The Delusionist Read Online Free PDF Page B

the cloth, an image out of the bible. Cyril had done the same. They worshiped secretly in the cavern of the basement like members of a persecuted sect.
    His father had died in 1955. It was not a dramatic death but quiet, like the man himself: he went to bed one night and did not wake up, slipping through a secret door. Cyril’s last glimpse of him was in the casket in church, crucifix in his folded hands, carrying an iron flower to the Lord. One of his earliest memories was watching him cut steel with a welding torch. Cyril wasn’t supposed to be watching because his father had warned it would damage his eyes, but unable to resist he’d opened the door that led down from the kitchen and peered between the steps, and for the next two days beautiful yellow spots hovered in his vision as though sunflowers were blooming in his eyes. For years afterwards, whenever he visited his dad’s grave he’d stare into the sun to relive that.
    â€œAt least he outlived that bastard,” his mother would always say.
    Cyril didn’t have to ask who that bastard was. Uncle Joe. Koba the Dread. Any time his mother saw a picture of Stalin in a newspaper, book or magazine, she burned the eyes out with a match. It didn’t matter where she was, the waiting room at the doctor’s office, the library, a store, out came the matches. More than one person had shouted in alarm and yet she carried right on. Cyril remembered the day he came home from school, up the back steps and into the kitchen and was met by the smell of burning newspaper. There were his dad, his mother, and Paul hunched over a paper speaking low and intense, as if plotting. When they saw Cyril they went quiet. He’d come stumping up the steps but had nonetheless surprised them. Their expressions—round, flat, uncomprehending—said he was a stranger. It was as if he’d stumbled upon their campfire in the forest. Occasionally his dad would start speaking to Cyril in Ukrainian and then catch himself and halt as if he’d let a secret slip, and quickly shift to English. Yet over the years Cyril had heard enough to pick up some of the language, and the afternoon he discovered them hunched over the newspaper he heard Paul say, “Toy proklaty zdoh.”
    â€œWho’s dead?”asked Cyril.
    â€œNo one,” said Paul. “Get lost.”
    â€œStalin,” said his dad.
    Cyril’s mother and Paul embraced and sobbed and remained locked together swaying side to side while Cyril’s father watched with an expression as unreadable as his welding mask. He needed a shave and his hair was messed and he was in his working greens, and yet here he was, home an hour early. He went to the window. He was about five-foot-eight and broad across the shoulders. Cyril had inherited his sharp chin and large dark eyes. Exhaling hard as if at the end of an ordeal, his dad put his hands on his hips and gazed out, not at the cemetery but at the sky. It was March, almost spring, the sun bright and daffodils blooming. “See.” He pointed to a flock of starlings swooping from one maple to another. “The birds are free again.”

    It was two weeks before he saw Connie. She showed up at the IGA on a Friday evening carrying an open package of red liquorice whips. She held the package out and he took one. Then she slid the crinkly package up under her black t-shirt and tucked it in. “You won’t rat me out will you?”
    â€œNorm’ll nail you before you hit the door,”said Cyril. He tugged up the hem of her shirt and adjusted it to hide her loot, and as he did he glimpsed her pale smooth stomach, felt its heat against his hands, and wanted to embrace her, but she stepped back out of range.
    â€œAiding and abetting,”she warned.
    He’d happily lose his job to win her again.
    â€œSo hey,”she said, “what happened? You kinda just vanished.”
    â€œ Me? ”
    Ignoring his shock she twirled