The Trick

by Emanuel Bergmann

  Zabbatini, who had managed to pull himself up, looked at her pleadingly. “I am one of the greatest entertainers in the world,” he said, but he didn’t sound very convincing.

  She suddenly heard a voice behind her. “Mom, don’t!”

  Deborah turned around and saw her son standing in the bathroom doorway, his hair and pajamas disheveled.

  “It’s all my fault,” he said.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked him.

  Max lowered his head and stared down at his feet. “He’s a magician,” Max said at last.

  “A what?”

  “The magician from Dad’s record.”

  “That guy?” she asked incredulously.

  “Hold on, I’ll show you,” Max said. He ran to his room to get the record. A few seconds later, he was back. “Look!” he said, holding the record up next to Zabbatini’s face.

  Zabbatini tried to smile like he did on the cover.

  Max saw a glimmer of recognition in Mom’s eyes.

  “What’s he doing here?” she asked.

  “I met him last night,” Max said. “He lives in an old-age home on Fairfax. He’s the guy I went to Canter’s with.”

  “I can everything explain,” Zabbatini said. He cleared his throat. “This young Max here has visited me in my home. And so he wanted to find me.” He carefully hoisted himself out of the tub, as fast as his age would allow him. His knees were shaking, but at last he was standing. Then he raised his withered hand in a grotesque parody of the gesture he had seen his father perform in the temple attic, so many years ago. With a creaky, feeble voice he said, “I am the Great Zabbatini!” Then he reached to Deborah’s ear and said, “What have you there behind your ear?”

  Deborah turned around. To her surprise, Zabbatini suddenly held her pink lace slip in his hand.

  “Aha!” he proclaimed loudly. “It was there the whole time!”

  Max applauded enthusiastically.

  Zabbatini bowed. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

  At that moment, there was a loud banging at the door. A voice shouted, “Police! Open the door!”

  All color drained from Zabbatini’s face.

  “Damn,” Deborah hissed, and ran into the living room. Max followed her.

  When Deborah opened the front door, she saw two uniformed officers standing outside, a young black woman with her hair in a bun, and an older, ruddy-faced white man with an enormous gut. “You called, ma’am,” said the guy.

  “Yes . . .” she said haltingly. “I thought there was a burglar.”

  “And?” the woman asked. “Is there?”

  “No.” Deborah shook her head. Then she said, “I mean, yes. There’s a stranger in my bathtub.”

  The two cops looked at each other. They asked if they could come inside to take a look. Better safe than sorry.

  Deborah nodded vaguely and stepped aside, letting them in. The cops looked around her house like tourists in a museum. Their hands rested on their leather belts. Deborah showed them the way to the bathroom. Zabbatini was sitting on the side of the tub, a beaming smile on his face.

  Then the cop with the gut said to Deborah, “That the guy?”

  She nodded.

  “He doesn’t seem dangerous,” he said.

  “I just heard a noise. And . . . I was scared, you see. That’s why I called you.”

  “I can everything explain,” said Zabbatini.

  “You better,” said the cop.

  Zabbatini told them how Max had shown up at his old-age home the previous night, how the boy had wanted to find him. Then his narrative began to take on some fictional elements, poetic even. He told them about the deep bond he and this fine young man had instantly shared, and that Max had asked him—what was he saying, implored him!—to come home with him, because, well . . .

  Well . . . why?

  The police officers were getting impatient. The woman asked to see Zabbatini’s ID and took it out to the cruiser to run a check on him. Returning a few minutes later, she said that the geezer was apparently harmless. He wasn’t even on their list of sexual predators, she said with an air of defeat. “No outstanding warrants. Nothing.”

  “He might still be a pedophile,” Deborah offered helpfully.

  The woman shrugged her shoulders. “Might be, but he’s not in our system. Most of them are.”

  Deborah nodded. A ringing endorsement.

  The two officers stood menacingly to the left and right side of Zabbatini. The cop with the gut placed his hairy paw on Zabbatini’s shoulder.

  “All right, then. Time to go, old man,” the cop said.

  They escorted him out, into the pouring rain, toward their cruiser.

  “Where are you taking him?” Deborah asked.

  “He’ll spend the night in a holding tank,” said the woman. “Unlawful entry. The rest is up to the judge.”

  Suddenly, Zabbatini tore away from them. He took a few feeble steps toward Deborah and did something unexpected: he sank to his knees.

  “Please!” he cried. “I don’t want going to the jail.”

  “Come on!” said the cop, the voice of reason. “You’re making a scene. No point in that.”

  But there was a point. It was exactly what Zabbatini intended. Wrapping his arms around Deborah’s legs, he began sobbing. “I am an old man, the jail I will not survive!”

  Deborah blushed and looked around. She hoped that none of the neighbors were awake to witness this. She was mortified by the display, the feeble old man, clinging to her legs, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “All right,” she said, exasperatedly. “I won’t press charges. You can stay. But for only one night.”

  “Thank you, Mom!” Max yelled and hugged her.

  Deborah managed a smile.

  The cops looked disappointed.

  THIS COMING DARKNESS

  At the banks of the Leine River, Moshe Goldenhirsch made a deal with Inspector Erich Leitner. Moshe would lend his expertise to the Hannover Kripo—the Criminal Police—as a “consulting detective,” and in return he would be compensated thirty reichsmarks per week, for the duration of the investigation. That was a lot of money for him. Moshe hoped the investigation would continue indefinitely. He certainly would do everything in his power to make sure it did. They sealed their pact with a handshake. Then a police car brought them to the station.

  “What’s your name?” Leitner asked as they were driving.

  “Zabbatini,” said Moshe.

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “It’s Persian. I was born in Tehran,” said Moshe, who was well-prepared for just this question.

  “Where?”

  “Persia,” Moshe said.

  “Can you believe it!” The inspector slapped his own knee in delight. “Persia! You don’t say!”

  “Did you know,” Moshe said, “that the Persians were the original Aryans?”

  “That so? Well, you can’t beat that for an Aryan certificate!” Leitner gave a choking laugh. “Don’t take it the wrong way, but I’m not big on racial science.”

  “You’re not?”

  Leitner shook his head. “Politics. Not my thing. All that modern stuff, Aryans, Jewish question, what have you.”

  “But aren’t you,” Moshe said carefully, “a party member?”

  “Got to be. Servant of the state and all that. And the Führer . . . what a guy! But folks like me . . .” He lifted his shoulders. “I just do my job. Let someone else worry about the rest.”

  Moshe nodded. It might be to his advantage that Leitner was not exactly a glowing admirer of the National Socialist movement. It might make him less distrustful.

  “And how come you’re in the Reich now?” the inspector asked.

  “My parents had to leave Persia during the revolution,” Moshe said
.

  “Revolution?”

  “In the twenties. Bolsheviks.”

  Leitner nodded. “Of course. Those damn Bolsheviks,” he said.

  “The revolution failed, but my parents and I had already gone to Paris.” The lies were coming to him with an almost frightening ease.

  “And now you’re here,” Leitner said vaguely.

  “Exactly.”

  They arrived at the police precinct. Even though he had claimed to be Persian, the swastika flags hanging from the windows of the police station made Moshe uncomfortably aware of what he truly was.

  They entered the building and walked past gloomy offices with gloomy officers inside, smoking as they huddled over their typewriters. Moshe was to spend many joyless hours there. At least he got on well with Inspector Leitner, who was a small, cheerful man, and whose jolly disposition and lack of intelligence belied his chosen profession. Leitner quickly took a liking to Moshe and enjoyed talking to him. Moshe made sure it stayed that way. Then Leitner showed him the files: a child killer was on the loose in Hannover, and the bodies of the victims had been savagely mutilated. With an uneasy feeling, Moshe stared at the grainy, black-and-white photographs of tiny, abused corpses. The police had no leads. Moshe promised to help.

  Now that he was earning money, Moshe rented a room in a house belonging to a retired schoolteacher, which he presented to Leitner as his current residence, and where he could inconspicuously fornicate with Julia. Moshe lived in a world of lies. He lied to the police and he lied to the Half-Moon Man. He lied to his colleagues at the circus. He certainly wasn’t about to tell them about his arrangement with the police. Instead, he invented an affair with a local woman. That was, he said, the reason he spent so much time away from the circus. It was a never-ending litany of lies. They came easily to him, but over time, there were too many made-up facts he had to keep straight. It was exhausting. Then there was the morgue, which was even more unpleasant than the police station. Leitner often asked him to come down there, and Moshe would have his hands hover over a small and pitiful gathering of human remains as he concocted an utterly useless clue. The morgue was cold and it smelled of formaldehyde, the sickeningly sweet odor reminding Moshe of rotting fruit.

  He was naturally weary of human bodies, especially dead ones. He did not like to be reminded of his own mortality. The morgue depressed him, forcing him to think of his father, whom he had abandoned. His heart became heavy with his betrayal of both the living and the dead.

  Also, it became increasingly difficult to make up clues. His stock phrases, such as “I sense a dark depravity” or “The killer is closer than you think,” lost their appeal over time. If Moshe sensed anything, it was that the inspector was under increasing pressure. Six children had turned up dead so far, and the police had no clues to speak of. The more desperate Leitner became to produce the killer, the more he relied on Moshe.

  Moshe had to attend interrogations and nightly raids of working-class neighborhoods. He would be asked to put the palm of his hand on the foreheads of dumbfounded workers who had been awoken in the middle of the night. At first, Moshe had been able to “feel their innocence,” but as the pressure from the public increased, he began to sense a “dark sense of unease.” It didn’t take much for these men to be arrested. Moshe didn’t want to know what happened to them.

  One night, they led him to a small greengrocer’s shop. Moshe knew it well, having often bought his vegetables there. The police had roused the merchant from his bed in the apartment above his shop. A new suspect! Luckily, the man didn’t appear to recognize Moshe.

  Leitner, who now had dark circles under his eyes, grinned at Moshe as he entered. He took him aside and asked him if he felt anything.

  Moshe walked toward the merchant with heavy steps and put his hand on the man’s forehead. The man looked at him, perplexed. Moshe had no idea what to say. He didn’t want to use any of his normal phrases. It was important not to overdo it. But he had to offer something, anything. He closed his eyes.

  “Well?” Leitner asked.

  Moshe still couldn’t think of anything. His thoughts were clouded. He removed his hand and looked at Leitner.

  “So?” the Inspector asked.

  Moshe remembered the Half-Moon Man’s advice. If in doubt, better to say nothing. Moshe simply shook his head gravely and turned away.

  Leitner, however, must have interpreted Moshe’s silence as an indication of the suspect’s guilt. “Arrest him,” he said.

  The grocer was dragged toward a car while his wife and kids stood crying by the upstairs window. Before they pushed him into the car, the man cast one last, desperate glance at Moshe. Moshe couldn’t bear it, and stared at the ground. Then his conscience started to bother him, so he decided to put an end to the whole farce.

  After all, where was he going to get his vegetables?

  WHO WILL SAY KADDISH?

  When Deborah Cohn got up the next morning, Zabbatini was already sitting at the breakfast table performing card tricks for Max.

  “And there,” Zabbatini concluded, “is the queen of hearts.”

  He winked at Deborah as he said it. She rolled her eyes. Max grinned broadly and applauded. The boy hadn’t looked that happy in quite a while.

  Zabbatini had to grudgingly admit that he’d begun to like the kid. A little bit. Not too much. He found most children insufferable, but this one had an air of melancholy that Zabbatini could relate to. And he wasn’t too stupid for his age. A bit of a know-it-all, yes, but not an idiot after all. They had been chatting over breakfast, a careful rapprochement, Oh, you like Zagir Chicken? Me too! No wonder, it’s right around the corner from Bongo’s Clown Room. And the garlic sauce? Heavenly, no? A life without garlic is no life at all. Stuff like that.

  “Mom!” Max yelled. “Did you see that?”

  Deborah shook her head, yawning. “Eat your cereal, honey,” she said.

  Zabbatini was staring brazenly at Deborah. Ah, he thought. The heavenly one. The scented one. “Good morning, young lady,” he cooed.

  “Mom!” Max said. “Do you know Bongo’s Clown Room? Zabbatini told me that—” He stopped when he saw the shocked look on his mother’s face.

  She frowned at Zabbatini, who looked perfectly innocent. He cleared his throat and decided to play it charming. “My dear,” he said, “do you offer coffee in this establishment?”

  Deborah raised her eyebrows. “Coffee?” Really? Who did he think he was?

  “Yes,” Zabbatini said. “A dark, hot liquid. They make it from beans, you see. Black, please, and with sugar.” He looked at Max and winked again. “Dark as night and sweet as a stolen kiss.”

  Ever since the incident with the broom and the pepper spray, Zabbatini had developed a healthy sense of respect toward Deborah, bordering on fear. But despite that—or maybe because of it—she had featured prominently in his erotic dreams the night before. With age, his pipes had become rusty, and as a result he embraced all things sleazy with increasing gusto. Sometimes, his feverish dreams woke him up at night, and his unfulfilled desires kept him awake. He had spent last night on the sofa bed in the spare bedroom, which used to be Harry’s office. How generous! But he had mostly been awake, twisting and turning on the uncomfortable bed, tormented by his dirty thoughts. He had dozed off right around dawn.

  “I am not your maid,” said Deborah with quiet menace.

  Max recognized that tone of voice. The calm before the storm. He had to act. “I can make coffee,” he offered, jumping up from the kitchen table. “I know how.”

  Zabbatini could feel the turbulence in the atmosphere. After all, he was a mind reader. But in the bright morning sunlight, he felt confident and safe. She couldn’t very well throw him out anymore, now that her son was under his spell. Her inner fire, her passion—Zabbatini was utterly enchanted by this angry goddess. It didn’t matter to him that her hair wasn’t brushed a
nd her face was puffy from a lack of sleep. On the contrary, it was her domesticity that he found so appealing. He had always been a searcher, a vagabond, an outsider. The mundane had been out of reach for him. On top of that, Zabbatini had devoted his life to lying. To trickery. Now that the end was near, there was no one left to fool. His greatest regret was to have lived a life without regrets. He had only ever looked out for himself, never anyone else. And now he was alone.

  “Let me get one thing straight,” Deborah said. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here. The only reason I let you spend the night was because it was raining, and you were embarrassing me in front of the cops.”

  “And for that I thank you. But now it is morning, the sun shines, and I wish for coffee.”

  That sounded like a command. Deborah didn’t like being told what to do. This guy? This alte kaker? First he was sniffing her panties, and now he wanted the scent of coffee to titillate his nose?

  “I think it’s about time you left,” Deborah said.

  Max stared at her. His mouth opened, like that of a fish on land. Then he said, “Please don’t.”

  “Why not?” she asked defiantly. “I said one night. Look outside. It’s daylight now.”

  Zabbatini and Max exchanged a shocked glance. Zabbatini wasn’t used to people resisting his manipulations. Apparently, he had overstepped his boundaries.

  Max looked at his mom pleadingly, a look he had practiced on many occasions. “Remember you said I could have anything for my birthday that I want?”

  Deborah nodded, the certainty gone from her face.

  “I want him to perform at my birthday party in two weeks,” Max said. “At Mickey’s Pizza Palace.”

  Deborah’s eyes wandered over the old magician mistrustfully as he sat there chewing his soggy cereal. He lowered the spoon and gave her a labored smile.

  “You wouldn’t rather have a Tintin book?” Deborah asked her son.

  “Yes,” Max admitted. “That, too, of course. But I also want Zabbatini to come to my birthday. He was really famous once.”