The Trials of Fred Kaps

Fred decides to walk.

Yesterday Bob had sent a car. They had only driven a couple blocks when the driver stopped. Fred thought they must be at a light and was still flicking a card around his fingers, lost in thought. He was embarrassed that the driver had to tell him they’d arrived. He got out of the car feeling like a zondaar. Three minutes that took and they sent a car! Today was clear and dry. The streets were busy but of course they were. It’s New York. It would take no more than five minutes to make the journey by foot. So today, Fred will walk.

He soon regrets it. He has a suit bag that he had slung awkwardly over his shoulder, worrying all the time about creasing his tuxedo and white shirt. He should have had the suit sent ahead. He also has a small briefcase which contains the magic. Trying to keep the bag in his left hand steady while balancing the suit bag makes him sweat. He always sweats. He feels an ache in his left arm. He rolls his shoulder cautiously, bringing the suit bag a little further forward, easing the strain on his arm muscle. The arm must be supple.

He tries to look insouciant, but his sense of the comic also means he can’t help allowing moments of annoyance and frustration flit across his face. As he walks along the road, he considers stopping to swap hands with the two bags. How would he do that, he wonders? Could he do it without putting either of the bags down? He imagines twisting his right hand laterally round to bring the suit bag in front of him, the fingers not hooked on the coat hanger scooping up the briefcase and relieving the left hand, placing the left hand fingers in a position to receive the hanger as it dropped from the right hand forefingers to the left, the two hands then going their diagonal ways, the left hand up to the shoulder and the right hand down to the side, holding the case, all one fluid motion of course. There’s something unbalanced about that last move, he thinks; the left hand requires an extra swirl to flip the bag over the shoulder while the right is dropping. What curlicue would misdirect the eye to the briefcase, to balance the flamboyance of the suit bag twirl?

He turns right at 53rd and 7th, within moments crossing Broadway. He looks up and down the avenue expectantly. He sees no theatres to the right and the theatre on the left has The Girl Who Came to Supper on its awning, which sounds to his ears like it might be a sex comedy. That’s what these Americans like, isn’t it? Sex and girls and screaming. Well that’s what they think they like, thinks Fred. But I have something quieter for them. It requires a bit of concentration. It repays concentration. The harder you look, the more silent you are, the more your own eyes will astound you.

Fred enjoys that thought and the briefcase in his left hand feels lighter and heavier at the same time. He is in command of it and if he is in command of it, he is in command of everything.

And he has arrived. He pushes through a large group of girls who are talking, obstructing the door, oblivious. He looks through the window and the doorkeeper sees him and buzzes the door. Fred pushes it open. Hey Michael. Good morning, Mr Kaps. Michael is Irish and Fred figures they are Europeans together so he stops for a moment to pass the time of day and also to rest the suit bag for a moment, placing it carefully across Michael’s countertop. He stretches his fingers as they talk.

Bit of a drama this afternoon, Mr Kaps. Oh why is that? Wells is here but only three of the four Fays. They’re combing the bars for Susie! Oh dear me, that won’t do. No indeed it won’t, Mr Kaps. Bob is beside himself. Wouldn’t you be, Michael? I dare say I would, Mr Kaps. I dare say I would.

In his dressing room he flicks the cards between his fingers and tries to suppress the mounting excitement he feels. Ken said he’d got the trick from Baue, but Baue puts no life into it. The trick should appear to baffle the magician, this is what Baue never saw. Baue is a technician. See what I can do, says Baue, and we see what he can do. But Fred mystifies everyone, even himself. That’s the light and shade, thinks Fred, and the card flicks around his fingers, over the index, under the middle, up around the ring, right over the pinkie and back. This card, then this card, then this card.

It’s a mixed bill. Good old-fashioned variety entertainment. There’s a husband-and-wife comedy duo, a pop group, the acrobats (including the missing Susie), and members of the cast of a musical based on Oliver Twist. Fred has seen this musical and he hopes they are on after him. It’s a good show; he took Nelly and she really liked it. She liked it more than he did but he trusts Nelly and so he wouldn’t like to go on after them.

He did two rehearsals the previous day and he doesn’t get into the tuxedo yet. He walks onto the studio floor and the floor manager shows him his marks and takes him through the order. He is relieved to see that he is separated from the musical cast by quite some way. The husband-and-wife duo follow him, which will be pleasant. He thinks he might stand in the wings, if he is permitted to do so, and watch them.

No Fred, you know what you are thinking and it is unworthy of you. It is variety. The audience will turn their attention from magic to comedy quite well and the husband and wife will not suffer from your card trick, no matter how superb it is. Do not expect too much, Fred. Expect everything, and anything will disappoint. Expect nothing and something will dazzle. A magician knows this better than anyone.

It’s a popular one tonight, Mr Kaps, says Jerry. Is it, Jerry? People have lost their minds about this show. 50,000 of them trying to get tickets. Fred shakes his head in agreement, though he understands it perfectly and is not surprised. It’s television. This is what entertainment is now. It’s democracy. Still, 50,000!

In his dressing room again, he unzips the suit bag. When he was thirteen, barely a month before his fourteenth birthday, his mother had come into his room and said, you know that noise last night, the banging, the booms. The knal, mama, yes. It’s all over for Rotterdam, she says, and for the mother country. And she cries right there. Young Fred sat on his bed and didn’t know what to do so he let her cry. And then she said something strange, that his cousin Meindert, who was in the army, well he will be coming home in a bag and she cries again. Fred doesn’t understand this but for the next few days he wonders about someone coming home in a bag and the thought troubles him. He imagined Meindert, who used to swing him round when he was seven, laughing, wearing a bag with holes cut out for the arms and legs, but he knows that wouldn’t make mama cry, so he thinks of Meindert in pieces, like a doll before it has been assembled, knocking about in a bag. And whenever he unzips his suit bag before a show, he flinches because he half-expects Meindert’s arm or head to fall out of it.

White tie and tails some people think they’re already history. But what does that even mean? Fashions come and they go. It’s a precise look and it says I have nothing to hide. It shows respect for the audience too. He flips two cards around his fingers one in each hand. He had passed the dressing rooms on his way back and he had stopped in to the cast from the musical and wished them luck. Young Davey had asked for his autograph and he’d given it. It’s going to be a magical night, kindest regards, Fred Kaps, he had written. You don’t know how magical, he had thought, but crushed it down. Susie had been located and so now the acrobats had their four Fays.

On the door of the biggest dressing room there is a star and the name of the pop group. Fred grimaces at the pun in the word ‘Beatles’. He doesn’t really enjoy pop. He acknowledges jazz and he admires the art of men like George Gershwin and Jerome Kern, because they are songsmiths. Songsmithery is craft made art by practice, arduous practice, he thinks as he turns the cards around his fingers, flashing this card, then this card, then this card.

A relay speaker from his dressing room plays the sound of the audience entering. They sound excited as so they should. This is The Ed Sullivan Show. Tens of millions of people watch this programme. Fred waits to see if this thought makes him tremble. It makes him smile, his iron resolve. He remembered the World Championship in Amsterdam, almost ten years ago. The decks stacked against him, everyone said, but what’s that to a magician, and he won the Grand Prix for the second time. He had his doubts before that but Nelly had run him a bath, he always remembered that kindness, she just ran him a bath and said she loved him and believed in him and he came out of that water a different man and he had no doubts. He produces a card and turns it.

There’s a knock on the door and Fred rises and adjusts his white tie and gathers a small bag of props, a salt cellar, a pack of cards. Perfectly ordinary items, of course, until they’re not. He concedes that he feels excitement. No, excitement is too strong a word. He feels a kind of pity for the audience who do not know yet that they are about to experience his new trick, because it is new; Baue used some of those moves, of course, but a pigeon and an eagle both flap their wings, the effect is quite different. He stands at the edge of the studio out of sight from the audience, protected both by the angle and a theatre curtain. Cameras move back into position. The floor manager speaks to an unseen producer through a microphone. An assistant checks that he has everything he needs. He nods solemnly. Yes, I have everything.

As an advertisement for a headache tablet plays out over the house band’s lively introductory music, Ed Sullivan, passing, grasps his upper arm and says you’re going to be swell, we’re glad to have you on, it’s a good crowd isn’t it? And before Fred can speak, Ed is announced and the curtains rise and he’s gone. Fred can hear him speaking to the audience but he can’t make out very much. He thinks he hears a mention of Elvis Presley, but the name provokes neither laughter nor applause from the audience. Fred is not surprised but he is saddened. It was inevitable that the mania would pass. It is, Fred reflects, built into the definition of a mania that it passes. A permanent mania could scarcely be understood as a mania. It would just be the way how things are now.

More advertisements. Fred senses an unusual mood in the audience. A wayward excitement, a peculiar kind of disattention, as if they might each be distracted by the slightest noise, a flash, even a pulse of emotion. There is a nervousness in the audience, in fact it seems to Fred that teeth are chattering everywhere.

Very well. He will have to redirect their attention to the small matter of the here and now. This card, then this card, then this card. He will control their laughter, make it his laughter. He looks forward to it. Fred has never concerned himself with those religious maniacs who believe magic immoral or evil. In fact he admits that he sees a certain value in the invitation to look anew at the world, to pay attention to detail, to search one’s own perceptions for the source of error. It would be too far to call this moral guidance but he is perhaps contributing to responsible citizenship.

The advertisements have finished and Ed Sullivan speaks again and he announces ‘… The Beatles’.

And the noise begins. Fred has not heard a noise like this except maybe at the airport, the sound of a jet engine roaring. For a moment he does not know where it is coming from and looks about him. But it is the audience. And then he hears that there is a kind of music playing, but it mixes with the screaming and he is not sure if the screaming is part of the music or the music is part of the screaming.

Fred Kaps stands still. He is not listening to the noise, only hearing it. The noise is incomprehensible to him. He is not breathing, Fred Kaps. He feels as if he is beaten back, as by a strong wind. He has an urge to step forward but dares not in case he finds he can not. He cannot hear what the noise means, if it is joyful or malevolent. The noise fills his head and he feels it disordering his careful routine. He turns over the cards in his mind, his hand rigid on the bag. The noise is without edges. It fills him to the edges of his horizons, it extends interminably into the future, it seems to erode the past, as there had been nothing before the noise. Fred feels himself drawn into the noise, not as its hearer but as more noise. His skin feels old because of the noise. His skin is wet. He sweats as he becomes noise. The noise builds, even when it seems to subside, it is still building. Even when the music stops and the screaming stops, it builds. The air is the noise now.

The pop group has stopped and the audience is not screaming but still the noise screams in the room, into the cameras, into the air, into Fred. He feels dry with noise, dusted with noise. The floor manager is talking to him, cupping his hand and shouting into Fred’s ear. Fred listens sightlessly. He adjusts his grip on the bag, the only readiness of which he feels capable. An advertisement promises something, something as Fred tries to smile, cracking thin lines in the noise that clings to his face. He clears his throat to dislodge some noise. As he steps forward he feels heavy with the noise clinging to his tuxedo, his shoes sticky with noise.

Ed is talking. A very amusing magician we saw in Europe. Fred’s shoes kick up small percussive clouds of noise. The crowd applaud, unnoisefully. Fred’s skills have no purchase here. He walks though. He walks.

This card, then this card, then this card.

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On 9 February 1964, The Beatles opened The Ed Sullivan Show, their first live performance on US television. The episode was reputedly watched by 78 million viewers at home and, in the studio, by over 700 mostly female fans whose screams became iconic. The evening was quickly recognised as marking a generational shift, an irreversible cultural transformation, a moment of history. Celebrated Dutch magician Fred Kaps was also booked on the show and he directly followed The Beatles.