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The World's Greatest by Gerald Budinski (Issue 10)

There are those who call him the world’s greatest magician and he does fill his Las Vegas theater with raving crowds. I, who made him what he is, know better. At any rate, the proper term for a most worthy art, is illusionist. And at that, I can testify that he is a fraud.

I first encountered the Great Zirconi (as he was called then) in a club near the Buffalo airport. That is how great he was – a club near the Buffalo airport. I had been headed from Philadelphia to a booking in Chicago when the snowstorm canceled my connection. Damn, a night in Buffalo – what to do beside watch TV in a dreary room. The desk clerk said there was a nightclub directly across the street with a magician who was pretty good. Why not? We illusionists are fond of appraising and even borrowing from each other’s art.

The act was lame, but I did stick around, attracted by his intoxicatingly beautiful assistant, he called Miriam. If I didn’t see any tricks worth stealing, I had fantasies of spiriting her away. But back to Zirconi’s act. Oh, the illusions were mystifying enough – I never was able to figure out how he did them, but he nonetheless managed to make them all boring. “Here I present the same dark miracle with which Moses terrified the great Pharaoh.” And actually, I think the adjectives are my invention. What he did was lay the wooden staff he carried on the floor, then covered it with a long black cloth. After a brief incantation that was supposed to sound Hebrew, out wriggled a six-foot python. I later figured that the snake was trained to hide up his pants legs.

As I indicated, the man had no stage presence or sense of entertainment. “I will start with the world’s most amazing card trick,” he droned. In contrast, my tricks may lack originality but I will have the audience laughing, gasping, cheering, and praying for my success at my next attempt at the impossible.

Zirconi, then was tall and pasty looking, only a small pointy goatee to spruce up his dreary face. He wore a threadbare black tuxedo, with a pitiful cape that was too short for his stature. After his act I looked all over, trying to find Miriam, but it was as if she had disappeared altogether. How appropriate.

I ran into him again a couple of years later at a festival of magic in San Francisco. It was a sort of convention for lesser but rising magicians but also with many venues to entertain the public and to become better known. After completing my act, I wandered across the street to another club – much smaller and shoddier - where, Zirconi, of all people was performing. Again, I was mystified by some of his tricks but nearly laughed out loud at his poor presentation. He did do an amazing disappearance trick with his gorgeous assistant, so convincing that my heart pounded with concern that she might never reappear again. After the show, I got the germ of a brilliant idea. My own tricks were getting stale and I was having trouble mastering or even thinking up new ones. What if I were to enter into a sort of partnership with Zirconi? And wouldn’t I mind sharing his assistant?

I mulled the idea around for a couple of days and worked to present my case in the most diplomatic terms. Magicians are a prideful breed and easily insulted. I called him over to my table after his act one night. The proposition I made was that we would be partners in that he would teach me his tricks and I would do the presentation in my highly entertaining way. His face stretched into the most hateful and sardonic grin and he said, “And I would not appear on stage at all?”

I could see that this deeply bothered him so I quickly backtracked. “Not at all. I was thinking that I would present you as the master wizard who had taught me the secrets of the orient. And then you would perform the most spectacular tricks.”

His nose wrinkled and his grin turned to a grimace. “But you would open and close the act and I suppose get top billing.”

“We can work the details out later.”

Zirconi stood up and said, “Well Mr. Townsend, a very interesting concept, but I’m afraid I am not interested.” I bowed my head in farewell but gave him my card with my cell number, in case he changed his mind. There was small satisfaction that he put the card in his breast pocket instead of discarding it.

I was still in San Francisco on a gig I had landed when about a week later I got a call from Zirconi. He was surprisingly pleasant and told me he had caught my act and he invited me to his home in San Francisco to discuss his counter proposal. It would be on a Sunday night when I had no show. His having a home there surprised me because the city real estate is so expensive.

It was a creepy old house, a block from the ocean on the west side of the city. It must have been one of the few survivors of the catastrophic earthquake. It was as dark and dreary inside as the exterior promised. All Zirconi’s choices of furniture and drapes were dark and gloomy. Even the paintings on the walls were of storms at sea and other threatening scenes.

Zirconi sat next to me on the couch, poured us each a small snifter of brandy and announced. “What I propose Mr. Townsend is that I would do the act alone and you would work behind the scenes writing the humorous banter and directing my presentation.”

I stood up as it to leave and said, after a generous sip of brandy, “No, if that is what you have in mind then I have to decline. It was an interesting thought that we might work together but I’m afraid it will not happen under those conditions.”

“No, my proposition is exactly what will happen. You cannot refuse.”

I almost asked him if he were the Godfather but declined. Before I could say anything Zirconi spoke again.

“I want you to come with me down to my basement and I will show you why the accoutrements of my act are impossible for anyone to manage but me.”

I really doubted that but I was curious as to what he had to show me. Maybe I could steal one of his tricks after all. He made me walk down the stairs ahead of him which made me really uneasy, a good shove could finish me and if something terrible were down there I could not escape. I feared I might have seriously angered him. But surprisingly it was quite pleasant down there. Zirconi had built a little stage, perhaps as a place to rehearse his act. Strangely though, in a corner barely visible through and opening in a black curtain was something that looked like an altar.

Once I had left the stairs the first thing that caught my attention was a large glass enclosure holding the six-foot python.

“Ah, the star of your Moses trick. I’m really curious about how you did that. But don’t worry, I won’t steal it – I wouldn’t have the nerve to do what you do. Where do you hide him – in your pant legs?”

Zirconi smiled at me. “Oh no, the trick is much simpler than that.” He removed the screen top to the enclosure and stuck his arm in. Immediately the snake coiled around his arm, threatening to crush it. Out of his pocket he pulled the silly wand he sometimes used in his act. “What I do before I go on stage is to simply turn him into a wooden staff.” He muttered his Hebrew incantation.

I was so stunned I stumbled backward when I saw the serpent disappear and immediately be replaced by a long wooden rod. It was impossible; there was no distracting diversion no place to hide the snake, nowhere the staff could have come from. A frightening concept was coalescing into something like an impossible fact that my mind refused to accept.

“See, you could never manage that,” said Zirconi grinning, “nor Miriam either.”

It was just then I noticed a bell shaped object on a table, covered with cloth, that could have been a bird cage. Zirconi went over and removed the cloth and what I saw shocked me more than the wooden staff. Under the cloth was a sort of a bell jar and standing inside, just ten inches high and frozen like a stage award was my beautiful Miriam.

“I created her just to be my assistant and occasional servant. So you were foolish to have any notions about her.”

I had to sit down and compose myself and I found a chair. I couldn’t help expressing what now was frighteningly obvious. “So you’re not an illusionist but a genuine sorcerer.” Still I had to extricate myself from this impossibility by probing what remained illogical. “And with all that power, all you want is the acclaim of audiences?”

“Why not? It can be very satisfying, though I haven’t fully experienced that yet. And what else would you have me do? Should I influence world events? The world has its own clanking mill, pressing out monsters every day, who do a credible job of serving Satan’s will.” Then he became quiet and just stared at me with an evil grin.

I began to tremble with a new realization. I was not just going to walk out of here and go on as if nothing had been revealed. Still keeping his evil eyes on me Zirconi walked over to a closet and produced another bell jar, just like Miriam’s.

“No!” I shouted. “I will help you as you wish. There is no need for any of that.”

“This will guarantee it.” He touched me with his wand and I was suddenly a stringless ten-inch manikin floundering on the gigantic chair.

Zirconi raises me to normal size for eight hours a day to work on this laptop. I no longer dare try to escape. One attempt earned me a full week as a toad and I still cannot look at a housefly without retching. But I have made a great success of his act, under his new name and modified appearance. He has been so successful there is talk of a TV special. For that I may be allowed ten hours a day of normalcy.

Except for sleep, and writing his scripts, the remaining portions of my days I spend yearning toward Miriam whom the sorcerer leaves exposed as a tantalus. Perhaps from this narrative, someone out there can someday help me. It will be difficult to make public as I am watched very closely.

If you come, on the way in, be very wary of the snake, he has since grown considerably.

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