I am an Eight of Spades hidden inside the magician’s sleeves. I am shown at the peak as I immerse myself in the loud claps and flashes of the spotlights. He bows with his crooked shoulder from having slept on the concrete floor for years. Every time he does so, he always holds his arm tight as though he would fall and fall if he took one wrong step. Because if he suffers, I too carry his burdens; after all, I am his punchline, his peak of the show, his golden card.
I am hidden in the small bag behind the sleeves of his tattered coat with patched holes and threads fusing with the fabric. With this, he is seen more like a clown than a magician up until I am revealed. Behind the stage, the magician hums his own name as I lay on his table with rocking legs and its skirt filled with splinters and sharp edges. He brings me up, and wipes the surface with his worn-out, red cloth. My eight spades are shinier than any diamonds, he whispers. But I am no perfect card. My right edge was bent and an indent in the middle. Some of the spades are scratched by the erosion of time. The top left one is left as like half a spade with finger imprints in the middle. Still, he whispers affirmations to me while saying his own name, over and over again.
The magician was a no-name clown for a while. During his first shows, he would always mess up on all of his tricks. He would accidentally forget the dove in his black top hat. Accidentally broke his magic stick. The hem of his coat would be caught in the sharp hole of the chair, and he falls with the torn fabric all over his head. Yet there is one perfect trick he has never fumbled. When the volunteer chooses me from the deck (and it is given that I will always be chosen), he will always be able to guess their card. Applause would roar, and soon, he went from a no-name to being recognized in his street.
In interviews, when they ask him about his inspiration, he yanks me out and fans himself. When they ask him about his ultimate trick, he tramples in his steps, as though to heighten tension, and yanks me from his other sleeve. When they ask him about his family, he insists that it is me.
“This is the card my father handed me when I was a kid,” he starts, “We’ve been through storms and droughts.”
His career isn’t always good. He plays the same trick in every show and soon, experts and critics will stain his name with allegations of being a fraud, a fake, a conman. And although his job at the core is truly to trick people, he has to trick them enough that they don’t know they’re being tricked. I remember that night, when he read all the newspapers slandering his name, that night when I first saw him resent me. He separated me from the rest of the deck of cards, but not to abandon me entirely, but to hold me tight against his two giant hands, and pressed them together so as to undo all the sharp edges I had, the indents made by him. The magician then, for the first time in years of homelessness, shed tears.
But being a fraud is better than having no food or a place to stay. He writes and writes and writes and organises press conferences and somehow, he turns the slanders into a joke, like the clown he has always been. I would be kept away inside his coat. And within the press, he would occasionally play new tricks he thought of on a whim, and instead, he would pull other cards, and not rely on me as much. As a result, his ‘magic’ would be the talk of the town, and he would once again earn his place, a bigger place than he has ever had. There, in the pocket of his blue coat, I would watch from the small holes of the fabric to see him praise other cards. I am not sad as I would do anything to see my master succeed. I am not sad because we will have food on the table. I am not sad as I am still his right-hand card.
It has been three years since then. The magician has gotten more and more popular with his new card tricks. Now they call him The Greatest. With his new wealth and fame, he bought a new deck of cards – coated with glitter and blue ink. He hired a professional to tailor him a blue handkerchief and an obnoxious blue coat. Meanwhile, I lay somewhere under a single spotlight. A broken one that dims with the background. People who pass me roar and chant his name. The last time I saw his face was when he left for another interview. Usually, afterwards, he would tell me all about how it went: how much he hated the interviewer, weird questions he was asked, and how he dealt with it all. That interview must have gone well. I’ve never heard anything from him since. Now, all I smell is burnt rubber and wet fungal gunk. No one believes that I was in The Greatest’s hands once. Even the half-broken plastic cups and stained paper bags are tired of my rambling.
เนื้อหา: อลิน เซ่งเจริญ / Alin Sengjaroen
พิสูจน์อักษร: จวนจับจิต
กราฟิก: คืนวันวาน
