The meanest Flood

waking day through the net curtains. He thought about the Indian Rope Trick. During British rule in India there were many reports of this trick. A fakir throws a rope into the air. Before the rope can fall to the ground it inexplicably becomes solid. An assistant to the fakir, a small boy, climbs the rope and when he gets to the top he disappears. The fakir then ascends the rope with a knife. When he gets to the top he also disappears. From up above, though they can see nothing, the crowd then hears the cries of the boy as he screams in pain. Moments later the ground around the rope is littered with the amputated and bleeding limbs of the young boy. The fakir descends his rope, collects the parts of human anatomy and puts them into a basket. When he lifts the lid of the basket a second or two later the boy is in there, intact, smiling and ready to receive the pennies of the crowd.
    Over the years there had been various explanations of how the trick was done. Some people had suggested that the fakir was a hypnotist and that the entire crowd in the dusty square were put into a trance. One elaborate explanation had suggested that the rope was thrown up into strands of woven hair dyed the same colour as the sky. That the bloody limbs were shaven monkey-limbs. Another that there were two boys, twins, and for the trick to succeed one of them had to be murdered.
    Danny didn’t know the answer. It wasn’t one of his tricks, though he was connected with it through centuries of association with magic and the practices of magic. Well before the advent of Christ magicians like Diamond Danny Mann were confounding audiences with cones and balls in exactly the same way they do to this day. There was a red thread, a line connecting all those practitioners through the ages. It was like a family tree.
    He watched the milkman float into the street on his electric cart. Delivering bottles of milk and cartons of cream and collecting empties and pursing his lips together like he was whistling but there was no audible sound. There were several rhythms to the man’s physical work; the pulse and throb of his footsteps up and along the paths to the houses, the pace and tempo of his arms and shoulders as he sorted the empties into their various crates. In the back of his mind the magician could almost make out the lyrics of a work song, something to do with black people and slavery, though the milkman was white and the name on the side of his float was Dai Evans.
    When he came up the path to the house the magician froze. Dai Evans was on the other side of the glass and the net curtain, perhaps a metre away. Danny could pick out the stray hairs in his eyebrows and a couple of tiny strands sticking out of his nostrils and ears. He placed one red-topped bottle on the step, semi-skimmed for health-conscious people. The couple who lived in the house and who didn’t want to take too many chances with their cholesterol levels.
    The milkman waited a moment, adopting the listening position, as if he could hear the steady rise and fall of the magician’s respiratory system or the stillness of death on the mattress in the spare room. But there was nothing tangible or audible for the man to connect with, just an uneasy feeling, the sense that all was not right with the world. Too much for a milkman to handle in the early morning. He shrugged his shoulders and continued with his round.
    The magician didn’t move. He sat like a Buddha, naked behind the window, and watched his own body and his own reactions to everything that happened in his immediate environment. The milk reminded him of his mother and how she hadn’t been able to eat at the end. It had begun with her avoiding olives or anything spicy. She’d stopped eating meat, saying that it was indigestible, then fish and beans. For the last couple of months she’d eat only a couple of spoons of cauliflower cheese, a glass of milk, a poached egg and pasta alphabet shapes. Her body had gradually lost the power to transmute food to flesh and bone, to transform protein and vitamins and minerals into consciousness. This would happen to Danny as well; one day, like everyone else, he would lose his individual magic and become part of the wider magic of the cosmos. He would become food for worms, contribute selflessly to the regeneration of the earth.
    But not yet. In the present there was work to be done. Ego work. There were runes to be rhymed and charms to be chanted. There were thunderbolts to be