Smoke and Mirrors

pushed it slowly through the red hatbox.

And then the singing stopped.

He put the boxes back together,

pulled out the knives and swords, one by one by one.

He opened the compartment in the top: my grandmother smiled,

embarrassed, at us, displaying her own old teeth.

He closed the compartment, hiding her from view.

Pulled out the last knife.

Opened the main door again,

and she was gone.

A gesture, and the red box vanished, too.

It’s up his sleeve, my grandfather explained, but seemed unsure.

The conjurer made two doves fly from a burning plate.

A puff of smoke, and he was gone as well.

She’ll be under the stage now, or backstage,

said my grandfather,

having a cup of tea. She’ll come back to us with

flowers, or with chocolates. I hoped for chocolates.

The dancing girls again.

The comedian, for the last time.

And all of them came on together at the end.

The grand finale, said my grandfather. Look sharp,

perhaps she’ll be back on now.

But no. They sang

when you’re riding along

on the crest of the wave

and the sun is in the sky.

The curtain went down, and we shuffled out into the lobby.

We loitered for a while.

Then we went down to the stage door

and waited for my grandmother to come out.

The conjurer came out in street clothes;

the glitter woman looked so different in a mac.

My grandfather went to speak to him. He shrugged,

told us he spoke no English and produced

a half-a-crown from behind my ear,

and vanished off into the dark and rain.

I never saw my grandmother again.

We went back to their house, and carried on.

My grandfather now had to cook for us.

And so for breakfast, dinner, lunch, and tea,

we had golden toast and silver marmalade

and cups of tea.

’Till I went home.

He got so old after that night

as if the years took him all in a rush.

Daisy, Daisy, he’d sing, give me your answer, do.

If you were the only girl in the world and I were the only boy.

My old man said follow the van.

My grandfather had the voice in the family,

they said he could have been a cantor,

but there were snapshots to develop,

radios and razors to repair . . .

his brothers were a singing duo: the Nightingales,

had been on television in the early days.

He bore it well. Although, quite late one night,

I woke, remembering the licorice sticks in the pantry,

I walked downstairs.

My grandfather stood there in his bare feet.

And, in the kitchen, all alone,

I saw him stab a knife into a box.

You made me love you.

I didn’t want to do it.

CHANGES

I.

Later, they would point to his sister’s death, the cancer that ate her twelve-year-old life, tumors the size of duck eggs in her brain, and him a boy of seven, snot-nosed and crew-cut, watching her die in the white hospital with his wide brown eyes, and they would say, “That was the start of it all,” and perhaps it was.

In Reboot (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 2018), the biopic, they jump-cut to his teens, and he’s watching his science teacher die of AIDS, following their argument over dissecting a large pale-stomached frog.

“Why should we take it apart?” says the young Rajit as the music swells. “Instead, should we not give it life?” His teacher, played by the late James Earl Jones, looks shamed and then inspired, and he lifts his hand from his hospital bed to the boy’s bony shoulder. “Well, if anyone can do it, Rajit, you can,” he says in a deep bass rumble.

The boy nods and stares at us with a dedication in his eyes that borders upon fanaticism.

This never happened.

II.

It is a gray November day, and Rajit is now a tall man in his forties with dark-rimmed spectacles, which he is not currently wearing. The lack of spectacles emphasizes his nudity. He is sitting in the bath as the water gets cold, practicing the conclusion to his speech. He stoops a little in everyday life, although he is not stooping now, and he considered his words before he speaks. He is not a good public speaker.

The apartment in Brooklyn, which he shares with another research scientist and a librarian, is empty today. His penis is shrunken and nutlike in the tepid water. “What this means,” he says loudly and slowly, “is that the war against cancer has been won.”

Then he pauses, takes a question from an imaginary reporter on the other side of the bathroom.

“Side effects?” he replies to himself in an echoing bathroom voice. “Yes, there are some side effects. But as far as we have been able to ascertain, nothing that will create any permanent changes.”