The Magician's Wife (30 page)

‘We won’t be on stage then,’ he said. ‘I can let my guard down. Deniau’s servant will lead my horse.’

But on the following day when, in the ravines, their horses stumbled and slithered in deep descent, the giant Kaddour took Lambert down from his horse and carried him through the most dangerous of the passes. And then, towards sunset as they at last approached Algiers, Deniau rearranged Lambert’s cloak and tunic, while Emmeline bathed his face and neck as he positioned himself for the ride into the city where Arab eyes would survey his passage. And, as always when he felt himself to be in the public gaze, Lambert displayed the discipline in deception that was the cornerstone of his skills.

But the following evening when he was fêted and applauded at a reception given by Monsieur de la Garde, attended by all of the senior officials and their wives, Emmeline saw that something had happened to him. He, who had always been avid for approbation, now seemed restless and inattentive, anxious for the evening to end. At first she put it down to fatigue and his wound but that night as she helped him undress, he looked at her and said, ‘This is the end for me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I am a cripple now.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘No. The doctor who came to dress my wound this afternoon is Colonel Pouzin. He’s the senior medical officer in Algiers and Maréchal Randon’s personal physician. So his is the best possible opinion. I described my symptoms and he made some tests. There is severe nerve damage. I may be able to raise my arm to waist-level, or I may not. In any event, my career is over. I am crippled for life.’

She looked at him, desperately searching for words of denial and comfort. But instead saw him as he once was when he entered a room, holding up his slender, graceful hands as if to show that nothing was concealed. Or standing on a stage, diverting the attention of his audience by quick skilful movements, his right hand holding his talismanic ivory-tipped baton to draw attention away from that other hand which would make the covert movement necessary to produce an illusion. That right hand, that right arm, now a dead weight at his side.

‘But your inventions,’ she said. ‘You told me you no longer needed to perform, you said you wanted to devote more time to your mechanical inventions, to your marionettes.’

He took hold of his useless right arm, holding it carefully as he eased himself down on the bed. ‘Inventions? Who would remember me if I were merely a clockmaker? Who, when they watch a mechanical marionette perform its tasks on stage, asks who
made
it? No, they watch me, the magician, the man who can make people disappear, the man who can bring flowers and fruit endlessly from a cornucopia, the man who – why do I tell you, you’ve seen how people admire me, even fear me, you saw what happened here in Africa where I have managed to prevent a war! I am Henri Lambert, known throughout Europe as the greatest magician alive. And now because some drugged savage fires a pistol, my life is over.’

‘Your life is not over,’ she said. ‘You’re famous, you have money, you can work on your inventions. And you have me. You said I mean everything to you.’

‘You do.’ He looked at her and shook his head.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Do I have you? Or is that another of my illusions?’

‘Henri, listen – Henri?’

But he turned his face to the wall.

Two weeks later, the steamer
Alexander
sailed from the port of Algiers on its normal passage to Marseille. On the promenade deck Lambert stood with Emmeline, his left arm around her waist as they looked down at the dock where Monsieur and Madame de la Garde and Colonel Deniau smiled up at them. As the steamer’s siren hooted and the mooring ropes were slipped, those on shore waved in farewell. Instinctively, Lambert tried to raise his right arm in salute. But it fell back against his side. Emmeline looked down at Deniau and the others. She did not wave.

The following year, in the summer of 1857, French armies under the command of Maréchal Randon and General MacMahon subdued the tribes of Kabylia, thus completing the conquest of Algeria by France.

In the summer of 1962, Algeria officially declared its independence, ending the French presence in that country.

BRIAN MOORE
was born in Belfast. He emigrated to Canada in 1948 and then moved to California. He twice won the Canadian Governor General’s Award for Fiction and has been given a special award from the United States Institute of Arts and Letters. He won the Author’s Club First Novel Award for
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for
The Great Victorian Collection. The Doctor’s Wife, The Colour of Blood
– winner of the Sunday Express 1988 Book of the Year – and
Lies of Silence
were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Six of his novels have been made into films –
The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Catholics, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Cold Heaven, The Statement
and
Black Robe
. Brian Moore died in 1999.

By the Same Author

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

The Feast of Lupercal

The Luck of Ginger Coffey

An Answer from Limbo

The Emperor of Ice Cream

I am Mary Dunne

Fergus

Catholics

The Great Victorian Collection

The Doctor’s Wife

The Mangan Inheritance

The Temptation of Eileen Hughes

Cold Heaven

Black Robe

The Colour of Blood

Lies of Silence

The Statement

No Other Life

ALSO AVAILABLE BY BRIAN MOORE

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After three marriages and four last names, Mary, a neurotic woman in her thirties, finds herself struggling to remember her own name and losing her sense of self. But what she does want to forget she is condemned to remember: the last days of her relationship with Hat Bell, her depressive, alcoholic second husband, and her sense of responsibility for his death.

As friends from the past resurface, unwanted memories return full force and Mary finds herself desperately battling her inner torment. A powerful portrait of a woman struggling to reafirm her identity,
 I Am Mary Dunne
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‘An extraordinary piece of feminine characterisation’

SUNDAY TIMES

‘I can think of no other living male novelist who writes about women with such sympathy and understanding’

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

‘One of the truest and most awesome books I have ever read’

SCOTSMAN

THE DOCTOR’S WIFE

Sheila Redden, a quiet, thirty-seven-year-old doctor’s wife, has long been looking forward to returning with her husband to the town where they spent their honeymoon over twenty years ago. Little does she suspect that after a chance encounter in Paris she will end up spending her holiday with a man she has only just met, an American ten years her junior.

Four weeks later, Sheila is nowhere to be found. Owen Deane, her brother, follows her steps to Paris in the hopes of shedding light on her disappearance, but soon begins to wonder if she will ever reappear. Interspersed with Sheila’s harrowing memories of her hometown of Ulster at the height of The Troubles, this is a compelling tale of love, escape and abandon. ‘It is uncanny: No other male writer, I swear (and precious few females), knows so much about women’

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘The novel is near perfection. The elegance and clarity of style rides in perfect harmony with the subtlety and depth of feeling . . . a novel of mature assurance and brilliant insight that must make it one of the outstanding works of fiction of the year’

THE TIMES

‘A splendidly bracing experience’

NEW STATESMAN

NO OTHER LIFE

When Father Paul Michel, a missionary on the poor Caribbean island of Ganae, rescues a young local boy from abject poverty, he unwittingly sets him on the road towards a dramatic and dangerous future. For Jeannot grows up to become a visionary priest and, later, the first democratically elected leader in a country previously accustomed to dictatorships. As Jeannot rises in power and makes deadly enemies of the corrupt army, the mulatto elite, drug dealers and the Catholic Church, Father Michel reluctantly finds himself drawn into a drama of faith and politics. ‘In this explosive book, Moore brings a world pulsating to life, with vivid descriptive writing and a series of beautifully accurate vignettes’

FINANCIAL TIMES

‘The profundity of this book is achieved with breathtaking lightness . . . Moore can push the reader’s mind against its own extremities’

GUARDIAN

‘Comprehensive, delicate and mysterious’

OBSERVER

THE STATEMENT

Condemned to death in absentia for crimes against humanity, Pierre Brossard has lived in the shadows for more than forty years. Now, at last, his past is threatening to catch up with him. A new breed of government officials is determined to break decades of silence and expose the crimes of Vichy. Under the harsh glare of the Provençal sun, Brossard is forced to abandon the monastery where he has been hiding and turn to old friends for support – but can he really outrun his past?

Based on the real-life case of Paul Touvier, a French war criminal long protected by Church and government officials, The Statement combines profound moral questions with 5 flawless plotting and breathless suspense

‘Once you have opened its firrst page you won’t be able to stop reading. A superbly plotted story with a brilliant twist’

A.N. WILSON, EVENING STANDARD

‘Blends conscience and guilt with fast-moving storytelling. Brian Moore is a man of profound human insight as well as a master storyteller’

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘The finest thriller of his distinguished career.
The Statement
is an unputdownable, rollercoaster ride’

BELFAST TELEGRAPH

First published in Great Britain 1997

This electronic edition published in January 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © The Estate of Brian Moore 1997

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved

You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise

make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

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printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the

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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney

50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781408828939

www.bloomsbury.com/brianmoore

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