The Manual of Darkness (16 page)

‘In twenty per cent of cases,’ the doctor goes on, ‘the optic nerve head …’

‘What is it called?’ Víctor asks, shifting in his seat as though he has suddenly decided to take part in the conversation.

‘Sorry?’

‘The disease. If I have to deal with some monster that is going to leave me blind, the first thing I need is a name, don’t you think?’

‘The full name is Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy, but it’s generally referred to as Leber’s for short.’

‘Leber.’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was Leber?’

‘Theodor von Leber was the ophthalmologist who first described the disease.’

‘When was that?’

‘1876.’

‘Jesus! What a coincidence.’

‘How so?’

‘Nothing, it’s just something personal …’

‘Tell me about it …’

‘How long before I go completely blind?’

‘Look, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

‘I’m sorry …’ Víctor gets to his feet and begins to pace around the room. He is trying to keep calm but he looks like a caged animal. ‘… but I’ve heard those words a little too often lately and I can’t say I agree with them. There’s a runaway train bearing down on me, and if I don’t get ahead of myself, it’s going to run me down. If you don’t mind, I have a couple of questions I’d like to ask and I want straight answers.’

‘Fire away.’

‘And no jargon.’

‘Ask away, I’ll do my best.’

‘Is there any treatment?’

‘There are clinical trials to see whether Vitamin B12 and Vitamin C supplements together with quinine analogues …’

‘Doctor …’

‘No, there are no tried and tested treatments.’

‘Am I going to go blind?’

‘Yes, but to what extent is difficult to predict. Twenty per cent of cases retain up to fifteen per cent …’

‘Enough with the percentages, please!’ Víctor protests. ‘How long do I have?’

The neurologist checks the file in front of him to see when the symptoms had first appeared.

‘It’s difficult to say exactly. It starts out with problems
distinguishing red and green. Then the halo gets bigger … With the spot in your left eye, I think it’s only a matter of days, a week at most. After that …’ He takes a deep breath and, for the first time, sets his face in something akin to an expression of compassion. ‘Between losing sight in the first and second eye there is usually a gap of about eight weeks.’

‘From now?’

‘From the moment the symptoms first appeared.’

‘In other words, I’ve got about a month.’

Víctor cannot help glancing at the calendar on the doctor’s desk. Then he turns and pretends to study the diplomas that hang on the wall.

‘Can you explain in simple terms exactly what it is I’ve got?’

‘The optic nerve has atrophied and can’t function properly any more. Your eye is perfectly fine, as indeed is the part of your brain that processes visual information. Imagine there’s a petrol station on one side of a river, and all the cars are on the other side. Now imagine the bridge is out … Or an engine, when the transmission cuts out …’

‘All right, I get it. What I don’t get is why. I mean why now? I know, I’ve always been a little short-sighted, but …’

‘It has nothing to do with that. As I said, it’s a mitochondrial mutation. It’s passed down through the maternal line and can develop any time between the ages of ten and seventy.’

‘But my mother wasn’t blind.’

‘Look, I know you hate the whole percentages thing, but this is like the lottery. Your mother must have …’

‘Had.’

‘OK, had the same mutation but, like ninety per cent of women, she never developed the disease. It’s likely that a couple of generations back there was someone blind in your family, but it’s so far back that no one remembers. And because you’re a man, when you drew the same lottery ticket, the situation was different because half the balls in the drum had your number on them.’

‘Fifty per cent,’ Víctor says. ‘That’s a lot.’

Slowly, as he digests the information, he comes back towards the desk. He is going blind. That little wretch … It’s not a prediction,
it’s a statement of fact. The future has just come crashing down on him with such violence that it is already almost a memory.

‘Is there anything else? What I mean is, is there anything else I should prepare myself for, apart from the blindness?’

‘In principle, no.’

‘I see … in principle.’

‘Leber’s is a mitochondrial point mutation related to respiratory chain complexes. In some cases, patients have been known to develop other symptoms including movement disorders, tremors, peripheral neuropathy and even cardiac arrhythmia, but there is no proof they are directly related to Leber’s. In my opinion they are often stress-related.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘There is one other percentile group that might interest you, though the last thing I want to do is give you false hope. In about 0.2 per cent of cases, for reasons we do not understand, some degree of vision has been recovered.’

‘At least there’s some hope,’ says Víctor. And he says it again, ‘Some hope.’

There’s nothing more to talk about, Víctor. Leave now. Get out of here. Take that crumb of hope, go home and lick your wounds. Or better still, make the most of what little time you have left to prepare yourself. You are about to enter a world peopled by ghosts, by illusions, and the frontier has already been marked: you have one month. There is no line of fire now, it is a line of shadows. The day you cross it, your eyes will see no more. Worse still: we know that they will go on discerning light, movement and the whole panoply of physical manifestations implicit in the verb ‘to see’, but your brain will be like a wheel spinning in the void. The doctor explained it perfectly: there is no bridge. All that will remain is that mocking 0.2 per cent chance of hope and a faint curiosity as to what happens to all those images you see without seeing. Are they lost in some forgotten corner of your brain? Who cares? Maybe the eagle that is your blindness devours them. See how hungry it is? You can ask yourself a thousand times: ‘Why me?’ Because of a nerve, Víctor. One bloody nerve. The one you leave on the side of your plate when you eat your steak.

A
lthough he had no reason to hide, Peter Grouse took cover in a doorway in order to observe number 22 Piccadilly on the opposite side of the street. He had passed the outlandish building many times but, assuming it to be a museum, had never stopped to give it a second glance. Somewhat narrower than the surrounding buildings, it was notable for the opulent pilasters that flanked the doorway and for the two enormous statues above the entrance. He had no possible way of knowing that they depicted Isis and Osiris, but anyone with even a minimal education would have been able to identify them as Egyptian. This was how he knew he had found the right place, since nowhere on the building were the words Egyptian Hall. The only word carved into the stone was EXHIBITION.

The figure of John Nevil Maskelyne came around the corner of St James’s Street, threading his way through the traffic towards the entrance. Let us give Grouse due credit for what might otherwise be taken as chance: since his encounter with Maskelyne had occurred the previous day at about 6 p.m., he had stationed himself there since five o’clock. As soon as he saw the magician, he threw himself back and dissolved into the shadows. One could never be too careful. All his attention was focused on the case, once again attached to the man’s left wrist by the braided leather strap.

Maskelyne opened the front door with his own key and then locked it again once inside. Grouse thought it prudent to wait before approaching any closer, and even then, he went to the next corner before crossing the street so that nobody might see him arriving directly and conclude that he had been waiting. Ever the professional.

He stopped and read the poster next to the entrance:

This was followed by a promotional text which guaranteed unrestrained laughter and the verisimilitude of the decapitation. Grouse scanned the text to the next paragraph in bold type:

He was confused by what he read, but the name Psycho told him that this was indeed the right place to try to shed light on what had happened the previous evening. Although ‘magic’ did not appear on the poster, the word certainly summed up what was written and moreover explained the skill with which Grouse’s intended victim had picked
his
pocket. He felt one step closer to avenging this slight, though he had not yet decided what exactly he was going to do to the man when they came face to face once more. He immediately dismissed the idea of resorting to violence. Not only because he was peaceable by nature, but because he took pride in the fact that he had made a living from his profession without ever having to shed a drop of blood. However, he needed to think of some means of recovering the money he had lost. More than that: he licked his lips at the prospect of multiplying his loot by robbing the man of everything he possessed, though he could
not begin to plan his revenge until he discovered what exactly went on in the Egyptian Hall.

He wandered around the area until the box office opened then willingly paid five shillings for a front-row seat. It was a good investment. When the theatre doors opened, he waited for a large crowd to come inside so he could mingle with them and make his way to his seat. The walls were decorated with vast murals depicting dogs, huge birds, snakes and Egyptian gods. He recognised one of the signs of the zodiac. The show took place in a large room on the ground floor. Grouse counted the rows and estimated that the place seated at least two hundred people, although tonight the audience barely numbered one hundred. Judging by their appearance, most were visitors to the city. In Grouse’s profession, the ability to recognise a tourist was crucial.

Music began to play and the curtain rose. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness the audience noticed that, aside from the pianist, all the other musicians were automata. A harp flew above their heads and for a moment Grouse thought he saw the light glinting on a piece of wire or rope that was holding it aloft. The orchestra were playing a merry tune which seemed to go on too long; only when the last notes died away did the man with the leather case finally appear and begin to speak. First he introduced himself as John Nevil Maskelyne, thereby confirming what Grouse had suspected when he read the poster at the entrance. Then a second man appeared, whom Maskelyne introduced as Mr Cooke, his assistant.

Onstage, Maskelyne looked even shorter and his walrus moustache seemed all the more ridiculous. His voice had a grating quality and his attempt to sound authoritative served only to make him sound unpleasant. What most surprised Grouse was his refusal to use the word ‘magic’ or anything similar. On the contrary, he insisted on warning the public that everything they were about to witness had a scientific explanation: ‘Pure science, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said between bows, ‘the only marvels you will see here are those the human mind is capable of creating when it understands the laws of physics, mechanics and optics.’ Since he knew nothing of the controversy surrounding the spiritualists at the time, Grouse did not understood why Maskelyne was saying
this. Where was the mystery? What was the point of paying to see something which, in the words of the inventor himself, could be performed by anyone with the necessary knowledge? Why was the audience applauding? Clearly the spectacle had not been conceived for minds as pragmatic as his. And since he did not care much for the music, the first half-hour of the show, during which each of the automata performed long solos, seemed interminable.

When Maskelyne announced that the moment had come to introduce Psycho, Grouse started in his seat. As the assistant pushed a large bundle swathed in black cloth to the centre of the stage, the audience gave their loudest ovation yet. Apparently this was the part of the show they had come to see. Maskelyne removed the cloth and finally Grouse could see in three dimensions the figure that had so perturbed him the night before. He took the illustration from his pocket and surreptitiously glanced at it to compare the two. Introducing the piece, Maskelyne asked the audience to note that the trunk was standing on a glass cylinder which was completely transparent and consequently was not connected to any ropes or cables. Although the cogs and pistons visible in the illustration were not apparent onstage, Maskelyne was not trying to pass this off as a man of flesh and blood. On the contrary, he was emphasising the fact that it was mechanical. Its great achievement was the ability to play cards unaided. With slightly stiff movements, accompanied by the suspicious hiss of valves, one of its hands would systematically run along a metal shelf on which a dozen cards were laid out and, at the magician’s request, would hand him a card in order to play a game of whist. Maskelyne deliberately exaggerated the movement as he stretched out his arm to take the card so the audience would discount the possibility that he was influencing the automaton’s movements in any way. Every move was greeted by a round of applause Grouse thought excessive. When the hand was over, the magician turned to the audience and issued a challenge: for years, he had offered a reward of £1,000 to anyone who could show him a similar apparatus capable of playing cards that was genuinely automatic. But that evening, he was feeling particularly generous and felt disposed to increase the reward to £3,000. Having said this, he covered Psycho with the black cloth and announced there would be a short interval.