Ezequiel arrived on the coast of Suriname in a small boat arranged by the Universal Organization of Magicians, to attend the Central Academy. Until the age of 30, his current age, Ezequiel had oscillated between different accesses to knowledge, work and relationships, without ever finding a direction, a meaning, a synchronicity between his drives and circumstances.
Neither a bilateral love, nor a convening job, nor a personal success
.
He had finally allowed his memory to win the game: the memory of that magic session on Heloise's 11th birthday. The magician Najón, a sexagenarian, with flabby cheeks, poorly shaved, with a general capped aura and his galley tilted, was anticipated by the appearance of the dove.
They discovered the rabbit's escape and found the duplicate card. He tried to split a balsa wood human silhouette in half: they booed him. As a distraction, Najón revived a withered plant in the pot on the coffee table. But the children's audience did not celebrate this prosaic phenomenon. The silence was not respectful.
Only 15 minutes of a 40-minute routine had passed and the guests just wanted him to leave. The magician's left arm stiffened, he turned pale, he put his right hand to his heart and fell flat on the parquet floor. Heloísa's father called the ambulance, while her mother cried.
Heloise, already dismayed by the failure of the entertainment, hugged Ezequiel without thinking. Just a few seconds, of fear and confusion.
When the doctors confirmed that the magician had died, Ezequiel composed a reflection that accompanied him on his solitary return along Tucumán Street, to his house on the corner of Uriburu, in the Once neighborhood:
the magician's successful trick had been his unforeseen end.
. Pondering this paradoxical triumph, Ezequiel was able to feel sorry for the deceased. Heloísa's touch had left a mark on some part of him that he couldn't pinpoint.
It was already the holidays. Ezequiel's school was changed and he never crossed paths with Heloísa again.
He remained between those two events - the death of the magician and the absence of Heloise - until he was 19, without knowing exactly what to do. But
he studied magic from a distance
, with the postal coupons of a landscape comic magazine, more by discard than by conviction.
After a decade working effectively as a vocational magician at parties, he applied to graduate from the Order. There he disembarked. A rickshaw was waiting for him at the dock.
Ezequiel was intensely surprised by the transportation, typical of Asia in past centuries. The shooters, a man and a woman, appeared to be arguing as they charged him. Ezequiel did not decide if his face was already dark or tanned by the sun. Could they be Hindus?
During the journey through dirt streets, which lasted approximately 40 minutes, in the middle of what Ezequiel considered the climax of an incomprehensible disagreement, the woman told him to get off the chair - Ezequiel obeyed without knowing why - she took the seat. place of the passenger and between the two men they transported her to the Academy building. As the woman descended, Ezequiel thought he found something familiar in her face, or in her gestures, or in her voice.
He was received by the magician Fechor, dean and jurisconsult of the Brotherhood. He asked him why he wanted to become a Wizard.
"19 years ago," declared Ezequiel. During a magic act at Heloísa's house, for her eleventh birthday. As the magician Najon passed away, Heloise clung to my right arm. I have not been able to forget her or find her again. Neither did that episode: I call it a deadly trick.
Ezequiel allowed himself a silence after the recapitulation, and concluded:
-I decided that I must become a Wizard to get Heloise back.
The wizard Fechor held his chin.
"The motivation is correct," he finally said. "The direction is precise." But you're missing the details. It is logical: no one can know everything.
Ezequiel looked at him perplexed.
The rickshaw drivers stood on either side of Ezekiel and the magician Fechor.
"I am Luis," said the man.
"I am Marta," said the woman.
They were Heloise's parents, tanned by the Surinam sun.
Heloise herself, of unearthly beauty, introduced herself. She took Ezequiel's right arm.
"I know you never forgot me," Heloise whispered. Nor me to you. But we are not right for each other. That time she was fine.
Ezequiel knew, from the bottom of his soul, that if that certainty was all he had to deduce at the end of that bizarre trip, it was worth it. Heloise was right. She felt it in her arm and in her heart. It could be unfortunate, but it could also be appropriate.
"So..." Ezequiel prefaced his departure.
At that precise moment the magician Najón entered. As sixty-year-old as on Heloísa's eleventh birthday; but with his face firm, his expression awake, his galley impeccable.
"To become a Magician," he said to Ezequiel, placing an affectionate hand on his right shoulder, "the first lesson is when a trick ends."