Amazingly accurate indeed, Moshe thought. He was as surprised as the general public.
He would one day realize that his days with Julia in Berlin were the happiest of his life. They spent their first few weeks walking through the city, or staying in and making love. Occasionally, they would go down to the local pub for a beer and some food. Their stay in Dagmar’s attic room stretched from a few days to three weeks. Dagmar had started to make cutting remarks, and they knew that they had to find their own place. But first, Moshe needed work.
One afternoon, Julia took him to Friedrichstraße, to the Wintergarten Cabaret.
“This is where I first met Rudi,” Julia said. After the fire, she had never referred to him by his stage name again and simply called him “Rudi.”
The manager of the Wintergarten was a corpulent man named Kowalcyk, who had a small dog that he liked to feed pralines to. When Julia and Moshe entered his narrow office behind the stage, the dog started yapping wildly.
“Stop it, you rascal,” Kowalcyk admonished the dog, grinning as he laboriously lifted himself out of his squeaky chair. He hugged Julia a moment too long for Moshe’s liking, then held out his hand halfheartedly to Moshe, without looking him in the eyes.
Julia explained to him that the man by her side, Zabbatini, was a great mentalist. And that she was his assistant, and they were looking for work. Kowalcyk wanted to see a few tricks. Moshe was prepared, and managed to win the man over with some card magic and mind reading. As proof of his psychic abilities, he brought the article about the captured killer. Since the Hannover police department had endorsed him, he suddenly had an air of legitimacy.
Zabbatini and his assistant were given a regular slot. When he said farewell, Kowalcyk patted Julia’s butt, a bit too far south, and Moshe was forced once more to shake that hand of his.
When the first night of their performance arrived, Moshe was almost sick with stage fright. But he and Julia had worked out what seemed like a solid routine, and thus his difficult apprenticeship and months of performing under humiliating circumstances finally paid off. Moshe had paid close attention and had a much better idea now what the audience would accept and what would be met with boos. Since the incident with the Brownshirts, he had come to realize that all of the magical arts, his favorite was mentalism. Looking back, much of what Kröger had taught him now seemed primitive. Silly card games, childish props. So instead, he and Julia decided to present a mind-reading act. Moshe bought himself a turban and pretended to be a deposed Persian prince.
The show was actually rather simple. Moshe remembered the Half-Moon Man’s words, that magicians tend to hide their fears with talk, and he decided to go the opposite route. So he sat onstage in silence, his eyes covered with a blindfold, while Julia gathered personal items from the audience. She hardly said a word, and Moshe always managed to correctly identify each object. The act was a sensation. And so began the rise of the Great Zabbatini. He and Julia were a perfect team, onstage and off. They functioned in perfect harmony, during the day, at night, and throughout each performance.
Almost, at least.
One night before the show began, Julia and Moshe had an argument. Moshe had noticed that the announcer who appeared after them—a frighteningly good-looking man with dark, slicked-back hair—was flirting with Julia. And she had the audacity to smile at him! Moshe confronted her and she accused him of being vain and petty.
“I’m not allowed to smile at people, is that it?”
Yes, that was it, in a nutshell. Moshe didn’t like it one bit. Sometimes, when he couldn’t fall asleep, he imagined Julia leaving him. That was something he couldn’t survive. Moshe wasn’t at all sure if she loved him like he loved her. He had quickly learned that there is always one who loves and one who accepts that love. Julia was one of the latter, and it gnawed at him. On top of that, she knew his secret. She alone knew that he was a Jew, and if she ever betrayed him—whether intentionally or not—that would be the end. Not just of his heart, but of his life.
That night, she punished him for his jealousy. She held up a wallet from one of the audience members, a stout man in a tight suit, and deliberately gave Moshe the wrong code word. Moshe stood onstage and confidently declared that it was a handkerchief. The audience grew restless.
“No,” said the man. “Not a handkerchief.”
First there were just a few giggles; then laughter broke out. Moshe was humiliated.
After the show, in the dressing room, he made bitter accusations toward Julia. She sat across from him at her makeup table, taking a suggestive drag on her cigarette. Her eyes were cold. Then she stubbed out the cigarette and said, “That’s what you get.”
But they made up that very night. Julia felt a little flattered that Moshe was jealous. And it had been fun to pay him back during the show. But Moshe also profited from the incident, in a roundabout way. He had an idea. He realized that not only he, but every human being, lives for love. We need it, Moshe thought, like the air we breathe. On the drive home, he was pensive. A love spell, he thought. That might be interesting. It would lend a final touch to his act.
Later, in Dagmar’s attic room, they made love, as if in a frantic rage, driven by lust and anger and fear. The country was going mad. There was a storm coming.
Afterward, when they were lying sweaty and exhausted in the moonlight, sharing a cigarette, Julia took her “little Jew” into her arms and told him that they would go to Spandau the next day, where she had grown up.
“Why?” he asked.
“You’ll see.”
Moshe was curious. But then his thoughts drifted off, far away from Julia, just as they had when he was a child. He felt her hand on his chest only from a distance, and when she whispered into his ear that she loved him, he barely heard her.
He was thinking of his love spell.
In Spandau, Julia led Moshe through remote alleys and gray courtyards, to a small printing shop. She knocked on the door.
“I’ve known him since I was a little girl,” she said.
The door opened. A haggard man with a long beard and unkempt hair stood in front of them. A hand-rolled cigarette was dangling from his lips. He smelled of old sweat. Julia introduced him as “Friedhelm” and Moshe as “a friend.”
In a long-winded speech, she explained that her friend needed papers. They both talked around it for a while, but Moshe soon realized what Friedhelm really was: a forger. Julia would later inform Moshe that Friedhelm was a Communist who forged documents for the left-wing underground.
Julia finally got down to business: “My friend needs an Aryan certificate, and a passport.”
Friedhelm nodded. He had nervous eyes that were always moving toward the window. His fingers were long and graceful, exactly as Moshe had assumed the hands of a forger should look. They agreed on a price. It was too high, but what can you do?
A few days later, Julia went to get Moshe’s new papers. Moshe was impressed and hugged Julia fiercely. Now that he had papers in the name of Zabbatini, he could start looking for an apartment. His previous place of residence was listed as Tehran, which explained why he hadn’t been registered with the authorities as of yet. Soon, Julia and Moshe moved out of Dagmar’s attic. Dagmar was relieved, not realizing of course that Moshe was Jewish, but nonetheless feeling that there was something odd about him. The mood had become tense in the last few days, and Dagmar was afraid that the neighbors might report her guests to the police. Every time the doorbell rang, she flinched. Moshe, too, breathed a sigh of relief when he and Julia finally moved into their own place on Fasanenstraße, in the west end of the city. It was a small but charming apartment near the fashionable Kurfürstendamm promenade. When the contract was signed, Moshe took Julia into his arms and danced with her on the empty parquet floor.
Within a few months, the Great Zabbatini was what the locals called “world famous in Berlin.” He managed to fill the W
intergarten’s auditorium twice daily. Carefully crafting his persona as a Persian prince, he cultivated a foreign-sounding voice and what he assumed was a smoldering glance, which he practiced in front of a mirror. He even learned a few words of Farsi from a dictionary he purchased in a bookstore near Savignyplatz. And he always ended his act with the same flourish of the arm that he had seen his father make in the synagogue, so many years ago. Closing his eyes, he would bow deeply and intone, “Istgahe Ghatar Kojast!” It was his favorite phrase in Farsi. He relished the sound if it, and never ever told anyone what it really meant. Not even Julia.
After hundreds of successful performances, Moshe opened a private parlor in Uhlandstraße, just a few blocks away from the new apartment, on the fourth floor of a nineteenth-century office building that was otherwise occupied by respectable law firms. Moshe furnished it with imported Indian furniture and the finest Persian rugs, as well as a singing bowl from distant Tibet, which was in fact a colorfully painted former piss pot. His business hours, posted on a brass sign by the main door, ended prior to his nightly appearances at the Wintergarten.
He didn’t have to wait long for his first clients. After about a week, a distraught housewife from Schmöckwitz stood at his door, a nervous, haggard woman in an apron dress. He drew her into his parlor like a fisherman reeling in a catch. The woman kept apologizing needlessly, as if her very existence were an inconvenience to others. Her cat, Adolf, had run away. Zabbatini was surprised when he heard the name; apparently, even pets had to make political statements nowadays. He soon surmised that the woman lived in an attic apartment, which led him to believe that Adolf the Cat was most likely wandering around on the rooftops of Schmöckwitz. Zabbatini closed his eyes and pretended to concentrate. Then, in a quavering voice, he proclaimed that Adolf would soon resume his rightful place once again. He felt quite certain of it, in fact. Zabbatini was hardly an expert on cats, but he knew a thing or two about hunger, realizing it would only be a matter of time until Adolf’s stomach would start to growl. A few days later, the lady from Schmöckwitz rang his doorbell again, this time to thank him profusely and give him a handsome tip. Apparently, the furry Führer had been unable to resist the lure of her bowl of fish innards.
In time, more and more people came to him with their problems. Unfaithful wives, bankers with gambling debts, healthy hypochondriacs—they all wanted his advice. Zabbatini was able to play their emotions like a violin. Most of them became regulars. Soon, the first party members started to appear at his doorstep. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party attracted the stupid and the gullible like a powerful magnet. So it was hardly surprising that many of its members turned into loyal customers for Zabbatini. After all, the party’s leadership dealt heavily in occultism and mysticism, and on the top of the ladder stood a man whose talent for dazzling manipulation surpassed even Zabbatini’s.
The Persian fortune-teller’s reputation grew. Everyone came to him, even the random skeptic who sought to expose him. But Moshe had an eye for such people and he quickly sent them away, claiming they had a “negative energy.” He noticed that over time, the party members who came to him were higher and higher in rank. Occasionally even a sturdy SA-Standartenführer would sit in his parlor, crying bitter tears in his silly brown uniform. It didn’t take long before the crème de la crème of Berlin society beat down his door as well, for Moshe had a gift for telling people what they most wanted to hear, and what they were most afraid of.
Berlin was paradise for Zabbatini. After a long and dreary age of reason, the public had begun to turn once again to all things irrational. The city became a mecca of mysticism, a frolicking field for fortune-tellers and faith healers, hypnotists and hysterics alike. Looking back, Moshe was grateful that his father had made him learn the Torah and the Talmud: he used his understanding of Hebrew, numerology, and the Kabala in a completely different way, turning ancient scripture into easily digestible psychological mumbo jumbo with an uplifting message. He looked like a character from A Thousand and One Nights. With his ornate turban, flowing robes, and theatrical gestures, he managed to convince the public that he was a true Aryan, a prince of Persia. No one had the slightest inkling that he was, in actuality, a rabbi’s son. Protected by his web of lies, he was seemingly unaffected by the hostilities toward the Jews.
Here, in the capital of the Third Reich, Moshe Goldenhirsch finally was able to thrive. Since money seemed not to be an issue for Berlin’s upper crust, Moshe’s fees became increasingly absurd. He realized that the more he asked for, the more people were willing to pay. Money suddenly came easy. It was lying in the streets. All he and Julia had to do was bend over and pick it up. They dined in the finest restaurants, they went to every lavish party and nightclub. Moshe soon discovered the joys of cocaine, and the illicit thrill of transvestite shows and burlesque dance acts. But despite all his cleverness, he could never fully shake the fear of being exposed. He remained dimly aware that he was far from being the greatest practitioner of the Unseen Art, but it didn’t seem to matter. He was in fact a mediocre performer, who knew how to pull off his act well enough, but who never managed to take the last step on his journey—to deepen his art, to develop new ideas, to break new ground. He stuck with what worked. Why not? He had managed to become outrageously famous with just a handful of solid tricks. Why bother to go any further? His customers loved him still. What mattered was not his skills, but rather the audience’s hunger for enchantment.
Moshe and Julia’s apartment on Fasanenstraße was only a short walk away from a synagogue, which, like so many others, was burned down during the so-called Kristallnacht. Moshe would never forget that November night. He and Julia had been on their way back from another performance at the Wintergarten and were sitting in a taxi when they saw the fire. It reminded them of the night the Zauber-Zirkus burned to the ground.
A crowd of people had gathered in front of the temple, apparently having a good time. A lot of Brownshirts, but also entire families, even the elderly. Women were holding their small children up, so they could see better.
“Say good-bye to the Jews,” a woman cooed to her daughter, as if she were reciting a children’s rhyme. “Say good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Jews,” the daughter obediently said, laughing, an angelic and innocent sound.
Good-bye, Moshe thought glumly, feeling sick to his stomach. He was thinking about his father and the old synagogue where he had spent so much of his childhood. At least, he thought, Laibl was far away in Prague, safe and sound. Julia put her arm around him. “We still have champagne at home, don’t we?” she asked with forced cheerfulness. Moshe nodded. His throat was dry and his face had turned pale. The taxi had difficulties making its way through the crowd. Outside the window, Moshe saw a young Brownshirt officer, whom he recognized as one of his clients.
Moshe smiled vaguely at him and waved. The man approached and knocked on the window. Moshe opened it.
“Didn’t see that coming, did you?” the man said, laughing.
Moshe shook his head. “No,” he said. “I certainly didn’t.”
Finally they arrived at home. They went upstairs, opened a bottle of champagne, and made love while Berlin, or parts thereof, was burning. That night, Moshe hardly slept. He tried in vain to ignore the calls and cries coming from the streets, the crashing glass, the scornful shouts. He felt that he belonged out there, down there, with those who suffered. When it was time to change into his costume at the Wintergarten the next day, Moshe was nervous and distracted. Even so, he thought, I am the Great Zabbatini. The show must go on.
No matter what.
THE CLOWN ROOM
The Great Zabbatini was dressed in shorts, his customary Hawaiian shirt, and a trench coat, in case it started to rain. Unlikely in Southern California, but you never know. He had a bruise on his forehead, where Deborah Cohn had hit him with the frying pan. He was sitting at the bar of Bongo’s Clown Room, watching a young dark-skinned woma
n writhing in front of him. Edith Piaf was playing on the jukebox, and the girl seemed bored and distracted. Zabbatini didn’t care. He was simply enjoying the sight of a human female. He was nursing a Heineken, mainly because he didn’t have enough money for anything else. He had no idea what to do next, no place to go, and nothing to do. He was broke. But at the moment, it didn’t bother him. He had a slight buzz, and he felt that he might stand a realistic chance with the girl onstage. A few charming lines, maybe a magic trick or two . . . who knew? He was suffering from the typically male delusion of having a chance. Like most men, he wasn’t willing to blow it by opening his mouth. Nothing hurt as much as rejection, except perhaps a frying pan to the head.
The door to the strip club opened and a beam of bright sunlight briefly illuminated the inside of the room. Very unpleasant. The few lonely drunks that populated Bongo’s in the afternoon flinched like vampires in a horror film.
Max Cohn entered the strip club.
The woman behind the bar, a large, severely tattooed blond lady who could have been a sailor or a wrestler, put the shot glasses that she had been scrubbing down and yelled at him: “Get out of here, kid. It’s twenty-one and over.”
Max threw her a pity-inducing look, which he called “the Starving Puppy.”
“I’m looking for my grandpa,” he said.
Zabbatini slammed down his beer bottle and gasped indignantly for air. He turned around to Max and yelled, “You heard the lady. Get out of here.”
The Trick Page 18