The sigh, then, was a measure of the weight of his responsibility. To teach Víctor everything that Galván knew and to urge him to surpass his master was comparable to setting him on a rollercoaster with no firm ground waiting for him below, only an abyss, an endless cycle, a constant rushing forward towards something new, something better, always something better, an imaginary goal which, if attained, simply meant starting again from the beginning. The more the maestro fuelled this frantic search, the better a magician his student would become. He was doomed to fall from grace: he might be courageous, enthusiastic, perhaps even brilliant, prize-winning, but he would fall from favour in the end. Did Víctor have the strength and the discipline necessary to ride this rollercoaster without being thrown off?
To judge by the enthusiasm with which he presented himself at his second lesson, he was not lacking in determination. When he saw the boy take out the deck of cards, Galván could not help but smile. The cards looked as though they were about to fall to pieces. Clearly Víctor had been practising Hoffmann’s card trick over and over.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ the student said as he sat down at the table, ‘I could pick up the deck and say …’
‘Don’t tell me what you could do.’ The maestro cut him off immediately. ‘Show me …’
Víctor smoothed the green baize mat several times to gain a few seconds, as though he needed to run through the story before launching into it, then he began:
‘Actually, I’m not a magician.’
‘Stand up,’ Galván commanded.
‘Actually, I’m not a magician,’ Víctor said as he got to his feet, irritated at the interruptions and clutching the deck tensely in his left hand. ‘The thing is, I found this deck of cards and it turns out they have magic powers …’
Galván’s heart skipped a beat. He had heard a thousand different versions of this story. Whenever a magician lacks experience or talent, they play dumb. The most common thing is for the magician to start by saying that, actually, he is not a magician, or he is, but only reluctantly, that objects acquire miraculous powers the moment he picks them up. If it works, it’s a double triumph because the magician has overcome his self-proclaimed lack of ability; if he fails, he has set up a logic by which his failure can be viewed as funny, winning him the sympathy of the audience.
Galván repressed the sigh that welled up inside him so as not to influence Víctor, but he could not help but look at the boy pleadingly: don’t let me down, make me correct the way you hold your cards as often as you like, pick the wrong card, get nervous, drop the whole pack on the floor, but show me something of yourself, show me some talent.
Víctor carried on with his predictable story, which gave him time to shuffle and cut the cards precisely as the trick required.
‘And the best thing is that every single one of these cards has the same powers. To prove it, we’re going to pick a card at random. And so you can be sure that I’m not cheating, I’m going to flick them from one hand to the other until you tell me to stop. The card at the top of the deck when you say stop will be our card.’
Galván had the good grace to wait until at least half the cards had been transferred before saying ‘Stop.’
Víctor handed him the card and the maestro screwed up his face.
‘No,’ he said seriously.
‘No what?’
‘It has to be a different card.’
Víctor did not understand.
‘Is it the ace of hearts?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then it worked, that’s what it’s supposed to be.’
‘That’s why it should be a different card.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘All are children of God. Never forget that. A deck has fifty-two cards and all of them are children of God. The magician’s first weapon is chance. And it’s not plausible that chance would always pick aces and kings. It makes you a banal magician. Like writers who only tell tales of great feats, or musicians who play only catchy tunes.’
‘OK, I get it.’
‘What’s the next card?’
Víctor turned it over and said:
‘The six of clubs.’
‘Perfect. Let’s suppose chance has picked that one. All are children of God,’ he said again. ‘Carry on.’
Víctor continued, his voice feeble. Galván had just ignored a feat which it had taken him endless hours to perfect and which he had good reason to be proud of. However valid the maestro’s criticism, the fact remained that as an inexperienced student, with no guide but Hoffmann’s obscure instructions and an English dictionary, he had managed to execute the fundamental skill required for any trick: forcing a card. What difference did it make whether it was an ace or a six? Didn’t he at least deserve some praise? It would be weeks before Víctor realised that this was a deliberate strategy on Galván’s part to encourage him to do better: negating every major success with some minor objection. But at that moment, nervous and resentful, he could only carry on because the muscles in his hands knew the routine by heart. When he came to the end, he had to drop the pack on to the table suddenly, from a height of about six inches. If he did it correctly, all of the cards would land face down with the exception of Galván’s card, which would land face up on top of the deck. But, instead of a subtle, final movement, he dropped the cards from three feet higher than necessary. Hearing the racket as they landed on the table, he started, and closed his eyes for an instant. When he opened them again, he did not see, as he expected, the pack strewn chaotically across the table, but a perfect pile. It looked as though, while he had his eyes closed, Galván had gathered them together out of sheer compassion. However, the first card, which had flipped over and was lying face up on the others, was not the six of clubs. Víctor stared at the pack. His hands were shaking. He touched them as though looking for some explanation.
‘It’s OK,’ Galván quickly reassured him.
Staring at the face and hands of his student, Galván did not even need to look at the table to know that something had gone wrong. Víctor’s eyebrows had just jackknifed twice, signalling the mistake.
‘Take off your glasses and try again,’ Galván commanded.
Upset, Víctor took off his glasses, set them on the table and tugged at his shirt cuffs. Galván immediately leaned forward, as though trying to discover the source of some hushed sound, and just as Víctor was about to pick up the pack, he slapped his hand down on the pile, like a cat catching a mouse.
‘Sing that song for me,’ he demanded.
‘Song? Which song?’
Something Very Strange
He has been short-sighted since he was nine. Over the years he has had his sight tested dozens of times and, on occasion, his correction had gone up by half a dioptre. Look at the chart. Read as far as you can. OK, that’s it. You can go now. Sometimes, he would quickly try to make a word out of the letters before they moved on to the next chart. Once, he needed only an ‘I’ to spell INSECT and he cried as he left because he could not tell his father.
Now, he does not know where to begin. ‘Something very strange.’ This is the only phrase that occurs to him when he is asked the reason for his visit. ‘Something very strange happened to me.’ He prefers not to say that, just before the white halo appeared, he was blindfolded. It would be difficult to do so without explaining that he is a professional magician. If anyone asked him to do a trick now, he would not be accountable for his actions.
They sit him with his forehead pressed against a machine such that his eyes are only millimetres from a visor. If he were in the mood, he would say ‘Cuckoo!’ as the optician peers at him from the other side of the device. But he is not in the mood. He says nothing. He feels a point of warmth sweep slowly outwards from the inside of his left eye. Then the process is repeated with his other eye. Víctor imagines that this will cure him, that the heat will somehow dissolve the impurities. Easy. A magic laser that can make full moons disappear.
When it’s over
, a nurse tells him to make himself comfortable, that he will have to wait for a few minutes. His eyes are watering. He would love to be able to burst into tears, into great gasping sobs, but it is simply a physiological reaction to the fact that he has not blinked for too long. He keeps his head down, staring fixedly at a join in the parquet floor to see whether the halo is getting bigger as he waits. The halo in his left eye is still where it was when it first appeared. The one in his right eye comes and goes, a white pulse, a shooting star. He is suddenly struck by a memory of his mother. Her voice: don’t stare so hard at the paper, you’ll go blind. The ophthalmologist places a hand on his shoulder.
‘From what I can see, your eyes are fine. I think perhaps you should see a neurologist.’
‘But the white spot …’
‘Human eyesight is a complicated thing …’
‘A neurologist …’ he echoes now incongruously, as though it has taken him some time to process the information.
‘That’s not to rule out …’
Is nobody capable of completing a sentence?
‘That I’m going blind.’
Blind. There, he’s said it. The terrible word hovers over the high plateau of his brain like a hungry eagle, chooses a place to alight, folds its wings against its body and thrusts out its powerful talons. All other thoughts are now just frightened rabbits.
‘It’s possible that it’s psychosomatic in origin. Have you been particularly stressed recently?’
‘A little.’
‘Well, that might explain it. Trust me, make an appointment to see the neurologist. In the meantime, try to take your mind off it, think about something else. You need to relax.’
The time it takes to process his credit card seems endless. When the moment comes for him to sign, he closes his left eye unthinkingly as though to see what it would be like to be one-eyed.
Stepping out into the street, he bumps into the first passer-by. They don’t actually collide; it is barely a brush, a clash between the air each person trails in his wake, but Víctor freezes, stands petrified on the pavement. He is still standing there when the other person crosses the street. Night is falling. Víctor begins to walk, head down, staring at the patch of ground a few inches in front of his feet. People turn to stare. It is impossible to say whether he is trying to walk carefully or steeling himself to bump into someone else. Or whether it is just that his mind is on other things.
When he gets home, he goes straight into the kitchen, fills a pan with water, goes out on to the terrace, sits in a chair with the saucepan on his knees and stares out into the distance, across the rooftops. After a while, he places his right hand on the formicarium. For ten minutes he does not move. He does not even blink. He is thinking about the ants. Although, after his father died, he got out of the habit of doing his Saturday morning chores, he has carried on filling the moat with water from time to time. It has been years since he saw a single specimen crawling over the surface, but he has always suspected that there is still something living deep beneath the earth. He pictures the day when the ants realised no one was going to leave food for them in the little box. Perhaps the first envoys dispatched on an urgent mission came back with news that there was no talc on the formicarium walls. Hundreds of worker ants were sent out to find food but only one, half dead, came back to report that there was still water in the moat. Clearly they didn’t say: ‘We’re alone. We’re under siege. Somebody do something.’ Ants don’t talk. They learned to go out only at night. They crossed bridges. Fragile, precarious, made up of tiny twigs found on the surface, pieces of dead leaf and even the corpses of their fellow ants. Every night, dozens drowned on the way out and dozens more on the way back. Only a few made it to the safety of the terrarium with a few crumbs to share, hurrying down into the depths of the earth before they were spotted by that boy – no longer really a boy – who still circled the formicarium from time to time, his ear pressed to the glass, rapping with his knuckles.
What are you doing here, Víctor? Are you waiting for instructions? There are no instructions now, and no maestro to give them to you. The manual of darkness that lies in wait for you has not been written. No one has yet predicted whether you are going to be one hell of a blind man. And you’ve already got the little wretch thing nailed. Fate, however cruel it may seem, does not wish you harm. It is simply warning you what is about to happen to you. Get moving, get moving now. Stop hanging around. Yes, something very strange is happening to you. And not just to your eyesight. A man is accountable for his time, Víctor. He has a duty to take it with him, close to heel like a ferocious dog that must be muzzled. You stopped on that stair and set the dog loose. You wanted to stop and survey your life from its happiest moment. Well, this is the result. Time has turned on you, bared its fangs and attacked you with its chaos. One hell of a magician. A little wretch. One of these days you’ll kill yourself.
Caught up in memories and predictions, Víctor is oblivious to the present. The present is that the doorbell is ringing. Urgently. Relentless. Five rings and Víctor still has not noticed. He does not even know how long he has been sitting here. His right hand is still pressed against the glass of the formicarium. He thinks he has been tracking the course of the moon but he wouldn’t dare swear that the white dot is not in his left eye. Perhaps he has nodded off, sitting with his back rigid, his ankles tense, the toes of his shoes pressed to the ground.
When he finally hears the doorbell, he jumps to his feet, spilling the saucepan of water. He goes to the door and flings it open. Outside is Galván, his finger poised to ring the bell again.
‘If you’re here for your fifteen per cent,’ says Víctor, ‘it’s not a good time.’
Galván stands, open mouthed, looks Víctor up and down: the scruffy hair, the dark circles under his eyes, his trousers wet. The difference between this slob and the stylish man he has known for years is much more than aesthetic. The worst thing is the tone of his voice. And his words. What he just said. In twenty-two years, Víctor has never once been disrespectful to him. Especially not when it comes to money matters. Why is he being like this now? Who cares about the fucking fifteen per cent? Galván came out of concern for him, to find out why he disappeared from the party without saying goodbye. He is hurt. No one has the right to talk to him like that at his age, least of all Víctor. He turns on his heel and heads towards the stairs.
‘Mario!’ Víctor’s voice stops him. ‘Mario, I’m sorry … Don’t go, please … Come back.’
Galván hesitates for a moment until Víctor’s tone, the sadness in his voice, the feeling he might suddenly burst into tears like a child, forces him upstairs again. Hardly has he crossed the threshold when Víctor falls into his arms. It is the second time he has done this in less than forty-eight hours. But the circumstances on the night of the party were different: the excitement, the culmination of the years they had both devoted to reaching that moment, could account for his distress. He had hugged Galván so hard it hurt. But this is not a hug. It is a breakdown. Galván knows that were he to take one step back, were he to let go, Víctor would collapse like a marionette with its strings cut. His arms still around Víctor, he manoeuvres him back into the apartment as though they were staggering back together from a night on the tiles.
It is difficult to get any coherent explanation from Víctor beyond the words ‘I’m going blind.’ Galván talks to him as one might a wayward child, forcing him to look into his eyes, repeating the same questions over and over until he has managed to elicit some information and make sense of it: the green door, the red card, the full moon in his eye, the visit to the ophthalmologist.
At first Galván tries to play it down. The doctor is probably right, Víctor’s just suffering from stress. It’s probably because he’s exhausted. Then he tries nagging him, trying to get Víctor to react. Since when did whining ever solve anything? Galván tells him that if he’s so worried, instead of sitting here snivelling, he should do something. Reminds him that he’s not short of money
, he could see any number of specialists he wants. He should see the neurologist. Or go to casualty. Galván offers to go with him right now, but he cannot even get Víctor off the sofa.
Then, just as in the old days, comes the lecture. Galván tells Víctor he has no right to go to pieces like this without a fight, reminds him he is the finest magician in the world, not because of some jury’s decision at a festival, but because they have both been working towards that goal for years, ever since Víctor was a wide-eyed brat. He has a moral obligation to himself, Galván warns, and to Galván who has led him by the hand all the way and has no intention of letting go now. He lingers over the memories of the tough times, the faith and the tenacity that brought them through. He tries to imply that even if his worst fears are realised, even if he loses the sight in both eyes, Víctor will still be the best magician in the world because the true miracles take place in the mind; performing them is simply mechanics, muscular memory. He does not need to be able to see to be who he is. Until Víctor cuts him off. For the first time, he looks Galván in the eye and says calmly:
‘Do you understand, Mario?’
‘I understand. You’ve been thrown a curveball.’
‘I’m not talking about that. This is the first time you’ve been wrong. In all these years, you’ve always known what was best for me better than I knew myself. You only had to say the word and I knew which way to go. Not only in magic.’
‘OK, OK,’ Galván modestly tries to interrupt.
‘Let me finish.’ Víctor cuts him short. He is serious, curt, determined, as though he has spent years honing the words he is about to say. ‘I hope you know how grateful I am to you, though I never found a way of telling you that when we first met, I was just a kid who wanted to learn how to do magic. I didn’t even know why. A lot of good things have happened to me since and I know better than anyone what it took to make them happen. But I also know that none of it would have been possible if you hadn’t always been there, showing me the way. You’ve been good to me. That stuff about your fifteen per cent was below the belt. I’m sorry.’