The Gießen storm troopers were drunk that night with their own arrogance and more than a little beer. They were the least desirable audience: skeptical and inebriated. They enjoyed tripping Zabbatini as he clowned his way through the spectators. It was not just the usual amusement—they actually enjoyed his suffering. Their humor was cruelty, and they kicked him around like a soccer ball. Moshe, terrified and nearly in tears, felt as if they could see through his makeup, as if his face would give away his secret, his Jewishness.
Then he had a flash of insight.
He grabbed the arm of one of the Brownshirts, a stout ruddy fellow with a shorn head, and immediately became very still. His lips started to quiver, and his eyes bore into the other man’s face.
“What?” asked the man, suddenly off guard. He looked uneasily at the others. Moshe prolonged his act as long as he could. Then he began shaking. The others started to back off.
Suddenly, Moshe flinched, as if he’d snapped out of a trance.
“What?” the man asked again.
Moshe became very calm, regarding the man with great pity, then leaned next to him and whispered, “In less than a year, you will die.”
The man shrieked and took a step back. He was suddenly pale. Moshe turned on his heel and strode through the audience, making his exit. No one stopped him.
Outside the tent, Moshe felt jubilant. He’d done it! He’d scared the man off! Unbelievable that people should fall for such a stupid trick. His prediction was no more valid than that of the village idiot. And yet, the man had believed him. He, Moshe Goldenhirsch, had scared the Brownshirt!
He heard a voice behind him.
“What did you do to him?”
Julia emerged from the tent, a fur coat thrown over her white dress. These were the last days of winter, and the field was covered in snow. Her dress and skin shone in the pale moonlight. Her beauty was blinding. He could see her breath against the icy night, and he longed to feel it against his skin.
She lit a cigarette.
“I made a fake prediction,” he said.
“All predictions are fake,” she said.
Moshe nodded. “But he didn’t know that.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That he would soon die.”
She laughed. “And he bought it?”
“Looks like it.” He took a step toward her. Emboldened by his success, he made another daring prediction: “Before the night is over, you will be in love with me.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve been in love with you from the first moment we met,” she said.
It wasn’t true, but she said it anyway. It sounded good.
“Oh,” he responded, somewhat helpless. He was delighted, but also confused. Why hadn’t she told him before? Why did she let him suffer all these months? “Well . . .” he stammered. “That’s nice, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “It is nice.”
He looked around. Dozens of rabbits were hopping about the nocturnal field. They had thick winter coats and seemed to be rather busy.
Julia glanced at him expectantly. Her eyes seemed larger and deeper than ever before. They were like an ocean, and he felt he couldn’t swim. Any moment, he would go under.
Julia took the initiative. He felt something against his hand and looked down. Her slender fingers were resting on his.
Gradually, it dawned on him that he was supposed to kiss her.
He had never kissed anyone before. No one had taught him. His father had only ever talked about long-dead Talmudic scholars, and the Half-Moon Man was only interested in making pigeons vanish.
He was only seventeen, and he had no idea what to do. Julia, however, was twenty and had a very clear idea as to what should happen next. She took a drag off her cigarette and turned away, blowing out the smoke so it wouldn’t get in his face. Then she ran her finger through his thick, black hair, pulled his head toward her, and kissed him.
When she was done, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“That was nice,” Moshe said, somewhat helplessly. He could taste the tobacco on his lips.
She shrugged. “Could have been better.”
“Oh.” A devastating verdict, he felt.
“You’re too tense,” she said. “I’ll show you how it works.”
She threw away her cigarette and began her lessons.
MAX AND THE MAGICIAN
When Max came home that afternoon, he saw the Great Zabbatini snoring loudly in a deck chair on his front lawn. He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, and a suitcase was standing next to him. Max was surprised, to say the least. After school, he had gone on his bike to visit Mom at her shop and had spent two boring hours brooding over his homework. He didn’t feel quite comfortable at Om Sweet Om, since it held nothing of interest to him. Just furniture, clothes, and tchotchkes from the Far East. Mom was dealing with some customers, and therefore had no time for him. When he finished with his homework, he biked home. And now this.
Max approached the old magician.
“Hello?”
No response. Max gently shook his shoulder. Perhaps he was dead again. Max shook harder, and Zabbatini flinched, then moaned as he opened his eyes.
“What is this nonsense?” he demanded indignantly.
“You were sleeping.”
“So? Can’t I sleep in peace?”
“What are you doing on our lawn?”
“Sleeping.” With an elegant gesture, he brushed some imaginary dust off his shirt.
“How did you know where I live?” Max asked.
Zabbatini flashed him his trademark smile, which he had perfected during his many years onstage. A perfect blend of charm and mischief. “I am a magician, no?” he said, bowing with a flourish, and then groaned.
“Are you all right?” Max asked.
“My neck,” Zabbatini said with clenched teeth. “A cramp. I can’t move.”
Max carefully guided the old man inside the house and helped him lie down on the sofa.
Zabbatini sighed with relief and rubbed his neck.
“Wonderful,” he said. “What a beautiful couch. Give me now the remote control.”
Max did as he was asked.
“I need more pillows,” Zabbatini declared. “For my neck.”
Max ran into Mom’s bedroom to get pillows. When he came back, he saw Zabbatini agitatedly pressing buttons on the remote.
“How do I turn this thing on? I want the Playboy channel,” Zabbatini proclaimed. “I want to see nekkid girls.”
He looked around, as if he was hoping the nekkid girls he so desired were about to walk into the living room. Instead, his gaze fell upon a hideous painting that Deborah had hung next to the door, against her family’s protests. The face of a clown was visible on a backdrop of black velvet. He had a tear on his cheek and a tortured smile on his lips. His white face seemed to float forward toward the viewer. Max found it creepy, but his mom was inexplicably attached to the thing. It wasn’t so much its artistic value that she defended, but rather its emotional meaning for her. She’d had it since she was a child.
Zabbatini looked at it with disgust. Then a thought occurred to him. “Were you ever in Bongo’s Clown Room?” he asked.
Max shook his head.
“On Hollywood Boulevard, at Winona. It is even better than the Playboy channel.”
“Are there clowns?”
“Clowns, shmowns!” Zabbatini said. “It is a titty bar. There are nekkid, horny women with big breasts.”
Max blushed.
“Paradise,” Zabbatini said. “Women and whiskey.” Then he added, “Why have I nothing to drink?”
Max rushed into the kitchen and poured a glass of tap water for his guest.
Zabbatini was indignant.
“Do I look like a shitty fish? I want so
mething to drink. Whiskey!”
“We . . . we don’t have whiskey . . .” Max said cautiously.
“No whiskey?” Zabbatini looked as if he’d just found out that the love of his life had married someone else.
Max shook his head.
“Shit,” Zabbatini said. Then his face lit up. “I saw a liquor shop. On the corner. They will have schnapps or something. In my wallet is my money. Give me pilsner or give me beer.”
“They won’t sell me beer,” Max said.
“No beer? What is this nonsense?”
“I’m under twenty-one,” Max explained.
“I can see that,” Zabbatini said. “You are not drinking my beer, I am.”
“We have iced tea,” Max said.
“I shit on tea,” Zabbatini said. “And why is the television working not?”
Max took the remote from him and switched it on.
A smile spread across Zabbatini’s face. “Finally,” he said.
After watching some quiz shows, Zabbatini felt hungry and demanded some lunch. Max went into the kitchen. He still had some leftover Indian food from when he and his mom had gone to India Sweets and Spices down the road. It was a grocery store and takeout restaurant, and one of his favorite places in town. Max and his mom would often get lunch at their buffet counter and sit in front of the huge flat-screen TV, watching dazzling dance sequences with Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan. As it happened, he still had some vegetable korma and paneer masala left over from two days ago. He put it on a plate, placed the plate in the microwave, and then laid it down graciously on the coffee table in front of Zabbatini. The old magician began gobbling it up, all the while complaining that he was being fed leftovers. Max finally worked up the courage to ask the question that had been on his mind for the last hour: “Why are you here?”
Zabbatini lowered his fork and feigned surprise. “You invited me.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Or see you anyone else here?”
“No.”
“Aha!” said Zabbatini triumphantly, taking another bite of his paneer masala.
“But I didn’t invite you.”
“A beer would now be good,” said Zabbatini accusingly.
Max sighed. The old man was driving him crazy. What was he doing here? More importantly, how could he get rid of him before Mom came home?
Zabbatini pushed the plate away and burped. Then he said, “You wanted me to perform love magic, no?”
Max looked at him, astonished. “What?”
“Eternal love. Like on my record.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
Zabbatini nodded, as much as his cramped neck would allow him to. “That is why I am here. Eternaaaaal loooooove,” he said, sounding like Dracula. “The record, yes? It works not, no?”
“Yes,” said Max. “I mean, no. It doesn’t work.”
“You see,” Zabbatini said with a grin. “So I come here.”
Max felt like jumping up and down with joy. “For real?”
“For real. To make your parents fall into the love.”
Max rushed toward Zabbatini and gave him a hug. Zabbatini, who was never very good with children, looked as if he had just stepped in a dog pile. “All right already,” he said. “Enough with the schmaltz.”
“You’re really going to help me?”
“As really as my name is Zabbatini.”
This gave Max pause. “Is your name Zabbatini? The man in the retirement home said—”
“Firstly of all,” Zabbatini declared, “it is not a retirement home. It is for the active seniors, a community.”
“Okay.”
“And secondly of all, this man, he is stupid, an ox. A nudnik also.”
“Why?” Max asked. “What did he do?”
Zabbatini suddenly looked very nonchalant. He didn’t dare tell Max that he had been kicked out of the King David Home for the Elderly as of this morning.
Ronnie, in his capacity as all-knowing manager, had simply marched into Bungalow 112, where Zabbatini was still passed out in his La-Z-Boy. He had awoken the great magician and repeated that he had to leave.
“But where will I stay?” Zabbatini said pleadingly.
“Not here,” Ronnie replied.
Most of Zabbatini’s personal effects were confiscated, because he hadn’t paid his rent in a while. The incident with the gas valve had been the last straw. The alte kaker had to leave!
And so it came to pass that Zabbatini was, as of this morning, officially homeless. After he pensively sat on a bus bench for a few hours, flicking cigarette butts at pigeons, he hit upon an idea: the idiot kid from last night? The kid who wanted eternal love! An idiot kid must have idiot parents. With a roof over their heads.
He had gone back to the King David and peeked into the lobby. Empty. Ronnie wasn’t at the counter. Sneaking inside, he found that the idiot boy had indeed obediently written his name and address in the visitors’ log.
And so, Zabbatini, who was all alone in the world, decided to visit Max Cohn of Atwater Village.
“You can really get them to fall in love again?” Max asked hopefully.
“Of course,” Zabbatini said, his tone slightly offended. “I am the Great Zabbatini. I can work the mighty magic.”
“But you said there is no magic.”
He did? That had been, perhaps, a mistake. The first thing Zabbatini did was conjure up a charming smile. Then he said, “If you will it, it is not a dream.”
THE BONES OF CHILDREN
In the fall of 1937, the Zauber-Zirkus was slowly moving north on muddy country roads. After a few appearances in Goslar—a terrible place, Moshe thought, and full of Nazis—followed by Brunswick—much better, the Paris of the North—they made their way to Hannover. Moshe didn’t particularly like it here in Lower Saxony. The land was too flat, the sky too gray, and the buildings unbecoming. All that brick! There was none of the elegant architecture he had grown up with in Prague. The Czechs, he felt, constantly strived toward heaven. Not so much the folks in Lower Saxony. They clung to their muddy earth.
At least the boss was excited. The Half-Moon Man felt right at home in this dreary, rainy city. One evening, as he was joyfully sucking on a piece of candied sugar, he announced that they would spend the winter here. The Baron had a soft spot for all things aristocratic, and he hoped that some members of the House of Hannover might deign to honor the circus with their presence. Soon, a rumor spread that Ernest Augustus III, Duke of Brunswick, was going to attend one of their performances. And even though this rumor originated solely in the Baron’s fervent wish, a “ducal loge” was installed in the circus tent.
But the duke never came, and the ducal loge remained empty.
Meanwhile, Moshe Goldenhirsch and Julia Klein carried on an affair behind the Half-Moon Man’s back. Julia quickly took to Moshe. He was a pleasant diversion for her; he adored her, and she enjoyed being adored. They would exchange secret kisses behind the circus tent, and there were moments—brief, fleeting moments—when Julia was convinced that she was in love with him. Even though, deep down, she knew it wasn’t true. Moshe, however, took their relationship much more seriously. Julia was his one and only. He felt drunk with happiness, and in the boundless optimism of youth, he was certain that it would never end. Everything around him tasted sweeter, the air, the water, and especially the stolen kisses.
This was, perhaps, the most dramatic change in Moshe’s life. He learned the mysteries of love, both spiritual and physical. He especially enjoyed the latter. Up until that point, he’d had to rely on his feverish imagination and his left hand for relief. He still couldn’t believe that an actual woman—and what a woman she was!—would voluntarily sleep with him.
Sometimes, however, the Half-Moon Man called Julia into his wagon at night. Whenever that happened, Moshe would feel nauseous
with jealousy. He would stand, shovel in hand, near the wagon and watch the warm glow inside the steamed-up windows. Thankfully, these visits didn’t last long: the Baron was lacking in stamina, and after half an hour, at the most, Julia would emerge. She would walk briskly past him and go to the water pump to wash herself.
No one knew the secret Moshe and Julia shared. On Mondays, which was their day off, they would go their separate ways and then secretly meet some time later in a far-off café or a park. They would walk for hours on end. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, they would sneak into the circus tent and make love.
This was where he had lost his virginity.
Moshe had been cleaning out the lion cage when he suddenly felt someone staring at him. He looked up. Julia stood outside the cage. It was dark outside; the show had ended a while earlier. He saw a mischievous gleam in her eyes. She put her finger on her lips and smiled at him. He dropped the shovel and walked out of the cage.
She took him by the hand. “Come with me,” she said. “I want to show you something.”
He obediently followed. She led him to the ducal loge, which was, as usual, empty. Moshe looked around, confounded.
“There’s nothing here,” he said.
“Oh yes, there is,” she replied and pulled him down into the sawdust.
When Julia saw him naked, she blushed, and said, “You really are a Jew.”
Moshe nodded. He felt ashamed, but Julia merely smiled, leaned forward, and kissed him.
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