Clear (23 page)

When I check out the acknowledgements I see it was co-written with this guy called Ratso who also wrote
On the Road with Bob Dylan
. And apart from ‘Blaine’s Challenge’ (which is entertaining enough) there’s also loads of information on how to perform various tricks (and pull various
scams
). I actually learn–there and then–how to relight a candle without holding the match to the wick, try it, at once, then dash upstairs and show off my achievement to a bemused-seeming Solomon.

Tons of science stuff. And history stuff (it’s virtually a magician’s
lexicon
). Blaine actually pinpoints his various magical heroes and influences, and if you read closely, it’s possible to see what he’s cherry-picked, why and where from: Alexander Herrmann; the
street
magician; Robert-Houdin, with his role as international envoy and ‘
peace
-bringer’ Houdini, with his amazing knack for
publicity
; Xavier Chabert, who really risked his
life
for his feats; Orson Welles–a keen amateur magician–gets a plug, for
duping
dumb America with his radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’
War of the Worlds
(So there’s the
literary
angle neatly sorted,
eh
?). He even gives Fidel Castro a name-check for cunningly using trained white doves to bring this magical sense of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘wonder’ to his political machinations.

Here’s another thing: there’s tricks inside the text
itself
. Blaine claims, near the start, that his publishers (Pan) have agreed to print many different
versions
of the book, which means (
Wha
? You think we were born
yesterday
?) that
each
copy is somehow particular to the person who’s bought it. That it’s actually ‘magical’ in some way. At one point the casual narrative is suddenly interrupted by a
mind-reading
section, where Blaine whispers into the reader’s ear
directly
, saying stuff like, ‘You’re easily hurt. You like to travel…’

Hell
yeah. This is brain-fucking at an
executive
level.

I finally get to investigate the whole
Jewish
angle.
Man
, the autobiographical content is utterly
fascinating
. There’s no mention at all of Blaine being Jewish himself (there’s a general impression that he was raised in a nurturing, free-thinking, 1970s New Age style environment–I mean there’s hard times and austerity, no TV and plenty of reading, but single-parent wages are carefully scrimped and saved for Montessori schooling).

It becomes increasingly apparent how important Jews have been to Blaine from the start. His hero–Houdini–was the
son
of a rabbi. Blaine’s first big break? Being booked to do magic at a bar mitzvah when he was eighteen, and meeting the hugely wealthy and influential Steiner family who whisk him away to St-Tropez for the summer and teach him everything he could ever possibly want to know about money. And socialising. And
glamour
(he totally changes his
image
, at this stage, shaves his head, grows the goatee, dresses in black…I guess you could say it was a ‘Jewish look’.)

To show
need
, he soon learns, is never a good thing.

But he kind of knew this, already. When he worked at a restaurant (this macrobiotic joint he went to in order to try and learn how to cook healthy food for his–by then–very sick mother) he used to perform tricks for all the customers there, and if they gave him a big tip, he’d often hand it straight back. He wasn’t doing it for the cash, see? He was doing it to ‘bring mystification’, because people are at their most
beautiful
when they’re at their most
vulnerable
, apparently.

He actually said that.

I’m reading the book backwards, Chinese-style, and it’s when I get to the beginning that I finally hit gold. It’s then that I see the photographs. Two photographs. In quick succession.

The first is of Houdini, Blaine’s hero. Blaine says (underneath) how it was as a direct consequence of seeing this particular photo (in the library, when he was five) that all his subsequent interest in magic was spurred.

I inspect the photo very closely.

It’s scary.

Houdini is straitjacketed and his legs are tied. He is balanced, precariously, on the edge of a high rooftop (or perhaps a bridge), and he seems to be holding on to that ledge only by dint of his
chin
, which is hooked (resolutely) around a metal strut.

Blaine says it was the eyes that initially fascinated him. The eyes are desperate. Staring.
Frantic
(in fact so mesmerised was Blaine by the look of Houdini’s eyes in this particular photograph, that he actually had them
tattooed
on to his own arm when he grew up).

It’s an exciting image. Melodramatic.
Kinky
, even.

I try to enter the mind of the 5-year-old Blaine. A father dead, a doting but hardworking mother, a sharp intelligence (Aged three he developed a passion for chess. His mother took him to the local parks where he challenged all the old geezers at the game), and this powerful, this overriding sense of physical precariousness.

They moved around a lot. One of his abiding memories of childhood, he says, was of staring backwards over his mother’s shoulder as he was hurried away from a burning apartment block. ‘For some strange reason,’ he says, ‘the buildings we were living in always burned down.’

(Yup. I know what you’re thinking. ‘
Eeeek
! Shades of
The Omen
.’)

And the second image? The
second
photograph? It’s an early family shot. Nineteen seventy-five. A 3-year-old Blaine and his mother posing on a New York street together.

She’s glamorous. Like a model. But smart-seeming, too. For the benefit of the photo she has hauled the baby Blaine on to one of those New York newspaper dispensers. She is staring at him (mouth slightly ajar from the effort of lifting him up there, head still tipped back as she struggles to sit him
still
).

And Blaine? Looking confidently towards the camera. Holding his mother’s knitted hat (with such delicacy and
precision
) between two tiny hands. Rotating it. Getting to grips with it. One hand flattened, as if he might–if he chooses (and definitely not, otherwise)–draw a small bird, or a pack of cards, or a bunch of those crazy artificial flowers which magicians used to favour so heartily in the seventies from the pale fabric of that most-esteemed piece of woolly head-apparel.

Now here’s the shocking thing: Blaine has the
exact
same eyes as Houdini on the rooftop.
Fact
. Even then, aged
three
(I flip back and forth.
Yup
).

It’s as if Uri Geller was here, playing one of those mind-games where he tells his victim to draw ‘anything you want’ on to a piece of paper, and then, five minutes later, when the secret image is finally revealed, he opens his
own
piece of paper and has drawn precisely the same thing (Then he goes one step further and holds them together–front to back–and you can see through the paper that they are
exactly
the same size. The proportions are identical.
That’s
how similar they are).

Houdini’s eyes are full of fear, but those baby eyes? Haughty. With just a whiff of hostility (who’s taking this picture? His father? A new friend? A relative? Does it matter? Because the tiny boy Blaine is fiercely protective of his mother. This is
her hat
, his expression says, and she’s
my
mother, so who the hell are
you, eh
?’).

Tiny nostrils flared. Chin lifted.

I smile at his boyish defiance.

It’s then–and only then (when my eye is idly inspecting the newspaper dispenser–that I notice his little legs, and the small, supportive, metal and elastic harness there. The left leg relaxed. The right leg kicked out slightly, under the stress of the wire.

Mystery and suffering. Mystery and
suffering
.

Bly’s words rush back to me.

I really need to share. I
do
. But I don’t dare phone Jalisa. And Bly will say I Told You So. And Solomon will just scoff and sneer…

Aphra’s in a
towering
rage (we’re talking 30 storey) when she finally gets around to answering her buzzer (‘
What
?!
Who
?! Oh for
Christ’s sake
. Just
come up
’), and she hasn’t calmed down much by the time I’ve staggered up there. Her front door has been wedged open with a phonebook and she’s in her tiny kitchen, throwing stuff around and cursing.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, peering tentatively in (she’s dressed in a beige, rough linen, deep-pocketed miniskirt, an expensive-seeming red V-neck sweater–and some antique red Scholl sandals with thick, flat wooden heels. Her hair’s pulled back into a chaotic bun. Hairpins shoved in everywhere).

‘The bloody…’ she kicks the cooker and her sandal flies off. ‘
Fuck
. Something’s
blown
. A wire. A
fuse
. I don’t know. But I’m halfway through making dinner…’ (or several dinners- from what I can tell- since all the worktops in that tiny space are literally crammed with bowls and boards and mixers).

She tries to bully me into fixing it.

‘How many wires can there
be
?’ she asks indignantly (when I try to tell her that this electrical lark isn’t really my forte). ‘I mean there’s just a big, fat one at the back. How complicated is
that
?’

‘I could get you a takeaway,’ I offer.

She turns and looks at me, furiously. ‘What do
you
know…’ she splutters, and then suddenly, the stress in her face simply falls away and she just
grins
.

‘Adair Graham Mac
Kenny
,’ she says, holding out her arms (as though expecting me to jump into them, like an enthusisatic young
pup
). ‘Long time no see,
eh
?’

She kisses me, with tender ceremony, on either cheek.

(No hard feelings about the other night, then?)

Even through the immaculate veneer of her sudden cheerfulness I can tell that she’s exhausted. It’s only been a week or so, but she looks thinner. And the whites of her eyes are pinky-red. She seems a little high. Medication? Stress? Exhaustion?

‘But what will I
do
?’ she asks, pointing towards the chaos on the counter.

‘I have an oven,’ I say, ‘at home. We could jump into a cab and hightail it on over there.’

‘How far?’ she asks.

‘Five minutes, tops.’

‘Good,’ she says. ‘Okay. Let’s.’

Part of me thinks she might be upset by it. She might be
sensitive
(invalids can sometimes be funny like that), but she isn’t. Not remotely. She’s fine. In fact she’s
beatific
.

We’ve dumped three bags of provisions (and one of Tupperware) on to the kitchen table, she’s growled at the dogs (and they’ve fled) and she’s followed me downstairs, quite willingly, into my lair.

I put N
^*
e
^*
r
^*
d on the stereo- ‘In Search Of…’

First thing she does is open a window.

‘Air,’ she gasps, then glances up towards street level.

‘How lovely for you,’ she murmurs, ‘to see everyone’s
shoes
…’ She pauses, ‘And up everyone’s
skirts
, too.’

Then she sits down on my bed and I show her the pictures.

‘The
eyes
,’ I say (the way Blaine does in the text), flipping between the two images.

‘Good gracious me. I get your
point
,’ she murmurs.

‘The way I see it,’ I say, my own eyes drawn inexorably towards her shapely bare thigh, ‘Houdini’s like Blaine’s inspirational
father
-figure.’

She tips her head slightly. ‘
Okay
…’ she says, tentatively.

‘We know nothing about his relationship with his
actual
dad,’ I continue, ‘except that he died when Blaine was young. It’s entirely conceivable that he might’ve been obliged to watch him
suffer
, as a boy, and magic–this strange and mysterious world of wands and tarot–was an
escape
for him. A release.’

Aphra says nothing.

‘At one point in the book he talks–at some length–about this recurring dream he has as a child. In the dream he suddenly finds himself standing inside this amazing room crammed with countless magical devices and huge, ornate glass display cases. He says that the room made him feel inexpressibly happy. It was a refuge. He would enter this room and he would feel magic all around him. In fact he would enter this room and he
was
magic.’