The Magician's Lie

by Greer Macallister

  And I saw a woman shot in the face, to wild applause.

  January started gray and bitterly cold. By the second week, it began to warm, and there was no snow, which gave me the opportunity to save streetcar fare by walking to and from the theater. The days were short, and it seemed always dark. One evening when I exited the stage door of the theater into the usual darkness, someone was waiting in the alley. I caught the smell first, a sweetish smoke, and then a blur of motion caught my eye.

  I moved closer, carefully, and the shape resolved.

  There was a man in the shadows, in light-colored clothing, smoking a large pipe. He spoke to me in a bright high voice, saying, “Good evening, young lady.” I couldn’t place the accent.

  I said, “Good evening,” and started walking past.

  He said, “Wait a moment, please. I’d like to speak to you.”

  “I need to get home, sir.”

  “Ma’am,” the voice corrected, and I took a closer look. Despite the breeches, the smoker was a woman. A large woman. Not fat but simply large, like an Amazon, built on a grander scale. My fear lessened somewhat without draining fully away.

  “I’ll get right to the point. My name is Adelaide Herrmann,” she said, tapping the bowl of her pipe against the heel of her hand. “I have a show. I think you might be suited for it.”

  “What kind of show?”

  “Magic,” she said.

  My first instinct was revulsion. Magic made me think of Ray, who had been convinced he and I both had magic in us and had tortured me for it. But then I realized she probably wasn’t talking about real magic, if in fact it existed. She’d said show. That was a different animal.

  She was looking at me very closely. She put her hand out and gently turned my shoulder, turning me toward the streetlight. I could feel the warmth of the light on me, against my cold skin.

  “You have a very classical face, did you know that?” she said.

  “I suppose not.” No one had told me I had a classical face. Not even the underhanded Clyde, who had admired me, in his way.

  “You could do a lot with that face.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It isn’t about the face really, of course,” she said. “I need a dancer.”

  “What kind?”

  “Your kind. I saw you in the show, and I think you can do what I need done.”

  “Which is?”

  “Better that I show you. Come with me.”

  She turned down Broadway, and after only a moment’s hesitation, I followed. The scent of pipe tobacco was more pleasant than most of the smells of the city, so I was happy to trail behind her in that cloud. I shouldn’t have trusted her, but I did.

  There were people on the streets, which usually made me feel safe, but these weren’t the people I was used to. It was full dark. Nighttime revelry had begun. There were policemen around, but it didn’t look like they were doing much policing. At least one had a girl in one arm and a drink in the other. I tried to keep myself to myself as we went and trailed Madame Herrmann like a shadow.

  Ten blocks later, she turned left onto a narrower street and left again into an alleyway, and we went in at a small door.

  The stairs were narrow and dark, and I followed her pale shape up through the darkness. The room behind the stage was large and mostly empty, except for several trunks lined up against one wall. Madame Herrmann rummaged in a trunk and threw a few things aside. Two kinds of cloth and something furry. I didn’t look too closely. The next thing she found, she held out to me. Long blond ringlets dangled from her clutched hand.

  She said, “Put this on.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Put it on,” she said. “I may have a very important opportunity for you. But I need you to put on this wig so I can see you in it.”

  I tucked my hair underneath the horsehair cap and yanked the wig down over the top of my head. It smelled of old sweat. I held in the gag. I knew whatever opportunity this woman was offering me would rely on my doing what I was told, and I had a strong feeling it was an opportunity I wanted to know more about.

  “Go over there,” she said, pointing toward the brick wall. When I faced the wall, she said, “Turn around,” so I did and faced her.

  “Should I—”

  “Just stay still,” she said.

  I left that ratty wig on my head and didn’t even blow the hair out of my eye although it itched something awful, and I stared at a brick in the wall that the mason had nicked and overgrouted to make up for it. I only blinked on occasion, because when a powerful woman who smells like rosewater instead of dung tells you to stay still, you know everything depends on exactly how still you can stay, and for how long.

  After a few minutes, she said, “Well done, you can move now. What’s your name?”

  “Ada Bates.”

  “Eh, no good. We’ll change that,” she said. “You’ll start overmorrow.”

  “What will I start doing?” I asked her. “You haven’t said.”

  “Young lady, you are going to have the most wonderful life with us. You have no idea.”

  She was dead right, on both counts, as I would later discover. I didn’t think to ask her how she had picked me out of the crowd. I was no more prominent in the show than a dozen other girls. I was the one she had waited for, and I was a fool not to inquire why. But it was an unexpected, mad night, and I was caught up. And perhaps there was a part of me that was afraid it was too good to be true and asking questions might break the spell.

  “Fifteen dollars a week, first week in advance,” she said and pressed two bills into my hand. Real money. I only made ten fifty in the chorus. If I’d been a giddier girl, I would have run off right then, but I was levelheaded enough to know why Adelaide had given me the money up front. She wanted me to know there was plenty more where that came from.

  “I still need to know what the work is,” I said.

  “What you’ll do for this money, it’s nothing you need be ashamed of,” Madame Herrmann said matter-of-factly. “Tell you what. Tomorrow night, come to the Metropolitan Opera House. You’ll see something amazing. And you’ll understand what my magic is about.”

  I agreed to come, accepting the ticket she handed me. And I tucked the money into my blouse. So whatever ended up happening, I’d come out ahead, just a little.

  ***

  The next night, I was delayed by some minor tragedy of Clara’s and then by a slow streetcar, and in the end, I was almost half an hour late for the show. I hoped I wasn’t missing the whole thing. Still I paused when I saw the majestic bulk of the Opera House. It was a tall, yellow brick box with square corners and a triangular peak on top, crowned with a rosette window. Its color stood out clearly among the darker bricks of the other buildings nearby. I scurried around the side and in at the nearest door, handing my ticket to a grim-faced usher. I entered the back of an enormous auditorium, rows and rows and rows of seats stretching out toward a stage.

  Adelaide Herrmann was onstage, I could see in the first instant, and she would have commanded attention even if she hadn’t been facing a sea of guns. Her robes were almost Oriental, but not adorned. Behind her, a series of great Greek columns rose, white on white, and had something less amazing been happening in front of them, they would have been enough to stare at. But there was this woman. And from the apron of the stage, a firing squad faced her, guns at their shoulders.

  I stared in dumb fascination at first. I simply couldn’t grasp what was happening. And then, I could.

  She was a great, grand woman facing down a crowd of men with their guns pointed toward her heart, and as I watched, one man stepped forward and pulled back the trigger of his rifle, and I couldn’t help myself—I shouted “No!”—but no one even turned to look at me, and when I heard the loud report of the gun crack through the silent air, I closed my eyes and prayed to God for a mi
racle.

  I still had my eyes closed when the thunderous noise began. I grabbed immediately for the door frame, thinking perhaps it was an earthquake, since I’d never seen or heard one, and you can’t understand a new thing until you’ve had the experience of it. But the noise was not an earthquake, nor an explosion, nor a steam engine.

  It was applause.

  I’d heard applause, but not from the back of a room this large, so full, so strong. I realized that not only were the seats on this level full to capacity, but I could hear a whole crowd in the balconies above me, clapping their hands together in a waterfall of dozens, hundreds, of individual acts of praise. The firing squad had laid down their guns, except the dumbfounded man who had stepped forward to fire, and the statuesque woman stood there before them. She looked unharmed. She extended her fist toward the audience, turned it so her fingers were facing up, and uncurled them like the petals of a flower.

  I was too far away to see, but I knew from the presentation what she was showing them: the bullet.

  The crowd around and above me leapt to their feet, applauding even more wildly. The applause surged and echoed around the high walls and ceiling of the enormous Opera House, and whatever thrill I’d felt from applause before was like a pale shadow of this new, powerful, crackling energy, and I never wanted it to end.

  ***

  She was still signing autographs by the stage door when I found her a half hour later, and I waited a half hour after that until she’d finished. I couldn’t help thinking she was moving quickly for someone who’d been shot. There wasn’t a spot of blood or gunpowder anywhere on her pale robes. I wondered what the secret of the act was. What if she could actually do magic? Did she have some power that allowed her to snatch a fast-moving bullet out of the air? If there was a trick to it, I certainly couldn’t guess what it was. All I could do was be amazed.

  Once the last stragglers were gone, I stepped up to her and said, “That was amazing, Madame Herrmann.”

  “Wasn’t it though?” she said, and from a fold of her elegant robes, produced her pipe. “Adelaide Herrmann, Queen of Magic, first successful performer of the bullet catch in America. Though she is not American. As I’m sure the papers will say. Which is acceptable. As long as they say something, and in large type.”

  “I have some questions,” I said to her.

  “I have some answers. Let’s get a drink.”

  We sat at the tavern for hours, and she answered my questions, every last one. Although she had come to New York City for the bullet catch and sometimes performed here, her magic show was not based in the city. They traveled by train on the vaudeville circuits. She was the star of her show, as she should be, but she used a team of assistants in her various illusions, and they were one short at the moment. A young person with a good amount of talent and a willingness to work hard could find success with the Great Madame Herrmann’s show. Her voice was wistful as she told me that she herself loved the stage and was never happier than when she stood in front of a thunderstruck crowd, performing. And in her words, I heard the echo of that amazing, all-embracing storm of applause, and I knew I was ready to sign on for the adventure. She was offering me another audience, and I was hungry for it. The promised salary of fifteen dollars a week instead of ten-and-change didn’t hurt either. And with bed and board provided—even if that room was on a moving train, it was still no cost to me—I’d have far more of that salary to keep.

  And still in the back of my mind, the fear of Ray was there, logical or no, and if by chance he came to look for me in New York, he would never find me. I would be on the move constantly. What better way to be invisible than to never be still?

  When the light began to touch the sky outside, she said, “Settled then. We’re off to the station.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “My things are back at the rooming house,” I said. “I need to go pack them up.”

  “Ah, no need,” she said. “I’ll send a boy to take care of it. He’ll get your things. The address, write it down.”

  I did as she said, printing in careful letters. I wasn’t used to having other people do things for me, but as it turned out, I got used to that quickly enough.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1897–1898

  The Dancing Odalisque

  My entire life changed immediately, which actually made the change easier. I simply had to let go of everything I knew and welcome whatever came my way. I learned to brace myself while sleeping on a swaying train so I wouldn’t roll off the mattress, change my dress in a roomful of other women without exposing my private flesh, and wash my entire body in under five minutes in bathwater I was neither the first nor the last to use that evening. I learned to study the schedule in advance and find out which nights were one-night stands in small towns instead of longer engagements in larger ones, since the food was often better in the small towns but we were threatened with being left behind if we took too long over dinner. The train pulled out when the train pulled out, and Madame Herrmann wouldn’t wait on anyone. When we left a male assistant named Billy behind in Oconomowoc one night, Madame reminded the assembled company that she was our boss, not a friend or sister or confessor or nursemaid, and above all, she was a woman of her word. I heard enough to know that her warmth upon meeting me was not characteristic. Those who crossed or disappointed her could expect anything from a shout to a slap or some of each. I resolved to do nothing to provoke her.

  As for the job itself, learning the ropes on Adelaide Herrmann’s traveling show was nothing much like either of my previous positions. Neither the discipline nor the routine were as strict as they had been at Biltmore. There was little in the way of training; we were expected to figure things out on our own. And while I remembered a friendly atmosphere backstage on The Belle of New York, here I received only a chilly reception from my fellow dancers. The girls’ railcar was divided into sleeping berths, four beds lining two walls, and mine was shared with three girls named Scarlett, Marie, and Belladonna. When I had little luck with them from the first, I analyzed my behavior to try to figure out what I’d done. Had I been unkind? Too haughty? I couldn’t remember having done anything to offend. Then one night when Marie was in her cups, she told me flat out: with one of the four bunks empty, a girl could enjoy some small measure of privacy when male visitors came calling, knowing no girl was trying to sleep either above or below. When I moved in to occupy the fourth bunk, I’d ruined everything. I had no urge to bed down with men in the company just for the sake of it, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have confided it to these girls, so we had no common ground for conversation. What free time I had I often spent with a book, but these three were hardly readers. It turned out the dancer I was replacing had been forced to leave the tour because she was in the family way. I’d have been much more shocked by that news if I’d learned it earlier.

  When I joined the Great Madame Herrmann’s show, they were midway through a circuit around the Middle West. It was still possible to book a single act into a theater individually, but many theater owners had allied with each other to form circuits, so that a set roster of acts would tour together, making the booking process easier on all participants. A season might consist of many circuits or only one. Ours would be many, assuming this first circuit went well enough for us to book the next. We went as far east as Muncie and as far west as Wichita, with many stops in between—the Majestic in Dubuque, Turner Hall in Galena, the Creighton in Omaha, and many more. We crossed our fingers against the snowstorms, having heard plenty of sad tales of trains marooned by bad weather on this circuit, but our luck seemed to hold, and we performed all our shows on schedule. The foolhardy but resourceful Billy, who we’d left behind in Oconomowoc, caught up with us three days later in Davenport and went onstage that night without fanfare. It took more than such a mundane disappearance and reappearance to make an impression in our remarkable world.

&n
bsp; The illusion Madame hired me for, and the only one I performed during my first month with the company, was the Dancing Odalisque. It was one of the simplest illusions in the act. The set gave the suggestion of a painter’s studio, with easels and paint pots scattered about and a trompe l’oeil window of streaming “daylight” positioned upstage right. I was wheeled out in an enormous picture frame and appeared to be a painted girl coming to life as a real one. The secret was that it was never a painting. It was always me. What looked like canvas was a trick of the light. So all I needed to do for the first sixteen bars of the music was remain perfectly still as I was wheeled out. The seventeenth bar was my cue to extend my arm and begin the slow, gradual awakening of my dance. The steps themselves didn’t matter, she had assured me, as long as the dance took up the right amount of time. At the end of my piece of music, I returned to the picture frame and settled into the same position I’d held on my entrance, and Madame Herrmann strolled out in a painter’s smock, clouds of sweet incense hovering low around her feet, and gestured to “turn me back” into the painting. I remained stone still, barely daring to breathe. She rested one hand on the edge of the frame and wheeled it offstage—with some help from an invisible stagehand who had snuck onstage under cover of incense—and we left the stage empty as the music shifted to a light, lilting melody setting the tone for the next illusion.

  The Great Madame Herrmann’s show, and the entire rail-bound enterprise supporting it, seemed huge to me. Besides the dancers and assistants who appeared onstage, there were a dozen others who worked behind the scenes. Six men were required to manage the props, setting up and breaking down. In addition, there were specialists like Jeannie, who sewed and repaired our costumes, and Hector, who looked after the animals. There were two dozen humans and two dozen animals in our entourage, including a full-grown Bengal tiger that seemed to regard me about as favorably as Scarlett, Marie, and Belladonna did, with even less provocation.