The Magician
Tanizaki Jun'ichirō
Published in the January 1917 issue of Shin-shōsetsu.
I cannot clearly recall the name of the town or the country in which I met him. I seem to remember Tokyo, Japan, but at times I feel as though it could have been a colony in the South Pacific, or South America, or a harbor somewhere in the Orient. At any rate, it was an unusually bustling night, in this backwater capital city far distant from the European center of civilization. The port was in an upscale part of town. But, dear reader, if I wanted to impart onto you a clearer sense of this place’s disposition, look, and atmosphere…well, let’s just say that it resembles the red-light district of Asakusa, but rougher, more mysterious. A park reclaimed by the wilderness.
If you, having read this, feel (as I suspect) not some great yearning nor sense of beauty, but instead think of an unhappy ground befouled with night soil, that is because your conception of “beauty” bears no resemblance whatsoever to mine. It is not the beauty found in on the lower floors of a twelve-story tower, where there lives a harem to be bought. The beauty I speak of is the air of the whole thing. The atmosphere of the whole park: their cheerful expressions whenever they come out of the darkness of the cave in which they huddle; the light of their audacious, inquisitive eyes. I speak of the mood of the thing itself, boasting night after night of its gaudy mascara. I speak of the ocean-like magnificence of the great park, which overflows with vivid colors, where all is melted away—good and evil, the beautiful and the unsightly, laughter and tears—into a bedazzling light. This park that I am trying to describe was a brutal, monstrous land, in a country I cannot recall. In terms of greatness and disorder, it was more of an Asakusa Park than Asakusa Park.
Oh, if only I could show those of you who consider Asakusa Park to be a place of wretched vulgarity the park of which I speak, just what would you say? For here there are savages, impure, and cast-offs far beyond vulgarity that accumulate like gutter trash. Pale and shameful, they are exposed alternately by the rays of the tropical sun and the dazzling lights of the lanterns at night, their fetid stink fermenting in the ceaseless humidity. And yet, those who can appreciate the taste of Oriental vendors’ century eggs know how it feels to smack one’s tongue against the sickly-sweet moistness of a duck’s egg which has been corrupted over months to a deep green color, even while being overcome by its queer, nauseating odor. Even I was wrapped up in that same uncanny fascination the first time I entered that park.
I understand that it was a night in early summer, when the cool winds still blew. I had just had a pleasant time out with my lover at a café in the neighborhood, and we were in the middle of a pleasant stroll, arm in arm, along an avenue busy with trains, automobiles, and rickshaws.
“Oh, honey, after this why don’t we go take a look at the park?” she whispered in my ear, her great big bewitching eyes open wide.
“The park? What’s in the park?” I inquired, a little taken aback. You see, I had not up to that point known that there was such a park in the neighborhood, and furthermore, there was something sort of fishy in what she had just said. It sounded as though she might have even been tempting me into doing some evil act.
“But you’ll just love this park! The first time I went I was scared out of my wits. I thought it disgraceful that a girl should even set foot into a place like that. But you must have had some kind of influence on me; I’ve taken an unusual interest in these sorts of places. Even if I had never met you, I would know what you were like if I were to go to the park…It beautiful, like you are beautiful. You have peculiar tastes, and so does the park. There’s no way you shouldn’t know of this park.”
“Of course I’ve heard of it,” I replied reflexively. “If I’m, ah, not mistaken, there’s various and uncommon sights to see. They’ve gathered together all sorts of marvels. They’ve probably got something that looks like an ancient Roman amphitheater. Spanish bullfighters, perhaps. And the more exotic, the more entrancing. Maybe a hippodrome. And they might even have my dear, my beloved, what I love even more than you, my moving pictures! Any number of films, more hair-raising to the people of the world than Fantomas or Protea, projected ghosts!”
“At the theater, I have to sit through those respected movies based on the poems or plays you’re always reading,” she said. “You must already know Homer’s Iliad, or Dante’s Inferno. You must have seen the tempting smiles of the harpies from the kingdom of women in Xiliang in Journey to the West? Or any number of curious tales by the American, Poe: terror and madness and mystery woven with exquisite threads. You must have once imagined the terrors which appeared before your very eyes, projected from the film, no? Consider how you feel in the moment that you sense the blinding light, more uncanny than fiction, more vivid than reality, of the bone-chilling developments in the basement in ‘The Black Cat,’ or of the gloomy state of the prison in ‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’ And furthermore, hundreds come to observe in silence the spine-tingling slides of the phantasmagoria. They all clutch their clammy hands as if tormented by nightmares. Women grip men’s arms; men cling to women’s shoulders. As they shiver and grind their teeth, tenacious, they give their eyes, frightened and on edge, all as one to the cinema. On occasion they let escape nothing more than a sickly gasp. No one coughs, not once. Their spirits are so taken with amazement, their bodies so rigid, that there is not enough time to do so. And when there are those who, overtaken by the overtness of it all, hide their faces and attempt to flee (which does happen on occasion), every seat in the darkened house erupts into feverish applause. And then all at once the applause spreads outwards and joins into a harmony with even the most skeptical. Enthusiastic echoes, enough to shake the whole building, soon spread through the theater…”
Every single lascivious detail my partner wove painted a vivid picture in my mind, like a rainbow across the wide open sky. I felt dizzy, as though I was not listening to a story, but rather watching a movie. I felt as though I had visited this park several times before. And on occasion something between a photograph and a fantasy of those phantamagorias my partner had witnessed projected itself dimly onto the walls of my soul, demanding my attention.
“And yet, the terrifying thing is that within this park, there may be things that jeopardize our souls more mortally, things which bewitch our senses anew. There may be displays the likes of which have not been seen in heaven nor on earth. Acts which even a woman of such peculiar tastes as myself has never even dreamed of. I know nothing of them, but there’s no mistaking the fact that you surely do.”
“Yes. I know of them.” My reply was instantaneous.
“There is a cabin set up on the banks of the pond in the park. Inside is a young, handsome magician.
“On many an occasion I have passed by the cabin, but never have I gone inside. The townspeople say that the magician’s figure and face are so beautiful and radiant, that it is safer for whomever is his lover that they do not approach him. There are many whispers that the magic he performs is not clumsy, but captivating; more menacing than mysterious; sorcery that is not elegant, but depraved. And yet, those who pass through the cold iron doors and see this sorcery but once, to a man, are totally enraptured. They go to see it every single night. Not even they themselves understand why they wish to go so much. I can only suppose that they have been bewitched down to their very souls. But you! Unbelievably, you do not seem to fear the magician. You live more for monsters than men, more for illusions than reality. You ought to be dying to see the magic in this park of such high appraisal. Even if some cruel hex or curse is cast upon me, as I am going with you, my love. I shouldn’t be taken in by his enchantment, either…”
I said, “If this magician is as lovely a man as you say, than it is only right that we ought to be seduced” and then gave out a lightheaded chuckle, like the cry of a skylark across spring fields. And yet in the very next instant, I was suddenly betrayed by the faint insecurities and petty jealousies boiling over deep within my mind. Despite myself, I raised my voice:
“Well then, let’s head over to the park now! You and me, let’s test this man. See whether our spirits shall be spell-struck or not.”
By this time we had dawdled to the edge of a large fountain in the middle of a wide path in the town center. A pale marble wall encircled the area around the fountain like a crown. Spring water bubbled forth from the feet of the goddess statues placed every six feet, constantly spurting up with an aim on the stars in the wide sky, gurgling out a sob into the night air, come rainbow or mist, all bathed in the arclights. We sat down on a bench covered thick with the shadow of leaves. After I had been viewing for a while the crowd of people in the street, all at once I became aware of a strange realization I had had regarding the throng. The four roads, coming to a crossroads at the fountain from the four corners of the town, were all choked with mobs of people out for nightly strolls. And furthermore, almost all of those people, as one, had their sights set on the same destination, moving at an easy gentle current. After a brief meeting in the plaza at the center of the crossroads, all of the people who were not walking along the southern road would build a dense procession, form a plump, pitch-black retinue, and lazily make a push towards the south gate. This act left my partner and me, who were relaxing on the bench close to the fountain, in the middle of the river, so to speak. We were left behind by our surroundings, like driftwood caught and held motionless in the middle of a current.
“Oh, look! Such a great many people drawn in by the park! Say, why don’t we go and join them soon?” My partner wrapped her arm around my back and stood up. We joined our arms together like links in an iron chain, so that no matter how much we were jostled we could not be separated, and joined the crowds.
For some while, I just went along wherever the cloud of humanity took me. While trying to see where we were going, there were dazzling beams of light—blue, red, yellow and purple—burning across the sky, close enough to the park and low enough in the sky to scorch the heads of the throng. Both sides of the road were lined by buildings three or four stories tall. They might have been restaurants or brothels; out on the lantern-festooned balconies were drunk men and women plumbing the depths of their depravity, acting with the violence of wild animals. Some of the customers would look down upon the passersby below and hurl various curses, make jokes, or, rarely, spit on the crowd. With both honor and shame forgotten they danced and frolicked, and when they had exhausted their baser natures, men, like wilted leaves of cabbage, and women, their hair all disheveled, tumbled head-over-heels into the crowd. And then, in the blink of an eye, the onlookers scratched at their faces and tore their clothes from their bodies. I watched as some of the victims shrieked, while others let out deathlike groans and turned corpselike. One man, suspended like seaweed in water, was held upside-down, his legs sticking into the air like two stakes, as the crowd continued onwards. The man’s legs were beset on all sides by scoundrels. They hit him and scratched him, first removing his shoes, then ripping his trousers away, and finally stripping away his socks. One woman was tossed above the crowd as they cheered, “One, two, THREE!” Her cheeks swollen red with drink, she called to mind the figures in Giovanni Segantini’s The Punishment of Lust.
“It seems as though everyone’s gone mad!” I exclaimed, looking back towards my lover. “Is there a carnival, I wonder?”
“No, it’s like this all the time. The people who come here act like this all year round. They’re constantly drunk. The only sober-minded people in sight are you and me.” She murmured this offhandedly, in a clear, earnest tone. Reflected in my eyes was a lone goddess surrounded by a troupe of demons, my partner, who never lost her pure passion or her natural composure, no matter how tumultuous the port or disorderly the environs. When I gazed into her bright eyes, I could not help but think of a crystal clear autumn sky, gentle as the eye of a storm.
We were so buffeted by the waves of pedestrians that we walked an inch at a time, but though it took us what seemed like over an hour, at last we came to the restrained entrance to the park. When those who had participated in the packed march, which looked like the path of some giant crawling centipede, finally reached the plaza inside the gates, they split into groups of three to five people and scattered about as they pleased. It did not look very much like a park; instead of hills or trees, there were towering structures upon which man had exhausted the very perfection of his labor. The tiled roofs, countless lights, and lofty buildings gave the place the look of a fairy-land. Standing dumbfounded in the center of the plaza, I was foremost enraptured by an advertisement for the Grand Circus, emblazoned on an illuminated lantern hanging in the middle of the sky. It looked like an oversized Ferris wheel. It might have been several dozen feet in diameter, but it was too big to tell. The letters GRAND CIRCUS were visible on the axles of the cars. The spokes of the several cars were similarly decorated all across their surfaces with light-bulbs that projected an eager arrow of light, a giant’s umbrella opening in the sky that continued gradually to a more impressive state. And what was even more astonishing were several hundred acrobats, men and women dressed in outfits so skimpy they might as well have been naked, climbing all over the off-limits pillars of fire. As the Ferris wheel went round, they would continuously leap from a higher spoke to a lower one. From far off it looked as though they were fruits dangling from the cars. Their clothes fluttering, they jumped into the bright night, like beads of dew falling in the sun, like angelic dancers.
It was not just the cars that made me wary, but the work of the lights that covered almost the whole section of the sky above the park. They were weird, buffoonish, rapturous. I observed their flashing and undulating, like fireworks which hung eternally in the air. If you were to show this this spectacle to people from Tokyo at a summer festival and people from Kyoto unaccustomed to the mountain fires lit during their festivals, which party would be more shocked, I wonder? The countless bold patterns and exquisite lines were such that even a brief glance would sear itself upon your memory. Among them must have been demons endowed with superhuman strength. You could say that it was graffiti scrawled without regard for humanity across the sky. Or perhaps that, emboldened with the knowledge that the Day of Judgment was soon to come, the sun and the laughing moon and the weeping comets had all gone mad, and the stars were all huddled about the horizon.
The plaza where we were standing formed a perfect half-circle. Beyond the arc of the plaza stretched out seven roads going in all directions, like the ribs of a paper fan. The widest and most elegant of these seven roads was an avenue straight down the middle. It appeared that the most popular booths of the several hundred exhibitions in the park were clustered along this road. There were austere ones, dangerous-looking ones, ones in disarray, ones perfectly symmetrical. Structures in all kinds of styles, and of varying heights, stood end-to-end like a stronghold or a fortress. Right next to a monastery modeled after the Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto you might find a tall building in the Indo-Gothic style. There were monstrous palaces that rose so high they swelled like cups, and an extraordinary tower at a sharper angle than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. A house built entirely out of human faces. A roof as rough as a crumpled piece of paper. Pillars warped as an octopus’s tentacles. They made use of undulating things, swirling things, bending things, warping things, any number of shapes. Some scraped the earth while others reached up to the sky.
“Honey…” My beloved tugged lightly on my shoulder. “What is it you find so fascinating? You must have been here before.”
“Oh, all the time,” I nodded, flustered. I felt like I couldn’t back down now. “But…I can’t help it. It charms me, every time. That’s how much I love this park!”
She smiled innocently. “You don’t say! The magician’s hut is over this way. Shall we head over there?” She raised her left hand and pointed down the avenue.
The shiny red head of a demon, large as the Great Buddha statue of Kamakura, glared at us from the entrance to the avenue. Its eyes blazed with emerald green electric lights and its saw-like teeth were bared. Its jaws formed an arch large enough for several people to pass through. The eyes of the demon were far from the only illuminated section of the park; the whole complex was as bright as a blast furnace. But this central avenue was a measure above the rest. Fire was spurting from the demon’s mouth. When I jumped into the fires, urged on by my lover, I felt as though I was really aflame.
As we approached the exhibitions lining both sides of the road, they became more plentiful, more tasteless, more fantastic. Posters for moving pictures drawn with a total lack of reserve, depicting absurd scenarios with garish materials. The stink of the paint slathered onto every building, each with its own individual, somehow unpleasant, color. The banners inviting customers into shops. The puppets, the orchestra, the mayhem and the lewdness of the costume parade. Were I to go into more detail, dear readers, I fear you might avert your eyes in terror. If I could distill my feelings about what I saw there into a single image, it would be of a comely young woman with a pus-festering tumor on her face: an uncanny mixture of the beautiful and the unseemly. It was like viewing a world composed totally of perfectly geometrical shapes through a carnival mirror, where everything is woven in with irregularity, ridicule, and unpleasantness. To be honest, as I walked through there, I felt a bottomless anxiety and fear, such that countless times I tried to flee.
If my partner had not been there with me, I might well have turned tail and ran halfway through the proceedings. She strode forward with an innocent, childlike gait, as confident as I was hesitant. I stole glances at her with cowardly eyes to see how she was doing. Always she had a broad, unburdened grin. “How is it that a modest, gentle girl like yourself so calm in the face of such wild sights?” I repeatedly failed to ask.
And what might she say when I finally did ask? “You have a calming influence on me,” perhaps. “Because my lover is at my side. For those well-versed in the indecision of love, it is neither frightening nor embarrassing.” Yes, of course. That is what she would say. For she never doubted me and loved me genuinely. Her delight at the spectacle of this park was just proof that she loved me. She was obedient as a lamb, pure as the driven snow. This is what happens from her making my pastimes her pastimes and striving to acquire my tastes. Society might think her corrupted on my account. But even if her pastimes and tastes flirted somehow with fiendishness, her heart, her soul, still possessed human kindness and dignity.
I could not help but feel grateful for my partner. When I considered that idea that a weary, wretched soul such as myself, who drifted through life with no expectation other than the temporary embrace of beautiful ephemera, had subjugated a valuable maiden’s soul, I felt a strong sense of profanity.
“I simply don’t have the ability to become a tender girl like you. You’re too noble, too proper to come to this park with me. I’m warning you,” I said abruptly, clutching at her hand. We were frozen in the middle of the road. “I should cut all ties with you. It’s for your own good. How much happier would you be? I feel like a sinner, that you have become bold enough to gamely step into a place like this.”
And yet she just kept on smiling, tranquil as always. Her bright eyes were open. She was like a small child facing a deep pit of some kind of abominable ruin. After I repeated those same words over to her several times, she chirped, in her usual good spirits:
“I’m prepared. It’s too late to ask you, but I know already. Right now, walking through the town with you like this, is so fun and so happy for me. If you feel sorry for me, all I ask is that you don’t cast me aside. I believe in you, so please believe in me.” She spoke back over her shoulder, like it was nothing.
And so she urged me on a second time, until we stood before the magician’s hut.
“Why don’t we try something honey?” she spoke. “Let’s see which is stronger, the magician’s arts or our love? I have no fear, and I have faith in you.” Seeing this wonderful demonstration of devotion from my partner made me feel like a rotten man of mean disposition, but nevertheless my curiosity was piqued.
“I shouldn’t have said what I did before. It can only be fate that has drawn together a corrupt man like me and a pure woman like you. Surely we are bound together by chains of fate forged before we were born! We are commanded by karma to love each other eternally, you still pure, myself still corrupt. This magician is a fool! I will go with you, no matter how strange or terrifying a hell he may cast us to. You may say that you have no fear, but I have everything to fear.” I knelt down before my partner and left a long kiss on the sleeve of her white gown.
Just as my partner had said, the magician’s hut was on a lonely street at the edge of a bustling quarter. Leaving behind the rowdy crowds for this dim, gloomy road did not set my mind at ease; on the contrary, I was all the more unnerved, and my apprehensions quickened, as though I was anticipating some great disaster. Until now, I had considered that this park was totally lacking in all things natural—trees and forests and water and all that—but coming here I confirmed for the first time that they were indeed in use. However, the elements of nature were not small scatterings intended to reproduce a natural feel, but rather brought about with the painstaking help of human assistance and adopted as raw materials to compensate for the effects of twisted techniques. Some of my readers may call to mind the horticultural arts depicted in certain of Poe’s stories, like “The Domain of Arnheim” or “Landor’s Cottage,” but the artificial landscapes I speak of utilize more artful trickery and appear even further away from nature. Ultimately, the trees and the grass and the water were just the same as the arches and the billboards and the lampposts: tools for building. This was not nature curtailed, or nature amended; rather, it would be more appropriate to call it architecture in the shape of landscapes. The trees and the vegetation lacked vitality, instead exhibiting the ideal straight lines of a skillful reproduction. The garden felt closer to the set dressing for a play. All that was different was that standing in for painted decorations were leaves, for an ocean backdrop, water, and for paper-mâché mounds, hills.
Were I to criticize one aspect of the set dressing, it would surely be the appalling, characteristic setting. It held one object which would be difficult to give a natural impression, or indeed anything else. The shape of a tree’s branches and a rock suggested a ghostly figure, arranged so as to give a profound notion. We felt a horrible dread such that we forgot the very fact that they were trees and rocks. I would wager that my dear readers know of Arnold Böcklin’s painting Isle of the Dead. The description I try to give now is close to that painting, but it was colder, darker, and a more desolate place. The very first thing that totally unnerved me was the dark, thick ring of poplars surrounding the district like a folding screen. They had such a mysterious shape that it took me some time to realize that they were, in fact, trees. From far off you simply could not conceive of the fact that they might be trees. They looked just like the bars of a prison: with nothing to speak of at either the base or the top, they formed a towering black wall which continued in a circular fashion. And to delve more deeply into detail, this serpentine castle wall featured two great bats on either side. Their dark wings were outstretched, and their paws had been sculpted into fists. The more cautious I became, the more the outline of the beasts’ paws, feet, and the space between their wings became clearly visible. They were locked between the heavens and the earth, as if they were projected onto a screen. I did not expend much effort into pondering the reasons behind the creation of these skillful silhouettes. The monstrous bats were in truth a dense thicket of aspens which had been exquisitely sculpted into the shape of monsters. Once I realized this, I could not help but feel some wonder and admiration.
“You probably don’t know who designed this forest. All of this is the magician’s design. It’s only recently he’s had his gardener bring in all these trees and plant them. Not one of the many laborers brought in to work on the forest understood how it would end up. They just planted the trees where the magician wanted them. Once the forest was finally completed, the magician smiled happily and shouted, ‘O forest! O forest! Take the form of a bat and frighten off these humans!’ He raised his magic wand over his head and struck the ground three times. All of the laborers had been working on the aspens as if they were in a trance. Then, all of a sudden, they discovered that the forest had the silhouette of a mysterious winged animal. That was when word of the magician’s reputation, as well as of the forest, spread into the city. Some people say that the forest doesn’t really have the shape of a bird, but just that those who look at it see such an illusion. But anybody who passes through here trying to get to the magician’s hut is menaced by the silhouette, and it chills them to the bone. Only one person knows whether the forest has a spell cast on it or the people have a spell cast on them, and that’s the magician himself.”
As I listened to my partner tell her tale, I strained my eyes going over every detail of the surrounding neighborhood.
The magical forest—the name the townsfolk had bestowed upon it—was not merely possessed of a wraithlike form, but was wrapped in a tall, thick curtain which extended up to the sky. This area was well shielded from the vivid hues of the rest of the park. Though it created a bleak spectacle suggestive of darkness and curses, it served a very important role. The area enveloped by the forest was perhaps about as big as Shinobazu Pond. Most of that area was taken up by a fetid, stagnant swamp of pitch-black rotten water. It held a chilly glow that appeared to be diffused over the whole surface of the swamp. Doubting my own senses in this magical forest, for a moment I hesitated in deciding whether or not this was actual water or a pane of glass—it seemed too still to be real. I felt as though even if I tossed a rock into the water, it would recoil off with a clatter. In this middle of this grave, desolate swamp were several moundlike objects—they might have been birds, or boats, it was hard to tell. A single point of blue light, faintly reminiscent of The Kingdom of Magic, stood at the apex of the eternal darkness like a star.
I feel that there is a need to give a more thorough explanation of those moundlike objects. They were towering collections of rocks that bore a resemblance to those mountains of needles you seen in depictions of hell. Rock cairns with points as sharp as spears lurked, devoid of grass or trees or buildings. Though there was a signpost bearing the words THE MAGIC KINGDOM, I had no idea where this kingdom was supposed to be.
“It’s over here. The entrance to the magician’s hut.” When I looked to see where my partner was pointing, sure enough, it looked as though there was a small narrow iron gate wedged in between some of the rocks near the signpost. And on the edge of the swamp, there was a narrow, rickety-looking temporary bridge leading to the gate.
“But the gate looks as though it’s shut tight,” I muttered to myself. “There’s no sign of anyone having left, and I don’t hear anything that could be a person’s voice. Maybe that’s the magic at work.”
She nodded. “Correct. For most of them, the magic has just begun. This magician isn’t some sleight-of-hand performer who banters with his audience and seeks applause. They say that it runs deeper and more adept than that. All of his audience say that his performance is so tense that they’re frozen in place; all they can do is breathe. I’ll wager from this silence that he’s in the middle of his act right now.” Her voice was hoarse and wavering, though why I did not know. It might have been uninvited terror or strange excitement.
After that we began to cross the bridge to the island in total silence.
Five or six steps inside the gate, my eyes, which had already grown accustomed to the gloom, were struck suddenly by an array of dazzling beams of light. It felt like they were gouging great chunks out of my head. The Magic Kingdom, which looked from the outside like it encompassed nothing more than some scattered piles of rocks, possessed the resplendent golden interior or a large theatre, and the solemn ornamentation added expertly to the pillars and ceiling was marvelously reflected in the electric lamps. There was radiance enough to intoxicate one’s eyes. The seats on the ground floor, and on the second floor, and on the third floor, were packed so tightly that the crowd could not move. The diverse audience was comprised of all types: Chinese, Indians, Europeans, all in various kinds of dress. However, for some reason, I was unable to spot a single person who appeared to be of a Japanese manner. And then there, in the box seats, were the sorts of high-class individuals you would never expect to set foot in a place like this. There was a splendid little band of ladies and lords. Some of the ladies were slouched and wore veils, in the Muslim fashion. Perhaps those of high breeding did not want to damage their reputation by appearing in such a place. However, their eyes, transfixed on the stage, shone with the lust to reveal their secrets. The gentlemen were a troupe of known men from all fields: politicians and captains of industry; entertainers and priests and prodigal sons. I was sure I had seen most of their faces before in photographs. Two of them looked like Napoleon and Bismarck; another had the appearance of Dante. Yet another possessed a silhouette that looked like Byron. I daresay Nero and Socrates were among their number. Most likely Goethe and Don Juan, too. I could immediately understand the reason why they were all in attendance. After all, sages and tyrants, poets and scholars are all captivated by the mysterious. They would say they have come to research, to proselytize, to experience. Perhaps they even believed this themselves. However, in my opinion, in their heart of hearts, to some degree, they saw the same beauty I saw and had hidden dreams just as I did. They were as conscious of this as I was, with possibly a discrepancy of positivity.
In the end, my thoughts always turned to this.
My lover and I, along with some Chinese with their hair done up in thin ponytails, turban-wearing Africans, and women in bonnets, pushed ourselves through onto the dirt floor where the chairs were situated. It was clogged through like a mass of red and white lotuses, but fortunately we found two empty seats. There were only five or six rows of seats between myself and the stage, and most of those members of the audience looked to be chic young European women clad in the adornments of early summer. With their long, think necks, they looked like a flock of swans. My eyes passed over the rows of women’s shoulders to drink in the stage.
The backdrop of the stage consisted of a black curtain with a fabulous, splendid, throne-like seat about a single story high, situated squarely in the middle. This must have been the seat of power for the so-called Magic Kingdom. And sitting on the throne was the magician. He was a youthful-looking man. He wore golden sandals, had a Roman toga draped around his body, and atop his head was a living snake. Beneath the throne to either side were six assistants waiting in supplication as though they were slaves. The backs of their feet were exposed to the audience as they prostrated themselves before the magician. This was the extent of the stage: a few props, human and literal.
I fished up the program I had received when we entered from my jacket pocket. There were about twenty or thirty acts listed. I imagined that they all must be world-shaking, primordial magics the likes of which have never been seen before. A couple of examples of what piqued my interest: firstly, something called mesmerism. To explain it in brief, a hypnosis effect would be cast over the whole audience, and everybody in attendance would feel compelled to heed the magician’s every word. So if the magician, for example, were to say, “It is now five o’clock in the morning,” every man and woman in the room would feel the glowing rays of the morning sun and would see the time on their pocket-watches as five in the morning, no matter what time it actually was. And if the magician said, “We’re in a field,” they would see a field. “By the ocean,” and they would see the ocean. “It’s raining,” and they would begin to shiver as they felt water dripping down their bodies. The next most awesome act was the dark art of “shortened time.” The magician would plant a single seed in soil, and then slowly chant a magic spell. In the mere span of ten minutes he would have it sprouting, going into bloom, and bearing fruit. But what was even more remarkable was that the magician would choose a seed randomly from the audience, and no matter whether it had a trunk that would reach above the clouds, or leaves that grew thick enough to blot out the sky, he would have it reach maturity in under ten minutes. A similar, but more uncomfortable, act was called “the mysterious seductress.” With the power of his incantation, the magician would, again, within ten minutes, have a woman give birth to her inner seductiveness. In most cases the magician would cast this on one of his slaves of the Kingdom, but, it said in the program, he would appreciate willing volunteers from the audience. You should be able to tell from the above examples that this magician was not performing some simple street act, dear readers.
However, I was highly disappointed to realize that by the time we had entered the theatre the vast majority of the acts in the program had already finished, and that we were now on the final performance. Shortly after we took our seats, the magician, sitting on his throne, leisurely rose to his feet and strode to the front of the stage. His face red like an adorable child’s, he attempted to explain the night’s proceedings in a low, bashful voice.
“Well, we’ve, uh, packed a lot into tonight’s show, and now I’d like to show you ladies and gentlemen my most fascinating, most inexplicable magic. For now I’m calling it “bodily human transformation.” What that means is that by the power of my magic spells, I can instantly change the shape of a human volunteer into another—be it a bird or a bee or a beast. Or even something not alive. A liquid, like water, or liquor. I can transform you, ladies and gentlemen, as you please. I can even transform individual parts of the body, like the neck, the feet, the shoulders, the rear…”
As the magician continued to wax about his art, I was charmed less by his words and more by his captivating features and coquettish demeanor. I was totally spellbound. I had heard that this magician had ensnared people with his incredible beauty, but the real thing was a marked difference from the countenance I had expected from the stories. What I thought was most unusual was that this magician, whom I had thought was a young man, might have been a man or a woman; it was difficult to tell. If you were to say he was a woman, you could call him a gorgeous man. Say he was a man, and you could call him the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. I scrutinized his bone structure, his muscles, his movements, his voice, and what I saw was the elegance, wisdom, and vigor of a man totally mixed with the charm, delicacy, and wiles of a woman. Bushy chestnut hair was paired with plump cheeks, small crimson lips with virile arms and legs. More than anything he looked like a boy or girl of about fifteen or sixteen, before the sexual characteristics are fully developed. And there was one more mystery regarding his appearance. That of where he was born, to which race he belonged. Anyone who looked at his skin was bound to have doubts, if he were a man—but if he were a woman, he could certainly not be of pure white ancestry, nor Mongolian, nor African. If you forced me to choose, I would have to say, based on his physiognomy and bone structure, that he what somewhat closely related to the peoples of the Caucasus, that great producer of human beauty. But to describe him more closely, I could say that he was a child of all humankind, encompassing the best and most beautiful traits of all races, bearing the most complete image of human beauty. Everyone found him to have an exotic charm, and men and women both had the capability to be tested and tempted by his seduction.
“By the way, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to ask something of you…” The magician was still talking. “You see here before you my six slaves, whom I have transformed, one by one. However, to prove that my sorceries are something intimate, something miraculous, I would hope that every man and woman in attendance would willingly have magic cast upon them. It has now been more than two months since I began performing this act here, and in that time, many wonderful volunteers from the audience have taken the stage and allowed themselves to be sacrificed. Yes—sacrificed. They are indeed sacrifices. They allow me to toy with their precious human bodies and turn them into dogs, or pigs, or rocks, or even manure. If there are not in this audience brave souls willing to be embarrassed, they will not come up on stage. Regardless, every night I have discovered several commendable sacrifices. You have heard the rumors about how many noble’s respectable sons and wives have surreptitiously added themselves to my sacrifices. Therefore, I believe that tonight, as usual, there will be a surplus of volunteers, though it is dependent on pride.”
A boastful, unbearably grim smile dawned on the magician’s pale face. Furthermore, most of the audience, listening to his fearless words, were more intrigued the more he boasted. He had them in the palm of his hand.
The magician, after a long pause, beckoned to one of his slaves, who had been kneeling before the throne still as statues. The cute girl stumbled to the magician as though she were sleepwalking. There she hung her head docilely before the magician, as though she were a puppet and he held the strings.
“You may be one of my slaves, but you are the most beautiful woman I have ever taken notice of. Give me five or six years and some patience and I’ll make a great magician out of you. The foremost magician in the world, capable of feats unattainable by gods or demons. Surely you are happy that you have become my servant. You must realize that it is far preferable to be a slave in the kingdom of magic than a queen in the kingdom of men.”
As the magician trampled on the woman’s long locks, which fell all the way down to the floor, he stuck out his chest and orated:
“Well, as always this is the part of the show where we break out the transformation magics. What do you wish to become tonight? As you know, I am a king possessed of great mercy. I will make you whatever you wish, so I command you to tell me.” He spoke as though he was granting her some appreciated favor.
The woman’s whole body stiffened, as though she were made of plaster. Then, just as she had begun to quiver as though an electrical current was passing through her, her lips began to move, like ice thawing in the spring.
“Thank you, my lord. Tonight I would like to become a beautiful peahen. I will prance around the stage with my tail feathers on display.” Then, like a pilgrim to a yogi, she raised her hands, palms open, high into the air.
With a nod, the magician immediately set about chanting an incantation. The magician had boasted about his time of ten minutes, but it couldn’t have taken more than five for the woman’s limbs to become totally covered in peafowl feathers. The magician spent the remaining five minutes gradually reshaping everything above the woman’s head into that of a peahen’s. At the beginning of those second five minutes, this woman with her head on a peahen’s body, a cheerful expression still held on her face, shut her eyes tight as her head completed its metamorphosis into that of a pitiful peafowl. It was the most poetic sight I had ever seen. At the end of these ten minutes, this woman, now in body totally a peahen, noisily flapped open her elegant wings and started to strut, then flew above the audience several times before coming in for a landing beside the throne. Just as she set down on the stairs, she fanned open her tail feathers. It was like all the leaves coming off of a tree at once.
The magician worked his magic on each of his five remaining slaves in turn. One man wished to sit upon the throne; he was turned into a leopard skin. The remaining two men, who wanted to light up the stage, became lampposts and were placed on either side. The remaining two female slaves were turned into butterflies and were lightly perched on the magician’s body. Their wish had been granted.
The audience, having witnessed several impossible acts take place before their very eyes, had been shocked into silence. They were stupefied, doubting everything they had seen. In the instant when the first male slave, with a tap from the magician’s wand, had been turned into a flat leopard skin amidst the gasps of the audience, I watched a woman in front of me bury her head in her date’s shoulder in fright.
“Well, what’ll it be?” asked the magician. All the more boastful, he brushed off the two butterflies fluttering around him. “Is there anybody willing to offer themselves up as a sacrifice? Do you think it is so distasteful to become a captive of the Magic Kingdom? Do you value your attachment to your human shapes and ways that much? Perhaps you think that the state my slaves are in is a wretched one. Yes, in body they are butterflies, a peahen, a leopard skin, and lampposts, but they still have human sensations and emotions. Their hearts are brimming with pleasure and happiness that you, ladies and gentlemen, could not experience even in your dreams! I believe that with just a single brush with that same magic, you can feel that same happiness.”
When the magician looked around the auditorium, everybody had their eyes lowered to their knees. Perhaps they feared that if they made contact with the magician’s eyes they would be hypnotized. And then suddenly, the overwhelming silence in the auditorium was broken by the rustling of clothes and a pair of woman’s shoes walking towards the stage.
“O magician, surely you must recall me. I, who was bewitched more by your beauty than your magic, have come again today. Make me a sacrifice and I will accept the fact that my love has been achieved. O magician, make me into your golden sandals!”
Beckoned by this voice, I nervously lifted my head. I saw one of the veiled ladies I had seen in the box seats prostrating herself before the magician like a martyr.
Several men and women stumbled onto the stage after the veiled lady, tempted by the magician’s charms. And then I surprised myself by leaving my seat to become the twentieth sacrifice.
My lover gave a sharp tug at my sleeve. “The magician has bested you,” she sobbed. “My love for you protects me from the magician’s allure, but you’ve already forgotten me. You’re going to cast me aside to join the magician. Cold-hearted coward!”
“What you say is true. I am a coward. I’ve forgotten about you in the face of the magician’s charms. I’ve completely and totally lost. But you see, there’s a bigger problem for me beyond who wins and who loses.”
I was compelled to the magician like a shard of metal to a magnet. I forced my way to the stage and began to ramble. “O magician, make me a faun. I will dance a bacchanal before your throne. Grant my wish and make me your slave.”
“Very good!” the magician laughed. “Your desire suits you. There was no point of a man like you being born human in the first place.”
The magician struck my back with his magic wand and before my eyes, my legs burst forth with goat’s fur and two horns appeared on my head. At the same time, I felt the anguish over my human conscience vanish in an instant, replaced with a rush of joy bright as the sun and wide as the ocean.
Lost in ecstasy, I drifted across the stage, but in a short while, my delight was obstructed by my former lover. She had followed me to the stage in desperation.
“I have not been lured to the stage by your wiles or your magic. I have come to take back my lover. Please, give this man back his human shape, not the form of a disgusting faun. And if that is beyond your power, then make me a faun as well. Even if he has cast me aside, I cannot do the same for him. If he is a faun then I shall be, too. I will follow him anywhere.”
“Very well. Then you shall be a faun as well.”
With those words, my lover immediately took on the form of a cursed half-beast. And so just as soon as she had rushed headlong to the stage for me, she was rubbing her horns against mine, and the two of us could not be separated, no matter how we leapt and pranced.