The Manual of Darkness Page 3

  ‘Got it.’

  They spent a long time on something as simple as the perfect way to hold the cards. Then they moved on to practising the various standard shuffles. Little by little. There were no tricks yet. Galván explained that before you could be a magician, you had to be a croupier. The hour the lesson was supposed to last had long since passed, but the maestro did not even look at his watch. With infinite patience, he answered the torrent of questions Víctor asked, gently corrected the position of his hands and offered him practical advice so that he made quick progress. Until Víctor asked:

  ‘OK, so what can I do with all that?’

  Galván gave a heavy sigh and then said, ‘I give up. Look, I’m not going to teach you a little sleight of hand so you can show off at school. Not today, not ever. What you’ll learn from me are the fundamentals of the art, and a little of its history. You’ll learn everything I know. Or most of it, at least. And what you can do with that. The rest is up to you. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand why you’re so eager to put what you’ve just learned into practice.’

  He got up, took two or three steps and vanished into the darkness.

  ‘Can you read English?’

  ‘A bit.’

  Galván stepped back into the light carrying a thick sheaf of photocopies ring-bound along the spine. He pointed to the cover, to the title in huge capital letters: MODERN MAGIC. Underneath were a number of short sentences, each on a separate line.

  ‘Not very modern. The book dates from 1876.’

  ‘A practical treatise on the art of conjuring,’ Víctor translated. ‘By Professor Hoffmann. With three hundred and eighteen illustrations. And an appendix … do you want me to go on?’

  ‘Please. Some other day I’ll tell you who Hoffmann was.’

  ‘… Containing Explanations Of Some Of The Best Known Specialities Of Messrs Mask …’ He stumbled.

  ‘Maskelyne And Cooke,’ Galván corrected.

  ‘Populus … this bit is in Latin.’

  ‘Populus vult decipi: decipiatur.’

  ‘No idea what that means.’

  ‘People want to be deceived: let them be deceived. A good motto for a magician, don’t you think? The quotation is apparently from a cardinal in the sixteenth century. Skip the introduction and start on page forty-five. The trick is called “The Turning Card”. There are various methods of doing it. Concentrate on the third.’

  Without putting down the deck of cards he was holding, Víctor tried to find the page and began translating quickly in a low voice, but Galván, once again plunged into darkness, announced that the lesson was over.

  ‘No. Practise it at home, it’s getting late.’ The room was clearly much larger than Víctor had realised, because the maestro’s voice seemed to come from far away. ‘Take the deck of cards. My gift to you. Remember that today, I am the only person watching you, but one day you will have an audience. Practise in front of a mirror whenever you can. Buy a green mat. Next Tuesday, same time. On the dot.’

  Víctor slipped the deck of cards into his pocket, picked up the photocopy of Modern Magic, slung his knapsack over his shoulder and headed towards the door.

  ‘Oh, one more thing.’ Galván’s voice stopped him. ‘Seeing as you’re in such a hurry, next time I’ll ask you to demonstrate what you’ve learned. If you can’t get it quite right, it doesn’t matter. Don’t get too obsessed with your hands. You’ll perfect the movements in time. What is important is that you can tell a story.’

  ‘Tell a story?’ It felt strange, as if he were talking to a shadow. ‘But if you already know …’

  ‘No. What I know is that if you do certain things to a card, it will land face up when the rest of the pack fall. What I don’t know is what sort of story you want to tell me with that card. And for the moment, that’s all I care about. I’ll see you on Tuesday.’

  Galván’s dismissal was final. As he went, Víctor left the door ajar and stopped on the landing. A story? He didn’t have the courage to go back inside and ask again. He slowly started down the stairs. If Galván had made himself disappear, if – rather than through sleight of hand and a way with words in the darkness – the magician, the room, even the whole building had vanished in a puff of smoke, Víctor would have believed it.

  The maestro, on the other hand, was worried about more practical matters. With the haste of someone afraid to trust vital information simply to memory, he took a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and fumbled vainly in his other pockets for a piece of paper. He tried to scribble something on a card, but the pen kept slipping. In the end, he opened his left hand, and on the palm, beneath the initials ‘V. L.’, he wrote: ‘cuffs and eyebrows’.

  We all have nervous gestures which appear when we are under pressure: there are those who pat their pockets, who stick out the tip of their tongue, or rub their fingertips together in a particular way. Good magicians shun such tics and make superhuman, often fruitless, attempts to overcome them. Every time you palm a card, you raise the opposite shoulder slightly. You are about to pick up the thimble that contains the hidden pea and you wink involuntarily. Galván had noticed that, each time before beginning a new exercise, Víctor tugged at the cuffs of his shirt. Also, whenever he made a mistake, his eyebrows immediately shot up in a look of bewilderment which was emphasised by his glasses giving a little jump on the bridge of his nose. It was vital to correct these reflex gestures quickly, though neither was serious. If Víctor turned out to be as talented as Galván suspected, he would soon be segueing from one trick into another so quickly he would not have time to think about fiddling with his cuffs. The thing with the eyebrows would resolve itself: all he had to do was not make any mistakes.

  Galván stood for a moment, the pen hovering in the air, his left hand open, searching for the right word to describe the third tic, which was much more worrying. He dismissed ‘coughing’ and ‘humming’ and finally wrote ‘singing’, though he was not entirely sure that the almost inaudible vibration that emerged from Víctor’s throat when he was tense was a melody. He had heard it seven or eight times during the lesson and at first he had thought the boy was just clearing his throat. He took it for granted that Víctor was completely unaware that he was doing it, but since he did not know what triggered it, Galván knew from experience that drastic measures would be required to stamp it out. As soon as possible.

  When he reached the door to the street, Víctor realised that he had not paid for the lesson and started back up the stairs. He was a few steps from the landing when he heard sounds coming from the other side of the green door: first, feet shuffling across the floor and the maestro folding the chairs and propping them against the wall. He could make out each sound with perfect clarity. He could even hear the rasping breaths of bellow-like lungs abused by years of smoking, then a heavy sigh and finally a whisper:

  ‘That little wretch is going to be one hell of a magician.’

  Víctor climbed the few remaining steps, bent down and slipped the envelope with the money under the crack of the door. As he straightened up, he felt a shiver run down his back that had nothing to do with the cold. He hated predictions. Even favourable ones. He had watched a terrible prediction come true. He knew only too well the magnetism of predictions, their ability to draw reality to themselves. ‘That little wretch is me,’ he thought, though this first part of the prediction did not fit with his personality. ‘I’m going to be one hell of a magician.’

  Though the light was too poor for him to be able to read, he still held Hoffmann’s book open as he went back down the stairs, as though he must immediately read it if Galván’s prediction were to come true. With his other hand, he patted his left pocket to make sure the deck of cards was still there. Even he could not have explained his excitement. After all, aside from Galván’s prophetic words, he had learned very few things during that first lesson: this is a deck of cards, you hold it like this, and this is how you shuffle. If you want to know more, read this book.

  Upst
airs, with a brush in his right hand and a dustpan in his left, Galván was standing next to the small window. He saw Víctor leave and, over the boy’s shoulder, he could glimpse the illustration on page two of Modern Magic, of a head appearing from inside a box that sat on a table. Under the table, a dotted line indicated the space where the body was hidden.

  ‘Hoffmann,’ said the maestro aloud, smiling to himself. ‘Lucky bastard.’

  When Víctor disappeared from view, Galván set about sweeping the floor. When he came to the table, he pushed it aside with his hip and picked up the three cigarette butts, the remains of the flower and the little piles of ash on the floor. With each sweep of the brush he said a name aloud in a theatrical voice, drawing out the vowels as though announcing the winner of a raffle.

  ‘Harry Kellar! Pete Grouse!’ He continued on towards the door. Each sweep of the brush more powerful, each name he uttered louder. ‘John Nevil Maskelyne! Auzinger.’ He stopped and picked up the envelope, and as he stood up again, he flung his arms wide, scattering everything he had just swept up. ‘And Víctor Losa!’

  As If By Magic

  He lashes out with his foot in sheer frustration, bringing a flutter of objects – cards, thimbles, balls, small garishly coloured scarves – tumbling down; all except the scarves, which hang in the air for a few seconds. Víctor does not dare look up, afraid to discover that, after the hours, the days, the months of effort, he is back where he had started, up to his knees in a jumble of preposterous bits and pieces. Most of them are small and light, but they have accumulated so quickly that any attempt to forge a path through them is a heroic feat.

  He takes a deep breath and throws himself forward as though he is about to lie down on, or perhaps dive into, this sea of clutter, swim through the scattered objects at his feet in order to find somewhere to lay his head. But the layer of objects is so thick that Víctor lands face down, on top of everything, rocked by the solid wave created as the weight of his body forces the objects to spread out beneath him. With a look of disgust, he flings one arm out and swipes at the nearest thing to hand, propelling himself forward another two feet. With his other arm, he repeats the exercise and realises that it is not an optical illusion. Not only has he advanced; everything else seems to have moved too, as though, beneath the apparently tranquil surface of this clutter there is a current, a direction, a purpose. He finally lifts his head and sees, so far away that the distance would have to be calculated as days of walking, the outline of a wardrobe, a cabinet. Everything is flowing towards it, as though the objects know that only inside it will they find the order that justifies their existence.

  Though it seems completely contradictory, the sudden appearance of this large, solid piece of furniture among so many tiny objects brings a logic to the scene that it lacked. It is a Proteus Cabinet, patented in London in 1865, though probably in private use for decades before that. For thirty or forty years, anyone who considered himself a magician or spiritualist would have had such a cabinet, or one like it, and attempted to improve on it, to make a more sophisticated version, to adapt it using some new technology. Inside this cabinet, men and women would disappear, spirits materialise, impossible noises occur. Víctor smiles with relief. Although he still does not know where he is, nor how long he has been here, at least he knows where he is headed. His only regret is that it has taken him so long to discover the thread common to all the objects he can see before him. Magic has made all of them disappear at some point. It would have made Víctor calmer had he known this earlier. Thanks to the cabinet, he finally realises that the nine of clubs floating on the surface next to his left elbow, its corners almost imperceptibly shaven, once belonged to the great Maskelyne. And the ridiculous wig half buried must be the Egyptian headdress which Stodare used for his Sphinx Illusion, a trick involving a decapitated head. And something over there …

  He cannot linger over such trivial details. To identify each of these objects would take him centuries. Besides, if he goes on thinking like this, he might succumb to the temptation of wondering about the one vital piece of information he still does not have: what is he doing here? Because he has never disappeared by magic. Or he doesn’t believe he has.

  He does another few clumsy strokes, pulling himself forward with the instinctive doggedness of a long-distance swimmer. When he tilts his head from time to time to breathe, the subtle changes in the light around him lead him to think that days and nights are passing and nothing is happening. The suspicion that it may take years before he arrives at his goal does not discourage him. On the contrary, it confirms that he is floating on the sea of the past, drawn by a current of dates that have elapsed and which he will only be able to explain when he finally gets close enough to make out the details of the cabinet and work out which version it is. Because he has owned a number of cabinets. Just as he decides to throw out his arms and allow the current to take him where it will, a great wave knocks the breath out of his lungs, tosses him in the air like a puppet and deposits him, dazed, on a smooth, hard surface. He rolls over half a dozen times before he manages to stand up. He touches his neck, his ribs, unable to believe that no bones have been broken.

  He walks around the cabinet, estimating its size with an expert eye, runs his fingers over the wood. He notes that at head height on both doors there are holes roughly the size of a fist. It could be the work of the Davenport Brothers or one of their many imitators. But then he notices that there is a small lock with a key sticking out of it. Perfect, there can be no doubt now. This is Harry Kellar’s cabinet.

  ‘Peter Grouse?’ he asks.

  He knows Grouse is inside. He wants to throw himself at the cabinet, fling the doors open and welcome him with a hug, but a nagging doubt prevents him. During his years as an apprentice, Grouse was a role model for him. His legend illuminated every difficult moment, and in times of success, when he wanted to pay homage to the greats, Grouse was always the first name that came to him. And he realises that, having spent so much time watching himself in this symbolic mirror over the years, his mind has created an impossible photograph in which Grouse is the spitting image of him. A little older, perhaps. He does not want to open the doors now to discover some fat, bald man with bad breath. Or the reverse, someone unbearably handsome.

  ‘Mario?’ a dull voice finally asks from inside the cabinet. ‘Is that Mario Galván?’

  ‘Yes,’ Víctor answers. ‘It’s Mario.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you for over a hundred years.’ The voice is not in the least reproachful. It is a little difficult to understand because it is almost drowned out by a maddening peal of bells. ‘Did you bring mine?’

  ‘Of course,’ Víctor says.

  He half-turns the key and opens the doors but the mirror inside simply reflects his own image, barely lit by the tiny flame of a match, an oil lamp, perhaps a gas lamp that someone is holding up. Víctor squints and discovers that in his left hand he is holding the cap of a pen. Well, he has to call it something. It looks like a finger, or to be precise, half a finger. Half a thumb neatly severed at the phalange. But it is made of plastic or some thin, flexible material and hollow inside. In fact, he is wearing it over his own thumb like a cap. He holds it up, pronounces Grouse’s name twice, or three times, and, confused when there is no reply, closes the cabinet again. Immediately, there are three loud knocks from inside. It is the sound of flesh on wood, but to Víctor it sounds like bass chords from some instrument and he rushes to open the cabinet again. Even he does not know why he is in such a hurry, but he has the feeling that if he waits even a second longer, if he allows the fourth chord to sound, the swell of time will burst its banks again and sweep him far away from here, from the cabinet, from any possibility of finding some purpose to this moment and giving it meaning.

  ‘Idiot!’ he mutters to himself, shaking his head as he turns the key again. ‘You’d think I’d never seen this cabinet before. Grouse must be hiding behind the mirror.’

  He opens the doors, pushes the mir
ror gently; it swings back on a large hinge.

  ‘Who said more than a hundred years?’ The voice coming out of the darkness now is a male voice speaking with irrefutable authority. ‘It’s only been thirty-two.’

  ‘It’s not possible,’ Víctor says.

  ‘What do you mean it’s not possible?’

  ‘It’s impossible, Papá,’ Víctor insists. ‘There’s no such thing as spirits. And don’t take my word for it, it’s been proven. You only have to read the Seybert Commission Report. It was published in 1887.’

  ‘A worthless piece of drivel,’ his father answers.

  ‘Not at all. It’s pure science. It’s in the library of the University of Pennsylvania. And it concludes that …’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about science, son. You want proof?’ The sound of footsteps, the cabinet shakes slightly and Martín Losa, Víctor’s father, appears before him. ‘Look at this,’ he says, holding out his left hand.

  Víctor hesitates for a moment. He stares into his face and, although this confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is indeed his father, he finds it hard to accept the flagrant temporal incongruity, since this man is the same age as he is. However, he is not surprised to see the line of ants marching across the ghost’s forehead.

  ‘I’m telling you, it’s not possible,’ he insists.

  But, in the end, he looks down and sees that there is a dark mark on the outstretched hand, what seems at first to be a dry, amber stain like nicotine, but as he examines it more closely it turns out to be wet, bubbling, and though he cannot bring himself to touch it, he would swear that it is blood, and that it extends far beyond the fingers, that it starts at the thumb, which has been severed right in the middle, runs down to the wrist, to the elbow from which it trickles, almost gushes, to the floor. A puddle is forming.

  ‘Cockroaches don’t have blood, Papá, or at least not much,’ says Víctor, trying to keep his voice calm.