the truth of this, though his skills in magic afterwards did seem to take on an unprecedented depth, a depth not easily explained.
The one concrete fact of Robert’s days of exile is the meeting of his now almost equally famous personal assistant, Sherpa the Silent. Sherpa was in fact of Cuban heritage, a sailor and pirate of the Caribbean. Somewhere in his late twenties, he was really named Roberto Hernandez, and how he and Rouncival met was indeed sordid. Apparently, Robert found himself in a sinister confrontation in a waterfront tavern somewhere along the Yucatan coast, and for reasons unclear Hernandez used his own considerable knife skills to save Rouncival from a bloody death. Like the appearance of Jerzy the strongman earlier in life, Robert’s good luck continued so far as bar room saviors was concerned.
Following their victory, Robert and Hernandez became fast friends, exploring the seedier elements of the Mexican coast together. At one point they even penetrated the thick jungle in order to find a temple of Mayan origin, which Robert in that same Chicago interview would describe as “the perfect conglomeration of God and creeping rot.” As they traveled, they hit upon a scheme to further draw attention to Robert’s street-side magic acts, and they concocted a story of Hernandez being of Tibetan stock, a lost lama seeking to return to his home on the roof of the world. So Hernandez became the usually silent Sherpa, standing hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed at Rouncival’s right, hidden knife kept at the ready. When Sherpa did speak, he called the sandycomplexioned Rouncival Sahib, and did so with a gibbering accent again entirely concocted. No doubt, the two friends were laughing up their sleeves the whole time. Clothed in a wild amalgamation of gypsy, horse thief, and voodoo priest, they proved such a success in the plazas that Rouncival proposed they go to America to try their act there amidst the monied frenzy of the burgeoning Jazz Age. With little else to do aside from drinking, fighting, or pirating, Sherpa agreed readily.
They left during the festival of the Dead, and that is when Robert brought back the one souvenir of his days of sordidness. The paper skeleton was long a small aspect of his stage show, kept in the background as a kind of glum motif. The beautiful necklace around the neck and the arrows you see embedded in the ribs are later additions. Apparently, during a party in the study in the mid-1930s, Rouncival and the artist Frida Kahlo became so inebriated that they practiced their archery at the poor vaquero. The blood-red spot in the region of the heart is from her palette, and the hand-painted serpent beads were given to the vaquero directly from Kahlo’s own throat. For this alone, the dead vaquero has been valued as priceless despite being a rather cheap souvenir of its time. Fakir that he was, Rouncival would have enjoyed this estimation quite heartily.
THE Orphan Timepiece
Just a short walk now, thankfully far less than Robert’s return to America. Though we don’t have time, you see there that framed newspaper print? It is from a now-defunct New York daily and the first-ever review of Robert’s show. It is a pan, and Robert, perhaps infected with the hot temper of the Latin world, challenged the reporter to a duel in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow. Luckily for Robert, the newspaperman did not appear at the scheduled appointment. Most assuredly, the intrepid reporter would have perished in that meadow, either by Robert’s hand or, more likely, by Sherpa’s.
But before Robert’s act can receive its first poor mention, it must take the stage, and that took a bit of doing. Rouncival and Sherpa, perhaps through one of Sherpa’s old Caribbean acquaintances, returned to America via the seas, arriving at New York Harbor in May of 1921. Disgusted with Prohibition, as well supposedly with the success of the women’s suffrage movement, Robert wished to see his home and family. Taking a Spanish molasses barge up the Hudson River, which Robert later claimed was called The Dolorosa, the friends arrived at Kingston only to discover the death of Robert’s mother, Elaine Rouncival. In his absence, she had died during the Spanish influenza epidemic. It was Robert’s second funereal homecoming in as many trips, and the effect upon him was grim. Though gladdened to see his father, Robert took to the taverns yet again for an extended period, Sherpa at his side, and the summer was spent in hollow-chested debauchery. They did assist Mr. Rouncival, whose eyesight was failing quickly, with his watch repairs, which Sherpa was fascinated by.
On the whole, however, the return to Kingston was a disaster. Unable to give up their rough, waterfront ways, Robert and Sherpa could be found most evenings in the illegal saloons around the riverside Roundout area of town. There, as usual, they drank and brawled, with the Kingston toughs taking no degree of delight in picking quarrels with Sherpa. The town’s distrust of the two wild foreigners—and make no mistake: Robert was by now a very foreign entity—was such that he and Sherpa were regarded as thieves, Bolsheviks, homosexuals, or a combination of all three. That the young women of the village found the two wild men enticing only exasperated matters with the local ruffians. Even dour Robert realized the situation was untenable, and by late October he told his father they were off again, this time to New York City. He’d been practicing various routines with Sherpa and felt it was time to make their fortune.
The evening before their departure, Thomas Rouncival presented his son with a gift: a pocket watch and fob made entirely from used, discarded, or otherwise orphaned parts accumulated throughout the years. Robert called the watch “my most hideous, tormented, treasured possession,” and it can be found right here, in my vest pocket. As you can see, it is indeed a timepiece of odd appearance, though most skillfully made. What you cannot see is that inscribed upon the back are the simple words, For My Son. Thomas Rouncival, who’d also given Sherpa a small folding pouch of watch-repairing tools, died of pneumonia in February the following year. When he received the news, Robert told Sherpa, “Going home to yet another death will kill me as well.” Robert did not return to Kingston for the funeral, or ever again for that matter, and he immediately sold the house and the shop at the back, his entire inheritance, for far less than its worth.
THE Silver Stage
Ah, madam, I see the grimace has returned. Though it has been said I appear young for my age, I too am beginning to glance longingly towards the benches and small stage at the center of the study. Let us approximate Robert’s zig-zag path through life and head that way. If you all would be so good to excuse a momentary informality, I shall seat myself at the lip of the stage. So much better. Please rest on the benches and let us take just a second to ponder a typically overlooked aspect of Rouncival’s life. As we are already feeling strained from our standing and shuffling, imagine then how Rouncival must have suffered during his lengthy performances. The pains in his leg often made the act an ordeal. In fact, madam, and do excuse my referencing the lemons again, no insult is intended, Robert insisted that the juice of a citrus fruit relieved the pains in his joints. After more than one performance, he could be found in his dressing area, leg bared, with a cut-and-squeezed lemon perched atop his kneecap. Ha, I am glad to see the grimace has transformed to mirth. I too am tickled every time I consider Robert the Great greeting his admirers backstage with a lemon on his leg.
While we shall abstain from such measures, nevertheless, to be seated is a relief. That we are seated upon or in front of the first stage of Robert the Great’s career makes such relief that much more intriguing. In fact, these obviously charred boards and one-time stage for a Yiddish theater troupe are the true beginnings of Robert’s greatness.
Rouncival and Sherpa arrived in New York City by late October, 1921. With little funds saved from their wasted summer, they shared a room in a run-down hotel in the only neighborhood they could afford: the Bowery. Though perhaps not quite as fearsome as during its heyday at the turn of the century, the Bowery and the neighboring Tenderloin and Five Points districts remained slums of the worst sort. Prostitutes, cutthroats, thugs, thieves, cheats, sharps, pimps, addicts, gangs, the wanton, wicked, and unwanted
