Escape (24 page)

I had to say things three times to Clara now before she would
hear me. What was she thinking about? She was floating off in her
mind somewhere, I was sure. Did she do that at school, too, when the
teacher was talking? Would she be like this forever?

When she didn't answer me I grew anxious, then angry. Our
conversations were often short and sharp, like bullets fired across
enemy lines. It was dreadful. Often I had empty arms now even when
she was at home. Stop pestering her, I told myself, let her be. But I
couldn't.

It was when Clara came home saying Stuart Alexander was a
peasant because he blew his nose in a tissue instead of a hanky that I
saw I'd have to take a more active role in her social education. Guido
didn't hold with Kleenex, saying tissues were unhygienic, but I had
always found this bewildering – what you do with a hanky is stuff it,
still full of snot, back into your pocket. Clara's own handkerchiefs,
which Guido insisted we have embroidered with C, were often
plastered with dried green mucus, hard as plastic, that crackled when
you opened them and had to be soaked in hot water to soften into
slime before they went into the wash. Perhaps, I thought, if Guido had
to do the washing himself, his championing of the handkerchief as
opposed to tissues might change.

'What did you see today?' I asked Clara after her excursion to the
rock pool.

'Miss Booth wore a purple dress and she didn't even
know
it's bad
luck. So I told her and anyway it's an ugly colour like a bruise and it
makes her look old.'

'Did you see any periwinkles or little silvery fish?'

'Can't remember,' said Clara. 'Aren't silvery fish those things we
keep in cupboards that aren't cleaned out? That's what Daddy says.'

Guido laughed when Clara told him about Ben's funny eye twitch
or Cathy's wetting her pants. Clara would smile at him and glance
quickly at me, then away.

'That's not funny, Clara,' I'd say, 'Ben can't help it, imagine how
bad he would feel—'

'Oh let the girl 'ave a laugh. You are always so serious, like the
tomb.'

Perhaps it was to make her laugh that Guido made a feature
out of people's peculiarities. In the car, or walking through shops,
he would point to a woman with a pronounced moustache, a man
at the bus stop with a drooping eye, someone with a garish shirt.
He remarked on these things while walking with Clara the way
another person might indicate a particularly beautiful flower,
sunset, view.

He had a whole system for keeping himself separate – unmoved or
touched by others. He held his breath when a homeless person walked
by. He made the
scongiuro
sign at people in funeral parlours, to ward
off bad luck. I got the feeling that with just a small flick of the mind,
people, for Guido, could become lumps of flesh, squiggles of clumped
cells wiggling on a Petri dish under his X-ray eye.

I didn't want to think about it. But like Ben with his twitch or
Cathy with her mole, I couldn't help it. I thought about his disgust
when I cried, lost control. His distaste for the secretions of humanity
seemed infinite. Most of me was horrified but my secret self, about
Clara's age, understood it. Inside, in the pit of me, I'd sometimes laugh
with him too.

Guido brought out the worst in me, and I loathed myself.

It was my publisher, Mary Page, who suggested the series on magic.
She took me out to lunch and contemplated me across the table.
'Isn't it strange, after all these books of yours, that I've never met your
husband?' She smiled at me flirtatiously and sipped her wine. She'd
never offered me a smile like that, or an invitation to lunch either.
'And now I find he has a second book of poetry published, and very
good, too.' She leant forward confidentially. 'Is he really as handsome
as his photo?'

'Oh yes,' I told her, 'more so. In fact he's so good-looking that when
you meet him you don't notice anything else for five years.'

'And tell me, his bio says he worked as a magician, is that how you
two met?'

The waiter came and I ordered the saltimbocca alla romana
because we were at Fellini's and Guido said that was their best. He
said, 'You might as well order something expensive, seeing as you
don't have to pay, and if you can't finish it, bring it home – I could have
it for dinner. Or, could you get an invitation for me, too?'

Two weeks before, when we'd made the lunch date, I hadn't liked
to ask Mary about Guido but now I wondered if I'd done the wrong
thing.
Of course you did
, said the voice. As we waited for our lunch, I
tried my best to describe the kind of magic Guido had performed –
his escapes from the Door of Death, his Houdini Metamorphosis, the
Bohemian Torture Crib, the Winged Angel illusion. Drinking another
glass of wine I could feel myself warming up. Remembering Guido's
magic was like coming into a room with a fire roaring after being outside
on a winter's night. I felt my cheeks flushing. I explained to Mary that
the successful performance of magic depended on a knowledge of the
laws of nature. Magic, I said, is actually all about science.

'Fascinating,' said Mary. 'And does Guido still practise magic?'

'Well, once you're a magician, I suppose you never lose the
knack,' I said wistfully. There was a short silence. I fiddled with the
stem of the wineglass. You should hold a glass by the stem when
you're making a toast, Guido told me, because the glass must be free
to vibrate with sound. If you hold the glass itself, as peasants do, the
sound is muted.

'But does he still perform, or maybe just in private, for you,
hmm?'

'Well, no, not really, not in public I mean,' I smiled
uncomfortably.

But Mary wanted more. 'So what's he like? Does he write every
day? He teaches too, doesn't he, it said so in the blurb.'

'Yes, he meets all kinds of interesting people. He was reluctant to
teach at first, wanting to devote himself to his poetry, you know, but
now he seems to enjoy it. His students are always telling him about
some show or exhibition – he has a lot in common with them.' It was
so much easier to conjure up Guido's magic than to describe him as a
person. These days he seemed more like a relief sculpture stuck on his
bedroom wall – you could see the front of him but anything behind
or in the middle was a mystery. When I thought about it, the fact that
he'd become a relief sculpture was a kind of relief in itself.

When we were having our coffee Mary said, 'For your next series,
would you like to write about magic? I've been thinking about it for
a while – you know, a "how to" series, laid out simply, something
children could follow and perform for their friends. You could—'

'Oh I couldn't possibly, I don't know enough—'

'You didn't know much about tarantulas or mud wasps when you
started that series, either, remember. And look, for this one you'd have
ready help at home!' Mary smiled and touched my hand. 'Would your
husband be interested in contributing to the series? He'd lend real
panache, hey? We could put his name on it with yours.'

And his photo, too, I thought. Guido on the cover might become
a bestseller.

'Well, it's a great idea, I'm sure children would be interested—'

'And we'll be increasing your advance too, Rachel. You've
completed five different series now, and you've got quite a name in
educational circles.'

'Really?'

'Yes, don't you read the publicity letters?' She put on her glasses
and flicked through the papers sitting next to her plate. The slim black
frames and her charcoal suit emphasised the professional, successful
aspect of Mary Page. My anxiety rose as she read. ' "The Insect series,
together with Natural Disasters and Bush Banquet, are becoming
a standard text in this state for fifth and sixth grades." You should be
very proud. With magic, we may get international interest, particularly
if you approach it from the science angle. So, will you ask Guido if he
wants to have a part in it? In any way he'd like, of course.'

'Well, certainly.'

'No,' said Guido when I told him that afternoon about Mary's offer.
He was opening his mail at the desk.

'But she seemed so keen that you be involved, and they'll be
increasing my advance, too, and if you came on board, well, I imagine
they'd offer even more—' although the thought of Guido negotiating
for a higher fee made my stomach tense.

'I said no, Rachel, or weren't you listening? I am no longer
interested in magic, is not part of my life. I thought you would know
this about me.' His voice slowed as if he were talking to a child.

'Well, yes, but I thought, you know, it might be good to do
something together, it could be fun, don't you think—'

'Obviously not if I have said no. You didn't have an entree today?'

'No, Mary didn't have one and it was too much—'

'What does it matter what Mary orders? You could 'ave brought
one home for me. So, we eat scrambled eggs again tonight?'

He left the pile of torn, empty envelopes on the desk and started
towards his room. As I watched him go, heat flared in my chest. 'But
wait, Guido!' I hurried down the hall after him. 'I can't do this subject
by myself. I'm not a professional, I wouldn't know how to start. I
couldn't do it without you!'

He turned around and raised an eyebrow. 'Oh, Rachel, you are too
old to say things like this. Is absurd. You will do the research as you
do with all your other little projects – this book is only for children,
remember.' His face darkened as he studied me. 'If you are asking
this to convince me to return to my old job, then you are making a
mistake.'

'Oh no, I hadn't even thought of it—'

He waved his hand at me. 'What do I 'ave to do to make you
realise I am no longer interested in that job. Soon I will make money,
big money, you will see and then maybe you will leave me alone about
this.'

I waited until Mary rang to tell her about Guido's lack of
cooperation. I said he was so busy with his own creative work and his
teaching that there wasn't a moment to spare. She was quiet for at least
twenty seconds, which is a very long time on the phone.

'I understand,' she said finally. Disappointment dulled the tone of
her voice.

'I'm so sorry,' I said. 'I wish I could persuade him but I don't have
that magic, ha!'
Oh cringe
, said the voice,
can you hear yourself?

'Well,' said Mary, after another silence. 'Are you sure?

'I never am,' I said, 'but he always is. Practically always.'

'All right then.' I could hear her trying to rally. 'But you will
take the project on, won't you? Perhaps you could just check over
the details with your husband – get him to run an eye over the final
manuscript?'

'Yes, okay,' I rushed in, glad to hear the life back in her voice. 'I'm
sure he would do that.' It will be all right, I told myself, because by
then, with the deadline nine months away, anything could happen:
I could be run over, get a brain tumour, spontaneously combust like
that woman in India I read about.

'Okay then, I'll send you a letter of agreement with the details.
Nice to have seen you the other day.'

She'd put the phone down before I'd thought of a proper reply.
You should have thanked her for lunch
, said the voice.
You've got the social
poise of a mud wasp
.

Every time I thought of starting the new series I had to go to the toilet.
'Are you doing number one or two?' Clara asked me. 'How long will
you be?' At six, she hated closed doors. At thirteen, she wanted to put
a lock on her own.

How can you pin magic down? I asked myself as I washed my
hands. I thought of iridescent butterflies in a glass case, stuck through
their middles.

I'd taught the science but not the wizardry of magic. I didn't want
to reduce magic to its skeleton. There must be a way to present magic,
even its bones, without destroying the illusion. It was the illusion I
loved.

'When can I see a first chapter?' Mary asked me after two months
had passed. She sounded brisk, as if she were tapping her fingers on her
crowded desk. She was probably wearing those black-framed glasses.

So the next day, when I picked up Clara after school, we went
back to the library. I wanted to sit down with Clara and read
Where the
Wild Things Are
or escape into the new Margaret Atwood novel, but I
remembered Mary's tone so I left Clara in children's fiction and went
straight to the magic section.

I ran my finger along the shelf, noting the familiar titles. I'd dipped
into several already, but nothing had galvanised me into action. I
glanced back at Clara; she'd helped herself to her own pile of books,
and was quite absorbed. A glow spread through me as I watched her
turning the pages, and it was then, as I struggled to stop looking at
Clara, that I saw The
Truth and Myth of Harry Houdini
.

It was a large glossy hardback I hadn't seen before. Harry
Houdini was on the cover, staring straight at me. The room went
silent, like when you dive under a wave. Harry's gaze was so intimate
that a flush moved over my body. His eyes were dark and tender with
a sizzle of light in them. I felt electrified, as if he'd reached out and
zapped me.

I'd seen pictures of Harry hanging from skyscrapers, working his
way out of Chinese Water Torture chambers, German courts, English
jails. I'd seen him beaming beside his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
standing between his mother and Bess, his wife. But I had never seen
his face naked, like this.

His eyebrows seemed to levitate, swooping up like a pair
of blackbirds. His heart-shaped face was magnetic – clenched,
concentrated – like caught lightning, the eyes telling you he cared
terribly about something just then, something only barely out of reach.
His eyes thrust into mine, past the numbness, the lake, the shopping
lists, into the centre of me.

How could he feel so much, and still
concentrate
?

I crouched down next to the shelves and read the first seven pages
right through.

Harry Houdini had more charisma than any other performer of
his era. When he performed he was not only exacting a technical
escape, he was acting out in public the private fear of all human
beings. Houdini's performance possessed the seriousness
and total absorption of a religious ritual: he summoned the
possibility of death, and with his survival, a moment of power
unlike any other.

I sat down suddenly on the floor with the book on my lap.

An escape artist must be in such a pure state that he becomes
a single conduit of electricity. 'You stand there before a jump,'
Houdini wrote, 'swallowing the yellow stuff that every man has in
him. Then at last you hear the voice and you jump. Once I jumped
on my own and I nearly broke my neck.'

Houdini's close friend and admirer, Sir Arthur Cobnan Doyle,
claimed that Houdini was the greatest risk taker he'd ever met. But
in fact, Houdini left nothing to chance. He made sure over and
over again that his survival was ensured, testing, practising, timing
himself with his locks, shims, keys, all his equipment with the
absolute care of a perfectionist. After all, he was also a realist, and
the penalty for failure was death.

In the stillness of the words, it came to me that magic rested on
paradox. In playing with death, there was the affirmation of life; in
paying attention to the real world, there was the reward of escape into
another. And Harry could straddle it all, like a man standing with each
leg on a precipice and an echoing abyss between.

The name Houdini became so synonymous with heroic action that
he grew into not only a myth, but a verb! To
houdinize
meant to
escape from an apparently impossible situation.

Houdini's concentration on the task was so formidable, the book said,
it took him to a state of transcendence achieved only by the masters of
the ancient practices of meditation and martial arts.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. Houdini's ability
was astonishing. It flew him up above ordinary men – he'd even
transformed the English language, just like my favourite poet,
Hopkins! He was able to focus entirely on the present moment –
there would be no part of him stranded in the past, wishing he'd put
more salt in the pasta, or anticipating the future, worrying the butcher
would be closed by the time he arrived to buy his lamb cutlets for
dinner. In his concentration there'd be just his own being in the
hushed universe of his body. And if all his thoughts were gathered
together in that one moment, like all the armies of the world putting
down their weapons in sudden and unanimous agreement, imagine
the energy and power that would be harnessed! In that pure, silent
state he would control the warring parts of his mind, have effortless
control over his actions. And wasn't that the perfect state, the only
state, to perform magic?

As I made my way to the counter to borrow the book, an image
of Guido on stage flashed into my mind. I remembered how hungry
I'd been to know him, how his magic had made me hold my breath, go
dizzy, go under. Being with him was like living inside a fairytale where
the rules of the ordinary world didn't apply. In fairytales you had to
discover a person's true name before you could know them; that was
the only way to steal their power. I think I'd wanted to own him back
then, this extraordinary prince – I'd wanted to take him home and
discover his name, his history, his essence. Maybe I wanted to live
inside him, to stop being myself. Or maybe I'd just wanted this ability
to fly, right out of myself.