“You’ve been following me?”
“Yes.”
“Were you there in New York when John G. Nemesis attacked me?”
“The way I saw it, you attacked him. John G. Nemesis is a spiritualist catchall name for the hand of fate. He has many guises and can be anyone. In this case, he is a man we know very well.”
“Who is Dr. Le Roi Crandon? Who is Walter?”
“Dr. Crandon is the husband of Margery Crandon, the witch of Beacon Hill. She’s possibly the most prominent medium in America. Walter is her dead brother, with whom she claims to communicate from beyond the grave.”
I remembered Houdini talking about the witch of Beacon Hill at the Princess Theatre in Montreal. According to him she was a fraud of the highest order.
“Why do they want the book?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Why did Houdini give me the book?”
“I can’t answer that either.”
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
“I’m not sure you appreciate the situation you’re in. I am not your enemy. This isn’t about you or me or even Houdini.”
“Then what is it about?” I felt an anger rising in me that I wasn’t sure I could contain.
Grigoriev’s voice was soft and calm. “It is about competing views of the world, a question of what is real and what is not.”
“And what do I have to do with any of this?”
“No more or less than anyone. Perhaps you have yet to discover what is real and what is not in your own life.” He swerved, the momentum of the car leaning me away from him.
“The book is coded.”
“It’s a standard keyword code.”
A keyword code. I knew a bit about these from the spy novels I read as a kid. A word or phrase created a numerical value that would allow a person to encipher passages of text. If the person receiving the garbled text knew the keyword, it would be a relatively simple matter to decode the text. “What’s the keyword?”
“If I were to tell you and they were to find out, they would kill you.”
They were already trying to kill me. Knowing the contents of the book didn’t seem to make a difference. “I could destroy the book.”
“Yes.”
“I could just give it to them.”
“Yes.”
Perhaps if the Crandons had the book, they’d leave me alone. Though the incident with their thug probably wouldn’t go overlooked. But giving them the book or destroying it didn’t feel right.
“I didn’t mean to punch Houdini,” I said. I knew that the reason I had kept and would continue to protect the book was guilt.
“Didn’t you? It didn’t look like an accident.”
“You were there?”
He said nothing, his eyes on the road. But he was right. The punch wasn’t an accident. I may not have known why I did it, but my fist swung with intent.
“I didn’t mean to kill him.”
We had arrived back at my cheap hotel. He parked across the street and turned off the engine.
“Houdini was fond of saying that when he died, the spiritualists would declare the day a holiday. He may have underestimated their glee. All over the world telegrams and letters flew back and forth proclaiming victory. He was, for them, their greatest obstacle. They had tried to kill him before, and were actively trying to kill him now. There is no limit to what they will do in the name of their cause. Bear that in mind, Martin.”
Grigoriev reached into his pocket and removed a letter. “This is for you. I collected it when you left New York.”
I took the letter from him. It was indeed addressed to me, posted from Montreal. The return address was Clara’s but the handwriting on the envelope wasn’t hers.
“Thank you. What happens next?”
“Do we ever know what happens next? They will make a move, and we’ll see where that leads us.”
“I meant what happens to me.”
Grigoriev smiled. “You should get some sleep. I’ll be nearby, and will be in touch if need be. Just stay away from the Crandons for now.”
I got out and watched him drive away. It was baffling how easy it was for people to find me. After all the precautions I’d taken, telling no one where I was, making no friends and keeping to myself, using a false name, and living completely disconnected from the world at large, it was simple for Grigoriev to track me and the Crandons to find me. Were Houdini’s escapes so popular because people knew deep down that there was no way for anyone to escape?
I walked around the block to make sure no one was following me and then climbed the stairs to my fifth-floor room. Each thud of my feet was a thumping reminder of my exile.
The hair I had placed on my doorknob was undisturbed—another technique I’d read about. I opened the door and slipped inside. My hands were steady as I sat on the bed and tore open the letter Grigoriev had given me.
Mr. Martin Strauss,
Clara does not wish for you to have further contact with her. Given what you have done, I suggest you respect her wishes. As it stands I hereby discharge you of any further duty concerning her. You have disappeared, and you will stay disappeared. Should you contact her again I will bring down the full force of the law upon you.
The letter was signed by Clara’s father.
I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. What was I doing? What was I trying to accomplish? You don’t abandon those you love, or those you could love, for nothing. Houdini had done it. And I had done it too. This elaborate game he had mixed me up in was just an excuse.
“It doesn’t matter why you did it,” my mother said, sitting on the bed beside me.
“Yes, it does.”
“It only matters that it’s done. It can’t be taken back.” She looked so young. Like she’d looked when I was a boy.
“Then there’s no hope?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t you?”
She smiled and reached toward me. “Martin, dear Martin. Haven’t you been listening?”
I stretched out to grasp her hand, but she was gone.
Houdini’s book was hidden in the lining of my coat. I retrieved it and opened it to the first page. I’d looked at the letters many times before, but they remained as cryptic as ever.
QRQHRIWKLVLVUHDO
BRXUPHPRUBFDQQRWEHWUXVWHG
WKLVLVDOOUHDO
Gibberish. If there were clues inside, I wasn’t going to find them, not without the keyword at least.
There was a bottle of whiskey on the floor beside my bed. I’d bought it the day before. I picked it up and stared at it. I could hide inside it, I knew. It wasn’t an answer, but it was something. Things needed to stop. The confusion, the anger, the loss. The first third of the bottle charred. The second third tingled. An hour later, when I dropped the empty bottle on the floor and passed into oblivion, I felt nothing.
I stayed there for the next week, leaving my room only when it seemed like I would run out of drink. My routine was simple—any time a thought crept into my head, I drank it down. If my mother came to me, I drank her away. If a letter ended up in my hand, I drank it back into my pocket. My goal was to remain insensate, and for a while I achieved it.
One morning I woke up, on the floor, sober. I’d emptied every bottle I had, and while I didn’t feel like having more, I didn’t feel like changing anything either, so I pulled myself to my feet and made my way outside to find one of the local bootleggers.
It felt odd to be outside. Like I was in a foreign country where I didn’t belong. I kept my head down for the first few blocks, but all I saw were parked cars, trees, grass, and the paving stones of the sidewalk. The further I went, though, the more a feeling of alarm rose inside me. Something was off and I almost missed what it was.
I stopped walking. Grigoriev’s car was parked about half a block back. I was sure of it. I should have recognized the unmistakable scrape on the passenger side door.
So he was
still watching me. I hadn’t expected any less of him. But still I stayed frozen on the sidewalk. Had I seen something inside the car? I felt like I had, like something was there that shouldn’t have been and I’d somehow ignored it and kept on. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d let my mind refute a fact.
It came back to me before I could actually see him. Grigoriev was inside the car, collapsed over the steering wheel. His face was obscured by his arm, as though he was sleeping.
When I reached the car I opened the passenger door and got inside. I pulled him back by the collar of his coat and he groaned. The front of his shirt was stained with blood, his hands and the car door handle coated with it. His face was drained of all colour except for his lips, which were a pale blue.
“Who did this?”
He licked his lips, trying to speak. “John G. Nemesis. Findlay.”
“Was it the Crandons?”
Grigoriev started to laugh but got nowhere, simply emitting a weak croak. “I told them you were a decoy. That you were always a decoy. I gave them a false book and keyword. That should buy you some time.”
“What’s in my book?”
“Most of it’s a diary,” he said. “At the end of it is a list of people who the spiritualists control and the means by which they’re using them.”
“What people?”
“You need to find him. He needs to know what’s happened. This was not part of the plan.” Grigoriev looked past me.
“I don’t understand.” I felt sick. A strong desire rose to be anywhere else but there.
“Forgive.” His hand shook, and his eyes began to dart from side to side.
“Forgive who?”
“Forgive,” he said. His eyes stopped moving. His mouth hung open. He looked surprised.
I raced out of the car and back toward my hotel. I didn’t care if anyone saw me or was following me. It was as if I were an animal who had just caught sight of a predator, obeying only my instinct to run. I took the stairs to my room two at a time, unlocked my door, and slammed it behind me.
My room was a mess. I wasn’t sure if this was because someone had ransacked it or because I’d been on a drunken binge for the past week. But the envelope containing what was left of the money I’d taken off the hired gun in New York was untouched.
I fell to my knees. Sweat dripped off my forehead and I watched it pool on the floor, soaking into the bare wood. I leaned forward and dry heaved.
My mother knelt next to me. “This is the last time I’ll visit you,” she said.
“Because of the drinking?”
“No.”
“Because of what I did to Clara?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
She looked old to me, older than I ever remembered her looking. Much older than she would have been. “It’s how it works.”
“I don’t want it to work like this,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter how we want things to be. It doesn’t even matter how things have been. Things are the way they are, and nothing can change the moment you’re in.”
I don’t know how long I lay on the floor. It was dark outside when I was able to get up. I wiped my eyes clean and ran my sleeve across my mouth. I gathered my belongings and left, not bothering to collect the deposit I’d left with the hotel clerk.
The train station was deserted and I hadn’t made up my mind where I would go. There wasn’t anywhere left. I sought out a bench in a corner and replayed the last thing Grigoriev had said.
An idea seized me. In the spy novel I’d read, where a keyword code was used, each letter was given a number, A as 1, B as 2, and so on until Z was 26. With a keyword, you added up the relative numeric values of the letters of the word until you got a number. F-O-R-G-I-V-E, F as 6, O as 15, R as 18, until it all adds up to 82. Divide that by the number of letters in the alphabet and you end up with four letters left over. So the idea is that A would be written as D, the fourth letter of the alphabet, with the rest of the letters transposed in the same way. It’s simple, easy enough to decipher with or without the keyword. I made a chart that raised the alphabet by four letters.
I opened Houdini’s book and looked at the first sentence. It made sense. I flipped to the back page, which was written in a hasty hand. After a few minutes the message was clear.
I had not killed Houdini because Houdini was not dead. And I knew where he was hiding.
MARTIN STRAUSS
Present Day
“IT’S NOT GOOD NEWS,” I SAY. ALICE SEEMS ACCUSTOMED to bad news—she betrays no shock or surprise.
I tell her the particulars of Dr. Korsakoff’s diagnosis and ask if she has any questions.
“No, not really,” she says.
This puzzles me. I have nothing but questions. The ice cream orderly is again lurking at the entrance.
“What’s that guy’s problem?” I say, the harshness of my voice surprising me.
Alice looks around. “Who?”
I point toward the hospital doors. “The ice cream man.”
She looks at me like I’m a child throwing a tantrum. “He’s not an ice cream man, Martin.”
“I know that. He looks like one, though. He keeps coming out here and giving me dirty looks. We should go.”
“He’s just doing his job.”
“Since when is staring at me his job?”
Alice begins to answer but thinks better of it. We’re on the verge of a disagreement, and she seems to want to step back from it as much as I do. I don’t know why I’m acting this way. There’s an anger inside me, one I don’t know what to do with. I will try harder to keep it in check. Especially around Alice.
We’ve been meeting regularly every few months or so since I came out of hiding. After that first meeting, where she tracked me down, it took me a while to work up the nerve to tell her my story. I couldn’t tell her everything—I still haven’t told her everything—but what I did say to her made me feel better. Just being around her seems to bring me a measure of peace. She’s like me—she keeps to herself and isn’t particularly forthcoming about her life. I enjoy her, though. She’s the only link I have to the life I never lived. She’s asked me a lot of questions about what I’m like, about my family, about why I am the way I am. Attempting to answer her has bonded us.
We watch the traffic lights on the street change from green to yellow to red and back to green. I can tell she’s thinking, and I’m content to leave her to it.
“Do you know why I keep coming to see you?” she says, her voice so soft I almost can’t hear her.
She’s here for answers, I imagine. As I am the man who killed her father, she wants to know why, how. I want to tell her she was better off without him, that he wasn’t anyone she’d have wanted for a father. It’s hard to tell someone that their father was a horrible man. No, not hard. It’s cruel. The truth is not the salve people make it out to be.
“You want to know what happened,” I say.
“When I was about eleven,” she says, “my mother took me to the beach. I’d never been before. We lived with my grandparents, who were not the sort of people who did such things. For a week before we went I asked her every day if today was the day, and finally her answer was yes. We took three buses, loaded up with towels and swimming suits and whatever else, it doesn’t matter.”
I haven’t been to the beach in years, but when I was growing up, there was a swimming pond that all the town’s kids would go to on hot summer days.
“When we got there, my mother spread out our blanket and said I could go swimming, but I didn’t want to. Something felt wrong. I sat on the blanket and watched everyone else, kids building sand castles and swimming and running around, adults joining them or sunning themselves or talking. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, why I wasn’t having a good time. My mother gave up trying to make me and sat reading her book.
“I want to be able to tell you a story about seeing a happy family with a mother and father and feeling sorry for myself, or may
be one where I went swimming and had trouble and some stranger had to save me because my father wasn’t there, but nothing like that happened at all. I’d brought a small rubber chicken, a toy I was fond of, and at one point a dog picked it up and ran away with it. I didn’t do anything, just sat there and watched it go.”
Her neck is red and her shoulders are raised. She’s looking off at a space where there isn’t anything to see, they way people do when they’re trying to remember something.
“I don’t know what I expected to happen. But I know I expected something—anything. And nothing happened. There was an absence of event.”
An absence created by the loss of her father. An absence created by me. I wonder which is better, a parent who never fully existed or one who has haunted you through your life. Is the ghost of a real parent more or less than the imagination of an invisible one?
“What was it like? The absence.” I am afraid of her response.
She thinks before answering. I like that about her.
“It’s like your life is a mystery. There are pieces of you that you don’t know the origin of. They may be yours alone or you may be continuing a long history. There’s a voice in your head and you don’t know if it’s yours or a stranger’s.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiles. “I know. That’s not why I came today.”
My head is buzzing. That damned tinnitus. She doesn’t seem to understand that she doesn’t know what really happened. I need to tell her. Maybe this will help her understand herself, or the voice in her head that might be her own. I’m making a mess of this.
“There’s more, Alice. I haven’t told you the whole story.”
“I don’t need to hear it,” she says.
Another confabulation jumps out at me. I don’t know why certain false memories are so persistent. It’s a familiar one. I am sitting in a sparsely furnished room by myself. Above me a bare lightbulb hisses and ticks. There is a pile of boxes in the corner waiting to be unpacked. I am drunk, can taste my dry mouth. I have at some point been crying, but at this moment I am still. I am dazed by loneliness, futility, and the sense that while there was nothing I could have done to avoid ending up as I am, it was still my fault. The telephone rings, and I know that it is Clara calling, but I don’t answer it. I can’t. I sit there and feel myself get smaller and smaller, until I am certain I will vanish.
The Confabulist Page 23