Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

Zal, naturally paler than paper, turned gray. Hand to mouth, eyes closed, shoulders quivering, he whispered, “No, no, please — I mean, I’m full.”

Roksana and Silber had exchanged baffled expressions, until Silber, having connected the dots, popped out of his seat and threw his hands in the air.

“Oh my fucking God!”

Zal, with his napkin at his mouth, eyes averted to the plasma TV, at least two-thirds his height, far off in the living room, said nothing.

“Zal, baby, I cannot believe it. Roksana — well, Roksi didn’t know. Don’t worry, Roksi, just make it go away, please, thank you, I’ll explain later, thank you — I just cannot believe I did that. And I’m a vegetarian! You are, too, certainly!”

Zal shrugged. “More or less. But, yes, I don’t eat. . that. ”

Silber had insisted they share his salad, while Roksana made even more salad.

Zal was not the same after that. But it was not quite what Silber thought — simple offense at the bird flesh. For Zal it was the after-effect of news-worthy, and now, in his reaction, he had been forced to act the role of freak fully. He might as well be a talking, walking, man-charading bird.

“Do you feel,” Silber had begun, and then lowered his voice, as if Roksana, far off in the kitchen, was poised with glass against door, “that you are like that ?”

Zal had looked at him blankly. “Like what?’”

“You know, an actual. .” and this time, resisting miming wing-flap, he mouthed it: bird.

Zal paused and slowly opted for a shortcut: he shook his head.

Silber smiled. “Good. Because, as if that wasn’t bad enough already, imagine how much worse.”

“I’m not crazy, Mr. Silber. I know who I am. I’ve learned. I get it. There’s still. . stuff . . but I’m pretty much normal.”

They both knew that wasn’t true. But they made it through dinner, both a bit gloomy with bursts of forced levity, forcing their way through their salads and leaving the orange blossom flans mostly untouched. Silber had taken a phone call, a long one, and ducked into his bedroom. Eventually Zal had grown tired of waiting and left.

He had received Silber’s e-mail hours later, while surfing the Net, unable to sleep. He had written back, Thanks, Mr. Silber. No need to be sorry. I do trust. I trust everyone. I have no reason not to. I know you did not mean to hurt me. “Muse-worthy” is an honor, but not fitting, as I am not worthy of that. I am just an abused child with a particularly, I suppose, intriguing story to people. But it’s just my life. I have to confess that perhaps I lied when I said I was normal. I know I am not. But I think I can be helped. This may sound strange, Mr. Silber, but I believe you may be able to help me. I know by now that it could be unrealistic, that it is actually, as you end with, just me dreaming. And I do dream, in case you were wondering, and because I know you will further wonder, even though I do not speak of this to anyone really: yes, at times I have dreamt, as you might say, “in bird.” , Zal.

It wasn’t until many visits to the Silbertorium that Zal realized its backyard was essentially an aviary, a garden of trees and shrubs and bushes crowned with ornate-looking cages, all with open doors and easy outs, to Zal’s relief. It was a world bound up in delicate netting, punctuated strangely by two large fountains — a young boy whose mouth spouted water, another young boy whose penis spouted water — and statues of lions and monkeys and cherubs and elephant gods. Beautiful as it was — and Silber did what he could to emphasize that: a sanctuary, not a jail —Zal would not enter. I understand, of course, Silber said, but doesn’t a side of you, well, feel at home there, sugar pie? Zal said it did not. But he watched, a big step. He stayed behind the glass doors and stared at Silber’s showoff antics with his birds, who swooped down on his blazer and swooped off, as if used to meeting-and-greeting distant shy bird boys for the sake of their god Silber. Silber went further for Zal, went through the whole round of Dove Tricks 101, as if he were a birthday party magician. He whipped out silk handkerchiefs of all colors from his every pocket and put them over cages and did a sort of silly semi-pirouette and tada, he mouthed: bird gone! Then he leapt onto a bench, in one movement whipped off his blazer and put it back on, and then shook his blazer sleeves: dove after dove after dove came flying out. He tossed another gold handkerchief in the air, caught it, turned once, then twice, and waved it in the air: a tiny canary fluttered into thin air. Zal looked on like his little son, reluctantly mesmerized but only partially disturbed. After a half hour or so of this, Silber left his little courtyard of flying creatures, looking a bit embarrassed, like old money suddenly revealed to be very, very new. He put a hand on Zal’s shoulder. Anyway, I don’t do that shit for anyone, kiddo! That’s it!

Zal nodded. Fine with him.

Those were not the acts Zal was interested in, not the ones where Silber resorted to his slave birds and their sleazy relationship with sleight-of-hand games of animation and inanimation; his aerial cousins’ unabashed fragility, their barely there magnitude, their no doubt compressible constitution, was heaven for those slave masters of unreality: magicians. But this was not how he saw Silber, this was not what brought him, like they were brought, to Silber’s lair.

Until the end of his life, Zal kept the newspaper clipping that had drawn him to Silber in the first place, the one that announced “Master of Illusion Takes to the Skies.” The daily paper had announced a series of shows Silber was going to do in Las Vegas in early December 1999, for a tribute to the first millennium’s aeronautical innovations in the final countdown to the twenty-first century: “The Flight Triptych.” It was going to be Silber’s tribute to flight, past, present, and future. The article gave the skeleton of the acts: the first would celebrate ancient Persia and the Thousand and One Nights and end in a magic carpet ride, a levitation act of sorts; the second, a multistory free-fall descent from a high tower, in which he’d land on his feet; the third, Silber’s own ascension into flight, at the end of which a lucky audience member would join him in the high skies of a Vegas amphitheater.

He basically, the article implied, knew how to fly. Had, in fact, mastered it.

This interested Zal. Particularly the last one, in which a person — a normal person, or perhaps a not so normal one, one whose life had made him just barely not normal — could, for more than a few moments, in tandem, indeed experience flight.

Dr. Rhodes, Zal’s longtime therapist, would have described Zal’s interest as an unhealthy and furthermore unnecessary indulgence and regression. But as the years went on, Rhodes had become a cartoon angel on his shoulder, blurring in and out of high beam, just as easily brushed off — stardust, dirt, moral nebulae, particles of judgment neither here nor there — as the cartoon devil on his other side, the one he’d one day come to understand spoke most devotedly to the impulses that made all men simply men.

He sent the author of the article an e-mail immediately . Thank you for your most informative article on Bran Silber’s upcoming Flight Triptych. It is urgent I get in touch with Mr. Silber. I would like to work for him, consult with him, volunteer, or do anything affiliated with this production. Since you have quoted him in your very informative piece, I think you know how to get in touch with him. I am not a student, I am not just some kid or obsessive stranger. You may have actually heard of me, though perhaps not, since the story is old. I have links below to my story in any case. It should make my interest in this stunt of his very clear. I thank you for your time. Most sincerely, Zal Hendricks