The Last Illusion Read online

  Zal did not let on, for instance, that he was too scared to sleep at night, much like he used to be as a child. But Hendricks sensed this and, instead of addressing it and his anxiety about his son—now an adult and too scared to go to sleep—Hendricks chose to pretend that he wanted to read to Zal again. In fact, he just wanted to read in general, read certain material he knew Zal liked, but he pretended it was his material of choice, too. And so he told Zal that he would be doing that for the hour before bed, and that Zal was welcome to join him.

  “What is the material?” Zal asked cautiously. There was so much he felt he could not endure.

  Hendricks smiled. “The Book of Kings,” he said, and immediately Zal’s insides warmed. His favorite. It had been their old ritual, Hendricks reading him tales of his namesake and his magical adventures. There was no book Zal loved more, no hero he adored more than that other Zal, from whom he was so impossibly different, to his own chagrin.

  Hendricks pulled a chair to Zal’s couch-bed and began to read. Zal found himself drifting to a different time, his youth, or at least the era that had become the substitute for what is youth in most people’s lives. And he didn’t hear much, just felt the old familiar feeling: suddenly the room had a warmer glow, suddenly Hendricks expanded into more god than father, and suddenly he was smaller, smaller than he could even imagine, with nothing to do but be embossed with words, even ones that were ever so thinly related to him. Hendricks could have been saying anything, but it was a good particular something, like a mystical chant, something he was connected to but couldn’t quite understand.

  Hendricks read and read and Zal drifted in and out. He did catch a few passages, usually moments when Hendricks’s voice went from its soothing rich monotone to something a bit more shaky, a touch more feverish, hinting of unstable.

  Zal heard, We are all born for death, we belong to death, and we have given our heads into its keeping.

  He interrupted: “Who said that?”

  Hendricks murmured softly, “You did, of course.” He smiled gently at Zal’s alarmed eyes. “Zal, silly. Zal, Zal.”

  And Zal drifted in and out again, and the next time he tuned in, many hours later, so many hours later that it felt like dawn—had they really been up all night? It seemed like it—it wasn’t Hendricks’s intonation that riled him but the word magic.

  Hendricks was channeling a new character, declaring, I’m a magician: I’m the opposite of a straightforward, honorable man. When my lord goes to war against someone and gets into difficulties, I set to work. At night I show people things in their sleep, and this disturbs even those who are calm and careful by nature. It was I who sent you the nightmare that bothered you so much. But I should try for something stronger, because my spells didn’t work. Our stars let us down, and all my efforts dispersed like so much wind. If you’ll spare me, you’ve found a very skillful assistant . . .

  Zal made a sound, somewhere between gasp and sob.

  “Are you okay?” Hendricks cut in. “My, it’s getting late. Or should I say early. Epic session there. You’ve been half-asleep for much of it.”

  “I didn’t remember a magician,” Zal said.

  “Funny, neither did I,” Hendricks said. “We rarely got this far into it. It’s nearly done.”

  “What happens to the magician?”

  Hendricks paused, skimming ahead with his eyes. “He’s killed. Beheaded right then and there. Those were his final words.”

  Zal nodded. Somehow it made sense, context out of context, and yet how startling it was. That must be the key. There was magic, there was miracle, there was madness, all untethered, and all one. It was this moment, this moment before.

  “Dangerous times” were Zal’s final words before he fell asleep next to Hendricks, eyes half-closed, also too lazy to make it to his own bed.

  “They were,” Hendricks muttered, agreeing, though only he was referring to the world of The Persian Book of Kings.

  When Zal awoke the next morning, his mind was full of dream refuse he could not easily shake off. Maybe he had listened more than he realized. In his head, there were warriors with bodies like tree trunks on horses with shields and swords; women weeping, women of incomparable beauty, broken; there were wars, weddings, and births; and there was nature, birds—one great bird, greater than the rest, who was holding him in a giant nest in a forest that felt all too familiar. He imagined himself as Zal, the Zal, from his royal birth to his abandonment in the wild, his bird-raised upbringing to his warriordom. He wanted so badly to be great, to be fearless, to look at all the chaos around him and have direction. He wanted to lead and declare and denounce. He wished he could write himself into the lines of that ancient azure-colored book in front of him, the book he could not read, for which Hendricks, in order to read, had taught himself the mother tongue of that one woman he had loved, slowly over time, in her honor.

  In Zal’s head, he was animated like a comic book superhero, a foot taller maybe, perhaps fifty pounds heavier, radiant and rough, a man greater than men, fighting something he couldn’t quite make out, but a force of evil. He tried to make out what the menace was, tried to refocus into the dream world again, and although he wasn’t sure it was from his dream, or inspired by any of the epic’s verses, he suddenly saw it clearly: a magician. A magician with a face the color of bronze, teeth whiter than silver, and wild eyes of an otherworldly gold. The magician was at the gates of a great building, laughing wildly into immaculate blue skies. And Zal, great warrior Zal, was watching. He wasn’t laughing—not because he couldn’t (this Zal presumably could), but because he was angry. In this momentary fantasy, the enemy was, for reasons he could not understand, Silber.

  “I’m not normal, am I?” he said out loud one afternoon, days later.

  Hendricks, who was watering plants at that moment, was unsure who it was directed at. But who else. “What?” he called, even though he was fairly sure he heard.

  “I’ve never been normal and I’m never going to be normal,” Zal announced. “And really, did I want all that stuff ? Love and my own home and a job and wife and kids and all that stuff ?”

  “Oh, Zal,” Hendricks said, coming over to him and reaching for his shoulder, attempting to draw him into an embrace.

  “No,” Zal said, backing up. “It’s okay. It’s better this way.”

  “You can stay here as long as you want, Zal,” Hendricks said, the only thing he could think of saying. “We can get rid of your apartment even, if you’d like. It doesn’t mean you’re not normal . . .” But the way he said normal, more softly than the rest of the words, expressed a world of other things.

  Zal shrugged. “It won’t matter. None of this will matter. I didn’t make any difference. I wasn’t of any consequence. I know that. I can prove that.”

  Hendricks tried to nod as he took in those clashing words, but he found himself slowly shaking his head. “Are you okay, son?”

  Zal paused and looked out at the blaring September sunshine. “I don’t know. But I do know that’s not the point. I know that doesn’t matter.” He paused again. “I know that now. So in a way, I guess I am okay.”

  September 10, 2001. Zal woke from a dream that was all audio, all questions and answers, like a radio quiz show, all answered by the voice of a man he did not know. Question: How does anyone know one exists? Answer: You know when you cease to exist. Question: How does anyone know you were ever there? Answer: It becomes evident once you disappear.

  He shook it off and sat up and turned on the TV. When he saw Silber, somehow he felt no surprise. It made perfect sense that his would be the first face before Zal that day. Silber was on The Early Show that morning, chatting about the stunt, but not quite himself: he was strangely dressed like a sober businessman, in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. There was nothing showman-like about him. No Silberisms in his speech even. Zal listened closely and was only partially amazed to hear their conversation about Asiya and the meaning in bits and pieces.

  Silbe
r: “I think they’re buildings that New York has never known what to do with. What do they symbolize? Money? Sure, money. But there’s all sorts of firms there, shops, restaurants, bars, everything. You have all walks of life, working away halfway up to heaven. What’s more New York than that? And so it is a symbol of the city. A symbol nobody ever really bothered to recognize but now will have to . . . once it’s gone. I think most people don’t even think about it in our skyline, but once it’s gone they will—it’ll be like a person with a limb missing. Sometimes you have to take away something, if even just momentarily, for people to appreciate it, to really see it, read it, understand it, get the meaning. Do you dig me?”

  The news anchor was smiling widely and vacantly. “Mr. Silber, thank you for being with us this morning. We wish you the best of luck.” She turned to face the home audience. “And if you’re not fortunate enough to actually be at Battery Park, in lower Manhattan, tomorrow, you can catch Bran Silber’s Fall of the Towers live on our show tomorrow morning, 8:30 a.m., when we begin our coverage. We can’t wait, Mr. Silber!”

  “Thank you,” he said simply, with the smallest of winks.

  So what was there for Zal to do but contemplate attending? He imagined Asiya in her cell—her cage, my God—noticing the date, closing her eyes and keeping them closed till tomorrow’s time was up. She would be sitting cross-legged, like a swami cut off from the world, blind and deaf, and yet ready. She wanted him to be there, he knew that. Since she and he had failed, had not been able to stop the thing from happening, what difference did it make to be “safe” or in the line of fire? It was all over. Might as well have front-row seats, he thought she’d be thinking.

  And so for the first time in days, he got up, dressed, shaved, and put on shoes.

  “Where are you going?” Hendricks wondered. He himself had taken many days off to be with Zal.

  “I’m going away, Father,” Zal said, and then clarified, “For a while. Till tomorrow. I want to do some things, take some walks, go to the apartment, maybe stay the night there.”

  Hendricks shook his head, not buying it. “Does this have to do with Asiya?”

  Zal shook his head. “No, really.”

  “Does this have to do with the Silber act?”

  Zal sighed. “Partially. Yes. I want to be there. Tickets are sold out, so I’d have to get there before, way before. Anyway, I want to see the scene, what they’re up to. Really, I feel better. This is a good thing.”

  Zal wished that, like all other people, he could insert a smile there to console his father, but he just stood there, with his always-blank face, trying to transmit sincerity and wellness.

  “Zal, I’m not convinced you’re well enough,” he said.

  “I can’t live like this, Father,” Zal said. “I can’t be kept here like . . .” He was about to say “like in a cage,” but he stopped himself. “Eventually, I have to move on. Look, everything is okay. Asiya is cut off from me. I’ve gotten rest. What’s done is now done. We’ll wait, we’ll see.”

  And suddenly it occurred to him that he may never see Hendricks again. And for a moment he did not want to leave, either.

  “The only thing that’s important now is one thing,” Zal said, his voice cracking slightly as he tried hard to rein in any telltale emotion, not wanting to alarm Hendricks any more than he already had. “I hope you know how much I have appreciated you all this time and how much I truly love you, Father.”

  Hendricks turned a bit red, unused to such declarations from Zal.

  “I meant that,” Zal went on. “You saved my life. Over and over. You did it when you first adopted me and then you did it by raising me. And now in this difficult period, I’ve come to you over and over in pieces and you’ve put me back together. I owe you my life.”

  Tears welled up in Hendricks’s eyes. He looked down, wanting to hide it. “You don’t owe me anything, son. You’ve saved me as well. I love you more than anything I have ever loved.”

  They embraced, Zal holding on longer and harder than Hendricks expected. He thought about worrying about it. But he had heard Zal; his worries were nothing but negativity. Zal was feeling better. And Zal was free. He had to be free. He had raised him against all odds to get to this point, after all.

  And with that, Zal left. Hendricks was heartened that all his belongings, all his mess, was left behind. It made him feel like nothing was changing that much.

  But something was. Zal could feel it in the air. New York felt different. In some ways, the city felt thrilling. His imagination was running wild, eyeing every person—man, woman, and child—all the potential, all the possibility. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure Asiya, too, with closed eyes herself, and he tried to send her a mental message. Asiya, he thought, I did love you. And if it turns out the way it likely will, I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything. I’m sorry I didn’t altogether believe you.

  And as he scanned the city streets, he thought about how they were trapped on this island that was now overfilling with the insane potential of miracle and disaster stirred together. Asiya, wherever she was, encaged, might actually make it, ironically. She might be the only one to live to tell the story.

  Zal brushed the ideas out of his head and went to his old apartment. He had left only a few things behind, things he didn’t need, like the suit his father had sent him for the trip to Las Vegas to see Silber. How fitting that he’d be back in that outfit for this final act. He put on the suit, a bit overwhelmed by its smell of another time—that dinner at the top of the World Trade Center that had triggered it all—moved by how doubly fitting it could all be, and he left his old home.

  Only to return for an umbrella. Outside, as he made his way through the evening after-work crowds, a storm was in full force, one of those late summer storms full of gales and thunder and lightning. The sky flashed pink and brown and purple and the city hissed through the downpour.

  It felt right. It felt just like she had said, just as he had imagined. Downpour. Downfall. The Before.

  At Battery Park, just a few blocks from his apartment, the huge seating area was tented already, and crossed off by police lines. The buildings themselves were overtaken by awnings and a platform, and a few cranes that held giant lights. A massive black billboard seemed to envelop it all, announcing in lavish golden script, tuesday, september 11, 2001 . . . come behold the fall of the towers, the most earth-shattering feat of our lifetime. behold bran silber, the greatest illusionist in american history, alter the new york skyline . . . and play with the future of not just the city, but the world • 9/11/01, world trade center, new york city, u.s.a., a bran silber production.

  Zal could hear Asiya’s thoughts break through those words; he could read his own interpretation to Silber that one desperate lonely night—and there it was. Silber had needed him, just as he’d once needed Silber. Zal would never be able to fly—he couldn’t even believe that, once, not even that long ago, he had held on to that desire—but he’d helped Silber soar. He had given him something much bigger than flight.

  You’ve given me purpose, meaning, kiddo, Silber had said at the end of their call, weeping into the phone, a weeping that sounded like howling. A story to tell. I don’t think you know how big that is for a man in my business. It’s everything. It’s a reason to go on . . .

  They had hung up that night with the intention of seeing each other soon, at the show. Silber promised Zal seats, Zal promised to pick up the tickets from Indigo, and he had just never done it. He didn’t want seats. If it came to seats, he’d have other things to celebrate, namely survival.

  And so Zal, umbrella overhead, stiff in his suit, walked the city that night. He walked almost the entire city, from that end of the city to Harlem. It took him three hours. When he got there, it was 10 p.m., and he stopped to get a papaya smoothie from a stand and walked all the way down again.

  It was, in many ways, a beautiful city. And it was, in many ways, his home. He felt for it. He really felt for it.

  By ti
me he got to Battery Park again, it was very late. It had taken him longer than three hours to walk back downtown. He was exhausted. He couldn’t remember ever walking so much in his life.

  And so he climbed over the yellow police tape and into an empty chair, in a back row, wanting to sit far away to get the full view. Huddled in his own arms, under the finally dry skies, he fell asleep.

  He had never slept in the streets of New York before, but that was what he loved about the city—you could simply imagine doing the unthinkable, and then, the next thing you knew, there you were doing it. Nothing was out of the question. Anything could happen. You had to do it your way.

  And as he fell asleep, he thought how strangely safe he felt. He really felt secure out there. Either he was completely losing his mind and thus gaining the strange peace of the truly lunatic, or his calm came from actually being quite safe—compared with what was to come very soon, after all.

  And in that cage that had become her new home, where she sat day after day, drowning out her fellow inmates’ infinite variations on every profanity, the sounds of anchormen and women in some distant world overhead, the constant echoes of hard heavy steps—and sometimes, she swore she heard chains dragging down the corridor. She heard it all, and she transmitted right back to him the only thought she had for him: Zal, it’s okay. I know you loved me. And I know you couldn’t believe me. And I’m sorry I acted like it mattered. Belief is an optional bonus. What needs to happen will happen. These things were written long before our time. We’re just reading the lines off the script. There was nothing anyone could do, and I knew that and I still brought so much pain to us. That’s why I’m here. I’m where I belong. I’m where I should have been long ago. Locked up and away from all sorts of people that I could harm. But we’ll all be in the same boat soon, so what did the minor points even matter? Everything will be as it should be: equal once and for all.