Winner of the 1987 Nadal Prize
Blanco the Magician is renowned across Europe for his astonishing telepathic feats, dazzling audiences with the power of his mind. But when a ruthless conspiracy exposes him as a fraud, his carefully constructed world shatters. Fleeing disgrace, Blanco escapes to the remote corners of Argentina, where he begins a new life in obscurity with the beguiling and enigmatic Gina.
As Blanco struggles to rebuild his identity, he finds himself entangled in a series of events that blur the line between illusion and reality. In The Event, Juan José Saer weaves a hypnotic tale of deception, exile, and the search for meaning in a world where nothing is as it seems. With his signature philosophical depth and luminous prose, Saer explores themes of love, identity, and the fragile constructs that hold our lives together.
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In London, around 1855, he emerged from the shadows, in a second-rate theater, to exercise his powers, telepathic thought, movement of objects at a distance, distortion of matter through simple contact, and to maintain that this gift, which he himself had mastered to perfection by practicing it for years, is within the power of everyone and that all one need do is to believe in it and to dissolve that excremental residue of the mind constituted by matter, as he takes pleasure in calling it, in order to exercise it fully, with the result that the theaters in which he performed were filled to overflowing by people who brought their spoons, their iron bars, their old vest pocket watches with broken springs and who, concentrating under his direction, gripped them in their hands with all their strength, with their eyes closed, convinced of the secondary nature of agglomerated substances, until the metal bars or the spoons twisted or broke to pieces, as though they had been made of soft caramel or clay, and until the watches began to keep time again. As the theaters became more central and more spacious, the scientific authorities to whom Bianco appealed publicly to verify his demonstrations became stricter, and his main tactic, paying a call on the skeptics who insulted him in the newspapers in order to propose to them, with no restrictions whatsoever, the supervision of the controls imposed upon him, managed to win his detractors over. Maxwell himself in the end asserted to a reporter: “Mr. Burton and I are doubtless working in a similar experimental field that it would be difficult to define within the framework of a mere interview; we differ only as to our method, our hypotheses and our objectives.”
Another of his gifts was telepathy. He invited to the theater those psychiatrists who raised objections, had them draw in secret on a sheet of paper in one corner of the stage and then reproduced the design before the public, in colored chalk on a large blackboard, more or less precisely but almost always in a form very much like that of the original, which was then spread out so as to compare it with the reproduction drawn on the blackboard; and Bianco, gravely and without an excess of self-pride, maintained that, unlike the difference of matter and its capricious and asymmetrical forms, mind does not manifest itself except in certain great universal figures that reproduce, contain and explain the essence of all things, and that all that was necessary was to know how to perceive them and decipher them: “All that is required is patience and sincerity,” he would say. “We”—onstage he used the royal “we”—“seek neither to engage in polemics with materialists or to convince them. We are not unaware of matter, nor do we deny it. We merely wish to demonstrate its secondary nature.”
Two years later, the doors of the university were thrown open to him—not only the lecture halls but also the physics laboratory and the medical and psychiatric amphitheaters. One day, at the end of one of his demonstrations, a sickly-looking young man, prematurely bald and noticeably timid, introduced himself to him, saying that he was the son of a high Prussian dignitary and that he wished, in the name of the authorities of his country, to invite him to give a series of lectures, but before that event took place, he would be delighted to invite him to have lunch in London. Unlike what his rachitic air would leave one to suppose, the young Prussian ate with gusto and engaged in energetic and frank conversation; not only did he agree that Burton, in order to demonstrate his gifts on the continent, should change his name and begin to be known as Bianco, but even strongly recommended that he do so; the young man’s advice was followed, not in one fell swoop but gradually, so that during his first year in Prussia Bianco went by both names, sometimes one, sometimes the other, and even in certain cases the two of them at the same time, until he had adopted, exclusively, Bianco, saying Burton had been the name of his mother; the fact is that, at heart, he felt an uncertainty about his name, a resistance at letting himself be represented by a sole patronymic, as though he was afraid that, by choosing too definite a name, a number of parts of his being would dry up and disappear.
For six or seven years still, he continued to proclaim Malta as his native island, there where Templars, Gnostics, and Saracens had lived side by side or whose paths had at least crossed and intensified its aura, archaic and ill-defined, with their obscure flashes of light.
For several years, Prussia welcomed him and fitted him—he frequented the nobility, scientific circles, actresses, and members of the general staff of the Army. From time to time, the embassies organized lectures abroad for him, demonstrations at universities, meetings with scientific authorities and even with religious authorities who saw in his theories concerning the supremacy of the mind an unexpected and modern confirmation of old dogmas from which the masses were beginning to disassociate themselves. Paris wrought its magic on him, and on his return to Prussia, he began, having become a little weary of provincial life, to prepare for his departure so as to make Paris his permanent residence and send out from there his message to the entire world. But he feared that his Prussian protectors would not allow him to leave. To his surprise, they greeted the idea with enthusiasm and soon invited him to present himself to the general staff for a private interview with one of its principal officers. The officer received him affably, offered him a cigar, and explained to him the reason for their interview: the intelligence service would like Herr Bianco, thanks to his gifts for telepathy, to undertake to fathom the secrets of the French general staff, in an indirect way, naturally, profiting from his eventual friendships in Paris and his frequentations of milieus that the Prussian Embassy would take charge of gaining him entry into. “Malta, colonel, is my native island,” Bianco replied, “and England the scene of my first scientific demonstrations, but Prussia is my adopted homeland and the country imposes duties that gratitude and honor preclude my evading.”
And so he settled in Paris. Academic and scientific milieus, skeptical less out of intimate conviction than out of professional interests, looked upon him with reticence, but from salon to salon, from grand gala to grand gala, from adultery to adultery, he finally won the indispensable relationships, and at the end of a year, he was a notable whom a handful of adepts considered to be the living proof of the sordid unreality of matter, while a swarm of snobs competed for his attention at well-attended lunches and elegant afternoon chocolate parties. The newspapers engaged in controversy concerning his case; a member of the Institute attacked him, but the Academy of Sciences, more prudent, defended him, arguing that a priori attacks scarcely accorded with the experimental method and that the century authorized its impartial application to any object whatsoever, wherefore it, the Academy, did not pronounce itself either for or against as long as the necessary tests had not been carried out. In his public demonstrations, now less frequent, Bianco continued to twist little coffee spoons and metal bars, to make unusable watches work again, to reproduce almost to perfection, through thought transmission, designs hidden from his sight, which, after a moment of painful concentration, he drew in colored chalk on a blackboard; his mere proximity made compass needles waver with uncertainty, made magnets capricious, caused screws to move like insects. Go back home, concentrate, forget the prestige of matter, he would say, and its stubborn resistance will vanish once you have subjected it to the continual fire of the mind, of whose superior power I am the living proof. And the watches started ticking again; the metal bars twisted; compass needles spun about wildly.
Every so often, he would draw up a report for the Prussian Embassy, without great conviction, awaiting the moment to free himself of his mission, for he regarded it as unworthy of his gifts and dangerous for his reputation; but when he hinted at that possibility to the officials at the embassy, these civil servants gave him to understand that this possibility was extremely remote, for from the moment that he had drafted the first report his fate had been linked to that of the general staff until the end of time. Bianco approved with a resigned smile that accentuated even more the bitter expression of his mouth without there being any way of knowing whether it should be attributed to the very shape of his lips or to a grimace acquired in the course of the obscure first thirty years of his life.
One day, the Academy of Sciences sent him a letter proposing that he perform a demonstration in their laboratories. The time had come, the letter said, for him to prove his gifts for telepathy and telekinetics before a select group of scientists, without the presence of the general public and in experimental conditions that the Academy itself would establish. The Academy’s basic premise was that both sides would act in good faith and it thought that a meticulous experiment could not help but be useful to science. Bianco did not fail to note the peremptory and slightly stern tone of the letter but the challenge excited him, even though he suspected a trap and accepted knowing that if he triumphantly proved his point, what he called in salons and theaters his simple truth would thereby be regarded as possessing an invincible and definitive nature. On a winter afternoon, he went off, alone, to the Academy and subjected himself to the proposed experiment. Eight persons supervised it; among them, a middle-aged man, dressed in black, who kept looking at him sympathetically. As dusk fell, they let Bianco go, but did not announce their decision as to the results. In the street, the middle-aged man caught up with him, looked him over for a moment with a curiosity full of admiration and invited him to dinner.
According to him, the members of the Academy appeared to be convinced of the genuineness of his gifts and the conclusions would no doubt soon be made public in the form of a communication that would be made by one of the scientists present who would thus assume the role of spokesman. He for his part was entirely convinced, but he was only an attorney and a journalist. He thought that, in order to put pressure on the Academy to announce its decision in short order, Bianco ought to hold a great public demonstration in a theater, and if Bianco agreed, he, the attorney-journalist, would take charge of organizing it. Bianco reflected in silence for several minutes, warming his glass of cognac in the cupped palm of his hand, and finally accepted. The journalist did a fine job: he filled the largest theater in Paris with disciples and detractors, with journalists, scientists, artists, bureaucrats, and members of the military. He had also organized, in addition to the usual experiments, a debate during the intermission so that Bianco might explain the origin of his work and his supporters and his enemies might freely put forth their arguments, but on ascending to the stage, Bianco felt that the evening was going to be stormy, and that to judge from the shouts and constant disputes in the audience, the number of skeptics was infinitely superior to that of the believers. He began to speak nonetheless: he was by no means a scientist but merely a humble object who placed himself at its disposal; in his youth, he himself had had doubts as to his powers, immersed as he was, because of the education that he had received, in the excremental magma of matter, which in this century was an object of worship; he himself had suffered from the same skepticism displayed by many of those who were in the audience, having for many long years been assailed by doubt and gone astray, refusing to believe in his own gifts, which existed, he was certain, in each and every one of the persons present in that theater, in whom they had simply atrophied through lack of use. During his speech, he was obliged to put up with shouts, guffaws, and one or two interruptions but his supporters, and even certain of his detractors, raised their voices to demand silence, in firm and solemn tones. Finally, a number of scientists insisted that he proceed to perform the experiments. Bianco maintained that the audience was too agitated for him to be able to obtain the concentration necessary, but knowing that if he backed down, his simple truth, as he called it, risked being shattered to bits, he began his demonstration in a precarious silence and the spiteful attention of the audience, twisting, by the simple imposition of his hands, the well-known iron bars and spoons, making small metal objects change place on a transparent table, making broken watches that had been rusting away for years work again, causing compass needles to go wild, and reproducing, by mental concentration, on a blackboard with bits of colored chalk, the design that someone had made at the other end of the stage, out of his sight, on a sheet of paper that he then carefully folded in four. When he had finished his demonstration, the shouts and the catcalls drowned out the applause until one of the scientists managed, with great effort, to silence the audience once more so as to address a brief speech to those present: “We are going to perform a comparative examination between Monsieur Bianco’s demonstration and that of one of the eminent members of the Institute (laughter) who has been kind enough to offer to participate in our experiment.” And, holding his arm out toward the wings just as an orchestra hidden in the pit abruptly began to play circus music, he invited someone waiting behind the scenes to come onstage.
A clown, his face hidden behind a mask and a huge red nose, made his appearance, pretending to run as fast as he could as meanwhile headvanced very slowly until he had reached the middle of the stage, and without uttering a word, keeping time to the music that grew slower and slower, he began to perform, with great rapidity and facility, all of Bianco’s experiments, twisting iron bars, starting watches going again, making compass needles abruptly change direction, moving every which way, receiving objects from a group of scientists on his right and then passing them on, in a different state, to those on his left, and little by little, there was created, beneath Bianco’s thunderstruck gaze, a sort of round, the scientists on the right receiving from the audience spoons, pieces of iron, watches, and compasses and passing them to the clown who started the watches again, twisted the pieces of iron and then passed them on to the scientists on the left, who examined them and then handed them back to the audience. “I’m a prestidigitator! I’m a prestidigitator!” the clown began to shout: “I’m a prestidigitator but I’m also a positivist!” The audience was in an uproar and there began to rain down onstage, in Bianco’s direction, spoons, watches, iron bars, compasses. Bianco tried to fling himself on the clown but those onstage held him back as the clown now began to produce, from out of nowhere, doves, bouquets of flowers, a rabbit, silk ribbons, colored paper streamers that floated about onstage, and kept shouting without a letup: “I’m a positivist! I’m a positivist! I’m a positivist!” with inordinate fury, almost in a sort of trance, until, turning around, he approached Bianco and murmured to him: “I’ve been through all that myself, my esteemed colleague. Twenty years ago, I had the same temptation and in my case too, it turned out badly.” And as he took off his mask and his fake nose, Bianco recognized the journalist, his companion, whose absence, a while earlier, had deeply disturbed him, for his eyes had searched in vain for him onstage and in the audience as he was carrying out his demonstration.
The following day, the news appeared in all the papers. Since one of them insinuated that Bianco was probably, apart from being an impostor and a mythomaniac, a spy in the service of one of the traditional enemies of the nation, not only were the doors of salons closed to him but also those of the embassy which, in the face of repeated insinuations, found itself obliged to publish a communique in which it was explained in detail that the person in question had hurriedly left Prussia some years previously after having been found guilty several times of abuse of confidence and of fraud. After retiring for a time to Normandy to a house which overlooked the Seine, Bianco, who, two times out of three, ran across, even in the countryside, someone who recognized him (his picture often appeared in the newspapers or in magazines, both before and after the scandal), decided that it was perhaps necessary to go back for a while to the obscure, hazy area from which he had emerged when he was about thirty, and gathering together all his worldly goods which, despite the reverses of fortune, were not negligible, since his practical sense and his prudence in financial matters were in no way contaminated by his excesses and his predilection for risk in other areas, he boarded a ship at Le Havre and went to settle in Sicily.
