The Confabulist

by Steven Galloway

  After about a fifteen-minute walk, and some trouble getting my key into the lock, I wobbled my way up the stairs and made it into my room. On the desk was a stack of mail that I’d tossed there that morning. At the bottom was a letter addressed to me in my father’s handwriting. My father wasn’t one to write.

  I sat down and opened the letter. The words made no sense. I understood each of them but couldn’t string them together. I felt sick, and I could feel the blood pumping through my temples become a high-pitched whine. There was a glass of water on the nightstand and I drank it, lay down, and closed my eyes as tightly as I could.

  I awoke the next morning with a roaring headache. My sheets were soaked in sweat and the room felt like a sauna. I opened the window and stuck my head out, but it made little difference. I sat on the bed, dizzy, and waited for the world to stop spinning. It didn’t. I lay down and fell back asleep.

  I awoke again around three in the afternoon feeling a little bit better. I washed and dressed as best I could and made my way outside. I had a flask for emergencies, and this felt like an emergency. Three long pulls of cheap whiskey seared my throat and things began to level out.

  Clara’s house was about a twenty-minute walk away. Winter was doing its best to gain a foothold, but for now the air was brisk and you could barely see your breath. I’d pulled on my coat and stuffed my pockets without thinking, and had to double-check I still had the two tickets Will had given me the night before.

  The initial pain of the day had retreated to a general sense of numbness. It felt like an improvement, and I resolved to establish a more optimistic outlook. I was alive, had my life in front of me, and was on my way to pick up the girl I loved and see the world’s greatest performer. What more could I possibly hope for in a day?

  Clara lived in an upscale neighbourhood with fashionable houses nestled back from tree-lined boulevards. Her father was in finance and had done well for himself as some sort of bigwig with the Bank of Montreal. They were wealthy, but she had never really let on exactly how well-off her family was. It didn’t seem like she much cared about that sort of thing.

  I’d met her father a number of times and was unable to tell whether he approved of me.

  “What does your father do, Martin?” he asked the first time she brought me home for dinner.

  “He’s in shipping,” I said, which wasn’t technically a lie. My father worked part-time for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

  Because today was Friday I thought it unlikely Clara’s father would be home. Before climbing the stairs to her front door I took a quick slug from my flask and then stashed it in my pocket.

  Clara answered the door, her hair flowing over her shoulders. I wanted to bury my face in it but didn’t. She smiled when she saw me, but her smile faded.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I reached into my pocket and retrieved our tickets. “Look what I have.”

  She took the tickets from my hand. “Where did you get these?”

  “Will.”

  “Wow,” she said. “I wonder who he had to kill.” She laughed and got her coat and scarf. She held my hand as we walked back toward the theatre, and she told me about an argument her mother and sister had and the kind of dog she someday hoped to own. Then she talked about a mathematical theorem she’d been studying.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  I didn’t want to tell her that I spent it in bed. “It was fine. Not much happened.”

  The show didn’t start until seven, so we got a table at a restaurant a block away and ate a leisurely supper.

  “There probably won’t be any crate escapes,” she said. “He doesn’t do those anymore. He’s kind of gone off the audience challenges. I hope he does the Water Torture Cell, though. My cousin saw it in Philadelphia and said it was terrific. And the Needles. I have no idea how he does it.”

  I’d wondered that myself. In fact, I’d read about and heard his act described so many times that it felt like I’d witnessed it firsthand. I had in my mind a vivid image of a string of needles coming out of his mouth, pulled by an unbelieving member of the audience.

  We finished our meal and strolled the rest of the way to the theatre. The night was clear and bright. The streets were full of people, and as we got close to the theatre Clara pulled me closer and squeezed my arm. I stopped walking, leaned over, and kissed her.

  “This is going to be great,” I said.

  Will was waiting for us outside the theatre. He had a woman with him who I’d never met before, though that wasn’t unusual. He often showed up with women who were loud or drunk. I didn’t mind so much but was concerned that Clara might be upset. She’d never said anything about it, but I didn’t want to risk it. I’d tried to keep her as insulated from Will as much as possible.

  Tonight’s girl seemed all right. Will introduced her as Evelyn, and she smiled. Clara went right up to Will and gave him a hug.

  “Thanks so much for getting the tickets,” she said, and held on to him for what I perceived as a moment longer than necessary, if a hug was even necessary in the first place. He’d gotten the tickets for me, not her.

  “Anything for Martin. You’re a lucky girl,” he said, and winked at me.

  The Princess Theatre was an impressive building. There were large murals of musicians and entertainers, and the seats were covered with velvet. It must have held over two thousand people if you included the box seats and twin balconies. Our seats were near the back on the ground floor, not the best but still pretty great. Evelyn sat next to Will, who was beside me, then Clara on the aisle. The room buzzed with excitement.

  “We’ll go to the Pig and Whistle after?” Will said. The Pig and Whistle was a bar in the basement of the Prince of Wales Hotel, a popular spot with students.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The house lights dimmed and the theatre manager came onstage. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed in a throaty baritone, “it is my wondrous pleasure to introduce to you the one and only Handcuff King, the Great Mystifier himself, back from the grave a thousand times, Mr. Harry Houdini.”

  The applause was deafening. Clara was excited, more so than I’d ever seen her. We’d been to numerous shows but this was different. She looked over, bit her lip, and leaned into me.

  Houdini was a short man, but you didn’t notice at first. He was muscular, and though the hair at his temples had gone grey he seemed in excellent shape. He spoke in a commanding voice that demanded attention.

  Houdini began by calling for a volunteer from the audience. Of course every hand in the theatre went up. He picked a man from the front row and an assistant led him onstage.

  “He’s doing the Needles,” Clara said.

  She was right. We watched as the man inspected a package of needles. Houdini popped about thirty of them into his mouth, then some thread, chewed, and washed them down with a glass of water. He then looked sick, contracted at the stomach, reached into his mouth, and pulled out a piece of thread. The man took it and Houdini slowly backed away from him. From his mouth came a string of threaded needles that must have been six feet long. It was just as I’d pictured it. “Wow,” I said.

  He moved on to some conjuring of cards and other objects, some really great bits of magic. After these, the stage was cleared and there was a small musical interlude.

  Will leaned in and whispered to me, “Your girl there seems to like the magic.”

  Clara was flushed and beaming. Her hand was on my knee, her index finger running back and forth on the fabric.

  The show began again and Houdini invited a committee of audience members, selected at random from a glut of volunteers, onstage to fasten him into a straitjacket. “Nice and tight, gentlemen,” he said. “We don’t want anyone thinking you’ve let me off easy.” Once he was fastened into it, he writhed and wriggled like a madman until he was free of it.

  A group of assistants wearing rubber coats wheeled a large curtained object onto the stage. The curtain w
as moved aside to reveal the Water Torture Cell. It was a large box, about five feet high and three feet square. On the front was a glass window; the other three sides were enclosed wood.

  Houdini addressed us. “Ladies and gentlemen, introducing my original invention, the Water Torture Cell. Although there is nothing supernatural about it, I am prepared to forfeit the sum of one thousand dollars to anyone who can prove that it is possible to obtain air inside the cursed cell when I am locked up in it after it has been filled with water. Should anything go wrong when I am locked up, one of my assistants will watch through the curtain, ready to demolish the glass with his axe, allowing the water to flow out in order to save my life.”

  Clara’s hand had moved up my leg and was now resting at my midthigh. It was becoming difficult to concentrate. We’d kissed a bit, but that was as far as anything had gone. Her eyes were locked on every movement Houdini made.

  “Let me first thoroughly explain the apparatus, and then I will invite a committee onstage to examine everything. The cover is a steel frame made to prevent it from being opened even if it were not locked. Padlocks will hold it in place once I am secured inside. In front, there is a glass plate for self-protection. I do not expect anything untoward to happen. But as we all know, accidents will happen and when least expected.”

  Houdini then invited a dozen men to inspect the cell. They came onstage and poked at the thing, examining it from top to bottom.

  “Are you satisfied?” Houdini asked.

  One man, an elderly fellow with a cane, was not. “How do we know there’s not a trapdoor underneath?”

  Houdini smiled. “An excellent question. Choose any portion of the stage you wish and I’ll have the cell moved there.”

  The man took a few steps back, scuffed his foot on the floor, and pointed. Houdini’s assistants pulled the cell to the spot he’d chosen, and with a hose and several large buckets they filled it with water.

  An assistant locked Houdini into handcuffs. He lay down on the floor, and the lid was lifted off the top of the cell by a wire and pulley system. The lid had stocks that were fastened around Houdini’s ankles before being pulled aloft, suspending him upside down in the air. He took one last deep breath before being lowered into the cell. Water sloshed over the side as he was submerged. His assistants fastened the hasps at the lid and snapped padlocks onto them. They then raised the curtain around them.

  The band played while an assistant stood by with his axe, his gaze alternating between the curtain and the stopwatch in his hand. After two minutes everyone who had been holding their breaths to test him had given up. Another minute went by. The curtains fluttered. A few more seconds passed. Then the curtains flew open and Houdini staggered from the cell, dripping wet but unharmed. The cell was still full of water and the lid was intact, the locks undisturbed.

  Bedlam followed. The audience vaulted to its feet and made the theatre tremble under the weight of its admiration. The din was so loud that I couldn’t distinguish my own voice from Will’s or Clara’s, though I cheered with the full force of my lungs.

  It took some time for the racket to die down, but when it did the theatre manager announced an intermission. We got up and went to the lobby. Clara and Evelyn went off to the washroom, leaving Will and me by ourselves. We found a spot in the corner and took turns with the flask.

  “These tickets are going to pay off in spades,” Will said, looking to see if Evelyn was on her way back.

  I shook my head. “I doubt it.”

  “You’re blind.” He handed me back the empty flask. “You’re a smart guy, Martin, but you don’t get a lot. And Clara is one of those things. You treat her like she’s some sort of saint, like she’s above you. She’s not. She’s right down in the regular world just the same as you.”

  I put the flask back in my pocket. “I don’t treat her like a saint.”

  “Really? You even do anything other than make eyes at her?”

  I very nearly answered that I’d kissed her a number of times but realized that this was exactly his point. There was something about Clara that made her almost untouchable to me. Her faith in me had put her in the same camp as my mother. But she wasn’t my mother, she was a twenty-three-year-old woman.

  “Don’t worry, Martin,” Will said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  Clara and Evelyn returned, making a response unnecessary. Will became engaged in a conversation with Evelyn, and I took a few steps away from them, pulling Clara with me.

  “Let’s not go to the Pig and Whistle after,” I whispered. “Let’s go somewhere quiet, just us.”

  The lights in the lobby flickered on and off, on and off. The intermission was over.

  Clara’s lips lightly scuffed my ear. “Let’s go somewhere now.” I’d never seen her look at me the way she was, or maybe she had and I hadn’t noticed.

  “Are you coming?” Evelyn asked. “The show’s going to start again.”

  “Go on ahead, we’ll be right there,” I said. Will was about to argue with me but changed his mind. I took Clara’s hand and we went through the lobby to a side door that led up a narrow stairway. Off to the side was a coatroom. The door wasn’t locked and the light was off. No one saw us as we snuck inside.

  “Lock the door,” Clara whispered.

  I clicked the lock into place and reached for her. The room was windowless; the only light came through the crack under the door. We kissed, and it wasn’t the same as any kiss we’d shared before. It was desperate and ambitious.

  Clara’s hands were at my belt. I lifted her skirt. She smothered a sigh as we surged against the wall. I was aware of how awkward we were, but it didn’t matter.

  She guided me into her, laughing as we knocked over what I think must have been a coat rack. She was the softest thing that had ever lived, and I felt for a moment like I might be invincible. The entirety of my life distilled itself to a girl and a coatroom.

  I’m not sure how long we were there together. It seemed like a long time, and it seemed like it was over in the blink of an eye. As we pulled our clothes back into place, neither of us spoke, but when we kissed for the last time before opening the door I knew that everything had changed.

  There was a smile on Clara’s face as we stole down the hallway, but by the time we were downstairs in the lobby it was gone.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She didn’t say anything, just gave me a small nod. We found our seats in the dark, as the show had begun again.

  The third act of Houdini’s show was a lecture on spiritualism. I hadn’t much thought about it, though it was something people were very interested in. At that point in my life I had no inclination to consider life after death, whether it was real, whether those who were dead could be communicated with. Death had never touched me in a way that made it necessary to think about such things. For a great many others, however, particularly those who had been through the war and lost people, it was an unavoidable question. And the spiritualists claimed to have the answer.

  “There is an adage that truth is stranger than fiction, but some of the miraculous things attributed to the spirits would not be told, could not be told, by even the most famous writers of wild fiction. The conglomerated things you are asked to accept in good faith are almost inconceivable, but under the projecting mantle of spiritualism these vivid tales are believed by millions.”

  Houdini had changed back into evening clothes, and the stage was empty save for a table and chair. He paced back and forth with purpose, his voice loud and zealous.

  “We read in the newspapers of some payroll bandit who steals thousands of dollars, or of burglars entering homes and stores and breaking open safes and taking valuable loot, but these cases we read of are nothing in comparison to news of mediums who have earned millions of dollars, blood money made at the cost of torture to the souls of their victims. Folks who hear voices and see forms should see their physicians immediately.”

  The audience laughed, but the energy in the ro
om was different. Where before there was a tension between life and death, a cultivated air of mystery, it now felt as if we were being let in on a secret.

  “I am familiar with a great many of the methods of these human vultures. I think it is an insult to that scavenger of scavengers to compare such human beings to him, but there is, to my mind, no other fit comparison. Their stock-in-trade is the amount of knowledge they can obtain. It is invaluable and they will stop at nothing to gain it.”

  Clara wasn’t paying attention. She was staring down at her hands, which were clutched on her lap. I put my hand on hers and she looked up and smiled at me. The way she looked at me was different, and I couldn’t tell how. Had she seen something in me up in the coatroom, a revelation of my nature she hadn’t known? I wondered if she regretted what we’d done.

  “Mr. Bernard Delacroix, I have a message from the spirits for you,” he called. “Are you there?”

  A man stood up in the audience.

  “Your aunt Genevieve wishes me to tell you that she desires for you to call on her son, your cousin, who has been unwell. He has always been a sickly boy and wants to thank you for being so good to him.”

  The man appeared shocked and sat down. Houdini called the names of a half-dozen people and gave them messages from beyond. They each responded with disbelief, then confirmation that the information was indeed accurate. I thought about what I might say, if I were on the other side, that might be of any consequence to those still alive. What would there really be to say? You might describe what it was like, and maybe give some insight into what it was like to die, but beyond that it was difficult to imagine how death could fix whatever you’d done in life. If you were a fool in life, why wouldn’t you be one in death?

  “Myra Goldfarb, your mother is here and tells me that her leg no longer bothers her. She is dancing every night with your father and brother.”

  A woman in the audience cried out, “Is she really here?”

  “No, madam, I’m afraid she isn’t. None of what I’ve said tonight was gained by any method beyond the ordinary ability of man. Through spies, bought information, and trips to the graveyard I’ve been able to gather everything I need to convince you I can speak to those who have departed. These mediums, these bloodsuckers, do the same thing, but they do not tell you so. For that they cannot be forgiven.