“Precisely. The revelation of the glory in the commonplace. And you two very great artists — the great film director and (may I say it) the great actor — are revealing the glory in Robert-Houdin, who perversely sought to conceal his own artistry behind that terrible good-citizen mask. It hampered him, of course, because it was against the grain of his talent. But you two are able to do an extraordinary, a metaphysical thing. You are able to show the world, a century after his death, what Robert-Houdin would have been if he had truly understood himself.”
Eisengrim and Lind were liking this. Magnus positively beamed, and Lind’s sad eyes rolled toward him with a glance from which the frost was slowly disappearing. Ingestree was well in the saddle now, and was riding on to victory.
“You are both men of immeasurably larger spirit than he. What was he, after all? The good citizen, the perfection of the bourgeoisie under Louis Philippe that he pretended? Who can believe it? There is in every artist something black, something savouring of the crook, which he may not even understand himself, and which he certainly keeps well out of the eye of his public. What was it in Robert-Houdin?
“He gives us a sniff of it in the very first chapter of his other book, which I have read, and which is certainly familiar to you, Mr. Ramsay,” — this with a nod to me — “called Les Secrets de la prestidigitation et de la magie –”
“My God, I read it as a boy!” I said.
“Very well. Then you recall the story of his beginnings as a magician? How he was befriended by the Count de l’Escalopier? How this nobleman gave a private show in his house, where Robert-Houdin amused the guests? How his best trick was burning a piece of paper on which the Archbishop of Paris had written a splendid compliment to Robert-Houdin, and the discovery of the piece of paper afterward in the smallest of twelve envelopes which were all sealed, one inside the other? It was a trick he learned from his master, de Grisy. But how did he try to make it up to l’Escalopier for putting him on his feet?”
“The trap for the robber,” I said.
“Exactly. A thief was robbing l’Escalopier blind, and nothing he tried would catch him. So Robert-Houdin offered to help, and what did he do? He worked out a mechanism to be concealed in the Count’s desk, so that when the robber opened it a pistol would be discharged, and a claw made of sharp needles would seize the thief’s hand and crunch the word ‘Voleur’ on the back of it. The needles were impregnated with silver nitrate, so that it was in effect tattooing — branding the man for life. A nice fellow, eh? And do you remember what he says? That this nasty thing was a refinement of a little gubbins he had made as a boy, to catch and mark another boy who was pinching things from his school locker. That was the way Robert-Houdin’s mind worked; he fancied himself as a thief-catcher. Now, in a man who makes such a parade of his integrity, what does that suggest? Over-compensation, shall we say? A deep, unresting doubt of his own honesty?
“If we had time, and the gift, we could learn a lot about the inner life of Robert-Houdin by analysing his tricks. Why are so many of the best of them concerned with giving things away? He gave away pastries, sweets, ribbons, fans, all sorts of stuff at every performance; yet we know how careful he was with money. What was all that generosity meant to conceal? Because he was concealing something, take my word for it The whole of the Confidences is a gigantic whitewash job, a concealment. Analyse the tricks and you will get a subtext for the autobiography, which seems so delightfully bland and cosy.
“And that’s what we need for our film. A subtext. A reality running like a subterranean river under the surface; an enriching, but not necessarily edifying, background to what is seen.
“Where are we to get it? Not from Robert-Houdin. Too much trouble and perhaps not worth the trouble when we got it. No. It must come from the working together of you two great artists: Lind the genius-director and Eisengrim the genius-actor. And you must fish it up out of your own guts.”
“But that is what I always do,” said Lind.
“Of course. But Eisengrim must do it, as well. Now tell me, sir: you can’t always have been the greatest conjuror in the world. You learned your art somewhere. If we asked you — invited you — begged you — to make your own experience the subtext for this film about a man, certainly lesser than yourself, but of great and lasting fame in his special line, what would it be?”
I was surprised to see Eisengrim look as if he were considering this question very seriously. He never revealed anything about his past life, or his innermost thoughts, and it was only because I had known him — with very long intervals of losing him — since we had been boys together, that I knew anything about him at all. I had fished — fished cunningly with the subtlest lures I could devise — for more information about him than I had, but he was too clever for me. But here he was, swimming in the flattery of this clever Englishman Ingestree, and he looked as if he might be about to spill the beans. Well, anyhow I would be present when, and if, he did so. After some consideration, he spoke.
“The first thing I would tell you would be that my earliest instructor was the man you see in that chair yonder: Dunstan Ramsay. God knows he was the worst conjuror the world has ever seen, but he introduced me to conjuring, and by a coincidence his textbook was The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, by the man we are all talking about and, if you are right in what you say, Mr. Ingestree, serving! Robert-Houdin.”
This caused some sensation, as Eisengrim knew it would. Ingestree, having forced the oyster to yield a little, pressed the knife in.
“Wonderful! We would never have taken Ramsay for a conjuror. But there must have been somebody else. If Ramsay was your first master, who was your second?”
“I’m not sure I’m going to tell you,” said Eisengrim. “I’ll have to think about it very carefully. Your idea of a subtext — the term and the idea are both new to me — is interesting. I’ll tell you this much. I began to learn conjuring seriously on August 30, 1918. That was the day I descended into hell, and did not rise again for seven years. I’ll consider whether I’m going to go farther than that. Now I’m going to bed.”
3
Liesl had said little during the quarrel — or rivalry of egotisms, or whatever you choose to call it — but she caught me the following morning before the film crew arrived, and seemed to be in high spirits.
“So Magnus has come to the confessional moment in his life,” she said. “Its been impending for several months. Didn’t you notice? You didn’t? Oh, Ramsay, you are such a dunce about some things. If Magnus were the kind of man who could write an autobiography, this is when he would do it.”
“Magnus has an autobiography already. I should know. I wrote it.”
“A lovely book. Phantasmata: the Life and Adventures of Magnus Eisengrim. But that was for sale at his performance; a kind of super-publicity. A splendid Gothic invention from your splendid Gothic imagination.”
“That’s not the way he regards it. When people ask he tells them that it is a poetic autobiography, far more true to the man he has become than any merely factual account of his experience could be.”
“I know. I told him to say that. You don’t suppose he thought it out himself, do you? You know him. He’s marvellously intelligent in his own way — sensitive, aware, and intuitive — but it’s not a literary or learned intelligence. Magnus is a truly original creature. They are of the greatest rarity. And as I say, he’s reached the confessional time of life. I expect we shall hear some strange things.”
“Not as strange as I could tell about him.”
“I know, I know. You are obsessed with the idea that his mother was a saint. Ramsay, in all your rummaging among the lives of the saints, did you ever encounter one who had a child? What was that child like? Perhaps we shall hear.”
“I’m a little miffed that he considers telling these strangers things he’s never told to you and me.”
“Ass! It’s always strangers who turn the tap that lets out the truth. Didn’t you yourself babble out all the secrets of your life to me within a couple of weeks of our first meeting? Magnus is going to tell.”