The Confabulist

by Steven Galloway

  I could feel my pulse in every part of my body and my mouth was dry. I couldn’t go back to my rooming house. I’d have to leave New York. It didn’t matter. I had disappeared before, and I could do it again. As I made my way north toward Grand Central Terminal I kept my head down, not stopping except for traffic and to drop my letter to Clara in a mailbox.

  MARTIN STRAUSS

  Present Day

  ONE PLUS ONE DOES NOT EQUAL TWO, AND I CAN PROVE IT.

  Another confabulation has come to me, unbidden. I’m sitting at a kitchen table. I’m tired. My face is hot and my mouth is dry. In another room I can hear a child crying, but I’m trying to ignore it. I want a drink. What I would really like to do is get up, cross the room, and leave. I can feel the door pull me toward it. Just as I am about to succumb, Clara sits beside me. She is tired too, exhausted. Her shoulders slump and she rubs the back of her neck.

  “This,” she says, “is hard.”

  I agree with her, though now I’m not entirely sure what we were talking about.

  “It will get better.”

  “Will it?” she asks, and I don’t know that it will. I feel powerless. I want to say something that will reassure her, perform some action that will fix everything, but if such a thing is possible it is beyond my ability. Again I feel the pull of the door, and I know that when Clara leaves the room I will succumb to its call. I will go out that door and I will not come back.

  I wonder about this false memory. If I had somehow had a life with Clara, if I hadn’t run away when we were barely beginning, would this be how it was? Would I always want to be escaping? I want to believe that I would have been steadfast, but maybe not. It is entirely possible that I am capable of simultaneously loving someone and not treating them well.

  A couple walks past me and toward the street. They’re arguing about something, but soon they’re too far away for me to hear their voices. The woman is poking at the air with her finger and the man is shaking his head. They stop walking, apparently unable to continue their discussion while in motion, and the man throws his hands up in the air as if in surrender. The woman doesn’t seem placated, though, and she keeps on. I wonder what he did. Or is going to do.

  Most argument, and in fact most conflict, has nothing to do with the present. It’s always about the past or the future. People can’t agree on the details of what has happened or is going to happen. But we rarely know what has happened, and we never know what is going to happen. What is really at dispute is how we will deal with not knowing.

  Even though I can’t hear them, these two aren’t any different from the rest of us. They’re walking down a street, and instead of enjoying the sun and each other’s company they’re fighting. But maybe it has to be this way. Maybe you can’t go through your life trying to make the best of the present. I certainly haven’t.

  One plus one does not equal two. Well, yes, it does. Sometimes. But not always. I realize the impossibility of this. Much of the world is binary. You’re alive, you’re dead. But what if it was uncertain whether the number one existed?

  Imagine I have a cookie. I’m allowed to eat this cookie, but before I eat it I must first eat half of it. So on the first bite I eat half the cookie. On the second bite I eat half of that half, am left with a quarter, and so on.

  I keep eating, and the cookie gets smaller. It won’t take long until the piece I’m left with is too small for me to physically divide. But if I could shrink myself down to scale I could continue, on and on, forever. There would always be a tiny piece of cookie left; it would never completely disappear.

  Which makes getting to zero impossible. And if one and zero exist as opposites in a binary world, that makes one impossible too.

  So one and one cannot be two. There is always that tiny piece remaining, that tiny fraction that makes infinity and illusion possible.

  Then there is the Indian rope trick. It goes like this: a rope and a basket are brought to a field. One end of the rope ascends until it disappears into the sky, too high to see. The magician’s assistant, a boy, climbs it. The magician calls after him, but he doesn’t come down. Enraged, the magician seizes his sword and climbs the rope. A terrible argument is heard, and then limbs begin to rain down from the sky as the boy is hacked to pieces. The magician descends and the rope falls to the ground. He gathers up all the limbs and places them in the basket, says a few magic words, and the boy emerges unharmed.

  It’s a good illusion. So good, in fact, that it has never been done. It began as a story, a false description of mystic Eastern magic, and then it was repeated so many times and with such fervour that people believed it was true—some even would swear they had seen it with their own eyes.

  I worked as a draftsman of architectural plans after I came out of hiding, disappearing in plain sight. I’d wanted to be a doctor, but that didn’t work out. By the time everything settled down after Houdini’s death I was too old to go to medical school. I’d more or less lost my enthusiasm for doctoring anyway. What I liked about my job was its certainty—I’d draw up plans for something and it would be made accordingly. There was a concrete outcome that I could control.

  I’m not sure how to characterize my life. Missing? It’s like there’s a big chunk of time missing, except there isn’t. The time is there. Nothing happened other than it filled. A minute turned into an hour turned into a day, a week, a year. Years became decades. And here I am. Old and alone.

  Except for Alice. She’s the only real person I know. We don’t see each other often, maybe once or twice a year, but I have a hard time keeping her at bay when I do see her. She’s the one person who knows what I’ve done, all the gory details. Almost all of them. It’s time for me to reappear.

  The ice cream orderly is back and staring at me again. He checks his watch as if he’s waiting for a bus. He’s about forty, tall, and I imagine women find him handsome. Maybe they like the uniform. Maybe they think he will give them free ice cream.

  He turns and a woman comes out of the hospital. She stops to talk to him, and I’m momentarily jealous. I can see only a bit of her—the great lug blocks my view—but I catch a glimpse of a blue cardigan and light brown hair, and I get a feeling that whoever he’s talking to is worth his time.

  He steps aside and points at me. For a moment I’m surprised, but then I get a look at the woman he was talking to. It’s Alice, and I remember now that we were supposed to meet today. She must have come looking for me here—I likely mentioned on the telephone I had an appointment—and of course this guy knew where I was. This is probably a tactic he uses to meet women. That and the ice cream.

  For a second I panic. I don’t like surprises. I turn away, hoping she didn’t see me looking at her.

  She sits next to me. “Hello, Martin.”

  I turn back to her and smile. “Hello. I forgot about our plans.”

  In truth, I can’t exactly remember what it is we were going to do today. I normally have a book that I write things down in, to help me remember, but I don’t seem to have it with me today. In the past we have been to movies, gone for walks, eaten at restaurants. Our relationship is comfortable and strained at the same time.

  “It’s okay,” she says, and I can tell by the way she looks at me that it is. She’s a pretty girl. Scratch that, she’s well into her forties, and there are lines around her eyes—she is no longer a girl. She was married once but isn’t anymore, and doesn’t have any children, which is a shame because I think she’d make a good mother. There’s something about her, an ineffable generosity and kindness, that reminds me a bit of my own mother. But we’ve both grown old.

  I swallow. My mouth is dry. “I have some news I need to tell you.”

  Her hand picks at the hem of her skirt, and she looks at me. “I have some news as well.” Her voice is soft and cracks slightly. “I think you already know, or maybe you don’t. But I have to tell you.”

  She sees that I’m watching her closely and composes herself. I do the same, and neither of us spe
aks. The orderly comes back out through the automatic doors. I wave at him. “I’ll have two scoops of vanilla, and the lady will have a Popsicle.”

  He scowls at me and goes back inside. Alice laughs, a singsong of a laugh that makes me feel like I’ve just done the greatest thing ever. It’s a sound I haven’t heard for a long time.

  HOUDINI

  1926

  THE SUN HAD SET SOME TIME AGO. SUMMER WAS COMING to a close, and there was a coolness to the breeze. Soon it would be time to dig sweaters and shawls out of storage, and not long after that heavy coats and gloves. The trees would shed their leaves and snow would swathe the city. But not yet. None of that had happened yet.

  Houdini peered out the window. Rose Mackenberg was on her way in her car, and it was critical that their dealings this evening go undetected. He studied the street for any sign of the unordinary. The floor above him creaked, and he glanced upward. Bess was asleep, or at least she had been a few minutes ago when he’d checked on her, and the housekeeper was in her room at the rear of the house. He turned his attention back to the street.

  He had always had enemies. For the most part they’d been harmless; even at their most malevolent they had been courted and destroyed. In a way they’d been useful. They kept him sharp, kept him on his game. And the free publicity he gained when he destroyed them, revealing them to the world as the imposters they were, was priceless.

  This time was different. Not only were these enemies dangerous, they were persistent and skilled. They’d gained the upper hand for the moment, and he had no choice but to retreat from them, though it was completely against his nature. He had misjudged them and now he was paying for it.

  He’d spent much of the day in his lawyer Bernard’s office. The lawsuits lodged against him by spiritualists totalled well over a million dollars, but most of them were spurious and a nuisance at worst. Defending himself against them was a matter of money and time. He had plenty of money but not much time.

  Throughout the meeting he’d been distracted, and now couldn’t remember much of what had been discussed. That morning he’d telephoned Rose and told her to come get him as the sun went down. It wasn’t like her to be late.

  Tonight’s work would need to be completed whether Rose showed or not. There was no time left—if not tonight, then never. He thought of Bess, somewhere in this house that had once held their whole happy family, of his mother, rest her soul, of his brothers and sister and his father. They seemed so far away now, and he could feel his memory of them fade each day.

  He was sore. He could not deny that his body was letting him down. Fifty-two years of strain and tension, of unbreakable bonds broken and leaps into icy waters, of little sleep and much travel; it had all caught up with him. Fifty-two years. It was hard to believe that it had gone by so fast and yet there he was, exhausted by it. He wished Rose would hurry up.

  Six years earlier he’d gone to lunch with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He’d been excited about it—Sherlock Holmes, champion of rational thought and logical conclusions, was possibly his favourite literary character. He’d been good friends with Jack London, but Jack had died in 1916, and afterward Houdini had made the awful mistake of carrying on an affair with his widow. It had become messy—he was sure Bess knew all about it—and he’d been lucky to end it without lasting damage.

  Doyle was by reputation a perfect gentleman, though temperamentally at odds with his famous creation. Not only did he despise Sherlock Holmes, he had become a devotee of spiritualism, the very antithesis of rational thought. Houdini wondered whether Doyle was merely humouring his second wife, Jean, who was said to fancy herself something of a medium.

  The invitation to lunch at the Doyle estate, Windlesham Manor, had come after Doyle had witnessed one of Houdini’s underwater crate escapes in Bristol. Doyle had been completely enthralled. “I don’t care what you say,” he said, clapping Houdini on the back, “that’s as clear an instance of dematerialization as I’ve ever seen.”

  There was a gleam in his eye as he said this, and Houdini couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. It was puzzling, but there was nothing he liked more than a good puzzle, so he’d accepted Doyle’s invitation.

  As his hired car negotiated the narrow country road that led to the Doyle estate, Houdini wondered what to expect. Doyle’s first wife, Louisa, had died in 1906 of tuberculosis. For the last nine years of her life, Doyle had an apparently platonic relationship with Jean Leckie, whom he’d married a year after Louisa’s death. Houdini was skeptical. His curiosity was not based on moral qualms about infidelity. He was in no position to judge anyone on that account. What interested him was the deception. In his estimation, there could be only three types of spiritualists: the charlatans, the dupes, and those who actually communicated with the dead. Given that he knew the last to be impossible, there remained only the fakes and the believers. So if Doyle did not possess actual mediumistic powers, he must either be a fool or a liar. It seemed unlikely that the creator of Sherlock Holmes was a fool, but by reputation Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a meticulously honest man. These two conditions could not mutually exist.

  Ahead of him Windlesham Manor came into view. It was a large, rambling house set back on a lawn. An impeccably dressed servant met the car, opening the rear door for Houdini. He stepped out onto the gravel driveway and followed the servant down a path to the rear of the house, where he found Doyle waiting at a table set outside on a paved patio. He was a large man, over six feet tall, with a moustache that struck Houdini as extremely commanding, and wore a three-piece suit despite the heat of the day. An Irish wolfhound lay at his feet, perking up when Houdini approached.

  Doyle looked up from his newspaper and smiled. He sprang out of his chair, startling the enormous dog. Doyle paid no attention to the dog’s scrambling attempts to get out of his way as he crossed the distance between himself and Houdini, extending his hand eagerly.

  “Harry Houdini! I’m glad you made it all the way out here to our little spot in the country.”

  Doyle’s handshake was firm, almost aggressive, but Houdini smiled back all the same, returning Doyle’s force.

  “I’m a small-town boy myself,” he said. “Always glad for a chance to get out of the city.”

  “Good man, good man. Come, sit. Lady Doyle will be with us in a moment.” He looked around as if to confirm the obvious fact that Houdini had come alone.

  “I must apologize. My wife, Bess, is under the weather today and was unable to come.” This was more or less true—Bess had been unwell lately, but she hadn’t come because she didn’t want to.

  “Please send her our best wishes.” Doyle smiled again.

  Houdini sat at the table and a different but equally gallant servant poured him a cup of tea.

  “I hope tea is sufficient,” Doyle said. “I can provide you with something stronger if you like, but I don’t touch the stuff myself.”

  Houdini shook his head. “I don’t either. I’ve never understood the point of ingesting a substance that is known to dull your senses.”

  Doyle gazed at him, inscrutable, then laughed. “A great many men wish for nothing more than to be relieved of their senses. You and I, we are not such men.”

  The wolfhound nuzzled Doyle’s hand, and he gave it a cursory pat on the head before sending it off.

  “When the war was on, I could hear the guns in France from this spot, if conditions were right. I used to imagine that my son Kingsley heard those same guns, and I suppose that sometimes he did.”

  Houdini nodded. He knew that Kingsley Doyle had died in the war, along with several other members of Doyle’s family.

  “Don’t be so glum, Houdini. I still speak to him often. But of course you know that.” He stood up. “Lady Doyle. You look as wonderful as ever.”

  Sir Arthur’s wife had arrived. She wore a simple but elegant blue dress and white gloves. Her hair was pinned up and she moved stiffly, as though her joints gave her trouble. There was something severe about her—she seem
ed to disapprove of the condition of being alive but was trying to make the best of it. Houdini stood and kissed her extended hand, then they all sat. Jean said little. Where her husband was jovial, she remained withdrawn and almost hostile.

  If he was aware of this contrast Doyle didn’t show it. “Let me say again how much I enjoyed seeing your escape the other day in Bristol. A remarkable feat. One of the best I’ve ever seen.”

  “Thank you. Years of practice.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you do a disservice to your abilities to pretend that you use trickery.”

  “I’m afraid it’s the truth. I do not dispute that I have extraordinary abilities, but they’re achieved by human means. Of that I am sure.”

  Doyle smiled. “Ah, well, perhaps we are in agreement. I, for one, dislike this arbitrary distinction between the natural and the supernatural. They are two sides of a coin, that is all.”

  Houdini was about to protest, but thought better of it. The three of them sat and ate cucumber sandwiches, and for a while the conversation was the sort of small talk that could be found at the table in any club in London. Houdini was growing bored, and he could tell that Doyle was as well. The question was which one of them would break first.

  After a discussion about the weather in which Doyle delineated four distinct types of rainfall that could be found in this area of Sussex during the spring, Houdini wanted to stand up and shout at this ridiculous man, this giant of literature who bore a striking resemblance to an oversized Yorkshire terrier.