A Bird's Eye

by Cary Fagan

  Even when I was out, I practised. With coins, balls, cards, and small gimmicks such as matchboxes or a fake mouse. There was always something moving in my hand. Of course, it wasn’t enough to practise by myself, or in front of a mirror. If I saw a kid on the streetcar, holding his mother’s hand and staring at me, I would produce the mouse from my pocket or lean over and pull a long ribbon out of his ear. From a couple of old men on a park bench I would borrow a dollar (which took convincing — they always thought I was going to run with it), cause it to disappear, and find it again inside a lemon that I sliced in half with a knife. Once, I entertained four women at a restaurant table through the front window with a small set of linking rings. Even when I didn’t want to, when I was too tired or feeling shy, I made myself do it. I practised colour changes, transformations, vanishes — a black spade into a red diamond, a pencil into a cigarette, a rose into smoke.

  It was the men who told me about Murenski. A true world-class conjuror who had toured Europe, Russia, Asia, Australia. His name was in the books I had read, with old photographs of a thin, dapper man in top hat and tails. The Great Murenski. Over twenty years ago, while performing in Toronto, his wife had died during the act. He never left the city, becoming a pauper and living in a shack near the cottages on the Island.

  The deck vibrated beneath our feet. I had never been on any kind of boat or ferry before and it was thrilling to be moving over water, made even more so by our destination. It was almost dark and the Island only became visible by its scattered lights. They had told me that it was better not to go in the day.

  Corinne said, “Are you sure about this Mureeny guy? That he even exists?”

  “Murenski.”

  “And if he does exist, is he going to be glad to see us? I thought those smarty-pants in the magic shop knew everything anyway.”

  “Nobody knows everything.”

  “They said he was a hermit.”

  “Not a hermit. He just likes to keep to himself. On account of his wife dying right here, on the stage of the Royal Alexandra where he was doing a full evening show. It was during the bullet catch.”

  “The what?”

  “Someone fires a gun and the magician catches it on a plate. Or in his hand. Sometimes between his teeth.”

  “Big surprise she died.”

  “She didn’t die from the trick. A sandbag dropped on her.”

  The ferry cut its engines and drifted the last few feet into the dock. We waited with the other passengers to disembark, mostly women holding paper bags of groceries, whose families lived year-round in the summer cottages because of the Depression. Corinne followed me along a path covered in overhanging tree branches. We passed cottages with glowing windows. Somebody was stacking a woodpile. Faces under a lantern were eating dinner. Somebody was playing “Happy Days Are Here Again” on a ukulele. We passed the last cottage and passed through another thicket of trees, and then we got to the shore and, again, the dark lake.

  I ignored Corinne nagging me to go back. She had always been the brave one, but it was as if she had lost her nerve suddenly. We came to a stand of birches on a crest above the beach. The trees shimmered with flashes of strange light. As we got closer, I saw little fans of tinfoil, made from the liners of cigarette packages, hanging from the branches. A shelter came into view, a patchwork of wooden boards and old doors and crate lids nailed together. The slanted tarpaper roof had a stovepipe sticking up.

  “I can’t find which door is real,” I said.

  “Maybe there isn’t one.”

  “Here, this must be it.”

  I knocked hard, waited, heard something inside, waited some more. At last the door opened — it was slanted and opened at a peculiar angle — and a man stepped out. I had been worried he might be crazy, but he didn’t look it. He was tall and frail and neatly dressed in a suit shiny from wear. White hair neatly trimmed and a thin moustache. He looked at us with drooping eyes.

  “And whom do I have the pleasure of finding at my door?”

  “Mr. Murenski? The Great Murenski?”

  “Not so great anymore.”

  Corinne pointed at me. “He’s a magician too.”

  I blurted out, “I always use the Murenski finish on the rope and ring illusion.”

  “I’m flattered. I only wish that I still could.”

  I saw the tremble in his hands. “Did you really know Keller?” I asked.

  “So first it’s Murenski and now it’s Keller?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I’m joking. And yes, I knew Keller. He came to spy on my act. Of course, I’d already spied on his.”

  Corinne said, “He wants you to teach him. He’s got money.”

  “Not a lot of money,” I said.

  “I don’t take money from children. It’s getting chilly, isn’t it? Would you two mind snitching some wood from the last woodpile you saw? We can get a fire started and make some tea.”

  It was the beginning of many visits and even more hard work. But he was the real thing, an artist of the conjuring arts. And having a young disciple gave him a new energy for a while, a chance to relive his glory years and see, in my own face, the pleasure and excitement and ambition that he had once had.

  My father did not like having to pay the streetcar fare for work. And too often there were delays — a delivery truck turned over, a horse dead in the street. So he bought a bicycle at a used-furniture dealer on Gerrard Street. It was a black Dawes model that must have been thirty years old. He strapped on his briefcase and began to cycle about the city, knees pointing out awkwardly.

  This new job suited my father’s temperament. A door would open and in that moment’s view — children scrabbling at the table, or a man asleep on the sofa with a hat over his face, or piles of ancient newspapers everywhere — he would get a glimpse of other lives. It stimulated his imagination and at the same time it was as much information as he wanted.

  He had cycled over the Bloor Street viaduct, the green valley and trickling Don River below, and was now working the streets off Pape Avenue. Wroxeter. Frizzell. Dingwall. In an apartment house on Bain, a door was slammed in his face; the man of the house didn’t like his wife talking to people. But he had already got what he needed and, standing in the hallway that smelled of boiled eggs, he wrote up the entry on his clipboard. Morgan, Howard, unemployed. Morgan, Mrs. Frances, attendant, House of Industry.

  At the next apartment, a woman in her undone bathrobe, not trying to seduce him, just not caring if he saw her sagging tits. Next, a husband in an undershirt, the wife out and her sister reading a paperback detective novel.

  A man with shaving cream on his face.

  A blind man holding a miniature dog.

  Elderly twin sisters dressed identically.

  He walked outside and sat on the apartment step to eat a sandwich wrapped in wax paper that Bella had made for him. He’d never asked her to, but she’d started leaving a lunch by the door. He ate it as late as possible so as to delay the pleasure. As he chewed, he amused himself by thinking of the project he had begun to see in his mind: a miniature clockwork city, the roofs of the houses tilting back to reveal the figures moving within — a man tipping over a table, a child going to the toilet, a couple moving up and down as they copulated in bed. He imagined a tavern where two men sprang punches at one another. A garbage dump where a boy hit a dog with a stick. Even the mechanical parts he thought through, the little pulleys and wheels and drives.

  With a pocket knife, he peeled the skin from an apple and ate one thin slice at a time. Then he brushed himself off and headed into the next building. It was better maintained, without the usual pile of undeliverable mail inside the door. He liked to start at the top and work his way down, and so he climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.

  The first door opened. He saw an unusually tall woman, glasses, large teeth. “Yes
?”

  “Excuse me for disturbing you. I am a representative of Might’s Directory. You are Mrs. Goldsmith?”

  “The Goldsmiths lived here before me. I’m Conover. Miss Daphne Conover.”

  “Are you employed, Miss Conover?”

  “I teach kindergarten at Withrow Avenue School. In fact, I’ve just returned.”

  “And if I can confirm your telephone number.”

  “May I ask your name?”

  “Kleeman. Jacob Kleeman.”

  “Like the pen. Mr. Kleeman, do you enjoy games?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Are you familiar with backgammon?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s an ancient game, at least five thousand years old. A board, black and white pieces, dice. You can even bet, although I only play for pennies.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I have two cold beers in my icebox. Perhaps you’d care to learn.”

  “That’s very friendly, Miss Conover. And I’m sure it’s the best offer I’m going to get today.”

  He stepped in, looking for a place to put his hat.

  The thing about magic is that it must be taken very, very seriously. If you don’t, it can become a joke. This is why so many performing conjurors have an attitude of pompous gravity on the stage. They are, at heart, deathly afraid of being laughed at. They need to be believed in, like Tinker Bell in the famous play, or they will fade away. Even more, what a conjuror needs is for himself to believe. To believe that what he does has a deeper meaning.

  Perhaps this is the most important thing that Murenski taught me in the weeks that I went to see him. But at the time, I was focused far more on the glides, shifts, and palms, the methods of misdirection, the uses of silk thread, secret pockets, black velvet, small mirrors. Every hour spent with Murenski meant days of intense practice afterwards. I had the natural yearning of the young and also the unexplainable confidence of someone who believed he was born with a divine gift. Still, I didn’t think I was ready. I’m not sure that I would ever have felt myself ready without Corinne’s big hands shoving me from behind. Shoving me right up to the frosted glass door with the letters etched into it. Moses Ludwig, Manager. It was my fault for telling her that the Brant didn’t have a magician on the card anymore.

  Through the floor, I could feel the vibration from the theatre below. I touched my hand to the door.

  “Come on, big shot,” Corinne said. “Knock louder. Houdini could walk straight through that door.”

  “Houdini was an escape artist.” I knocked louder.

  “Who the hell is it?”

  I opened the door. The man behind the desk was eating a pastrami sandwich with both hands. Jowly, with heavy-lidded eyes, wheezing between chews. The sort of man who would play a theatre manager in the movies.

  “If you want free tickets, you can scram. I don’t care if your ma’s a cripple or your old man is on the dole. Those cheapskates across the street never put on enough mustard. Get out of here, kids.”

  “Mr. Ludwig,” I said. “I want to audition.”

  “I guess you’re trying to make me laugh till I die.”

  “He’s serious,” Corinne said.

  “You two do a midget version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin? I can get plenty of midgets if I want them, and believe me I don’t.”

  “Maybe I could leave you my card,” I said. I reached into my cotton jacket and pulled out a dove. Its head hung limp. “I think I suffocated it.”

  “That’s an original touch. Jesus, an animal-killing act.”

  The bird shuddered, shook itself, and flapped upright onto my finger. “Are you all right?” I said. I threw the bird up into the air, only for it to become a shower of confetti.

  “Hey, you’re making a mess in here.” Mr. Ludwig brushed the paper bits off his sandwich. “What else can you do?”

  “Mr. Ludwig,” I said, tugging at one sleeve to show nothing was hidden under my shirt cuff, and then the other. From the folds at my elbow I palmed a hidden roll of bills that I now fanned out with my fingers. “What I can do is make you money.”

  The man half snorted, half chuckled. “I doubt it. But I’m the easiest mark in the world. A kid magician might be novel for a couple of weeks. Even if you screw up, you might get their sympathy. Can you do eight minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve got to figure out some way to bill you. Youngest member of the Magic Circle in London, Blackstone’s illegitimate kid, something like that. You’ll work every night but Sunday, plus Saturday afternoons, ten bucks a week.”

  “That isn’t much,” Corinne said.

  “He isn’t much either. Listen, we’re the last straight vaudeville house in town. Every other one is showing movies for half the night if it hasn’t closed down. Here are the rules: Late for one show and you lose a day’s pay. Show up intoxicated and you’re suspended. Complaints from any of the girls and you’re out. Bomb and you’re out. I get in a bad mood and you’re out. You can start two weeks from Thursday.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Ludwig.”

  “I’m going to need a letter from your parents. That they’re okay with this.”

  “I’m an orphan.”

  “That’s my good luck. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Benjamin Kleeman.”

  “We need one of those magician names for you. The Great Kidini. Nah. The Little Wonder. That might do. Listen, Benjamin. You want to get in my good books? Run across to the deli and get me some more mustard in a paper cup.”

  The phone rang. I hurried out of the office, closing the door behind me. Corinne gave a little shriek. I felt the blood drain from my body. I had tricks, but I didn’t have an act, not even eight minutes.

  Daphne Conover, the woman who taught my father the game of backgammon, was the oldest daughter of a Methodist minister from Bracebridge. She was thirty-seven years old and had turned down a proposal of marriage when she was nineteen. Even then she knew that men did not attract her, that she did not want children of her own, that she was destined for university and a career. She had a woman friend, a private school teacher named Elspeth Watson, with whom she spent every Friday and Saturday evening.

  My father, it turned out, was good company. He could be quite cynical and witty. He told her stories about the people he met during the day. He did not appear to want any sexual favours from her. Best of all, he was an excellent backgammon player. She would put Tosca or Rigoletto on the record player and they would drink beer and play.

  For his part, my father enjoyed Daphne’s company. He found himself more talkative than he had been in years. Backgammon intrigued him from the beginning, and soon became a passion. It was the only game he never tried to cheat at. He puzzled over the patterns and strategies of a game so simple and yet with such depth.

  At home, his spirit was lighter. He found himself more kindly disposed towards my mother and me. In his free time he began to work on the house, stripping off the old wallpaper, caulking the drafty windows.

  This reformed behaviour made my mother happier but also more guilt-ridden. She was having sex with the emotionally wrought Sigismond several times a week, usually in the morning before opening up the stand. She worried that Jacob suspected. In fact, my father still had not the slightest idea. She worried about me too, with more reason.

  The act that I came up with was really just a series of unconnected tricks. First some colour changes with scarves, then vanishing a dove, then the lota bowls — three brass bowls emptied of water to the last drop that became full again. It was a simple trick, one only had to put a finger over a hole under the rim of the bowl, but it had to be done slowly and with a sort of hushed reverence. I finished with a cup and balls routine.

  I also worked out my patter, but the words came out stiffly and if anything took away from the tricks. “I w
ill now make this dove vanish,” I would say, giving away the effect.

  Practising so hard, and being so afraid, I didn’t have a lot of time for Corinne. I thought this was what a woman did, wait for you. I didn’t see that she had ambitions of her own, even if she was less sure of where they might take her and was more realistic about the obstacles.

  Of course, she came to my first performance. Corinne was the only one who knew besides Murenski, who never left the Island. The master of ceremonies came out and made some jokes and then began to introduce me. He said that I wasn’t called the Little Wonder for the reason the audience thought. “You have such dirty minds.” For some reason the small band in the pit played “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” as I came onstage. The lights were hot and blinding and I couldn’t see the audience scattered in the seats near the front and up in the balcony. I tried to speak, but my throat felt closed up and I couldn’t get any words out. So I started anyway, pulling a red scarf out of the air. The scarf tricks went well enough, but I tried to be too careful with the dove, not wanting to hurt it, and I could tell by the titters that some people in front saw me change it for a dummy before collapsing the cage.

  I carried out the table for the cups and balls. It hadn’t occurred to me that the act was too intimate for a large theatre until someone in the balcony shouted, “What are you doing down there, counting rice? We can’t see!” But I kept going through the routine to the end, when the curtain closed and the band played “Oh! Susanna.”

  I hadn’t gone to see my aunt Hannah for a long while, as I had better things to do these days. And besides, I was making money now and felt less need for the handful of dollars she always slipped me when I was leaving. But I knew of her failed engagement and for some time I had been worried about her, for she seemed the most delicate person I knew. So I went in the late afternoon, when I knew that Uncle Hayim would be at the factory. And besides, a few extra dollars wouldn’t hurt.