After a few days, he began regaining his strength. He spent a few more weeks in a camp for displaced persons, then made his way west. A long and arduous journey. Germany was in ruins.

  Near Hannover, he saw a dead body strung up in a tree. The sight disgusted him, but he couldn’t resist a second look. The man had been hanging there for a few days, and Zabbatini gasped in shock when he saw who it was. The crows had already picked out the man’s eyes, but Zabbatini still recognized him.

  Then he heard a voice coming from behind.

  “You know him?”

  Zabbatini turned around. The man had spoken English, not German. He was wearing an American uniform. A major, apparently. He was just buttoning his pants. A few feet away stood a jeep. The man must have been peeing, Zabbatini thought. Two other soldiers were sitting in the jeep, having a cigarette.

  Zabbatini nodded. He had to fight against the urge to vomit. The wind carried the sweet scent of decay.

  “Who is he?” the major asked.

  “Inspector,” said Zabbatini, who had learned only a few words of English in his time in Berlin. It had been a very fashionable language for a while, but the Nazis put an end to that. They put an end to everything.

  “A policeman?” asked the major.

  Zabbatini nodded.

  “A Nazi?”

  Again, Zabbatini nodded, though with some uncertainty. Yes, strictly speaking, the man had been a Nazi. Strictly speaking. Zabbatini turned away. The sight of the dead man made him infinitely sad. He had liked that man.

  “What was his name?” the Major asked.

  “Erich Leitner,” said Zabbatini, and added in German: “I helped him catch a murderer.”

  The major seemed to understand. “You’re a policeman, too?”

  Zabbatini shook his head. “No,” he said. “Mentalist.”

  “What?”

  In an awkward mélange of English and German, Zabbatini explained to him that he had the ability to read other people’s minds. The major seemed unconvinced.

  “You have a paper?” Zabbatini asked. “And a pen?”

  “Sure,” said the major.

  “I want you think of a vegetable. No matter. Any vegetable. Write it down, please. . . .”

  Zabbatini seemed to relax somewhat. The conversation picked up as he told a few more anecdotes from his life. Old people loved talking about the past, that much Max knew. They lived in the past, because their limited future featured mostly bedpans, walkers, and various ailments.

  Zabbatini told Max how he’d come to this country, after the war.

  “Major Forman helped me.” He ate another piece of his pancake, a distant look on his face. “After the war, I was a colonel in the American army. I had even a uniform. It was nice. Very green.”

  Max was impressed. “Cool. What did you do?”

  “I found Communists.”

  “What?”

  “Communists. I found them.”

  “What’s a Communist?”

  “A Communist is a someone who dreams of a better future.”

  Max scratched his head. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “Neither do I. But it is forbidden.”

  “What, the better future?”

  “No, the Communism.”

  Zabbatini went on to explain that after meeting Major Forman, he had worked for the U.S. Army as a mind reader. His job was to weed out Communist infiltrators. For that, he was given a uniform, a rank, a paycheck, and, last but not least, American citizenship.

  In 1948, he went to New York.

  “I cannot describe to you,” he said to Max, “the seeing of the Statue of the Liberty for first time. I was on a boat from Hamburg. It was night when we arrived in the New York Harbor. It was very cold, and windy. And it was raining. But everyone, no matter, old, young, sick, no matter, everyone came on deck to see it.”

  He took off his glasses and wiped them with a paper napkin.

  “It was beautiful. Manhattan was shining like a diamond in the dark. We could see a thousand lights glowing in the mist. And the statue, she looked down on us, and it was as if she made us a promise.”

  “What promise?”

  Zabbatini shrugged. “A better future?”

  “So the Statue of Liberty is also a Communist?”

  Zabbatini shook his head. “No, not like that. When I saw it, I thought, Maybe now, there is a little bit more freedom, a little bit less Nazis.”

  He paused, and stared off into his distant, dreamlike past. Then he told Max how he joined Project MKULTRA.

  “Project what?” Max asked.

  Zabbatini tapped against the side of his head. “Mind control. The CIA. It was a se
cret project for the control of the minds of the stupid.”

  “Control of the minds?” Max was in awe.

  “Yes,” Zabbatini said.

  “And?” Max asked. “Does it work?”

  “Of course not, you schmuck! That’s why I left the CIA and joined the CBS.” He slurped his iced tea and said, “It is all a big bullshit. Dumb tricks. There is no magic. Your dad will leave you, and you can do nothing. Now pay the money so I can get out of here. I must now go to toilet.”

  Choking, Max said, “There’s nothing you can do?”

  Zabbatini shook his head. “Nothing.” He tapped the bill. “Money.”

  Max looked at the bill, somewhat startled. Was he really supposed to pay? Normally, the adults in his life paid for everything. He timidly lifted up the bill and looked at it. Then he said, “I can’t afford this.”

  “What?” Zabbatini practically screamed. “You bring me to the eating and you cannot pay it?”

  “I didn’t bring you,” Max said.

  “It was your idea!”

  “You wanted pancakes.”

  “Of course. I always want pancakes. Who doesn’t want pancakes? Pancakes and pussy.”

  “But I can’t afford this.”

  Zabbatini looked at him and said, “Not my problem.”

  With that, he got up and casually walked out of the deli. Max was left sitting there, wondering how to proceed. He really didn’t have enough money, only five dollars. After a few seconds of agonized pondering, he came up with the only plan that made any sort of sense.

  He could feel his heart beating in his chest. He looked at the waitress. When she turned around, he suddenly leapt from the imitation leather set and ran as fast as he could toward the glass door.

  He didn’t get very far. The waitress’s hands were on him before he could run to safety.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she said. She had his shoulder in a tight grip.

  Max blushed. “I . . .” he began. “I was just going for some air.”

  “First you pay your bill,” she said. “Where’s the old guy?”