The Trick

by Emanuel Bergmann

  “The history of our race,” Moshe replied, “is the history of gallantry caught between two fronts, two choices.”

  “I knew it!” Hitler said. “Gallantry! Two fronts!”

  “Thus spoke Zabbatini,” Moshe added grandiosely.

  “Well, what I would like to know . . .” stammered Hitler. “Will the Jews succeed in this?”

  Moshe was confused. What the hell was this guy talking about? “In what, exactly?” he carefully asked.

  “In driving our nation to war, of course!”

  “Right. Of course.”

  Moshe stared blankly at the Führer. It was never a mistake to allow a few seconds to pass in silence. Then he reached for Hitler’s hand. “Allow me,” he whispered.

  “What are you doing?” Hitler asked indignantly.

  “I need to feel you,” Moshe explained. “To answer your question, mein Führer.”

  Hitler seemed appeased, at least for the time being. He smiled slightly.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” He held out both his hands.

  They felt cold and limp, and oddly clammy. Moshe closed his eyes. His lips began to tremble. Then he said, “You will bring a great peace into the world. A peace such as the world has never known. Your name will never be forgotten, mein Führer.”

  Hitler smiled.

  THE LAST MAGIC SHOW

  Zabbatini moved back into Deborah’s house. Peace, or at least some kind of truce, had been achieved. It was decided that he could stay until he had made more permanent arrangements. Deborah and Harry had reconciled themselves to the strange old man’s presence, even though they weren’t exactly thrilled. Deborah especially continued to cast a critical eye on him, and who could blame her? Harry called Dr. Susan Anderson, the child psychologist, and told her, after some stuttering awkwardness, that her services would no longer be needed, thank you very much.

  Dr. Anderson was miffed. “This is not healthy for your child,” she said. “He is almost eleven. Most children at that age have abandoned the magical thinking of their early childhood.”

  But Max wasn’t like other children. Max neurotically clung to his beliefs.

  “Is it so terrible to believe in magic a little bit longer?” Harry asked.

  “Yes and no,” Dr. Anderson said. “You don’t want your child’s emotional life ruled by superstitions. One day, Max will realize that there is no such thing as magic, and that you have lied to him all this time. What happens when he realizes that it’s all a trick?” she asked.

  Harry hung up the phone and told Deborah, who had been nervously pacing the kitchen, what Dr. Anderson had said. Deborah naturally didn’t want to shatter Max’s few remaining moments of happiness. Just a few years ago, they had had a similar debate regarding Santa Claus. An enchanted childhood, was that really so bad? Was it a mistake to try and protect Max a little while longer from the inevitable disappointments of adult life? Is it harder to wake up from a long sleep than from a short nap? If Deborah had her way, Max would remain a small child forever. She would never forget what it had been like when he was cradled in her arms right after birth, so small and pink, oddly foreign and yet intimately familiar. She wished she could have preserved that moment, like a photograph, untouched by time. But time always had the last word. At some point, Max Cohn would grow up. He would get his driver’s license, he’d drink and go to college and sleep with women, or—God forbid!—with men.

  “What happens when he realizes that the love spell doesn’t work?” she asked Harry. “He thinks the old man’s mumbo jumbo can bring us back together. What do we do when he sees that it won’t?”

  Harry, who on some level hoped the mumbo jumbo would work, merely shrugged.

  They looked at each other, with no idea what to do.

  Harry Cohn had always been enamored of noise. Even as a child he had felt the need to fill any void with sounds. He was distrustful of silence. As a young man he had dreamed of a career as a rock musician. All that stood between him and fame was a lack of talent and discipline. Deep down, he just wasn’t the type of guy to hop around on a stage, sweating and grunting. His mother, Rosl, had pressured him to “do something real.” Harry had acquiesced and put his electric guitar away. It had since gathered dust. Every once in a while, after a few glasses of red wine, he took it out and played a few bars. Once upon a time, its sounds meant endless freedom; now they only reminded him all too bitterly of his abandoned dreams. His overbearing mother seemed to have taught him only to be a weakling. Harry had changed careers and gotten into law, telling himself that being a music licensing attorney was a pretty good compromise: after all, he was still surrounded by noise. But it was the noise of others, of more successful people.

  His inner child had not been silenced completely. Whenever things in his life were too calm, too steady, there was something in him, some instinct that sought to make noise, to create drama, to disturb the peace. That was probably why he went for the yoga instructor. That, and her nimble stretchiness. He tried to feel ashamed, but when he was honest with himself, he had to admit that making love to her was one of the sweetest times of his otherwise uneventful life. He liked how she surrendered, how she let herself go. So unlike Deborah, who was very controlled, even in bed. He loved the way Eleanor would walk around nude, the way her sweat tasted, the way she kissed him, so hungry, so angry. He missed her. It had been fun having an affair. In her arms he felt like a kid again, stealing cookies from his mother’s jar. He loved the secret meetings in her apartment, and he loved taking Eleanor out to dinner, the titillating risk of getting seen by someone he knew.

  But, eventually, all things must end.

  For Eleanor, Harry had only been a distraction. He had entered her life during a time of great upheaval. Her heart had just been broken. Her fiancé, a muscular, tattooed, aspiring rock musician who worked as a bartender downtown in the Arts District, had broken up with her via text message. Women were always throwing themselves at him, and he had realized that it was a mistake to commit to only one of them. He wanted to enjoy the buffet a while longer.

  Eleanor had been hurt and humiliated. And she suddenly had an enormous appetite for men. She needed to prove to herself that she was an attractive and desirable woman. Then came Harry. He, too, had been vulnerable. The years of an uneventful marriage had taken their toll. He was depressed, he felt stuck in his life. One thing led to another.

  Soon, however, a lightbulb went off in Eleanor’s head. What the hell am I doing here? she thought. Have I gone mad? She couldn’t see a future with Harry. Around that time, Harry had become careless. After going home one night, he had neglected to shower before going to bed. And that’s how Deborah smelled the perfume on him.

  Harry had never really trusted the concept of familial stability. His mother had taught him that the natural state was tension and anxiety. His father had died young, and Harry had been the sole focus of his mother’s attentions. The only stable families he knew were on TV. He didn’t quite believe that something like that could exist in real life.

  And now he missed it all. He missed his family, his home, his wife.

  It gradually dawned on him that he loved Deborah. Still. Again.

  But it was too late.

  Zabbatini, meanwhile, was happier than he had been in years. He grudgingly had to admit that meeting the brat had, in a way, turned his life around. Hardly something you could take for granted at age eighty-eight. He was ready to make a comeback! God, how he had missed the stage, the applause, the adoring crowds. But there was a lot to prepare. Deborah took him on some errands. Among other things, they were going to stop by her store on Glendale Boulevard to pick out a costume for him. His big show was scheduled for tomorrow, at Mickey’s Pizza Palace in Burbank. In the car, Zabbatini voiced his concern that a pizza parlor might not be the ideal venue for an artist of his caliber.

  “It’s Max’s favorite fast food place,
” Deborah said. “He insists.”

  She explained to him that Mickey’s Pizza Palace was a themed chain restaurant, very popular for kids’ birthday parties. Mickey’s Pizza Palace was specifically designed for exhausted parents and overeager kids. The concept was brilliant. The little ones could eat greasy pizza and romp around an indoor playground. And there was a small stage, where costumed employees—mice, squirrels, and bears—performed silly slapstick shows. For the childless, Mickey’s Pizza Palace was hell: The room echoed with the shrill cries of kids, the food was an affront, and the college-age employees in their furry costumes seemed creepy rather than cuddly. For children, however, it was paradise. For parents, too, because after only a few hours, the little ones were exhausted and ready for bed. Plus, you didn’t have to clean up. You could just get up and leave the battlefield.

  Zabbatini grew increasingly concerned when he heard all this.

  But Deborah wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You’re living with us,” she clarified. “So you do what I tell you.”

  Zabbatini was disgruntled. People dressed as squirrels? Really?

  Deborah took him to Baller Hardware in Silver Lake.

  Zabbatini needed a padlock; then he asked to talk to the owner in private. They vanished into the back of the store. The man was, as Zabbatini realized with a tinge of nostalgia, a trained locksmith.

  “What a coincidence,” the old magician said. “I knew a locksmith once.”

  The store owner, a hefty man with a gray moustache and a comb-over, merely nodded vaguely.

  “Each lock is a mystery,” Zabbatini said.

  “I don’t have all day,” said the man. “What do you need?”

  Zabbatini explained it to him and the man listened in astonishment. Then he said it was doable, but that it would take one or two hours.

  “The lady pays for all,” Zabbatini said with a glance toward Deborah, who stood by the front register. She frowned at him.

  Next, Zabbatini dragged her into a Kinko’s. He asked to use a computer. He surfed the internet for a while, looking for images of cities. He printed them out and made colorful postcards.

  Deborah watched all this, puzzled. She had no idea what any of this had to do with love.

  When Zabbatini was done at Kinko’s, they went to two or three other stores. Traffic was heavy. Zabbatini was hungry, and the hungrier he got, the grumpier he became. Deborah stopped at a taco truck and bought him a burrito, which he practically inhaled. Then the old man looked at his watch and said it was time to pick up the keys.

  All that was left was the costume. As they drove to Glendale Boulevard, headed for Deborah’s store, Zabbatini began acting more and more curmudgeonly, complaining that the burrito had been too heavy for his delicate stomach.

  As soon as they entered Om Sweet Om, Zabbatini’s mood lifted. He was delighted at the place, which was full of Asian-inspired tchotchkes that reminded him of his days as a Persian prince in Berlin. He had always longed to go to Persia, or better yet, India, the land of fakirs and elephants, but he had never had the chance. Now it was too late. At his age, he couldn’t afford to get diarrhea. Still, his fascination with all things Asian remained, and though Deborah’s shop wasn’t India, it was as close as he would ever get. He wandered around her store with a bittersweet feeling of gratitude and regret.

  He saw a flowing white robe, much like the one he had once seen Julia wear, floating in the air, back in Prague, when he was a youth and had visited the Zauber-Zirkus for the first time. He let the fabric run through his fingers, and the memories came flooding back. He asked himself, as he often did, what had become of Julia. Was she still alive? Had she survived the war? Did she have children? Grandchildren? Did she sometimes think of him? He felt transported back in time, to the moment when his fingertips had touched the fringes of her white dress. His sudden desire for her was like a physical pain. He had never forgotten that moment. This was why he loved to smell women’s clothes, to feel again. He was searching for a scent, her scent. He longed to return to a time when he still had illusions. A time when he was still little Moshe Goldenhirsch and not the wreck of a man he now saw whenever he looked in the mirror.

  He took a deep breath, stepped back, and asked, “Can I try this on?”

  “Uhm,” said Deborah, “that’s for women.”

  He looked at her like a beaten dog.

  “Fine.” She sighed.

  When Zabbatini emerged from the changing room, he felt like a shining angel. The costume was perfect. No one would know that it was a ladies’ dress. And he would, in his own way, feel close to Julia. His Julia. He looked at himself in the mirror. He was pleased. His age, he felt, worked to his advantage for once, bestowing on him a certain gravitas, as befitted a mentalist. As he began to search for a turban, he came to a realization. The time for colorful charades was over. He was too old for silly tricks and games. What he was looking for was a deeper truth, a return to the essential. He decided that his new act would be no act at all. He would not play any tricks. Not as such. He would simply be. He imagined himself in his clean, white robe, standing once more in front of an adoring audience. While this didn’t exactly compare to his appearances on The Tonight Show, or even to his stint at Disneyland, he felt, at last, that he was close to achieving what he had always longed for: the fundamental purity of his art.

  Who knows? he thought. Perhaps I can even make Harry and Deborah fall in love.

  TWO POUNDS OF SUGAR

  In 1943, the Allies began bombing Berlin. Come November, Moshe and Julia were awakened almost every night by sirens. Together with their neighbors, they had to go downstairs and hide in the cold basement, listening to the distant thunder of falling shells. Old Mrs. Rettenbacher from next door seemed to enjoy these nightly interruptions. The war brought out her maternal side, and she always brought cookies she had made, insisting that everyone eat.

  Moshe took his own precautions. The constant bombings, the news from the Eastern Front, the endless suspicion and denunciations, the rumors about deportations. For once, you didn’t need to be a psychic to see what the future held in store. He bought a tiny summer house outside of Berlin, in Grunewald, no more than a shack. This was where he and Julia would escape to, just in case. They brought some furniture, blankets, and canned food. If things got too dangerous in their neighborhood of Charlottenburg, if one of them ran into trouble or didn’t return home or if they were separated for some reason—this was where they would meet and hide.

  When the hard winter gave way to spring, the bombing took on a new intensity. The Americans dropped their bombs by day, the British by night.

  In August, a remarkable incident occurred during one of Moshe’s performances at the Wintergarten. He didn’t like being interrupted onstage, much less by bombs. In the middle of his mind-reading act, he heard the shrill whistle of a falling shell. He knew from experience that he was safe, for the higher the sound of the falling bomb, the farther away it would hit. The ones you had to worry about where the ones that made a low, droning noise. He reacted to the high-pitched screech by standing up and announcing: “Ladies and gentlemen, I feel a dark thunder approaching.” As the audience got restless, he raised his hands, closed his eyes and whispered, “None of us will be harmed.”

  He was right, of course. The bomb fell far away—they heard the impact. It was as if the air itself was torn apart. The ground shook. The lights went out, and dust engulfed the room. People screamed and the audience threw themselves on the floor. When the lights came back on, everyone was huddled there except Moshe, who stood heroically on the stage, motionless. Slowly, people rose to their feet. Seeing that his prediction had been correct, that no one was hurt, a few people started to applaud. The relief was palpable. Moshe stood silently as the applause rose to a deafening roar.

  It was to be his last triumph. The nightly curfews and blackouts made it impossible for him to continue his performa
nces. All public performances were forbidden, except for those by the Berlin Philharmonic. The Wintergarten closed down and the windows were boarded up. The time of magic, it seemed, was over. Moshe and Julia came to pick up his equipment, his costumes, and his vanishing trunk. Sunlight fell through the cracks of the boards on the windows, and Moshe walked through the auditorium, feeling infinitely sad. Julia put her hand on his shoulder. Neither of them spoke.

  As they left the Wintergarten, Moshe looked at the ruins of nearby buildings. Berlin was covered with scars. The war had come home. He noticed a young girl, maybe fifteen years old, sitting in the midst of a bombed-out apartment building, surrounded by dust and rubble, on a wooden chair, playing a cello. Her eyes were closed and the wind tousled her red hair. The music was so beautiful that it gave him pause. He reached for Julia’s hand, and together, they stood and listened in silence:

  Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,

  Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;

  Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God, to Thee

  It happened on a cold, gray morning. “I’m just going for a walk,” he said to Julia. “I’ll be back in an hour.” Julia was still in bed, half-asleep. He kissed her head. For a while now, he had been lying awake and brooding. Perhaps a walk would clear his mind. Moshe heard Julia murmur something; then she turned over in bed and pulled the blanket around herself. He went outside and carefully pulled the door shut.

  When he left his apartment on Fasanenstraße, he passed a man in a black overcoat on the sidewalk. Moshe was on his way to the Café Kranzler for a malt coffee, and when he looked over his shoulder, he saw that the man was following him. He quickened his pace and turned at a corner. The man was still behind him. Nervously, Moshe broke into a trot.

  In the grotesque and distorted wasteland that was Berlin, the real and the surreal lived side by side. People tried to go about their daily business as best they could. Everyone chose to ignore the obvious: that each night, when the sirens howled, more and more of the city and its people were bleeding and dying. Things that had previously seemed solid—bricks and walls, stone and steel—were now revealed to be feeble, no more solid than the illusions Moshe had been performing for all these years. It was the most awesome and awful magic Moshe had ever witnessed: now you see it, now you don’t! Entire buildings disappeared, streets even. Bodies were floating in the canals. And still, the audience acted as though none of it was true. Now, Moshe found himself chased through a nightmarish landscape. Nothing felt real anymore. He was terrified. He ran faster and faster, but the man—like a demon—never let up.