As she watched from stage right, Alexander ran through his patter in a perfunctory manner, employing none of the usual pomp and grandiosity of an actual performance. Over the course of several minutes, he poured five different beverages from the same bottle: white sauterne, claret, port, scotch whiskey, and gin. Adelaide had seen him perform this trick dozens of times. But now, instead of simply putting down the bottle and motioning for the goblets to be cleared, he retrieved a silver hammer from a silk-draped stand and began to speak as if the empty hall were full to the third balcony.
“Now, my friends, I know that you are well and truly amazed that I have been able to produce five different delicious liquors from this one humble bottle! The kind gentleman from the audience (and here he indicated an imaginary participant) has already attested to their quality and, from the way he seems to be weaving a bit, their potency. However, to prove to you that this is indeed merely an ordinary bottle containing no secret pump or apparatus, I take the magic hammer and count. One! Two! Three!”
Holding the bottle by the neck, Alexander smashed it to bits. From its falling shards rose a white dove, fluttering in panic, a pink lace handkerchief tied about its neck. Alex elaborately feigned surprise.
“But what is this? Why, it is one of our little feathered friends from the Magic Hat! Nice little birdy! Nice little … but wait! Hullo! What can this be?”
With a flourish, Alex untied and removed the cloth from the dove and displayed it to the footlights.
“Why, it is a handkerchief! I daresay the very handkerchief lent to me by the lovely Miss Adelaide only moments ago.”
Adelaide laughed as Alexander bowed to her.
“I wondered when I would get that back from you, Professor. This is going to be wonderful for the audience.”
Alexander walked across the stage and draped the handkerchief over Adelaide’s shoulder. He then reached behind her right ear, produced a gold sovereign, and pressed it into her hand.
“Wonderful? I hope so. New? Not really. I stole it from Robert-Houdin, who stole it from old John Henry Anderson. God only knows who he got it from—may his soul rest in peace. The only thing I added was the patter and the bit with the dove, which I believe works quite well, don’t you think?”
“Indeed. I found myself quite amazed.”
“You were amazed, Miss Adelaide? Imagine how the poor bird felt.”
Her laughter was interrupted by a piercing scream from the left wing. It was followed by a firecracker chain of obscenities such as Adelaide had never heard from a female mouth. Blushing, she turned toward the sound in time to see Princess Noor-Al-Haya emerge from the backstage darkness.
She was dressed in the most beautiful of her harem costumes, its yellow gossamer and gold doubloons shining against the darkness of her skin. In her hand, she held another skein of cloth. It was of the same material and color. Adelaide could not help but be struck once again at the beauty of the Lady-Jane; the grace and determination of her stride, the high color brought to her lovely face by a fine Ponca temper.
“Look, Alex,” the princess said. “Look! Look what they want me to wear!”
Princess Noor took the yellow swath in both hands, draping it over her shoulder and across her belly.
Alexander nodded. “I think it looks fetching.”
“Fetching?” the princess cried. “It will be the ruin of me. This was my prettiest costume. Now look. See how it covers my middle, the part that the audience watches most closely. Look at how it destroys my line. How am I supposed to dance in this?”
The princess began to shimmer and shake. She slithered on the floor and rolled head first toward the footlights. Adelaide thought her even more magnificent in motion.
Alexander applauded.
“Excellent, your worship. Most excellent.”
“It’s not excellent, Alex. I can hardly move with this big rag around me. You’ve spent the past three weeks bullshitting the newspapers that the new emerald in my navel cost five thousand pounds. How is the audience going to feel when they can’t even see it?”
“They’ll get a glimpse, my darling. We’ll make sure of that. As for the costume addition, well, I’m afraid it’s the compromise I’ve had to make with the local police and politicians until all their bribes are distributed. So, until they are, you’ll wear it and we’ll go on. By next week, they’ll all have their money and you can tread the boards wearing nothing but your god-given talent.”
“I can’t wear it,” the princess shouted. “I won’t!”
Adelaide watched as Alexander’s eyes narrowed and his smile faded. When his face went dark like this, he looked enough like his brother to chill her blood.
“You can and you will,” he said. “I have not come all the way from America to be a laughingstock.”
“And if I still won’t?”
“Then, as much as it would pain me, I should have no choice but to send you back to Nebraska—in steerage—where I am sure many of the patrons from your previous career await you. We shall have to get by with your understudy, more’s the pity.”
“Understudy?” the princess shouted, her eyes becoming large. “There’s no understudy for me.”
Alexander turned slowly downstage and looked directly at his newest employee.
“Her?” Lady-Jane shrieked. “That little orange-headed nothing? You’re joking.”
“My dearest, I am as serious as a mortgage in arrears. Miss Scarcez has been with us all throughout the rehearsals for the show. She is, like you, small and lithe. The night we danced the gavotte at the Grosvenor Hotel, she proved to me that she has excellent timing and rhythm. The rest is simply a matter of wig, costume, and enough makeup to cover. Voilà! Al-Haya!”
Adelaide blushed redder than the princess herself.
“Oh, no. Please. Please, Professor. I could never … I could never take the place of …”
Adelaide turned toward Lady-Jane. The princess’s face was twisted in fury and she began to shred the huge sash with her long red nails.
“Princess,” Adelaide said. “You cannot imagine that I could ever hope to equal you in any way.”
“You’re damn right you couldn’t. Alex, tell her she couldn’t.”
“My dear, you are as irreplaceable as the Hope Diamond. Your movements are informed by a thousand years on the primitive plains and your eroticism could never be approached by our Miss Scarcez, who, being unmarried, I’m sure has little knowledge of such things. But we have contracts to honor and a public to entertain. It may be cliché, but the show must go on.”
“You bastard. I’ll expose you! What would happen to the Great Herrmann if the world found out that his great Egyptian discovery was an Indian whore from Omaha?”
“That is your prerogative,” he said. “But your contract of employment indicates that should you reveal any of my trade secrets, you will be subject to prosecution, including fine or imprisonment or both. And, as it happens, my love, you are a trade secret. I hope you have saved the fine salary I have been paying you because, believe me, it will take all of it and then some to defend such a suit—and it would injure me greatly to have to visit you in the slammer.”
Princess Noor seemed primed to explode. She looked from Alexander to Adelaide and back again, trying to decide which of the two she hated more. Choosing the magician, she reached up to scratch at his eyes. Alex took her by both wrists and held her easily, laughing at her struggle. She spit in his face and tried to knee him in the groin, but he skillfully avoided her maneuvers. Then, as Adelaide looked on in astonishment, he wrestled her through the wings to the door of his great dressing room and slammed it behind them. Adelaide stood alone on the quiet, empty stage, looking into the blackness beyond the enormous red curtains.
From beyond the dressing-room door she heard the princess’s voice cut through the still theatre. She ranted at Alexander, her language laced with new oaths and expletives.
And then, as if a dial had been turned, there was silence. What she heard next
was unmistakable.
It began as low moans, soft and guttural, punctuated here and there by a gasp or a strangled sigh. Then it escalated to muted whimpers and high shrieks of satisfaction. Adelaide colored with embarrassment. Even if Alexander and the princess seemed not to care, this was not something she was meant to hear.
Still, she found herself inching across the stage, moving closer to the source of the sound.
How long had it been since she had made such loving noise; since she had ebbed and flowed against the sinew of a man? Listening now to the pleasures of another, it felt as if years had passed. Wiping her brow, she leaned against the proscenium wall straining to hear every breath, every cry, all she had missed since Compars had claimed her life. In each murmer, she could hear the princess surrender.
When the passion subsided, Adelaide hurried to the place she had stood when the couple made their exit. She now knew what drove Princess Noor and her magician; and in that moment, divined how to feed the obsession of Compars Herrmann without revealing a single important truth.
Adelaide would report to him, yes; she would outline in painstaking detail all of the trivial changes that to him would seem monumental: the Inexhaustible Bottle and its more recent outrage, The Dove from the Glass; the switching of the Floating Boy from the right to the left of the stage. She would report to him every variation in the hokum and chatter, every movement of a footlight or curtain, every repainting of a box or cylinder.
And she would impart every fact concerning the mysterious princess—her wardrobe, her temper, her knowledge of his legacy—but more than this, she would speak to him of sex. In lurid detail, she would regale him with tales to equal the Arabian Nights—stories of an Eastern temptress who each night bewitched his brother, body and soul. She would tell all—except the single fact with which he could do the most mischief—that Princess Noor-Al-Haya was a redskin prostitute wanted in a mass murder.
He would devour it like red meat; and while he did, she would gain the time needed to free herself from his snare. Time to think and plan. Time to set a trap of her own.
30
FROM THE OMAHA DAILY Herald
May 13, 1879
STANDING BEAR’S VICTORY
Judge Dundy Issues Order Releasing the Ponca Indians.
A DECISION FAR REACHING IN ITS EFFECTS
There is no Law for Using the Military to
Force Indians from one Place to Another.
An Indian has Some Rights Which the Courts Will Protect.
In an historic decision sure to have far-reaching effects throughout the land, United States District Court Judge Elmer S. Dundy has ruled that the Ponca Indian chief Standing Bear, on trial for deserting from a reservation where he had been forced to move, can legally sue for redress in court and that the United States has no jurisdiction over his whereabouts.
As part of his finding, the judge ruled that the American Indian, heretofore seen as an alien member of a foreign race, is in fact, a person under the constitution.
In his remarks Judge Dundy wrote:
“An Indian is a person within the meaning of the habeas corpus act, and as such is entitled to sue out a writ of Habeas corpus in the federal court, when it is shown that the petitioner is deprived of liberty under color of authority of the United States, or is in custody of an officer in violation of the constitution, or a law of the United States, or in violation of a treaty made in pursuance thereof.”
The decision protects the red man from search, seizure and arrest unless the Indian in question is suspected of a crime. The judge went on to say that the Indian, though not yet legally a citizen, may not be moved from place to place by the government unless that Indian is found to be in violation of the law. “The right of expatriation,” the judge wrote, “is a natural, inherent and inalienable right and extends to the Indians as well as the more fortunate white race.” He also stated that the Indian, like all who are born on U.S. soil, has the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
During the three-day trial, supporters from the worlds of politics, academia and religion came from everywhere to support the beleaguered chief. Members of the press arrived from as far away as France and Germany. Many attending the trial agreed that it was the chief’s tragic story of the so-called “Trail of Tears,”—a forced march during which three of his children died—as well as his dignity, that won the day for his cause.
Speaking through his court interpreter, the chief recounted how his dying son pleaded to be returned to the region of the upper Niobrara and be buried among his ancestors. Could any man in the court that day, he asked, refuse such a request? Holding up his weathered hand before the packed courtroom, Standing Bear made a plea for universal brotherhood and understanding, stating that although his hand was not the same color as that of the judge, it was made by the same God.
“This decision is not only gratifying, but it shows that our system of laws works for all, even the most wretched and despised,” said Mr. John Webster, former Omaha mayor and an attorney for the Ponca chief. “It is a victory not only for my client, but for the American legal system and all oppressed peoples.”
Asked for his reaction to the verdict, Standing Bear spoke through the voice of Mr. Julius Meyer, his great friend and longtime interpreter. “For a hundred years or more, the white men have been driving us about. They are shrewd, sharp and know how to cheat. But since I have been here, I have found them different. They have all treated me very kindly. Hitherto, when we have been wronged we went to war. To assert our rights and avenge our wrongs we took up the tomahawk. We had no law to punish those who did wrong, so we went to kill. You have gone into the court for us and I find our wrongs can be righted there. Now I have no more use for the tomahawk. I have found a better way.”
Having found that the United States had no authority to hold the chief and his fellow Indians, Judge Dundy ordered the Ponca dissenters discharged from custody.
District Attorney G.M. Lambertson, speaking for the prosecution, expressed surprise and disappointment at the decision.
“We will seek redress upon appeal,” he said. “While Mr. Standing Bear may be a good Indian, there are many of his brothers who still live in a state of barbarism. One need only mention the bloodthirsty beast called Chased By Owls—who yesterday attempted to ambush a hunting party made up of railroad executives and captains of industry, the cream of our society. It was only the quick action of their guards and scouts that spared their lives, costing, I am afraid, some of their own.”
Asked what Standing Bear’s further plans were, Mr. Meyer, a respected Jew businessman and expert in Indian affairs, told the Herald, “the Ponca have achieved a victory but they are still starving and miserable. We plan to travel to the East where the great abolitionist, Mr. Wendell Phillips, has arranged for Standing Bear to lecture and raise money from sympathetic whites. From there, I will travel to England where my cousin, Mr. Alexander Herrmann, has promised to introduce us to others who believe in the red man’s freedom and will back up that belief in pounds sterling.”
31
THE GREAT HERRMANN STOOD AT THE BOTTOM OF THE gangway of the Berengaria. It had taken some time for the giant ship to dock, but he hadn’t minded the wait. It had been thrilling to watch the little tugboats push and pull the great vessel into place. Periodically, supporters approached to report how much they enjoyed his work and asked him to sign their ticket books or passport pages.
Adelaide Scarcez had enjoyed the time, too. The trip down from London had been an unexpected pleasure, uninterrupted as it was by the officious interventions of Seamus Dowie or the unnerving unpredictability of Princess Noor. Liberated from performances or rehearsal, Adelaide had her first chance to observe Alexander in ordinary circumstances, released from the grandeur and conceit required of his role as World’s Greatest Magician. She had felt unexpected warmth for him as he gazed through their compartment’s window, pointing out a species of tree or a quaint farmhouse. After they had enjoyed a
lovely breakfast in the parlor car, Alex had amused some children, cranky and exhausted with travel, with some sleight-of-hand. He produced shillings from their ears, made sugar cubes disappear, turned salt into pepper and water into wine. Adelaide found herself as charmed as the small ones by his performance, a little show presented with a patience and modesty she had never before seen.
“I suppose it will not be difficult to spot your cousin.”
“I think not. Just look for the little Jew dressed in buckskin leading a retinue of red Indians similarly attired. I imagine there won’t be more than four or five other parties like that on this ship.”
As Adelaide grinned at the joke, the passengers began to disembark, first class leading. Their travel clothes were of the finest: rich velvet suits and dresses on the women, bespoke gabardines on the men. The children who accompanied them were no less turned out: the girls in creamy bonnets and summer crinolines, the boys in dark knickers with wide straw hats or white sailor suits trimmed in gold. Experienced seafarers, they smiled and waved to the family or servants who had come to collect them.
The passenger behind them could not have been more different.
Instead of the stark solids and clean whites of his predecessors, his costume vibrated with color—blue and yellow beads and tawny skins adorned with the art and history of the plains. When the small mustachioed man finally gained the foot of the long bridge, he took the hands of Alexander in his and kissed him on both cheeks.
“So, what should I call you?” Alex said. “Surely a warrior of your standing can no longer be addressed simply as Julius. So, what is it? Big Yiddish? Chief Makes Much Matzoh?”
Julius laughed. “Witty as ever. My friends have a different name for me, but you couldn’t pronounce it; not that you would when you can make up your own. Alex, you look fine.”
“As do you, O Mighty Morning Minyan. But please allow me to introduce my secretary, without whom I would surely have forgotten what day you were arriving. Miss Adelaide Scarcez, my cousin, Medicine Man Eats On Yom Kippur, better known as Mr. Julius Meyer.”
Magic Words Page 24
