The Vanishing Act (8 page)

‘What does the Enlightenment mean?’ I asked Papa.

‘It means,’ said Papa, ‘that Rousseau wanted the best for everyone. He wanted a new world where people were happy and free.’

I imagined five hungry children standing on a cold floor, waiting for their father to come home and enlighten them as well. Later I dreamed that they came to visit me, freezing and shivering. In my dream I knitted five long scarves, one for each of
them, and when I woke in the morning I had unravelled a whole ball of wool.

Walking next to Uncle, I wondered if I could trust Descartes’ way of finding the truth if he had been an awful man. But then I reminded myself that logic could be held up against bad weather, and years without apples on the apple tree, and had nothing to do with either kindness or love.

No Name barked again. I could see him, tiny in the distance, running across the beach. The ocean was churning grey with snow and broken ice.

My stomach rumbled. It was almost dinnertime, but it was quiet downstairs and I thought Papa was still asleep.

No Name reached the forest and was running very fast. I thought he might be chasing a rabbit. When I was little I used to worry about the rabbits when it got cold. I couldn’t imagine how they kept warm in winter. But Papa had assured me that they had burrows to hide in and could easily dig their way through all the snow.

The rabbits were shy. No Name had never caught any and I had only ever managed to catch one. It happened when I was six, and Papa still remembered
it as one of the worst days of his life, worse even than the cellar, he said.

I brought a small sturdy box to the forest. It had previously contained twelve jars of paint that Mama had ordered from Belgium, and it had a lid with a shiny silver latch. I set it on its side near the apple tree and placed a whole cabbage inside it. Then I waited for a long time. By noon my stomach started rumbling and I was contemplating running home for a sandwich, when, at last, a lovely little rabbit jumped into the box and started nibbling the cabbage. I quickly closed the lid, secured the latch and lifted the box. It was very heavy. I had to put it down several times before I reached the beach and when I finally put it into Mama’s rowboat my arms felt fluttery and much longer than usual.

The tide was high, and even though I was little, I managed to push the rowboat into the sea. I climbed aboard and sat next to the oars as I had done on land so many times before, pretending that I was Mama, arriving at the island, waving to Papa on the shore.

The ocean took the boat and pulled it out to sea. It felt wonderful. I opened the lid to the box and the rabbit stuck its head out and looked at the water. I sat next to him like Mama had sat next to Peacock.
I didn’t really notice how fast we were drifting out to sea, but suddenly I was far from shore.

It was then that I saw Papa on the beach. He was calling out, ‘Minou, Minou, what are you doing, what are you doing, my girl?’ I waved to him, and wondered if I was just as colourful as Mama had been when she arrived. I was wearing a green dress and my dark blue scarf. I had just learnt to knit and the scarf had several holes in it, but I thought the colours went well together. And I wondered if Papa could see the rabbit. I got it out of the box and held it up for him. But when I got to my feet, the boat tipped and I almost fell out. Now I could no longer see Papa, but I could hear Mama calling, and saw her running down the path to the beach. And then I saw Papa in the water. He was swimming towards me, calling out, ‘Sit down, Minou, sit down.’

Papa had never taught me to swim, he said the ocean was far too dangerous for us to practise in, and I could see that he was struggling in the waves. All at once being in the boat didn’t feel so good. The rabbit gave these tiny wheezing sighs, and looked at me with stiff eyes. When Papa reached the boat he was puffed and his hair was wild. Mama stood
on the beach and waved. But she didn’t look happy. And when Papa rowed us back, she got me by the arm and pulled me up the path, shouting and crying, and I wasn’t allowed to go out for three days. Papa released the rabbit on the beach, but it was so scared that it stayed on the same spot until nightfall.

It was getting darker. I looked up from the notebook and noticed it had stopped snowing. No Name was nowhere to be seen. Boxman’s yard was empty but the barn door was open, and I was sure he had gone back inside. I thought of how Uncle and I had walked through the forest on our way to visit Boxman. We had seen several grey rabbits darting across the path, and I told Uncle the story of the rabbit and the boat. Uncle laughed, then stopped in front of the apple tree, admiring its bare branches, shaking his head.

‘Three hundred and two apples, you say.’

‘Boxman had a stomach ache for a week.’

When we arrived Boxman was sitting on a bale of hay in the middle of the yard playing his accordion. He was wearing his blue cape, and played with gusto, swinging here and there, even though he had once told me that musicians need to be careful not to get carried away.

‘There is only so far you can follow a tune before it starts to get dangerous,’ he said.

One night Boxman played a particularly sorrowful tune in his yard. It built up, getting faster and faster, wilder and wilder, like a horse galloping out of control. Then, with a horrible screech, he stretched the accordion so far that he dislocated his shoulder, dropped his cigarette in fright and burned a hole in the instrument. And Papa, who was sleeping, yelled, ‘Let me out. Let me out.’

‘Sometimes,’ explained Boxman, ‘sadness has a sweet, enchanting edge. It pulls at your heart and you can’t get enough.’

‘What were you sad about?’ I asked.

‘I kept seeing Cosmina in the Himalayas gazing at the stars, her hands all cold. And I thought, what if she wants to find me and doesn’t know the way?’

Boxman put the accordion down and stood up when he saw us. He shook Uncle’s hand, and inquired straight away about the ghost machine.

‘I am a researcher of paranormal phenomena,’ said Uncle.

‘Is that a dangerous profession?’ asked Boxman.

Uncle shook his head. ‘Only when you research
at night and risk tripping over things.’

No Name didn’t take any notice of Uncle. He was too busy barking at the tins of dog food piled high on Boxman’s wheelbarrow. Every tin had ‘Happy Dog’ on the label and sported a black terrier with a pearly white smile.

‘I noticed the tins on the ship,’ said Uncle, as we followed Boxman into the barn. ‘But I had no idea they were for such a delightful dog. He looks like a frisky encounter with life itself.’

And all of a sudden I saw Boxman and No Name the way Uncle might see them. They looked almost as mysterious as The Great Shine and his tiger. And the barn felt different too. It looked the way it did the first time we visited Boxman after his arrival on the island.

For weeks the boatmen had delivered his things. They had to go back and forth in the dinghy so many times that I lost count, and they were tired and grumpy by the end of it. I was eager to pay Boxman a visit. But Mama said that it wasn’t polite to drop in on someone uninvited, and that he was most likely busy putting away all those interesting things he had brought to the island. I got terribly impatient. But just as I felt I couldn’t wait any longer, Boxman
appeared at our door and asked us to come for punch that night.

Mama wore her prettiest dress. It was blue with a tight belt around her waist, and she wore a dark red rose in her hair. She wasn’t shy like the rest of us, but walked around the barn, examining everything, opening drawers and turning things over.

Papa, Priest and I stood in the middle of the room, each holding a glass of red punch, which Boxman assured us only contained sparkly raspberry juice and finely sliced pineapple.

Papa asked Boxman if he had been in the war.

Boxman shook his head as he refilled Priest’s glass. ‘I was young when it broke out,’ he answered. ‘I was working on a ship with my father. He was a magician too. We stayed abroad until it had all finished.’

Later, Priest inspected the box on Boxman’s worktable. Painted on the side was a man with a deer’s head and the words: ‘Transformation or transfiguration, you choose!’

Priest looked at the box with awe. ‘My dear Boxman, you must tell us how this works,’ he said.

Boxman asked us if we wanted to try and lie in it, but Papa said that it reminded him too much of
the root cellar, and Priest was scared of the dark. Mama was investigating the apothecary’s desk at the other end of the barn, and I was too shy to say yes.

Boxman had just started explaining the box trick, when Mama yelled, ‘Oh, look,’ so loud that it made us all jump. She had found a parcel wrapped in purple paper. It had a little card, decorated with a bird in flight, attached to it. The card said: ‘For the Madame of the island.’

‘Is that for me?’ she asked.

Boxman feigned surprise. ‘What in the whole wide world could that be?’

Mama unwrapped it quickly and unveiled a pair of turquoise silk gloves. ‘They are beautiful,’ she exclaimed and held them up so Papa could inspect them. She gave Boxman a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘They are exquisite.’

‘I have something for you too,’ Boxman said to me. ‘But I am afraid I might have forgotten where I put it.’ He winked at me.

Everyone tried to help me.

‘Warm,’ said Boxman, as I walked along the wall of boxes, ‘warmer, cold, freezing, a little bit warm.’

‘Go to the left, Minou,’ shouted Mama.

‘No, maybe in the corner,’ suggested Priest.

‘Yes, try the corner, Minou, next to the apothecary’s desk,’ said Papa, and they were all laughing.

I found the present under Boxman’s bed. It was a pair of knitting needles adorned with small lion heads. ‘There seem to be a lot of scarves on this island,’ he said, looking at Papa and Priest and myself in turn. ‘I thought that it might just be possible that you were the creator.’

I decided that I would start a scarf for Boxman that night.

Boxman gave Papa a paperweight, and Priest, who had pretzels in the oven, left early with a clock in his pocket. He didn’t get to see when Boxman made Mama’s gloves vanish behind a silk scarf, only to have them reappear in Papa’s pocket.

‘What a wonderful exciting thing to have happen to us,’ said Mama, and put her arm in Papa’s as we were walking home. Her cheeks were glowing.

Papa took my hand. ‘I wonder if Boxman has read T.S. Somer,’ he said. ‘He is a little known philosopher, but he writes extensively about the metaphysical impossibility of disappearance.’

Mama said, ‘Well, my love, it looks to me like Boxman is managing to make things vanish just
fine. And how refreshing it is to see a man with such passion.’

Standing next to Uncle I saw Boxman’s barn the way I had all those years ago. Boxman explained once again how the magic box trick worked, and when Uncle admired the apothecary’s desk, he was invited to open any drawer he liked. Uncle was excited. He placed his ghost machine and walking stick on top of the desk and began to open one drawer after the other. In the first drawer was a measuring tape. In the second a globe. In the third a punnet of gooseberries, and in the fourth an enormous snake that I had never seen before. Uncle jumped back and, without his stick, almost lost his balance. I helped him sit down on a bale of hay, while the snake swayed life-like in Boxman’s hands.

‘It’s made from nineteen melted bike tyres,’ Boxman gazed proudly at the snake. ‘It’s a copy of Sigurd.’

Uncle and I must have looked puzzled.

‘Sigurd was the greatest dancing snake in history,’ Boxman explained. ‘Some say he is still alive.’

‘Was he dangerous?’ I asked, looking at the dark glinting eyes of the snake. ‘Sigurd,’ said Boxman,
giving the snake an affectionate pat, ‘killed ninety people. The last to die was the snake charmer himself.’

‘That’s too sad,’ I said, as I passed Uncle his ghost machine.

‘Especially,’ said Boxman, ‘because it is well known that the charmer was fond of Sigurd. He had never before owned a snake that could dance to all kinds of music, whether it was tango, blues or jazz. His last words were, “Keep dancing, Sigurd.”’

After the snake charmer collapsed, the snake retreated into the basket. The market square was abandoned in seconds, even though it was the middle of the day and the busiest time for buying gulab jamun, sweet fried balls in rose syrup.

The basket, Boxman told us, sat in the empty square, first in the sun, then in the shade, before evening arrived. From his window, an old man who liked night better than day saw someone walk across the square, humming a tune. The person, it was impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman, went straight to the basket and, still humming, picked it up and walked away.

But no one believed the old man. He was not always on his best behaviour. He stole from the stall holders at the market, sometimes socks, sometimes
apples and once a watermelon hidden under his shirt, and every morning with impeccable timing, he flashed on the street corner, amusing anyone who was around to notice.

For years everyone thought that Sigurd was still somewhere in the town. They looked under their beds at night and, as most people in the town had big feet, they also made sure to check their shoes each morning.

Uncle looked faint during this story.

‘What an adventure,’ he said breathlessly when Boxman finished, and then he gave a strange laugh that ended in a swallow. ‘I don’t know why,’ he continued, ‘but that snake, Minou, reminds me of the woman with the strawberries.’

I went over and sat next to him. ‘The snake isn’t real,’ I said, patting his hand. It was freezing cold. ‘You have to think logically when you get scared,’ I continued. ‘Logic is all we’ve got, says Papa. It’s a shield against snowstorms and other scary things.’

Uncle nodded, still looking pale, and then told me that he used to be scared of ghosts.

‘Aren’t you scared anymore?’ I asked.

‘I starting looking straight at them,’ he said. ‘Then they stopped coming so close.’

I thought about this. ‘Do you want me to get the snake, Uncle, so you can look straight at it?’