TALES OF TWO HYPNOTISTS

William Harwood

Tales of Two Hypnotists

Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2010, by William R. Harwood, 1935-

ISBN 978-1-935444-21-3

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CONTENTS

The Great Zubrick5

Prologue9

Part One13

Part Two67

Part Three105

Part Four133

Part Five169

Epilogue201

The Disinformation Cycle excerpts

Hypnotism205

Recovered Memories213

Hypnotism Then and Now excerpts

A Case for Columbo223

The Search for Bridey Murphy  225

Book Reviews

They Call it Hypnosis231

Franquin: Master Showman235

Hypnotism: A History237

Hypnosis: A Novel239

The Great Zubrick241

Hypnotism Then and Now243

The Last Hypnotist245

Books by William Harwood419

FOREWORD TO TALES OF TWO HYPNOTISTS

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The Great Zubrick and The Last Hypnotist were written for two different audiences. The Great Zubrick was set in Australia and Canada, and was designed to look familiar to Canadians who had seen performances by stage hypnotists Reveen, Morton, and Van Leowe. The Last Hypnotist was set in Great Britain, and was designed for readers whose concept of a stage hypnotist was the fatuous wannabees peddling their wares for the tourists at places like Blackpool. Consequentially I saw no reason to avoid including similar scenes in both novels. To readers of this two-novel book who find themselves annoyed at having to read some of the same material twice, I say look on the bright side. While you are getting two stories, you only had to pay for one book.

Both stories stem from my forty years of touring with the three most successful stage hypnotists of the twentieth century; and the more improbable an incident might seem, the more likely it is that art is indeed imitating reality. While both novels were, as television disclaimers like to say, inspired by true events, the fact that two of the four role models for Zubrick and Kruger are still alive meant that I needed to avoid creating the impression that either fictitious hypnotist was a real person. But since the other two models were dead at the time of writing, I was less restricted in utilizing events from their lives with greater resemblance to what really happened. If a reader gets the impression that I like one of my fictitious stage hypnotists more than the other, he will get no argument from me. And if he gets the idea that there is a character in each story who speaks for the author, that is acceptable as long as he does not imagine that the character is the author.

Note that a statement by a character in The Last Hypnotist, that Books disproving religion are lucky if they sell two thousand copies, and most of those to university libraries, was true at the time of writing, when million-sellers by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Victor Stenger had not yet been published.

THE GREAT ZUBRICK

DEDICATION

To the Simpsons, the Glicks,

the Hudsons, the Derkenses and the Zubricks

who make this business

the business there’s no business like.

(These are the same characters to whom

Mythology’s Last Gods was dedicated,

but this time I acknowledge that

they are not real persons.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Peter Reveen, whose technical advice on the intricacies of combining hypnotism with show business, plus suggestions on possible story lines, proved invaluable; to Leon Van Leowe, whose hypnaughty anecdotes a fiction writer would not have dared invent; to Pat Quinn, Franquin, who got rich performing hypnotism and thereby proved it can be done; and to Robert Tex Morton, whose long career as a western singer, ringmaster, hypnotist, and modern-day Barnum, is an inspiration to hucksters everywhere.

APOLOGIES

To the authors of Sheik of Scrubby Creek, Sunday Morning Christian, and Sonny Boy, for the song parodies in chapters three, four and eight. Also, a handful of scenes in The Great Zubrick have parallel scenes in The Last Hypnotist. They constitute a minute proportion of either novel. And in any story in which scenes inspired by events from an earlier decade are located at a later time, some anachronisms are unavoidable. For example, a scene involving seventeen-year-old twins is written in such a way that it could only have happened before Canada’s age-of-consent laws were changed in 1985. Yet earlier in the novel there is a reference to actor Paul Hogan as an international celebrity, a status he did not achieve until after 1985. Such mini-anachronisms are trivial, and only nasty little nitpickers will be bothered by them. This is fiction. Suspend your disbelief. Read and enjoy.

"Big man: big zubrick;

Little man: all zubrick."

Australian proverb

FOREWORD

All realistic fiction bears a resemblance to the author’s experience or perception of reality. If it did not, it would be nonsense. Events similar to those in The Great Zubrick have indeed occurred in the real world—but not in the manner described herein, and not to persons resembling the characters herein. This novel is a work of fiction, and all characters and events are either the product of the author’s imagination, or fictionalized speculations about how events from reality might have occurred with a different cast of characters with different motivations and different beliefs, and at different places and in different times. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

Before I start my show, there is one thing I always make clear to my audience. I am not supernatural in any way; nor do I have any extra-normal powers. I am a hypnotist because I have trained myself to be a hypnotist for the past twelve years.

The speaker was The Great Zubrick. The place was the Greengrass Theatre in the town of Greengrass in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The season south of the equator was early winter.

Zubrick was a stage hypnotist. Some would say that he was the world’s most watchable stage hypnotist. In time they would say that he was the world’s only watchable stage hypnotist. He was an entertainer who demonstrated hypnotism, as opposed to a hypnotist who tried to entertain. Indeed, more than an hour of his three-hour show was devoted to the other forms of entertainment that had made him a national Name before he ever became a hypnotist: the cowboy singing that had first brought him fame on television’s Talent Quest; sharp-shooting and whip-cracking, using volunteers from the audience who agreed to have cigarettes shot and whipped out of their mouths; magical illusions, including one in which a showgirl was seen in silhouette to undress behind a blind, and somehow in the time the blind was being raised she disappeared and was replaced by a gorilla that turned out to be Zubrick; and the more subtle magical illusions in which Zubrick appeared to read minds, foretell the future, and bend crowbars by the power of his mind.

But from the moment Zubrick had added hypnotism to his performance, all else had become prologue. In time he would come to believe that he was really a hypnotist, even though he would never cease to be an actor impersonating a hypnotist. Over the next couple of years he would learn much about hypnosis, including how to entertain with it without the necessity of using stooges.

But tonight he was an entertainer portraying a hypnotist. If he was still unsure of his ability as a hypnotist, this audience would never know it. For the next three hours he would prove to them that he was a hypnotist, and in proving it he would also prove himself to be the finest exponent of this form of entertainment ever seen on a public stage.

The hypnotism would not all be stooged. By the time Zubrick had sorted out his volunteers and gone through the motions of hypnotizing them, he would have sixteen people ostensibly asleep on stage. Four would be unpaid stooges. Four more would be John Barrymores, local boys who came on stage unprompted, pretended to be hypnotized, and gave performances that were less than convincing. The remaining eight would simulate a state of hypnosis with sufficient realism to convince Zubrick that at least some of them were genuinely hypnotized. In a few weeks, sooner perhaps than he expected, Zubrick would dispense with the stooges and present a show that was completely unrehearsed and, as far as he could tell, reasonably genuine. His show would be no less entertaining then than now.

But this was Zubrick’s first tour as a hypnotist. That he could entertain, he was sure. That he could hypnotize, he was less sure. That was why the first hour of his show was devoted to establishing his credibility as an entertainer. An audience that had seen him do so many other things so well, should have no reason to doubt his competence as a hypnotist.

I now invite those who care to do so to come on stage, to experience the sensations and benefits of hypnosis for yourself.

Zubrick’s advertising did not call him The World’s Greatest Hypnotist, or even Australia’s Greatest, despite the fact that the world’s greatest this-and-that was as much a part of the average Australian’s vocabulary as if the expression had some objective truth. Rajama could have billed himself as The World’s Greatest Hypnotist without being thought fatuous. Zubrick could not. Rajama, real name Reg Hammer, was Australia’s best-known hypnotist. He had achieved phenomenal success in Australia’s two largest cities over the past two years. To persons who had seen Rajama’s show, it would have seemed preposterous to suggest that Zubrick, "that hillbilly on Talent Quest," could be a more entertaining hypnotist than Rajama.

And yet it was the simple truth. By the time tonight’s performance was over, Zubrick’s severest critics, two members of his staff who had worked for Rajama and regarded Rajama as the most accomplished entertainer they had ever seen, would concede that this performance at the Greengrass Theatre was as good as anything Rajama had ever done. It would be another year, however, before they relegated Rajama to the ranks of the also-rans, and included Zubrick on their list of the three most hypnotic spellbinders Australia had ever seen, alongside Billy Graham and Johnny Ray.

The show was half over. Despite the fact that Zubrick was intentionally keeping the stooges in the background and starring the local volunteers, the audience was in fits of laughter. Zubrick was in the middle of one of his most popular routines, a concert in which each ostensibly hypnotized subject was told that he or she was some famous personality. A girl whom Zubrick had never seen before was told that she was a famous movie queen. She confided to the audience that, To get to the top in Hollywood, you have to sleep with the producer. A boy threw his shoes at the audience when told that cats on the roof were keeping him awake.

The show was drawing to an end. Earlier in the night Zubrick had told his subjects, Whenever you hear this melody—Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana—you will immediately go back to sleep. Now Intermezzo was played. This melody will never again put you to sleep unless I personally suggest it while you are on my stage.

It only remained to send the volunteers back into the audience. As soon as you reach your seat in the audience, Zubrick instructed the first girl, you’ll stand up and call out, ‘Goodnight Mr Zubrick,’ and then you’ll wonder why you did it.

Each subject was given a final suggestion, something that he would do in the audience. Zubrick shook each one’s hand and sent them, one at a time, off the stage. Before saying goodbye to the last alleged volunteer, the stooge to whom he had entrusted the carefully rehearsed finale, Zubrick told the boy that he had no feeling of pain in his right hand. He then proved that the stooge was really hypnotized by plunging a sewing needle into the back of his hand without evoking any observable reaction.

Zubrick announced that he would be returning in four days for one last performance in Greengrass. The audience, still energetic after laughing itself hoarse for more than two hours, was on its feet, yelling, whistling, and applauding.

Tickets for the next performance would be sold out in advance.

The curtain closed.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Archie Fenton was depressed. For eight years he had wanted to be a schoolteacher. Now that he was the newest member of the staff of the Woolloomooloo Collegiate High School, he was finding the job far less satisfying than he had expected.

Perhaps I could soak the little bastridges’ pencils in a solution of arsenic, he mumbled, more to himself than to the girl who was helping him save water by sharing the shower. They’ll absorb it through their fingers, then after a few days they’ll be too sick to come to school. Then when they do come back, they’ll get another dose....

Archie! Beryl laughed. Those are your pupils you’re talking about. You’re supposed to love them as if they were human.

I’ll love them all right, Archie murmured. Baked, broiled, barbecued, on a shish kebob. Mind you, there’s one gorgeous little ninth-grader I could eat from the toes up: legs that go right up her twat, tits like a two-humped camel, an arse just made for my fingernails. I sweat blood just thinking about her.

Beryl giggled. So I see.

Archie looked down and grinned. Remind me to give her your thanks. Now as long as I’m up, can I scratch your navel?

I can scratch my own navel, Beryl picked up her cue.

From the inside?

There was no need for foreplay as such. Twenty minutes of what amounted to caresses with two bars of soap had left Beryl more than ready. The two fell into an embrace and gently swayed back and forth under the warm shower, loving each other as they had done perhaps three hundred times since Archie, at seventeen, had first penetrated his then fourteen-year-old sister.

Archie was twenty-two now, a Bachelor of Education and Master of Arts, a teacher, and a frustrated magician and hypnotist. Beryl Fenton, who had never known any other surname, since she had been less than a year old when her mother married Archie’s father, was nineteen, on the pill, and since leaving school on her sixteenth birthday had been an usherette at the nearby movie theatre complex.

Archie, if you don’t like teaching, why don’t you give it up? You have a good magic act. You could get fifty dollars a night. Why don’t you try?

But I do like teaching, Archie corrected her. I just wish the epsilons would let me do it. What I can’t stand is babysitting unteachables, and being under orders not to bruise their tender psyches by requiring them to learn anything. As for doing magic professionally....

Archie had been a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians for eight years. He loved show business. That was why he had stooged for Rajama for several months last year, for no payment other than four free tickets a day, which he usually managed to sell to other education students for slightly less than half price. He would have liked nothing better than to be The Great Fenton, professional magician and hypnotist. But he was a realist.

Archie knew the few fulltime professionals in the I.B.M. They managed to make a living, if one or two jobs a week at fifty dollars a show could be called a living. Those with the right contacts made as much as one hundred or two hundred dollars a show, and toward the December holidays they even managed to work several nights a week. But for the rest of the year the high priced Houdinis might secure two or three jobs a month.

That was not for Archie. Magic, hypnotism and mentalism might be all right for a hobby, and perhaps even a means of picking up a few extra dollars at kids’ birthday parties. But it could not be considered a potential livelihood. As unpleasant as it was to babysit unteachables who should have been sterilized at puberty, before they could pollute the human gene pool by breeding in it, it would have to suffice until Archie could find the time and economic means to acquire a doctorate and teach at a higher level.

Coral Fenton walked into the bathroom. As the only offspring of the senior Fentons’ second marriage, she was the biological half-sister of both Archie and Beryl. Since, however, none of the three had any recollection of a time when they were not all together, it was doubtful if they even remembered that they were not full siblings by birth.

Coral slid open the shower screen. Archie, she said, Pat Franklin’s on the phone. He says it’s important. She saw what her brother and sister were doing, and threw up her arms in mock despair. What else do you do besides Siamese twin impersonations? she demanded. What happens when you’re too old to root five times a day? Unless you find an alternative form of recreation, you’re going to die of boredom. Learn bridge or golf. The pleasure is less intense, but it lasts longer. And the day never comes when the mind says yes and the body says no. Diversify.

Archie turned the shower down to a dribble. He turned Beryl so that she was no longer leaning against the wall. He capped his hands over her buttocks, holding her upright as he continued to move slowly in and out. He grinned at Coral. You mentioned Bernard Shaw’s first objection to coupling: the pleasure is momentary. There were two others: the cost is enormous, and the position ridiculous.

Position? Coral queried.

He was referring to the missionary position, Archie clarified.

I like the missionary position, Beryl protested. Not as a steady diet, maybe. But for a nice relaxing workout before going to sleep, nothing beats it.

Actually you’d make good missionaries, Coral Fenton quipped. What Archie is doing is very religious, bringing about Beryl’s second coming.

Beryl smirked. Try twenty-second.

The phone! Archie remembered. He slid out of Beryl, at the same time kissing her lightly on the mouth. Don’t go off the boil. I’ll be right back.

What in the name of Zeus, Aphrodite and Apollo could Pat Franklin want, Archie wondered, that he could not leave a message? Probably it was another stooging job, at the hypothetical fee of thirty dollars a night. Archie had worked twenty shows for Pat, The Great Zubrick as he called himself now, and somehow Pat had always managed to avoid paying him. Sure, fooling an audience into believing he was hypnotized was fun, but the satisfaction of being paid to entertain was part of that fun. With Rajama, the prestige of being associated with a Big Star compensated for the lack of cash remuneration. There was no prestige in stooging for The Great Zubrick, Hypnotist Extraordinaire. What a weird word, extraordinaire. It was French, Pat had explained. Using a French word on a poster showed class. The hicks would lap it up.

The hicks, as Archie had learned next, were Pat’s customers, his audience. If people who paid four dollars admission are hicks, Archie wondered, what does that make someone who works for nothing after being promised thirty dollars a show? Oh well, it was all experience. A hundred shows with Rajama had enabled Archie to memorize all of Rajama’s scripts. The hypnotic act that Archie performed with a weekend concert party was pure Rajama. For a while Archie had pictured himself as Rajama’s natural successor. Then he started counting the number of other amateur magicians, singers, plumbers and garbage collectors with the same idea. All called themselves The Great Something-or-other. And all were starving to death, including The Great Patrick Franklin Zubrick.

What a name, Zubrick! Where had Pat dug it up? Someone must have suggested it as a joke and Pat had fallen for it. The Great Zubrick! The Big Prick! Could Pat be aware of what zubrick means and be enjoying the joke? Negative, Archie concluded. Pat Franklin takes himself a little too seriously for that. What will happen when he finds out the meaning of his own stage name? He’ll drop it like hot shit, of course. But what if he doesn’t find out until he’s been using it too long to change? What if he never finds out? Man, would that be something? Well he isn’t going to find out from me, Archie thought.

It was at the International Brotherhood of Magicians that Archie had first met Pat, when they were both fourteen, and Pat had just written the song, Valentino of the Shearing Shed, that would one day win him instant fame on Talent Quest. They had not become friends. When Pat had left Sydney three years ago to tour as a magician and cowboy singer on the carnival circuit, Archie had all but forgotten his existence. Even when, a few months back, Ron Hudson had recruited Archie to stooge for The Great Zubrick, Archie had not been aware until he arrived at the theatre that Zubrick was Pat Franklin.

In the three months that Archie had worked for Pat, he had learned that Pat used a total of four stooges, in shifts of two per show. Besides Ron and Archie, there were Kevin, a kamp, or gay as kamps were calling themselves now under the influence of American television programs, who had the distinction of being Rajama’s first salaried stooge, and Charlie, whom Pat had met on the carnival circuit, where he had been doing a fire eating act as an Indian fakir, under the name of Ali Ben Yogi. Ron, also a former Rajama stooge as well as a magician, was a Canadian religious missionary, who was nonetheless rationalist Archie’s closest friend. Ron had not joined the IBM, where Archie met him, until after Pat’s departure. How Ron and Pat had met, Archie was uncertain.

Archie picked up the telephone. Wild Bill Hickhater speaking. He noticed that the Venetian blind was open and the two old maids next door were admiring his undraped tumescence in their living room mirror. Since they were undoubtedly a mated couple, he wondered why they even looked. No point being blatant, he thought. Coral! he called. Will you bring me a towel?

Archie? It’s Pat Franklin.  I’ve got a job for you.

What night?

It’s not a one-nighter, Pat answered. I’m going on the road. We open in Marvell in five weeks, then go north. I want you and Beryl to come with me.

Beryl had accompanied Archie to a Zubrick show about a month ago, and had since worked six shows as Pat’s stage hostess, or tits and arse broad as showgirl assistants were more commonly called. She was currently owed $180.

How can we? Archie asked. We’ve both got jobs.

Archie, I’m offering you a fulltime job. What would you rather do, teach crayon and sandbox to heretical ditch-diggers all your life, or be in show business?

Heretical? Archie puzzled. Heretical? Hereditary! What an illiterate!

Archie had not told Pat how much he hated the system that required him to assign fourth grade work to fifteen-year-olds who had already learned everything they would ever know. Pat’s shrewd guess hit him like an adrenalin shot. He knew that even one year of working for epsilons, who believed that a passing grade should be a pupil’s minimum reward for turning up, could prove intolerable. And as if that were not bad enough, he was also required to teach science and superstition as equally viable theories of the origin of the universe, the earth, terrestrial life and human life.

Pat, how can you offer anybody a fulltime job? What if you go broke the first week?

I can’t go broke. I’ve got a promoter. We’re willing to give you a year’s contract. Even if we lost money for a year, you’d still get your pay. If we didn’t pay you, you could sue us. We’ll give you a hundred dollars a week and your keep.

Aaaaarchie!!! Beryl’s voice floated in from the bathroom.

Pat, I’m in the middle of something. Can we discuss this some other time?

The promoter who’s backing us is worth a fortune, Pat went on. He owns the tent show I worked for on the carnival circuit. If he ever did run out of money, he could borrow more from the Showmen’s Guild. He’s their president. The guy’s a thousandaire.

Beryl walked in, her half-dried body dripping water onto the living room carpet. Her right hand lightly stroked the vicinity of her clitoris, while with her left hand she made a severe motion of hanging up the telephone. Not wanting to be responsible for two heart attacks, she stood where the old maids could not see her.

Pat, it sounds good....

You won’t have to stooge. You’ll be advance man. There’ll be three stooges. Ron’s coming, and Charlie and Kevin. We’ve got three new cars. Wait till you see yours. It’s a red Thunderbird, real classy. You’d never know it’s been rolled. As soon as....

Pat, I’ve got to go. He saw that Beryl was masturbating swiftly now.

As soon as we get organized, Pat gushed on, we’re getting our own organ. We tour the whole of Australia, and then we’re going to America. Surely you want to go to America? You don’t want to stay in this hick country all your life?

Goodbye, Pat.

What? What? Don’t hang up. It’s a great opportunity for you.

I’m sure it is, Pat, and I’d like to talk about it some time. Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of something. Or at least—he glanced at Beryl’s now motionless hand, and his own now flaccid organ—I was five minutes ago.

Archie, you’re going to the convention, aren’t you?

Yes.

Okay, we can make the final arrangements then. Is Beryl there?

Huh? Sure, why not? She wasn’t doing anything, anyway.

Slowly dressing in the bedroom he shared with his two sisters, Archie Fenton tried to concentrate on the paragraph of educationese doubletalk that would have to be written into his daily plan book by tomorrow morning. The paragraph would be a compilation of weasel words, impressive in appearance but not actually meaning anything, that had nothing to do with classroom activity, but would satisfy the epsilon who was Archie’s principal that the lesson fulfilled a mythical purpose known as an educational objective.

Instead of doubletalk, Archie found himself thinking of the phone call. Just how far could he trust this budding Rajama? Ron, Charlie and Kevin were apparently convinced. Kevin was an intellectual zero whose concept of the future was the day after tomorrow, and Charlie was an unknown quantity. But if Ron Hudson had agreed to join Pat’s show, that was significant. Ron had a brain, even if he did tend to put it in neutral every time Archie forced him to defend the mythology of the Church of Love, named, not after the emotional abstract as Archie had first assumed, but after Father Love, the excommunicated Catholic priest who had founded the church in the nineteenth century at the alleged instigation of an angel named Galgaliel—or was it Montiawl? Ron was the first person Archie had ever accepted as an equal. If Ron was joining Zubrick, then Pat’s chances of getting Archie were considerably higher.

Even so, Pat’s behavior of these last three months did not inspire confidence. Apart from the unpaid salaries, another thing that bothered Archie was Pat’s conflicting stories about his strategy. Whenever Pat had played two shows in the same suburb, he had used Ron on stage the first night and Archie the second night. He had told Ron, We have to give the hicks our best show the first night. That’s why I use you. We give them a strong show so they’ll talk it up big, then we pack out the second night.

Pat’s story to Archie had been, I’m saving you for the second night. The second night has to be better than the first, so we can come back a third time and really pack the hall. To Archie, one of those statements had to be a calculated lie, and conceivably both were calculated lies. And while he conceded that lying could be justified in exceptional circumstances, transparent flattery failed to qualify as an exceptional circumstance.

Yet despite his misgivings, Archie liked the idea of touring with Zubrick. Pat was a good hypnotist. He was no Rajama, but then Rajama had been perfecting his show for more than a decade. Pat was certainly better than any of the other Rajama impersonators, including Archie, who had sprung up like mushrooms all over Australia.

Oh well, Archie thought, no point deciding anything now. Ron will be at the convention. I’ll see what he has to say first.

In fact Archie’s decision was made for him the following day. For the past several weeks he had been assigning writing practice to a pupil whose handwriting resembled the tracks made by an ant that had fallen into an inkwell. The parents had responded by complaining to the epsilon that it was the teacher’s responsibility to learn to read their little moron’s hieroglyphs. Archie had invited the parents to come to the school, and they had agreed.

The interview lasted almost fifteen minutes, during which time only Archie and the mother conversed, while the father sat facing Archie with a mongoloid glaze in his eyes. Eventually Archie leaned toward the mother and, indicating her husband, half whispered, Does the etard-ray eak-spay?

In later years Archie would come to regard his question as an unsurpassable exit line on which to end his career as a vegetable-sitter. For the father had been neither mute nor imbecilic. But Archie had asked the question in the conviction that the man was a delta minus at best, trainable mentally handicapped. He had not intended to burn any bridges. Now that he had done precisely that, he saw little option but to accept Pat’s offer. Working for a living was not a viable alternative. Just the same, he would postpone the final decision until he had discussed the situation with Ron.

CHAPTER TWO

The first International Convention of Flying Sorcerers ever held in Australia opened in Sydney on a Friday evening in June at 7.30 PM.

Ron Hudson was in a dilemma. This offer from Pat Zubrick was the break he had been seeking since he was sixteen, six long, weary years ago. Show business! The only business! The business there’s no business like! Yet he hesitated. He had not come to Australia to be an entertainer, yielding to the sin of pride by basking in an audience’s applause. He had come to serve Yahweh, the One God whose true Hebrew name had been mistranscribed into Jehovah by the terminally ignorant.

There was, of course, no divine imperative that Ron must perform his missionary work evenings. Instead of ringing doorbells and telling people about the Church of Love after finishing his day’s duties for Martin, Barton, Spartan and Fargo, Australia’s seventeenth-largest advertising agency, he could do so during the day and work for Zubrick at night. But what if Pat’s itinerary took him out of a town just as Ron was in the middle of a conversion? Would Yahweh understand? Of course he would, Ron reasoned. Yahweh was understanding by definition. Archie Fenton’s description of Yahweh as the insane god was totally unjust. It was Archie’s god Hughie that was crazy. Whoever heard of a god that defined sin as the unnecessary hurting of a non-consenting victim, and decreed that, If it doesn’t hurt somebody, then it cannot possibly be objectionable to any sane god? What was the point of being the One True God, if Yahweh could not arbitrarily decree that right and wrong were whatever He said they were, heads it’s a sin and tails it’s a virtue?

Where did Archie get a god such as Hughie in the first place? As far as Ron could ascertain, Hughie had been invented by Archie’s father, professor of Levantine history at NSW University, in his philosophical treatise, Here’s Hughie, that purported to disprove religion. Here’s Hughie had caused something of a storm in a teacup when it was first published, and forced its author to flee his Alexandria professorship and accept a lower paying position in his home country. But Professor Fenton was better known in scholarly circles for his discovery and translation of pseudo-Agamemnon’s Mycenaean Chronicle, and more recently as chairman of the hypnotism subcommittee of the Scientific Committee for the Investigation of Extra Natural Claims and Enigmas (SCIENCE).

Enough of the Fentons and their homemade god, Ron thought. Yahweh is the only god who matters. Correction: Yahweh is the only God. Period. Yahweh is benevolent and understanding. He would not expect Ron to reject a career opportunity on the off chance that it might interfere with a conversion. Just the same, Ron would feel a lot better about placing himself in Pat Zubrick’s hands if Archie was also joining the show. Dash the man to heck. It’s seven-thirty already. Where is he?

Ron had met Pat Zubrick two years ago, at a convention of Australian magicians (foreigners welcome) in Melbourne that Archie had not attended. Pat had not been a hypnotist then. He had been a country and western singer, or hillbilly as such artists were still called in Australia. His appearance on the national television show, Talent Quest, singing his outlandish satire, Valentino of the Shearing Shed, had made him an overnight Somebody. He had been on the verge of signing a recording contract, when a rumored liaison with the record producer’s wife had caused the deal to collapse.

Instead, Pat had accepted top billing in a traveling tent show that also featured a hypnotist, an aging (the man was over thirty!) nobody named Rajama. Pat opened the show with his whip cracking, sharpshooting, rope spinning, mental telepathy and magic. Rajama followed with seventy-five minutes of hypnotism. Then Pat returned to close the show with the cowboy singing that the customers had come to see.

Except that the customers had not come to see the Valentino of the Shearing Shed at all. Despite Pat’s top billing, the performer who was filling the tent night after night was not Pat Franklin, not yet known as The Great Zubrick, but Rajama. Pat knew it, Rajama knew it, and showman Roy Sands, for whom they both worked, knew it. Inevitably the day came when Rajama demanded, not only top billing, but also fifty percent of the profits.

He did not get it. Fifty percent? octogenarian Sands laughed. For what? Reciting a script and letting members of the audience get the laughs? Anyone can do what you do. Pat could do it. You’re making three hundred dollars a week. That’s more than the prime minister gets. Be satisfied.

The following night, Rajama refused to perform unless he was given a new contract. Pat had not consciously memorized Rajama’s scripts, but he had seen the hypnotist perform often enough that he could ad lib his way through a comparable performance. Pat did Rajama’s part of the show as well as his own, and it worked. Pat became The Great Zubrick, hypnotist extraordinaire, earning $500 a week for himself and a little more than that for Roy Sands. Rajama rented the largest legitimate theatres in Sydney and Melbourne and became a STAR, grossing $20,000 a week.

It was after Pat also quit working for Roy Sands, and started promoting his own shows in suburban town halls around Sydney, that Ron had gone to work for him, usually on Friday and Saturday nights, as a stooge. He had been stooging for almost six months now, and in that time he had formed the impression that Pat was in many ways irresponsible. That was why he had not jumped at the opportunity to join the Zubrick show on tour (fulltime!) as soon as it was offered.

It was still strange to Ron, thinking of Pat as Zubrick the hypnotist, after knowing him as Pat Franklin, amateur magician and semi-professional cowboy singer. How much money did Pat owe him now? Twenty-seven shows at thirty dollars each, that comes to over eight hundred dollars, equivalent to sixteen weeks’ pay at his day job. Pat would have paid me, Ron told himself. He just didn’t have the money. It’s not his fault there were no customers. So what if Pat cried poor after spending more money on one meal in an expensive restaurant than Ron paid for a week’s board? It was not as if he deliberately spent the money on himself in blatant disregard for his outstanding obligations. Pat was just thoughtless, that’s all.

Could Pat make money on the road? It seemed hard to believe. Those shows in suburban town halls had been disastrous. Of course that was only to be expected. Stars like Rajama played Sydney’s surviving legitimate theatres, downtown as Ron thought of the city center, although that was not a word with which Australians were familiar. If Zubrick wanted people to think he was a hypnotist of Rajama’s caliber, why was he performing in the Redfern Town Hall and the North Sydney Returned Soldiers’ Hall? Naturally he had flopped. It would be a different story on the road. If a screaming faggot—make that kamp, Ron corrected himself. I’m not a homophobe—who called his gang of noisemakers Backward Electricity, could make money with a touring show that appealed only to the braindead, Pat could make money with a show that would make the faces on Mount Rushmore laugh. The name change from Franklin to Zubrick would help get around the prejudice Australians appeared to have against people who achieved recognition in one field and then attempted to do anything else. And Pat’s new gimmick of avoiding the upstart-local-boy label by pretending to be South African was also sure to help.

Yes, Ron was satisfied. He would talk it over with Archie, but he knew he would join.

You wouldn’t spring it in a jungle.

Ron spun around, startled by the unexpected voice. He stared into the familiar face of Charlie Newton, Zubrick’s stooge and stuntman. He wondered why Charlie looked vaguely different tonight. Then he realized. "Charlie, you’ve shaved your five o’clock shadow. Isn’t Miami Vice your role model any more?"

So make a federal case of it, Charlie shrugged. By the way, Charlie McCarthy called. He wants his suit back.

Ron, an inveterate handshaker, offered his hand. Charlie, who detested formalities, spat on it. Ron wiped his hand dry on Charlie’s sleeve. He grinned. Have you seen Archie anywhere?

You rang? said the voice in Ron’s left ear.

Ron turned and bowed. May your house be safe from tigers.

Archie Fenton returned the bow. May the insane god predecease you. He bowed next to Charlie. May you be shot by a jealous husband at a hundred and three.

Charlie made a masturbating motion in front of his crotch.

What a perfect little gentleman, Ron murmured. Come to my place some time. I’ll give you some lessons in couth.

To Beryl, who had arrived with Archie, Charlie said, Morning, love. How’s your business?

I’m not in business, dear, Beryl cooed. I prefer to give it away. But in your case I’ll be happy to make an exception.

Will you take a dollar-fifty? Charlie asked.

Never one to spoil a joke by failing to give the designated straight line, Beryl pouted, A dollar-fifty! What do you think I am?

We’ve established that, Charlie answered. Now we’re haggling over the price.

Beryl grinned and repeated Charlie’s front-of-crotch gesture. Tell me, Charlie, she asked, do you ever jack yourself off?

Of course I do, Charlie answered indignantly. Do you think I don’t know to use it or lose it?

When you do it, are you ashamed?

Of course not.

Then why do you hide?

Hide? Charlie laughed. Who hides?

A buzzer sounded.

Hey, they’re starting, Archie declared. We’d better grab our seats. Has anyone seen Pat? Beryl’s supposed to be sitting with him. The rest of us are at the table on the far side. There he is. Off you go, kitten. See you later.

The president of the Sydney ring of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, one of the convention’s co-sponsors, banged his gavel. Ladies and gentlemen, he announced, I have much pleasure in declaring this International Convention of Flying Sorcerers open. I now ask you to charge your glasses and join me in a toast to our most gracious queen.

All stood. Mrs Mountbatten, Archie toasted, not caring who heard him.

Liberace, Charlie toasted.

Also the jack, ten and nine, added Ron.

As soon as the opening formalities were over, Ron said, I think I’ve decided to join Pat. What about you two? Have you decided yet? Is it true that he wants Beryl to be his stage hostess? I suppose she won’t be coming unless you do, Archie? I mean, she wouldn’t go on tour unchaperoned, would she?

Beryl is going, Archie answered. "She needs her job as a flashlight jockey like she needs an auxiliary rectum. As for the concept chaperone, you should know by now that Beryl is no more superstitious than I am. Not being a masochist, she evaluates every offer to share joy on its merits. For myself, I no longer have a choice. I need gainful employment, and the kind Pat’s offering is what I’ve always wanted."

Charlie, what about you? Ron asked politely. Are you coming? He realized at once that he had asked the wrong question.

No, I always look like this.

Are you joining Pat’s show? Ron asked patiently.

You know me, Charlie shrugged. I’ll be in anything but an arsehole. Except when I was with the circus, of course. My first job was preparing the elephants before each show, sticking my arm up their arseholes and dragging out two feet of shit, so they wouldn’t shit in front of the audience.

Seeing that no one else was going to give the required straight line, Beryl asked, Why didn’t you quit?

What? And get out of show business?

Dinner was over, and the caterers had finished clearing, when Ron, Archie and Charlie joined Pat and Beryl at their table. Now Archie noticed a conspicuous absence that had not consciously registered earlier.

Where’s Roy Sands? Archie asked. I thought he was going to be here?

Roy won’t be coming with us, Pat Zubrick answered. I thought we were going to be fifty-percent partners. But when Roy handed me his contract to sign, it showed him as the show’s sole owner and limited my salary to five hundred dollars a week, less than that if Roy’s constructive accounting could show a profit of less than a thousand dollars. But Roy’s no loss. He was only going to put in two thousand dollars. Hell, you could raise that much, Archie. And I’ll give you fifty percent of the show for a year.

Yeah, right.

It’s a terrific investment, Archie, Pat gushed. Roy’s been a showman for years, and he was convinced it’ll work. It’s just that he’s been paying his performers chicken feed for years. Giving the star fifty percent was against his religion. What do you say?

I say I’ll think about it, Archie answered. Why not? he asked himself. It’s not as if I have to part with more than a couple of hundred right away. If the first week bombs, I can pull out before I start throwing good money after bad. I’ll think about it, he repeated. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.

On the way home on the train, Archie asked Beryl, So what do you think? Assuming that I accept Pat’s deal, are you sure you want to come with us?

That’s a real tough decision, Beryl grinned. Like I want to be an usherette all my life.

"You realize he’ll expect you to share joy, or put out as he more likely thinks of it? Unless you consider him a more worthwhile person than I do, that could present a problem."

Archie, I believe Pat is a worthwhile person. He says a lot of things that seem to be lies, but I don’t think he does it intentionally. He just doesn’t comprehend that he can’t make something be true by merely wanting it. In that way he’s a lot like the godworshippers. If he had the means to keep his promises, as he will if he gets rich, he’ll be the most reliable person you could ever want to meet.

In other words you’ve got the twat hots for him?

It’s more than that, Beryl assured her concerned brother. I know he uses flattery on people he should be able to recognize as too intelligent to fall for it. I know he owes everybody who’s ever worked for him, and he seems to believe that, if people are dumb enough to let him use them, then he has a divine right to do so. But there’s more to him than that. Somewhere inside there’s a very frightened little boy who knows he’s a user and is desperate to become something better. Archie, Pat is basically a very decent person who hasn’t grown up. All babies want their every whim gratified. Most outgrow it by the age of five or six. Pat’s just taking longer than most.

He’s also a brainwashed victim of the superstition that man does and woman is done to. He boasts that he has five psychological words that can get any woman on earth out of her pants. Are you sure you want to get involved with someone who thinks like that?

So he has superstitions, Beryl shrugged. I’m not unaware of his cultural conditioning. For himself, he can bed down with anyone from Agrippina to Lucretia Borgia, without it ever crossing his mind that he’s degrading himself. But just let him see me in bed even with someone as fine as you or Ron, and he’ll rate me slightly lower than Typhoid Mary. I recognize the problem and I can live with it, at least until I find out if his brainwashing is irreversible. If we do become a couple, I’m going to be as monogamous as if I shared the godworshippers’ belief that adultery is a recreation taboo rather than an impregnation taboo.

Archie smiled. Sounds like a good idea.

So don’t expect to sleep tonight. It might be our last chance to share joy for a long time.

***

The traveling Zubrick show’s first professional performance was scheduled for Marvell, a town of twenty thousand population located 160 kilometers northwest of Sydney in the Blue Mountains. For publicity, Archie had arranged for Charlie to perform the bed of nails in a store window at one PM on the day of the show.

The bed of nails was Charlie Newton’s own act. He had used it to publicize some of Pat’s earlier shows in the Sydney suburbs. His fee was $150 per time, which Pat had successfully avoided paying.

As a solo performer, Charlie had worked in a loincloth and turban. For the Zubrick show, Pat had him wear a swimsuit, since his fakir costume would have obscured the message that Zubrick was the designated performer. Charlie would look into Zubrick’s eyes, and be ostensibly catapulted into a hypnotic trance. His body would become rigid, and then be lifted by the head and feet and lowered onto a bed of four hundred six-inch nails. Three men would then step onto his chest, stomach and legs, remain a few seconds, and step down.

The stunt was ready on time. A window had been cleared, and a crowd was already starting to gather.

How are the tickets going? Pat asked.

Not good, Archie answered. Less than a hundred in, and most of those are free passes. Let’s hope the stunt livens it up.

Archie picked up the microphone. In a few minutes, he told the lunchtime crowd assembled around the window, The Great Zubrick will hypnotize a subject and place him on this bed of nails.

In a few minutes Pat Zubrick did precisely that. Charlie was lowered onto the nails, and three men, including a 100 kg police constable, stood on him. That Charlie was not really hypnotized did not strike Pat as detracting from the legitimacy of his demonstration. Since the effect being simulated was real, he was taking the commendable action of lying to further a greater truth. Or so The Great Zubrick believed. Had his schooling continued beyond grade six, he might have realized that he was following a long established precedent. Believers in religion, parapsychology, alien visitations, reincarnation and Bigfoot had been faking data with clear consciences since at least the time of Bel and the Dragon.

You can step down now, Archie informed the constable. Into the microphone he continued, While you’re waiting for Zubrick to return and awaken the subject, might I suggest that you come into the store and reserve your seats for tonight’s show. Zubrick is appearing at the Marvell Town Hall for six nights, starting tonight at eight PM. Three hours of laughs, thrills and mystery, tonight at the Marvell Town Hall. This subject was hypnotized by The Great Zubrick....

During the hour that the stunt was on, ticket sales trebled.

A crowd of more than three hundred saw Charlie lifted off the nails and awakened by the sound of Mr Zubrick’s voice. There were a few dents in his back, mainly around the shoulder blades. In the last few minutes of a stunt, Charlie liked to relax slightly and let the nails sink in. He felt that it looked too phony if he came off without a mark, as he could have done.

Charlie was turned around to show the crowd the nail marks, and the demonstration was over. Sighs of relief quickly gave way to applause.

....avoid any delay tonight, you can reserve your seats right now... Archie spieled on for a few minutes.

They liked the stunt, Pat observed. Now let’s see if that translates into arses on seats.

CHAPTER THREE

The show had been advertised for eight PM, but as people were still crowding into the Marvell Town Hall for almost a half-hour after that, nobody worried about starting. Ron, Kevin and Charlie drifted into different sections of the hall. They were surprised to see such a huge crowd, ten times as large as any audience Pat had played to in the Sydney suburbs, but they were soon to get used to it.

Pat Zubrick was nervous. Despite his forty or fifty shows around Sydney, which had been little more than rehearsals, and the tent shows with old Roy Sands, which did not count at all, this was virtually his professional debut. It had to be good. No, it had to be great. The Great Zubrick could not afford to be merely good, not if he was to be the Big Star he expected to be by the time he was twenty-eight.

For as long as he could remember, age twenty-eight had been the limit that Pat had set for himself to become the World’s Greatest Magician. As a child, he had been taken by his grandmother to a performance of the last magician foolish enough to believe he could wean customers away from the free entertainment of four television channels. Somebody had told Pat that the magician’s age was twenty-eight. As of that moment Pat knew that he must be the magician’s superior before he reached the same age.

For three weeks after seeing what would be the last illusion show until David Copperfield discovered how to make television work for him instead of against him, Pat ranted and screamed at his jackaroo father to buy him some magic tricks from the mail order catalogue he had procured from a magic shop in Sydney. The elder Franklin’s reaction was to stomp out of the house, spend several hours in the nearest bar, stagger home and, when Pat’s tantrums started again, beat him unmercifully with the leg of a chair. Pat never once associated the beatings with his own fits of screaming, only with his father’s drunkenness. The third week, Pat ran away from home. He rode a station horse the fifteen miles to Katoomba, purchased a train ticket to the next station, stayed on the train all the way to Sydney, and jumped the suburban train to his grandmother’s house. He was promptly returned to his parents, but his grandmother bought him his first box of magic tricks.

Despite his associates’ belief that he had first encountered hypnotism while working with Rajama, Pat’s interest in the subject was as old as his interest in magic, of which he viewed hypnotism as a branch. At the age of eleven he swapped a set of multiplying billiard balls for a book that guaranteed to teach him how to become a hypnotist. He quickly read through the instructions.

Pat’s cousin was twelve. She was as black as he was white. Their common grandfather, Hercule Zubriques, was a Belgian immigrant who had married an Aboriginal woman and currently lived with her on a native reservation in Arnhem Land. Hercule’s light-skinned daughter, Pat’s mother, had married a white man, while his sons, as dark-skinned as any full-blood, had married native women. Thus, while Pat was as white as a tenth-generation Swede, his cousins were as black as Africans.

Pat and his cousin had played you-show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine many times. She had only refused him her complete favors because she shared the common pre-adolescent belief that such behavior always causes pregnancy. When Pat insisted that she accompany him to the garage, she assumed that it was for their usual game.

Instead, Pat sat her in a chair, looked into her eyes, and commanded, You are going to sleep. The book had recommended rehearsing in front of a mirror before trying to hypnotize a real subject, but Pat had no time for that. He repeated, You are going to sleep. Your eyes are heavy and you are very tired. You are going to sleep.

Mary Zubriques had never before associated hypnotism with her cousin. But she had learned enough about the subject from television and other sources to know what was expected of her. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Pat was ecstatic. He was a hypnotist! Or was he? What if she was just pretending? Departing from the book, he instructed, You are in my power. You are my slave. Take off your pants.

Mary had no awareness that hypnotists, like faithhealers, had concocted a myriad of rationalizations to explain away their failures, or that currently fashionable catechisms declared that any hypnotic suggestion inimical to the subject’s self-interest would not be obeyed unless it was imposed in the context of an artificial reality that would make it seem reasonable. Since Pat had called her his slave and given her an order, she assumed that that was how hypnotism worked. She took off her pants.

Pat realized at once that this proved nothing. She had done as much for him before, without being hypnotized. What else could he do? Of course! You don’t feel anything, he ordered. I’m going to hit you and you won’t feel it. It won’t hurt. He hit her with all of his strength in the stomach.

Determined to appear hypnotized, or perhaps even convinced that she was hypnotized, Mary did not move or cry out.

She’s hypnotized! She’s hypnotized! She’s really hypnotized! Pat ran out of the garage.

Three boys were playing in the back lane. I can hypnotize, Pat yelled at them. I’ve hypnotized a tart in the garage.

Bulldust, one of the boys scoffed. You couldn’t hypnotize pussy.

Come and I’ll show you, Pat exulted. Come on, come on. I’ll show you.

They followed.

Halfway to the garage, Pat stopped. It’ll cost you twenty cents each.

They paid. Pat had to promise double their money back if he was lying, but they paid.

In the garage Pat ordered his cousin, You are in my power. I am your master.  Stand up and dance.

The audience saw the girl’s pants on the floor. Make her show us her thing, the youngest boy asked eagerly.

It’ll cost you another twenty cents.

Sure, sure. They started to pool their small coins.

Twenty cents each.

They paid. They looked.

Can I touch it?

Another twenty cents.

Make her whip mine up.

Twenty cents.

One of the boys had heard what grownups do  Make her suck it.

Twenties were coming too easily. It was time Pat made some real money. It’ll cost you half a dollar.

That time there were no takers.

I’ll tell you what, Pat offered. I’ll let her suck you for nothing, if you can get six kids to pay twenty cents each to watch.

Three hours later, every boy in the neighborhood had seen the hypnotized girl, and Pat was richer by ten dollars. As a magician he had been unable to persuade anyone but his grandmother to watch him perform. As a hypnotist he had made his fortune in one afternoon.

The girl’s father walked in just as Pat was preparing to burn her hand with a match to prove