The Magician's Lie

by Greer Macallister

  I looked at him. He was right. It was what we both wanted. That didn’t make it easier, being apart.

  “You’re so beautiful when you’re sad, with those eyes of yours. They break my heart,” he said.

  “Mine too,” I said and curled my body into the curve of his, until I could feel his breath as if it were my own.

  ***

  I was riding high, thrilled and amazed at my own luck, feeling more powerful than Houdini himself. I wasn’t just a female illusionist; I was a woman in full, a woman with a man who couldn’t get enough of her. It made me even more confident and seductive onstage.

  We debuted the new version of the Woman on Fire, which I reveled in. My costume was crafted of white layers of chiffon with red, orange, and yellow ones underneath, and as I spun, the brighter colors looked like flame. With carefully placed lamps and wisps of smoke, the illusion that I was on fire was complete. I loved it because I could be my true self onstage for once. For the purposes of the Woman on Fire, I didn’t need to pretend myself fearful or foreign or shrouded in mystery. I only needed to be happy. And I was.

  The crowds grew larger, my billing more pronounced. I found myself in a familiar cycle. In the earlier days with the Great Madame Herrmann’s company, we’d played smaller theaters, and as she built her fame over the years, we’d visit larger venues in the same cities. And so it was with the Amazing Arden’s company. We went from the Howard Athenaeum to the Hollis Street Theatre in Boston, no small leap, and from the Locust Point Theater to the Ford’s Grand Opera House in Baltimore. As he had many times before, Clyde displayed his worth as my business manager and suggested it was time I begin to play on a percentage basis at certain theaters. My upfront salary would be smaller, but every ticket sold would yield a bit more silver for our coffers. Enjoying the gamble, I agreed. At three out of every four shows, it paid off, and it would be hard to say which of us was more pleased.

  Clyde was both my inspiration and my reward. I delighted in the stage and the road, collecting anecdotes and tales to tell him, and when we were together in New York, I disappeared into bed with him for hours and then days, and when he insisted we go and eat something, I mumbled and dragged my feet until he swept me up in his arms to carry me out, blinking, into the light. We could have griddle cakes at a lunch counter or shrimp bisque and spring lamb at Delmonico’s, and I’d hardly notice, so thrilled to be sitting across from him, looking at him, knowing he was close enough to touch.

  And when I was with him, I learned the compromises of intimacy, the way the pillow you fall asleep on disappears in the night sometimes, the way the other person’s smell becomes more familiar to you than your own, the way you learn the phrases they repeat and the foods they avoid and in which direction their hair grows. In the years before we found each other again, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be loved and needed; now it had become such a part of my life I couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to.

  And so things continued in the same way, for a full year and then some, until Christmastime of 1903.

  ***

  My little family of performers had grown together, and not a single one I’d hired had left the company. They also began to come to me for counsel and reassurance, which was something Adelaide’s employees had never done, forbidding as she was. Sometimes they only wanted my advice. Sometimes they wanted to ask to be included in or excused from a particular illusion or to be granted a particular day off here or there. On occasion, they asked for more meaningful favors. The long-fingered former bodyguard, whose name was Hugo, asked for a loan to get his sister out of a bad situation, and I was happy to advance him the money, though it was a substantial sum. He paid it back promptly, reaffirming my trust.

  We still had our curfews and our mandatory dinners. During these mealtime conversations, we were fond of going over and over our memories of every venue we knew, talking about which were the best theaters and which the worst, debating the pitfalls and benefits of each one. Late in 1903, Hugo told us of an ornate new theater built in Chicago, a beautiful, soaring place. Not only was there room for nearly two thousand audience members in the high, vaulted auditorium, but great thought had been given to the comfort of the acts as well. We’d never heard of a backstage area so luxurious. Five levels of dressing rooms had been built—surely, we exclaimed, that could only be a rumor—and an elevator constructed to shuttle performers from there to the stage level. Its opening had been much delayed, but all was now well at last. It was called the Iroquois Theater, and none of us could wait to play it.

  Clyde booked a show for me there in early January, but I decided to go a few days in advance, at the end of December. Holidays were a quiet time for us. What audiences there were tended to congregate for family entertainments, especially the seasonal ones, Yule-themed ballets and musicals and the like. So we made a plan: I would go on ahead while Clyde settled the year’s business. After this single show, I’d join a small circuit called the Castle for a month of shows in Missouri, and after that, we were very close to a deal with a northeastern circuit, the Monrovian. Once that paperwork was signed, Clyde could afford to spend a week without hustling for the next bit of business. When the deal was done, he’d follow me out to Chicago, stopping over for one night before turning north and heading into Canada, where he wanted to look at a plot of timber he might buy as an investment. He’d been eager to put some of his money into land, and as a man who knew growing things, he thought he might be able to turn a profit in lumber. When he described the virgin stand of pine to me, “trees so close together they rub shoulders,” he sounded giddy as a schoolgirl. I teased him for it, but to be honest, I only wanted him happy. Sinking money into the Canadian forest would delay his plan to build the Carolina Rose in New York, but we were in no rush, and the longer I spent on the road building my name, the better off we’d be when he did.

  Our Christmas presents to each other were simple. I gave him an expensive pair of leather gloves to keep his treasured hands warm, and he gave me a copy of the book that gave me my name: a lovely pocket-sized edition of As You Like It, which I looked forward to reading yet again. Life on the road had given me many things, but it had made it impractical to maintain a collection of books, a rare regret among so many joys.

  The real present was time together, uninterrupted hours of pleasure, and we treated ourselves to the finest hotel we could find, heedless of the cost. I loved Clyde’s Jane Street rooms for sentimental reasons, but for luxury and indulgence, two days at the Astoria were like living in another world. We tumbled between the soft, lovely sheets, and every minute was glorious. The bed was enormous, like a sailing ship in the middle of a carpeted ocean, white draperies billowing from the framework of the canopy like sails from a mast. Rich, savory food was brought to us, whenever we wanted it, under silver domes. The faucets yielded up water at every temperature from Arctic to scalding. We looked down from our high window at the soundless streetscape below, the dots of people scuttling about their everyday business, then let the curtains fall closed upon them again. We plopped our bodies into overstuffed chairs, extended them across cool velvet sofas, settled them into the steaming, lavender-scented embrace of the marble bathtub. What I loved most in these moments was that we were still ourselves. Even among abundant, outrageous luxuries, even isolated from the forces that had brought us together in the first place, we still reveled in each other. Clyde of the cramped, cold office and Clyde of a richly appointed suite at the Astoria were still the same man. The man I loved. The man who—I could never believe my luck in it—loved me.

  After our Christmas together, I left for Chicago, arriving three days before year’s end. The soft languor of my holiday was worn away by hours of train-borne rattling. Accustomed to my private railcar, I found even a good journey by public rail exhausting, and I could barely keep my eyes open until I finally arrived at the hotel Clyde had arranged for me. All I wanted to do was sleep, but there was an envelo
pe on the bed with my name on it, so I had to read it before I collapsed. I was delighted at what I found inside—a ticket waiting there for the next day’s show at the Iroquois, with a note reading “Go see it for us. —C.”

  Walking into the theater was like walking into a dream. The Biltmore had been a palace, but the Iroquois was dazzling on a different scale. The entryway was larger than it seemed like any building could be, its ceiling impossibly far overhead. I had dressed in a plain brown shirtwaist and a low-brimmed hat, eager to avoid attention, but now I felt underdressed. A spectacle like this deserved better. All gold and ivory, it was like a song-and-dance man’s version of heaven. I drank in the details, trying to capture as much as I could in my memory so I could share every bit of it with Clyde later.

  Heading through a winding hallway lined with dark red carpet, I trailed my fingers along the brocade wallpaper, a heavy gold-and-red pattern almost too bold to be elegant. It felt like velvet.

  My seat was in the very first row. I smiled, thinking of Clyde, and took my seat. I imagined myself concluding a performance on the immense stage, drinking in the applause of a stunned and grateful crowd, and felt my limbs grow warm with the thought of such a triumph. But before long, I twisted around and looked behind me, risking a crick in my neck to take in the sight of the gorgeous theater filling up. Even though it wasn’t my own show, the excitement of an audience filing in still thrilled me.

  From my vantage point at the foot of the stage, the size of the room was simply astounding. Hugo had told us the theater could hold nearly two thousand people, but hearing the number was nothing on seeing it. An enormous orchestra section stretched out on the ground floor, with a dress circle and balcony stacked above, and as I watched, all three filled up completely. Women and children lined the rows. Not just in the seats but between them, up and down the aisles. People packed themselves in, sitting or standing, wherever there was room. My audiences were large, but never like this, and my theaters were rarely as grand. It was more than twice the size of the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, far more opulent than Ford’s Opera House in Baltimore. Gorgeous draperies of heavy scarlet damask lined the walls and boxes, and even the aisles were lined with deep carpet. Clearly, no expense had been spared.

  A chime played to indicate that it was almost time to raise the curtain. The bustle slowed and stopped, the only movement a set of ushers who locked the gates between the levels to keep patrons with cheaper tickets from sneaking into the more expensive sections. But even though everything was still, even when the lights went down, you could still hear the enormous audience breathing in the darkness. It was impossible to keep such a crowd completely silent.

  The orchestra played its merry fanfare and the show began. Again, I was overwhelmed and impressed. The bounty onstage was enormous, all colorful costumes and fast movement. The children in the audience roared with laughter at all the right moments. I’d never seen so many children in one place at one time—school must have been shut for the Christmas holiday, because these were children who should have been in school—and it was a strange sight to me. Then the sound of the calliope caught my attention, and I looked up at the pageantry on the stage, and I lost myself in the magic of the theater.

  Midway through the second act, it started, with a soft roar. Quiet at first, but growing louder.

  I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but the sound built and built until I couldn’t ignore it. I looked around. What was going on? What wasn’t right? At first, everything looked as it should have. An octet stood on the stage, four men and four women, singing a lovely ballad about moonlight, the stage lighting tinting their white garments softly blue.

  I returned to the sound, trying to remember where I’d heard it before, imagining what it might possibly be. It wasn’t the children laughing, and it wasn’t the audience applauding, and it wasn’t some kind of effect, like the metal sheets sometimes hidden behind the curtains and shaken to imitate the sound of thunder. It was softer than all that.

  Then the smell reached me, about a minute into the roar. The smell of smoke. Right after that, I saw the bright light, and with the evidence of my eyes and ears and nose all together, I knew what was wrong.

  The curtain was catching fire.

  The flames were roaring upward, and the sound was the air they ate as they soared up faster than any human could go.

  Panic spread in an instant.

  As soon as ten patrons stood and fled, it was twenty and then a hundred; women in the gallery were running before they could have possibly realized what they were running from. But the truth was clear to everyone soon enough. The fire leapt from the curtain onto the hanging sets that were waiting above the stage, and dozens of yards of painted canvas were swallowed up with hungry tongues of flame. The crowd surged away from the stage, away from the fire, in a blind scrum. Quickly people realized that the aisles were clogged, and they began to surge over the seats as best they could, stepping on seats and backs of seats and in some cases other people, too panicked and desperate to know the difference. They surged for doors—or what seemed at first to be doors but were only glass-paned decorations meant for show, an ornament no one could have guessed would turn cruel.

  I stood stock-still, terrified, not knowing which direction to run. The smoke had descended on me almost instantly, and my eyes burned with ash. I heard the sound of hundreds of feet. A boom sounded from somewhere distant—had a metal door been flung open? Had the windows burst? The smoke began to rise, lifting and rolling with the air currents, and the scene became clearer. I wished it hadn’t.

  The fire was spreading to the wooden trim on the boxes and the walls, and the audience was fleeing toward the sides of the theater where they’d come in. But the gates across the staircases were still locked, trapping the crowds in place. And there were too many of them. They were tripping over each other, searching for a way out in any direction, and in some places, people were horribly, horribly still because there was nowhere to go. Large bodies and small ones, tangled. To my left in the orchestra section, I could see people pressing against a closed door, pressing and pressing, but going nowhere. Smoke hung low over everything and everyone.

  The screams were loud and alien, and it was raining fire.

  Behind me, I heard a single voice, the only one shouting words: “Get out! Get out!”

  I turned. The stage itself was right behind me, and unbelievably, it was not burning. One of the members of the octet who had been singing was still there, dressed in white, and she beckoned to me. Behind her, a stream of performers—shepherdesses, gypsies, knights, men and women costumed as animals of all kinds—was moving toward a single destination.

  There was a way out.

  I didn’t want to die. The stage in front of me was too high, but I could see a half staircase at the side of it, and clambered up the stairs before leaping across the gap onto the stage. I hit the wood of the stage hard on my knees, one foot dangling back over the orchestra pit below, but I made it.

  I scrambled to my feet. The smoke was thicker again, heavy and gritty and everywhere, here where the fire had begun. I felt my lungs fill with it, my throat close. I coughed out what I could. I swatted the air around me as if that could clear a path, but I was still disoriented and could barely tell up from down, let alone downstage from up. My eyes failed me, so I focused on my ears, which picked up the sound of footsteps, headed all in the same direction. That was the back of the stage. I scanned in that direction with all my senses, knowing there must be a way out. And then I might have been imagining it, it was so very faint, but I thought I could smell fresh air.

  Foolishly, I turned one last moment to look out at the auditorium again, seeing at a glance scores of people, scores of bodies, those who would never escape. Too much stillness under the smoke.

  I swayed and fell.

  ***

  Someone carried me. In moments, I was aware. Desper
ate men ripped the hinges off the stage door. A horde of survivors huddled in a frozen alleyway. Performers scrambled up out of the coal chute, their spangles smeared with coal and ash. Then the moments were shorter, punctuated with darkness between. The horns of the fire companies arriving, steam from the horses’ nostrils looking like smoke in the frigid air. Near the exits and at the bases of the unfinished fire escapes, dark clusters of bodies heaped like flies.

  After that, when the darkness swum up at me again, I welcomed it.

  ***

  When next I woke, I lay on a cold stone floor. The smell of smoke and ash was less but unmistakably present. A basement? As dim as one—a room with few windows, small and placed high on the walls, giving very little light. Perhaps it was evening, or even night. Stacked wooden crates lined the walls, but they were too far away for me to read the lettering in such low light, so they might contain anything. It seemed like some kind of storeroom. I redirected my gaze nearer and felt reassured when I saw another woman’s face sleeping peacefully close to mine, only to recoil in horror when I realized she wasn’t sleeping but dead.

  I tried to scramble up, but my body failed me, my lungs and throat still seared with smoke. I had been carried to this place and laid down next to a dead woman. And next to her was another dead woman, and another, a whole roomful of the dead, and I lifted my arms, as heavy as lead, and covered my face and prayed it was only a terrible dream.

  When I let my hands fall again and dared to look, my awful company still surrounded me, so I turned my attention to my own body to try to shut out the horror of this place of death. The interior of my throat felt burned away. My eyes stung. A pervasive ache had settled in my veins. But on the whole, none of this mattered. I was alive, and safe, or so it seemed. Where to start? I wished soundlessly that my throat would heal itself. One step at a time.