by John Case
“And Ren fests,” Karl adds. “They hire a good many magicians.”
“Ren fests? What’s that?”
“Renaissance festivals. Pretty popular.”
Renaissance festivals. It’s one of those moments when the past crashes in on me. My head fills with vignettes of the day at the fair: the look on Sean’s face as he bore down on his brass rubbing, Kevin’s slightly alarmed expression as he stared at the falcon perched on the leather-gloved arm of its handler…
I concentrate on writing in my notebook.
Karl must see something on my face, because he asks if I’m okay. I mutter about jet lag and the moment passes and he’s talking again about magic’s geographical journey. “So, magicians congregated in Chicago for a while, say 1930 to 1962, then the whole scene moved to L.A.”
“Why L.A.?”
Leo shrugs. “A well-known magician bought an old mansion there and opened a club. Called it the Magic Castle. Eventually, the Castle drew more and more magicians out to the West Coast. And L.A. became the new epicenter of magic.”
“Who was this magician?”
“Mark Mitchell – probably doesn’t mean anything to you.”
I shook my head.
“That really points up the decline of the art,” Karl says, with a sad shake of the head. “I mean to me, as a student of magic, the deterioration of its status is quite remarkable.”
“It’s changed? Magic shows seem quite popular here.”
“Maybe so, but that’s an anomaly. Going back into history, though, magic was once the highest of all the arts, its performers famous the world over. Back in the day, attending the performance of a magician inspired awe and wonder. That, alas, is gone. Today, the word magic retains its elevated status only when used as an adjective to describe something else.”
“What do you mean?”
“If a performance is sheer magic, a work of art magical, a meal so memorable the chef is called a magician, this is still high praise indeed. But magic itself, as a performing art, is no longer even considered an art, but a series of cheap tricks – or more expensively staged illusions.”
“You’re right.”
“And its leading lights from the past are all but forgotten. Like Mark Mitchell, of the Magic Castle. I know you’ve never heard of him, but how about Dai Vernon?”
I shake my head.
“Just as a test: Apart from Houdini and the guys working Vegas today like Copperfield, give me the names of a few famous magicians from the past.”
“Let’s see.” I frown, concentrate, look up at him. “Mark Mitchell and… Karl Kavanaugh!”
Karl laughs, a big happy sound that makes me like him.
“Well, not that you really care about all this, but I’m close to the end now,” he says. “New York, Chicago, L.A.” He ticks them off on his elegant fingers. “And then in eighty-five or so, when Vegas started to take off, magic relocated here.”
“Why Vegas?”
“Because magic is at its best live and in person, and the oddity of Vegas is that it’s the one place in the country where stage acts flourish. Not just theater, but music, dancing, stand-up, and… magic. That’s why I said the popularity of magic here was an anomaly.”
I thought about what he said, about live acts being so popular in Vegas, about all those gigantic billboards advertising the shows of shopworn stars and celebrities I’d never heard of. “Why is that?”
The waitress takes our orders. Kavanaugh orders lemonade. I order a club sandwich and coffee. “Watch out,” he says. “That sandwich will be the size of an aircraft carrier.”
“Mr. Kavanaugh,” the waitress scolds, “maybe your friend has a better appetite than you.”
“I warned you,” Kavanaugh says. “So where were we?”
“You were telling me why magic is so popular here.”
“Right. Well, it’s not just magic, it’s all live acts. People can’t gamble all the time, and just as no one comes to Vegas to buy a lottery ticket, no one comes to Vegas to go to the multiplex, either. It’s a unique place. Look at the big hotels. They don’t even need signs. They are signs. They’re like Hollywood sets, backdrops for the tourists and conventioneers to play against. The old guy from Scranton, the couple from Huntsville, they come to Vegas and suddenly they’re starring in their own movie. The glitz is everywhere and so are they. Because they aren’t just in Vegas, they’re also in Cairo, Paris, Venice, and New York New York – only with showgirls, slots, and free drinks. They pay to see live shows because that’s what you do in Vegas. You take in a show.” He opens his hands in an expansive gesture. “The ladies like it. And magic is popular because it works so well on stage.” He leans toward me with a shy smile. “In fact, I have a theory about it.”
I make a gesture. “Please.”
“We’re all so jaded by filmed special effects that almost nothing can really break through and startle us anymore. We look at something really mind-blowing, some stunt or effect that was actually quite difficult to pull off – but it doesn’t blow our minds. Not anymore. We don’t even care how it’s done.”
“It was done with computers, with stuntmen, whatever.”
“Exactly. That’s why magic doesn’t play well on television, because anything can be done on film. I mean in a way, what is a movie but an extended magic effect? We’re seeing a reality that we know is not real. When we see something on film, we know it’s fake. But when you see something in real time, with your own eyes, you still trust your senses. So even the simplest trick provokes amazement. I can do a card effect and watch mouths fall open. Magic is still magic in other words, when people see it up close. It still provokes wonder. It still gets that response every magician is after: ‘How’d you do that?’ And by the way – I never tell.”
“Never?”
“Almost never. It’s too disappointing. Some very complex devices and mechanisms enable certain magical illusions, don’t get me wrong. And back in the day, magicians were on the cutting edge of technology and mechanical invention. There are some amazing automata from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, just wonderful stuff. So I don’t want to minimize the role of ingenious devices. But pretty often the secret to the most amazing effect is something simple, even crude. Some wax, a string, a magnet. You hate to pull the curtains aside like that. That’s not why people come to magic shows.”
“Why do they come?”
“They come to be deceived, to be fooled, to be amazed. That’s where the pleasure is – not in finding out that something astounding was enabled by a secret latch or a mirror or an accomplice in the audience. The pleasure comes in being deceived – except that you can’t figure out how it happened.”
“Okay…”
“Now, someone like Houdini, a real showman, he used to press the point. Before one of his escapes, he’d insist on being examined naked – usually by the police – to prove he literally had nothing up his sleeve. They’d inspect his gym shorts, or whatever he was going to wear for the performance, before they escorted him onto the stage. Fortunately, this was in the days before the cavity search.”
“You mean-”
“Yup. Something up his keister. That’s the suspicion – although this is not to disparage Houdini. He was an astonishing athlete and he trained as hard as Lance Armstrong.”
“Nobody trains that hard.”
“Maybe I’m exaggerating, but he trained like hell. For instance, he had this one effect where he was cuffed and wrapped in padlocked chains and then lowered into cold water – icy water, mind you. Now, sure – he had to have some kind of file or pick to get those locks open. But still – he’s upside down in thirty-five-degree water with his hands and feet cuffed, and wrapped in heavy padlocked chains. So he had a pick – he still has to spring all those locks. Years before, he’d practiced holding his breath until he could do it for three and a half minutes. Amazing. And to get ready for these cold-water escapes, he trained by sitting in a tubful of ice cubes every night for weeks until
his body could tolerate the shock, until he could still function” – Kavanaugh wiggled his fingers – “in the freezing water. That kid David Blaine recently did something of the sort. Encased himself in ice for several days – actually an endurance feat more than anything else. That kind of thing also has a long and honored tradition in magic. Being buried alive. In fact, all kinds of physical feats used to be part of the magic shows. Water spouting. Stone eating. Walking on coals. Interesting to see Blaine revive that aspect.”
“Blaine?”
“You don’t know him? You should check him out – he had a few TV shows. Street Magic was the first, I think. Anyway, very impressive.”
“But… you said it yourself. Magic doesn’t play on the screen.”
“Blaine did something really innovative: He concentrated on the audience. He shows himself doing the effects for small groups – one, three, four people, that’s all. And watching their response is fascinating. They go nuts, absolutely crazy, they are transported. They literally can’t believe their eyes. It’s wonderful stuff. Some of them actually cover their eyes, as if they can’t trust themselves to look at the world anymore.”
I add this to my notes: David Blaine.
Kavanaugh sighs. “I could go on all day. So maybe you should tell me what you really want to know.”
“I’m not sure what I want to know.” I tell him I’m investigating the murders of the Gabler twins, and that I think the murderer may have been a magician.
He steeples his hands and rests his chin on the point. “I remember the case. Dreadful. But what makes you think a magician was responsible?”
When I tell him what I’ve learned, he leans back. I hear a sharp little intake of breath, and his expression is serious, even grave. “Oh, my Lord,” he says. “The lady sawn in half. Sweet Jesus – it’s like an in-joke.”
I show him the Wanted poster with the sketches of The Piper. His face contorts. “I don’t know. Maybe. You mind if I keep this?”
“No problem.”
He folds the poster precisely in half, then runs a nail along the crease, then folds it again, and slips it into his pocket. “I’m not sure I agree with you – that a magician committed the crime. I hope not. Maybe just somebody with a repulsive sense of humor. If it is a magician – you’ll find there are certain characteristics many of us share. Would that kind of thing be helpful to you?”
“Please.”
“Well, most magicians take up the art as children. And there are a couple of reasons for that. It takes a long time to develop the dexterity a magician needs, for one thing. And many tricks take a really serious amount of practice. It’s like… oh” – he looks at the ceiling – “skateboarding. Even a simple skateboarding skill – and I know this, because my grandson is a devotee – takes hours and hours and hours to master. Same thing with magic. An adult would be daunted by the amount of time it would take to master – well, let’s say a faro shuffle.”
“What’s that?”
“If you cut the deck in half and shuffle, cut and shuffle eight times, interleaving each card, at the end you’ve restored the deck to its original configuration.”
“And people can do this?”
“Oh, sure. I could do it by the time I was ten years old. And I can still do it. But it took a lot of practice. So much practice that an adult would just give up. But kids – they’ll put in that time.”
“Hunh.”
“So if you have more than one suspect, you might want to find out if one of them did magic tricks as a kid.”
“Let me ask you something – are there any tricks that use kids as their… subjects?”
“Well, at kids’ birthday parties, sure. You get volunteers from the audience. But if you mean the magician’s assistant – the assistant is almost invariably a young woman, the better to inject a little sex appeal into a show. And scantily dressed women do work quite well for the purposes of misdirection – I can tell you that from personal experience. People will look at them. In the past, children were very commonly used as assistants. And they would perform all the roles that women do today – I mean they’d be levitated, locked in cabinets, or put into urns or baskets, then transported to distant spots or transformed into animals and back again.”
I force myself. “Sawn in half?”
Kavanaugh frowns. “Maybe. I can’t give you a date, but I believe that illusion is relatively recent. I’ve only ever seen or read about it being performed with women assistants.”
“Hunh. Anything else about magicians I should know?”
“Well, actually, I’ve been thinking about your fellow. If he is a magician, I’d say he’s a student of the art, someone aware of the history.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well… just what he did, with those girls, you know. I mean dismemberment and restoration have been part of the magician’s stock-in-trade for centuries, but nowadays you only see antiseptic tricks. You might see paper – or money, or rope, or fabric – torn or cut into pieces. Or maybe the magician has someone in the audience write something on a piece of paper – which is then torn to shreds before eventually being restored to wholeness. A twenty-dollar bill, somebody’s tie – that’s enough for today’s audiences. Even the standard sawing-the-lady-in-half is bloodless. She’s smiling the whole time. No one believes she’s being injured – or even in danger of being injured. Someone, I read – can’t remember who – thought the trick was actually a thinly disguised display of sexual sadism.” A shrug. “I don’t know about that. It’s still very popular. But certainly, it’s bloodless. My point is that tastes change. Audiences used to love gore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Audiences still love violence, don’t get me wrong. Danger – someone else’s danger – makes us feel more alive. But in terms of magic, audiences don’t enjoy blood and gore the way they used to. We’ve all become squeamish. Plenty of people who love their steaks and burgers find hunting, for instance, barbaric. You wonder what they’d think of a slaughterhouse.”
“They’d be vegetarians.”
“Exactly. But that squeamishness – that’s a new phenomenon. There was a time – and it wasn’t long ago – when people routinely enjoyed watching beasts rip each other, or human beings, to bits. In the Old West, or in Merry Old England, public executions were extremely popular. People came early to get the best spots. They probably had the equivalent of tailgate parties. In performance magic, it was the same. Just for example, there was a popular trick in Houdini’s day called Palingenesis. The posters would show the magician with an enormous sword. And the day’s flyer would advertise: Man to Be Cut Up Today. Come one! Come all! During this show, a man would be chloroformed – supposedly – and then dismembered, and I mean the bloody parts strewn around the stage. The audience sees this happening, mind you. The poor man’s various parts are collected, a rug or cloth placed over him, the magician speaks his potent words or waves his powerful wand and – presto! – the man jumps out, restored to health and wholeness.”
A wave of nausea rolls through my stomach.
“And that was far from the only such act. Dismemberment tricks are ancient. In India it used to be popular for conjurers to cut off children’s tongues – that was a standard. Ripping apart birds, cutting up snakes – street magicians in India probably still do this kind of thing. They would show the blood; they might even dip stones into it. Then once the bird – usually a bird because they’re cheap and dramatic – was restored to life, they’d sell the stones as lucky amulets, imbued with the life force.”
“Wait a minute – you don’t mean it was real blood?”
“Oh, yes. Well, not in the case of the children’s tongues. But the birds? Certainly. It’s my opinion – if you have time?”
I nod.
“I believe these tricks go back to ancient days. Dismemberment and restoration to wholeness and life – it’s the power of life and death, isn’t it? Magicians didn’t start as mere entertainers, you see. They used
to fill a much more elevated role in societies. This is the common theory, in any case – that today’s magician was yesterday’s priest or shaman.”
“Really.”
“Religion and magic have always been mixed up together. That’s because magic explores that region between the natural and the supernatural, between life and death, between reality and illusion. And religious figures have, I suspect, always employed magical devices and tricks to focus the attention of adherents and enhance their apparent power. There’s no question about that. Good Lord, there are sketches on papyri that show the ancient Egyptians used hydraulic devices to make temple doors open mysteriously.”
“Open sesame?”
A chuckle. “Quite right. And there’s solid evidence the priests in Greece used speaking tubes to make the statues talk at Delphi. It does make you wonder about weeping and bleeding statues. Even the ‘magic words’ have quite religious roots.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, abracadabra – that comes right from the Jewish Kabbala. So words, symbols – the Kabbala is a mystical text about… to some extent… the power of words.”
“Really? So abracadabra means something.”
“Absolutely. And hocus-pocus? – that’s even more shocking. Some scholars believe that hocus-pocus is a corruption of Hoc est meum corpus.”
My blank look conveys my lack of understanding.
“No Latin, eh?”
I shake my head.
“Well, I don’t know how religious you are and I don’t want to shock you, but it’s believed that the magician’s phrase hocus-pocus – which we perceive as so much nonsense – descends directly from the words of the Christian Eucharist: Hoc est meum corpus. ‘This is my body.’”
“No.”
“For that matter, Jesus of Nazareth was quite openly referred to as a magician in the early days of the church. And his miracles – the loaves and fishes, water into wine, even the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead – these are in the form of standard street magic of the era. There are Roman frescoes from the second century showing Jesus with a magic wand.”