Synopsis
After a long, slow climb out of the strip clubs of Europe, Jurgen and Rudolfo have hit the big time in Las Vegas, headlining a magic act as slick as their own buffed and usually half-naked bodies. Rudolfo is content orchestrating the spectacle and attempting to twin his soul with Jurgen's. But Jurgen hungers for more--and finds it in a mysterious collection of magician's paraphernalia that once belonged to Harry Houdini. With the knowledge he finds there, and his own faith in the unknown, Jurgen becomes the miracle worker of the Las Vegas strip. "Darkly comic, deeply sad, and always ironic" (Library Journal), The Spirit Cabinet takes dead aim at the place within us that yearns for miracles. "It is not a book about magicians and their pursuit of magic," wrote Alan Beaton in The National Post; "it is a book about human beings, and their pursuit of faith."
Extrait
Chapter One
Preston the Magnificent, Jr., (or, as he preferred to call himself privately, Preston the Adequate) stood outside the George Theater dressed in an old morning suit that had belonged to his father. Being a much larger man than Preston the Magnificent, Sr., he had only managed to do up one button on the slate-grey jacket. The lapels wowed over his girlish breasts; the jacket fell away on either side of his belly and the tails splayed. Despite the fact that he complemented it with sandals, exhibiting his oddly shaped and quite hairy toes, Preston felt that the suit lent an air of mournful dignity to the proceedings. He undermined this formality by glowering at people as they approached the George, his face warped by fury. Preston conveyed the impression that he could turn people away should he choose to, and might choose to do so violently. So people darted by him, ignoring the grunt that he meant as a greeting.
Once inside, the people would approach the glass box containing the ashen and improbably beehived Mrs. Antoinette Kingsley. Mrs. Kingsley shoved a crude little booklet at them, sets of photocopied sheets stapled together. Then, still alarmed by Preston's bristling, sorrowful presence outside, the people would seek refuge in the old theatre hall, which smelled like time kept too long in an icebox. They would look at the little booklet, a catalogue of the McGehee Collection, as compiled by Preston. The script was produced by an old and infirm typewriter. The letters refused to sit upon the straight line, each jumping or dipping according to whim. Some letters were truncated, ghostly patches of grey left behind where serifs had broken off the keys.
Seeing as there were still quite a few minutes before the auction's commencement, the people would allow the booklet to fall open. It always did so to pages eight and nine, where the most prominent listing was for item number 112: "The Davenport Spirit Cabinet."
Preston didn't frighten everyone, of course. For example, he didn't frighten a very tall man wearing a white shirt with foppish collars and what appeared to be black tights. This man, the world-famous Kaz, had known Preston for many years. Of all the magicians in Las Vegas, Nevada (and there are many), Preston and Kaz were the longest resident. Kaz had moved to the desert when he was thirteen years old, there to perform illusions with towering topless showgirls. This accounted, Preston thought, for Kaz's acne-ravaged skin and the spectacles with the thick, yellowed lenses.
Kaz approached Preston and announced, "I'm buying it. Just try and stop me."
"Why would I want to stop you?" responded Preston. "Go ahead and buy it."
"I'm buying it because I know." Kaz exhaled heavily on the last word, and Preston noted the sourness of his breath. Kaz's breath was spectacularly awful. Preston had heard that Kaz had had two or three operations trying to fix it, though he couldn't imagine what sort of operations they might have been. He began reflecting on this question, but only as an evasive tactic, and could not escape the profound sickness that came to twist his belly. Kaz would buy it. Kaz had nothing but money; he made an obscene amount, half a million a week or something. Preston remembered hearing that Kaz was the highest paid act in Las Vegas—
No, wait. He took a breath and silently corrected himself. Kaz was the highest paid individual performer.
"Preston! Kaz! How are you hanging?"
The highest paid act, Preston realized, was coming down the sidewalk.
They were led by the albino leopard, Samson, who had lowered himself into stalking position but allowed the pads of his paws to slap the pavement heavily. The big cat knew this was a foolish way to get about; in a jungle he'd have cleared every living creature out of his path hours before he himself arrived. But he didn't live in a jungle any more and retained only the vaguest memories of those first few weeks of life so long ago. The jungles he'd seen on TV didn't look all that appealing, despite the presence of sleek young females. Not that Samson was interested in that so much, not since he'd awoken one day to discover that his testicles were missing. But, despite that grim morning, Samson was a contented and obedient animal, so he lowered his old bones and gamely continued the loud, menacing strut. When he felt a slight tugging on his jewel-encrusted collar, Samson licked his lips and produced a roar guaranteed to turn bowels watery.
"Oh, Samson," tsked Rudolfo, even though it was he who had pulled upon the leash, "put a lid on top of it."
Rudolfo's partner, Jurgen Schubert, came to an abrupt halt. "Preston and Kaz," he announced. "Two people."
"Two people," said Rudolfo, hurrying to help out, because offstage his companion lacked confidence and tended to strip down his English to the barest of bones, "that are your favourite people."
"Ja," said Jurgen.
Kaz leaned down and whispered, his fetid breath stirring the hairs in Preston's ear, "What a couple of assholes."
Preston the Adequate merely grunted. He didn't approve of mean-mouthing fellow professionals, although it was hard to deny that Jurgen and Rudolfo were assholes. Leaving aside the fact that they'd brought a huge albino leopard to the auction, they themselves were done up in outlandish fashion. Jurgen, known as the more conservative of the pair, was clad in red leather, the jacket, pants and boots all the exact same bloody shade. Only his belt was otherwise, a foot wide, black and intricately tooled with a pattern of gnarled ivy.
Rudolfo was dressed in some sort of futuristic cowboy getup. His chaps were golden and the jeans beneath were made of a denim that was bleached until almost incandescent. His vest, which was all he wore on his upper body, was rendered out of metal and jewels and pieces of mirror, held together by thin silver wire. Beneath this peculiar garment, Rudolfo was all muscle, beautifully shaped and coloured. Due to an odd, utter hairlessness, his body looked as though it were made of porcelain.
"Hey, Kaz. Hey, Preston." Miranda appeared magically. Both Kaz and Preston, who between them knew the workings to every gimmick, rig and apparatus ever invented, thought of Miranda's appearance as "magical." She seemed to step out of a cloud of light, in a blink of Preston's eyes, in a sharp, sudden squinting of Kaz's. There she stood, towering above her employers, Jurgen and Rudolfo, dressed in some sort of plastic bodysuit that sucked itself to her flesh. "So," she asked bashfully, "how's everybody?"
Miranda seemed to be having a profound effect on Kaz, who was panting audibly, although this might have had something to do with Samson, who was sniffing at Kaz's genitals, shoving bits and pieces around with his snout.
Jurgen grinned, the owner of a vast number of blindingly white teeth. As the corners of his mouth turned upwards, his eyelids began to flutter girlishly. "Don't worry, Kaz. Rudolfo has given Samson his lunchtime."
"Ja, but Jurgen," said Rudolfo, "maybe now is time for a little schnawk."
Everyone laughed, no one with much enthusiasm. Samson backed away and sneezed, fluffing the folds of skin that hung over his colourless lips. It was his attempt to laugh along, although only Rudolfo recognized it as such. After that, a silence descended as each man looked into the others' faces, trying to decipher purpose and plan.
The group paid no attention to the people who walked around them, through the open doorway into the George Theater. It was understood that these others were not players. They were lesser lights, mostly, magicians from the smaller hotels. There were a couple of illusionists of international stature, but they seemed to be down on their luck, sporting shiny tuxedos and cheap toupées. Preston recognized Theodore Collinger, a friend of his father, once famous for his work with the Chinese rings. Collinger was now badly wrinkled, and his hands, shrivelled and clawlike, trembled awkwardly at his side. Preston shook his head. If any of these people had thoughts of competing in the auction, they would soon be dissuaded. While there might be any number of people in the world who wanted to own the Collection, only three (two if you counted Jurgen and Rudolfo as a single unit) could afford to.
A photographer from Personality magazine rushed up with the desperate singlemindedness of an assassin, the camera already stuck to his eyeball. Rudolfo, Jurgen and Kaz smiled with practised naturalness, upper lips trembling as they each tried to display just the fight amount of enamel. Miranda bent her knees so as not to loom over her bosses, and Samson shifted his weight onto his forelegs, assuming a heroic pose. Preston the Adequate scowled so profoundly that he would eventually be airbrushed out of the picture. The flashbulb exploded six or seven times, all within the same short moment, and then the photographer abruptly turned and darted away.
Preston stared at the other men, his dark eyes registering both wonder and judgement. He looked at Kaz, whose smallish eyes darted back and forth behind the lenses of his spectacles like small children trying to avoid the wrath of a bully. Then he looked at Jurgen and Rudolfo. The two men grinned still, somehow merrily frozen in time. Their faces were tanned, the whites of their eyes preternaturally white.
"Piss!" blasted Preston. He produced a cigarette and lit it clumsily. He looked at the others on the sidewalk and fashioned what he meant as a smile, although, judging from their reactions, his efforts again fell well short. He drew deeply on his butt and tried not to weep. It had been two months since Eddie McGehee had told him the Collection was to be auctioned off, but Preston's feelings upon hearing the news—disgust, panic and the deepest of sorrows—had not diminish...
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