The Confabulist (9 page)

Houdini had changed back into evening clothes, and the stage
was empty save for a table and chair. He paced back and forth with purpose, his voice loud and zealous.

“We read in the newspapers of some payroll bandit who steals thousands of dollars, or of burglars entering homes and stores and breaking open safes and taking valuable loot, but these cases we read of are nothing in comparison to news of mediums who have earned millions of dollars, blood money made at the cost of torture to the souls of their victims. Folks who hear voices and see forms should see their physicians immediately.”

The audience laughed, but the energy in the room was different. Where before there was a tension between life and death, a cultivated air of mystery, it now felt as if we were being let in on a secret.

“I am familiar with a great many of the methods of these human vultures. I think it is an insult to that scavenger of scavengers to compare such human beings to him, but there is, to my mind, no other fit comparison. Their stock-in-trade is the amount of knowledge they can obtain. It is invaluable and they will stop at nothing to gain it.”

Clara wasn’t paying attention. She was staring down at her hands, which were clutched on her lap. I put my hand on hers and she looked up and smiled at me. The way she looked at me was different, and I couldn’t tell how. Had she seen something in me up in the coatroom, a revelation of my nature she hadn’t known? I wondered if she regretted what we’d done.

“Mr. Bernard Delacroix, I have a message from the spirits for you,” he called. “Are you there?”

A man stood up in the audience.

“Your aunt Genevieve wishes me to tell you that she desires for
you to call on her son, your cousin, who has been unwell. He has always been a sickly boy and wants to thank you for being so good to him.”

The man appeared shocked and sat down. Houdini called the names of a half-dozen people and gave them messages from beyond. They each responded with disbelief, then confirmation that the information was indeed accurate. I thought about what I might say, if I were on the other side, that might be of any consequence to those still alive. What would there really be to say? You might describe what it was like, and maybe give some insight into what it was like to die, but beyond that it was difficult to imagine how death could fix whatever you’d done in life. If you were a fool in life, why wouldn’t you be one in death?

“Myra Goldfarb, your mother is here and tells me that her leg no longer bothers her. She is dancing every night with your father and brother.”

A woman in the audience cried out, “Is she really here?”

“No, madam, I’m afraid she isn’t. None of what I’ve said tonight was gained by any method beyond the ordinary ability of man. Through spies, bought information, and trips to the graveyard I’ve been able to gather everything I need to convince you I can speak to those who have departed. These mediums, these bloodsuckers, do the same thing, but they do not tell you so. For that they cannot be forgiven.

“Nor can those who support them, those like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a man capable of creating a character as intelligent and analytical as Sherlock Holmes but incapable of seeing through the trickery of Margery Crandon, the witch of Beacon Hill.”

He went on to show how mediums manipulated the tables during a séance, how they manifested ectoplasm, how they rang the bells and chimed the triangles and blew the trumpets. He gave a demonstration of slate writing, showing us in clear view how he did it. It was fascinating, I suppose—the entire theatre was riveted—but I had a hard time paying attention. I could not shake the feeling that I’d done something I could not take back. But I knew that everything had changed.

One summer morning when I was about ten I was in the kitchen with my mother. My father came in and announced that Charlie, the family dog, had died. That dog had been with us since I was born, and was as much a friend to me as anyone. A boy and his dog, that old story. My reaction to hearing this news should have been shock, grief, almost anything other than what happened.

“So what,” I said, “he was a stupid animal.”

This was something my father would have said, I thought, or maybe there is more of my father in me than I know. It is inexplicable to me why I said it. But I did, and an instant later I was on the floor with my head buzzing and a throbbing jaw. My father stood over me, his fists tight at his sides, as angry as I’d ever seen him. I didn’t dare speak. I can’t say how long he stood there. He breathed hard, and then my mother came over and touched him lightly on the arm. This made him look at her and she looked back at him, and his anger faded. Without speaking he turned and left the room. I lay on the floor a while longer and then sat up.

“I’m sorry,” I said to my mother.

She looked down at me. “Your father loved that dog.”

“So did I.” My jaw was really starting to hurt now that the shock had begun to wear off.

“I know you did,” she said, handing me a wet cloth. “But some things once said can’t be taken back. Not everything is reversible, even if you’re sorry.”

Houdini’s speech came to an end. He bowed to us as we rose to our feet, holding nothing back. He came back several times for encores, and then the lights came up and the Princess Theatre reluctantly disgorged us into the street. We were tightly packed as we left, almost dazed, and somehow I became separated from the others. One second Clara was right in front of me and the next she was replaced by a woman with a feathered hat, who was an instant later replaced by a tall man whose overcoat smelled of pipe smoke.

Out on the street I searched for her, expecting to see her standing by a streetlamp, waiting for us. Waving when she saw me, a smile on her face. All I saw were the faces of strangers.

After a few minutes Will and Evelyn emerged from the theatre, spotting me immediately and weaving through the throng.

“Was that a show. Wow,” Will said, his face flushed.

“Where’s Clara?” Evelyn asked.

I shrugged. “Wasn’t feeling well.” I felt sick. We shouldn’t have gone to that coatroom. This wasn’t how it should have been. None of what was happening was right.

“She seemed fine at intermission,” Evelyn said. She scanned the street for her.

“I have to go,” I said. “I should have walked her home.”

Will, to his credit, seemed to know something wasn’t right. “Go do what you need to do, and come by the Pig and Whistle afterward. We’ll be there awhile.” I could tell he wanted to say more but not in front of Evelyn.

I walked away. Moving fast, I took the route that seemed the
most likely one Clara would choose. She only had a bit of a head start on me, and I should have been able to catch up with her. After ten blocks I began to run. It was the only way to stop from thinking. My lungs ached from the cold air and my feet hurt, but instead of stopping I ran faster.

When I reached her house, I stopped and, hands on my knees, fought the wave of fatigue and nausea that had been chasing me. The lights at her house were all off. If anyone was home, they didn’t want it known or had gone to bed. I couldn’t simply walk up and ring the bell—what would I say if her father was home? There was no way to explain my presence, even to myself.

I stood there in the night air, sweating, unsure of what to do next. She was gone. Where I didn’t know. I pulled out my flask and unscrewed the stopper, tipping it to my lips. It was empty.

Wherever Clara had gone, she didn’t want to be found. I turned away from her house and began a slow walk back into town. I tried to keep my mind still, wanting to do anything other than think. My brain, as usual, did not cooperate.

Was this how life worked? Were people there one moment, wound around you so tightly you couldn’t distinguish what was you and what was them, and gone an instant later? This couldn’t be how it worked. Could it?

In front of me was the Prince of Wales Hotel. Will and Evelyn were probably inside. I didn’t feel very social, and certainly didn’t want to have to talk about Clara, but I did want a drink. Maybe not just one.

An awful thought seized me. What if something had happened to Clara? What if she hadn’t vanished of her own volition but
instead someone had taken her? I had to find Will. He’d know what to do.

I went through the heavy door and into the lobby, feeling a blast of warm air as the door swung shut behind me. A small crowd had formed at the far end, and as I passed by I saw that Will was there, speaking with a man I couldn’t quite see. I changed course toward Will and stopped. He was talking to Houdini himself. There were ten or twelve others with him, a few I recognized, and they were all listening raptly to Houdini’s response.

“He’s staying in the hotel,” Will whispered to me when he saw me standing beside him. Houdini seemed shorter up close, but it was immediately apparent how strong he was. He had a magnetism about him—even if you had no idea who he was, you would know immediately that he was someone important.

“Feel my forearm,” he said to one fellow. He flexed his arm and held it out to him.

“It’s like iron,” the man said.

“It has to be,” Houdini said. “Fools like Sir Arthur may say that the spirits help me in my work, but the truth of it is that I’m a mortal man, and all that keeps me alive is my wits and my training.”

At that moment my attention veered toward the stairway leading down to the Pig and Whistle. I did a double take as I saw Clara and Evelyn climbing the stairs. Will whispered, “She was here waiting for us all when we got here. She’s been wondering where you were.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d wait for us here. Is that what had happened? It didn’t make sense completely, but here she was.

I looked over to where Clara was, and she was staring straight at
me. I realized that she wasn’t the one who had been lost. I was. And I, or anyone, could see that she was relieved to have found me. I knew from the look on her face—this woman loved me.

“Is it true that your stomach muscles are strong enough to withstand any punch?” Will asked Houdini, but I wasn’t interested in their conversation.

I was about to go to Clara when I put my hand in my pocket, and it emerged holding the letter my father had sent me. I dropped it onto the floor as if it were on fire. I began to bend to pick up the letter. Instead, I stepped forward, toward Houdini. My hand tightened into a fist and I swung hard, transferring my weight from my back foot to my front foot and striking him squarely in the gut. It was nothing like iron. I felt the air pushed out of him and heard him exhale a grunt, and then the force of my punch took me into him. His hand grabbed at my coat as we both fell to the floor.

There was a moment while we lay there when our eyes met. His face was serene, not at all in pain. He looked, if anything, relieved. Content. He made no attempt to fight back. I didn’t understand it.

Someone grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me off him, though I wasn’t hitting him anymore and had no intention of doing so. I was roughly pulled away, and the last I saw of Houdini was him being helped to his feet, looking a little winded but otherwise unharmed. I couldn’t see where Clara was. I was ushered to the door and heaved onto the street. Will came outside and stopped a couple of meaty-looking guys from giving me a beating. I wished he hadn’t—I had no intention of resisting. He spoke quietly to them, trying to defuse things, and I turned away and started toward home.

For days after I ignored all knocks on the door, all shouts at my window, barely ate, barely slept. Every crack on the wall was enumerated. Each scrape on the floorboards was tabulated. I wished the world stopped, frozen until I could make sense of it. I sent away all voices that came to me and sat in silence, paralyzed by my actions and an inability to respond to them. It felt as if a great pit had opened up beneath me, and if I were to make any move at all I would fall into it.

Eventually hunger drove me out of my room. I went to a nearby diner and sat at the counter, ordered a coffee and a sandwich. I ate in silence. There was a paper on the counter from the day before. I had to reread the headline to believe it.

Houdini was dead. He’d died in Detroit the day before, from what the paper described as “a burst appendix brought on by an unexpected blow.” The paper went on to give a brief and vague account of what had happened in the lobby of the Prince of Wales Hotel. I wasn’t named, but I knew I was the one who had punched him. I was the one who had killed Harry Houdini.

I staggered out of the diner and went straight to my room. A panic seized me. I was the cause of the death of the most famous man in the world. It was only a matter of time before the papers figured out who I was. There had been plenty of people there that night who knew me.

My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my coat and felt in its right-hand pocket an unfamiliar weight. I reached inside and discovered a small, leather-bound notebook I’d never seen before. Scrawled inside were a jumble of letters that made no sense whatsoever.

SDBDWWHQWLRQLDPWDNLQJBRXRQDKXQWIRUWUXWK

There were about a hundred and fifty pages of this, and no clue as to what it all meant or how the notebook came into my pocket.

I set the book down and picked a letter off the floor. Someone had slipped it under my door while I was out. The envelope had no stamp or return address, only my name in bold lettering. I opened it. On a sheet of paper in the same handwriting was written

You need to leave. You cannot stay here
.

Immediately I knew that whoever had written the note, whether it was a threat or a warning, was right. I had to go.

By nightfall I had packed my bags and emptied my room, sliding the key under the door as I left. I was operating on adrenaline, reacting to my situation without thinking. I had planned to go straight to the train station, but instead I turned toward Clara’s house. I didn’t know what I would do when I got there, and spent the walk in a half daze.

When I arrived there was a light on upstairs, and I knew she was home, but I couldn’t make myself knock on the door. What could I possibly say to her? I’d sealed my fate the moment I’d punched Houdini, but for Clara that wouldn’t matter. She had been wrong to love me. I had let her down, but if it hadn’t been this, then it would have been something else. I couldn’t even explain to her why I had punched Houdini—I didn’t know myself. I wished I had time to figure it out, to enumerate my failings and repair them. But whoever had warned me to leave had made it clear I was in danger. I couldn’t put Clara in
danger too. As long as I was around, she wasn’t safe. If I really did care about her, then the only thing left for me to do was disappear. I turned away and walked the long walk to the train station.