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My husband, Albert Nathan Zaretsky, was until his retirement a judge of the Supreme Court of Ontario. Before his bench were heard the most grave criminal and civil accusations in the province, while the most sensational cases were written about in the newspapers and reported on for the television news. He was famous (or notorious, depending on one's position) for allowing Charter arguments to be made and unusual precedents to be cited, and decisions were appealed before the Supreme Court of Canada more often than most. He looked good on television, for he was a handsome man even in his late years when his hair was still full but absolutely white, and his slightly large features - his prominent eyebrows, his heavy pocked nose, his sensual lips - became more so as his face grew thinner. Actually, he was much more handsome as an older man; when I first saw him, a first year law student, his head looked too big for his neck and his arms and legs too long.

But Albert had another life, one outside the legal profession. He belonged to a secretive world, what in other circumstances spouses most fear from their partners. In this world, my husband was known as Zardoff the Mysterious, not so much to the public but in magician's circles, here in Toronto and also in New York and Los Angeles and, to a lesser extent, London. As a judge he was a forward-thinking champion of individual rights, but as a magician he was a strict traditionalist, eschewing modern technology in favour of the old and, in his opinion, more elegant methods of misdirection and sleight of hand.

I myself am not an expert (far from it), but by all accounts he was a steady performer, skilful without being outstanding. Some praised his stiff, rather formal presentation, while others criticized it. Of course, he could only practise for an hour or so a day after supper and he performed only as an unpaid amateur (he refused a fee when one was offered) for Boy Scout troops, in hospital wards, and at charity functions. Yet he had a fame, at least as well as I can understand, in the conjuring world that was equal to his fame in the legal profession. This fame was not for his performances but for his collection of Victorian and early twentieth century conjuring apparatus. These objects, acquired at auctions and estate sales, often with the assistance of an agent, he began to accumulate in the late fifties, when it was still possible to find important pieces at reasonable prices. He owned a cabinet built for the Davenport brothers, Heller's second-known black art table, a pair of pistols used by Anderson in his version of the bullet-catching trick, Chung Ling Soo's miracle board vanish, and perhaps three hundred more effects, all stored in a museum quality setting in a special room built onto the back of the house and which had necessitated the removal of the original tennis court. My husband was famous not only for owning the collection, but for his knowledge of how the illusions were originally presented, and for his generosity in granting access. Magicians came from all over the world, strange men (they were almost always men) who would astonish our children by pulling watermelons out of their ears. I remember one occasion, in the early seventies, when by an accident of scheduling the premier of the province arrived at our house for tea in a limousine (he wanted Albert to head a commission on payoffs in the building trades) at the same time as Robert Harbin, who arrived by cab from the airport. Robert Harbin was the creator of the zig-zag-girl illusion. I answered the door to the both of them and was highly embarrassed, but my husband simply introduced the politician and the conjurer to one another and after the premier swore an oath of secrecy, the three of them spent several hours in the special wing.

What I thought, standing alone in my kitchen: boys, they're still and always boys. You must understand that I hated magic. The ridiculous names (Zardoff, for God's sake), the black capes and top hats and gimmicked canes, the hands that could never be still but always had to be producing cigarettes or 'walking' coins over the knuckles. The arguments over the relative greatness of Le Roy and Devant, the inevitable shouting and finger pointing whenever Houdini's name came up. It was all so childish. As if there could be anything of interest in seeing a man scatter four aces in a deck only to find them in a spectator's pocket, or a woman in a leotard get trussed up, shoved into a burlap bag, locked into a trunk, only to appear a flashing moment later on top of the trunk itself, having changed places with the magician. Why did it matter that the magician had performed a false shuffle, or had used Maskelyne's method for releasing the chains? It was all child's play.

When we met in the early fifties Albert was not only attending classes but also holding down two jobs, one dipping ice cream bars at the Neilson plant on Spadina Avenue, the other shelving books at the law library. His parents had come from Galitzia, opening a small shoe store in Thunder Bay, and Albert was living in a boarding house on Harbord Street run by a Mrs. Mossoff. He was so thin because Mrs. Mossoff put a small amount of the cheapest ground meat into her stews, which she poured over potatoes every night and which Albert often vomited up. In fact, on our first, blind date, arranged by a mutual friend, we were walking down Yonge Street to see the Christmas display in the window of Eaton's when he collapsed on the sidewalk. I took him home to my mother's kitchen and fed him.

Back then, his head was full of ideas. He was in love with the law and revered the British legal system, which he saw as an antidote to the grotesque legal distortions enacted by the Nazis. We would go to Diana Sweets for coffee and pie and talk away the evening, Albert leaning forward, eyes aflame, a little spittle gathering at the corner of his mouth as his voice grew louder with excitement and I had to put my hand over his and gently hush him.

He was socially advanced for our time. He encouraged me to believe that, although he foresaw a future for us, he did not want me to restrict my life to that of a housewife. I was an undergraduate with some thought of becoming a nurse but half expecting that my education and career would end in marriage. With Albert's emotional and financial support, I did not become a nurse but a doctor, one of the few women MDs in the province. And I returned to work after each of our three children was born, Albert assuring me that I could be a good mother even if we needed a nanny to pick up the children from school.

When I first met him, Albert's interest in magic was a harmless pastime. He had become interested, he told me, on discovering that an uncle on his mother's side had been a professional magician in Hamburg, Berlin, Budapest, and Prague. He had found a book at Britnell's (The Amateur Magician's Handbook by Henry Hay) and had learned a few simple but effective slights that he showed to me one evening. Making a card rise out of the deck, changing a red handkerchief to green, and so on. This was, I think, the only time that I enjoyed watching him perform, mostly because of the pleasure that he himself clearly got out of it. But I was less pleased when about a month later we met in the Hart House Library and from his beaten-up briefcase he drew out a wooden box with two little doors. He opened one of the doors and put in a block of wood painted with spots like a die. When he opened the door, the die was gone; apparently it had slid behind the other door. But it wasn't behind that door either, for it had somehow jumped back into the briefcase. Three or four students in the library seemed to enjoy the little performance, but I was embarrassed and dismayed by it. Afterwards, Albert confided to me that he had just discovered a magic shop on Dundas Street and that he had paid a day's wages for the trick. I was going to say something, that I wondered if magic was a suitable interest for an adult or that perhaps it would be better if he saved his money, but I didn't get the chance. Because he suddenly got down on his knee, grasped my hand, and implored me to marry him.

***

Albert was never, in forty-three years of marriage, an unfaithful husband. He could easily have been, for women found him attractive even without the allure of his powerful position. I suspect that even if he had been tempted, he would have been too mindful of his robes to risk scandal or sullying the position he held. If he had been unfaithful, my leaving him would be more understandable, more justifiable to the outside world and to our children, who adored him.

I do not wish to spend a great deal of time recounting the details of his hobby turned obsession. The hours spent in the basement practicing the linking rings, or donning his custom-made set of tails (tails!) to work at his silent dove act. (He had a small aviary and, to the kids' delight when they were young, a rabbit hutch.) Every magician who passed through town was welcome in our house, no matter the time of day. Often they were alcoholic. One used his skills to steal silver. At night in bed, Albert pored over catalogues from magical supply dealers and auction houses. You must understand, I know that my husband worked extremely hard at a job of tremendous pressure. He was an otherwise attentive husband and a good father, and he never wavered in his support of my own career, as a doctor, a lecturer, and later the co-founder of a women's hospice. And I would have stayed with him, no matter how sick I became of phrases such as "double lift," "penetration frame," and "coin clip," or how often at a dinner party he would unscrew the top of the salt shaker, pour the contents into his hand, and then throw it at the guest across the table only to have the salt vanish.

I would have stayed if, after his retirement, he had not decided - no, insisted - on turning professional.

For several months he did not tell me that he had hired a director, a man who had worked with several established acts in Las Vegas and New York, to help him create a stage show. That he had found a 150-seat theatre to rent every Saturday night where he would perform as Zardoff the Mysterious. That he had found a young woman assistant who was lithe enough to fold herself into a basket or fit into that same zig-zag-girl cabinet. (Many of my friends would assume that Albert was having an affair with the young woman, a common occurrence in the magic world.) And when he did tell me I said no. I was absolutely clear about it, but perhaps he didn't believe me. Or he believed me but hoped that I would change my mind. Or believed me but decided to go ahead anyway. It was the last possibility that made me realize that I could not change my mind even if I wanted to. And so, when he returned from opening night, I was gone.

I slept at the hospital for a few days, then a hotel, and then rented a condominium at Bay and Wellesley. Our kids, young adults by now, were angry at me. Especially our eldest son, who threatened to derail his plans to enter medical school, as if this was a way to get back at me. Our daughter, the middle one, kept her usual neutral stance, while the youngest boy decided to stay with me although it meant a subway and bus trip to Forest Hill Collegiate every day.

I did not cut off all communication with Albert. We spoke on the phone for a few minutes every day, mostly about the kids but also about our work, never mentioning my having left or his magic show. I only knew it was still running from the entertainment listings. And then some anonymous "friend" sent me a review of the show in the weekly arts paper Now, with what intention I don't know. The review both mocked and praised Albert's solemn demeanor, but what caught my attention was the final paragraph.

Zardoff (whose real name is nowhere listed in the program) seems to think that the world has not changed in a hundred years and that people can still be astounded by objects vanishing, endless coins pouring into a top hat, and "spirits" writing messages on chalk boards. He believes that a striking head, lit in profile and with one hand raised, can make an audience grow silent with expectation. And he is weirdly right, or nearly so. But nothing that comes before will prepare you for the show's pièce-de-résistance, the climactic illusion that he calls "The Floating Wife." I heard people laugh and, when the lights came up, I saw more than a few surreptitiously wiping tears from their eyes. As for me, I just wanted to know how the damn trick worked.

Naturally I was dismayed and also possibly angry. How could I not be? Surely there were people in the audience on some nights who recognized Albert and knew me as well. It also occurred to me that, given Albert's nature, I ought to be flattered. And then I discovered that all three of our children had gone to see the show.

"I'm not going to describe it for you," my eldest son said on the phone. He was still refusing even to see where I lived. "It's no more nor less than you deserve. I think it would do you good to see it for yourself."

"I don't think Dad means anything by it," my daughter said. "It's just a good illusion, that's all. He probably wasn't even thinking of you."

"It's sweet," said my youngest at breakfast. "It's so Dad. Go and see it. I bet you'll cry and you don't cry easily."

It didn't seem as if I had much choice. Still, I waited another week before finally booking a ticket on the telephone, which meant leaving my name on the answering machine. I wondered whether Albert knew that I was coming, and even if he had created "The Floating Wife" expecting that I would see it. The theatre was in a decrepit building, a small, former chicken slaughterhouse. The seats had been rescued from a cinema being torn down to put up a multiplex. Perhaps it was half full, but there was nobody I knew in the audience. At eight o'clock the curtain did not go up. Nor at eight-thirty. Finally the assistant came out from between the curtains, clearly distraught. My first thought was maybe they were having an affair after all. And then she announced that "Mr. Zardoff" had become ill just before coming to the theatre and had been taken to hospital

It took me ten minutes to find a cab. I urged him to drive faster, but it did no good. Albert was already dead. He'd suffered a myocardial infarction - a heart attack. They were just cleaning up the emergency room and he was still on the table. I have seen more than my share of corpses, but when you see the body of the man you have shared your life with you are no longer a doctor.

We had been separated but still husband and wife, and the funeral arrangements fell to me. I wouldn't have wanted it differently. The service was overflowing - friends, lawyers and judges and other members of the judicial system, the mayor, the premier and several cabinet ministers, people I didn't recognize. Everyone silently agreed to overlook the fact of our late separation. But what none of them knew was that an hour before the service I had had a terrible argument with both the rabbi and the director of the Jewish funeral home.

There is a tradition that when a magician dies, his wand is broken in half and ceremoniously thrown into the coffin with him. The rabbi and the director did not want to allow it. In the end, we compromised. I broke the wand (Albert had about two dozen, I just picked one) and placed it in the coffin before the service.

I live in the Forest Hill house again, a widow. Unlike Albert, I have chosen not to retire; my practice is busier than ever given the current crisis in our health care system, and I have taken on extra teaching duties as well. Exhausted from the day, I go to bed almost as soon as I get home. Every so often the doorbell rings; a magician, visiting town, has come to see Albert's collection. I let them in, telling them to see themselves out when they are done. Sometimes the magician will ask me about "The Floating Wife," an illusion that, as far as I can gather, has become something of a legend in conjuring circles. But of course I can say nothing about it.