Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
he was the Sheik of Araby, the son could convince a tribe of thou­
sands that he was the Lord Almighty of Nats.
Having spent a good part of his boyhood in Burma, Seraphineas
Andrews was adept at debauchery in two cultures. He took to bed­
ding loose ladies and seducing laced-up ones, smoking opium and
drinking absinthe. In Mandalay, he learned from watching illusion­
ists of all nations and stripes, and soon began to defraud even the
savviest gamblers. He found opportunity in the thousandth of a sec­
ond between movements, and he knew the power of psychological
diversion and verbal smokescreen. What his father had lost through
speculation he could more than make up through manipulation. The
supply of gullible people in the world was delightfully endless.
Seraphineas Andrews made it his habit to discern quickly what re­
ligious, mystical, or superstitious beliefs people held. Their illusions,
he found, made for interesting twists in his illusions. He might
thump a Bible to ask God to deliver the right card into the victim’s
hand. He might cause watches to disappear from men’s pockets, and
reappear in the palm of the Buddha. The more people believed, the
more they could be fooled.
One day, he was performing his usual repertory of tricks, a deck
of cards in one hand, the Bible in another. He set the Bible down,
opened to Psalms, and as he shuffled and exhorted God to manifest
Himself to the unbelievers, an exhalation of his breath caused a few
pages to rise and turn. He had not intended to do this, but instantly,
a dozen new believers felt the hand of God seizing their necks.
From then on, Seraphineas Andrews practiced and perfected a
trick he called the Breath of God. At first he could turn a single thin
page of the Bible from a distance of one foot. He increased this to
two feet, then learned to shoot his breath from the side of his mouth
without any sign that he was puffing his cheeks or rotating his lips.
In time, he could converse and between words aim his breath back­
ward five feet and ripple the pages from Old Testament to New.
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