The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (18 page)

"The audience loves it. They applaud long and loud. But not one single
person believes it to be genuine. Everyone thinks it is just another clever
trick. And the fact that I am a conjurer makes them think more than ever that I
am faking. Conjurers are men who trick you. They trick you with cleverness. And
so no one believes me. Even the doctors who blindfold me in the most expert way
refuse to believe that anyone can see without his eyes. They forget there may
be other ways of sending the image to the brain."

"What other ways?" I asked him.

"Quite honestly, I don't know exactly how it is I can see without my eyes.
But what I do know is this; when my eyes are bandaged, I am not using the eyes
at all. The seeing is done by another part of my body."

"Which part?" I asked him.

"Any part at all so long as the skin is bare. For example, if you put a
sheet of metal in front of me and put a book behind the metal, I cannot read
the book. But if you allow me to put my hand around the sheet of metal so that
the hand is seeing the book, then I can read it."

"Would you mind if I tested you on that?" I asked.

"Not at all," he answered.

"I don't have a sheet of metal," I said. "But the door will do
just as well."

I stood up and went to the bookshelf. I took down the first book that came to
hand. It was
Alice in Wonderland
. I
opened the door and asked my visitor to stand behind it, out of sight. I opened
the book at random and propped it on a chair the other side of the door to him.
Then I stationed myself in a position where I could see both him and the book.

"Can you read that book?" I asked him.

"No," he answered.
"Of course not."

"All right.
You may now put your hand around the door,
but only the hand."

He slid his hand around the edge of the door until it was within sight of the
book. Then I saw the fingers on the hand parting from one another, spreading
wide, beginning to quiver slightly,
feeling
the air
like the antennae of an insect. And the hand turned so that the back of it was
facing the book.

"Try to read the left page from the top," I said.

There was silence for perhaps ten seconds, then smoothly, without pause, he
began to read:
" 'Have you guessed
the riddle yet?' the Hatter said, turning to Alice again
. '
No,
I give it up,' Alice replied. 'What's the answer?' 'I haven't the
slightest idea,' said the Hatter. 'Nor I,' said the Hare. Alice sighed wearily.
'I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, 'than waste it
asking riddles with no answers. . .' "

"It's perfect!" I cried. "Now I believe you! You are a
miracle!" I was enormously excited.

"Thank you, doctor," he said gravely. "What you say gives me
great pleasure."

"One question," I said. "It's about the playing-cards. When you
held up the reverse side of one of them, did you put your hand around the other
side to help you to read it?"

"You are very perceptive," he said. "No, I did not. In the case
of the cards, I was actually able to
see
through
them in some way."

"How do you explain that?" I asked.

"I don't explain it," he said. "Except perhaps that a card is
such a flimsy thing, it is so thin, and not solid like metal or thick like a
door. That is all the explanation I can give. There are many things in this
world,
doctor, that
we cannot explain."

"Yes," I said. "There certainly are."

"Would you be kind enough to take me home now," he said. "I feel
very tired."

I drove him home in my car.

That night I didn't go to bed. I was far too worked up to sleep. I had just
witnessed a miracle. This man would have doctors all over the world turning
somersaults in the air! He could change the whole course of medicine! From a
doctor's point of view, he must be the most valuable man alive! We doctors must
get hold of him and keep him safe. We must look after him. We mustn't let him
go. We must find out exactly how it is that an image can be sent to the brain
without using the eyes. And if we do that, then blind people might be able to
see and deaf people might be able to hear. Above all, this incredible man must
not be ignored and left to wander around India, living in cheap rooms and
playing in second-rate theatres.

I got so steamed up thinking about this that after a while I grabbed a notebook
and a pen and started writing down with great care everything that
Imhrat
Khan had told me that evening. I used the notes I
had made while he was talking. I wrote for five hours without stopping. And at
eight o'clock the next morning, when it was time to go to the hospital, I had
finished the most important part, the pages you have just read.

At the hospital that morning, I didn't see Dr Marshall until we met in the
Doctors' Rest Room in our tea-break.

I told him as much as I could in the ten minutes we had to spare. "I'm
going back to the theatre tonight," I said. "I must talk to him
again. I must persuade him to stay here. We mustn't lose him now."

"I'll come with you," Dr Marshall said.

"Right," I said. "We'll watch the show first and then we'll take
him out to supper."

At a quarter to seven that evening, I drove Dr Marshall in my car to Acacia
Road. I parked the car, and the two of us walked over to the Royal Palace Hall.

"There's something wrong," I said. "Where is everybody?"

There was no crowd outside the hall and the doors were closed. The poster
advertising the show was still in place, but I now saw that someone had written
across it in large printed letters, using black paint, the words TONIGHT'S
PERFORMANCE CANCELLED. There was an old gatekeeper standing by the locked
doors.

"What happened?" I asked him.

"Someone died," he said.

"Who?"
I asked, knowing already who it was.

"The man who sees without his eyes," the gatekeeper answered.

"How did he die?" I cried.
"When?
Where?"

"They say he died in his bed," the gatekeeper said. "He went to
sleep and never woke up. These things happen."

We walked slowly back to the car. I felt an overwhelming sense of grief and
anger. I should never have allowed this precious man to go home last night. I
should have kept him. I should have given him my bed and taken care of him. I
shouldn't have let him out of my sight.
Imhrat
Khan
was a maker of miracles. He had communicated with mysterious and dangerous
forces that are beyond the reach of ordinary people. He had also broken all the
rules. He had performed miracles in public. He had taken money for doing so.
And, worst of all, he had told some of those secrets to an outsider -- me. Now
he was dead.

"So that's that," Dr Marshall said.

"Yes," I said. "It's all over. Nobody will ever know how he did
it."

This is a true and accurate report of everything that took place concerning my
two meetings with
Imhrat
Khan.

signed
John F. Cartwright, M.D.

Bombay, 4th December,
1934

"Well, well, well," said Henry Sugar. "Now that is extremely
interesting."

He closed the exercise-book and sat gazing at the rain splashing against the
windows of the library.

"This," Henry Sugar went on, talking aloud to himself, "is a
terrific piece of information. It could change my life."

The piece of information Henry was referring to was that
Imhrat
Khan had trained himself to read the value of a playing-card from the reverse
side. And Henry the gambler, the rather dishonest gambler, had realized at once
that if only
he
could train himself
to do the same thing, he could make a fortune.

For a few moments, Henry allowed his mind to dwell upon the
marvellous
things he would be able to do if he could read cards from the back. He would
win every single time at canasta and bridge and poker. And better still, he
would be able to go into any casino in the world and clean up at blackjack and
all the other high-powered card games they played!

In gambling casinos, as Henry knew very well, nearly everything depended in the
end upon the turn of a single card, and if you knew beforehand what the value
of that card was, then you were home and dry!

But could he do it? Could he actually train himself to do this thing?

He didn't see why not. That stuff with the candle-flame didn't appear to be
particularly hard work. And according to the book, that was really all there
was to it -- just staring into the middle of the flame and trying to
concentrate upon the face of the person you loved best.

It would probably take him several years to bring it off, but then who in the
world wouldn't be willing to train for a few years in order to beat the casinos
every time he went in?

"By golly," he said aloud, "I'll do it! I'm going to do
it!"

He sat very still in the armchair in the library, working out a plan of
campaign. Above all, he would tell nobody what he was up to. He would steal the
little book from the library so that none of his friends might come upon it by
chance and learn the secret. He would carry the book with him wherever he went.
It would be his bible. He couldn't possibly go out and find a real live yogi to
instruct him, so the book would be his yogi instead. It would be his teacher.

Henry stood up and slipped the slim blue exercise-book under his jacket. He
walked out of the library and went straight upstairs to the bedroom they had
given him for the week-end. He got out his suitcase and hid the book underneath
his clothes. He then went downstairs again and found his way to the butler's
pantry.

"John," he said, addressing the butler, "can you find me a
candle?
Just an ordinary white candle."

Butlers are trained never to ask reasons. They simply obey orders. "Do you
wish a candle-holder as well, sir?"

"Yes.
A candle and a candle-holder."

"Very good, sir.
Shall I bring them to your
room?"

"No. I'll hang around here till you find them."

The butler soon found a candle and a candle-holder. Henry said, "And now
could you find me a ruler?" The butler found him a ruler. Henry thanked
him and returned to his bedroom.

When he was inside the bedroom, he locked the door. He drew all the curtains so
that the place was in twilight. He put the candle-holder with the candle in it
on the dressing-table and pulled up a chair. When he sat down, he noticed with
satisfaction that his eyes were exactly level with the wick of the candle. Now,
using the ruler, he positioned his face sixteen inches from the candle, which
was what the book said must be done.

That Indian fellow had visualized the face of the person he loved best, which
in his case was a brother. Henry didn't have a brother. He decided instead to
visualize his own face. This was a good choice because when you are as selfish
and self-
centred
as Henry was,
then
one's own face is certainly the face one loves best of all. Moreover, it was
the face he
knew
best of all. He
spent so much time looking at it in the
mirror,
he
knew every twist and wrinkle.

With his cigarette-lighter, he lit the wick. A yellow flame appeared and burned
steadily.

Henry sat quite still and stared into the candle-flame. The book had been quite
right. The flame, when you looked into it closely, did have three separate
parts. There was the yellow outside. Then there was the mauve inner sheath. And
right in the middle was the tiny magic area of absolute blackness. He stared at
the tiny black area. He focused his eyes upon it and kept staring at it, and as
he did so, an extraordinary thing happened. His mind went absolutely blank, and
his brain ceased fidgeting around, and all at once it felt as though he
himself, his whole body, was actually encased within the flame, sitting snug
and
cosy
within the little black area of nothingness.

With no trouble at all, Henry allowed the image of his own face to swim into
sight before him. He concentrated upon the face and nothing but the face. He
blocked out all other thoughts. He succeeded completely in doing this, but only
for about fifteen seconds. After that, his mind began to wander and he found
himself thinking about gambling casinos and how much money he was going to win.
At this point, he looked away from the candle and gave himself a rest.

This was his very first effort. He was thrilled. He had done it. Admittedly he
hadn't kept it up for very long.
But neither had that Indian
fellow on the first attempt.

After a few minutes, he tried again. It went well. He had no stop-watch to time
himself with, but he sensed that this was definitely a longer go than the first
one.

"It's terrific!" he cried. "I'm going to succeed! I'm going to
do it!" He had never been so excited by anything in his life.