The Magician
By
?eljko Obrenovi?
Although undoubtedly Magi’s invitation to his birthday party came as a surprise, we could not have imagined that the day, now more than thirty years ago, would end so tragically.
We were far from being the best, or even good friends.
We simply went to school together. Nevertheless, the strangest thing of all was that Magi also invited Trifke to the party.
We did not pay too much attention to Magi, but Trifke, on the other hand, was obsessed with him in a highly negative way.
He often made fun of Magi's excess weight and it was enough for someone to lose their appetite and, indeed, their will to live.
Other cruel acts are difficult to enumerate.
For instance, once he hooked him by the collar of his hoodie onto a traffic sign in front of the school and left him to wait for the next school shift.
To be honest, we were not particularly interested in Magi.
Being aware of this, he tried to emphasize precisely those things that were interesting to us whenever we were together.
For example, he often mentioned his grandfather, whose particular profession intrigued us.
He even brought it up when we were sitting in his room, already yawning from boredom and eagerly waiting for lunch after which we could finally go home.
"My grandfather used to perform in a famous hotel in Belgrade.
I forgot its name," Magi began his story.
He was sitting on the bed and theatrically gesturing with his plump fingers as if he were an illusionist himself.
Behind him, on a banner stretched from wall to wall, it said, "Happy 13th birthday, Magi!
" We surrounded him, sitting on the bed and a few chairs.
"Many famous criminals used to come to that hotel.
They all liked my grandfather. Apparently, it was interesting to them to know a magician.
He had a show there every night. The band played, he performed, and so on in a circle.
"Then, one night, one of those criminals burst into the room and yells, 'Here comes Brutus!
Here comes Brutus!'. And Brutus was, I guess, a famous policeman who everyone was afraid of.
The criminals pull out their guns and look for a place to hide them.
One of them says, 'Magi!'. And they all go to my grandpa, put the guns on the table, and say, 'Brutus must not find this!
'. And my grandpa, as cool as a cucumber, gathers the edges of the tablecloth, making a bundle, and snaps his fingers. Poof! No guns!"
"So what happened then?" we asked. "Did he return them?"
"Of course. Brutus came in, sniffed around, found nothing, and left angrily. Then, these guys started buying drinks for my grandpa. He snapped his fingers and the guns appeared in the tablecloth.
"Do you know that once he went on tour with Snowy Snow-White?"
Each of us probably had a poster of this singer on the wall or at least an audio cassette with her album, but we knew something else for sure.
When Snowy Snow-White and Santa Claus visited our city a few years ago, Trifke, although already too old for that, went to get a present. He didn't like to be reminded of that.
"Oh, come on," we said. "You're making it up!"
"I'm not! I'll prove it to you!"
Magi approached the bookshelf, took out a massive photo album, and extracted a black and white newspaper cutout from it.
Snowy Snow-White and a man in a tailcoat, who resembled an older version of Magi, were in the picture.
They were hugging on stage, and the image was faded and creased, making the details difficult to discern.
The mangled text surrounding the photo revealed little information.
Snowy Snow-White had indeed taken the magician on tour, just like she had taken Santa Claus with her, and his stage name was Magic Magi.
He had performed his tricks several times during her concerts, and the pinnacle of those concerts was the act where the singer vanished after he locked her in a magic closet.
The article was dated 1987, and Sava Center was listed as the concert venue.
We all passed the article around and nodded in approval.
Any doubts we had about Magi's words were dispelled, and we had to admit that we respected him a little more after this.
Each of us had dreamed of having a fighter pilot in the family, until we became one ourselves, let alone someone like a successful and well-known magician.
Finally, the cutout ended up in Trifke’s hands. Unlike the rest of us, he condescendingly scrutinized it. Trifke was almost ginger-haired, and beside his ears he had something that was supposed to resemble sideburns. He often touched them proudly, as he did now.
He said, "Look at him, he's like a penguin! Now I really believe he's your relative. Two wimpy guys! They didn't give you a girl's name for nothing! My grandmother was also Margita!"
"Trifke, you know that 'Magi' is short for 'Magov?evi?'. Give me the cutout back."
Upon hearing these words, Trifke began a bizarre dance, waving his hands above his head.
He was noticeably taller than all of us, so the article in his hand seemed infinitely high.
Magi stood still for a few moments before launching himself at Trifke.
He was hopping around him, trying to grab the piece of newspaper, and ultimately lost his balance.
He pulled Trifke down with him, and both of them ended up on the floor, tearing down the birthday decoration with the inscription.
While they were wrestling and rolling around on the floor, Magi's mother unexpectedly cracked open the door. Everything froze for a moment, but without even looking inside she casually said "Honey, your father is not back with the roast yet. If you want, you can play outside until lunch."
She closed the door and disappeared, completely unaware of everything, leaving us in the room strewn with confetti and navy-blue cone caps which were decorated with golden stars.
Magi and Trifke were still on the floor, trying to stand up by pushing their hands against the ground, and staring at the closed door.
Magi rose to his feet, picking up the torn piece of paper from the floor.
It was evident that the picture was ripped in half.
Magi stood expressionless for a moment, gazing at the ruined memory.
Then he walked over to the shelf, returned the article to the album, and put the album back in its original place.
He turned around and silently left the room.
"You are such a jerk," we muttered to Trifke. "Do you have to torment him even on his birthday?"
"Come on, guys! I didn't mean to tear it."
We shook our heads at his unapologetic response.
Then we made an effort to return the birthday banner to its original position and collect the caps, because the only way to clean up the confetti was with a vacuum cleaner.
We went outside and found Magi staring at his stopwatch.
He didn't need to tell us how much this had affected him.
His eyes were full of tears, and he was clearly trying to hide it.
When we approached him, he turned his head.
We may not have felt genuine sympathy for him, but we knew better than to behave like Trifke.
If we played soccer at someone's birthday party, we tried to let the birthday boy score or at least we spared him from intentional fouls.
Trifke's behavior was unthinkable and unacceptable.
"Why did you even invite him to your birthday?" we asked Magi when he noticed us. "You know him well enough."
"I thought it was a way to bury the hatchet, that he would stop tormenting me. But I was wrong. He will always treat me like this. No matter what I do."
We assumed this was entirely correct, but we couldn't tell him that. "It will pass, and who cares about him! Don't let that ruin your birthday."
"Yes," he replied flatly. "You're right."
"Where did you get the stopwatch?" We tried to change the subject. "It's pretty cool."
"A gift from my parents for my birthday."
"Let's compete and time ourselves! What could we do?"
"Let’s find out how long it takes us to drink a glass of juice!"
Magi, visibly in better spirits, ran into the house to fetch a bottle and a few glasses.
It was a typical September day, before the climate started changing, warm enough to be outside in a T-shirt but under constant threat of rain.
Currently, there were no visible clouds in the sky.
We found something to occupy ourselves for the next fifteen minutes and completely forgot about Trifke, who had not shown up during that time.
No one dared to mention him or wonder aloud where he was.
We silently concluded that he had most likely gone home.
Happy about that, we hurried to find a new pastime.
Magi's two-story house was surrounded on three sides by a fence with upright wooden posts, while on the fourth side there were only vertical stakes, connected at the bottom and top by horizontal beams. Magi's neighbor, known as the Pigeon-man, was a recluse and a hoarder who dressed in rags.
He had built a two-story pigeon coop beside the fence.
It didn't take long for someone to suggest freeing the pigeons.
"He is such a lunatic, so he probably eats them!" someone said.
At the bottom of the yard there was a pile of poles which would eventually be used to finish the fence.
We climbed up on it and then onto the pigeon coop.
We opened the door to the makeshift building, but the pigeons didn't move.
To get them going, we banged on the tin roof.
It only brought cries from the Pigeon-man's house, which was surrounded by various garbage and waste on all sides.
Soon we saw him moving towards the fence, wearing a camouflage hat and long white moustache, cursing everything that came to his mind.