The Disappearance Boy Read Free Page B

confused, but he doesn’t wait; already his top hat is off and twirling in his hands, the oval of its scarlet lining a sudden and demanding mouth. As if he were playing with a favourite dog, he makes two slow swinging right-hand passes across the front of his body, clearly indicating that he is going to toss the hat stage left for the woman to retrieve. She anxiously totters across the stage behind him, readying herself for her task. He keeps his eyes on his audience – and then on the third swing turns his well-tailored back on them and converts the pass with the hat (which he now swaps deftly into his left hand) into a slow upward diagonal. He does this twice, moving very slowly and clearly for everybody’s benefit – the dog’s included – and still exactly in time with his silent music. Neither he nor the woman has yet looked at the draped box. The hat is now down right of his body; suddenly, he double-times his gesture, flashing the hat up and down and up again, keeping strict time with three peremptory accents from an unheard snare drum – and as the girl stumbles forward to catch it on the expected third pass, both of his hands are suddenly up and to his left and empty again. The hat, of course, is nowhere to be seen; upstage, the girl gives a pantomime flinch of female failure to the sound of an accusing stroke from an imagined cymbal, and the man is already turning downstage again, with both eyebrows raised this time. He brings his empty hands slowly down, making a dismissive shrugging gesture that displays just how well cut that dinner jacket of his is across the shoulders. There is a momentary pause, in which he snaps the snowy linen handkerchief from his breast pocket, wipes the sweat from both his hands and then in three swift successive folds and one sudden landing swoop tucks it back whence it came, its two crisp peaks apparently – and inexplicably – as immaculate as they were before. All of this happens a bit faster than the eye can quite follow, but then his hands slow down again, as if they were considering what to do next. He shifts his attention back up to the gallery again, and then back down to the circle, and then finally to one particular seat in the middle of the stalls. His expression, though still officially deadpan, seems to shift; he flashes a look upstage at his assistant, and then back out at the empty seat. He is making, it would seem, a choice.
    She, meanwhile, tries to look foolish and unconcerned at the same time.
    In response to this slight shift in his expression – his brows furrow again, ever so slightly – it would seem that the silent music has just changed key. The man reaches slowly into his right trouser pocket, and quite matter-of-factly produces a small coil of rope; soft, and scarlet. Snake-like. He looks down at it as if this prop were an old and valued friend, and gestures elegantly towards it with his other, empty hand. Then, having now apparently decided what to do about his problem upstage, he once again shapes the relevant fingers into a pair of horns and inserts them into his mouth. Evidently the wolf whistle is louder and even more commanding this time, because the problem springs nervously into action. She spins, and looks upstage. She doesn’t do it that well, but you can see that she is pretending that the mystery object under the silken drapes is now being wheeled on from the wings. You can also see, from the way that the man now strides smartly across to downstage right, uncoiling and coiling the rope as he goes, that the music has changed tempo as well as key – something warmer and brighter seems to be suggested; something a bit more promising , if you know what I mean. The girl steps slightly to one side; clearly, whoever is wheeling the mystery object on from the wings is rotating it as it comes, and she needs to keep out of their way. As soon as it has come to a halt, and the man has coiled and recoiled his rope to his satisfaction, he beckons her