The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (top non fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

Piet reached up and pulled a cord. A bell responded from deep inside the house. As we waited, Toby shuffled his feet on the cobblestones, flattening the raindrops, while I tried to trace the path of a single vine as it climbed up one of the courtyard’s walls.

After several minutes, the top of the door opened with a creak and Theo van Eyck’s ivory face emerged. In the faded light, I recognized the Chinese conjurer from Piet’s poster. He looked past me and Piet to Toby. “Ah,” he said, “Finally.”

He unlatched the bottom part of the door, then released the iron gate, slowly coiling his scarred fingers around the latch.

Toby opened his mouth, but said nothing.

“No, no,” Theo said. “There’s no need to explain.”

Toby nodded. “Mel brought me here.”

“I know,” Theo replied, placing a hand on my back and leading us into his home. “Welcome.” He closed the doors behind us and sealed us in his world.

We were standing in an enormous room that filled the entire ground floor of the house. At its center was a wide staircase. The room’s narrow windows were located near the ceiling so the light shone in dusty shafts, creating a pattern of squares on the floor. A helix of blue smoke curled down the staircase along with the sounds of men’s voices. Somewhere someone was running through scales on an accordion.

In the checkerboard light, I could make out the stately decay of the room’s furniture—Queen Anne chairs with split velvet cushions, splintering steamer trunks, fraying tapestries, candelabras hidden beneath stalactites of wax. A collection of scales, crucibles, and test tubes was scattered across a long table with cabriole legs. A large map with curling, yellowed corners hung over the fireplace. An air of lax suspicion filled the room, and I felt as if we were being watched. I don’t want to say that it seemed as if time had stopped inside Theo’s house. Time had been ignored.

At the far end of the living room a roaring fire with flames more blue than orange was burning in a vast fireplace.

“Upstairs, there is drink. Down here, only the fire,” Theo said, heading for the staircase. As we started up after Theo, a chair near the fireplace scraped along the stone floor. Theo stopped and peered at a seated figure. We followed his gaze and saw a short man with salt-and-pepper hair dressed in a worn smoking jacket. He was sitting with legs crossed, holding a birdcage on his lap. Inside, a dead dove lay on its side.

“Lucio,” Theo said quietly. “Once a great spiritualist. He’ll never bring that bird back or hear it singing in the afterworld.”

Lucio removed the cage from his lap, placed it on the floor next to him, and stood up. “This is?”

“Toby Warring,” Piet said.

Theo placed a long, crooked finger to his thin lips, “Ssh.” Then he continued up the stairs.

On the second floor, a labyrinthine library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases created corridors and alleyways so that there was no clear sight line from one end of the large room to the other. Here and there in the stacks were massive armchairs, some occupied by men reading by candlelight or oil lamp. One read with no light at all, simply turning the pages in the dark. As we passed, Theo let out a small laugh. “I am not as old-fashioned as it seems. My house has electricity. It is their choice to be this way.”

In a corner of the library, we came to a set of steep stairs that ended in a heavy velvet curtain. The older magician slid in front of me and lifted the drape. I heard a few bars of a cabaret song and the whine from the accordion. I turned and smiled at Toby. His fingers were wrapped around the railing. His breath emerged unevenly as he craned his neck to see the magicians in the room beyond. “A new home for your magic,” Theo said, pulling back the curtain. And before Toby could object, Theo brought us inside.

It took me a moment to adjust to the strange light. The room was lit with a combination of kerosene lamps and stage lights, some covered with cracked, colored gels. This apartment resembled at once a gypsy caravan and a Victorian fun house. Like the city, it seemed to duplicate and double back on itself—fading away in places and presenting many odd corners in others. This illusion was the result of beveled mirrors hung haphazardly along the walls. Broken wooden pillars with peeling gold paint, remnants from some superannuated stage set, were stacked in one corner, and a pile of worn velvet curtains covered in a plush layer of dust lay in a heap opposite.

“Our sanctum,” Theo said. “You are standing in the remains of one of the last Spiegel tents. These tents have as many secrets as we do. Their name comes from the Dutch word for mirror. I journeyed with this one across Eastern Europe on my last grand tour. She was wrecked during a storm in Poland. This is all I saved.” He waved an arm around the room. “She might be a little worn, but more elegant than any Las Vegas theater.”

A circular table surrounded by chairs upholstered in old brocade occupied most of the room. An enormous electrified art nouveau chandelier hung overhead. Several of its bulbs were missing, and the others flickered weakly. A mixture of cigar, cigarette, and pipe smoke curled upward and swayed slowly in the dim lights.

A dozen magicians were seated around the table. They, too, looked as if they’d been left behind at the close of magic’s golden age. Their suits smelled of theaters and sideshows. The smoke that hung in the room seemed to have worn itself into their faces, tanning them like stage makeup. Two of the magicians were playing checkers. One used coins for his pieces, the other animal teeth. It was a game neither seemed to be winning.

Another group was immersed in a card game. Some