Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  When Phyllis realised this, her heart began to pound less, and her breathing became more natural.

  Daisy was still on guard, however. Her snout low to the floor, she gave another guttural volley of warning to the stranger: ‘Grrrrrrrr-Rrrrrrrrrrr-Grrrrrrrrrr-Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .’

  ‘Steady, girl,’ Phyllis said quietly. Slowly she crouched down next to Daisy and stroked the top of her head, between her ears. She didn’t take her eyes off the man. ‘Steady on.’

  The man looked down at her and her dog, and a smile slowly emerged, a smile that lifted the corners of his mouth like a gentle breeze lifting the wings of a butterfly.

  And Phyllis gasped! That smile. She’d seen it before. She’d seen it when she’d been watching old movies with her father and Daisy in their beautiful home cinema inside their apartment. She’d seen it when she’d looked at the old posters that were hanging upstairs. She’d seen it whenever she looked in the mirror when she was in a happy, planning frame of mind . . .

  Her heart rushed with a dizzy-making burst of confusion and warmth and incredulity, but she steadied herself as she patted Daisy’s head, and she managed somehow to find her voice. Tentatively, she uttered, ‘G-great-grandfather?’

  The man stepped forward and the dancing molecules of light melted away into nothing. He crouched down before her and Daisy. He looked into Phyllis’s eyes, and the greenness in his began to fade.

  ‘So that is who you are,’ he said, his voice deep and resonant, as though it were coming from a long way away.

  ‘I’m Phyllis Wong,’ she said to him. ‘And this is Daisy.’

  ‘I am most pleased to make your acquaintance,’ he said, his smile growing wider. ‘I am, indeed, your great-grandfather. I am Wallace Wong. I have returned.’

  He extended his hand and took Phyllis’s, then shook it softly. ‘Phyllis,’ he repeated. He stood, and she rose with him. ‘Daughter of Harvey. Harvey, son of Roy. Roy, of course, being my son.’

  Phyllis nodded.

  ‘Arf arf arf!’

  Wallace let go of Phyllis’s hand and scooped Daisy up. He held her close to his chest, looking into her small face. ‘Hello, Daisy, friend and companion of Phyllis,’ he said to her.

  She peered at him with her big brown eyes. Then she made a soft gargling sound and gave his hand a quick lick.

  He laughed, and the sound of his laugh made Phyllis smile so widely that she felt her ears stretching.

  ‘It is a good thing to be here again,’ said Wallace Wong, Conjuror of Wonder!

  ‘This is screwy,’ Phyllis said.

  ‘Ha! Screwy it is,’ Wallace said, laughing.

  ‘But how?’ said Phyllis. ‘How can you be here? You disappeared, way back in 1936! You were doing the Houdini sub-trunk illusion on stage in Venezuela! You vanished without trace—no one ever saw you again!’

  She looked at him, studying his face, which had hardly any wrinkles. And she could see a youthful twinkle in his eyes. ‘And how come you aren’t old? You don’t look any older than Dad!’

  ‘I do not age, Phyllis. I am lucky in that respect. I am the same age I was when I left,’ he told her.

  Phyllis squinted, and an idea shot into her mind. ‘Hey . . . how do I know that you are you? That you’re not just someone pretending to be Wallace Wong? Oh, man, I bet I know what’s happening!’ She started walking around the rehearsal area, looking at the ceiling and behind all the cabinets and boxes and tables. ‘I bet Clem’s put cameras in here and he’s hired you to dress up and pretend you’re Wallace Wong, and he’s filming it all and he’s going to put it on that Pranked show on TV . . . what a little wise guy!’

  The man watched as she went from place to place, peering in the cupboards and under the Mirage Tables and behind the billiard ball racks and silk production cabinets and beneath the life-size mechanical Bengal tiger with the bared teeth and the glinting eyes in the corner.

  ‘Okay, Mr Knucklebrains,’ Phyllis called out, ‘where’re your little cameras?’

  Daisy watched her as well, from the comfort of the man’s arms.

  ‘Come on, Clement,’ Phyllis called. ‘You’re not fooling anyone, you know . . .’

  ‘I like that hat,’ said the man. ‘Always have. It was one of my favourites.’

  Phyllis stopped her searching. She turned to him, unsure. He was still smiling at her, and was gently scratching Daisy behind her ear.

  ‘Take it off,’ he told her, ‘and look inside. Underneath the leather band near the brim.’

  Phyllis squinted at him again. Slowly she took off the top hat and inverted it. She turned down the band and peered into the hat.

  ‘See?’ he said. ‘There is my name: Wallace Wong. And the date and place: January 1926. Paris.’

  Phyllis saw all of this, written in a neat script in blue ink on the back of the leather band.

  ‘I bought that one,’ he went on, ‘when I was in that beautiful city, performing at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Oh, Phyllis, that is a marvellous theatre, the Théâtre du Châtelet . . . so grand and vast and so full of beauty! One of the greatest music halls in the world. I played for a month there, to nearly two thousand people at every performance. I was the headline act, I am proud to say. Ah, that was a superb engagement . . . and those dancing girls who performed before my spot!’ He sighed wistfully, his eyes gleaming. ‘Ah, yes, the dancing girls who could kick so high and flutter those feathers with more finesse than the most elegant of ostriches . . .’ He blinked and gave a little cough. ‘But that, my great-granddaughter, was a long time ago. And yet not such a long time ago, the way I Transit.’

  Phyllis stared at him. She folded the band into place once again inside the hat and put the topper back on her head. Then she held her hands together, intertwining the thumb on one hand with the little finger on her other, and folding her fingers around the backs of both hands. And she studied him carefully.

  He looked exactly like the Wallace Wong whom she and her father and Daisy watched in the old movies he had made in Hollywood, way back in the 1930s. He was the spitting image of the Wallace Wong who was depicted in the dozens of magic posters that were in frames in their apartment cinema and in the long rear hallway of their home. And he was identical to the Wallace Wong she had seen so many times in the black-and-white and sepia-tinted pictures in the family photo albums.

  He saw her scrutinising him and he asked, ‘You still are not sure?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered slowly.

  ‘Perhaps this will help to convince you.’ He put Daisy down and walked into the centre of the rehearsal space. Here he stopped before her and smiled. Then he lifted his head and pushed his shoulders back and spread his arms wide, holding his hands palm-upwards to the ceiling.

  And Phyllis gasped.

  Slowly his feet left the rug beneath them, and the man began to float. Up he went, silently and smoothly, still holding his arms out wide, still with his palms facing upwards.

  Every pore of Phyllis’s skin became riddled with goosebumps. Her jaw dropped open and her eyes widened.

  The man levitated to six feet in the air and stopped. He looked down at Phyllis, and his eyes shone brightly, still glowing that strange green.

  Phyllis knew what was going to happen next, but she’d never imagined how breathtaking it would be.

  The man kept his arms outstretched and now he brought his hands together, palm against palm in front of him. Then, slowly, still suspended in the air, he began to twirl. Round and round he went, picking up speed, twirling and spinning faster and faster, until all Phyllis could see was a whirlwind-blur of midnight-blue and white.

  She watched, hardly able to breathe.

  Daisy also watched, startled, her head cocked to the side.

  Now the man was twirling so fast that the midnight-blue and white became a smudged nothingness of colour: a blend of spinning, swiftly swishing confusion.

  Until it vanished completely, and the man was gone!

  Phyllis gasped again, this time
loudly. Daisy barked once and looked at Phyllis as if to say, Where? Where did he go? That shouldn’t have happened . . .

  ‘Oh boy,’ Phyllis muttered, her breathing coming fast and shallow. ‘The Whirling Whirlwind Disappearance! The famous Whirling Whirlwind Disappearance of Wallace Wong! Wallace Wong’s most celebrated trick, Daisy! No one else could ever perform that but him. People tried to copy it, but nobody could ever find the secret.’ She let out a whistle and shook her head. ‘Daisy, my darling, we just saw the greatest trick he ever did!’

  ‘One of the greatest,’ came the man’s voice from behind her.

  She turned to see him coming out of the shadows, his hair tousled and sticking up (it reminded Phyllis of the times Clement had experimented with hair gel to make himself look cool—every effort had been spectacularly unsuccessful).

  ‘I can’t believe I saw that!’ Phyllis exclaimed.

  ‘Ah, but you did,’ he said. ‘Now do you believe that I am me?’

  She nodded vigorously. ‘I’m sorry I doubted you.’ She rushed to him and gave him a huge hug.

  ‘That is perfectly understandable, Phyllis. This must all be a shock for you.’

  She stepped back and said, ‘Please! Teach me how to do that? Please? I’d love to know how to do that!’

  ‘If I teach it to anybody, it will be to you. I know your passion. I have observed it in you.’

  Phyllis’s eyes went big.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is not my first visit here. I have been returning every now and then. I have been aware of your magic, Phyllis. It pleases me very much, I must say.’

  ‘Returning?’ she said. She put her hand to her head. ‘Oh, brother, I’m getting dizzy with all of this. It’s doing my head in. First, your greatest illusion, and now . . . What do you mean, returning?’

  ‘Come, Phyllis.’ He took her by the hand. ‘It is time you heard the story of your great-grandfather.’

  Unfolding

  He led her to the sofa, lifted the tails of his coat, and together he and Phyllis sat, with Daisy sphinxing in between them.

  ‘I am a Transiter, Phyllis,’ he said softly. ‘I move through Time.’

  ‘A . . . Transiter?’ Phyllis’s eyes grew bigger. A faded memory from a recent incident rushed into her mind. She blinked and took a deep breath. ‘Go on,’ she said to Wallace Wong. ‘Tell me how.’

  ‘You do not seem surprised?’ he said, smiling.

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I’ve been aware that this could be possible,’ she told him. ‘I’ve . . . I’ve found things. Down here, in all your props and effects.’

  ‘Ah.’ He gazed at her proudly.

  ‘And,’ she continued, ‘I’ve been thinking about it. Ever since there was some strange stuff going down in the city. But I only ever half-believed that it could happen. And I started to think I was just going nuts.’

  ‘No, my dear girl, you are not nuts. I am not nuts. It is possible. I am here. It is as real as the effort of the steadfast lobster in the maelstrom of the sandy vortex.’

  Phyllis gave him a strange look.

  ‘Oh, I know what I mean,’ he said, a bit flustered. He cleared his throat. ‘This Transiting—being able to move from Time to Time—is how I disappeared in Venezuela in 1936, when I was performing the Houdini sub-trunk illusion. I had found the Pocket I needed, and I was able, at last, to commence my Transits.’

  Phyllis raised her eyebrows. ‘Pocket?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes, Phyllis. Allow me to tell you all about this. Sit back, listen, focus on my words, for what you will hear will need all your concentration . . .

  ‘When I was a young magician,’ Wallace began, his voice deep and soft, ‘about your age, in fact, I was totally devoted to my magic. I breathed conjuring, I lived every moment thinking about my next trick and how I would perform it. I was constantly rehearsing and, if I were unable to be in the theatre or in my rehearsal space, I would still always be practising—always manipulating with coins or cards or matches or whatever I had at hand—and doing it everywhere, on trams and subway cars and while I was walking along the street or through the gardens of the city. Magic was my world, Phyllis—totally and wonderfully and all-consumingly!

  ‘What I loved about it the most was the pleasure that comes from being able, for the briefest of times, to transport someone; to allow them to become completely amazed. That moment you get when your magic is working elegantly, smoothly, and you see in your audience’s faces the exact moment of delight, of the incredible, of them being tricked and filled with the wonder of the inexplicable!’

  ‘Oh, I love that too,’ Phyllis said, beaming. ‘It’s the best feeling ever!’

  Daisy gave her hand a gentle lick.

  ‘Apart from having this one snuggling up to you,’ she added, tickling the terrier’s ear.

  ‘Yes,’ Wallace Wong said. ‘It is a wonderful feeling, the moment of the magic. When you have your audience, to use a robust cliché, in the palm of your hand!’ He closed his eyes and put his head back on the sofa. ‘Only a prestidigitator can know the thrill of it.’

  Phyllis put her head back on the sofa too, and her top hat was pushed forward, so that everything went dark. She took the hat off and placed it in her lap.

  ‘And, Phyllis, this thrill and this love of the world of our magic grew. It grew every day. The more I learnt, the more I loved the mystery and the marvels of our profession. Mystery and magic became my life.

  ‘And then, a brilliant young scientist named Albert Einstein began publishing his theories. He was coming up with all sorts of new ideas, ideas which pushed the boundaries of how people had thought up until that time. I started reading about his ideas in the newspapers and in scientific journals, and I became intrigued by the kinds of things he was suggesting. I came to realise that there were different types of mysteries in the world . . . mysteries that were even bigger than those I was creating in my magic.’

  Bigger, thought Phyllis.

  ‘I wanted to know more about those mysteries, Phyllis. I wanted to know the bigger things. I subscribed to more and more science journals and magazines, and I started attending lectures on all manner of scientific topics . . . things ranging from relativity to new ideas of Time. Einstein opened up the whole concept of the Fourth Dimension to me.’

  ‘The Fourth Dimension?’ she repeated.

  Wallace opened his eyes and gave her a look of glowing wisdom, the likes of which she had never seen before. ‘Yes, great-granddaughter. Einstein introduced his great theory, his Theory of General Relativity. That was in 1915, and I was a little older than you are now. This beautiful, blazingly brilliant theory, to put it in a nutshell of wonder, proposes that our universe has four dimensions. The first three of these we know as Space; and the fourth is known as Spacetime. That is the dimension where Time and Space are linked; where Time is totally dependent on Space.’

  Phyllis concentrated hard on what he was saying, trying to focus clearly on every word and where they might be leading.

  ‘To give you a simple example,’ he went on, ‘imagine this: Einstein said that if two people were to witness the same event—say, a ball dropping from the top of a tall building—well, these two people might perceive the event of the ball dropping happening at two different times, depending upon how far away they are from the ball dropping.’

  ‘Huh?’ She frowned.

  ‘It’s dependent on distance, my dear. And on the Time it takes for light to travel through Space. You see, light always travels at the same speed . . . a constant speed, a finite speed. Therefore, someone who is watching the ball dropping from somewhere further away than another person who is watching the same thing from a closer place will perceive that the ball had dropped later in Time. But the ball is actually dropping at the same instant in Time.’

  Phyllis shook her head slowly. This would take a lot of getting used to, she thought.

  ‘And so Einstein put it to us,’ said Wallace Wong, ‘that Time is dependent on Space. Oh, my dear Ph
yllis, that is just the beginning. We also know that Space curves. And Time, being dependent on Space the way it is, becomes curved as well.’

  He stopped and noticed that Phyllis was biting her lip, and he saw deep creases furrowing across her forehead.

  ‘Ah, great-granddaughter, there is much more to all of this. Much more that I shall not go into now.’ He patted her hand. ‘Too much information at one time is worse than the hidden ear of a pig,’ he intoned mysteriously.

  Phyllis gave him another strange look.

  ‘I know what I mean,’ he said, clearing his throat again.

  ‘Okay,’ Phyllis said. ‘So Einstein came up with this theory—’

  ‘Blazingly brilliant it is!’

  ‘—and it’s because of this theory that you’re able to Transit?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But how? How? I mean, knowing something doesn’t mean that you can actually do it. Does it? Anyone can learn about playing the piano, or the xylophone like my friend Clem, but just because they know how to do it doesn’t mean they can do it, does it?’

  Wallace Wong took a deep breath. He beamed at his great-granddaughter, and his eyes blazed proudly. ‘I knew you would be the next one,’ he said quietly. ‘I knew your way of thinking would be right.’

  Phyllis was looking extremely puzzled.

  He patted her hand again. ‘You are perfectly correct, Phyllis. Knowing about something does not mean you are able to do it. You can know all the theory about writing a story or a piece of music, or you can know exactly where to hit the ball in a game of golf, but it doesn’t mean you will write a marvellous book or a symphony or get a hole-in-one. No, my dear girl, I delved deeper. I made some further discoveries. Some further discoveries of my own.’

  His voice had dropped lower, quieter; it flowed (Phyllis thought) like a river beneath a dark, cloudless sky.

  She felt her heart beating more quickly. Daisy, who had been grooming her front paws with her pointy, pink tongue, stopped her licking and looked up at the Conjuror of Wonder.