Saving Houdini

by Michael Redhill

“Don’t you agree?”

  Blumenthal’s eyes ticked over Dash’s face. “What does it matter if I agree? I am just a tiny cog in some larger machine. If you are to be believed.”

  “Are you on my side or not?”

  “I am on the side of the angels. Should there be any.”

  Houdini was working away inside the tank. Dash couldn’t watch.

  “He doesn’t look so good,” he said.

  “That man can take care of himself.”

  Suddenly, applause. They looked at the stage and Houdini was standing at the lip of it, dripping wet, his arms spread wide. The audience rose as one, all of them banging their hands together madly and hooting with delight.

  Their view blocked, Dash and Blumenthal went to stand near one of the exits. Houdini looked as weak as a kitten.

  “I saw Sol,” Dash said over the continuing applause.

  “How’d that go?”

  “Not so well. I don’t want him to put Walt on the morning train.”

  “How do you propose we fix that?”

  “You can go get him in the morning. Jacobson can’t say no to you.”

  Herman Blumenthal stubbed his finger into the middle of Dash’s chest. “You’re a big macher, aren’t you? You think you can tell people what to do.”

  “Walter deserves to see the trick! He has to stay with us to the end.”

  “You mean you. That’s what you mean every time you say ‘us,’ isn’t it? Sometimes you seem a rather selfish young man.”

  The applause grew louder and drowned them out as Houdini took his final bows.

  The only hotel Blumenthal could afford was considerably more modest than the Prince of Wales. The Butcher’s Arms was a house on Rue Aylmer and the room was in the basement. The ceiling was at a height of five feet, which was fine for boys or gnomes, but when Blumenthal entered, he had to crouch down. A pipe dripping with cold condensation travelled the width of the room a foot below the ceiling, and a sink stuck out of one of the walls like a tongue in a face. Two shapeless beds sat along one wall, squatting in the dark: dirty little mounds. There was a large, scoop-like indentation in the middle of each bed, where the bodies of previous guests had settled.

  “You hungry, kid?”

  “Starving.”

  Blumenthal had an oily paper bag from which he pulled out a heel of salami and a couple things wrapped in waxed paper. It all smelled like the man’s apartment had: smoky, greasy, fragrant with spice and rot.

  “I brought supplies from home,” he said. He laid out a few items on the little writing desk, including a cold cabbage roll and a few pickled herring, and put a couple of chocolate croissants alongside them. “You want a sandwich?”

  “In a chocolate croissant?”

  “All ends up in the same place.” He tore two of the croissants open with his thumbs, and ripped the salami into rough chunks, which he apportioned between the two of them. He unwrapped the cabbage roll, revealing a long, grey pill of ground meat within. With his finger, he wiped smears of the meat into the middle of the split croissants. “Fish or no fish?” he asked Dash.

  “How about I get the fish on the side?”

  “Don’t know what you’re missing,” said Blumenthal.

  They ate in companionable silence. Dash’s energy, which had been flagging under the weight of fearful thoughts, was returning. He could feel something aligning now; there were times when he sensed he was inside a track or a groove of some kind. It sometimes made the past feel familiar. He had this same feeling sometimes when he was playing tennis with his dad and the ball was coming to him and he knew where it was going to be, and all he had to do was plant his feet and grip the racquet with both hands. Movement did the rest.

  Was time a kind of motion? If you closed your eyes, it seemed to stop. Maybe this was how he’d done so much here, in the past, if time was actually stopped where his parents were. Two thousand eleven was dark and unseeable, so there was no movement and no time there, just as there had been no time in the past he’d once imagined Houdini in. Only where his eyes were open, where he could be witness, did time appear to run.

  “What is it with you and the faraway looks?” Blumenthal demanded. “You gonna finish that half or not?”

  “I’m finishing it,” Dash said. He was feeling stronger by the minute. “So do you want to hear my plan?”

  “I don’t know,” said Blumenthal. “I might’ve had enough of your plans.”

  “This one involves you being my hero.”

  Blumenthal ran his tongue around his back teeth. “I’m listening.”

  “You have to talk Harry into getting off the train in Toronto.”

  “You heard Sol. Harry has a show that night.”

  “I can give him a good reason not to go on to Detroit. A night in Toronto is what he needs.”

  “What do you know that I don’t?” Blumenthal asked him.

  23

  Early morning bloomed with its lambent light, and the streets were thick with people and cars. Dash felt he was fighting a tide as he walked quickly to Houdini’s hotel. He went breathlessly into the lobby while Blumenthal waited outside. Dash took up his position on the circular couch again, this time out of view of the front doors, the elevators, and the restaurant. He caught his breath and nodded surreptitiously out the window to his accomplice.

  Now Dash took a glance into the restaurant. When he was sure the coast was clear, he ran to the half-wall beside the teeming eatery, and crouched. There were more plants here, their leaves drooping over the wall. He scuttled to his left. Parting the leaves with his hands, he stuck his head in and peered around. He saw no one he recognized.

  Dash went back to his position on the couch and signalled Blumenthal. The magician went directly to the desk and requested the clerk dial Sol Jacobson’s room. Dash could hear both men from where he was sitting.

  “He asks who it is,” said the clerk.

  “It’s Herman Blumenthal.”

  “It’s Herman Blumenthal, sir,” the man said into the phone. He listened, then put his hand over the receiver. “Mr. Jacobson is unable to see you, sir.”

  “Tell him he needs to see me. There’s the matter of his signature on the contract between myself and his client.”

  The clerk listened anxiously, nodding. “I see. Mr. Jacobson? The gentleman suggests the matter is of some importance. He refers to a contract. Yes, I will tell him.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Mr. Jacobson says he is no longer employed in the capacity you refer to.”

  “Tell Mr. Jacobson that he has not submitted his resignation, therefore his signature is required.”

  Dash peeked around the couch. The clerk had grown hesitant. “Maybe sir would like to resolve this issue another time?”

  “Tell him.”

  He brought the phone back to his ear. “I beg your pardon, sir, but the gentleman makes the point that your signature on this contract is still necessary and valid. Shall I send him up?” He pulled the earpiece away. Even Dash could hear Jacobson shouting.

  “Sol!” Blumenthal called out. “Harry has offered to donate his services, he is so taken with our predicament! Isn’t that wonderful?”

  The clerk listened. “Ah,” he said. “I will tell him, sir.” He replaced the receiver. “Mr. Jacobson will be right down.”

  Dash kept as hidden as he could, but he slid around now until he could see the elevators. After a delay of a few minutes, he heard the gate open and the sound of expensive shoes clacking on the marble floor. He stuck his head around the foliage to see Jacobson proceeding across to Blumenthal, who’d installed himself by the front desk at the farthest point from the elevators. He stuck his hand out, and at that moment Dash strode as quickly and silently as possible toward the elevator, holding his hand up to signal to the attendant inside to wait. He stepped in, showed five fingers, and mouthed the number. The operator closed the gate and moved the lever to its Up setting. The elevator gave a lurch and whirred upwards, the floors passing in white and bl
ack whooshes before the gate.

  “Cinquième étage,” the operator said.

  Dash exhaled and got out. Room 501. That was Houdini’s suite. Dash knocked quietly on the door, but there was no answer. He knocked again. Nothing.

  There were ten other doors on the floor. He stood in the middle of the hallway hoping that someone he didn’t recognize would come out of one of the rooms so he could rule at least one out. But the hallway was as quiet as a mausoleum.

  There was a door to a stairwell at the end. Dash slipped through it to stand on the landing. He kept the door open just six inches and filled his lungs and belted out, as loud as he could:

  “WALTER GIBSON! CAN YOU HEAR ME, WALT?”

  Then he let the stairwell door close. He pressed his ear against it and listened. At first he thought the sound of his heart under his shirt was footsteps approaching along the carpet, but no—and then there was nothing else. He was about to give up when he heard a very light knock on the door he was hiding behind.

  He opened it a crack. “I thought that was you,” said Walt. “Whyint you just knock?”

  “You’re here.”

  “Wheredya think I was? Playing the ponies?”

  “I thought … maybe …”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Nothing,” said Dash. “Just glad to see you.”

  “Yeah,” said Walt, making a queer face. “Nice to see you too.”

  He led Dash back down the hall. He seemed perfectly fine. In fact, his eyes were practically shining, like he’d just woken up from a refreshing sleep.

  “We don’t have time,” Dash said. “You have to come with me now.”

  “Why? Train’s not for another two hours.”

  “You’re not getting on that train. Blumenthal is downstairs, distracting Jacobson so I can get you out! Grab your things!”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” Walter said laconically. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about.”

  “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing’s going on. I’m just not coming.”

  “Did you take a page out of his book?”

  Walt squared himself. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, Jacobson doesn’t think anything of walking out on his friends.”

  “Hey, I got into a lot of trouble for you, Dash. I haven’t walked out! I’m sick and Sol Jacobson is the only one who cares. And anyway, I’m eating fresh baguette with preserves and they put a radio in the room as well.”

  “What is wrong with you, Walt? You look like someone knocked you on the head.”

  “They gave me some medication. I feel better.”

  “What medication?”

  “I had a spoonful of Mentho-Kreoamo, one of Broncil, and a tonic in a tea, which was bitter.”

  “Come with me, Walt. We won’t have to ride with pigs, I promise. And Houdini will buy us chocolate if we ask him, I’m sure of it!”

  “Every time I follow one of your plans, Dash, they don’t work out so well.”

  “They will this time. And this is the last time, I promise.”

  They took the stairs, Walt with his crumpled rucksack under his arm, and came out onto McGill College Avenue, as Dash and Blumenthal had arranged. Jacobson would already be heading back to his room. After waiting for a moment in the shadows, Dash saw Blumenthal come around the corner, waving them on.

  “Let’s go!” he called, and they did.

  In plain daylight, Rue Aylmer wasn’t as sinister as it had seemed the night before, but it still didn’t feel like a place where a kid should be walking alone, even at nine in the morning. There were already whiskery men sitting in their coats on stoops with stubby-necked bottles of beer, or paper bags that clearly had bottles in them. They were rolling and smoking their own cigarettes from pouches with brand names like Tik Tak and Prince Albert Crimp Cut.

  Dash and Walt entered the lobby of the Butcher’s Arms, trying to avoid the cracked tiles where grime had gathered. No elevator operator. The desk clerk didn’t even look at them when they came in. They took the side stairs.

  Blumenthal had left his door open.

  Walt looked around the room with distaste. “This is what I left the Prince of Wales for?”

  “We’re only here for a while. Just relax,” said Blumenthal. “What’s the plan, though?”

  “We’re going on the three o’clock,” said Dash. “Houdini’s train. Herman is going to try to get him to stop in Toronto.”

  “Now I’m Herman?”

  “He already agreed not to,” said Walt. “He promised Sol. I heard him.”

  “He has to!” said Dash. “If he gets all the way to Detroit, Walt—”

  “Then what?” interrupted Blumenthal.

  “Nothing,” said Dash. “Then he doesn’t get to see the trick he helped invent.”

  At eleven thirty, they sent Blumenthal out for hamburgers. And malts.

  As he was leaving, Dash called, “And see if you can get yesterday’s paper! For Walt!”

  “Oh, I already read it,” said Walt. “Sol had one.”

  “But to keep,” said Dash.

  “I don’t need one,” Walt said. “And I clipped the article we’re in already.”

  “Hold on. You clipped the paper?”

  “Yes,” said Walt.

  “You have it right now?”

  “I have it in my pocket.”

  “Take it out,” said Dash. “I want to see it.”

  Walt reached into his pants pocket and removed a folded piece of newsprint. He put it on the bed and it began to unspring, like a magically blooming white rose. Dash took his out as well.

  “Well, wait, int yours half a page?”

  “Yes,” said Dash, unfolding the piece of newsprint he’d been given at the Canon Theatre. “But it was once a full page, wasn’t it? Look,” he said, “your first fold is in half crossways!”

  The two of them stood over the two pages, one crisp and white as steam, the other worn and browned and soft to the touch. The upper half of Walt’s paper echoed every fold in Dash’s.

  “How can we both have the same piece of newspaper?”

  “We can’t. We can’t, so we don’t. I have mine and you have yours. Mine is from 2011, I know, because that’s where I got it and I’ve lived there my whole life and I’m not crazy enough to have thought this all up.”

  “You’re a little crazy,” offered Walt.

  “I know … but I didn’t make you up. Or Blumenthal, and everyone knows Houdini existed. I couldn’t have invented what your Toronto is like. The smell of smoke everywhere, different sounds, sounds I’d never heard before. How could I have imagined them? So if 1926 is now for you and 2011 is now for me, maybe all the nows are happening all at once and there are an infinity of newspapers out there, each one from its own now.”

  “You lost me at smells,” said Walt.

  “And yet,” said Dash, brandishing the old newspaper, “this has to be yours. If the folds are identical. That newspaper you got from Jacobson this morning is somehow the one I have.”

  “But you said it was a boy who gave you the envelope.”

  “You’re ninety-six in 2011. Maybe you’re backstage too, Walt. In a rocking chair.”

  When Blumenthal came back with the food, they showed him the clippings, still laid out on the bed. It took him a moment, and he had to look a couple of times, but then he said, “Holy …”

  Dash wouldn’t have to worry about him being a non-believer anymore.

  After they had eaten, Blumenthal relaxed in a chair and lit a Phillie.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” said Dash. “Walt’s still under the weather.”

  “I like the smell,” Walt said.

  “Anyway, they’re no good for you.”

  “What? This?” Blumenthal turned the end of the cigar around and looked at it. “Smoke strengthens your lungs! It’s a tonic to the nerves.” He was vanishing french fries studded with salt. “But do tell. What prognostications have you for this
prestidigitator? Since you know so much about what is unseen and unknown.”

  “Well, you find someone,” said Dash. “A lady.”

  “Do I? I don’t think any ladies are thinking of marrying Blumenthal—with his best man, a squirrel. A girl maybe. I’ll settle for a girl.”

  “And you change your name too.”

  “I change my name.” He pulled his head back. “I hope it’s to Rockefeller.”

  “Blumenthal the Believer.”

  Herman Blumenthal narrowed his eyes. “You know, I like that. But …” He looked down at the floor and then back up at Dash. “Never mind. Maybe I like it.”

  “You like it,” said Walt, staring at his face. “And you should have seen your face when he said someone was actually gonna marry you.”

  Blumenthal swatted at him, laughing. “You’re a card, Mister Gibson. You should have your own act.”

  They resolved to stay in the hotel room until it was time to take the train. There was no point in being out. At large, as Blumenthal put it. For a while, everyone fell into a post-hamburger coma, lolling in chairs like lions lunching on an impala.

  Then they rallied a little. Dash stretched his arms and ran on the spot, which is something he had only done in gym class. Blumenthal collected the garbage.

  “How’d it work out with Gluckman?” Dash asked. “Did Houdini set it all up?”

  “Gluckman knows we’re coming,” he muttered.

  Dash laughed, a little unkindly. “You can’t even get away from him. You have to do the trick in his building.”

  “It’s a small world. You run into people. If I have to work with him, then I will. But I won’t trust him.”

  Walter was beginning to droop again. He went back to the bed. By this time Houdini’s matinee had begun. Dash wondered if Jacobson was watching from the wings. How long would it take him to forgive Houdini for being Houdini? Soon, Jacobson was probably going to see exactly what his friendship with Erich Weiss would cost him. Unless somehow Dash was able to stop Houdini from making his appointed date with his appointed destiny.

  At two, they woke Walt and collected their things. It was a short walk and the boys’ rucksacks were half empty anyway. Blumenthal carried Walt’s. They heard the steely jostling of the trains before they saw the station, and then they came upon it, the huge stone face stretching down two blocks, doors at the corners. The sounds of voices and trains inside the station bounced off the high stone walls.