I, Houdini

by Lynne Reid Banks

  “Look, Mark! He’s opened his eyes!”

  “He’s alive!”

  “Oh, Houdini—”

  “Mom! Houdini’s alive! He’s moving.…”

  With some difficulty I focused on the faces above me. Was I dreaming? Could it be them, Mark, Adam, Guy—and now their Mother? Yes, they were all there, beaming down at me. I wouldn’t like to swear to it, but I do believe the Mother had tears in her eyes.

  Then the Father appeared. No tears there, you can bet, but even he sounded a bit gentler than usual when he said, “How is the little terror? Good Lord. Don’t tell me he’s survived even a night in a fridge! Talk about cats having nine lives …”

  “Well, it wasn’t a whole night, Dad. Only a couple of hours.” That was Mark.

  “Mr. Jenkins must have gone out early to work and seen our notice. Lucky we offered a reward; I bet he’d never have bothered to let us know otherwise!”

  “Pity we had to give it to him. No need to wonder what it’ll get spent on,” said the Father.

  “How anyone could leave a poor little creature to freeze to death—”

  “He said he thought it was a rat!”

  “He’s not so far wrong, if you ask me.” That was the Father, needless to say. But all of sudden, to my astonishment, he reached out his big hand and ran the back of one finger very lightly along my fur.

  “Dad! You’re stroking him!”

  “You know you love him really.”

  “Do I,” said the Father, remembering himself and withdrawing his hand hastily. “Listen, you lot. You’ve got him back. All right. But if he ever gets out of that cage again—”

  A chorus of protest greeted this.

  “Of course he won’t!”

  “We’ll see to that!”

  “We’ll simply stack it with books—”

  “The whole set of encyclopedias!”

  “He’ll never get out again, we promise!”

  “And what about you? Do you promise?” said the Father, sternly, turning to his mate.

  She looked very ashamed and opened her mouth. But something told me not to let her promise anything rash. I created a diversion by struggling to my feet and beginning to groom my fur. I swear it still felt cold to my tongue, though I suppose it wasn’t really.

  “Ah, look! He’s better.”

  A pleasing wave of loving, encouraging sounds flowed over me. I still didn’t feel myself, of course, but I must say that never, in all my very independent life, have I been so glad to belong (excuse the word, it’s not really appropriate) to a family.

  For some time after that I was quite content with cage life. They made the most tremendous effort to make it as comfortable and pleasant for me as they could. The boys waited on me hand and foot (well, paw and paw), bringing me the most delectable tidbits to eat, lovely soft bedding, toys (well, you know, just sometimes one doesn’t mind having a game)—in short, everything they could think of to make me happy and satisfied. They even bought an extension to my cage so I would not feel confined.

  And while I was recovering from my awful ordeal, I was willing to accept all these kindly attentions and make the most of them. But of course, inevitably, with me being me, it couldn’t last forever.

  After a few days I began to feel a strange restlessness. It was not quite like my usual pre-escape restlessness. It was a definite urge. Not so much to escape, as such, but to get away by myself where nobody could look at me or disturb me, to find a private nest.

  More and more strongly came the recollection of my home under the kitchen floor, before I had caused the flood. I began to long for it keenly. Every night when I woke up (which I did, these days, with greater and greater difficulty), I would struggle to get out. Often the Mother, on her way to bed, would stop by my cage, crouch down, and watch me straining my back desperately against the book-weighted roof.

  “Poor Houdini,” she would say tenderly. “I know. But I can’t, Houdini. I really mustn’t. If you’re going to hibernate, you must do it in your loft. Here, I’ll put your cover on.” And she would drape a bit of cloth over my loft.

  But that only gave me an illusion of privacy. The boys would still come along in the afternoons and wake me up and play with me. Sometimes I was so weary I could hardly open my eyes.

  “Why’s he so dopey these days? He used to be so lively.”

  “Maybe he’s getting ready to sleep for the winter.”

  “Hamsters don’t, stupid.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It doesn’t say a word about it in the book.”

  “They don’t in captivity, but perhaps wild ones do.”

  I didn’t know what they were talking about, and I was too sleepy to find out. I only knew I had my urge. And I had to fulfill it, soon.

  It was the new extension that saved me.

  Funny that I’d never thought to try all the tests on the entrance plugs in that one, which I’d exhaustively investigated in my old one. Until one day, sitting up in my loft feeling quite miserable, I happened to glance across the gap between the two cylindrical houses (they were joined at the base by a tube) and noticed something.

  The water bottle in my old cage was attached by a rubber band to the ventilating bars, and its spout stuck through a little hole in the second-story plug. The weight of the bottle against the outside of the plug made it impossible to push it out, and as I’ve already mentioned, the one downstairs had a spring cunningly affixed, which I could never budge.

  But there was no need for two water bottles, so the second-story plug in the extension hadn’t got one. It had a plug, though, with a little hole in it just big enough for a spout—and no spring.

  For a second after noticing this, I simply stared. Then I flashed down the two tubes, through the connecting one, up the one inside the extension, and in a twinkling I had my front teeth at work, round that tiny hole.

  It was delicate work and might well have been discovered before I could have enlarged the space enough to let me out; but in bracing myself for my task I pushed hard against the plug. My muscles by now were a wonder. The inventors of the cage had not anticipated anything like them. A strong steady pressure and, with a most gratifying POP, the plug flew out. I was free!

  I headed down the side of the cage, down the corridor, down the stairs, dreading all the while to find the kitchen door closed. It stood as if shut, but reaching it, I saw it was not latched. By pushing my nose firmly and steadily against its bottom corner, I gradually worked it open and slipped through.

  As I crossed the familiar dark kitchen, another anxiety seized me. In repairing the leaky pipe, would they not have repaired the kitchen floor too? Would my hole be blocked? I felt I hadn’t the strength to gnaw a new one. But all was again well. I flashed under the stove, and there, just as always, was the gap in the boards. My heart high with delight, I dropped through.

  All was as it had been, except for the new pipe. I had, of course, not the slightest desire to gnaw that, or to do anything, indeed, which might have given away my presence. To that end, I knew, I would have to be quite silent during the day. All nest-making and storage must be carried on at night, and by day I must not so much as crack a sunflower seed.

  I worked hard that night, despite my growing drowsiness. Dawn and sleep overtook me only when I had made a very passable nest out of bits of soft yellow cloth I found neatly folded in a cupboard. I had shinnied up to my cookie drawer and found a princely collection of my favorite assortments, from which I took my pick, carrying each piece carefully down, breaking it up, and storing it near my sleeping place. Knowing the tendency of cookies to go stale, I needed some seeds as well, but there would be time enough tomorrow night to run to my cage for some of those. I always kept a good supply under my mattress in the loft.

  Not tonight, though. I was done in. I curled up in my cozy yellow nest. Dear Sun, I was tired! Tired but happy. Was there ever a hamster who was as happy as I was? Nor who deserved it better, I must say.

  Still, I
didn’t sleep at once. Before dropping off, I reviewed the major triumphs of my life and, let it be added, the major downfalls. I didn’t dwell on those, however. There was not one disaster, whether caused by my own fault or by sheer mischance, that I had not learned from.

  After all, what else—other than survival, of course—matters?

  Chapter 17

  I never did go up to get those seeds. I simply slept, on and on. Sometimes I would drift to the surface of consciousness and think, I must go and get those seeds! But I didn’t really want them. I hardly seemed to get hungry at all, and if I did I would nibble a cookie, and once, on sleep-wobbly legs, I crept out and found a drink. Then I tottered back to bed like an old, old hamster.

  Oh, it was so good to be private, to sleep without fear of disturbance! It was a deep prolonged sleep without dreams, indeed the “little death” the Sun had promised me, but a warm, pleasant kind, not the hideous shut-off cold one I had experienced in the fridge. In one moment of clear thought I said to myself, “If this is what death is like, I won’t mind it a bit when the time comes.”

  But the time had not come yet!

  One evening I woke up feeling completely different. Wide awake. Ready for anything. I could hear footsteps moving about overhead and smell a warm, tempting food smell, far nicer than the faded aroma of my stale store. I breathed deeply. It was stuffy under there. I sat up and scratched myself all over. Then, without a thought of danger, I dashed over to the hole and popped up under the stove.

  I could see the Mother’s feet standing beside it. A mischievous impulse seized me. I slipped out onto one of her shoes.

  She shrieked. But then she stopped. I saw her peering down at me in total disbelief. Footsteps came running. Gently and wonderingly, she picked me up.

  “Well! Look who’s here!” she said.

  What a welcome back I got! You’d think I’d been adventuring Outdoors again instead of just spending my winter in lazy idleness. I could tell, incidentally, that something had happened to the world outside. Even Indoors the air smelled different. Fresh. Invigorating! I wriggled in the hands that held and petted me, impatient to be allowed to run.…

  But it was not to be, not just yet. Having exclaimed endlessly over the miracle of my return “from the dead” (it seems they all thought I had somehow got out of the house and perished), they had plans for me.

  “We must take him to see his children!”

  My what? I must say for all my worldly knowledge I couldn’t imagine what this could mean. But I was soon to learn.

  Chattering gaily, the boys (all of whom seemed to have grown enormously since I had last seen them) put me into a ventilated box and carried me some distance through the street. I knew it by the smells and sounds that came through the airholes. Most of the sounds were birdsong, and very pretty too. Then we were indoors again and I recognized Ben’s voice.

  “Don’t tell me the little twerp showed up again after all this time!”

  “We think he’s been hibernating under our kitchen floor. But he hasn’t done any damage, so even Dad’s not too annoyed.”

  “Can he see the babies?”

  “They’re not such babies anymore, but bring him up.”

  I must admit to being very curious by now. Babies?

  The lid of the box came off. I reared up and put my front paws on the rim, looking over. And what a sight met my eyes.

  There, just below, was Oggi, in her cage, but with the top open, so that I had a bird’s-eye view. She looked sleek and contented. Around her were a number of different-colored balls of fur. Two of them were spotted, like her. One was dark, almost black. And three were golden. Like me!

  Ben reached his finger down and stirred the clump of fur.

  “Wake up, you lot! Your dad’s come to see you.”

  They twitched a bit and several little hamster faces were raised. I could only gaze.

  “Shall we put him in with them?” asked Adam.

  But Ben shook his head. “Better not. They’re funny little beasts. You never know, he might hurt them.”

  Hurt them? Not me! Another male hamster might perhaps—a primitive who did not know his own kind or grasp the wonderful processes of nature. But I knew now. These were my offspring, mine and Oggi’s. I wouldn’t have hurt them for the world.

  But on the other hand, I was not sorry not to be put among them. I felt very strange, looking at them. Overwhelmed. There are some feelings that are too big for small creatures, even highly intelligent ones. I sent Oggi a rather incoherent signal of praise, which I don’t think she noticed, and dropped back with a sense of relief into the box. I knew I had survived another of life’s high spots, but for once, I didn’t know how to take it. I am, if the truth be told, really better fitted for the physical than the emotional trials of this life.

  And that nearly brings me to the end of my story so far. I say so far because I’m not finished yet, by a long way. I’m not even slowing down. Well, not noticeably, anyway.

  As I said to begin with, I have the run of the house now, more or less. Oh, sometimes they shut me up in the cage, but what’s the use? I can usually get out again. All the plugs have worked loose now and they can’t lean heavy objects against all of them. Anyway, now that I’m older, I no longer gnaw on anything except the blocks of wood they provide for the purpose, so even the Father has come round to me. I ran up his trouser leg the other night by mistake (I thought for a moment he was Mark, who’s now almost the same size) and he just laughed and called me a little devil.

  I’ve been allowed to keep my nest under the floor. When no more flooding occurred, they decided it wasn’t worth the fuss of tearing up the floorboards again.

  My piano is still available to me, and in it I keep myself in condition. The temptation here, to chew the felts and make a nest, is perhaps the greatest I have to subdue. But I do subdue it.

  You see, I have arrived at a way of life with my family. They have given way, and I have given way. Compromise. That’s the secret of humans and animals living contentedly together. Humans and humans too, no doubt. Forgive me for ending on a preachy note. But as I get older, I find myself becoming less of an adventurer, more of a philosopher.

  Perhaps that’s how it goes, for all of us who are born with quite exceptional talents.

  About the Author

  Lynne Reid Banks was born in London in 1929 and spent World War II on the Canadian prairies as a “war guest.” On returning home, she studied drama and acted for five years. She then went into journalism, becoming the first woman TV news reporter in Britain in 1955. In 1960 her first novel, The L-Shaped Room, was published, and it was later filmed. In 1962 she emigrated to Israel, where she married, had three sons, and spent eight years living on a kibbutz and teaching English. She returned to London with her family in 1971 and since then has written nearly forty books, mainly novels for adults and young readers, including the award-winning Indian in the Cupboard series; the two Harry the Poisonous Centipede books; I, Houdini; The Farthest-Away Mountain; and The Fairy Rebel. Her latest novel is The Dungeon. She lives in a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse in Dorset, England, with her husband. She often travels and visits schools at home and abroad.