The Spirit Cabinet

by Paul Quarrington

  It is not entirely true that Anna’s apartment was an opium den, not in any strictly commercial sense. There were no tiers of flea-infested bunk beds; the furnishing was second-hand but comfy, long settees and big fat easy chairs. People did smoke opium, true, but they smoked many other things besides, marijuana and Turkish hashish and pipefuls of a rare Tahitian stuporific. Neither were the young women prostitutes, really. They referred to themselves as artist’s models, and when they achieved the summit of the staircase they stripped off their clothes and stood in the middle of the living room while the people in the room painted them, or photographed them, or composed poems dedicated to their physical beauty. Anna Thielmann was actually the custodian of a Salon, and the people who came to visit were artistes. They were unabashedly third-rate artistes, gleefully turning out childish drawings, blurred prints and clumsy rhymes, but they were artistes all the same.

  Things could get pretty wild. There was a huge humpbacked piano in the living room, and it tended to herald the debauch. At some point near midnight, someone (usually Heinrich Gissing, near-blind and proudly consumptive) would leap upon the machine, savaging the keyboard, playing jazz, which signified a careless admixture of white and black keys. The naked artist’s models would break pose and posit certain transactions. The artistes, uniformly penniless, would undertake the negotiations with vigour and conviction. It was often some time before things were hammered out, at which point the charge of nymphs and satyrs would commence. Around two a.m. the drugs would kick in, and Kramgasse 49 would ring with howls and half-forgotten lullabies. There were fights, often a stabbing. On one occasion someone flew through the front window and ended up a small crumpled pile on the cobblestones below, but this was a failed experiment in flight rather than foul play.

  Rudolfo had his own room; rather, there was a large walk-in closet which had been allotted to him, his crib pushed into the corner and his stuffed animals spread out around him. Little Rudy had an astounding number of stuffed animals, because, let’s face it, if you were an artiste intent on getting cross-eyed and rutting in the middle of the living room, you would bring a stuffed animal to the little boy who would no doubt be standing in the corner, sucking his thumb, wide-eyed with horror. Rudolfo soon had hundreds of them, bears, lions, tigers and rarer things besides, parrots with multi-coloured plush beaks, a well-crafted baboon, its rump a quilting of vibrant satin.

  Rudy had trouble—understandably—sleeping through the night. Sleeping at all, really. Sometimes he drifted away into a fitful trance, but there was always some loud noise to pull him back. He would sit up in bed, wailing, but his cries could never be heard above the piano, the grunts, the shrieks of hilarity. He sought comfort in the glass eyes of his menagerie, grabbing one of the plush pussycats and pulling it into bed.

  Some nights were more sedate. Some nights, Anna Thielmann would invite a youngish, long-haired man, whose name Rudolfo remembered as Flowers. Flowers was slender and incredibly vain, always throwing his chin high into the air and twisting his head so that he showed a full profile. Flowers affected black tails and, although his suit was shiny and the elbows put out, he did raise the tone of the Salon. The artistes were quieted by his presence; they sat placidly in the corners and picked things off their sweaters, or rubbed at the luminous nicotine stains that covered their hands. The models drew long scarves out of tiny handbags and draped them over their naked shoulders like prayer shawls.

  Flowers would sit down behind the keyboard and, after cracking each finger meticulously, begin to play. He favoured the music of the Great Romantics, and he played with a grand knuckle-rolling style that involved grunting. Flowers was, by most standards, awful, a hammer-handed dilettante who closed his eyes not out of ecstasy, but as an aid to memory. Even so, he’d bog down halfway through any piece, allowing his fingers to drop from the keyboard, slumping forward and sighing, as though to continue would be more than the soul could bear.

  At which point Anna Thielmann would enter the room, dressed as one of the great heroines from grand opera. She would take all roles, soprana, mezzo, alto; it made little difference to her. She was not focused on such niceties as pitch and tone; her accent was more on the dramatic. Although she might begin by standing erect with her fingers locked in front of her bosom, it wasn’t long before she started drifting through her little crowd, staring deeply into eyes, caressing cheeks, pulling on forelocks. Soon she would take advantage of any purely musical interlude to kiss a listener or two, undo shirt buttons, perhaps even thrum a crotch. Of course, this was just for the love songs, the arias that dealt with romance and the stirrings of the heart. If tragedy were invoked, Anna would reel throughout the room, bouncing off walls, tears spilling over the ridges of muscle that formed her face. Her Tosca, Rudolfo remembered, was especially effective; when she heard the shots that meant that Cavaradossi had been shot—damn that Scarpia—she would wail and keel over backwards, landing with a thud that shook plaster dust out of the ceiling.

  Some years before, when young Albert Einstein, an employee of the Swiss patent office, had lived at Kramgasse 49, he had already largely worked out the Theory of Relativity, bickering about it with his wife, Mileva, over the breakfast table. A tall reading stand stood in the corner as testament to Einstein’s having lived there, although Anna, not given to reading, used it mostly as a place to dry her dainties.

  Little Rudolfo had more second-hand contact with the previous tenant. In the quiet, dust-filled afternoons, Rudolfo prowled about the apartment. He was constantly finding pencil scratchings on the walls, formulae and brief exclamatory sentences. As a child, Rudolfo crawled about the place trying to make sense of these cryptic runes.

  As a man, Rudolfo could still see the letters and numbers clearly when he closed his eyes. They remained a mystery.

  Samson strutted into the cage, affecting an air of careless inquisitiveness, much like a janitor who has discovered the stockroom door left open. Seeing his master with another animal, he came to an abrupt halt, his head jerking back as if slapped. He recovered well, disdainfully squirting a stream of urine onto the sawdust. The albino leopard spied a sparkling ball, perhaps three feet in diameter, across the circle. He loped toward it, reached out and pulled the ball backwards with a huge paw. Throwing a glance toward Rudolfo and the panther (Rudolfo was on his feet, wiping sawdust from his dark blue bodysuit), Samson leapt on top of the globe. Unfortunately, it had been some time since he’d performed atop the gleaming ball. He was paddle-pawed and his joints were sore. Managing only a few clumsy minces, he rolled off sideways. He sought to regain some dignity by affecting a regal stance shortly before he hit, then there was a dull sound and a huge cloud of sawdust.

  Rudolfo walked over to Samson, now pretending to be asleep, snoring with such conviction that his pale tongue curled and unfurled like a party favour. Rudolfo gave the beast a gentle nudge, saying, “Come on, Sammy. Let’s go see how big a mess Jurgen is making.”

  Samson struggled up. He licked the back of Rudolfo’s hand and then made for the cage’s doorway. The panther roared at him, standing up and shaking his genitals. Without changing his gait, Samson contemptuously let loose another stream of urine. It was one of the few benefits of aging, the ability to summon piss at any time.

  Rudolfo felt as guilty as a lover who has been caught humped over the wrong backside. While it was no secret that animals were being trained to replace Samson, neither had there been any open discussion about it. Jurgen maintained that the animals were Rudolfo’s concern, covering any sign of affection for Samson with this impersonal professionalism. Not that Jurgen was that attached to the beast. Especially lately, especially after that show a few weeks ago when they had pulled away the curtain from the gaffed cage to reveal the albino leopard in a state of profound slumber. The audience had laughed, which always seemed to horrify and madden Jurgen. Rudolfo had tried to cover, guffawing with the exaggerated lip-twitching of a moronic donkey, slapping his thighs with stagy mirth. Samson awoke and, confused as to
what was happening, had backed behind the mirrored panel, disappearing from view except for a ghostly, quivering snout.

  Rudolfo and Samson neared the back of the house. The last of the movers emerged through the door, two overalled men chuckling and shaking their heads with bemusement. Rudolfo knew immediately that they were laughing at his partner, so he whispered to Samson, “Go play with those two fat piggies.” Samson bounded with childlike enthusiasm, indistinguishable from brute fury to the movers. Rudolfo allowed a few moments for bowel-loosening, with Samson cavorting before the two men, alternately hugging the ground and springing high into the air.

  “Guys, hi,” he said nonchalantly, leisurely walking toward them and clapping his hands together. Samson crumpled like an old newspaper, lying down and then licking out of habit, shovelling up a tongue-load of gravel from a flowerbed and tossing it down his throat. “What company are you babies from?” demanded Rudolfo.

  The two movers looked at each other and one pointed to the crest sewn over his breast.

  Rudolfo squinted, stared, nodded his head. “Because when is a big mess in the house I get angry and phone the company.”

  “No mess, chief,” said the man.

  Rudolfo grinned at that, always happy to learn new colloquialisms. “Okay, chieves,” he said, executing a quasi-military salute. “Is my friend in there?”

  The two men nodded as one and hastily began down the bright golden path that led around to the front of the house.

  Rudolfo pushed the door open for Samson, who hoisted himself from the ground and lumbered through. The hallway lay before them, a long tunnel of polished marble and burnished oak. They walked past the entranceways to the Gymnasium, the archery range, the theatre, Samson making a half-turn at each one, straightening out hurriedly when he noticed Rudolfo still walking determinedly.

  At the very end of the hallway was the Grotto. This had been Rudolfo’s idea, to construct a cave beneath the house, although the architect had embraced the notion with quixotic enthusiasm. Most of the stone was imported from the tiny emirate of Alqa’ar, although some of it was Himalayan, large pieces from the very summits imprinted, incredibly, with the fossils of sea creatures. The Grotto was vaulted, the light sources hidden in nooks and crannies. It was a large hole of shadows. There was no door as such, rather, a large remote-controlled boulder that rolled into place. However, the batteries had long ago run out on the remote, so the boulder remained parked just inside.

  The movers had dumped the boxes of books, the few pieces, with no care or design. True, the Grotto had no real corners, where things might be piled less obtrusively, but Rudolfo didn’t think that was reason enough for the confusion he felt.

  Rudolfo was briefly alarmed to see a fat man sitting over in the shadows, but as his eyes got used to the gloom, he realized that it was the big wooden doll-man. (He would not have been able to name it—Moon—even though the word was carved into the top of the automaton’s pedestal.) In the middle of it all, at a small schoolboy’s desk complete with empty inkwell and the initials of children long dead, sat Jurgen Schubert, a large leather-bound tome clutched in his hands, the covers sealed by cobwebbing.

  Jurgen flipped the front cover open and blew away dust. As he read the title page, his eyelids fluttered up and down rapidly like antique television sets that need adjustment with the horizontal hold.

  “Hi, chief,” said Rudolfo, from the hole that was the doorway, leaning up against the cool rock. “Anything good?”

  “The Art of Juggling, or …” said Jurgen, reading the English. There was another word on the title page, Legerdemain, which he did not attempt. He switched to German. “It’s a very famous book. Four hundred years old. One of the first books about magic.”

  “We have to the hotel be going.” Rudolfo would often use English when petulant, peeved or baffled.

  Jurgen looked up at his friend, nodded, and closed the book.

  “So,” asked their driver, Jimmy, “what’s the story on this Tee-hee-hee Collection?”

  Jimmy was a large man with a head that consisted of oversized features—long, froggy lips, a bulbous nose marbled with exploded veins—stuck onto a billiard ball. Very unpleasant. Fortunately, they rarely saw his face.

  “Why do you me this ask?” said Jurgen.

  Rudolfo scowled, annoyed as always with his partner’s English syntax.

  “No reason, boss,” responded Jimmy. Jimmy had originally come to Vegas hoping to become the driver for a shadowy underworld figure. He’d had a vision, which he found deeply exciting, of steering a long black limousine, willing himself to stare straight ahead, occasionally, very occasionally, glancing into the rearview mirror where he saw such goings-on as were unheard of in Missouri. “It was on television.”

  “What was on television?” snapped Rudolfo.

  “The thing,” explained Jimmy. “The Collection thing. They said as how you guys bought it. On the news.”

  “Oh, so it was on the news, ja?”

  “Yeah,” nodded Jimmy. “Not on the news-news, where there’s a picture in the background and the chick is reading from a piece of paper.”

  “Whatever in the world are you blistering about?” asked Rudolfo.

  “It was on that part at the end, you know, when the chick newscaster and the sports guy and the weather guy are all sitting together. And she says how you guys bought this Collection, and then they said some more stuff. Had a few laughs.”

  They hit the Strip suddenly, light and noise exploding upon the planet.

  “Ja, well,” said Rudolfo, “sticks and stones can break my bones, but local coverage will never harm me.” He felt very sad momentarily, for without thinking he had quoted Miss Joe, their first manager.

  “So this Collection thing,” persisted Jimmy—this now qualified officially as the longest conversation Jurgen and Rudolfo had ever had with their driver— “is a big deal, huh?”

  “It is,” responded Rudolfo, “just a bunch of books and a few hideous pieces of wood.”

  Jurgen put sunglasses on, even though it was still daylight and nowhere near as bright as it would be at night. “I will tell you about books,” he said quietly. He took a deep breath and chewed at his lips briefly, as if to draw blood and energy into them, and Rudolfo realized that he intended to continue in English, that whatever he meant to say was as much for Jimmy’s illumination as his own.

  “Was a man named Jean. In France, many years ago. And he was young man, eighteen years maybe, he is wanting to be, like his fodder—”

  “Father?” suggested Rudolfo meanly.

  “Watchmaker. Maker of watches. So he is asking the bookseller for book, you know, about making watch.”

  “You understand this, Jimmy?” wondered Rudolfo.

  Jimmy grunted, threw his shoulders upwards in a loose and uncoordinated manner. “Sure. Like on the back of the matchbooks. It’s got watchmaker right there with refrigeration and air-conditioning technician.”

  “So book comes, you know. It looks funny. It is name Amusing Mechanical Devices. Not about watch at all. It is about how to make, oh, Transformation Boxes and Automata and all sort of thing. So Jean becomes magician. Sometimes you no choose books. Books choose you.”

  “What the hell kind of stupid shit story is that?” demanded Rudolfo in German, the hard sounds and diminutives making him sound petulant and childish.

  “He make his name ‘Jean Robert-Houdin.’ He was the greatest magician of his day,” Jurgen switched to German. “That’s what you must do; that’s all that counts. Being the greatest magician of the day. And then another day comes, but that’s all right.”

  “And you are the greatest magician of your day,” said Rudolfo.

  “No.”

  “You are,” insisted Rudolfo. “Who else is there? Preston the Unsightly? He’s nothing. He’s no better than a gypsy playing three-card monte. Who else? The asshole? Kaz is shit and he knows it! He’s got all those people helping him. Half the audience are sticks, you know that.”<
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  “It’s not that Kaz is or isn’t good,” said Jurgen. “It’s that I am bad.”

  “Act of the Year, four years in a row.”

  “I’m so scared every time I do an effect. Even one I’ve done a thousand times, I’m afraid that people will see that it’s a trick and point at me and laugh and say, Jurgen Schubert, you big fake.”

  “Everyone’s a fake,” argued Rudolfo. “Magic is a fake. That’s why showmanship is so important.”

  But Jurgen had turned away, and no longer seemed to be listening.

  Chapter Six

  Having not seen them for a while—had he ever seen them, other than on television?—Preston decided to go to the Abraxas Hotel and catch the Jurgen and Rudolfo Show. He had to cancel his own evening’s performance, which he did simply enough. He telephoned Mrs. Antoinette Kingsley and advised her to stay home. She grunted groggily on the other end, having been newly woken. Preston offered to pay her nightly salary anyway, at which point she hung up.

  For a man who dressed as poorly as he did, Preston spent a lot of time thinking about wardrobe. He considered wearing the morning suit he had worn the day before, the one that had belonged to his father, Preston the Magnificent. But he had sweated the garment out—there were dark skunky stains emanating from the armpits. He next considered wearing his show clothes, a sweatshirt with the images of the moon and stars stitched on and a pair of jeans that kept a crease because he only wore them for two hours a night. But Preston decided that this garb was too ostentatious. He opened his closet door and surveyed his apparel. He selected an ornate and colourful Hawaiian shirt and put it with the trousers from the morning suit, which had not been damaged too badly by perspiration. Then he forced his fat and puffy feet into a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots.