I, Houdini

by Lynne Reid Banks

  Need I go on? With the added weight of the berries in my cheeks, I was too heavy. The branch, the berries, the vase, and I were all soon lying in a puddle of water in the hearth, the air around still echoing with the crash the vase made as it broke.

  Well, I thought, picking myself up with a dainty shake of my wet fur, at least that solves the problem of getting down. But there was another problem now, because the noise had woken the Father, who could already be heard thumping about upstairs. Houdini, said I to myself, this is no place for you! Quick as a wink, I scurried behind the piano and up into my brand-new nest.

  The fights about the telephone wire and the carpet and the door were nothing compared to what followed my escapade on the mantelpiece. The Father seemed to go completely mad. He literally jumped up and down, purple in the face with rage. (How do I know? I’ll tell you. There was a little window in my piano—actually a little sliding-glass panel. Don’t ask me why, but it was extremely useful, as I could sit on the hammers in a shadow and peep out at what was going on in the living room. That was where the light came from, inside.) He did more than threaten now—he issued ultimatums. “No more chances!” he bellowed. “Back it goes! That, or I’ll kill it—I will—I’ll kill it with my bare hands!”

  Yes, very intemperate of him, wasn’t it? And all that was before he’d discovered what needless to say I had not known—that all that soft stuff I chewed off the little wooden hammers prevented a number of notes from playing on the piano.

  He went to the lengths of pulling the piano out from the wall, taking its back off, and hunting for me through all the works. My nest was demolished, of course, and my store of berries was stolen. But fortunately for me, by that time I was no longer there. I had found my favorite place under the kitchen floor.

  Chapter 6

  My luck seemed to be with me altogether, so far as that kitchen was concerned.

  It was not one of your shining modern affairs with all the gadgets, stoves, washing machines, and so forth set so tightly side by side that even a mouse couldn’t squeeze between them—no. It was your old-fashioned, half-converted kind, with huge chasms between and behind the bits of equipment. I could safely run right under the stove, for instance, and one of the cabinets—the one that turned out to contain my beloved cookie drawer—had no back. The drawer itself, three shelves up, was not quite backless, but its back was half broken so that, having swung up to it, it was a simple matter to climb in and help myself. The children’s visits to that drawer left it in such chaos that it was a long time before the Mother realized that most of the crumbs, torn wrappings, etc., were my work.

  Well! So on my very first exploration of this domestic paradise, I discovered a hole in a corner of the floor under the sink. You may imagine I was exceedingly careful not to go down into it until I had checked on the distance of the drop below, but I soon realized that there was a sort of handy little platform just there, with the real floor about five inches underneath. The platform had been built to hide a strange tangle of pipes of various kinds, which snaked about in the dark under the false floor. They didn’t bother me, however. I soon learned which ones were hot and which weren’t, and in fact, they provided several cozy little nooks and crannies, in one of which I decided to build my permanent home.

  It took labor and planning, of course—what dream house doesn’t? I lost count of the number of trips I made in the dead of night, carrying all kinds of lovely soft bedding material—carpet fluff, shavings, bits of chewed-up fabrics that I found carelessly left lying about (how could I know that useless-looking strip thing was Mark’s school tie?). Anyway, by the time I had arranged everything to my satisfaction, a number of days had passed and I’m afraid the family had begun to despair of ever seeing me again, because I was very careful to work only after they had gone to bed in order not to draw attention to my activities.

  Nobody, I was determined, was going to find this nest—it was the most beautiful I had ever constructed. Nowhere, not even in the piano, had I felt so safe and warm and comfortable. The first night I bedded down there, after feasting from a splendid supply of grain, crumbs, and (treat of treats!) raisins that I had found readily available, I felt utterly contented and pleased with myself.

  There was just one thing that was not quite perfect. My under-floor home lacked a built-in water supply.

  When I got thirsty I had to go out and forage for drink. Sometimes there would be a puddle of water left on the floor near the sink, but I felt lapping up spilled water—often tasting disgustingly of detergent—was beneath my dignity.

  The surest source was, of course, my own water bottle in the cage, but that meant going all the way upstairs, slithering back into the opening I had made, having a drink, and rushing home again. I could never climb in or out of the cage without making some noise, and I paid for every drink I took in this way in sheer terror that one of the boys would hear me and come out and capture me.

  The infuriating thing was, there was water under the platform. In fact, I came to realize that one of the pipes that surrounded my nest was a water pipe. I knew this because there was a joint farther along, out of which, when the pressure was high, a few drops of water sometimes leaked. Each time this happened I would think, “How marvelous if there were a tiny hole in the pipe through which I could suck a drink whenever I wanted one!”

  This thought preyed on my mind. I would often lie in bed (as you would put it), with comforting rays of light filtering through the cracks in the floorboards, and gaze at that pipe, almost willing it to spring a leak. Needless to say it didn’t, but eventually, one hot night when my thirst was tormenting me and I just didn’t feel like climbing mountains and running risks to get water, I decided to do something about it.

  I had long ago learned that gnawing on metal is useless and painful. That was why I had not had a go at that pipe before. But what I now discovered was that not all metals are alike. I thought they were all equally hard and resistant. But as soon as I tried an experimental gnaw, I found that this kind was, well, not soft, of course not, but certainly no harder than a lot of woods.

  In fact I must say that gnawing on this stuff was really very satisfying. If I didn’t try to bite it, but just applied my side teeth to peeling off little threads of it, it came away beautifully. It also wore my teeth down beautifully, so that the process of actually making a hole in the thing took over a week. I didn’t want to find myself with stubs instead of teeth.

  I made my breakthrough on a Saturday night. I know that because the family usually lies in bed late on a Sunday, enabling me to be out and about in the morning after my usual bedtime, foraging for special tidbits for my own Sunday lunch.

  On this occasion, though, there was no Sunday lunch for anybody.

  At dawn, after a night’s work, I sensed that I was about to pierce the water pipe. I was belly-deep in fine lead shavings. There was a long shallow channel of bright, shining metal where I was working, grooved with my toothmarks. I must be nearly there! I could feel the extra coldness of water, right against my lips as I worked. Just one more good gnaw—

  Whoosh!

  The next second I was flat on my back. A jet of water, which had hit me in the face and bowled me over, was making a swift-running stream across the floor. My lovely nest was awash, my fur soaked. I jumped up and fled into a far corner out of the way of the stream, which rapidly enlarged into a river. The water as it came out of the pipe made a hissing noise every bit as sinister as the hiss of an enraged hamster. For my part, I was dumb with horror. What, oh what had I done?

  I had certainly blown my hiding place and my home, that was sure. I decided that discretion, as they say, was the better part of valor. I waded across the river, which was now flowing out from under the platform over the rest of the kitchen floor, came up through my entrance hole, took one appalled look at the spreading lake, and ran as fast as my little legs would carry me to the safest place I could think of. My cage. Foolishly no doubt, I thought that if I was found there, a sel
f-surrendered captive, suspicion would not fall on me.

  I cowered in my loft, wondering what was happening downstairs and willing and willing someone to go down and stop the water before the whole house was flooded. At the same time I hoped they never would, for I could not imagine what sort of calamity would follow. Perhaps I wouldn’t be blamed. I had all too little hope. The Father had become quite neurotic about me, blaming me for everything that went wrong in the house, including the loss of his hammer and the disappearance (later traced to Guy) of a two-pound box of after-dinner mints. As if I’d be caught dead eating anything so bad for my teeth! (Well, except on festive occasions!)

  At last Mark got up and padded sleepily downstairs to get something to eat. I crouched with closed eyes, every nerve alert for the outcry. It came, shatteringly.

  “MUMMY! DADDY! The kitchen’s flooded!”

  A moment later he came flying up the stairs, his face alight with excitement. I cowered down in the musty old bedding I hadn’t used for weeks. The loft roof overhead was clear, and as the Mother and Father, roused from their Sunday lie-in, came rushing down the corridor, I felt as if the ceiling were about to fall on me. What a fool I’d been to go to my cage! What a simpleton!

  The whole family thundered past me and down the stairs like a herd of elephants, and I crouched, waiting for the explosion. Of course, you’ll say I should have wriggled out and fled to a secure hiding place right away, but the shameful truth was I was too terrified to move. I heard the Father give voice to a bellow of dismay, while everyone else uttered shrieks and cries and exclamations and questions that went on for about ten minutes, seeming like ten hours to me. I expected every second that they would come thundering up again and rend me limb from limb. But to my great relief, nothing of the sort happened.

  Slowly everything quietened down. After a bit the boys were sent upstairs to dry their feet (I assume they’d all been paddling) and get dressed. As Adam went past the cage he suddenly stopped dead.

  “Look!” he cried in wonder. “It’s Houdini! He’s back!”

  I opened one eye just long enough to see they were all crouching around me, and then I pretended to be asleep. There was such a long silence, though, that I had another peep to see why they weren’t talking. The reason was, they were all looking at each other and then at me. When they did speak, it was in whispers.

  “Why would he go back in by himself?”

  “Unless he had a guilty conscience!”

  “What’s that?” hissed Guy. (It was the first time I’d heard the expression, but I knew what it meant all right!)

  “He knows he did something awful, Dumbo!” Mark hissed back. “And we know what it was!”

  “But we mustn’t tell!” Adam said, forgetting to whisper. Mark bowled him over backward and sat on his head.

  “SHHHH! If Dad ever finds out it was him—”

  “If we guessed, he will too!” croaked Adam from underneath Mark.

  “Then we’ll take Houdini out of there and hide him somewhere else till the trouble blows over.”

  And that, friends, is how I found myself back in that thrice-accursed bin.

  With the lid on.

  Chapter 7

  While it was very comforting to feel that the children were on my side, it was horrible to be incarcerated in that bin, even though I had richly deserved it. I had to stay there for nearly two whole days. They fed me, of course, and let me out for a run at night after the lights were supposed to be out, but that didn’t really help. To make matters worse, I lived in dread of discovery, especially after I heard Mark say, on the Monday morning:

  “The plumber’s coming. Daddy’s taking the floorboards up.”

  “Daddy” was nobody’s fool. I knew the minute he saw the marks of my teeth on that pipe, I was as good as done for.

  The bellow he had made when he first saw the flood was but a faint whimper compared to the roar he let out when the boards came up and my crime was revealed.

  “THAT ANIMAL! That—that—that little misbegotten son of a verminous flea-bitten cross-eyed sewer rat! Wait till I lay my hands on him—just wait—”

  I lost my head at this point and began running around and around inside the bin in an agony of terror. Mark heard me and lifted the lid long enough to whisper, “Keep still, you idiot! If he comes up here he’ll hear you!”

  Then he put the lid back and he and his brothers seemed to be dropping all sorts of stuff on top of and around the bin to hide it. I lay in the suffocating darkness and wondered whether the Father really meant even half the things he was threatening to do when he caught up with me.

  Mercifully I never found out. (Incidentally I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s not a bad sort really; he’s just got this fearful temper.) When Mark came home from school that afternoon, following a day that I would prefer to forget entirely, he had a master plan.

  I was to be loaned to a neighbor, cage and all, for as long as it took the Father to calm down. I heard the boys discussing it. This neighbor also had a hamster, it seemed, so I would not be lonely. Personally I didn’t care for any company whatever just then, but never mind. It would be a huge relief just to be out of the house and safe from the Father’s righteous wrath.

  In any case, even this disaster had not completely damped my love of change and adventure. I had pretty well exhausted the possibilities of my own family’s house—I certainly had no objections to exploring another.

  So, when the Father and Mother were closeted before the television, Adam popped me back into my cage and he and Mark crept downstairs, holding it between them, with Guy bringing up the rear with my bag of feed. Out of doors we went, and I had my first glimpse of the great big world of the street outside.

  It was a revelation, of course. The size of it—the scope! I had had no idea, till that moment, that there was a world outside houses. Well—I suppose I had known, from pictures and TV and so on, that an Outdoors existed. But the moment I saw it, smelled it, I knew I could not rest until I had escaped from Indoors and explored the wonderful, vast, fresh-scented world of under-the-sky.

  The neighbor I was to stay with proved to be a likely-looking lad, several years older than any of my boys. His hamster was a female, and the first thing they all expected of me, the moment we got inside the door, was—you guessed it. A bit of fun and games. Well. I was sorry to disappoint them, after all they’d done for me, but I really wasn’t having any of that. Or so I thought till I saw her.

  I won’t pretend I didn’t like the look of her. She was rather fetching as a matter of fact, with different colored patches on her fur—white, black, and reddish—and rather sweet little trembly whiskers. Her teeth, when she showed them to me in a not-very-friendly grimace, were really beautiful, sharp and yellow as husks of wheat.… But there now, I mustn’t get carried away. Nothing came of it.

  I don’t wish to go into details, but the plain fact of the matter is, she didn’t seem to find me attractive. In short, they put us together, I made a few tentative advances, just out of politeness, she bit me, and that was that. Most embarrassing. And the boys’ ribald remarks didn’t improve matters.

  After that I was allowed to return to my cage, the top of which was firmly weighted down with several hefty books. I saw at once there’d be no getting out of that lot, so I resigned myself and went straight to bed. Fortunately this other boy knew enough to put a little cover over the clear top of my loft, which enabled me to feel very private. For all that, it took me some time to shake off a certain feeling—one most uncharacteristic of me—which I can only call humiliation. Not that I’d wanted to mate with the wretched female, you understand, especially with a lot of eager little boys urging me on in terms that I won’t repeat.… But still. To be bitten, and with those charming little golden teeth … No, I won’t dwell on it. No one can succeed in every field. And I consoled myself by reflecting that, if she had known what sort of hamster she was rejecting, she would have been very sorry for her rude behavior.
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  My own boys left, after many instructions to their pal about looking after me and especially guarding against any attempts at escape. “Don’t let him out,” they kept saying. “Don’t let him out for a minute!” “Okay, okay,” said the older boy (whose name was Ben). “Don’t worry, I’m an expert.” That was his opinion.

  Scarcely were my boys out of the door when the cover and lid of the loft came off and I was picked up. I’d been half-asleep and was not very pleased, but I submitted myself out of courtesy to my host. First he put me in the bath, if you don’t mind, and said rather jeeringly, “Let’s see you escape from that, then!” Naturally I didn’t give him the satisfaction of even trying—I know baths of old. I simply sat there and stared at him loftily. So then he picked me up again and carried me quite a long distance between his two cupped hands, and suddenly there was a blast of cool air and I smelled that heavenly outdoor smell again.

  He put me down on an endless expanse of soft, natural-smelling green stuff—a lawn, in short. I didn’t just sit staring at him now! I ran ecstatically this way and that, reveling in the feel of the grass under my feet, the scents and sounds around me that told me in no uncertain terms that here was my true element—that I was a wild creature at heart and not a tame one at all. The fact that at the end of every little run I came up against Ben’s big feet planted in my way, which made me turn and run in another direction, hardly mattered. I was not—just for once—even thinking about escaping. I was simply glorying in the sensation of being more alive, more truly hamster, than I’d ever been before.

  After letting me play for a while, however, Ben picked me up again. I could almost have bitten him for lifting me away from that divine grass. But in a moment my feet were sinking down into something else, something, if possible, even more exciting, more—me. It was sand.