Pilgrims

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  stopped to pick up his daughter, Esther, from her birthday party.

  He carried her out to the parking lot.

  “Listen to me now,” he told Purcell. “You ever steal from me

  again, I’ll kill you.”

  “Take it easy,” the cop said.

  “If I even see you on the street, I’ll fucking kill you.”

  The cop said, “You want to press charges, pal, you press

  charges. Otherwise, you take it easy.”

  “He doesn’t like to be robbed,” Ace Douglas explained.

  “Animal,” Purcell muttered.

  “You see this little girl?” Hoffman asked. “My little girl is

  eight years old today. If I’m walking on the street with my little

  girl and I see you, I will leave her on one side of the street and I

  will cross the street and I will kill you in front of my little girl.”

  “That’s enough,” the cop said. He led George Purcell out of

  the parking lot and took off his handcuffs.

  The cop and the thief walked away together. Hoffman stood

  on the steps of the Pharaoh’s Palace, holding Esther and shout-

  ing. “Right in front of my little girl, you make me kill you?

  What kind of man are you? Crazy man! You ruin a little girl’s

  life! Terrible man!”

  Esther was crying. Ace Douglas took her from Hoffman’s

  arms.

  The next week, the thief George Purcell came back to the

  Pharaoh’s Palace. It was noon, and very quiet. The prep cook

  was making chicken stock, and Manuel the potwasher was

  cleaning out the dry goods storage area. Hoffman was in his

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  The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick office, ordering vegetables from his wholesaler. Purcell came

  straight back into the kitchen, sober.

  “I want my goddamn shoes!” he yelled, pounding on the

  office door. “Twenty-dollar shoes!”

  Then Richard Hoffman came out of his office and beat

  George Purcell to death with a meat mallet. Manuel the pot-

  washer tried to hold him back, and Hoffman beat him to death

  with the meat mallet, too.

  Esther Hoffman did not grow up to be a natural magician. Her

  hands were dull. It was no fault of her own, just an unfortunate

  birth flaw. Otherwise, she was a bright girl.

  Her uncle, Ace Douglas, had been the American champion

  close-up magician for three years running. He’d won his titles

  using no props or tools at all, except a single silver dollar coin.

  During one competition, he’d vanished and produced the coin

  for fifteen dizzying minutes without the expert panel of judges

  ever noticing that the coin spent a lot of time resting openly

  on Ace Douglas’s knee. He would put it there, where it lay

  gleaming to be seen if one of the judges had only glanced away

  for a moment from Ace’s hands. But they would never glance

  away, convinced that he still held a coin before them in his

  fingers. They were not fools, but they were dupes for his fake

  takes, his fake drops, his mock passes, and a larger cast of

  impossible moves so deceptive they went entirely unnoticed.

  Ace Douglas had motions he himself had never even named.

  He was a scholar of misdirection. He proscribed skepticism.

  His fingers were as loose and quick as thoughts.

  But Esther Hoffman’s magic was sadly pedestrian. She did

  the Famous Dancing Cane trick, the Famous Vanishing Milk

  trick, and the Famous Interlocking Chinese Rings trick. She

  produced parakeets from light bulbs and pulled a dove from a

  burning pan. She performed at birthday parties and could float

  a child. She performed at grammar schools and could cut and

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  restore the neckties of principals. If the principal was a lady,

  Esther could borrow a ring from the principal’s finger, lose it,

  and then find it in a child’s pocket. If the lady principal wore no

  jewelry, Esther could simply run a sword through the woman’s

  neck while the children in the audience screamed in spasms of

  rapture.

  Simple, artless tricks.

  “You’re young,” Ace told her. “You’ll improve.”

  But she did not. Esther made more money giving flute les-

  sons to little girls than performing magic. She was a fine flutist,

  and this was maddening to her. Why all this worthless musical

  skill?

  “Your fingers are very quick,” Ace told her. “There’s nothing

  wrong with your fingers. But it’s not about quickness, Esther.

  You don’t have to speed through coins.”

  “I hate coins.”

  “You should handle coins as if they amuse you, Esther. Not as

  if they frighten you.”

  “With coins, it’s like I’m wearing oven mitts.”

  “Coins are not always easy.”

  “I never fool anybody. I can’t misdirect.”

  “It’s not about misdirection, Esther. It’s about direction. ”

  “I don’t have hands,” Esther complained. “I have paws.”

  It was true that Esther could only fumble coins and cards,

  and she would never be a deft magician. She had no gift. Also,

  she hadn’t the poise. Esther had seen photographs of her uncle

  when he was young at the Pharaoh’s Palace, leaning against

  patrician pillars of marble in his tuxedo and cufflinks. No form

  of magic existed that was close-up enough for him. He could sit

  on a chair surrounded on all sides by the biggest goons of

  spectators — people who challenged him or grabbed his arm in

  mid-pass — and he would borrow from a goon some common

  object and absolutely vanish it. Some goon’s car keys in Ace’s

  hand would turn into absolutely nothing. Absolutely gone.

  184 ✦

  The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick Ace’s nightclub act at the Pharaoh’s Palace had been a tribute

  to the elegant vices: coins, cards, dice, champagne flutes, and

  cigarettes. Everything was to suggest and encourage drinking,

  sin, gamesmanship, and money. The fluidity of fortune. He

  could do a whole act of cigarette effects alone, starting with a

  single cigarette borrowed from a lady in the audience. He would

  pass it through a coin and give the coin to the lady. He would

  tear the cigarette in half and restore it, swallow it, cough it back

  up along with six more, duplicate them, and duplicate them

  again until he ended up with lit cigarettes smoking hot between

  all his fingers and in his mouth, behind his ears, emerging from

  every pocket — surprised? he was terrified! — and then, with a

  nod, all the lit cigarettes would vanish except the original. That

  one he would smoke luxuriously during the applause.

  Also, Esther had pictures of her father during the same pe-

  riod, when he owned the Pharaoh’s Palace. He was handsome in

  his tuxedo, but with a heavy posture. She had inherited his thick

  wrists.

  When Richard Hoffman got out of prison, he moved in

  with Ace and Esther. Ace had a tremendous home in the coun-

  try by then, a tall yellow Victorian house with a mile of woods

  behind it and a lawn like a baron’s. Ace Douglas had made a

  tidy fo
rtune from magic. He had operated the Pharaoh’s Palace

  from the time that Hoffman was arrested, and, with Hoffman’s

  permission, had eventually sold it at great profit to a gour-

  met restaurateur. Esther had been living with Ace since she’d

  finished high school, and she had a whole floor to herself. Ace’s

  little sister Angela had divorced Hoffman, also with his permis-

  sion, and had moved to Florida to live with her new husband.

  What Hoffman had never permitted was for Esther to visit him

  in prison, and so it had been fourteen years since they’d seen

  each other. In prison he had grown even sturdier. He seemed

  shorter than Ace and Esther remembered, and some weight

  gained had made him more broad. He had also grown a thick

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  beard, with handsome red tones. He was easily moved to tears,

  or, at least, seemed to be always on the verge of being moved to

  tears. The first few weeks of living together again were not

  altogether comfortable for Esther and Hoffman. They had only

  the briefest conversations, such as this one:

  Hoffman asked Esther, “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “I’ve got undershirts older than you.”

  Or, in another conversation, Hoffman said, “The fellows I

  met in prison are the nicest fellows in the world.”

  And Esther said, “Actually, Dad, they probably aren’t.”

  And so on.

  In December of that year, Hoffman attended a magic show

  of Esther’s, performed at a local elementary school.

  “She’s really not very good,” he reported later to Ace.

  “I think she’s fine,” Ace said. “She’s fine for the kids, and she

  enjoys herself.”

  “She’s pretty terrible. Too dramatic.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “She says, behold! It’s terrible. behold this! behold

  that!”

  “But they’re children.” Ace said. “With children, you need to

  explain when you’re about to do a trick and when you just did

  one, because they’re so excited they don’t realize what’s going

  on. They don’t even know what a magician is. They can’t tell the

  difference between when you’re doing magic and when you’re

  just standing there.”

  “I think she’s very nervous.”

  “Could be.”

  “She says, behold the parakeet!”

  “Her parakeet tricks are not bad.”

  “It’s not dignified,” Hoffman said. “She convinces nobody.”

  “It’s not meant to be dignified, Richard. It’s for the children.”

  The next week, Hoffman bought Esther a large white rabbit.

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  The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick

  “If you do the tricks for the children, you should have a

  rabbit,” he told her.

  Esther hugged him. She said, “I’ve never had a rabbit.”

  Hoffman lifted the rabbit from the cage. It was an unnatu-

  rally enormous rabbit.

  “Is it pregnant?” Esther asked.

  “No, she is not. She is only large.”

  “That’s an extremely large rabbit for any magic trick,” Ace

  observed.

  Esther said, “They haven’t invented the hat big enough to

  pull that rabbit out of.”

  “She actually folds up to a small size,” Hoffman said. He held

  the rabbit between his hands as if she were an accordion and

  squeezed her into a great white ball.

  “She seems to like that,” Ace said, and Esther laughed.

  “She doesn’t mind it. Her name is Bonnie.” Hoffman held

  the rabbit forward by the nape of her neck, as though she were

  a massive kitten. Dangling fully stretched like that, she was

  bigger than a big raccoon.

  “Where’d you get her?” Esther asked.

  “From the newspaper!” Hoffman announced, beaming.

  Esther liked Bonnie the rabbit more than she liked her trick

  doves and parakeets, who were attractive enough but were es-

  sentially only pigeons that had been lucky with their looks. Ace

  liked Bonnie, too. He allowed Bonnie to enjoy the entirety

  of his large Victorian home, with little regard for her pellets,

  which were small, rocky, and inoffensive. She particularly en-

  joyed sitting in the center of the kitchen table, and from that

  spot would regard Ace, Esther, and Hoffman gravely. In this

  manner, Bonnie was very feline.

  “Will she always be this judgmental?” Esther asked.

  Bonnie became more canine when she was allowed outdoors.

  She would sleep on the porch, lying on her side in a patch of

  sun, and if anyone approached the porch she would look up at

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  that person lazily, in the manner of a bored and trustful dog. At

  night, she slept with Hoffman. He tended to sleep on his side,

  curled like a child, and Bonnie would sleep upon him, perched

  on his highest point, which was generally his hip.

  As a performer, however, Bonnie was useless. She was far too

  large to be handled gracefully onstage, and on the one occasion

  that Esther did try to produce her from a hat, she hung in the

  air so sluggishly that the children in the back rows were sure

  that she was a fake. She appeared to be a huge toy, as store-

  bought as their own stuffed animals.

  “Bonnie will never be a star,” Hoffman said.

  Ace said, “You spoiled her, Richard, the way the magicians

  have been spoiling their lovely assistants for decades. You

  spoiled Bonnie by sleeping with her.”

  That spring, a young lawyer and his wife (who was also a young

  lawyer) moved into the large Victorian house next door to Ace

  Douglas’s large Victorian house. It all happened very swiftly.

  The widow who had lived there for decades died in her sleep,

  and the place was sold within a few weeks. The new neighbors

  had great ambitions. The husband, whose name was Ronald

  Wilson, telephoned Ace and asked whether there were any

  problems he should know about in the area, regarding water-

  drainage patterns or frost heaves. Ronald had plans for a garden

  and was interested in building an arbor to extend from the back

  of the house. His wife, whose name was Ruth-Ann, was run-

  ning for probate judge of the county. Ronald and Ruth-Ann

  were tall and had perfect manners. They had no children.

  Three days after the Wilsons moved in next door, Bonnie the

  rabbit disappeared. She was on the porch, and then she was not.

  Hoffman searched all afternoon for Bonnie. On Esther’s

  recommendation, he spent that evening walking up and down

  the road with a flashlight, looking to see if Bonnie had been hit

  by a car. The next day, he walked through the woods behind the

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  The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick house, calling the rabbit for hours. He left a bowl of cut vegetables on the porch, with some fresh water. Several times during

  the night, Hoffman got up to see whether Bonnie was on the

  porch, eating the food. Eventually, he just wrapped himself in

  blankets and lay down on the porch swing, keeping a vigil


  beside the vegetables. He slept out there for a week, changing

  the food every morning and evening, to keep the scent fresh.

  Esther made a poster with a drawing of Bonnie (which

  looked very much like a spaniel in her rendering) and a caption

  reading: large rabbit missing. She stapled copies of the

  poster on telephone poles throughout town and placed a notice

  in the newspaper. Hoffman wrote a letter to the neighbors,

  Ronald and Ruth-Ann Wilson, and slid it under their door. The

  letter described Bonnie’s color and weight, gave the date and

  time of her disappearance, and requested any information on

  the subject at all. The Wilsons did not call with news, so the

  next day Hoffman went over to their house and rang the door-

  bell. Ronald Wilson answered.

  “Did you get my letter?” Hoffman asked.

  “About the rabbit?” Ronald said. “Have you found him?”

  “The rabbit is a girl. And the rabbit belongs to my daughter.

  She was a gift. Have you seen her?”

  “She didn’t get in the road, did she?”

  “Is Bonnie in your house, Mr. Wilson?”

  “Is Bonnie the rabbit’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  “How would Bonnie get in our house?”

  “Perhaps you have some broken window in the basement?”

  “You think she’s in our basement?”

  “Have you looked for her in your basement?”

  “No.”

  “Can I look for her?”

  “You want to look for a rabbit in our basement?”

  The two men stared at each other for some time. Ronald

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  Wilson was wearing a baseball cap, and he took it off and

  rubbed the top of his head, which was balding. He put the

  baseball cap back on.

  “Your rabbit is not in our house, Mr. Hoffman,” Wilson said.

  “Okay,” Hoffman said. “Okay. Sure.”

  Hoffman walked back home. He sat at the kitchen table and

  waited until Ace and Esther were both in the room to make his

  announcement.

  “They took her,” he said. “The Wilsons took Bonnie.”

  Hoffman started to build the tower in July. There was a row of

  oak trees between Ace Douglas’s house and the Wilsons’ house,

  and the leaves from these trees blocked Hoffman’s view into

  their home. For several months, he’d been spending his nights

  watching the Wilson house from the attic window with binocu-

  lars, looking for Bonnie inside, but he could not see into the