Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “Where? When?” I asked.

  “When he was in prison— in the straitjacket,” Jack said smiling.

  “But, how— ?” I asked.

  “In his astral body, silly,” Charmian said.

  I looked over to Bess. She was looking at Charmian with a level glance.

  “You mean,” I said, “this is what Morrell claimed to have done.”

  “It was more than a claim,” Jack said. “Ed Morrell gave specific details about his experiences, details he could not have possibly known from his position in the cell.”

  “You’d be surprised at what details Spiritualists are able to uncover,” I said. “And they don’t astrally project— they just read city directories and listen to gossips.”

  “Oh,” Jack said, “Ed Morrell is not a Spiritualist. I can attest to that. Morrell traveled astrally to the San Joaquin Valley from his cell at San Quentin, and looked in on this lady stenographer’s schoolroom when she was but a girl! And the end of this whole account is the sort that some men would say could only happen in a storybook. The lady stenographer is now Ed Morrell’s wife! Do you think a man’s wife would be taken in by a tissue of lies woven from city directories and gossiping tongues? I tell you, Houdini, Ed Morrell’s story is a real case of astral projection— spirit triumphant over the bonds of matter! You must meet Morrell. I will arrange it, if it is at all possible.”

  We finished our coffee and Jack led us out on to the deck. The sky was turning gray overhead, and the wind off the bay was surprisingly piercing.

  “California cold is colder than elsewhere,” Jack said. “It is all psychological. One doesn’t expect it to be cold, so it seems colder than it really is. See over there where that cloud clings to the shore? That’s Emeryville. My father used to have a little truck garden over there when I was a boy. All along the bay here— over to San Pablo— these are my waters. When I was a lad, I sailed here as a pirate— an oyster pirate.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “We’d raid the commercial oyster beds along the bay— a grand adventure for a boy. Later, I became a member of the Fish Patrol, and I ended up corralling some of my old cohorts. Completely unbelievable and completely true.”

  “Such is life,” I said.

  “Indeed,” Jack said. “Such is life for those who really live.”

  We were approaching San Francisco. The numerals “1915” had been mounted on the tower of the Ferry Building. I looked out upon the city as it spread before us in the gray dawn. Shafts of brilliant white rays pierced the gray sky from the east and lit up the pinnacles of distant hills. Light and shadow, darkness and dawn, the city stretched forth an arm of hills from beneath a lowering cloud, inviting us to gaze upon its half-cloaked mysteries.

  “San Francisco!” I said.

  “A wonderful place,” Jack said. “And a terrible place— like all cities— an unnatural state of existence for a human being. But San Francisco is still quite apart. It cannot be pigeon-holed and it cannot be compared. It is not the ‘Paris of the West.’ It is not New York.”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “San Francisco is not what it was and not what it will be,” Jack said. “But to me it is a mark of orientation, a reference permanent.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It was where I was born.” Jack said simply.

  Our boat docked at the pier and all of us marched down the gangplank and on through the big waiting room of the Ferry Building. We reached the street. A cable car was approaching the turntable around which a line of people stood in a semi-circle. Crowds of people rushed to and fro, and a newsboy stood in the middle of it all shouting the headlines. Off to our left taxis waited at the curb. We followed Jack to a taxi and we all got in.

  “Take us to the fair, front gate,” Jack said to the driver. “Your tip will be measured by your pressure on the gas pedal.”

  We were off in a flash down brick-paved Market Street. I looked up at the buildings and their roof-tops crowded with big signs, advertising cigars, cigarettes, and beer.

  “I just played here a couple of weeks ago,” I said. “Funny— seems like a long time has passed already.”

  “San Francisco has its own time, I think,” Charmian said.

  “There,” Jack said, “down Third Street there, several blocks. That’s the spot where I was born. The building no longer stands. ‘Twas consumed in the 1906 fire, as was almost everything else in this city. South side of Market Street, wrong side of the slot. My life began in the mire, in disgrace and scandal. It is a long story I will tell you sometime, not fit for nice drawing rooms where proper gentlemen and ladies sip their tea. But it is a true story, and it is mine. Mire, scandal, disgrace. It all fertilized my life. Without mire nothing can grow. It is a mistake to deny the baseness in our natures. It is an integral part of us. Would you agree— Mrs. Houdini?”

  Bess gave a start. She looked up, astonished. Jack seemed to be trying to draw her into the conversation, but his attempt seemed to only underscore her separateness.

  “Or may I call you Bess?” Jack asked.

  “Oh— “ Bess said, clearing her throat. “Of course.”

  ”Please forgive us,” Charmian said. “Jack and I are chatterboxes.”

  “We’re not ones for formal introductions,” Jack said. “We just plow right in. You plow right in, too, eh?”

  “Certainly,” Bess said.

  “So— “ Jack said. “What do you think?”

  Bess looked back and forth at Jack and Charmian, and then over to me, as if asking for help; then she cast her eyes down.

  “I— I’m not one for thinking big thoughts,” Bess said. Then she looked up into Jack’s eyes; he met her glance, and she said, “I’m just an ordinary person.”

  “No, you’re not,” Jack said. “You are not an ordinary person at all, nor do you believe you are an ordinary person. You just think Charmian, Houdini, and I are terribly talkative bores who won’t let you get a word in edgeways, and if we would all just shut up for one single damned second you would tell us how talkative and boring and stupid we all are. Isn’t that correct, madam? Come, come, Bess, tell me I am right.”

  “You’re right,” Bess said.

  Jack and Bess stared at each other for about five seconds and then both of them broke up into hysterical laughter. It was contagious. Charmian and I began laughing, too.

  “You’re all a bunch of damn chatterboxes!” Bess exclaimed above our laughter.

  “She’s plowing right in!” Jack cried out.

  And so our laughter and chatter continued as our taxi climbed Van Ness Avenue and then took a turn to the east, but now there were four chatterboxes in the car instead of three.

  We turned a corner and descended a hill. Our taxi coasted downward passing two and three-story houses with bay windows. I looked through the windshield beyond the shoulder of the driver. The grounds of the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition spread out before us. Directly ahead at the base of the hill lay the green arches of the fair’s main entrance. Beyond the arches lay a great fountain and courtyard, and beyond the courtyard the magnificent Tower of Jewels rose to the sky, glittering copper-hued in the morning light. Ranged out on either side of the Tower of Jewels, west to east along the northern shore of San Francisco, were a number of terra-cotta colored domes and towers. Beyond them lay the waters of San Francisco Bay, a gray expanse with brilliant white spots picked out by the rays of the eastern sun lancing down through the clouds overhead. Beyond the waters of the bay lay the hills of the Marin headlands, rolling in patches of gray, green, and brown.

  “Oh, Bess!” I exclaimed. “Look! We missed this view before!”

  “Oh, it’s beautiful!” Bess said.

  “I didn’t expect this,” I said, turning to Jack. “It reminds me of the Chicago fair of ’93. Only this is more beautiful.”

  “Oh, yes,” Jack said.

  “You saw the World’s Fair?” I asked.

  “I did,” Jack said. “I c
ouldn’t miss that— or this.”

  Our taxi pulled to the curb. We all got out on the sidewalk as Jack paid the driver. People were already lining up to get in the front gates. I looked at my watch. It was seven sharp.

  “My treat!” Jack said to me. “I’ll pay admissions. You pay for breakfast.”

  “It’s too early for me to eat,” Bess said.

  “We’ll see some of the fair first,” Jack said, “and then head over to the Fun Zone and have a bite. We can’t miss the Fun Zone.”

  The crowd began to move forward and we moved with it.

  The whole grounds of the fair was surrounded by a wall thirty feet in height and covered from top to bottom with ice plant. We approached this verdant wall which formed into great arches above our heads as we neared the main entrance. Soon we were inside the arches and moving along iron railings which led to turnstiles manned by uniformed ushers. We reached a turnstile and Jack dropped several coins into a little glass box mounted on the usher’s counter.

  “I’m paying for all four of us,” Jack said.

  The usher nodded and gave us each a ticket as we each passed through the turnstile. When my turn came, the usher handed me my ticket mechanically, glanced up at me, back down, and then back up at me again.

  “You’re Houdini!” the usher said.

  “That I am. Good to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand, and passing on through.

  “The South Gardens,” Jack said, sweeping his hand across the scene before us. “The great domed structure to our right is Festival Hall; the one to our left is the Palace of Horticulture. They had a nice ceremony in there for my friend, Luther Burbank. Luther has a display over in the California Building. I’ll show it to you. Directly ahead of us here is the Fountain of Energy.”

  The pool at the base of the fountain was encircled with sea-nymphs riding dolphins. All about them great sprays of water arched upward to splash upon the central sculpture, a gigantic sphere upon which stood the statue of a god mounted upon a steed and upon each of the god’s shoulders a winged cherub blowing a long trumpet.

  “It’s magnificent!” I said.

  We passed on through the great arch of the Tower of Jewels and into the Court of the Universe. The centerpiece here was a square bandstand, now empty.

  “Souza played here for nine weeks,” Jack said.

  “Incredible,” I said.

  In what I began to realize was a well-planned route, Jack took us through the fair, one exhibit hall after another, and in between the halls he seemed to know exactly where to catch the auto trains which would speed us to our next destination. He took us to the California Hall to see Luther Burbank’s exhibit and then we went out to the green by the harbor so that Jack could show me where Lincoln Beachy crashed.

  We stood on the grass and I pointed out the spot in the bay where three weeks earlier I had escaped from a packing case lowered into the water from a barge.

  “The current is fierce out there,” I said.

  “Oh, I know,” Jack said. “And there’s the occasional shark as well.”

  I said, “Fortunately I didn’t encounter any of them.”

  “Mud flats over in there,” Jack said, pointing out an area up the shore beyond the lighthouse that seemed to be shallow water. “That’s where they say Beachy hit.”

  A man wearing a racing cap came rushing up to us.

  “Aren’t you Harry Houdini?” the man asked.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Art Smith,” Smith said, extending his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking hands with Smith. “This is Jack London.”

  “I know,” Smith said, shaking Jack’s hand. “I recognized Mr. London, too.”

  “So you’re taking Beachy’s place,” I said.

  “I don’t know if I can fill Beachy’s shoes,” Smith said, “but I’m flying my biplane here.”

  “The Comet?” I asked.

  “So you’ve heard of it,” Smith said.

  “And you,” I said. “I keep up on flying, even though I don’t fly anymore.”

  “I hear that you and Montraville Wood are trying to help the army sprout its wings,” Smith said.

  “Have you, now,” I said. “And from whom did you hear that?”

  “From Montraville Wood,” Smith said.

  “Wood likes to talk,” I said. “Sometimes too much. Jack was showing me where Beachy crashed.”

  “It was terrible,” Smith said. “He was flying at two thousand feet and had already made three turns. He had gotten down to five hundred feet when his machine just collapsed. The monoplane wings just couldn’t withstand the pressure of those last three turns. He went straight down like a rock and slapped into all that mud way down over there. When they found him, he was still strapped to his seat. Just terrible. He took a terrible risk with that monoplane and lost.”

  “Well,” I said, “I always say if the goal is worthwhile the risk is not a risk. Man has got to fly.”

  “Your preachin’ to the choir,” Smith said with a grin.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you,” I said, “but that’s our wives over there by the flagpole, and I have learned the hard way not to keep them waiting.”

  Smith grinned and shook our hands again, and then Jack and I strolled back to Bess and Charmian.

  “Who was that?” Bess asked.

  “Art Smith,” I said. “One of the best stunt pilots in the world.”

  “Are you famished yet?” Jack asked Bess.

  “Am I ever!” Bess said.

  Jack said, “We’ll breeze through the manufacturers’ exhibits and then head directly to the Fun Zone. We can’t miss the Fun Zone!”

  “To the Fun Zone!” I said.

  “To the Fun Zone!” we all said in unison— and by Jack’s pure magic, another auto train pulled up in front of us and we all climbed on before it sped away again.

  “How do you do it?” I asked.

  “Magic,” Jack said.

  “But I’m of the fraternity,” I said.

  Jack said, “You tell me how you do it, and I’ll tell you how I do it.”

  “Magicians,” Bess said to Charmian.

  “Breeze” was indeed what we did as we passed through the gigantic Palace of Manufacturers. We passed a thirty-foot tall telephone, a part of Western Electric’s display.

  “This is nothing,” Jack said. “Over in the Palace of Transportation Henry Ford has produced thousands of cars during the run of the fair. The Machines of Industry! Will they be our salvation or our ruin? Who can say? We can only know one thing: We will most certainly use them, use them up, and then demand more! More!”

  Jack was almost marching through the hall now, and, long-legged as he was, he was outdistancing the rest of us. We almost had to break into a run to keep up. The images of the fair began to blur in my mind like the colors of a kaleidoscope.

  Suddenly Jack stopped in mid-stride and announced: “To the Zone!”

  “To the Zone!” we all shouted. The crowds turned to look at us.

  As we rushed to the door we heard others shout in unison: “To the Zone!”

  “We’ve started a stampede,” Jack said. “Run! Run for your lives!”

  The four of us bolted out the door, and we kept running. I looked over my shoulder. A crowd of children and adults were pouring out of the Palace of Manufacturers and running after us!

  “Never look back,” Jack said, pulling me forward by my arm. “That’s how they get you.”

  We all took off running like we were crazy, and kept running until we got to the entrance of the Fun Zone.

  “Ghiradelli!” Bess cried out suddenly upon seeing the shop on the corner. “Chocolate!”

  “Let’s go!” Charmian said.

  We all went in, loaded up on chocolate bars, and came on out into the main thoroughfare. Jack started to un-wrap a chocolate bar.

  “Breakfast first,” Charmian said, reaching up to Jack’s hands.

  “No,” Jack said
petulantly. “Chocolate first.” And he raised his arms up and away out of Charmian’s reach and finished tearing away the wrapper of the chocolate bar. Then he brought the chocolate bar down to his mouth and snapped off half of it like a crocodile.

  “Give me that!” Charmian said, jumping up at Jack while he held the other half of the chocolate bar high in the air.

  “No!” Jack said, and then he went back to laughing and chewing. Charmian climbed on to Jack’s back.

  “Give it to me!” she shouted.

  Jack shook Charmian off and went running down through the Zone holding his chocolate bar in the air. Charmian chased after him.

  Bess looked at me and shook her head. Then she said, “They’re just like kids, just big kids.”

  “Reminds me of some people we once knew,” I said.

  “Who?” Bess asked.

  “You and me,” I said.

  “We were never like that,” she said.

  “Oh, really?” I said. “Remember Coney Island?”

  Bess smiled.

  “I’ll never forget,” she said.

  “We’ll never forget,” I said. “Come on. We can catch up with them.”

  I took Bess by her hand and we ran up to where Jack and Charmian were arm wrestling with the chocolate bar. Jack almost had it in his mouth. Then Jack snapped, like a snapping turtle, and that chocolate bar was gone. It was quite an astonishing sight.

  “You lose,” Jack said, chewing rapidly.

  “No, you lose,” Charmian said. “I’ve got all the rest of the chocolate bars here, and I’m not giving you a one!”

  “Aw!” Jack said. “One more, just one more?”

  “Don’t beg,” Charmian said. “It isn’t attractive at all. Here’s a restaurant. Let’s eat.”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Yes, let’s eat so I can have another chocolate bar! And don’t think I won’t get one either!”

  We sat down at the sidewalk restaurant and had a quick breakfast. Then Jack was dashing down the middle of the Zone again, all of us trying to catch up.

  “Cram!” Jack shouted. “We must cram! You’ve got to see this— the Panama Canal ride. C’mon!”

  We got our tickets, went inside, and got on a moving platform. It took us out over a five-acre waterway which recreated in every miniature detail the 5,000 square miles of the geography comprising the Panama Canal. Telephone speakers at each of our seats sounded the voice of a narrator who would explain each feature as we approached it.