Play dead

SIXTEEN
I

In the years before darkness became his Mistress, and time became an abstract precis, Karl Swann was a student of the masters.

His art was magic.

Born in 1928 to an upper-middle-class family in Hanau, twenty- five kilometers east of Frankfurt, Germany, Karl began his exploration of the dark arts at an early age. His father Martin, a retired army captain from Glasgow, Scotland, had parlayed a small military retirement into a thriving metals business after settling in the area following World War I. Martin married a local girl named Hannah Scholling.

In 1936, when Karl was eight, his father took him to a performance at the Shuman Theater in Frankfurt, a show featuring a well-known magician named Alois Kassner. During this performance Kassner vanished an elephant.

For three nights young Karl could not sleep thinking about the illusion. More than the trick, Karl considered the illusionist himself. He trembled at the thought of the mysterious, dark-haired man.

Over the next year, Karl collected books on magic, as well as biographies of the great American, European, and Asian conjurers. To the dismay of his parents, and the detriment of his studies, this pursuit seemed to consume the boy.

At the age of nine, he began to perform magic tricks at parties for his friends-cups and balls, vanishing silks, linking rings. Although his technique was not dazzling, his hands moved with competence and grace. Within a year he improved substantially, moving his act from the table to the parlor.

As the rumblings of war in Europe began, Martin Swann, over the hysterical objections of his wife, decided to send their only son to live with distant relatives in America. At least until the clouds of conflict blew over.

On October 4, 1938, Karl Swann boarded the USS Washington in Le Havre, France. His mother and father stood on the dock, waving good-bye. His mother cried, a white lace handkerchief in her hand, her rich burgundy cashmere coat in stark relief to the gray dawn. Martin Swann stood, shoulders square, eyes dry. It was how he had taught his son to face emotion, and he would not betray that lesson now.

As the ship set to sea, the two silhouettes painted a frozen montage in Karl's mind; his fragile, beautiful mother, his stoic father. It would be how he always remembered them, for he never saw them alive again.