The Spirit Cabinet by Paul Quarrington Read Free Book Online Page B

hadn’t selected the night because of the tempest; in fact, he was a little annoyed with it, as if God were trying to steal his thunder. The Schuberts crowded in, the parents and Oma claiming the spring-poked sofa, others squatting on the floor, the smaller children perching on the credenza and woodbox.
    Jurgen appeared suddenly and startingly, more out ofnervousness than showmanship, and announced the advent of the Cingalese.
    His family loudly demanded to know what
um Himmels willen
he was talking about.
    “The Cingalese,” repeated Jurgen, realizing that he’d been wondering about this himself, just what exactly a Cingalese might be. He knew why it was necessary for there to be one, because of the eyes—
    Reminded of the wonder he was about to achieve, Jurgen waved his hands at his clan and hushed them sternly. Remarkably, they hushed. For years to come, Jurgen would wonder why he was only able to control audiences when he was rude. When he tried to be cultured—in accordance with Preston the Magnificent’s “Magician’s Pledge”—people were disdainful, even disorderly. But when he stared at them with cruel eyes, his black lids quivering with rage, they pushed back into their seats and silently begged him to continue. (It was Rudolfo who understood all this, if not to explain it, then to capitalize upon it.)
    “Ah!” exclaimed Jurgen, fanning his hand behind his left ear. “I hear the Cingalese approaching!”
    Jurgen ran into the kitchen to get ready.
    He had managed the donning of his costume in as little as one minute and forty seconds, but that night, full of nerves and jittery as he was, it took four times that long. We can use the interlude to meet Little Ha-Jo, who was to assist Jurgen with the illusion.
    At that exact moment Hans-Joachim had no idea of this, because he was suckling at his mother’s breast and, besides, Ha-Jo had no idea of anything. He was eighteen months old, still bald and vaguely bluish, the latest addition to the Schubert clan. Houdini had called for the levitation to involve a baby, so that’s how Jurgen was determined to proceed, but if Houdini had been able to see Little Ha-Jo, he probably would have suggested usinganother child, perhaps even one of the smaller adults. Jurgen was not fully aware of the monstrousness of his baby brother, although many would have been alerted by the fact that Ha-Jo was transported not in the years-old perambulator, but rather in a souped-up wheelbarrow, cushions strapped to the metal sides.
    In the kitchen, Jurgen pulled his head through the hole he had cut in an old blanket. The fact that the blanket was old hadn’t qualified it for selection; all of the Schubert blankets were old.
This
one had a pattern of zigzags and circles and looked, if not Cingalese, at least foreign. Jurgen placed a hat upon his head, a cone he’d fashioned out of thick black paper and adorned with little paintings of the moon and stars. He was not artistically inclined, and the paint had bled, little rivers of dirty white flowing from star to star.
    Jurgen poked around underneath the sink and removed the piece of apparatus he’d constructed, a mesh basket. He was very proud of this contrivance, meticulously rendered out of screening, wood and wire. Houdini had not been helpful here; there were neither instructions nor handy hints. Houdini tended to write about the “mesh basket” with such insouciance that it took Jurgen two or three days before he realized this wasn’t something he could simply purchase in a shop. So he’d made one as best he could, and was very pleased with the results (although looking upon it right then, he briefly wondered if the basket didn’t seem a little small to contain Ha-Jo).
    He cast that doubt aside, and reached further into the recesses of the cupboard beneath the sink, searching for the eyes.
    According to Houdini, it was necessary to disguise oneself as a Cingalese because Cingalese people had odd eyes, silvered, almost