Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  The people in the carriages came pouring on to the bridge in a big crowd. One of the policemen came up to me and I said to him: “Will you check the handcuffs after I put them on?”

  “The lieutenant told me to cooperate, so I’ll play along,” the policeman said.

  I climbed up on to the railing of the bridge and made a little speech, telling everyone who I was and how I was famous and what I was going to do. I held up my pair of handcuffs and had the policeman lock them on my wrists. Then I shouted as dramatically as I could: “Behold!”

  I held my locked hands up in the air, and then made a half-turn where I stood balanced on the railing to look down at the river. Just as I looked down, the full stench of the water below rose up on the breeze and hit me in my face. In that moment I was very glad I had taken Rohan’s advice about stuffing cotton in my ears and nose. How bad would the stench have been without the cotton? I didn’t want to think about it. I took a slow, deep breath, and waited until every nerve in my body had quieted. Then I jumped— jumped as high as I could— doing three somersaults in the air, and then dropped feet first into the river.

  It felt like cement when my feet hit the surface of the water. I went under, my eyes closed tight. The cold of the water cut through to my heart like a knife. I knew I had to move fast before I froze to death. I slipped the cuffs, and then came back up, my head breaking the surface. Even with the cotton in my nose the stench of the river was so overpowering it nearly turned my stomach inside out. I flailed about on the murky brown surface for a moment, fighting panic and nausea, and then grabbed hold to something deep down inside of me and held on to it with all my strength of will. What I held on to was my intention not to drown in that sewer. If nothing else, I wasn’t going to give Rohan the pleasure of an I-told-you-so at my funeral. Directly in front of me floated a number of tin cans and boards with nails sticking out of them. If I had hit one of those boards with my foot, I would have been in serious trouble.

  I swam to the edge of the river, breathing in all those fumes from factory refuse and from God only knows where else. Rohan hadn’t been kidding. I was trying to keep my mouth closed and breathe at the same time, but my throat was closing up from nausea. I got to a pylon and climbed up under the bridge, and then waited and listened to the crowd that was beginning to grow hysterical. Finally I climbed over the top railing of the bridge on the other side from where I had jumped. The crowd saw me and went wild with shouts and applause. I made another little speech, telling everyone to come to see me at Kohl and Middleton’s, and then Jacob came forward with another boy from the museum, and I got up on their shoulders and they carried me away to a livery stable where I hosed myself off in a horse stall.

  I would later find out that Mr. Ade had been in that crowd on the bridge, and had seen me jump into the river. There had also been another writer present there, a much more famous author than Mr. Ade. It was Samuel Clemens, “Mark Twain.” In fact, as I was being carried off the bridge, I had caught sight of a man going by in a cab who I thought looked just like Mark Twain, and, as I later learned, this man passing by me in the cab was, in fact, Mr. Clemens. Mr. Ade and I did not know it then, but some kind of strange destiny was being worked out in Time. Mr. Ade and I would cross paths with Mr. Clemens again very shortly, and in the most incredible manner.

  That afternoon, Jacob and I returned to the dime museum and continued our regular performances. Once, between, turns, I caught sight of Lieutenant Rohan talking to Mr. Hedges back stage. Rohan looked at me and said, “There he is. I see you survived, after all. I’ll be seeing you around, young fellow.”

  Rohan went on down the hall with Mr. Hedges.

  “That was the lieutenant I told you about,” I said to Jacob.

  “So what?” Jacob said, and he went into our little dressing room with a sneer on his face.

  Jacob was more curt and sullen than ever. During one of our shows that day I asked Jacob to come forward with a small box as he was supposed to do, but he didn’t come forward. He just threw me the box. Later backstage, I asked him why he had done that.

  He said, “You’re so smart, figure it out for yourself.”

  This kind of thing went on for the rest of the day, and that evening back at the boardinghouse where we were staying I confronted him about it.

  “All right,” he said, “since you persist in questioning me. I’m sick and tired of your attempts to upstage me! And today was the final straw! Get it into your head that I am not— repeat am not— your assistant!”

  “I never said you were my assistant,” I replied.

  “You lie!” he shouted. “Today you said, ‘And now if I can have my assistant in this trick.’ Don’t tell me you didn’t say it!”

  “I said, ‘And now if I can have my assitance in this trick.’ Assistance— not assistant! I was only asking you to come forward.”

  “I know what I heard!” Jacob shouted. “And it doesn’t matter what you said— assistant, assistance— it’s your attitude.”

  “You’re jealous,” I said, suddenly realizing the whole thing. “It’s the bridge jump today. Isn’t it? You can’t stand it. That’s it? Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t give a rap about your bridge jump,” Jacob said. “That you think I do makes me sick to my stomach! You think the whole world revolves around you! I’m sick of your stupid bridge jump and I’m sick of you!”

  “You’re sick, all right,” I said, “in your head. You’re crazy.”

  Jacob lunged at me and grabbed me by my shirt.

  “Take it back!” Jacob shouted. “I’m not crazy!”

  “Get your hands off of me!” I shouted back, grabbing Jacob’s hands where they were clinched around my shirt front.

  “Take it back! Take it back!” Jacob shouted, shaking me in a fury. I gave him a light slug across his face— almost a slap— and shoved him back. He stumbled backward across the room and landed against his bed.

  We stared each other for a second, and then I said very quietly, “Don’t you ever lay your hands on me again.” And then I turned and went out of Jacob’s room.

  I went down stairs and out of the boarding house and started walking, bound for nowhere. I walked for several blocks and finally reached Michigan Avenue. There I was stopped by a board fence, which I walked along awhile until I saw a loose board. I pulled the bottom of it back and squeezed through the opening in the fence. On the other side lay the train yard and beyond that the shore of Lake Michigan.

  I had no particular destination in mind. I just wanted to walk, cool down, and get away from people so that I could think and decide what to do about Jacob and the way our act was going. I walked along the tracks, keeping an eagle eye out for the “bulls” that guarded the train yard, and finally made it to another board fence. I walked along this one, feeling each board until I finally found another loose one. I found one— this one was loose at the top— and I pried it back and went through to the outside of the train yard again. On the other side I was faced with an immense blackness with only a few points of lights. This was Lake Michigan, and those lights were ships out on the horizon. The Moon came out from behind a cloud and lit the sandy shoreline, and, finding this well-lit path, I took to it.

  I was deeply lost in thought, running Jacob’s last words through my mind, when I suddenly became aware of an odd tingling feeling on the back of my neck and scalp. This feeling increased until for a moment I thought I had become infested with ants. I swatted and scratched the back of my neck, but could find nothing crawling on me. Then I began smelling something which I later learned was ozone. I had never smelled anything like that before. I stopped and looked around, but saw nothing but the lake before me. I looked at the fence behind me and wondered if the smell was coming from the train yard. Just as I had this thought, I heard a crackling noise; it was coming from directly over my head. I looked straight up and gazed at the strangest sight I had ever seen in my life up to that moment. It was an airship, unmistakably an airship!

  It
was shaped something like a cigar and it glowed with a blue light against the night sky. The crackling noises were being created by bolts of electricity shooting around the hull of the ship. I stood there looking at this thing, trying to see as many details as I could. I could make out some portholes along the sides of the ship, but I couldn’t see into them because the airship was nearly directly over my head by several hundred feet.

  As I stood there looking at this airship, another aerial object came hurtling out of the sky toward it. I instinctively threw my arm up in front of my face expecting a crash, but as the second object approached the airship, it came to a sudden stop. This second object looked like a featureless cylinder, and this cylinder paused in the sky for only a second or two before it shot away again like a cannon ball and disappeared into a distant cloud. Then the airship I had spotted originally picked up speed, swooped out over Lake Michigan and became only a point of light. I watched that point of light as it moved to the south until it faded away into the night sky.

  I had no idea what I had just seen, but I knew that if I ever tried to tell anyone about it, they would call me crazy or a liar— especially Jacob. At that time I knew very little about the larger world around me. The things happening in science and industry were only a vague glimmering to me, and it seemed to me that the march of history stepped at a steady pace without pattern or purpose. But what I had just witnessed there in the night sky above Chicago was a glimpse of— not just the larger world— but the larger universe, and that aerial sight was a condensed essence of history, not marching in steady time according to the dictates of text-book law, but flowing inexorably along on its own mysterious power controlled by forces far beyond my youthful ken. I did not know it then, but what I had just witnessed was the first skirmish of a secret interplanetary war, a war waged between our own world and the planet Mars! To the sleeping multitude of Chicago this conflict taking place above our heads was too far removed from normal living to have a real life of its own; the people of Chicago could consider these strange objects no more real than the airships described in books by Jules Verne. Of this secret conflict between our planet and Mars I would soon learn much more. But for now, like the rest of sleeping Chicago, I could not connect what I had just seen to the events of my daily life. I had chosen a profession that brought entertainment to people by creating the illusion of the miraculous and the wonderful. But here I had seen a real wonder in the sky above Chicago, a wonder that exceeded everything I or anyone else around me ever knew or understood— not a wonder of this world— but a wonder of the worlds!

  I walked on along the shore of the lake until I came to the end of the rail yard. There I found an open field of tracks, and I crossed those in the moonlit darkness and so again got over to the streets of downtown Chicago. I went back to my room at the boarding house and went to bed.

  Very early the next morning I knocked on Jacob’s door. He opened it, and stood there staring at me glumly. Behind him I could see his open trunk on the bed with all his clothes in it.

  “What’s all this?” I asked.

  “I’m going home,” Jacob said.

  “And what am I supposed to do?” I asked.

  “That’s no concern of mine,” Jacob said as he snapped his suitcase shut. “I’m through with all this. I’ve had it with you!”

  “That’s fine with me,” I said. “Quit if you want.”

  “I’m not quitting show business,” Jacob said. “I’m just quitting our business. And it’s not soon enough.”

  “Go ahead. But you can’t just walk out and leave me with no way to do the act. You’ve got obligations,” I said.

  “I don’t have anything,” Jacob said. “I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

  “What about Mr. Hedges?” I asked. “It gets out that you walked out on Mr. Hedges, and you’ll be through in the show business.”

  “Don’t try to threaten me,” Jacob said picking up his trunk and putting on his hat. “You try to smear my reputation and I’ll come after you.”

  “Who’s doing the threatening?” I asked, laughing. “Let me tell you, I’m about as scared of you as I am of a bug. You can go to hell for all I care, but it will do me no good with my reputation if you get a bad one for yourself. I’m going to cover for you with Hedges. The least you can do is to give me an idea about how I’m going to continue with the act. What about your brother Joe? He wanted to get on stage. Do you think he’d replace you?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Jacob said, and he turned and went out the door.

  Jacob Hyman had left me high and dry. Yes, I did still have all the magic equipment for the act, but I had paid for nearly all of it myself, especially the trunk. I had a double act, but no one to double with. I ran down to the telegraph office and wired Joe’s brother an urgent message, and then waited impatiently until a reply came. About an hour later I got a reply back from Joe: “Meet you in Chicago at Kohl and Middleton’s in one week!” That was all he had to say— one week! What was I supposed to do during that one week?

  I went over to Kohl and Middleton’s with a sense of dread. Without Jacob I couldn’t do the act, for every effect in our show required two people to carry it out. I thought about going on by myself, but feared the result would be a disaster. What could I do all by myself? A few coin tricks, a few card tricks…then I thought of my handcuffs. Not only could I get out of them quickly, I had learned enough to get out of nearly all the models of handcuffs then being manufactured in America. I had even begun wearing a thin roll of kid leather inserted into the waist-band of my long underwear which contained some tiny lock picks and tools. Could I present a whole act of handcuff and lock escapes— and do it first thing this morning?

  By the time I got to the dime museum, my feet had gotten very cold. I knew I couldn’t do any shows until Joe arrived in the city, and that was at least a week away. I went into my little dressing room and sat down in front of the mirror and looked at myself. I knew I couldn’t tell Mr. Hedges that Hyman and I had argued about who was the boss and that Hyman had quit on me. It would make Hyman look bad and it would make me look bad. After a few minutes I came up with a story that I thought Mr. Hedges might swallow. I would tell him that Jacob had received an urgent message to return home because his mother was gravely ill. Just as I had framed this tale and had worked my courage up to the point of telling it, the dreaded knock came to my little dressing room door. I opened it, and there stood Mr. Hedges.

  The best way to run a bluff is to assume that the mark is already convinced. So this I did with Mr. Hedges, acting as though I thought he had already received the news about Jacob Hyman’s sick mother. Mr. Hedges had heard nothing about this, of course, and this allowed me to tell the whole, sad story. Some years later Mr. Hedges confided to me that he never bought my story about Hyman’s sick mother. He said that he and several others had heard Hyman and me arguing in our dressing room several times, and everyone knew that the “Houdini Brothers” were on the verge of splitting up. On this morning, however, Mr. Hedges played along and pretended to believe me. There wasn’t much else he could do. He even agreed to allow me to stow my trunk in the museum until Jacob’s brother arrived— and until Joe Hyman arrived, I announced, I was going on a holiday! This was more than Mr. Hedges could stand, and he looked at me with absolute disgust.

  Mr. Hedges then said, “You’ve got a couple of people out here who want to talk to you.”

  Mr. Hedges went away down the hall, and two other people came forward, a man and a woman, and it would be these two people who would completely change my life. The man was George Ade, and the woman was Lillie West. Miss West had been an opera singer, but she was now a reporter for The Chicago Daily News.

  Mr. Ade had not come to see me about my bridge jump. Oh, he had been there the day before, all right enough, and had seen the whole thing, but he was there this morning to make me a proposition: He would write a story about me if I, in return, would help him get inside a certain warehouse. This was n
ot the first time someone had come to me in my dressing room wanting me to commit burglary for them, and it would not be the last. But this morning, what Mr. Ade proposed turned out to be something more than common burglary.

  After I had adamantly refused his request, he thrust a newspaper in front of me— it was The Chicago Daily News— and on its front page was a big illustration of the airships I had seen the night before! I started reading the article and it began dawning on me that half of downtown Chicago had seen the same thing I had!

  Now Mr. Ade told me that this article about the airships had been written by Miss West, and that he and Miss West had discovered where one of the ships was secretly berthed— in that warehouse he had just mentioned. And then he fired a salvo at me that really made me stop and consider: The airship in the warehouse had been designed by none other than Nikola Tesla— and the other airship had come from Mars!

  Anyone else would not have believed Mr. Ade, but I possessed two bits of knowledge that made me know that he was telling me the truth: I knew Nikola Tesla, and I had seen both airships with my own eyes. I knew that if anybody was capable of creating an airship it would be Mr. Tesla. In fact, I had been present in Mr. Tesla’s laboratory one day when he and his engineers were doing tests with metal balls and plates. They had these pieces of metal attached to a pole with wires, and when they turned on a machine, the pieces would rise up and float around in the air. When Mr. Tesla saw me peeking in at the door, he pushed me out and made me promise to tell no one what I had just seen. I now realized looking at that picture in the newspaper what Mr. Tesla had been doing that day— he had been designing the airship I had seen in the sky!

  Now Mr. Ade and Miss West kept up the pressure for me to help them get into the warehouse. They said it was my duty as an American to give the public the truth etc. and etc. Still I refused. Finally Mr. Ade made it clear to me that he believed the real reason I would not help them was because I simply could not do the deed. He said he realized I could not open a lock on what he called a “real” door and that I was nothing more than a rank amateur. Here I had just jumped from the State Street Bridge handcuffed and had lived to tell it and Mr. Ade was claiming that I could not perform the simple task of unlocking a door! I was outraged, and thought: What do I have to do to show these thick-headed newspapermen that I am Houdini? Jacob had left, I had no act, and now my one chance to get newspaper publicity was going down the drain. What was there left for me to do? Go home to New York and beg on the street corners?