Smoke and Mirrors
The first thing Marvin Jenkins did when he decided to become a magician was change his name. With an inspiration he couldn't quite explain either then or later he became Mandar the Magician. It was easier then, of course, in 1871, when magic was the rage and it was all done with smoke and mirrors. However easy it was, when simple feats were blown out of proportion in reportage or word of mouth, Marvin just didn't have what it took. He was a competent magician who never seemed to have the flair of Houdini or any of the other greats. His loyal fans, who followed him from place to place, only did it to heckle him.
He read every journal of every feat knowing how the magnificent phantasmagoria was done. When he repeated them he had eggs thrown at him. He travelled, like the other magicians, bringing his magic outside of London to all the world, except where they toured Athens and Berlin he did Athens, Georgia and Cabris. Even in small out of the way places he was laughed at and his sign changed from Mandar to read mad man. Often he was giving lodging instead of pay and his props were stolen or smashed.
In a small town in New Mexico, who is in his autobiography he called Caralecas but which was probably Quelites, both of which were abandoned after the gold rush and left to die in the desert, but Caralecas was already dead then, he met an old lady who claimed that she was a powerful sorceress of ancient southern magic. This woman seemed as old as the desert and blind in one eye. Her dress was torn and showed a terrible puckered scar along her left rib, one that looked like it should have killed her. She had only one tooth. If you check the biography of Marvin Jenkins, you will find no mention of the woman although his stay in the ghost town is well documented. In it he tells of how he was visited by the ancient god Tezcatlipoca who offered him a terrible bargain which of course he accepted. In truth he met an old lady called Akhushtal which of course had its own resonance.
In the autobiography he tells of how being ousted from a small barn for his inability to dazzle when a passing smoke cloud carried him away to an ancient Aztec temple where he saw the god Tezcatlipoca, the patron of sorcerers and interestingly called the smoking mirror. His description, though loquacious, was lifted word from word from a scholarly work on the material. His description was of a pale god with a spear and a mirror, and tied to his left foot was a deer hoof. He met him and shared golden wine with him, that sparkled and shone in the cup. "I am the Smoking Mirror," the god said, "I am the god of sorcerers, both great and foul. I have heard your pitiful prayers for magic and I gift you this." In the biography he handed him a strange bracelet that tied to a pair of rings, one for the middle finger, and one for the thumb, though that could only fit on a woman's hand. "This is the bridal jewel of Xochiquetzal." The god told him, "marked by her husband with this gem." In the bracelet, halfway along the chain there is a small shard of rose quartz, carved into its face is a spider. "Find a woman and bind her to you as your wife within the new moon and you will be a great sorcerer."
This was the account of his biography, what happened in the village was completely different. His show had gone with its usual level of success and he had been thrown into the street with his articles of magic about him. He cursed the rudeness of the village, and how these outrages didn't happen in London. He had then roughly bumped into the old woman, and knocked both of them off their feet. On her left hand was a silver and jewelled bracelet that caught his eye. She swore at him in her own language and enraged and angry Marvin left his props and things in the street and quiet as a church-mouse followed her back to her house. At the time he couldn't have told you why. It was, however, the turning point in his life and his career as a magician.
The woman lived in a small adobe house that had seen better years. The roof had collapsed in on itself making the upper storey uninhabitable. She lived in a single room that was decorated with hanging herbs, and dried frogs. A few live chickens ran around the room which stank of piss and feathers and a few other, unpleasant smells. A black cat that looked to have survived its own war licked its paw on the mantle. The old woman stroked its head where Marvin looked on through the window shutters. "Akhushtal brings a fish for you, Nacon," From her layered skirts she pulled a large golden fish which she gave to the cat who did not even notice her but continued to lick its paws and look away with its one good eye. "I bring you tribute." The woman's entreaties were in vain, because half hidden behind a pile of fabric was the half eaten carcass of a chicken, livid with maggots. The cat had already eaten.The woman left the shimmering golden fish on the mantle for when the cat changed its fickle mind.
She took down one of the frogs from the hooks that hung from the beams on the room and to Marvin's amazement began to do something much more frightening than he had
ever known. The old woman ate it down in a few dry bites washed down with what looked like wine. Then the room began to fill with smoke and the old woman was now a beautiful maiden the dress was no longer torn and her dead eye could see. She began to dance.
Her dance was mesmeric. Around her in the shadows, as the light glinted on the bangle on her wrist and the chains on her hand, small figures rose from the floor and bowed obeisance to her. She spoke to them in a language that he knew was not Spanish, for it sounded alien and exotic and he spoke a smattering of Spanish. The demons, because they couldn't be anything else, kissed her beautiful white feet and fled into the night.The old woman, Akhushtal, then collapsed to the floor. Her beauty gone and panted with old and wheezing lungs. There could be no doubt in Marvin's mind. This woman was a sorceress, and a powerful one and she should be the one to teach him.
He broke into her house, taking the door clean off its hinges. The old woman began to wave her jewelled bangle at him, talking fast and low. The cat on the mantle hissed, but didn't move from its vantage. Marvin dived across the room to silence her, before she could call back her demons to prick at him. He clamped his hand over her mouth and pushed down. She became very still very quickly and he removed his hand. "You're a fool, an English and a fool." She spat the words out in broken Spanish. "You know not what you mess with, English."
"Teach me." He answered her in Spanish. "I will be your student, and you will teach me."
The old woman laughed, a horrid dry sound like wood rasping through the saw. "You are a fool and English both." She said, "I cannot teach you. You cannot have my dance." She was clutching at her chest with the jewelled hand.
He snatched it away. "This is your magic." He said. He snapped her brittle wrist as he took it from her. The old woman didn't scream. She just laughed again.
"That is cursed." She said, "and it is my curse to wear it." Her laugh was mocking him. "Kill me and be done with it. It will ease me, English." He couldn't get the bangle off so he took a heavy and blunt knife and possessed, he believed at the time, by one of the witch's demons he cut her hand clean off. In olden times such a hand was called
a hand of glory, but it was a long time before Marvin learnt that and what powers that they held. He split the hand in half, cutting away the finger and thumb to release the chain, and he pocketed her treasure in his long coat.
She sat there, her stump wrist spurting blood in an uneven and erratic stream. She laughed. "Do it," she said. "Or aren't you a man, English." He didn't want to kill her. He had only wanted her item of power. One didn't become a magician as talented, if unappreciated, as himself without learning of the items of power. "Are you a passer, English?" She crowed, she seemed delighted by him, a streak of blood crossed his face. "Are you even a man?" His hand had bruised her face, he could see the red mark coming through the leather and the chickens were dancing around squawking and flapping.
He had done all that he wanted to do.
As silent as a shadow the cat leapt from the mantle unto Marvin's head. He yelled trying to pull it free and as he turned he threw the knife. He didn't mean to. He just let go.
It caught the old woman in the throat with the sound of a melon splitting and a terribly final exhalation.
He threw the cat to the ground, hard then turned. "oh god." he swore. "Oh sweet god." Then not knowing what else to do he pulled out the knife. The blood sprayed across him. "Oh sweet god." He swore. The cat lay smashed on the floor and the old lady dead against the pile of clothes where he had pushed her. The spurting of her hand and throat slowing now to a seep. "Oh god, what have I done?"
Then with a realisation that caught him unawares he realised it didn't matter. No one would mourn an old sorceress. There would be talk if they found her. If they found her. He took the lamp from the mantle where the cat's fish was beginning to smell. He pulled off the cap and splashed the lamp oil about and then pulled, with a pair of tongs, a log from the fire. It went up with a vhoom, burning his face and hands and singing his hair. There was a smell like old cabbage.
Then with the ruined house burning behind him. Marvin ran.
He stopped in a small town with an even smaller inn. He put money on the counter without saying a word and the pretty girl behind the counter, a girl with long black hair and longer blacker looks, gave him a key. He went to his room. Hot, sweaty and scared. "Oh god," he repeated to himself when there was no one else to listen. And then he laughed.
His fever, which is recounted in his biography, lasted four days in all. When he came around the pretty girl from the reception had bathed him and tended him through out his sickness. Her name she gave as Maria and her breath tasted sweet when she leaned over him to feed him refried beans and spicy mince. He married her within the month, and on their wedding night he slipped the ring on her finger and thumb and clipped the bracelet on her wrist, almost immediately the clasp vanished into the carving on the silver.
Just like Houdini before him, Marvin took Maria on tour with him. Despite the great power he knew was in the gem, he was still ignored, or at worst assaulted when he presented his magic as Mandar the Magician. At this point in his autobiography he describes great triumphs that happened later, much later. After Maria.
Maria was as sturdy as a workhouse though as thin as a bamboo rod from distant china. Her hair was soft and her eyes liquid. She was beautiful and she loved him well. She never called him Marvin, which suited him well enough, she called him Manni, a name that was hers and hers alone, and he called her his gatito, or kitten. They
were happy together, for a time.
When his next tour was a failure Marvin and Maria returned to his parent's house in London, it was a large house though both of his parents were long dead. If he ever gave thought to the old woman he never showed it. Not when he stared into the London fog or the sputtering gas lamps. Not when he was with Maria. His family were wealthy and he brought Maria into that world. Where he was Marvin Jenkins, whose family were respected artificers of cunning devices.
In that time in the old house in London he began to research things. He began in earnest to study magic. Not the magic of the music halls and theatres. Old magic. What he called real magic. He stopped visiting his wife's chamber, and often she would find him asleep over smelly old books with odd relics around him when she brought him breakfast. She yearned for him to call her his little gatito, but he never did. He started to call her Woman, or worse, wife.
When his eyes hurt from the gaslight and books he would walk abroad through the dangerous streets of London. Ideas and theorems running through his head like a marathon. He learnt Greek and Latin and other languages thought lost or forgotten. He travelled to find other items of power. He saw other shows of magic like the one the old woman in Mexico had done. He could never duplicate them.
He learnt that innocent magic is for women and called the magic of the moon. It is the invoking of peaceful spirits with simple rituals and cannot harm either the invoker or the invoked. He learnt that the type of magic that men could perform was what was called black. He learnt to summon demons and the sprites of the air. He learnt that a spell failing would return on him threefold. He learnt nothing of the art of illusion that he could use on the stage, or so he thought. He learnt how to make something appear alive. How to galvanise a corpse to make it seem alive.He learnt these and other things and by his thirty fifth birthday was considered, by those who reckon these things, one of the most powerful necromancers in all
of England if not its empire. There were a few stronger, of course, who had studied longer, with more determination. Marvin did not want power for power's sake, like those men. He wanted the fame of the stage.
He began to visit Maria at night just to slake his lust, then he would leave to sleep on his own, or to return to the foul smelling room he used as a study. His time with Maria was growing sour. When he saw her she would berate him for his late nights studying or walking abroad. London was not a safe place to walk. She didn't believe the lie that he was at his club. She looked strange in the high collars and wasp waists of the contemporary fashion. She looked like a corseted shrew as she complained and wheedled and pleaded that they just have dinner together once, like they used to. Later Marvin couldn't explain his actions of that night. He once said that it was the pink sparkle of the spider on the chain on her hand, a bracelet he had never been able to remove from her.
He lifted his hand and slapped Maria that hard she was struck to the ground. She looked up at him and was, for the first time since she had met him, afraid of him. "You are not my husband." She said. He couldn't bear to hear her say that so he took his cane from the umbrella stand and began to beat her with it hard. This again was not reported in his autobiography, in which he speaks at length of her illness. He almost beat her to death. He beat a child, which she had not told him she carried, from her.
A week later she died. The circumstances are still open to conjecture, whether the initial beating killed her, or the abortion, such as it was, or if her visited her again. His money guaranteed that silence, and it was reported in the newspapers that she had died of an illness, nearly a full week after her death. It was then Marvin made the discovery that made him famous. He cast a glamour over Maria’s body to make it look whole if sickly, something no amount of practise ever managed to curtail, and galvanised it, in bed and dying, for a whole week after she died.
He did not, at any time, lament her death. He had thought that he would, because he had, at one time, loved her. He realised the potential of the magic he had striven so hard to learn. The art of illusion and something another wizard, as opposed to magician once told him, that people believe what they see because they're scared it might be
true, or because they want it to be true.
He took his show back to the stage and for the first time he achieved true fame, not as Mandar the Magician, but Mandar the magnificent. In his show, he would show real looking murders and then the girl would smile and laugh and bow to the audience to show it had never happened. At first it was just the same trick. He would appear to slit her throat and she would die, usually for a few minutes. Then he would lay a piece of gold silk over her and she would miraculously come back to life. Of course, like Maria before her, she was still dead.
The papers called him a miracle worker. People went to his show to prove that they weren't squeamish. The Times reporter said it looked so realistic he believed it true until the girl got up at the end without a mark on her.
The girls were willing enough, not that they knew what was happening. They were the homeless from across London, never Whitechapel in case you were wondering, offered food, lodging, fine clothes and a bath. They were paid handsomely, not that it mattered because Marvin always took the money back off them. It was a simple enough job, just stand there. Then he would kill them, on the stage. On a dust sheet that the girl had laid out willingly enough not knowing what it was for. When he was done with them, he would use his arts to lead her to the Thames some days, where she would fling herself in. Or to the top of a building for her to jump off. Or even to the great Kings Cross station. There were always enough suicides that no one asked questions.
It was at that time, before the murders became the Elaborate Phantasmagoria of the Magicks of Mandar the Magician, as his show was later known, that he met and married his second wife, Isabel. She was a hardy lass from Edinburgh, as small, he thought as a dove, and as sharp. On their wedding night, in an expensive hotel in Edinburgh, where they were honeymooning, he told her about the slow illness that killed poor Maria, and she held him as he pretended to weep for his dead, lost love. Then he asked her to outstretch her hand and when she did he slipped the ring on her finger and thumb and clipped the bangle about her freckled wrist. Bell, as he called her, was not to know that she would be the second of five wives in all. Marvin was, at that time, thirty seven.
Isabel did not live as long as Maria. However her fate was not the fault of Marvin she went to dinner at Claridges, the guest of many of the noble ladies and well to do of London. She choked on a chicken bone within four months of marrying him. He was even genuinely upset, but only at the lost opportunity for he had had an idea how much more spectacular would his show have been if it had have been his wife on the stage. He never used that idea.
Sophie was wife number three. She married him a whole year to the day after Isabel’s death. Perhaps she sought fame, perhaps Marvin's money, because he was rich before he had taken up money. Maybe her reasons were something else. She remained his wife for three years and in that time she had, it is estimated, no fewer than twenty discrete love affairs.
This may have even suited Marvin because it meant that he didn't have to spend time with her because as beautiful as Sophie was, and she was remarkably so, Sophie was talkative. Sophie yammered on day after day and night after night. During dinner, Sophie talked, in the bath Sophie talked, in a carriage, during sex, in her sleep, talk talk talk talk talk talk talk.
Marvin set aside the attic of the house to be a laboratory, and even there away from Sophie by two floors of the house he could hear her. He could not make out what she was saying, but he could hear her. He began to invent a machine. The first of his Elaborate Phantasmagoria. Interestingly, it was Sophie, probably the most intelligent of his wives that told him the meaning of the word Phantasmagoria and that in French it meant fever dream. That suited him well enough.
The machine itself started simple enough. It was a beam of wood and just under head height was a loop of wire, at waist height were another pair of wire loops, these were attached to that at the top. A serving girl proved to be the test subject. She was drugged and carried up here, away from everyone. A piece of cloth in her mouth stopped her screaming. He put both hands in the wire loops at waist height and the other over her head. Then he sat down and waited for her to wake up. When she did she began, as Marvin predicted, to struggle. She found out soon enough that when she moved her hands they pulled the wire at her throat taut. But to Marvin's dismay, the wire, which was the same type used to cut cheese, did not kill her. He resolved to work on this aspect, but the first half of the machine was to stay the same. He would also use it when he tortured women, though that came a lot later.
The second part of the machine he got the idea from an ancient medieval device called a scold's bridle. He devised a helmet made of straps of metal with a piece that was placed over the tongue. To the left of the helmet was a spindle, this was used to tighten the band over the mouth and forehead. He put it over the servant, that he had left there for the month in which he invented the device, slipping the metal tongue into her mouth. Then he tried it. It had worked well enough when placed on a melon, and in truth smelt fruity from the experiments. He began to turn the spindle.
This had two effects. One he girl began to try to scream, but the piece of metal prevented her. She began to jerk around, trying to get away, pulling at the wire at her throat drawing blood. Not enough to kill her, just enough to distress her. Then with a soggy crunch, that was entirely unlike the sound of a melon bursting, the girl's head collapsed in on itself, with her eyes bursting free of its sockets. The experiment was a complete, if messy, success. As he buried her in the coal shed he thought for a moment he saw a black cat with a dead paw and one eye look at him, but when he looked again it was gone. At this point he was forty two and there was the start of white in his hair.
Within the week Sophie went to bed on drugged wine and woke up in the machine. Marvin felt the only great loss was the smoking jacket which she had spattered on. He shattered her hand as he had with the previous wives, to remove the bracelet, and then threw her down the stairs. He even called the constabulary to report the terrible accident. Again, a nation mourned with him and cursed his terrible luck with wives.
He didn't marry Melanie. He had moved, with the great wealth his successful magic show was bringing him, with its elaborate escape acts, performed by himself, and the fantastic shows of illusion that he put on, to a large house in the countryside of Sussex. He moved Melanie there from the flat he installed her in in London within a fortnight. She was given leave to decorate the house as she liked because his work was in London.
Within a month, Melanie was bored.
By two months, Melanie began to relieve her boredom in wine.
At the end of the eighth month when Marvin returned, smelling of cigar smoke and sulphur. Melanie was unconscious drunk on a William Morris sofa in the parlour. This would not do. Marvin thought to himself. He even considered poisoning her. Then she burped and it was foul and acidic, when he picked her up to put her to bed. He never loved Melanie.
He didn't bother to create a device for Melanie, who isn't even mentioned in the autobiography. He returned home one night, maybe two or three nights later, to find her sat at the dining table, well into her cups. He walked up behind her and slammed her face down onto the waiting wine bottle. He had never given her the bracelet.
She was found in a lake nearly two months later. The official verdict was accidental drowning.
Constance was American. She was one of the adroit American girls unafraid to call a spade a spade but with the perfect manners of someone who spent her life in Boston high society. She was eighteen and he was forty five. Constance, or Connie, as she preferred to be called was the fourth wife, and was what was considered pleasantly plump. She had a pretty laugh, and shining hair, and only wore pink to set off the beautiful bracelet her husband had given her. She never really cared for him, which worked well for both of them for nearly ten years. There was even conjecture about London, Sussex, and New York that his terrible luck was
at an end.
Constance died a virgin.
She had two simple joys in life, she liked to eat, but was never overweight as she cycled everywhere, and gardening. He had her a fabulous green house built in the grounds of the Sussex house where she grew herbs and exotic flowers. She kept his house perfectly and made sure his bed was always fresh for whenever he returned home. She wasn't as clever as Sophie and never questioned anything. Her naiveté saved her life twice. Once when she knocked on Marvin’s study door to tell him his supper was ready, and he thought that she would push it open to find his secrets. He stood with knife in hand, ready. She was a good girl and he had told her never to go into his study. She didn't, he merely knocked and called out, then walked away. It saved her life.
The second time. She stood by the window over looking the lands to the east of them when he walked past the room. He was driven by the urge to just push her. It would look accidental enough. She turned and smiled at him and he walked off in a bad temper he couldn't explain.
Constance didn't fear him and Marvin didn't like that.
She really was the perfect wife and Marvin didn't like that.
He just couldn't think of a reason.
Eventually he decided that she wasn't perfect that she was mocking him. That was more than reason enough. He even spent months perfecting the machine, much longer than he had for Sophie. Of course there was none of the sense of urgency. Sophie's constant talking grated on Marvin’s nerves and Constance, Constance wasn't really that annoying. He never would have admitted that he killed her simply because he liked to kill. This mention used the wire loops but now, practice and use had seen him add a small pulley at the back, just to make sure, because after all Constance was so very stupid. This was attached to a board and over the board, about two inches above the neck loop was a funnel.
Constance woke up in the machine with her mouth held open by the funnel. "Constance, darling." He said as he lifted a bowl of freshly cooked liver. It was cooked to perfection. The cook believed it was cow's liver, but it was one of his show-girl's. He cut it into small pieces and then began to push it down the funnel. With the metal between her teeth Constance couldn't chew. He pressed the meat down with a pestle. She began to choke. She began to vomit. She died quickly and without a sound. He removed the meat, apart from one piece, from her throat with tweezers, and called the police. By the time they arrived, Constance was propped up at the dinner table. The coroner even removed the bracelet for him.
Marvin was fifty six that year.
He began to write the autobiography. It took him two years in which time even the most ardent admirers of his show spoke of the atrocities. How it was as entertaining as an autopsy. People squirmed in their seats and looked away. Women stopped attending altogether. Other magicians wrote to him asking how it was done. His fantastic phantasmagoria and he always replied with a laugh that they could read in his notes, either magic or smoke and mirrors.
The century was turning. It was 1899.
He married Emily in a small chapel in Sussex with the minimum of fuss. He married her for companionship. She knew practical things and she feared him just the right amount. He gave her the bracelet and broke her hand twice. Emily did the sensible thing straight away, something that she marvelled her predecessors hadn't. Emily ran away and took the bracelet with her.
The shows got more and more extreme until no one came.
Marvin never married again. He never took another lover. He died before the year was out with no pomp, no circumstance and no magic. He fell down the stairs. He was dead before he hit the ground but no one heard anything.
They found him two weeks later. Emily inherited the houses in London, Sussex, New York and one in Boston Constance had inherited from her parents. She sold them all and lived in Manchester. She sold everything he had and lived well. She even sold the marriage bracelet he had given her.
Later she said that she sometimes saw a black cat and although she left milk and food for it. It never ate, although her garden was infested with hedgehogs taking advantage of her kindness. No one knew she was the last unfortunate wife of Mandar the Magnificent, until a long time later, a university student found her, kneeling in her front garden pruning the roses. He asked her about her husband and the amazing feats that he had performed, and wanted to know if Emily knew how he had done them, because it seemed his secrets went with him to the grave.
Emily invited the boy in and gave him tea and cake. She told him all she knew which wasn't much. She told him that the magic was making the girls seem alive not in their death. The boy didn't believe her, but it didn't make it any less true. Others came after that and she told them all the same thing. They didn't believe it. It didn't matter to Emily though. She knew the truth about an old woman in Mexico and the curse he believed on what was, at the last, just an ugly piece of silver.
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