The Spirit Cabinet (25 page)

Miss Joe’s establishment began to acquire a reputation; no wait, that’s ill-put—the place always had a reputation, but it began to acquire a
favourable
one. Miss Joe’s became known as a place of genuine (if slightly peculiar) entertainment. The only downside, Rudolfo often reflected bitterly, was his friend and lover, The Great Schuberto. Jurgen simply never changed his act, never refined or augmented. He didn’t seem to notice, for
example, that the Scarf Production was capable of inducing slumber, even paralysis. Rudolfo tried to suggest a few times that Jurgen replace that portion of the act, but Jurgen would usually turn defensively haughty. “Hey,” he’d say, “I’m the
Chaser
.”

This was vexing, as vexing as Jurgen’s refusal to be kissed on the lips. Jurgen seemed to think that as long as he never
kissed
Rudolfo he wasn’t really homosexual, despite all sorts of evidence to the contrary. They would release each other from the most intimate of embraces, and Rudolfo would fold his lips together and search for Jurgen’s, but the man would be out of the bed, stalking about the room, scratching his ass and searching for his smokes.

Which was vexing, maddening, finally infuriating. One night, sitting in the small room they shared in the back of Miss Joe’s, Rudolfo snapped at him, “You’re too small.”

Jurgen finished lighting his cigarette. The smoke curled into his lashes and made his bruised eyelids blink rapidly. Jurgen shook out the match, tossed it into an ashtray, pulled a shred of tobacco from his lower lip and then grunted interrogatively.

“Your act,” explained Rudolfo. “Your act is too small.”

“Hey,” announced Jurgen, “I’m the
Chaser
.”

“Do you know what a
Chaser
is?” retorted Rudolfo angrily. He leapt out of the bed—it wasn’t a bed, actually, it was an old spring-poked sofa, the back flattened to accommodate the two men. “A
Chaser
is …” Rudolfo used some approximate synonyms:
rausschmeiber, lückenfüller
. “It’s someone with a shitty little act,” he explained. “He comes on between marquee attractions so that he
chases
people out of the theatre. Then they can get more paying customers in and after they get their money, it’s on with the fucking
Chaser
.”

“That’s what a
Chaser
is?” asked a dumbfounded Jurgen. He butted out his smoke and sat down on the bed. Rudolfo touched him on the shoulder. Jurgen raised a fist. “Leave me alone.”

“I can’t help what words mean.”

“I’m thinking. I’m thinking bigger.”

“Okay.”

“Well,” said Jurgen uncertainly. “I could escape from a big paper bag.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, that might work.”

Jurgen said no more about it, but the next day he put on his raincoat, even though the day was fine, and headed off to make a tour of second-hand bookshops. He didn’t find what he was looking for in the first, or the second, but in the third store he located—by purest chance—a copy of the cursed book,
Houdini on Magic
.

Jurgen took it back to Miss Joe’s and showed it to his lover, saying nothing, merely exhibiting the parchment cover with the gaudy gold lettering. Rudolfo nodded. “I see,” he said.

“Think big,” said Jurgen. “Think like Houdini.”

“Right.”

Jurgen thumbed through the book until he came to a crude line drawing showing a Production Box, a broken line showing how one of the sides pushed in from the bottom. “You see,” he said, showing the page to Rudolfo. “I push the box onstage. You come in behind it, hiding. I can open the top, tilt it forward, show how it’s empty. Then you push here and crawl in. Now when I open it, you jump out.”

Rudolfo nodded, but already had other ideas.

“We need lumber,” said Jurgen. “And some paint and velvet cloth.”

“Okay.” Rudolfo removed his wig and fixed the old blue watch cap over his gleaming skull.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to beg. Then I’ll come back with the supplies.”

“You’d go begging for me?”

“I’d go begging for
us
.”

Some nights later, Miss Joe made this introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen—and if someone doesn’t stop what he’s doing
right now
, I’m taking that ‘gentlemen’ back—we the management are proud to present the hottest act in Europe …” (Miss Joe giggled in an unseemly manner here, flapping the back of her hand against her crimson lips; she was silenced from the darkened wings, where four eyes glared like headlights, where two mouths clenched in grim rebuke) “… all right, all right, here they are are, ladies and gentlemen, the hottest act in Europe,
Jurgen and Rudolfo!
” The names were shrieked at such a high pitch that several of the patrons clapped without thinking. They stopped when they saw the figure step up onto the stage, his back toward them. They recognized the satin cape; they recognized the top hat—it was that magician fellow, the dull guy. The magician stood motionless for a long moment, apparently intent on sending the notion of
dullness
right up to the top floors. He slowly raised his arms above his head—there was an accompanying cymbal crash, which was kind of alarming and caused people to inch forward on their cheap wooden seats—and then slowly brought his hands down to his shoulders, lifting away his cape and allowing it to fall to the floor. The magician was revealed to be naked. Actually (the magician spun around quickly), he wasn’t quite naked, he was wearing a G-string, a little sequined pouch for his privates. The audience, those that liked that kind of thing, applauded in a desultory fashion.

The magician thrust his hands up again and suddenly there were two doves fluttering from them. The magician tossed them into the air (he doffed his top hat then and smiled grimly at the audience, his eyes bugged open) and the birds flew into the shadows, where they landed on the shoulders of yet another nearly naked young man. This man took a large step forward so that he now stood within the stage lights. Those in the audience that liked this kind of thing applauded with much more enthusiasm,
because this was the Go-Go Boy, the young man with the unlikely body, sculpted and oiled so that he seemed somehow like a mannequin come to life.

With Rudolfo’s appearance most of the members of the audience noticed the music for the first time. Some merely found it unsettling, some found it beautiful, one or two were able to name it, the “Adagietto” from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony Number Five.

The magician again lifted his hands, and scarves began to materialize, long and brilliantly coloured. He tossed them into the air, where they described long, graceful arcs. His associate received them, with abounding grace, in preternaturally slow motion, all of his muscles rippling sequentially. The audience applauded heartily, somehow thinking, believing, that the act of catching tossed scarves constituted a feat of great difficulty.

After all the scarves had been produced, tossed and caught, the two men stepped forward and took grand bows, like concert musicians who had just pulled off a notoriously tricky piece. The audience seemed to realize as one that this bit of stage business looked ridiculous unless they themselves were applauding with something that neared frenzy, so that is what they began to do.

Suddenly the void between the two men was filled by a large wooden box. It had been painted a sky-blue, and someone had rendered puffy clouds upon it. The nearly naked men exchanged knowing glances and then both took hold of the box. They tilted it forward and the magician lifted the top, showing the velvet-lined interior to be empty. They rested the box back down. There was a long moment where nothing happened—but the performers managed to fill it with such profound nothingness (staring into the audience, their lips pulled away as though their sole intention was to display some recent dental work) that the effect was one of suspense. Many of the patrons couldn’t resist a little nibble at their fingernails. Then both men clapped their hands
together with improbable synchronicity, and the magician lifted the top of the box once more.

A huge white creature leapt out and bolted toward the audience with its fangs bared. It reared up on its hind legs, roaring operatically, and clawed the air with vicious whistling swipes, tearing it to shreds.

Three people fainted. (Three became the minimum. Samson on subsequent nights managed as many as seven, although one teetered on her feet over by the bar, and Samson was forced to stalk over and growl at her from only a few feet away in order to force the topple.) Those who remained sentient threw up a cheer of enormous approval. Jurgen and Rudolfo joined hands, waved rather demurely, and then they themselves disappeared.

That was their act. It lasted about three minutes. There was no aspect to it that was mysterious to anyone with even a slight knowledge of illusion or stagecraft. The doves had been nestled under the shoulders of Jurgen’s dark cape; as he worked the clasp at the neck preparatory to throwing the cape away, he merely hooked the birds and scooped them into his palms. The scarves came from within false thumbs where they waited, folded and pounded to the size of peas. The most impressive bit of business was not the production of the roaring beast but the production of the Production Box itself, which seemed to move forward of its own volition. The secret there is that Samson himself pushed the box, hunkering low and placing his forehead against the wood. It fooled people because no one ever suspected a lion (there was much confusion as to Samson’s species) of being capable of it.