The Magician

by W. Somerset Maugham; Robert Calder

  She was pleased that the approach did not clash with her fantasies. She mounted a broad staircase, dark but roomy, and, at the command of the concierge, rang a tinkling bell at one of the doorways that faced her. Dr Porhoët opened in person.

  ‘Arthur and Mademoiselle are already here,’ he said, as he led her in.

  They went through a prim French dining-room, with much woodwork and heavy scarlet hangings, to the library. This was a large room, but the bookcases that lined the walls, and a large writing-table heaped up with books, much diminished its size. There were books everywhere. They were stacked on the floor and piled on every chair. There was hardly space to move. Susie gave a cry of delight.

  ‘Now you mustn’t talk to me. I want to look at all your books.’

  ‘You could not please me more,’ said Dr Porhoët, ‘but I am afraid they will disappoint you. They are of many sorts, but I fear there are few that will interest an English young lady.’

  He looked about his writing-table till he found a packet of cigarettes. He gravely offered one to each of his guests. Susie was enchanted with the strange musty smell of the old books, and she took a first glance at them in general. For the most part they were in paper bindings, some of them neat enough, but more with broken backs and dingy edges; they were set along the shelves in serried rows, untidily, without method or plan. There were many older ones also in bindings of calf and pigskin, treasure from half the bookshops in Europe; and there were huge folios like Prussian grenadiers; and tiny Elzevirs, which had been read by patrician ladies in Venice. Just as Arthur was a different man in the operating theatre, Dr Porhoët was changed among his books. Though he preserved the amiable serenity which made him always so attractive, he had there a diverting brusqueness of demeanour which contrasted quaintly with his usual calm.

  ‘I was telling these young people, when you came in, of an ancient Korân which I was given in Alexandria by a learned man whom I operated upon for cataract.’ He showed her a beautifully-written Arabic work, with wonderful capitals and headlines in gold. ‘You know that it is almost impossible for an infidel to acquire the holy book, and this is a particularly rare copy, for it was written by Kaït Bey, the greatest of the Mameluke Sultans.’

  He handled the delicate pages as a lover of flowers would handle rose-leaves.

  ‘And have you much literature on the occult sciences?’ asked Susie.

  Dr Porhoët smiled.

  ‘I venture to think that no private library contains so complete a collection, but I dare not show it to you in the presence of our friend Arthur. He is too polite to accuse me of foolishness, but his sarcastic smile would betray him.’

  Susie went to the shelves to which he vaguely waved, and looked with a peculiar excitement at the mysterious array. She ran her eyes along the names. It seemed to her that she was entering upon an unknown region of romance. She felt like an adventurous princess who rode on her palfrey into a forest of great bare trees and mystic silences, where wan, unearthly shapes pressed upon her way.

  ‘I thought once of writing a life of that fantastic and grandiloquent creature, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast von Hohenheim,’ said Dr Porhoët, ‘and I have collected many of his books.’

  He took down a slim volume in duodecimo, printed in the seventeenth century, with queer plates, on which were all manner of cabalistic signs. The pages had a peculiar, musty odour. They were stained with iron-mould.

  ‘Here is one of the most interesting works concerning the black art. It is the Grimoire of Honorius, and is the principal text-book of all those who deal in the darkest ways of the science.’

  Then he pointed out the Hexameron of Torquemada and the Tableau del’ Inconstance des Démons, by Delancre; he drew his finger down the leather back of Delrio’s Disquisitiones Magicæ and set upright the Pseudomonarchia Daemonorum of Wierus; his eyes rested for an instant on Hauber’s Acta et Scripta Magica, and he blew the dust carefully off the most famous, the most infamous, of them all, Sprenger’s Malleus Malefikorum.

  ‘Here is one of my greatest treasures. It is the Clavicula Salomonis; and I have much reason to believe that it is the identical copy which belonged to the greatest adventurer of the eighteenth century, Jacques Casanova. You will see that the owner’s name had been cut out, but enough remains to indicate the bottom of the letters; and these correspond exactly with the signature of Casanova which I have found at the Bibliothéque Nationale. He relates in his memoirs that a copy of this book was seized among his effects when he was arrested in Venice for traffic in the black arts; and it was there, on one of my journeys from Alexandria, that I picked it up.’

  He replaced the precious work, and his eye fell on a stout volume bound in vellum.

  ‘I had almost forgotten the most wonderful, the most mysterious, of all the books that treat of occult science. You have heard of the Kabbalah, but I doubt if it is more than a name to you.’

  ‘I know nothing about it at all,’ laughed Susie, ‘except that it’s all very romantic and extraordinary and ridiculous.’

  ‘This, then, is its history. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, was first initiated into the Kabbalah in the land of his birth; but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness. Here he not only devoted the leisure hours of forty years to this mysterious science, but received lessons in it from an obliging angel. By aid of it he was able to solve the difficulties which arose during his management of the Israelites, notwithstanding the pilgrimages, wars, and miseries of that most unruly nation. He covertly laid down the principles of the doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but withheld them from Deuteronomy. Moses also initiated the Seventy Elders into these secrets, and they in turn transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who formed the unbroken line of tradition, David and Solomon were the most deeply learned in the Kabbalah. No one, however, dared to write it down till Schimeon ben Jochai, who lived in the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; and after his death the Rabbi Eleazar, his son, and the Rabbi Abba, his secretary, collected his manuscripts and from them composed the celebrated treatise called Zohar.’

  ‘And how much do you believe of this marvellous story?’ asked Arthur Burdon.

  ‘Not a word,’ answered Dr Porhoët, with a smile. ‘Criticism has shown that Zohar is of modern origin. With singular effrontery, it cites an author who is known to have lived during the eleventh century, mentions the Crusades, and records events which occurred in the year of Our Lord 1264. It was some time before 1291 that copies of Zohar began to be circulated by a Spanish Jew named Moses de Leon, who claimed to possess an autographed manuscript by the reputed author Schimeon ben Jochai. But when Moses de Leon was gathered to the bosom of his father Abraham, a wealthy Hebrew, Joseph de Avila, promised the scribe’s widow, who had been left destitute, that his son should marry her daughter, to whom he would pay a handsome dowry, if she would give him the original manuscript from which these copies were made. But the widow (one can imagine with what gnashing of teeth) was obliged to confess that she had no such manuscript, for Moses de Leon had composed Zohar out of his own head, and written it with his own right hand.’

  Arthur got up to stretch his legs. He gave a laugh.

  ‘I never know how much you really believe of all these things you tell us. You speak with such gravity that we are all taken in, and then it turns out that you’ve been laughing at us.’

  ‘My dear friend, I never know myself how much I believe,’ returned Dr Porhoët.

  ‘I wonder if it is for the same reason that Mr Haddo puzzles us so much,’ said Susie.

  ‘Ah, there you have a case that is really interesting,’ replied the doctor. ‘I assure you that, though I know him fairly intimately, I have never been able to make up my mind whether he is an elaborate practical joker, or whether he is really convinced he has the wonderful powers to which he lays claim.’

  ‘We certainly saw things last night that were not quite normal,’ said Susie. ‘Why had t
hat serpent no effect on him though it was able to kill the rabbit instantaneously? And how are you going to explain the violent trembling of that horse, Mr. Burdon?’

  ‘I can’t explain it,’ answered Arthur, irritably, ‘but I’m not inclined to attribute to the supernatural everything that I can’t immediately understand.’

  ‘I don’t know what there is about him that excites in me a sort of horror,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ve never taken such a sudden dislike to anyone.’

  She was too reticent to say all she felt, but she had been strangely affected last night by the recollection of Haddo’s words and of his acts. She had awakened more than once from a nightmare in which he assumed fantastic and ghastly shapes. His mocking voice rang in her ears, and she seemed still to see that vast bulk and the savage, sensual face. It was like a spirit of evil in her path, and she was curiously alarmed. Only her reliance on Arthur’s common sense prevented her from giving way to ridiculous terrors.

  ‘I’ve written to Frank Hurrell and asked him to tell me all he knows about him,’ said Arthur. ‘I should get an answer very soon.’

  ‘I wish we’d never come across him,’ cried Margaret vehemently. ‘I feel that he will bring us misfortune.’

  ‘You’re all of you absurdly prejudiced,’ answered Susie gaily. ‘He interests me enormously, and I mean to ask him to tea at the studio.’

  ‘I’m sure I shall be delighted to come.’

  Margaret cried out, for she recognized Oliver Haddo’s deep bantering tones; and she turned round quickly. They were all so taken aback that for a moment no one spoke. They were gathered round the window and had not heard him come in. They wondered guiltily how long he had been there and how much he had heard.

  ‘How on earth did you get here?’ cried Susie lightly, recovering herself first.

  ‘No well-bred sorcerer is so dead to the finer feelings as to enter a room by the door,’ he answered, with his puzzling smile. ‘You were standing round the window, and I thought it would startle you if I chose that mode of ingress, so I descended with incredible skill down the chimney.’

  ‘I see a little soot on your left elbow,’ returned Susie. ‘I hope you weren’t at all burned.’

  ‘Not at all, thanks,’ he answered, gravely brushing his coat.

  ‘In whatever way you came, you are very welcome,’ said Dr Porhoët, genially holding out his hand.

  But Arthur impatiently turned to his host.

  ‘I wish I knew what made you engage upon these studies,’ he said. ‘I should have thought your medical profession protected you from any tenderness towards superstition.’

  Dr Porhoët shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I have always been interested in the oddities of mankind. At one time I read a good deal of philosophy and a good deal of science, and I learned in that way that nothing was certain. Some people, by the pursuit of science, are impressed with the dignity of man, but I was only made conscious of his insignificance. The greatest questions of all have been threshed out since he acquired the beginnings of civilization and he is as far from a solution as ever. Man can know nothing, for his senses are his only means of knowledge, and they can give no certainty. There is only one subject upon which the individual can speak with authority, and that is his own mind, but even here he is surrounded with darkness. I believe that we shall always be ignorant of the matters which it most behoves us to know, and therefore I cannot occupy myself with them. I prefer to set them all aside, and, since knowledge is unattainable, to occupy myself only with folly.’

  ‘It is a point of view I do not sympathize with,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Yet I cannot be sure that it is all folly,’ pursued the Frenchman reflectively. He looked at Arthur with a certain ironic gravity. ‘Do you believe that I should lie to you when I promised to speak the truth?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘I should like to tell you of an experience that I once had in Alexandria. So far as I can see, it can be explained by none of the principles known to science. I ask you only to believe that I am not consciously deceiving you.’

  He spoke with a seriousness which gave authority to his words. It was plain, even to Arthur, that he narrated the event exactly as it occurred.

  ‘I had heard frequently of a certain sheikh who was able by means of a magic mirror to show the inquirer persons who were absent or dead, and a native friend of mine had often begged me to see him. I had never thought it worthwhile, but at last a time came when I was greatly troubled in my mind. My poor mother was an old woman, a widow, and I had received no news of her for many weeks. Though I wrote repeatedly, no answer reached me. I was very anxious and very unhappy. I thought no harm could come if I sent for the sorcerer, and perhaps after all he had the power which was attributed to him. My friend, who was interpreter to the French Consulate, brought him to me one evening. He was a fine man, tall and stout, of a fair complexion, but with a dark brown beard. He was shabbily dressed, and, being a descendant of the Prophet, wore a green turban. In his conversation he was affable and unaffected. I asked him what persons could see in the magic mirror, and he said they were a boy not arrived at puberty, a virgin, a black female slave, and a pregnant woman. In order to make sure that there was no collusion, I despatched my servant to an intimate friend and asked him to send me his son. While we waited, I prepared by the magician’s direction frankincense and coriander-seed, and a chafing-dish with live charcoal. Meanwhile, he wrote forms of invocation on six strips of paper. When the boy arrived, the sorcerer threw incense and one of the paper strips into the chafing-dish, then took the boy’s right hand and drew a square and certain mystical marks on the palm. In the centre of the square he poured a little ink. This formed the magic mirror. He desired the boy to look steadily into it without raising his head. The fumes of the incense filled the room with smoke. The sorcerer muttered Arabic words, indistinctly, and this he continued to do all the time except When he asked the boy a question.

  ‘“Do you see anything in the ink?” he said.

  ‘“No,” the boy answered.

  ‘But a minute later, he began to tremble and seemed very much frightened.

  ‘“I see a man sweeping the ground,” he said.

  ‘“When he has done sweeping, tell me,” said the sheikh.

  ‘“He has done,” said the boy.

  ‘The sorcerer turned to me and asked who it was that I wished the boy should see.

  ‘“I desire to see the widow Jeanne-Marie Porhoët.”

  ‘The magician put the second and third of the small strips of paper into the chafing-dish, and fresh frankincense was added. The fumes were painful to my eyes. The boy began to speak.

  ‘“I see an old woman lying on a bed. She has a black dress, and on her head is a little white cap. She has a wrinkled face and her eyes are closed. There is a band tied round her chin. The bed is in a sort of hole, in the wall, and there are shutters to it.”

  ‘The boy was describing a Breton bed, and the white cap was the coiffe that my mother wore. And if she lay there in her black dress, with a band about her chin, I knew that it could mean but one thing.

  ‘“What else does he see?” I asked the sorcerer.

  ‘He repeated my question, and presently the boy spoke again.

  ‘“I see four men come in with a long box. And there are women crying. They all wear little white caps and black dresses. And I see a man in a white surplice, with a large cross in his hands, and a little boy in a long red gown. And the men take off their hats. And now everyone is kneeling down.”

  ‘“I will hear no more,” I said. “It is enough.”

  ‘I knew that my mother was dead.

  ‘In a little while, I received a letter from the priest of the village in which she lived. They had buried her on the very day upon which the boy had seen this sight in the mirror of ink.’

  Dr Porhoët passed his hand across his eyes, and for a little while there was silence.

  ‘What have you to say to that?’ asked Oliv
er Haddo, at last.

  ‘Nothing,’ answered Arthur.

  Haddo looked at him for a minute with those queer eyes of his which seemed to stare at the wall behind.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Eliphas Levi?’ he inquired. ‘He is the most celebrated occultist of recent years. He is thought to have known more of the mysteries than any adept since the divine Paracelsus.’

  ‘I met him once,’ interrupted Dr Porhoët. ‘You never saw a man who looked less like a magician. His face beamed with good-nature, and he wore a long grey beard, which covered nearly the whole of his breast. He was of a short and very corpulent figure.’

  ‘The practice of black arts evidently disposes to obesity,’ said Arthur, icily.

  Susie noticed that this time Oliver Haddo made no sign that the taunt moved him. His unwinking, straight eyes remained upon Arthur without expression.

  ‘Levi’s real name was Alphonse-Louis Constant, but he adopted that under which he is generally known for reasons that are plain to the romantic mind. His father was a boot-maker. He was destined for the priesthood, but fell in love with a damsel fair and married her. The union was unhappy. A fate befell him which has been the lot of greater men than he, and his wife presently abandoned the marital roof with her lover. To console himself he began to make serious researches in the occult, and in due course published a vast number of mystical works dealing with magic in all its branches.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Haddo was going to tell us something very interesting about him,’ said Susie.

  ‘I wished merely to give you his account of how he raised the spirit of Apollonius of Tyana in London.’

  Susie settled herself more comfortably in her chair and lit a cigarette.

  ‘He went there in the spring of 1856 to escape from internal disquietude and to devote himself without distraction to his studies. He had letters of introduction to various persons of distinction who concerned themselves with the supernatural, but, finding them trivial and indifferent, he immersed himself in the study of the supreme Kabbalah. One day, on returning to his hotel, he found a note in his room. It contained half a card, transversely divided, on which he at once recognized the character of Solomon’s Seal, and a tiny slip of paper on which was written in pencil: The other half of this card will be given you at three o’clock tomorrow in front of Westminster Abbey. Next day, going to the appointed spot, with his portion of the card in his hand, he found a baronial equipage waiting for him. A footman approached, and, making a sign to him, opened the carriage door. Within was a lady in black satin, whose face was concealed by a thick veil. She motioned him to a seat beside her, and at the same time displayed the other part of the card he had received. The door was shut, and the carriage rolled away. When the lady raised her veil, Eliphas Levi saw that she was of mature age; and beneath her grey eyebrows were bright black eyes of preternatural fixity.’