Read The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography for Free Online Page A

in three hours! Jaime stubbornly refused to postpone the voyage, even when Dr. Romero advised that I should stay in bed for at least a week. Cursing Western medicine, my father ran to the Chinese restaurant and, with his salesman’s skills, convinced the owner to give him the name and address of the doctor who treated them. There was not just one, but three aged brothers with a command of the science of the yin and yang. Serene as the mountains, with eyes like cats on the prowl and skin the color of my fever, they heated coarse grains of salt, put them on pieces of cotton cloth, folded these into packets, and rubbed them all over my body, almost burning me, whispering, “You go, but you stay here as well. If your branches grow to fill the whole sky, your roots will never leave the soil where they were born.” In half an hour the Chinese cured my skin, my fever, and my sadness, initiating me into Taoism.
     
    Seeing me thus restored, my parents allowed me to say goodbye to my schoolmates. No one at school was surprised when I announced that I was leaving for good. After all, I was the child who could disappear in a second. This legend came from a spectacle at which I had assisted at the local theater. The theater usually showed films (it was there that I had the great pleasure of viewing Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, Buster Crabbe in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and many other marvels), but sometimes the white screen was rolled back from the stage and visiting troupes would put on shows. So it was that Fu-Manchu, a Mexican magician, came to town. He told the adults to make sure the children kept their eyes closed, and with a great saw, he proceeded to divide a woman in two. When he put her back together and the blood was cleaned up, he permitted the children to watch the rest of the performance. He turned toads into doves, drew an interminable cord out of his mouth on which blinking electric lights were suspended, changed the color of a silk handkerchief ten times, then got down from the stage and, from a large teapot that he had filled with water, filled small clear glasses with whatever liquor the spectators requested. He gave vodka to my grandfather, aguardiente to Jaime, and whiskey, wine, beer, and pisco to others. Finally, he showed us a red armoire with a black interior and asked for a child to help. Moved by an irresistible impulse, I volunteered. At the moment I set foot on the stage, I felt for the first time that I was in my proper place. I was a citizen of the world of miracles. The magician told me solemnly, “My boy, I am going to make you disappear. Swear that you will never tell the secret to anyone.”
     
    I swore. I was ecstatic. If I disappeared, I would finally find out what existed beyond this gloomy reality. He had me go inside the armoire, lifted his red satin cape to hide me for a second, then let it drop. I had disappeared! Again, he lifted and dropped his cape. I reappeared! There was great applause. I returned to my seat. When my parents, my grandfather, and several other spectators asked me what the trick was, I answered with great dignity, “I have sworn to keep the secret forever, and so I shall keep it.” And I guarded the secret zealously until today, more than sixty years later, when I have decided to reveal it. I did not step into another dimension; while I was hidden in the cape a pair of gloved hands spun me around and shoved me into a corner. There was a person dressed all in black inside that black compartment who could not be seen. All he needed to do was cover me with his body in order for me to disappear. What profound deception! The great beyond did not exist. The miracles were mere illusions. And yet, I learned something more important: a secret, even one of little substance, when kept, gives one power. At school I declared that I had gone to another world, that I knew how to go there, that I had the ability to disappear