The Magician's Tale

by William Bayer

  "Slowly, as I mastered these effects, I incorporated them into my routine. Mind you, everything I did was classical magic, nothing novel or extraordinary, nothing people hadn't seen before. That was my problem. I was too ambitious to settle for the standard repertory of tricks. I wanted to show people something new, stand out from the herd.

  "It was then that I started doing serious research, hanging out with the old-timers, delving into old books. One day, in the main reading room of the Forty-second Street Library, I came upon a sector of magic I had previously known nothing about—Indian and Malay magic, which amazes by means of bizarre, shocking and bloodcurdling effects involving such grotesquerie as self-lacerations, even the decapitation of small creatures such as fowl. I remember putting down that book, closing my eyes and thinking about what I'd read. And then, as in a vision, I saw myself in a turban with black beard and coppery skin, doing those very things."

  He gives me a glance to measure the effect of his words. Decapitation: I wince at the memory of what happened to Tim.

  "Sounds awful, Kay, I know, but remember, back then we weren't in the age of the touchy-feely magician or, for that matter, animal rights. What I wanted was to truly astound people, shock them out of self-satisfied contentment. I'm sure as an artist you can understand. Épater le bourgeois! Right?"

  He chuckles, then kicks out with his well-shod foot—a demonstration, I gather, of a fond desire to put the boot to the middle class.

  "Yes, I think in those days I was pretty violent, not on the surface—there I was smooth as glass—but underneath where the raging anger roils. I promise you I'm not like that anymore. Look at me—I'm a dandy! But peering back fourteen years, I see myself as an angry kid."

  He pauses. "There was something else. It went like this: If I could not be as great a mentalist as Dunninger, as great an escape artist as Houdini, as great a stage illusionist as Blackstone, then I would become something none of them had been—a violent, flesh-cutting magician-personage, reincarnation of the conjurers who worked the villages of South Asia leaving astonishment, terror, nightmares in their wakes."

  At this point we're sipping green tea in an upstairs Japanese tea parlor near Fillmore and Bush. The window is open; bitter smells permeate the air. I look at David and see a man lost in a mist of tormented memories. I decide not to interrupt. Better for us both if I simply let him speak. Perhaps he senses my anxiety, for suddenly he smiles.

  "Maybe you know this, Kay." He speaks calmly. "The true magician's grail, the ultimate act of magic, is an illusion called the Indian Rope Trick."

  I nod.

  "No one has ever seen it convincingly performed. . . though immense sums have been offered to anyone who can. Even indoors it presents a series of complex problems: the rope, the child's climb, the fakir's subsequent climb with the sword, the disappearances, the rain of dismembered limbs, the fakir's reappearance, the child's reappearance at the end. In fact the trick can be done reasonably well in a theater with the help of motorized rope, stage smoke, catwalks, split-second timing and lots of skill. But to mount it in the open air as originally described—there's not a respectable illusionist who thinks that's possible.

  "The Rope Trick has always baffled magicians. Most believe it exists only in legend. Still, the deeper I looked into Hindu and Malay magic, a sort of hybrid illusion of my own began to take shape. Mind you, nowhere near as astonishing as the Rope Trick, perhaps more like a poor second cousin. But if it could be done (and I had no doubt it could), it would be a tour de force: shocking, astounding and appalling all at once . . . with the added bonus of a healing finale."

  David sips from his cup, then sits back. Knowing he has me spellbound, he becomes expansive, reveling in his control:

  "It took me over a year to work it out, to practice my part of it and devise the rest. And then I began my search for confederates. I consulted theatrical agents, placed advertisements, even sought people out on the street. My confederates, you see, had to possess a certain appearance and, more difficult, had to be available and willing to obey. You'd think it wouldn't be all that hard to find people happy to work with a magician, earn good wages and experience fascinating travel. But what I wanted my confederates to do was extremely off-putting to those I approached, repulsing them on account of the nature of the performance and because basically what I wanted was to borrow and employ their precious kids."

  Again I feel troubled. Too many of David's words cut close: "decapitation," "flesh-cutting" . . . and now the awful phrase from his description of the Rope Trick: "rain of dismembered limbs. Jesus! What the hell is he talking about? Who are these children? And if, as I suspect, one of them was Tim, in what awful bloody rites were he and David involved?

  We are walking rapidly up Fillmore toward the Washington Street–Broadway crest, past pricey restaurants and boutiques purveying elegant housewares and apparel. David is once again his jaunty self, twirling his stick. The words gush from him, yet now his saga takes on an edge. It's as if in the telling he's reliving the particular moment he's about to describe, the moment when, as he puts it, he first laid eyes on "them":

  "I'd been searching for a set of identical female twins. They'd have to be intelligent, possess an innate flair, little show-offs if you will. They'd also have to have extremely pliant bodies, as at least one of them would be trained as a contortionist. Finally there was the matter of size: I wanted little kids, small and lean, preferably no older than five or six. That way, if they didn't grow too fast, they could, after training, perform with me for at least four years. According to my plan, when they grew too big, I'd simply replace them with another pair.

  "But, as it turned out, not so simply. Stage parents were delighted when I'd ask to see their little darlings, but when they learned the criteria—rigorous training, devotion and discipline, long road trips, dyeing of the skin—they'd become alarmed. And if not by all that, then surely by the nature of the little play their cherished sweethearts would perform. When they understood what was involved they'd turn furious: 'What are you—a monster? You expect our twins to do something so disgusting as that?'"

  He lowers his voice. "It was at a birthday party in Fairfield County that I saw them. A glorious October day. A beautiful house set within a garden bounded by a millpond with classic red horse barn behind. The setting was a fantasy. Wherever you walked you heard the tinkle of water and the crunch of fallen leaves beneath your feet. The party was held outdoors, and it was there that I performed, setting up my table between the pond and the house portico, the children seated before me on the grass.

  "The birthday kid, a snooty little thing turning eight, struck me as incredibly spoiled. I remember the obnoxious way her parents showered her with gifts, accessories for her pony, a bridle from Gucci, a saddle specially made by Hermès.

  "Bored with her, I looked around. There were twenty-five or thirty children. As usual I tried to choose one or two toward whom I could direct portions of my act. I saw the usual all-American freckle-faced boys, suburban sugar-and-spice-type girls. Not an interesting face in the lot, I thought . . . until my eyes alighted on them.

  "A striking pair, the girl with long blond hair, the boy with his hair cut short. Because they were differently dressed I took them for brother and sister, not grasping at first that they were twins. You see, it was their eyes, not their twinship, that attracted me—huge, live, sensuous eyes, fascinated and fascinating, boring into mine, eager, greedy for my magic. Powerful eyes. Burning eyes. The kind of rapturous eyes that, when you see them, you know they can devour you alive."

  David stops, turns to me.

  "Oh, Kay! The thrill of it! Remember, by that time I'd been performing for kids for several years. My hunt for suitable twins was more than a year old. Yet never in all that time had I seen anything like these two—their sparkle, mesmerizing beauty. Had I been a pedophile I'd have fallen into lust! As it was I merely fell in love. . . ."

  As David again steps out he changes his tone, taking on the part
of a cool stalker on the hunt.

  "Remember what I was seeking: a pair of six-year-old identical females. A pair of eight-year-old opposite-sex fraternals had never occurred to me. With good reason. I didn't think such a pair could accomplish what I had in mind. But watching this pair as I performed—and I performed by rote that afternoon though not, apparently, to the detriment of my act; afterwards, receiving the congratulations of parents, I was informed several times my show had never been better!—watching them, attentive to them, noting how attentive they were to me, I began to calculate if there was some way I could adapt them to my trick.

  "One thing was clear—even if they weren't literally identical, they looked amazingly alike. Eyes, faces, even their heights, were the same. I tried to imagine them with duplicate haircuts. Then, it seemed to me, they'd be almost perfectly matched. And the matching loose-fitting garments I had in mind would well disguise the difference in gender. What struck me most, apart from their eyes, were the identical expressions on their faces, alertness and also something sorrowful which I felt would boost the trick by arousing spectator sympathy. By the time I'd finished amazing that party of spoiled little brats, I'd concluded not only that I could adapt these two, but that no other pair I would ever find would possibly do for me as well."

  We are at the top of the ridge that runs along Pacific Heights separating it from Cow Hollow below. At one time an area of slaughterhouses, Cow Hollow is now a neighborhood of fine shops, chichi restaurants, real estate brokerages dealing in the city's finer properties. Here we pause, David to gasp at the beauty of the Bay, I to take his picture. As a performer he knows well how to pose. Perhaps later I can seduce him into showing vulnerability. But shooting him now, I wonder if the pleasure in his eyes can be accounted for less by the stunning view before us than the memory of his good fortune that golden Connecticut afternoon.

  Descending into Cow Hollow, he describes how, after the magic show, he schemed to meet the pair and learn their names. He carried a bunch of The Great deGeoffroy business cards depicting a little drawing of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. He wanted very much to get one of these into their hands, and so began to hand them out to everyone, kids and attending parents alike, finally reaching the coveted glowing twins.

  The girl, he understood immediately, was the leader, the boy shier, submissive to his sister. Even then he knew she would be the one who would learn contortion and thus star in the crucial first portion of the act, while the boy, disguised to look like her, would emerge only for the finale.

  Both were full of praise for his performance. Listening he was struck at once by their intelligence and poise.

  "How can we learn to do these tricks?" the girl asked.

  David could barely believe his ears. Perhaps, he thought, this is a fateful meeting, one that will forever change three lives. Taking a certain risk, he knelt until his head was level with theirs. He whispered: "You will learn to do them, both of you. I will teach you how!"

  A risk, of course, because such a statement could be taken as a come-on . . . which, indeed, it was. David didn't see himself as the proverbial bogeyman of the suburbs, the one kids are warned against from the time they're old enough to play alone outside. He would not be the dark stranger with candy canes in hand who would hang around the back of the schoolyard. David deGeoffroy was no kind of kidnapper, merely a talented magician with an ambitious plan. But if ever he was tempted to spirit kids away, it was at the instant he first felt the collective breath of those two on his cheek, saw the sparkle that lit within their eyes as they learned that they too could be taught to mystify, dazzle and astound.

  He asked their names. The boy was Timmy, the girl Ariane. When he asked if their parents were around, as he would like to meet them, Ariane responded that their parents had passed away in an accident two years before, and that they now lived with their Aunt Molly but a hop, skip, and jump down the road.

  By this time, nervous about paying them so much attention, David glanced around. No one, he was pleased to discover, seemed even to have noticed. In fact the party had broken up into a melee, kids laughing and playing, adults dishing out wedges of birthday cake and globs of multicolored ice cream.

  Kneeling between them again, he said: "If you really want to learn magic, have your aunt give me a call. I'll come out from the city and give you lessons in your home. But remember, whatever I teach must be kept between us. Magic, you understand, is a secret craft."

  And as at this their eyes enlarged, he knew that he would have them, that he must.

  He was elated as he drove back to New York. All the portents were right. And in his short exchange with the twins, he had divined a possible weakness: if it was true that both blood parents were deceased, then perhaps Aunt Molly was the kind of surrogate whose feelings were founded more in obligation than parental love.

  He sweated out the next few days wondering if she would call. He had decided that if she didn't he would take the initiative himself. However, on the fourth day after the party, he found a message on his machine from a Mrs. Molly Kerrigan responding, she said, to an offer to teach magic which her godchildren, Timmy and Ariane Lovsey, had reported he'd made. If in fact his offer was real, she'd appreciate it if he'd be so kind as to call her back.

  At the first meeting, wishing to inspire confidence, he dressed like a schoolteacher in tweed jacket and regimental tie. He also made a point of addressing himself to Aunt Molly, maintaining eye contact with her while throwing occasional soft glances and friendly remarks to the kids, who, eyes glowing, sat together on the rug, arms wrapped about their knees.

  It was in the family room of a nondescript split-level that the meeting took place. Aunt Molly offered cookies and coffee, with soft drinks for the twins. She was a good-natured, slightly disheveled, plump fifty-year-old woman with a head of tight untrained gray curls, who worked as voting registrar in the local town hall.

  As David spoke about magic, he did not forget that his sole purpose was to sell himself. He was, he wanted to convey, a responsible adult who would teach not only an exotic craft, but also something that would remain with his students all their lives—discipline, commitment to excellence, the rewards of practice, the very things they would learn if they took up a musical instrument.

  Molly, he quickly understood, was overwhelmed by the twins. A widow, she had three grown children of her own, one a travel agent, one a bus driver, the youngest just finishing a stint in the Marines. Having exhausted herself bringing up three ordinary kids only to find herself suddenly burdened in middle age with two more, both brilliant, intense, most likely conniving and very difficult to please—David sensed her desperation.

  That night a deal was struck: he would come out once a week on Tuesday afternoons to teach magic to the twins for less than a music teacher would have charged, providing props and apparatus at wholesale prices with no profit to himself. By the end of the evening everyone was satisfied, not least of all Timmy and Ariane.

  He could barely wait for that first Tuesday. In the intervening days he worked out a strategy. He would play it absolutely straight for several months, coaching the twins, measuring their abilities, building up trust which, according to his plan, would lead in time to deep complicity. He would turn them into little magicians and, with the bonding power of magic, make them his allies. He already loved them; if he could make them love him, then nothing, he felt, would be impossible.

  The lessons went well. The twins were talented. Ariane was delighted at the prospect of becoming a contortionist, and Timmy soon became skilled at juggling and manipulating coins and cards. During the lessons, which he kept informal; David carefully built their confidence, teaching them how to recoup after a mistake, delighting them with special games by which he tested their talent for theatrics.

  They constantly surprised him. They adored deception. And they lacked the most obvious flaw in a child magician, the desire to flaunt their secrets by revealing them to friends. Ordinarily when children are mysti
fied by a trick, their first query is: "How did you do that?" From Ariane and Timmy the first question always was: "Please, David, teach us how!"

  Confusion, bedazzlement, mystification—the Lovsey twins were natural adepts. They loved waving the wand, rubbing the ring, conjuring spirits from the dark. They reveled in hocus-pocus and abracadabra, liked nothing better than to pull a coin out of an ear or force it up through the surface of a table. Wine that turns to water, then back to wine, flying cards, the levitation of balls—David had never seen such quick, deceptive little hands. And being kids, they delighted in scatological variations such as pulling colorful scarves out of each other's rear ends to the accompaniment of rude noises simulated by their mouths.

  But what they liked even more than prestidigitation were the sword box illusions: the Scimitars of Baghdad, the Decapitated Princess, the Mismade Lady, the Headless Chinaman in the Mysterious Trunk. These illusions, which David introduced after several months, fascinated them on account of their ability to horrify. He explained the principle: how by severely shocking people one can make them vulnerable to effects which, in a normal state, they would never accept.

  It was seven months before he broached to them the special trick. He told them he had invented it uniquely for the three of them, and it was only because they were twins that it could be made to work.