It is not every family that can count a count and a movie star and even a magician in their ancestry. True, the count was a no-count, the movie star a faded light, and the magician a bit of a fool, but that – as any chef will tell you – is what makes the hamin hum.
Hamin is a kind of stew.
But then again I don’t really cook all that much.
In any case, at the end of his long and very undistinguished career, Schmoolie the Conjurer returned to Vilna for one final show. It was late in the game both for him and for the town. Times were changing and without the local festival circuit, Schmoolie’s meager talents had no place left to stink. Besides, he was getting to be too old to live the vagabond life and the town had only weeks before its final gasp.
Yet he came and set up and performed his usual slight-of-hand tricks which had not gotten much better over the years. Still, the children came along with their parents who had been the children before, and they giggled and fidgeted and the adults came to watch over them and hear their laughter drown out the sounds of war.
Then Schmoolie with the low grand opera he had developed in lieu of charisma, took out a heavy sledgehammer and made a big deal about it…the size, the weight, the density of the wood. He called one of the strong young men up to the stage – which was still nothing but a table on a blanket on the grass – and told him to take the sledgehammer and hit him over the head with it as hard as he could.
The young man, an apprentice carpenter, was familiar with hammers and once he felt the heft of it, adamantly refused to do it. Schmoolie cajoled and pleaded but it did not work. The man weighed the hammer against the sight of this now frail older man and decided intelligently not to spend the rest of his life in prison for manslaughter.
But then Schmoolie winked at him as if to let him in on the trick and that tricked him. He felt that the old man either had something up his sleeve or a great deal of chutzpah and either one was convincing.
“Is this going to be okay?” the young man asked no one in particular.
“I am Schmoolie the Conjurer,” the magician announced, “what do you think?”
So with a little more coaxing, mostly from the kids in the crowd who still trusted adults, Schmoolie bent over before him and raised his arms out to his sides. Like someone preparing for the guillotine. Then he motioned to the young man who raised the sledgehammer over his head. He held it high for a few seconds but thought the better of it and paused. Then, noticing all the eyes on him, he thought the better of that too and brought the hammer crashing down on the magician’s head.
Schmoolie collapsed in a heap.
Everyone gasped. The tinker turned blue; the teacher fainted. Some of the adults rushed in but no one could revive him. Medics were called and Schmoolie was taken to the hospital in the nearest city. Weeks passed and nothing worked. And there Schmoolie stayed in a coma for five long years.
One day, long after Letz and all its citizens were long gone, a nurse was adjusting his tubes and thought she saw a flutter in his eyelid. She called another nurse over and, sure enough, both his eyes flicked under the closed lids. Other nurses and doctors came. It was a stunning moment. Could the long vigil finally be over? They all hovered over the bed, staring, waiting.
All at once, Schmoolie opened his eyes. He looked around at the group of people who were gathered around him staring and waiting. True to his nature, he threw up his hands and shouted: ”Ta-da!”
As I look at one of his calling cards, I often wonder just how much of the magic we all yearn for is nothing more than a touch of chutzpah.
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