The Spirit Cabinet

by Paul Quarrington

  Cheap trick, Preston thought. When Jurgen was showing the cube to be empty, Samson was hidden within the ring. When the cube was put inside the ring, it covered up the big cat, allowing the ring to be acquited, acquitment being the technical conjuror’s term for—in its most popular form—showing the sleeves to be empty. The illusion relied on quickness and practice and a large dollop of chutzpah. But the crowd went wild, driven to a frenzy by a strange combination of things—the music, the ghostly leopard, Miranda’s near-nakedness, Rudolfo’s perfect glass body and Jurgen’s black-eyed solemnity.

  The music stopped abruptly and Jurgen stepped forward. A microphone stand blossomed from the stage; Jurgen tore the instrument out of its clip and slapped it against his thick red lips. “Okay,” he muttered. “Is time for Up Close and Personal.”

  “Hoo boy!” said Rudolfo, coming now to stand beside his partner. He, too, touched a microphone to his lips. “Ja, Jurgen,” he continued, “what nice person are we talking to?”

  Rudolfo took a few determined strides forward; he squinted and stared at the faces in the audience. His eyes brushed across Preston’s face quickly; a moment later they returned. Rudolfo may have even nodded at that point, but so subtly that the action was impossible to decipher. Was it a greeting or a lofty dismissal?

  Rudolfo’s eyes finally settled upon a middle-aged woman three rows from the front who sat clutching her handbag. There was nothing remarkable about the woman; she had brown hair and eyes, was perhaps twenty-five pounds overweight and dressed in a steel-blue outfit. When Rudolfo pointed at her, she rose as though hypnotized. She made no motion toward the stage, however, until the man beside her placed his fingertips on her backside and pushed her forward.

  The woman climbed the stairs slowly and with trepidation, almost as though she were on her way up the hangman’s scaffolding. Rudolfo smiled and offered a hand, which the woman latched on to immediately, with all the force she could muster. Rudolfo brought her forward and deposited her in front of Jurgen. Jurgen’s dark eyes flickered like a matinee idol’s. “Darling,” he asked, “what is name?”

  “Lois Sweet,” whispered Lois Sweet.

  “And where you from?”

  “Fort Dix, New Jersey.”

  Jurgen produced a deck of cards and executed a couple of flourishes. This was his speciality as far as cards went, turning the deck into a fan that encircled his hand evenly and perfectly, or stretching out the packet until the cards in the middle seemed suspended in nothingness. He stared into Lois Sweet’s eyes as he did this. “Okay, tell you what we going to do, Lois.”

  “Hoo boy!” sang out Rudolfo, although he was supposed to wait until after Jurgen’s next statement.

  “You going to name one card, okay? You just say name out loud.”

  “Six of spades.”

  Jurgen abruptly tossed the cards into the air. As they fluttered and turned he stabbed his hand upwards. The swarm of cards disappeared, fifty-one of them tumbling to the stage. Jurgen held the fifty-second between his thick fingers. He showed the face first to the audience—who roared appreciatively at the sight of the six of spades—and then he showed it to Lois.

  “My goodness,” she said. She covered her heart with both hands.

  “Stick,” muttered Preston.

  “Okay, Lois,” said Jurgen, producing a thick-tipped felt pen, “we going to sign this for you.” Jurgen scrawled a hasty version of his name on the face of the card and then flipped the ducat and the pen to his partner. Rudolfo somewhat laboriously produced his signature. Then both men leaned forward and kissed Lois on her cheeks. “Thanks for coming up …” began Jurgen, and then he and Rudolfo finished with their eerie simultaneity, “… for Up Close and Personal!”

  They clapped their hands and darkness and smoke claimed the stage. Preston recognized the new music, an ululation that filled the auditorium; it was Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, formerly spritely, now manic. Rudolfo and Jurgen both executed balletic leaps, but their leaps had no apex; both continued upwards until they were gone from sight.

  Miranda rushed onto the stage, dressed in some handkerchiefs. She twirled and gyrated, dislodging these tiny draperies, flashing patches of naked skin. Preston squirmed in his seat and tugged the material away from his crotch to give himself a bit more room. Jurgen and Rudolfo now reappeared—their costumes seriously abbreviated, tiny bathing suits and silver boots with curled toes—pushing a huge cage. As Jurgen unlocked the door, Rudolfo pounded on the iron bars with his hands, demonstrating their solidity. Miranda climbed into the cage (shifting her hips suddenly to the left, she relocated a couple of handkerchiefs and gave Preston a breathtaking view of flawless buttock) and then Jurgen and Rudolfo encircled the cage with velvet drapery. The cage was no sooner enclosed than the drapery was tugged away, and there, in Miranda’s stead, stood Samson.

  “There’s an old chestnut for you,” said Preston.

  “Excuse me,” snarled the old woman from Winnipeg. “I am trying to enjoy the show.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You might be insane,” noted the woman. “Some of the things you say make no sense. Stick, for instance. Why did you say stick?”

  “You know what?” said Preston. “I am insane.”

  “Thought so!”

  The audience gasped as one, and Preston saw that the cornball transformation he had just witnessed was but preamble to a more ambitious illusion. Miranda floated in the air. The handkerchiefs clung to her like seaweed to a lovesick suicide. Miranda hovered above Jurgen and Rudolfo, who both reached up and laid hands upon her—Jurgen taking hold of her head, Rudolfo her feet—and spun her like a helicopter blade. Miranda rotated, airborne, toward the back of the stage, gaining altitude as she went, and came to rest atop the gleaming silver pyramid. Jurgen and Rudolfo pranced over and spun Miranda once more. The point of the pyramid lay just at the small of Miranda’s back and as she turned she settled upon it. The audience—including Preston—sucked in their collective breath, because Miranda continued spinning, unaffected by the laws of physics, and the point of the pyramid drove itself into her back. She was soon turning so quickly that she was just a blur of white linen (spackled by luminous fleshtones) and then the pyramid’s point appeared above her middle, driven cleanly through her perfect body.

  As Jurgen stepped forward to receive applause, Rudolfo began to corral and run animals. They appeared from anywhere and everywhere. There were clouds of butterflies, swallowtails and luna moths. There were gangs of African greys and forpus parrotlets. Then came the small mammals—sugar gliders, tenrecs, chinchillas—and finally the big cats, of which the biggest was Samson. Samson went to the front of the stage and allowed his wobbly front legs to buckle, crashing his forequarters onto the stage with a thud. This was his version of a deep bow, and as soon as he’d taken it, Rudolfo and Jurgen came to stand on either side.

  Miranda was nowhere to be seen.

  The applause was deafening, and Preston joined in with gusto. He even stuck fingers in his mouth and managed a whistle that wet the backs of many heads.

  But Kaz (thought Preston) had made a valid point at the auction with his chimps/brain surgery comment. Most of what Jurgen and Rudolfo did was ancient stuff, variations on things created by venerables like Anderson (the Wonderful Wizard of the North), the American Philadelphia, Professor Pinetti and L’Escamoteur Philippe. Or else it was little stuff blown up to ridiculous proportions, like the silver ball. Most guys could afford a tiny silver ball with a false flap inside, where they could produce or unproduce a ring or something, but only Jurgen and Rudolfo could afford one twelve feet in diameter.

  Preston rose from his seat, knocking the little tray that held the drink he’d barely touched. The drink tumbled; Preston rather absentmindedly aimed a finger. The drink slowed, stopped, then reversed, disappearing as it neared Preston’s puffy hand.

  “Stop that,” snapped the elderly woman from Winnipeg, clearly annoyed.

  “Sorry.”

  Still, reflect
ed Preston, it was an impressive show. It had a choreographed austerity that people obviously responded to. In terms of sheer stagecraft—the needles of light, the bastardized music, the costume changes, the exotic animals—it was a pretty good show. But (Preston moved slowly toward the exit, engulfed in a sea of doughy, elderly people) sheer stagecraft is sheer shit. Jurgen and Rudolfo didn’t have a shred of talent between them. Miranda was the magus on that stage. She was the one who slipped unseen into small shadowy places, who appeared suddenly bathed in light, who was impaled upon a pyramid, sacrificed to the small gods of showbiz. And Samson was impressive. The big cat must have crunched himself up pretty good to get into some of the secret places. That silver ball, for example, could only have a hidden compartment of a couple of cubic feet. And come to think of it—Preston snapped his fingers and, as he was now wandering through the wasteland of the Casino, a half-dressed woman materialized with a tray full of drinks—Samson must have been responsible for the animation of some of the geometric shapes. The bleak shining monoliths and pyramids had moved toward the front of the stage without obvious propulsion. They were then moved around by the boys, and usually yielded up the albino leopard. Preston chuckled. That was clever stuff, a good way to move props and sneak the load on stage. Get the load itself to do it.

  Preston had only worked with animals once, long ago, as the fifteen-year-old “Presto.” He did a few things with birds, although they often disappointed him. They rarely, once produced from nothingness, flew upwards with exaltation. They more usually crashed to the ground (made as awkward as dodos by domestication) and pecked around, searching for breadcrumbs. Presto had also worked with a rabbit, until that sad day when—entertaining at Courtney Bell’s sixth birthday party—he pulled out a beast that had been claimed by disease. Blood trickled out of the floppy ears. The pink eyes were glazed. Courtney was never the same.

  One of the giant doormen pulled open a huge glass door and Preston obediently wandered outside. He peered upwards, trying to see the night sky, wanting to see the stars coalescing into constellations. But, of course, the heavens were obscured by the neon radiance of Las Vegas.

  His father, Preston the Magnificent, had worked with animals. Also briefly. He’d had a few exotic birds, an iguana (he claimed it was a miniature dragon and made the thing seem to exhale huge licks of flame) and a tiny dwarf pony. The last was an attempt to inject humour into his act, which was otherwise characterized by dour propriety. Toward the end of his set, Preston the Magnificent would clear his throat and massage his Adam’s apple gingerly. “I’m getting a little hoarse,” he’d declare. Then quickly he’d step aside and the dwarf pony would be standing there. “Aha!” Preston the Magnificent would shout. “A little horse!” Preston had once counselled his father that there was no need to hit the gag twice, but his father never listened to him.

  For the most part, his father had found the animals intractable and insalubrious. Preston remembered very well coming home from school one day and finding the backyard littered with the corpses of exotic birds. The lizard hanging from a tree branch. The little pony had been shot through the head. Preston the Magnificent lay by the pool, stark naked, lost in drunken oblivion.

  The doorbell rings.

  Rudolfo starts up suddenly, which alarms Samson, because Samson is a skittish beast, perhaps the most skittish in creation. Samson emits a kittenish yawp and races off toward safety. Mind you, he begins his racing off before assuming a proper stance. He begins whilst still prone on the sofa, lashing out with his limbs. Instinct, the tiny residue of instinct that still courses through his veins, pops out his claws. So it is that he gashes his master and true love. As Samson tumbles from the sofa, his forepaw slides down Rudolfo’s smooth chest, carving out four parallel lines that stud instantly with crimson beads. Rudolfo rises and touches the blood. He stares at his fingertips for a long moment, as though surprised to find the stuff.

  The doorbell rings again and Rudolfo goes to answer.

  No one has rung the doorbell in some time. For a few weeks after Jurgen’s disappearance their manager, Curtis Sweetchurch, would drop in, waving his huge Daytimer like Moses wielding the holy tablets. Sweetchurch would keen forlornly, stumbling throughout das Haus. What he was doing was making certain that Jurgen wasn’t merely hiding somewhere, because such pranks, such childish trickeries, were certainly not above Jurgen Schubert, not at the end when he was glowing and weightless and silver-eyed. It eventually became plain to Sweetchurch that Jurgen was gone, absolutely and forever, so he stopped coming over. For a few days he made phone calls, then he abandoned that, and Rudolfo had now all but forgotten that the man had ever existed.

  The doorbell rings again, with insistence. The chimes are rhythmic and tonal, and it occurs to Rudolfo—which is to say, this realization sounds dully, a howl from far, far away—that they play a tune. He cocks his head in order to better hear. (Samson, following fearfully in his master’s wake, cocks his head also, wondering what they are wondering at.) I know this, thinks Rudolfo, and he clenches his fist to facilitate thought. He clenches his fist until the knuckles blanch. His nails, which are long and thick and curved, leave behind a series of halfmoons across the palm of his hand. I know this. Rudolfo has forgotten that he himself demanded that the doorbell be programmed to play this tune. The images that the music summons forth are confusing. He sees a golden key; he sees hands groping toward and around it. Fingers find the key and then, for some reason, surreptitiously slip it into a pocket. This is what Rudolfo sees, fleetingly, and then he sees a pale face, so very pale as to be ageless and sexless.

  Rudolfo remembers that he is headed toward the door and spins around to make certain that he is going in the right direction. Turns out he wasn’t; he was retreating back into the bowels of the mansion, back to the shadows. He corrects himself and marches off with false determination, because really he has no intention of answering the door. He may achieve the door. With a little bit of luck, he may even screw one eye closed and apply the other gingerly to the peephole drilled through the thick oak. But he can’t imagine whom he might see that would cause him to open—

  He remembers suddenly what tune the doorbell sounds.

  Rudolfo stumbles, weak-kneed. He holds his hands out to protect himself, but as the tiles fly toward him he calmly slips his hands behind his back so that his head can meet the floor. Although this place he goes to is not truly slumber, it is dark and silent.

  Chapter Seven

  Rudolfo never dreamt, as far as he knew, but he often awoke distressed, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. As a wet sidewalk might indicate that it had rained the night before, so his mind glistened with emotion and hinted at nightmares.

  So when Rudolfo woke up, he popped his eyes open with such force that they almost produced sound. He did not, however, peel back the covers and bolt from the huge circular bed. Instead he lay perfectly still, this being some defence mechanism put into use by his limbic brain, that part of his consciousness that was prehistoric and inchoate.

  Beside him, Rudolfo could see, resting atop an unreasonably firm pillow, the back of Jurgen’s head. It was remarkable that a night of slumber had done nothing to muss or ruffle Jurgen’s coiffure. Then again, Jurgen didn’t move while he slept, lying perfectly still on his side, his breath even and not quite loud enough to be called a snore. Rudolfo, on the other hand, stirred, budged and thrashed. This he knew because he often woke himself up. More precisely, he woke the animals on the bed, and they in turn screamed him into wakefulness.

  Sharing the bed, at that particular time, were Samson, three Japanese bobtails, a muntjac, a mute swan, and two Flemish giant rabbits. The smaller creatures were moulded into the folds of Rudolfo’s naked body. Samson lay sprawled across the lower half of the round mattress, his mouth hanging open, his tongue dangling over the side and halfway to the plush mauve carpeting.

  Rudolfo thought about what he must do that day (give the animals their breakfast, work with the panther, animal lunch an
d recreation, personal training—today was legs—animal dinner and baths, die Schau at ten o’clock that evening, fifteen hours away) and decided he must get going. He tensed then, preparatory to pushing off into the day, when his attention was caught by something most strange.

  A hair.

  The hair sat in the geometric centre of the back of Jurgen’s head—and such was the nature of Jurgen’s head that the geometric centre was unequivocal—and glowed. Because this hair was not merely grey (actually, Rudolfo knew there was no such thing; all grey hairs are actually bone-white), it was luminous and dazzling. Little of the dawn was able to enter the bedroom, but what little there was seemed to be trapped and reflected by this single hair, the kinky little strand that grew out of Jurgen’s head.

  Rudolfo reached forward and plucked the hair from Jurgen’s scalp. He did this without thinking, but even if he had thought about it, he certainly couldn’t have predicted the anguished howl that came from Jurgen. The animals on the bed became a maelstrom of feathers and fur, the swan beating its wing upon Samson’s head, the rabbits finding no purchase on the satin sheets for their panicky hind legs. Jurgen flung himself out of bed, one thick hand grasping the site of the plucked hair with knuckle-whitening force, as though fearful that his brains would squirt out the tiny fissure.

  Jurgen spun around to confront Rudolfo. “Vot in the hell you are doing?” he demanded in English, his voice a thick, dripping porridge of diphthongs and grunts.