The Manual of Darkness (30 page)

And then he performed the illusion again. The audience spent two hours going from pillar to post, first watching in fascination as a historic trick was performed, then dazzled as the working of the trick was revealed to them only to be enraptured when the illusion was repeated without any possible explanation for how it was done.

Just when it seemed that Víctor could not possibly pull another trick from his metaphorical hat, the string quartet began to play the first notes of
Mumuki
, slow and disjointed as the sound of an approaching storm. Víctor would walk to the front of the stage and recite the valedictory:

‘There are no spirits. All things come to an end. Life is a fleck of gold glimpsed in the lode. Some day, someone comes and finds our body deserted.’ At that moment, with exquisite slowness, he collapsed onstage saying: ‘And we disappear.’

And he disappeared. The quartet unleashed the violent storm that is
Mumuki
, pure Piazzolla, profane tango, and the audience would sit, dumbfounded, as the music played on, three, five, six minutes as the measures spilled out and the magician did not
reappear. Only after the last bar, when silence fell on the hushed theatre, did some of them realise that Víctor was not coming back, and they began to clap, and applause spread like contagion through the theatre.

It always worked. The clapping, the stamping, the rhythmic beating on the seats; it was not simply a testament to their appreciation, or even their gratitude for the marvels they had witnessed, it was a refusal to accept that this journey, which some felt during the performance might go on for ever, was over. It was a demand for Víctor’s return, as though only his reappearance on the stage could restore them to normality, the blind, unthinking humdrum life they had willingly relinquished when the show began on condition that it be restored to them at the end. More than once, Víctor felt tempted to reappear, to bask in the applause, but he never did so. He always stayed in the wings, paradoxically happy but alone, thinking of Galván and denying his audience the thought of a return after the end.

Standing on the terrace, he now says the last words aloud: ‘And we disappear.’

H
e’s annoying you, Víctor, admit it. You only opened the door, only let him in, because you thought it would be the quickest way to get rid of him, but the conversation has gone on for more than two hours now and there is no end in sight. You are sick of his questions, irritated by his patronising tone; above all you are tired of the pauses, the scratch of pen on paper that follows your answers. Sometimes it is rapid, as though he is merely ticking a box, turning your answer into ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on a questionnaire. At other times, though the short strokes of the pen sound like a stenographer eager not to waste time, he seems to be writing long sentences you know nothing about. You know this is a standard questionnaire: yes or no; none, a little, some, enough, a lot, too much; never, daily, weekly, monthly, annually. But now and then there seems to be a box for observations over which the social worker lingers. You want to ask him what the hell he’s writing, but you say nothing. You’ve decided to confine yourself to short answers and pretend to be completely uninterested in this interview and its consequences.

He asks whether you have any family, and you say no. Friends? No. Acquaintances? No. There has to be someone. You raise your eyebrows in a gesture of mild irritation, as though this might force him to move on to the next question. But he insists: nobody? He glances down at his paperwork and mentions Mario Galván. He tells you it was Galván who called ONCE in light of your circumstances. This irritates you too, this carefulness with language, the euphemistic way he refers to your blindness as a visual impairment concomitant with atrophy of the optic nerve. Of both nerves. Galván? Oh, yes, my old teacher. But we don’t see each other any more. You can’t help but smile when you use the verb
‘to see’, a fact he quickly jots down. You don’t tell him that, since his last visit, Galván has been calling you. That would mean giving him an explanation that corresponds to the boxes on his questionnaire: initially, several times a day; now, never. We don’t talk any more. You have every right not to tell him you’ve disconnected the phone. Everyone has their secrets.

It’s possible this man thinks you are the most disagreeable person on the face of the earth, though from his tone it seems more likely that he pities you. You know: your circumstances. He may also think you’re stupid. Slow witted. Because given your obvious intention to get this over with as quickly as possible, you linger every time he asks you to clarify something. Come on, Víctor, it’s not hard. All he wants to know is whether you take the bus, whether you manage to shower, cook for yourself, cope with the housework, go out from time to time. Stuff like that. But on the questionnaire, there are three boxes for each of these questions. The first marked ‘Before’; the second ‘Now’. Before you lost your sight: yes or no, a little or a lot, daily, weekly. Now that you’re blind: no, no, nothing, never. You understand him, don’t you? What’s your problem? Box number three? This is marked ‘Prospects’. It’s just a name so the box fits the questionnaire. What it really means is: ‘Prospects with regard to rehabilitation’. Bluntly: before, now, after. Afterwards, in the future. Will you need to be able to take the bus? Or to take a more concrete example: will you want to eat? Everyone needs to eat, Víctor. They’ll teach you, but you have to do your bit. Get a move on and answer the questions, because he hasn’t told you yet, but after this section, there’s a general section with lots of white boxes with titles such as ‘Attitude’. You know, Attitude with regard to rehabilitation. He needs to decide whether you demonstrate hope, denial, euphoria, urgency, indifference or fear. And he doesn’t know what to put because every time he uses the word ‘before’, you take refuge in silence as though decades have passed, as though to remember what you did when you were blessed with the gift of sight, you have to cross over to some previous life. And every time he uses the word ‘now’, you freeze, as if the word is absurd, a meaningless sound to which your only response is an echo: now? You mean, now, now? And, naturally, with every passing second, the word
now means something different. Now, Víctor, the present, Jesus! Today. Have you taken a bus? Did you shower and dress yourself? When he leaves will you be able to make a decent meal? Don’t just sit there looking bewildered, say no. Now, no. Today, no. In the present, not, nothing, never.

He’s a nice man, Víctor. Admit it. He’s not pressuring you, he’s trying not to make this any more painful than it has to be. Sometimes, he’s a little too persistent, but he’s only doing his job. OK, you don’t like his manner, he irritates you; when he’s not making notes, when he looks at you, waiting for you to answer, he constantly clicks his plastic ballpoint. Click, click, click, click. The unbearable sound of the little spring creeps into your ears, travels along the dead roads of your nervous system. You are about to reach out and rip the pen from his hands. You have lots of reasons to forgive him. Because this situation isn’t easy for anyone and he has as much right to be nervous as you do. Because in all probability he’s not aware that he’s doing it; he’s too busy studying your face, finding some word that sums up your attitude. And because he has only just met you. He knows nothing about your life. He doesn’t know that the sound of him clicking his pen is precisely what makes it impossible for you to travel in time, it is what anchors you to the last moment you want to think of right now.

Take a leap into the future, Víctor. Or just a little step. Ten minutes, fifteen, nothing much. At some point this interview will be over. The man will gather his paperwork, put it in the folder he was hugging to his chest as he arrived, the yellow folder you could barely make out, he will put his pen back in his pocket, get to his feet and, before he says goodbye, he may pretend to smooth the creases in his trousers so he can dry his hands, because he is sweating just as much as you are. And though he will tell you it’s not necessary, you will insist on walking him to the door and you’ll pretend not to be conscious of the fact that, as he walks behind you, he is watching the way you brush the walls with your fingertips, the slight deviation in your steps, the way your fingers hesitate before they find the handle and open the door. You’ll say your goodbyes, exchange awkward, interminable small talk about the heat, the rain, and eventually he will say what you expect him to say:

‘We’ll be in touch.’

We, plural. You won’t ask who: ONCE? Social Security? Who knows. Someone will call you. Maybe you should reconnect the phone. ‘When?’ you’ll ask. And you’ll realise that it took you too long to ask, because before you hear his voice you will hear his footsteps stop on the stairs, hear him clear his throat as people do before answering an awkward question:

‘I can’t really say, there’s a long waiting list. It’s usually within the year.’

‘Oh.’

This is what you will say: ‘Oh.’ Then you will close the door. And the social worker will be relieved that you have finally said something laden with meaning, a single word by which he suddenly grasps the before, the now, and can fill in all the little boxes relating to after.

E
very journey, every voyage, imposes a suspension of time during which the armies of the past and future sharpen the swords they use in their permanent duel. Aboard the boat that brought Peter Grouse back to London, memory and imagination squared off in an unequal battle. Memory, though benefiting from superior forces and more effective weapons, stood to lose everything. For Grouse found it both difficult and unrewarding to recount precisely what took place during his last days in Philadelphia.

He records that he was held down by four thugs who gave him a good beating and threatened to cut off his entire thumb unless he stopped struggling. He records the feeling of cold steel against his skin. The sweat on the arms of the men who held him down, the noise of frantic breathing, the curses. He even records the moment when he took a deep breath and closed his eyes so that at least he might be spared the sight of the blood. But he says nothing about the pain. Nor the sound, the inescapable crunch of bone and cartilage. Memory cast a blessed veil over the time he spent in the hospital, where he was dumped at the door by the four men. The sutures. The smell of flesh burning as it was cauterised. Even the days that followed, spent in bed in his lodging house, waiting for the infection and the fever to subside, not daring to sleep for fear that even a slight movement might drag his thumb across the sheets.

When, eventually, the fever passed, he made the sort of false account of losses we invariably make to console ourselves with what remains. He had come through with his life, and by the merest chance, with his right hand unscathed. He could use the tools of his profession as effortlessly as he had before. Of both his
professions: picklocks, of course, but also pencils and tools for designing and constructing illusions. And though he lamented the loss of half his left thumb, he suspected that the remaining part could still fulfil the basic functions required of it: holding, pinching, pushing. But it would be weeks, perhaps months, before that was possible. Grouse was in no doubt that, as he had been told when he was given first aid, the skin of the stump would eventually scar and, with time, would become hard and insensible. But until that happened, the slightest touch was enough to send a shudder like an electrical shock all the way from his hand to his feet. Washing, dressing, eating, all the day-to-day activities could trigger excruciating pain which he could avoid only by keeping his left hand behind his back, as though it had been not his thumb but his wrist which had been severed. Moreover, the wound, which was still tender and raw, leaked pus continually, forcing him to change the dressing several times a day, something he could do only by biting his lip, distracting his attention with self-inflicted and hence manageable pain.

Aside from the physical consequences, his trip to Philadelphia had been a disaster. Grouse cursed the moment when he had had the absurd idea of trying to profit from a plan so foolish and ill conceived it hardly warranted the name. Force the Seybert Commission to reconvene? During his time in hospital, he did not even read the accounts in the local newspapers of his misguided involvement in Kellar’s show. However, he assumed that not even the elderly, stone-deaf Furness could have attributed Eva’s howl of pain to the work of spirits. As for the reporters from the spiritualist magazines, at most they would take advantage of the circumstances to make fun of the magician’s ineptitude, to settle the score for the many insults he had directed at them over the years. There was no way to turn a penny out of the fiasco.

Grouse returned to London ruined and sadly condemned to forget his forays into the world of magic, going back, for some time at least, to his profession as a common thief. In fact, he might well have started aboard ship, since the frequency with which he was presented with the opportunity to plunder cabins, bags, wallets and pockets was almost insulting. Only the fear that he would have to use his left hand held him back. The humidity
aboard softened the skin of the wound, preventing it from scarring, so that by the third day out, he did not even need to bump it accidentally to feel the pain. It throbbed constantly as though the blood coursing through him were chafing at the wound from inside.

It was the pain which prevented him from wallowing in the memory of the past few days. He needed to find something to protect the stump as soon as possible. It was child’s play to get his hands on a piece of balsa wood, a hacksaw, sandpaper and a chisel. He fashioned a hood, hollowed it out and sanded it until the interior was completely smooth. The real problem was calculating the correct size and width. For the protective cover to work it had to fit snugly against the base of his thumb, or at least neatly over the severed digit so that it didn’t chafe the sensitive skin. It took a week of agonising trial and error, but eventually he managed to create what he wanted, a cover that was both comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. At last he could reach for the fork at dinner without worrying about seeing stars, at last he could put his hand in a pocket, his own or someone else’s, without fear of his hand spasming. Though it mattered little to him, the prosthesis was rather attractive. From a distance, his thumb was once again the correct size, and the colour of the wood, closely matching that of his skin, gave a fleeting impression of normality.