Here Is Real Magic Read online

  This was not going well.

  The snake charmer placed the lids back on the baskets and motioned for me to sit next to him. We spoke about my trip and his life with the cobras. Apparently the snake charming act was just a side job. His main role was as a snake catcher who removes cobras from populated areas and releases them into the wild. He caught his two current cobras in Haridwar—a town near the northern border of India. We spoke about the cobra and how he saw his work as an act of devotion to this holy animal.

  “You are very afraid?”

  I nodded.

  He thought about this for a moment. Then he asked me to stand. He went to the basket and lifted the lid. When the cobra stuck her head out to look around, he gently grasped her behind the head and supported her weight with his other hand as she slid out of the basket.

  “I will hold her head,” he said, and indicated that I should lift my arms. He stood next to me and placed the cobra in my hands. She felt like one continuous muscle, like she could strike through a wall if she wanted. She was at least six feet long, probably seven, and her dry, black scales felt smooth and hard, like small stones. I was astonished by her weight.

  The sun had climbed high enough for the heat to feel unbearable. I was hot, the cobra was hot, and neither of us was taking this particularly well. I think the cobra could feel my anxiety. She twitched and I heard a squirt and suddenly my hands were covered in cobra shit, yellow and thin. The snake sprang forward into the arms of the snake charmer and I jumped away, hollering. The snake charmer put the cobra back into the basket, taking his time about it. I sat on the steps, shocked, looking down at my hands.

  Andy had been filming this entire encounter, and as he came over I had a terrible thought.

  “Andy, is cobra shit poisonous?” I asked him.

  “What?” He looked up from the camera.

  “Is cobra shit poisonous!” I was now worried about the neurotoxic death shit all over my hands, and Andy is the sort of person you just assume would know this sort of thing.

  One of the bystanders came over. “No no. Cobra shit is not poison.”

  An hour later we had installed ourselves outside a tea stand and were waiting for our second cup. The power of the tea stand to impose calm and comfort on this street was impressive, crowded as it was by a few dozen cars, maybe a hundred rickshaws, two camels, a few dozen motorcycles, hundreds of pedestrians, a cow, a bus, and an oversized delivery truck, all honking, shouting, or bleating according to their nature and competing for the right of way. The din from the road was overpowering, and yet just a few feet from the curb we sheltered on the other side of the stand and somehow the cloves and cardamom from the tea cut through the smell of dust and burning diesel and made you feel that you could take a rest from the city for a minute.

  The man in the tea stand had clearly spent years honing his craft and had elevated this beverage almost to the level of a sacrament. I admired the workmanlike way he handled his kit—no fuss, no latticework latte art with the foam on top. He just stood there all day in the heat and the noise and knocked out cup after cup of perfect tea. After the excitement of the morning this felt like a kind of miracle.

  Andy had fallen into conversation with him and I sat on a plastic stool that used to be white and looked down at my feet in the dust of the road. I was thinking about the snake charmer—the snake catcher—and trying to imagine a situation in America when someone would cry “Quick, find the magician!” during a crisis. Other than entertainment, I wondered what real, tangible value someone in my profession could actually contribute to society. I know that some of the top card guys in magic moonlight as security consultants for casinos around the world, and sometimes a film production team will hire a magician to make a stunt look more impossible or a con more believable, but this seems unimportant compared to the snake charmer who plunges his bare hands into the sewers and basement corners of India to keep people safe from cobras.

  I was thinking about some of my best shows and wondering how long that moment of wonder stayed with the audience. An hour? A day? And then it passes and I go on to do another show somewhere else, but other than the fading memory of the impossible I’m not sure I ever really gave anybody anything. It’s hard to say.

  I finished the second cup of tea and tried to taste it as long as I could. When I looked up, I noticed a crowd of people gathered next to the tea stand. The snake charmer stood in the middle of this group, waving at me and holding one of those industrial PVC paint buckets covered with a lid.

  “He is asking for the magician.” One of the tea stand patrons started translating for the snake charmer.

  I stood. Suspicion. Worry. Dread.

  “He says you are very lucky.” I looked at the translator. He clarified, “He says you are very lucky for him. You have brought him good fortune.”

  “What’s in the bucket?” I asked.

  “This is an auspicious day, he says. On the same day he met you, he has also caught another cobra and believes you brought him this good fortune.”

  The snake charmer had put the bucket down on the ground and was motioning for everyone to stand back.

  “You mean in the last hour he caught another cobra? Here? In Varanasi?”

  “Yes,” the translator said, “in the toilet of a house not far from here.”

  I had that feeling you get in horror movies when the camera moves in close and you know some evil creature lurks just out of the frame.

  “Where was the house? What do you mean ‘Not far from here’?”

  But the snake charmer was talking again and the translator plowed ahead to keep up.

  “He says he wishes to show you his new cobra to thank you for this good fortune. Watch.”

  My brain hadn’t really moved on from the thought that other cobras were coiled in the pipes and toilets of this city, but events were moving on without me. The snake charmer had cleared a circle around the bucket and was working on the lid. Andy was up with the camera. I stood there, incredulous, watching.

  A sound came from inside the bucket and then he got the lid off and we heard the sound again—a deep-throated hiss, and then another. This was the only warning we got. Faster than anything, a cobra rose from the bucket, up like a rocket as high as she could go. She was smaller than the others but made up for it with fury, flashing her eyes and hissing, her fangs clearly visible, her head darting, assessing escape routes, looking for options, or justice, or revenge. Again, I was simultaneously in awe of her magnificence and numb with fear. The group watched, dumbstruck, and Andy shouted “Shut her in the bucket! Shut her in the bucket!” She dropped her head, ready to dart into the crowd, but the snake charmer pushed her back inside with the lid and held it tightly to the top of the bucket. We heard the hissing again and the bucket shook as she roiled inside.

  The snake charmer looked at me and we faced each other. He bowed. I bowed back.

  That afternoon Andy and I sat at a table at the terrace restaurant of our hotel. The sun felt closer than usual. Everything—the air, the walls, the ground through my shoes, the glass tabletop, the plastic chair—everything was hot. I went to my room to wash my hands, which still carried the tang of yellow cobra shit, and returned to find Andy studying the menu, frowning.

  “I’d like a beer,” he said. “You?”

  Never in my entire life had this sounded better.

  The waiter came over. He was in his late teens, I think, and wore a brown cotton shirt under a crisp white apron. “Sir?”

  “Hello,” Andy began. “Could we please order two large Kingfishers?”

  The waiter stepped back, bowing slightly and frowning apologetically. With genuine regret, he explained that local law prohibited the sale of alcohol during the day. Would we like tea instead?

  Now, I will say this about Andy. He is magnificent under pressure. “This tea,” he began, without missing a beat, “does it come in a teapot?”

  “Sir?”

  “Does it come in an enclosed pot?” He forme
d a teapot with his hands to demonstrate.

  “Yes, sir.” The waiter looked at Andy carefully.

  “And the cups—are they ceramic? Opaque?”

  “Yes, sir. Ceramic cups, for tea.”

  “Okay, sorry to ask so many questions,” Andy said, “I just want to clarify. If the tea comes in a ceramic pot and we drink the tea out of teacups, isn’t it true that no one could see the color of the tea we are drinking?”

  The waiter began to smile and we were now part of a conspiracy. “Sir, it is a very old law. If someone saw us serving alcohol we would be punished. But if they didn’t see us, we would not be punished, and I should add that I have no personal objection to the serving of alcohol during the day.”

  “In that case, would it be possible to order two large pots of this special tea?” Andy said, indicating Kingfisher beer on the menu.

  The waiter grinned, sealing our cabal. “Absolutely, sir. Two large pots of special tea it is.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen and we heard him say something to someone, followed by laughter. A head poked out of the doorway, looked in our direction, and returned to the kitchen. More laughter. Apparently we were a riot. Two minutes later our waiter reappeared, flanked by two additional staff. Everyone was grinning. They carried two teapots. Andy thanked them profusely.

  The tea was wonderful.

  GODMEN

  I didn’t know their names. I don’t think they ever knew mine either. To them, I was simply the magician who had traveled from America and now spent every morning hanging out by the river. To me, they were a disorganized gang of fifteen to twenty kids that roamed the neighborhoods of Varanasi and liked to see magic. In return, they helped me on my search. Want to meet a snake charmer? Meet us here tomorrow at nine. You want to meet a holy man? We call them sadhus—right this way. Now you have to teach us a trick. My father has a tea stand and if you do magic for the customers I bet he will give you some tea. Come this way and I will show you.

  These kids and their families became my de facto ambassadors to the side of the city that most tourists never get to see. Their parents—as interested as the children as to why an American magician would come to Varanasi—shared meals, tea, advice, knowledge. They invited me to the neighborhood pickup cricket game, asked me to do magic for their relatives and friends, and allowed me to insinuate myself—however briefly—into the day-to-day life of this city that would have been otherwise inaccessible.

  One morning I was doing magic for them by the river when a man approached.

  He looked like a pirate, or a wizard. He stood directly in front of me, wrapped in a complicated array of orange and yellow cloth trimmed in places with gold plastic ribbon and held together by strips of what appeared to be a torn white bedsheet. He stepped through the crowd to the front and interrupted by raising his hand toward me, saying “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

  “Hi, okay,” I said.

  “Yes yes yes yes yes yes,” he said again. He was thin and tall. Around his waist, a golden braided rope held a silver pitcher and an empty paint can that rattled when he moved. He carried a wicker bedroll under one arm and wore a kind of cloth crown on top of his head.

  A sadhu, I thought. Varanasi was famous for its holy men—known as sadhus—who spend their lives in ascetic devotion to various strands of Hinduism. The day before, I had met another sadhu by the river, but other than repeating the words “all is one, all is one” over and over, he didn’t want to talk.

  I was interested in the sadhus for a few reasons, the first being that I’m fascinated by those who devote their lives to one pursuit to the exclusion of all else. Houdini pretended to live like a superstar, but he worked seventeen hours out of every twenty-four, never smoked, never drank, exercised constantly, and completely gave himself over to his craft. This isn’t the same thing as a life of hermetic meditation, certainly, but the two are more similar to each other than they are to the common life of work and leisure. So I wanted to talk to a sadhu about his existence and learn more about the practicalities of a life of devotion. Also, a particular type of sadhu—the aghori—are said to practice black magic. I didn’t know what that meant, and I wanted to learn more.

  All of this ran through my mind as the sadhu stood before me. He began to speak, and one of the spectators translated for me. “ ‘Practice makes perfect,’ he is saying. ‘You practice and that is how you can do your magic.’ He says if he practiced, he could do also.”

  “Once again,” the sadhu said, pointing back and forth between us. “Once again.” He wanted to see magic.

  He sat in front of me, requiring a full minute to settle in comfortably, like a cat circling tediously before finally sitting down. He repeatedly rearranged the various folds and twists of his garment, unaided in this by the paint can and silver pitcher, which kept sliding along the rope into his lap. Once he had completed these adjustments to his satisfaction he looked at me impatiently and indicated that I should get on with it. I stared at him, bemused, and then showed him a simple piece of sleight of hand—I burned a match, then held it closed in my fist, and when I opened my hand the match was unburned. One of the parents shouted once and then began to clap. Others laughed. But the sadhu didn’t respond at all. He just stared at me, unblinking, and I thought of the cobra in the bucket. He said something I couldn’t understand.

  “He wants to talk to you,” the spectator said. The others were shuffling their feet and looking around. A few wandered off. The sadhu raised his hand for silence and then began, in English.

  “Your god, my god. Your god, my god. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

  I looked at him.

  “Your god, my god. Yes. Your god, my god. Yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

  These appeared to be the only English words he knew, but he made the most of them. This wasn’t the conversation I had hoped for. I heard two of the children laughing. “They laugh because you are listening so earnestly to a madman,” the translator explained, imitating me and furrowing his eyebrows in concentration. “He is just crazy. What he says is nothing.”

  “Good night, good morning,” the sadhu was saying now. “Good night, good morning. Good night, good morning.”

  “Isn’t he a holy man?” I asked one of the spectators. “A sadhu?”

  Everyone laughed. “No holy man. No sadhu. He is a freeman—he just travels from place to place asking for money. See?”

  The freeman held his paint can toward me. “Yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

  The whole group was still laughing at me when a large man wearing a Styrofoam tray walked into the midst of our huddle and asked if we wanted to buy any Popsicles. “Ice cream? Ice cream?”

  The freeman immediately raised his hand and the ice cream seller handed him a yellow Popsicle.

  “Money, money?” the vendor asked. The freeman pointed to me.

  “Money,” the vendor demanded, this time talking to me.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Five rupees.”

  I pulled out a note.

  “No!” shouted a young boy who had been watching the magic—noble soul, he—“One rupee only. Five is too many!”

  I paid for the Popsicle and made the change disappear. The ice cream merchant looked at me strangely and hurried away.

  Word spread. An American magician was in Varanasi and he could do amazing things. I wasn’t famous, of course, but we were the only Americans we saw in that part of the city and Andy brought the camera everywhere, so we were conspicuous. Sometimes the crowds got uncomfortably large. Andy had obtained permits to film in Varanasi but I certainly didn’t have permission to give performances. I hadn’t come here to perform, but I had learned that it opened doors that might have been closed otherwise. Unfortunately, the police were notoriously strict about street performing. When I did magic, Andy would keep a lookout, and we worked out a signal—a rapid tugging on his earlobe—to let me know if the police were coming.

  One morning I was doing magic for a group of
rickshaw drivers. One of them was about to turn over the top card of the deck and find the ace of spades, and it was going to feel like a miracle.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Dabbu,” he responded, not taking his eyes from the top of the deck.

  “Dabbu,” I said, “turn over the top card.” He did, and immediately I realized we had a problem. The group—which had grown considerably since I began doing magic five minutes ago, now extended well out into the street, and while a moment ago they were quietly straining for a better view, now they were all reacting to the illusion and this looked uncomfortably like a riot. Dabbu raised his hands and covered his eyes. The man next to him slapped him on the shoulder. Everyone was shouting. “Nate,” Andy said, but it was hard to hear him and I was trying to bring the group back down. I raised my hands and tried to speak but everyone was too loud. “Nate!” Andy said again, and this time I looked over to see what he wanted. He was pulling on his earlobe.

  “Do you have your rickshaw nearby?” I asked Dabbu. He nodded. “Good. Can you get us out of here?”

  Andy was already hauling me through the crowd by the loop on my backpack and Dabbu steered us to his rickshaw on the edge of the street. I was astonished at how large the group had grown. A row of men sat on a low wall for a better view and the spectators had spilled out onto the road, blocking the traffic. Dabbu’s rickshaw was green and yellow and Andy and I slid onto the back bench as he started the engine. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Anywhere,” Andy shouted. “Just go!”

  A rickshaw ride is harrowing even under normal circumstances, but Dabbu grasped the urgency of the situation and we hurtled down the narrow street, horn blaring, as cows, cyclists, and pedestrians hurried to clear the way. He leaned over the handlebars, throttle wide open, and this was maybe the first time in my life I have ever needed to make a real getaway. We emerged onto a main street and blended into the cars, trucks, and dozens of other yellow and green rickshaws.