He held out his bare hand over the table, holding something small and white between thumb and forefinger. I couldn’t see what it was from where we were sitting.
“I come from a country they used to call the Bread Basket of the World. “Don’t leave, son,” my mother would say. “You’ll never lack bread here.” I left, but I always have this little piece of bread with me.” He held it out again between two fingers, swivelling so that we could all see, before placing it carefully on the table. He pressed down with his palm in a circular movement, as if to knead it. “How strange these trails of breadcrumbs are. Birds remove them at night so that we cannot follow the trails back. “Come back, son,” my mother would say, “you’ll never lack bread here.” But I couldn’t go back. How strange these trails of breadcrumbs are! Trails that you can follow away but not back.” His hand was circling hypnotically above the table. “That’s why I didn’t use up all my breadcrumbs on the way. And wherever I go, I always have with me…”-he held up his hand and we saw that he was holding a small perfectly formed bread roll, the pointed ends protruding from his fist-“…a piece of bread.”
He turned and held out the roll to the first person in the semicircle.
“Don’t be afraid. Have some.” The hand, like the hand of a clock, moved to the second person and opened again to reveal a rounded, intact end. “You can take a larger piece. Come, try some.” He turned to each of the people sitting on the chairs, until they had all had a piece of bread roll.
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully when he had finished. He opened out his hand and there was the little bread roll, still intact. He straightened out his very long fingers before slowly closing his fist again. When he opened it, all that remained was the little piece of bread, which he held up between thumb and forefinger to show us. “You mustn’t use up all your breadcrumbs on the way.”
He rose to receive the applause and stood at the edge of the stage dismissing the people who had occupied the chairs. Lorna and I were in the second group to go up on stage. I could now see him from the side with his hooked nose, very black moustache, that looked dyed, and lank grey hair clinging to his skull. But I was struck above all by his large, bony hand with liver spots on the back. He slipped it around the glass and took a sip of water before continuing.
“I like to call this part of the show ‘Slowification’,” he said. He took a pack of cards from his pocket and began shuffling it fantastically fast with his only hand. “Tricks cannot be repeated, my teacher used to say. But I didn’t want to perform tricks, I wanted to perform magic. Can one repeat an act of magic? Only six cards,” he said, taking them one by one from the pack. “Three red, three black. Red and black. The black of night, the red of life. Can anyone control colours? Can anyone impose an order on them?” With a flick of the thumb, he tossed the cards down on the table, one after another, facing up. “Red, black, red, black, red, black.” The cards lay in a row, red and black alternating.
“And now, watch my hand. I want to do it very slowly.” He moved his hand forward to pick up the cards in the order in which they lay. “Can anyone impose an order on them?” he said again and flung them back down on the table with the same flick of the thumb. “Red, red, red, black, black, black. It could not be done any slower,” he said, gathering up the cards. “Or perhaps…it could.” Again, he tossed down the cards with the colours alternating, letting them fall slowly. “Red, black, red, black, red, black.” He turned towards us so that we could see exactly what he was doing. He inched his hand forward, as slowly as a crab, touching the first card with the tips of his fingers. He picked the cards up extremely gently and, when he threw them back down on the table, the colours had come together once more. “Red, red, red, black, black, black.”
“But this young man,” he said, suddenly turning his gaze upon me, “remains sceptical. Perhaps he’s read some manual of magic and thinks the trick is in the way I pick up the cards, or in a glide effect. Yes, that’s how he’d do it. That’s how I did it myself when I had two hands. But now I’ve only got one. And perhaps some day I won’t have any.” He flung the cards down on the table one by one. “Red, black, red, black, red, black.” Looking at me again, he commanded: “Gather them up. And now, without letting me touch them, turn them over one by one.” I obeyed, and, as I turned them over, the cards seemed to submit to his will. “Red, red, red, black, black, black.”
When we returned to our seats, while the audience was still applauding, I realised why Seldom had insisted I should see the show. Each of the tricks that followed was, like the first ones, extraordinarily simple and also extraordinarily pure, as if the old man had truly reached a golden moment in which he no longer needed his hands. And it seemed to amuse him to break the rules of his trade, one by one. He repeated tricks, he had people sitting behind him during the entire show, he revealed techniques with which other magicians throughout the ages had attempted the same effects. At one point I turned round and saw Seldom completely enthralled, happily lost in admiration, like a child who never tires of seeing the same marvel over and over. I recalled how serious he was when he said that he preferred the ghost hypothesis for the third murder, and I wondered if he really believed such things. But it was difficult not to give in to the magician: the skill of each trick lay in its essential simplicity and the only explanation always seemed to be an impossible one. There was no interval and all too suddenly he announced his final trick.
“You must have wondered,” he said, “why I have such a large glass of water when all I’ve taken is one small sip. There’s still enough water here for a fish to swim about in.” He brought out a red silk handkerchief and slowly wiped the glass. “Perhaps,” he said, “if we clean the glass well and imagine little coloured pebbles, perhaps, as in the cage in Prevert’s poem, we’ll catch a fish.” When he withdrew the handkerchief, there was a goldfish swimming around inside the glass and little coloured pebbles at the bottom.
“As you know, we magicians have been cruelly persecuted through the ages, ever since the fire in which the Pythagorean magicians, our most ancient forefathers, perished. Yes, mathematics and magic have common roots, and for a long time they guarded the same secret. We were most savagely persecuted after the struggle between Peter and Simon Magus, when the Christians officially banned magic. They feared that someone else might be able to multiply the loaves and fishes. It was then that magicians devised what remains today their survival strategy: they wrote manuals explaining the most obvious tricks and circulated them among the people, and they used silly boxes and mirrors in their shows. They gradually convinced everyone that there was a trick behind every act of magic. They became armchair magicians, indistinguishable from vulgar conjurors, and in that way were able to continue in secret, doing their own multiplying of loaves and fishes under their persecutors’ very noses.
“Yes, the most subtle and enduring trick was to convince everyone that magic does not exist. I myself just used this handkerchief. But for true magicians, the handkerchief doesn’t conceal a trick, but a much more ancient secret. So remember,” he said with a mischievous smile, “always remember: magic does not exist.” He clicked his fingers and another goldfish jumped into the water. ‘Magic does not exist.’ He clicked his fingers again and a third fish jumped into the glass. He covered the glass with the handkerchief and, when he removed it, there remained neither pebbles nor fish nor glass. ‘Magic…does not exist’.”