The Prison Mirror

A Magician's Alter Ego
By Michael Manos

While making a tour of night-clubs displaying my act, I acquired as an attraction, a parrot that I trained to ridicule me on certain tricks which I displayed to the audience. Herman (for that was the parrot's name), would, on the completion of each trick, yell to the audience from his perch on my shoulder: "Yah!! He's got it hidden up his sleeve, folks!" etc., depending on the trick performed. In this way he would reveal to the audience exactly how I accomplished each illusion.

The audience loved it, and, because the tricks that Herman first exposed were very simple ones, I really didn't care too much.

I began to have difficulty with Herman, later on. He learned my most treasured secrets, and when I performed a very complicated feat of magic Herman would ridicule me and expose me. Even though the audience applauded and laughed, I felt somehow that they were ridiculing me.

Finally, I decided to get rid of Herman and I told him as much. Well, you should have heard him carry on.

I relented, eventually, after many solemn promises on his part to behave and keep quiet. Herman kept his promise so well that I thought for a long while that he had lost his voice altogether, and I became quite worried over his continued muteness. I often would look up and catch him on the verge of uttering some ribaldry, but the very act of looking sent him back into his self-imposed total silence.

It was about two months later that I was drafted into the army, and before I could pull my famous vanishing act I was on my way overseas, bound for the war theatres. Herman was perched on my shoulders—also drafted.

It was a particularly hot night and everyone was below decks. The landing was scheduled for the following morning. To relieve the tension, I decided to put on a show for the boys. Herman chose this time to start ridiculing me again. The boys loved it but I didn't.

"I saw him! I saw him!" he screeched time after time and trick after trick. "He's got it hidden in his tunic." And so on.

"O.K.," I finally said to Herman, "O.K., let's see you expose this one. You've never seen it before and I defy you to explain how it's done."

I began gesturing and uttering secret abracadabra, in preparation for the trick. Just as I was about to display the results of my illusion to the men, a torpedo struck our ship. Wham! The next thing I knew I was sitting in a life raft in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with Herman sitting on my shoulder and glaring at me in contempt and fury. There was no one else in sight—just the two of us from horizon to horizon. Herman kept quiet for so long that I thought he had gone into another silent period, as he had before. We floated all that day and well into dusk without saying a word.

Finally, just as night started to close in, Herman could contain himself no longer.

"Awright, awright, wise guy," he blurted out, "I give up. What the hell did you do with the boat?"
—The K. P. Tele-scope (Canada)