The Great Fakir

"It's easy," said the brash medical student, "the pins go through his skin a bit, and into his flesh, but you notice how fat he is, don't you, and how loose his skin is? Well, that means the pins don't hurt nearly so much as you think they do."

Tarah Bey M.D., Fakir and Mystic, had just finished his first act at Symphony Hall. It began with a display of long pins and longer knives which members of the audience examined for proper honing. After putting himself into what he identified as a cataleptic trance, Bey declared himself insensible to pain and asked those on stage to prove it by sticking the pins into him.

Several people started for the Bey with poised pins and had to line up for order's sake. Then they began. Before long, Tarah was clothed in a swath of white cloth, a smile to show he didn't mind at all, and about ten pins. When my medical acquaintance tried to shove his pin into the bony part of the Insensate Swami's hand, Bey, who does not speak English, whispered something to the interpreter. The interpreter did not bother to translate for the audience, but snatched the Bey's hand away from the grinning student and motioned to the next in line.

After the intermission, the second act began with an explanation of psychic powers by an "independent expert," Professor Sanjean, owner, trainer, and confidante of "Emir, the only dog in the whole world who can read your mind." Sanjean told the audience that the "only reason telepathy isn't more widely recognized is that peope are on different wave-lengths." This meshed nicely with the assurance Bey's interpreter gave before the program that the "astral, or soul body is the force that binds the chemical body to God. And Bey, by completely mastering the astral body, loosens the silver chord and goes into the world beyond."

The act started badly for Tarah. He tried locating objects that volunteers from the audience were thinking of. Clutching their hands, he walked about in the audience making mystic-type motions and frowning. "Cosmic emanations," said Bey. "Unconscious stiffening of the muscles as they near the object," said my medical friend. The mystic missed on two of three expeditions and quit, muttering something about "no cooperation and poor conditions."

Then he tried picking thoughts out of the audience. After walking about getting names, be went back to the stage, announced a name and answered the psychic question. "Mary" stood up when called, and the interpreter commisserated with her on Bey's behalf for her "illness," but assured her that all would be well since there was a cure. Mary shook her head and said that wasn't the question. Tarah stiffened when told, and pointing at Mary roared, "Are you sure you're not sick?" "No," replied Mary, "and I should know because I'm a doctor." "Well then," returned Tarah, "someone in your party is sick. That person next to you is your patient, and you're worried about her recovery. Will you not have the sincerity to admit it?" The woman next to Mary rose: "No, it isn't true. As a matter of fact, I'm a doctor myself."

Just then a large, furry woman in the back stood and called out, "Doctor Bey, you have the wrong person. I'm the one worried about illness." Bey smiled again and asked, "Are you Mary?" "Well, no, doctor, I'm Hilda, but that was my question exactly."

Having cleared up this matter of short-circuited psychic waves, he told a pretty young girl, with a large engagement ring, that her wedding would take place soon, in the middle of March. The girl acknowledged the question, and the act went on amid applause.

The finale came when Tarah was "buried alive." He went into another cataleptic fit and stage hands laid him into a plywood coffin lying in a pile of sand. They sprinkled several shovelfuls of sand on his face and chest, then, as the interpreter announced over the microphone that the coffin was completely filled with sand (the lights were funereally dim, and the people on the stage could hardly see, let alone the audience) the lid, which warped up in the back leaving an inch crack facing away from the audience, was put on the coffin, making it "air tight and filled with suffocating sand."

Those of the audience who were on stage to attest the honesty of Bey's performance spent the ten minutes of his "airless interment" accusing the manager of fraud. He replied that they were all "unbelievers," and when Bey "returned from the grave" and distributed talismans to "ward of evil," the manager's epithet was quite valid. Those who saw the performance from the stage went away unbelieving.