MAGICIANS
Mina Laksh
12 October 2007, 13:43‘In the back of my mind
In the shadow of day.
You live everyday
In the back of my mind…’
The boy was seated on a high stool as he strummed his guitar and sang softly whilst the Magician in front of him began the show by asking the audience, “Do you know all there is to know?”
He was dwarfish and was asking for volunteers.
Frightening, I thought and even wondered if I should give it a try. But the curtain came down. Many clapped. And it was over.
Backstage, he was strumming again. The same tune from a popular group.
Fleetwood Mac isn’t it? I thought again.
He strummed. Sang on, ‘In the back of my mind.’ This time the boy sat on a chair outside the green rooms. I walked past him and tossed my head, more out of courage, to get past as I tried persuasively to get to the tiny magician’s room to get his signature in my autograph book.
Magicians had always intrigued me. I remembered how as a little girl I would stand almost hypnotised watching the street magician tumble balls out of his sleeved shirt or have pigeons fly out of his top hat. Oh! How I loved these magic tricks. In fact, I sometimes even missed school and that got mother cross. Let’s say, I had an inconceivable attraction to magic and saw no reason to believe that I had wronged if I had struck school whenever it took the better of me.
“The autograph, I suppose” he asked, seeing me at his door and clouding my thoughts.
He was seated on a swivel stool that moved like thunder from one table to another as he swerved around, removing his thick hairy black false eye brows, and adjusting the lights on the mirrored walls that faced him.
Isn’t he arrogant! I thought as I extended my hand with my book tightly held.
“Come here, closer to the lights so that I can get a good look at you,” he beckoned with his tiny fetching finger, “I like to see the person I give my autograph to.”
And as I got closer, I noticed that he looked quite Faustian. Not like the simple complacent magic man I knew in my small town. He had his face painted! Plastered on his face were thick coats of blue, white and pink. Purple streaks lashed out of his eyelids to form fancy lines and arcs, which actually widened his otherwise small eyes.
I realised I was getting a bit frightened at his weird painted face and just when I had decided to give it a pass he pulled the book off my hand and asked loudly, ‘What would you like to become?”
“Me? Why I haven’t thought of it.”
“Well, we need to sometimes.” He smiled back.
His face looked a suggestion of intrigue and yet calm. He was less fierce.
“All right then”, he continued “What would you like most? Immortality, perhaps.’ And he scrawled across the book.
“Immortality! Who would want that!” The fright in me had gone. I was getting my guts back, “We all have to die. You must be joking!” And I dropped the book into my duffle bag and drew its strings to a poutish mouth.
As I turned to leave he repeated after me. ‘You’re sure aren’t you? Immortality or would you rather capture death?”
I then decided not to look back. But did remember him picking a coloured sobrani and blowing faint smoke circles casually.
********* This morning was like any other. Nothing spectacular had happened. I had my coffee and bowl of Papaya and pressed open the button to join the rest of the bobbing umbrellas down the street with my bag slung on my shoulder. As the doors to the tube jammed shut,I noticed the giant poster plastered against the white tile: The Great Croatian Magician at Leicester Square. And gently the poster and the sign, Baker Street disappeared.Somewhere off the main street and not far from the store where I worked I stopped for a bunch of grapes, a happy habit it was. Slipping my fingers into my holdall for loose change I felt an eerie awareness of silence unmoving within. The feeling was undoubtedly inside the depths of my sausage duffle bag.
“What’s ‘appen’ luv, you’ve gone pale. Surely, the ‘earse do’n bother you?” And he handed me the brown paper bag while the hearse now opposite us had come to a halt obeying the traffic lights.
The sensation that had wrapped round my fingers and my entire self had troubled me. It gave me the runs. Back and front. Then later, when I pulled open the strings to my holdall in the silent privacy upon a public commode, the dark insides to my duffle bag were no longer familiar with the cylindrical lens case and the rectangular lipstick. Instead, my searching fingers touched what felt different. Its tactility went confused inside. Women, Men, Children. Some pale. Some not.
Some white. Some yellow. Some brown. Some black. Some tired. Some peaceful. Figurines like miniatures off a china shop cluttered together clustered like a Holocaustic field. Lined against the duffles’ soft walls.
They were knotted up. Ashed. Nailed down. Boxed. Lilies. Chrysanthemums. Wreaths encased in a flood of darkness with Mrs. Bonaparte, the floor manager, in her frilled night dress, lipstick still on, lying well cushioned on her brik-a-brac bed within the limits of a zipped side pocket.
“Hey girly! Up, Up.” She was shaking me “you’re sleeping’ like y’r dead!”
She was rotund and had found me. “Couldn’t you find a better place to ‘ave a break? Hid’n like that” her crinkly head bounced as the curls stood tight. “What next! If you weren’t a darky. I’d ‘ave given you to the law.”
I wasn’t thinking. Just watching her Jif up the mess and slot more white rolls in place; having realised with some embarrassment that I had spent hours in this boxed toilet.
HOME:
I clicked open the latch of the laptop to type the day’s accounts.
I switched it on and as I did, the phone rang in high pitched notes.
“What happened? Screeched a friend. “You didn’t come to work. Mr. Devon is furious. You should have called. Mrs. Bonapart was absent. Cherry couldn’t substitute you at the Givenchy stand. We were short staff.”
“I have to tell you something.”
“Shut up!”
“Just listen can’t you? My sachet. No…no, my usual holdall…”
“Twit! If you have to take the day off why can’t you tell me? Also Mrs. Bonaparte died in her sleep! The cow is dead!”
The laptop was reading yesterday’s accounts. It blinked back its familiar type: Papaya ₤5.50; milk ₤2.50.
Then staring searchingly it read. “Time and death Is one capsule. It oscillates You held theirs. Not yours. Should we play catcher? Hide and seek?” ******