had described the piece of jewelry to a T.
Hermes Trismegistus proceeded to repeat the same feat with a young man’s engraved cigarette lighter and then an older gentleman’s mustache clippers. “A real stumper, that!” Mikael said sardonically into Sophie’s ear, and she had a difficult time not laughing out loud—gosh, it was awfully unsanitary, someone carrying such a thing around in his pocket, or using it in public!
After several more feats of mentalism—Mikael thought the audience members must be plants, but Sophie wasn’t so sure; wasn’t it genuinely possible that Hermes Trismegistus had learned how to open a quite focused channel of mental communication with his partner in the act?—Hermes Trismegistus unwrapped his lovely assistant and asked the audience to give her a round of applause. He took a few bows himself. Then the lights went out.
When they came back on, both he and his assistant had vanished, and the park’s ushers were quietly but effectively shepherding everyone out of the theater.
Mikael checked his watch, and whistled when he saw the time.
“Good thing that piece of charlatanry didn’t last any longer! Sophie, let’s make tracks; we’re due back at the station in fifteen minutes. . . .”
They picked their way through the crowds and out of the park, Sophie looking regretfully at various wonders she had not had the chance to examine properly and making herself a promise to come back one day and see everything in a more leisurely manner.
Inevitably when they got back to the station Bohr wasn’t at all ready to leave yet. Wittgenstein’s train had been delayed by an hour, and the two men had laid out an extraordinarily complex map of condiments and cutlery and napkins to represent the nuclear reactions with which they were concerned.
Sophie and Mikael found a bench to sit on while they waited. Their attention was arrested shortly thereafter, though, by the sight of a couple in heated argument. The fact of the man and woman’s both being dressed in street clothes and carrying perfectly ordinary-looking luggage could not obscure that they were the mentalist Hermes Trismegistus and his assistant Lilly.
The mentalist looked more or less as debonair and relaxed as he had onstage, but Lilly’s body was gathered up into an angry, self-contained rod of fury.
They came to rest in a spot not very far from Sophie and Mikael’s bench, and it was all too easy to hear what they were saying. They were speaking in English; indeed, Sophie could have sworn they both had Scottish accents (her Danish was certainly not yet good enough to identify a foreign accent in Danish).
“You’re impossible, Sean,” the woman was saying. “I don’t know whether you’ve come to believe all that mystical guff you spout during the show—”
“It’s not guff!” the mentalist interjected, sounding genuinely injured. “Lilly, you know that—”
“The only thing I know,” she snapped, “is that you seem quite incapable of understanding what I’m thinking!”
“You’re being unfair,” said the mentalist. “If you don’t tell me what you want, how am I supposed to intuit it?”
“You’re the thought reader, not me!” she shouted.
“Such skills of which I am possessed,” he said, “do not enable me to disentangle the confused jumble of desires and fears making up the average female psyche. . . .”
“Ouch!” Mikael whispered to Sophie. They were both mesmerized by the exchange, which had become loud enough that others in the station had begun to attend to it also.
“If you knew what you wanted, Lilly,” the mentalist added portentously, “I might be able to help you to it. As it is, my hands are tied.”
“I do know what I want!” Lilly said.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to want to marry me!” she shouted, and then burst into tears.
The mentalist put his arm around her and whisked a beautiful and gleamingly white silk handkerchief out of his pocket, but it was
Hermes Trismegistus proceeded to repeat the same feat with a young man’s engraved cigarette lighter and then an older gentleman’s mustache clippers. “A real stumper, that!” Mikael said sardonically into Sophie’s ear, and she had a difficult time not laughing out loud—gosh, it was awfully unsanitary, someone carrying such a thing around in his pocket, or using it in public!
After several more feats of mentalism—Mikael thought the audience members must be plants, but Sophie wasn’t so sure; wasn’t it genuinely possible that Hermes Trismegistus had learned how to open a quite focused channel of mental communication with his partner in the act?—Hermes Trismegistus unwrapped his lovely assistant and asked the audience to give her a round of applause. He took a few bows himself. Then the lights went out.
When they came back on, both he and his assistant had vanished, and the park’s ushers were quietly but effectively shepherding everyone out of the theater.
Mikael checked his watch, and whistled when he saw the time.
“Good thing that piece of charlatanry didn’t last any longer! Sophie, let’s make tracks; we’re due back at the station in fifteen minutes. . . .”
They picked their way through the crowds and out of the park, Sophie looking regretfully at various wonders she had not had the chance to examine properly and making herself a promise to come back one day and see everything in a more leisurely manner.
Inevitably when they got back to the station Bohr wasn’t at all ready to leave yet. Wittgenstein’s train had been delayed by an hour, and the two men had laid out an extraordinarily complex map of condiments and cutlery and napkins to represent the nuclear reactions with which they were concerned.
Sophie and Mikael found a bench to sit on while they waited. Their attention was arrested shortly thereafter, though, by the sight of a couple in heated argument. The fact of the man and woman’s both being dressed in street clothes and carrying perfectly ordinary-looking luggage could not obscure that they were the mentalist Hermes Trismegistus and his assistant Lilly.
The mentalist looked more or less as debonair and relaxed as he had onstage, but Lilly’s body was gathered up into an angry, self-contained rod of fury.
They came to rest in a spot not very far from Sophie and Mikael’s bench, and it was all too easy to hear what they were saying. They were speaking in English; indeed, Sophie could have sworn they both had Scottish accents (her Danish was certainly not yet good enough to identify a foreign accent in Danish).
“You’re impossible, Sean,” the woman was saying. “I don’t know whether you’ve come to believe all that mystical guff you spout during the show—”
“It’s not guff!” the mentalist interjected, sounding genuinely injured. “Lilly, you know that—”
“The only thing I know,” she snapped, “is that you seem quite incapable of understanding what I’m thinking!”
“You’re being unfair,” said the mentalist. “If you don’t tell me what you want, how am I supposed to intuit it?”
“You’re the thought reader, not me!” she shouted.
“Such skills of which I am possessed,” he said, “do not enable me to disentangle the confused jumble of desires and fears making up the average female psyche. . . .”
“Ouch!” Mikael whispered to Sophie. They were both mesmerized by the exchange, which had become loud enough that others in the station had begun to attend to it also.
“If you knew what you wanted, Lilly,” the mentalist added portentously, “I might be able to help you to it. As it is, my hands are tied.”
“I do know what I want!” Lilly said.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to want to marry me!” she shouted, and then burst into tears.
The mentalist put his arm around her and whisked a beautiful and gleamingly white silk handkerchief out of his pocket, but it was
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