The Spirit Cabinet (42 page)

“You’ll have to tell me quickly, then.” Jurgen jerked his head toward the Spirit Cabinet. His head glowed so brightly that it left behind ghostly traces, smears of luminance. Rudolfo saw that light leaked from the Spirit Cabinet, and strange sounds, too, harmonious zephyrs, winds that wailed and keened. “I’ve got to be going,” Jurgen whispered.

Rudolfo sighed. “Go, then.”

“Okey-dokey.” Jurgen released his hands and floated away. He pulled through the air with both arms, then added a strong frog kick, because, don’t forget, he’d been an amateur swimmer, a member of
die Haie
, the winner of three small, tarnished trophies. He reached the Spirit Cabinet and the righthand door swung open. Rudolfo tried to peer inside, but the glare was too much. He had to turn his head away and even so was forced to close his eyes.

“I love you,” he said. He never knew whether Jurgen heard, never knew if his partner was then inside the Spirit Cabinet or merely entering. He never heard the sound of the door being closed—he could hear nothing except the wind raging in the room, sending up a howl that had driven all the animals in
das eindrucksvollste Haus im Universum
to seek shelter in the shadows.

Then there was light, pure and radiant, and then there was nothing.

A few days after the fire on the desert, the one that had destroyed
das eindrucksvollste Haus im Universum
, Theodore Collinger took himself down to the George Theater.

He was an elderly man. His hands, once long and graceful, were stained with age spots and shook uncontrollably. Collinger had been renowned as a magician, his speciality being the Chinese rings. It was quite some time ago that the rings had begun to clang and clatter whenever they neared each other, begun to meld when they should have stayed distinct, and separate when Collinger tried to display a chain. Since then he had applied himself to the art as a kind of scholar and amanuensis. He wrote a column for
Hocus Pocus
magazine in which he related news concerning the craft. “Collinger’s Corner,” it was entitled and he often reflected, bitterly, at how apt the title was, because in whichever sense a magazine can possess a corner, that was what was alloted to him, a tiny space in which it was impossible to get comfortable. And it paid nothing. His monthly stipend was pitiful, forcing him to live in a shithole motel with a clutch of aged showgirls who played Scrabble and discussed farfetched plans
for restoring lustre to their sagging breasts. Collinger had taken to drink, of course.

He knocked on the glass doors of the George Theater and peered through into the foyer. The velvet within was blurry with dust and cobwebbing. He reflected that he may have come too early. He lifted his thin wrist and tried to catch a quick look at the watch there. Eight-thirty-seven. Hmmm. Perhaps a little ill-timed. He recalled that when he was young and played all the big hotels, he likely wouldn’t have even made it to bed by eight in the morning. Unless it was with a comely young person, gender immaterial. Theodore Collinger scowled, feeling decrepit and sexless.

Preston descended hurriedly from upstairs, fastening his robe, evening the sides about his pale belly before drawing them together. He worked at the lock for a long moment and then pulled open the theatre door. “Hi, Mr. Collinger.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve arrived a little prematurely.”

“That’s all right. I was just …” Preston waved vaguely in the direction of his sleeping quarters upstairs. “Come in, Mr. Collinger. Come on in.”

Preston pulled open the door slightly and Collinger, ever a slim man and these days even more so, slipped through. As he passed by Preston he noticed an acrid, musky odour. It reminded him of something, although he couldn’t quite place his trembling finger on it. “I’ve brought two things,” said Collinger, getting down to business. “One is a cassette recording of what was actually heard on the evening in question. The other is a transcript of the same, translated into English.”

Preston shook his head slightly. “Okay. Now, I didn’t quite follow this on the telephone. This was a seance, last Thursday …”

“Hallowe’en.”

“Sure.” Preston nodded. Hallowe’en was, of course, the most popular night for seances, seeing as ghosts were out and about
and looking to drop by for visits. Many people held seances, chanting low invitations to disembodied spirits. Mind you, some people were more particular in their incantations and awaited only the arrival of Ehrich Weiss.

Many know this story: in Montreal, in the year 1926, Ehrich Weiss was reclining on a sofa in his dressing room in the Princess Theatre. Two young men burst in, eager to meet the great Houdini. One of them, a McGill student named Whitehead, asked Weiss if it were true that punches to the stomach did not hurt him. Houdini pursed his lips and shrugged with what little modesty he could muster. Popular legend has it that Whitehead then struck him without warning; historians have it that Houdini did prepare himself, but rather ineffectually. He did not rise from the couch, for example, and Whitehead was able to shower blows from above, striking Weiss hard on his tiny stomach. Something inside Houdini burst. Some believe that something was already broken, that Whitehead’s blows merely exacerbated the situation. At any rate, Houdini left Montreal, took a train to Detroit, even managed to give a show: a newspaper reported that he looked “more than a little tired.” Afterwards, he was rushed to the hospital, where doctors attended to him frantically. Houdini slipped in and out of consciousness. Once, he looked at the young man caring for him and whispered, “I wanted to be a doctor. When I was young. I wish I had become a doctor.”

“But, you’re Houdini.”

“But what you do is real. I am just a fake.”

Houdini died on Hallowe’en.

Ehrich Weiss had stated on many occasions that if there were some way of getting back from the Other Side, he would find it. Since then, people have assembled every Hallowe’en and awaited his return.

Theodore Collinger took a deep breath and managed to get his shaking hand into his trouser pocket, pulling out a folded
piece of paper and a small cassette tape. He waved these in front of Preston, who took a few moments to judge the speed and modulation, then pinched thumb and forefinger together, stabbed out and intercepted the stuff.

Collinger’s attention was now drawn once more to the staircase where a young woman was descending. She was measuring out the sides of her robe, giving the terry cloth a little shimmy before drawing it closed across her nakedness. Collinger’s innards were suddenly molten. He was so shaken that his hands were stilled. He lifted one, as though in greeting, although he was really holding it in front of his eyes to block the view, much as one would if forced to stare into the sun.

“Hiya,” said this young woman, making a knot in the sash. The robe split high to allow her legs to take the last couple of stairs. “I guess you must be Theodore Collinger.”

Collinger nodded; the name sounded familiar.

Preston, meanwhile, had lumbered behind the snack counter where there was a small tape recorder. Mrs. Antoinette Kingsley had long ago grown bored with Preston’s Show and preferred to spend the time sitting behind the counter listening to Tony Anthony tapes. Preston plugged in the cassette, placed his thick forefinger on the “
PLAY
” button and pressed.

The tiny speakers issued forth a silence thick with static and human breath.

“There were four of us,” said Collinger. “Myself, Kenny Bental, Louisa Hoyle and Freddy Myztyk.”

“Oh, yeah.” Preston scowled. Of the three people named, Bental was the most sane, and he was only allowed out on weekends. Louisa Hoyle was rich enough to avoid hospitalization; Freddy Myztyk was so loopy that his presence caused radio interference and local blackouts.

“Listen!” said Collinger suddenly, pointing at the tape recorder. “There’s the first voice.”

The “first voice” was laden with zizz and cackle, hard to distinguish beneath the ethereal roar.
“Hallo,”
it said.

“And here—” said Collinger. The second voice came too close upon the heels of the first for him to announce it.
“Oh,”
went the voice.
“Du bist es. Der Typ der mich im Bauch erwischt hat.”

“German,” noted Preston. He unfolded the piece of paper he held in his hand.

“Das tut mir leid,”
returned the first voice.

“Es macht nichts. Heh. Gib mir einen Spot.”

Miranda shivered suddenly and pulled the collar of her robe together, running her hand upwards like a western tie until the terry cloth was knotted around her neck.

“Ich kann nicht. Ich muss gehen.”

Preston ran his eyes over the page and found the appropriate words.
“I can’t. I have to go.”

“Gehen? Keiner kann gehen.”

“Go?”
translated Preston in as soft a voice as he could manage.
“No one can go.”

Then there was silence, which somehow seemed much louder than the eerie, tape-recorded words. Collinger said, “That’s it,” and Preston the Adequate switched off the machine. He pulled at his face, the pasty jowls seeming to stay stretched for many moments after he removed his hand. “Well,” he said. “The German is a problem.”

“Not really,” argued Collinger. “The Weiss household spoke German. Houdini spoke German with his mother exclusively.”

“Sure, but the first voice. I mean, for this to make any sense, that first voice would have to be Whitehead’s. Wouldn’t it?”

“Point of information,” said Miranda. “What did they say?”

“Oh.” Preston read from the sheet of paper, running a finger underneath the words as if to lend them a sort of forensic rightness. “Hello.”

“I got that part,” said Miranda.

“Oh. It’s you. The guy who hit me in the stomach.”

“No shit?”

“The translator,” pointed out Collinger, “notes that the verb used is actually somewhat vague. ‘Hit me in the stomach, got me in the stomach, something like that.’ But the stomach part is clear enough.”

“So what else?” Miranda prompted.

“Let me see. I’m sorry about that. Don’t worry. Hey. Give me some scorn.”

“What the what?” repeated Miranda.

“
Spott
,” said Collinger, adopting a scholarly tone, “apparently means
scorn
. Ridicule, mockery, that sort of thing.”

“No,” said Miranda. “I bet he said
spot
. In English. You know. As in weightlifting.”

“Aha!” declared Collinger, and only partly because the gap between the bathrobe lapels had dropped deep between Miranda’s breasts. “More supporting evidence. Because Houdini, an adherent of the physical dynamism espoused by Eugene Sandow, spent many hours occupied with muscular training and improvement.”

“Yeah, but,” said Miranda. She fell abruptly silent.

“Yeah, but what?”

“This is wild,” she declared, with considerable enthusiasm. “Houdini pulls off the Big One.”

Preston spun around. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said slowly. “Why would Whitehead speak German?”

“Preston, you unimaginative schmuck,” countered Miranda, “we are dealing with the Great Beyond. I’m guessing you can speak whatever language you want.”

“But—”

“You got hold of something pretty special there, Mr. Collinger,” said Miranda.

“Oh, I don’t suppose anybody will believe it. A few, here and
there. But there’s a few here and there who will believe pretty much anything.”

Preston popped the cassette out of the machine. He had to take hold of the old man’s wrist, which seemed as thin and fragile as an icicle at noon, steady the hand and tenderly slip the tape between the vibrating fingers. “Hey, Mr. Collinger,” he asked quietly. “What do you believe?”

“Me?” Collinger shrugged. “I suppose I believe that there is life after death. But I had pretty much come around to believing that, anyway. It’s easy to believe that when one is about to die.”

Miranda came close and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for coming and playing that for us, Mr. Collinger.”