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

whispered, parting two trees that had interlocked over the walkway. I gripped the railing and closed my eyes. He was right. Unlike the trees in American forests, which bustled with life—shedding their leaves, changing their colors, and giggling in the wind—the captured palms covered us in an umbrella of quiet. They seemed to absorb all sound into their flat leaves.

I pushed ahead and arrived at another helixlike staircase at the end of the walk. But before I began to descend, I felt the magician pull me back. I turned around. Toby was standing where I’d left him. I brushed the spot on my shoulder where I’d felt the cool touch of his hand. Then I rustled toward him through the curtain of fronds.

“Ssh.”

“What is it?”

We were standing in front of a palm with dark green elliptical leaves. “Look,” he said, pointing at the tree. He took one of the fronds between his fingers and began to rub it. A single note from a distant woodwind rose from the leaf. The magician took a deep breath. Then slowly, he began to rub the frond once more. The single woodwind note ran along the leaf to the trunk of the tree, then coiled up the bark toward the palm’s crown. As we listened to the palm’s music, to the hollow sound of a tropical jungle, the expression on his face was the same as when he had made the sand dance into his hands.

He hesitated before reaching back into the tree. I bent over the railing and stared into the maze of leaves and bark. I felt the tree sway as if a wind had leaked into the greenhouse. It swayed again. And then the fronds began to rub against each other like cricket wings. The music that rose from the tree sounded like the secret voice of the forest. It was the music of the soil. It was as complicated and as textured as the roots of ancient trees. The music flew to the top of the atrium, where it collided with the raindrops falling on the glass roof. Then it echoed along each panel of the glass before descending over the sloped edges of the dome like a waterfall.

Now Toby waved his arms again, calling down a crescendo from the trees. He fluttered his fingers along a small frond, summoning a harpsichord solo. He shook a massive palm, from which a drumroll and cymbal crash erupted. He reached out toward a distant tree, calling down a flight of oboes and bassoons. At his command, a palm tree with thin fronds exploded in a jubilant string arrangement, and a tree with narrow, tubular fronds sang with the strength of ten flutes. Toby kept his head thrown back, his arms stretched forward, and his fingers waving madly.

The music of the palms and their hidden orchestra was majestic, but Toby had promised me. I took his wrists in my hands and pulled them downward, ending his concert.

“It doesn’t always have to be magic,” I said.

He didn’t reply.

“You said so this morning.”

“I thought you loved the magic.”

“I love you. It’s different.”

“But I’m a magician.”

“I don’t have to love you for being a magician,” I said, heading down the wrought-iron staircase, wondering for the first time where the magician ended and my husband began. I knew he didn’t know.

“I’m afraid there is little else to me.”

I took a deep breath. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Toby took a few steps down the staircase, then stopped. “If you grow tired of the magic, you’ll grow tired of me.”

“Never.”

“I’ve pushed everything aside for my art. And why not? There’s a malleable world at my fingertips. I never have to settle for things the way they are.”

I turned and faced him. “But sometimes you should just accept them.”

“Why?”

I didn’t know.

“If I can make a dead plant bloom, why shouldn’t I? If I can make these trees sing, why should I stop myself? If I am the one person on earth who can do these things, is there any reason I shouldn’t? My art is like a trick box. I keep going deeper inside it, finding another box, leading to another dimension. The nature of my magic is its limitlessness. Why stop with one trick when there is another unfolding behind it? It’s like a kaleidoscope—one spectacular combination sliding into another. How can I look away?”

“I don’t know.”

Since our arrival in Amsterdam, Toby’s sleep had become erratic and almost reckless. In Las Vegas, the thrill of his next performance propelled him from bed with the rising sun, but sometimes he now slept from the moment he finished his dinner until past breakfast. On those nights, he would curl himself into a ball at the far edge of the bed with his hands tucked underneath the pillow. His sleep was impenetrable, resistant to any touch or caress, or even a lingering kiss in the shadowy hollow beneath his cheekbone. On other nights, however, Toby could not remain still. After we had gone to bed, something would jar him from his sleep. For the rest of the night, he would move about the house. Sometimes he would come to rest on a sofa or landing, and then set off again on his nighttime ramble. In the morning, I might find him slumped over the dining room table or nestled against a newel post.

I woke up just past four in the morning. Toby had left our bed hours earlier. I shivered in the cold attic air before finding a sweater. Downstairs, I could hear the rustling of paper. In the living room, I found Piet kneeling next to three large boxes of playbills. He rarely slept, and had taken to cataloging and rearranging his memorabilia.

Toby was standing by the fireplace, one arm outstretched, his hand curled around the edge of the mantelpiece. His head was bowed and his cheek pressed against his shoulder.

“He’s sleeping?” I asked Piet.

He nodded.

Toby opened his eyes and looked from me to Piet. His expression was slightly angry,