Escape Artist Read online

  Feeling oddly calm in his presence, I decided I could outlast this overgrown yeshiva boy in the poorly assembled flowing tie, his diamond shirt stud gleaming in the sunlight. On his head an incongruous sailor’s cap.

  I broke the silence. “My name is Edna Ferber and I’m a reporter at the Appleton Crescent.” I actually pointed across the street to the sign. But Houdini refused to follow my hand. His eyes never left my face. “And,” I beamed, “I’ve been told you’re not granting interviews.”

  “So why are you talking to me? I ain’t a man to change my mind.” Said with that thickly accented voice. There was something else there now—a real humor.

  “Because I assume entertainers want publicity.”

  His eyes smiled. “You sound like my wife Bess.” He still hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “Is she in town with you?” Bess was his stage partner, the fearless woman sealed in boxes behind curtains.

  “No, she’s in New York.”

  “You’re just here with your brother?”

  “Are you conducting an interview?”

  I waited a bit. “Seems like it.”

  “Ferber.” He squinted his eyes. “Your father is Jacob?” His face relaxed a bit.

  That startled me. “Yes. How…”

  “I’m staying with David Baum, over on Oriental. David mentioned your father…”

  “Why?”

  “Is this part of the interview?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “We were talking of the Jewish families of Appleton. The old days when I was here. The new families.”

  “Yes, I’m his daughter.” I rushed my words.

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Ah, Miss Ferber, another question but an easy one to answer. I spent my young years in Appleton. I got friends here. I visit. People talk.”

  “But your family left before the Ferbers arrived.”

  “David likes your father and mentioned him. They used to go to concerts together. He also mentioned the young daughter who rushes around town like a crazy chipmunk writing her stories and…”

  I pursed my lips. “Are you saying I’m odd?”

  Now he chuckled. “No, Miss Ferber, I’m the oddity. I let people tie me up, chain me, lock me in dark containers. I’m the odd one. You’re the town scandal.”

  I could see he wasn’t being serious, so I relaxed. “Sir, I get three dollars a week running up the streets of the town.”

  “Handcuffs pay better.”

  “I’ll stay with my flowery accounts of afternoon teas with the Ladies Benevolent Society, sir. Less wearing on the wrists.”

  He crossed his arms. “A secret, Miss Ferber, though not a big one. Two days ago, my dear, David pointed you out to me as you interviewed a visiting lecturer at Lawrence. You were in the library, and David and I were meeting a friend there.”

  “You watched me?” I did not like this.

  “Fascinating. A girl reporter. A young Jewish girl, at that.”

  “And?”

  “You’re…unrelenting.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You have a lot of energy. You overwhelmed the man.”

  “What?” I was not happy.

  “You were a delight to watch, Miss Ferber.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I mean that you are a spunky girl. You tackle the trivial as if you was having dinner at the White House.”

  “I take my job seriously, sir.”

  “But it’s Appleton, Miss Ferber.”

  “It’s important to me.”

  Houdini ran his tongue over his upper lip. “Of course it is. Everything is important to you. But Appleton’s routines are a lot more boring than your life should be.”

  “My job is less dangerous than handcuffs and sealed coffins, sir.”

  He got serious. “Safer is not good for the soul.”

  “What?”

  He looked up and down the street. “Are these the boundaries you set for yourself, Miss Ferber? You’re a bright, clever girl. That’s obvious. Look around you. You don’t take no risks. Where would I be if I didn’t tackle the world out there?”

  “Sir, if you don’t think being a girl reporter in Appleton is a risk, then…” I waved my hand in the air.

  He tipped his hat. “Ah, point taken, Miss Ferber.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So you and I are alike then.” He bowed dramatically. “As I suspected. Two souls running after the horizon.”

  “I’m not saying that. I like my job here. Appleton can be lively, filled with…” My voice trailed off.

  “But you’re young. Don’t be bound by College Avenue. It’s easy to be trapped by what’s easy.” He pointed his hand across the street.

  What were we talking about? Strangely, I felt as though he were interviewing me, for I deliberated, weighed my responses, felt the need to satisfy him…to provide him with information from my unheralded biography. Mine was an uneventful life story. Houdini seemed bigger than life, a mountain of a man, the world’s adventurer. Me? Nineteen years old, and…what? An Appleton scourge, peeping Tom, prier into peoples’ mundane lives. Tillie Eisenhower will display her embroidery at the Masonic Hall beginning…

  I needed to refocus. “So I can interview you, Mr. Houdini?”

  He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying our exchange. “You already are.”

  Something had just happened here. We liked each other. He was flattering me, I could tell, but more so—yes, he was flirting with me, innocently, trying to charm me. And I felt pleased, a little intoxicated. Men didn’t flirt with me, the drab, plain girl with the bushel-basket pompadour and the round nosy face. And certainly not older men…and famous ones at that. Was it that easy for young provincial girls to fall prey to such idle flattery? Obviously it was; I was ready to follow Harry Houdini to the ends of his handcuffed universe. Well, maybe not.

  For the next fifteen minutes or so we chatted like old friends, Houdini wanting to help me, this young intense girl, and a good measure of our talk was silly and frivolous. I’d been training myself to remember conversations, word for word, believing that a notepad suddenly thrust into the space between me and the soul being interviewed served as a wall. So, instead, I listened to his boisterous anecdotes and made mental notes.

  Yes, he was in town to visit old school chums, David Baum especially, the boy he hung out with as a child, the two of them stealing peaches and crabapples from the farms out by Little Chute. Yes, he was here for a week, enjoying his hometown, traveling with his brother Theodore, and he’d try out his new show at the Lyceum—a “few surprises,” he hinted—as he prepared to head back to Europe later that summer. He described his fascination with handcuffs, leg irons, ropes, and nailed boxes. He was animated, twitching, nervous, and he spoke loudly, boasting of his stupendous salary. “I make sometimes two grand a week.” He got a little sentimental when I asked him about his boyhood, his embryonic magic shows, what he recalled from the old fields across the tracks in the Sixth Ward, a contortionist act, three silly performances managed by buddy Jack Hoeffler, who paid him exactly thirty-five cents.

  “What was your most difficult feat, the most difficult escape you ever made?”

  “I think my escape from the Siberian Transport. I was placed in the great vault intended for political prisoners, and when the massive door was shut, I had the hardest time of my life, perhaps, in releasing myself.” He confided, “Eighteen minutes it took me. But, after all, I am Houdini. In Germany they called me König der Handschellen. You speak German?”

  “Of course. King of the Handcuffs.”

  “Very good, young lady.”

  I got him to talk about his life as little Ehrich Weiss, and he got teary-eyed talking about his mother. What was he doing in front of the drug store? Well, his father the rabbi rented rooms on College Avenue between Oneida and Morrison. He pointed to a building. “Right there. Over the Heckert Saloon. Where I used to get my spanking.”

  “A se
ntimental journey?”

  He ignored that. “But now I’m the master of chains and handcuffs, all made of the strongest iron.” He made a bicep and told me to feel his upper arm. I hesitated, but he insisted. “Go ahead.”

  Feeling foolish, I let my fingers feel the hard muscle, which he flexed. Red faced, unsure, I dropped my hand back to my side. He was grinning, enjoying my discomfort.

  Suddenly, as though slamming a book shut, he stopped talking. The interview was over. I backed away, thanking him, but he leaned forward. “Let me tell you a secret.”

  “To what?” A child’s wide-eyed wonder.

  “To your future. Because I sense you are like me—hungry to leave this small city, hungry for something out there. You have a heimweh for it. You know that word?”

  “A talent, I suppose.”

  “You are hungry…”

  “Oh, no,” I protested, “I’m content…”

  He hushed me. “No, you ain’t. Stop this…this talk. Otherwise you wouldn’t be assaulting strange men in front of drug stores. You’d be home, the dutiful Jewish daughter, serving your father and mother.”

  I closed my eyes and thought of my blind father, lonely on the front porch of our home. “Mr. Houdini, I…”

  He held up his hand. “I’m not saying this is a bad thing, young woman. But you must let me finish talking.”

  “But…but…I’m content…”

  “No, you’re not. Contentment is for the baby in a cradle. All over the world I spot it, identify it. You—I see it. Keep in mind that I come from these streets. There’s a hunger in some souls…”

  I needed to get away, miserable now. How had this man, a stranger talking about himself, guessed my unhappiness?

  “I’ll tell you something. Just two things. Two things that lead you to success in the world. In fact, why I am the world famous Houdini and not little Ehrich Weiss picnicking on the Fox River. Houdini, one of the great people of the earth right now. Why people all over know me.” He puffed up his chest, face flushed. I waited, breathless. “Can you tell me what they are?”

  I panicked. What? What? Finally, I stabbed, “Imagination.”

  He slapped one fist into the other. “Good for you, Miss Ferber. But that you knew all along. The other?”

  I was at a loss.

  “Let me tell you then. Concentration. Imagination ain’t nothing good without concentration. How do you think I get out of deadly bolts and chains? It takes imagination, true, the leap of fancy, maybe, but, you know, concentration shapes the edges of the fancy.” Then he closed up again. “I expect to read your interview in the Crescent. I’ll cut it out and paste it in my scrapbook.”

  The interview was over. But my mind spun like a child’s top. My God, an interview with Harry Houdini! How would my revelations be greeted across the street, down in the office? I, the distaff interloper, the snooping girl, sashaying in with the scoop of the week. A bead of sweat formed on my brow. One more battle to wage.

  Houdini kept talking. “You’re a delightful young woman, Miss Ferber. And, I think, a brave one. I hope our paths cross again before I leave Appleton.” That struck me as impossible. “Are you coming to my performance at the Lyceum?”

  I hadn’t planned to. Beer hall pyrotechnics; vaudeville buffoonery. “Yes. Of course.”

  “Would you like to have me tie you up and secret you in a box—and then change places with you?”

  “No, sir. Coffins have no appeal for me.”

  He laughed then, uproariously and full-throated. I turned to go. “Ah, Miss Ferber.” I swung back. He was handing me something. Two padlocks rested in his palm. In front of the drug store were two candy machines, glass-bowed containers of penny candy, set up against the white clapboards. Somehow, deftly, while we spoke, he’d undone the simple padlocks and now deposited them into my palm. “You’d better return these to the shopkeeper. Otherwise he’ll have no candy left for the youngsters of Appleton to buy.” He walked away.

  I hadn’t seen him touch the two dispensers in all the time I’d spoken with him.

  ***

  Back at the city room, reached in a fury, I pecked out a two-page interview on my Oliver. No one there paid me any mind nor wondered at my sudden return to the city room. Within the half hour I was through, a rambling but nonetheless faithful account of my conversation with Houdini. As I typed, I felt euphoric. Still, his advice locked itself neatly in my brain. “Concentration and imagination,” the secret code to something. There was a whiff of arrogance in his telling me how to succeed, which bothered me, a hint of his own self-congratulation. Frankly, I already possessed both qualities. I was a young woman of purpose, clearly. So be it. Ego is the province of an entertainer. Satisfied, I slipped the final page from the machine, read it over again, penciled in some changes, and sat back, triumphant.

  Sam Ryan, nodding off in the late-afternoon warm room, roused himself. “You got the look of a fox raiding a hen house.”

  I gleamed, handing him the two typed sheets. Silently, he reached for them, sat up, and read the headline I’d provided: “Houdini is Master of Locks and Bolts.” He shot me a look, shaking his head. “How?”

  I shrugged.

  He read on, a smile seeping into the creases of his mouth. “Good job.” Then, getting the attention of Matthias Boon who’d been ignoring our brief exchange, he waved the sheets. “Here, Mr. Boon. This will run tomorrow.”

  Boon probably expected to read of some boating mishap on the Fox River or, maybe, the wife of the President of Lawrence University spilling tea on a visiting dignitary. He read the sheets rapidly, his small, stolid body hard, tense, the tendons in his neck purple and prominent. His stubby fingers drummed the pages, his nails so bitten to the quick that a line of dried blood seemed permanent scars. He eyed me. I expected censure or anger at my usurping his planned thunder. Instead, his voice was buttery. “A tad flowery and syrupy, no?”

  I fumed.

  He drew a red pencil across lines, editing, shifting, truncating my prose. He slid it back to me and half of my words had disappeared, blotted out, including my last mesmerizing paragraph about the trickery with the drug-store candy machines. Gone—all of that. Where I’d mentioned the London Times, he’d added a phrase: “the most conservative paper in the world.” Why? Where I’d said how successful Houdini was, he’d added to my “poor fatherless boy” the phrase “wealth and ease.” He’d brutalized my work, but I said nothing.

  “Quite the coup, Miss Ferber.” Sam saluted me.

  When I looked at Matthias Boon, his expression could only be called hatred. “I guess it helps to be Jewish.”

  “No,” I cut the silence, “it helps to be a reporter on the prowl.”

  Houdini’s praise—his celebration of my spirit—flooded me, lifting me beyond the cramped city room. Something of Houdini’s energy or golden dust covered me, even as I realized that Matthias Boon would punish me for what I’d just done.

  The stump-like city editor sat with his pipe in hand, his feet up, munching on the hardtack biscuits he kept in a brown bag in his drawer. The muscles in his neck looked like taut rope.

  Well, one more nail to my own coffin. Which, I knew, I couldn’t escape as seamlessly as did Houdini.

  Chapter Three

  Daylight was fading as I finally turned onto North Street, four blocks north of the Crescent office. There was my home, the white clapboard house with the gingerbread lattice, the floor-to-ceiling casement windows, and the generous wraparound porch on three sides of the house. Flower boxes, planted with Sweet William and marjoram, lined the porch, along with wicker baskets filled with cascading ferns. I loved the house, considered it modern and grand.

  But I dreaded what I’d find there.

  I dawdled, my long dress sweeping the dirt lane, dust swirling. From a distance in the faltering twilight, I could see my father behind the floral boxes and baskets tucked into the Adirondack chair he lived in these days. Sitting there, impeccably dressed in his black suit with knitted tie. Wa
iting for me. My heart raced.

  Distracted, I nearly crossed into the path of Mr. Cyrus P. Powell passing by in his plum-colored Victoria. He ignored my raised hand of greeting as he maneuvered his horses into a brisk clip. There was always something about the severe man that made me shiver. I’d never seen the prosperous Mr. Powell smile at anyone. In seconds he disappeared around a corner.

  All was quiet. Staring down the street, across that expanse of neat and mannerly homes, I was gripped by a wave of panic; my throat tightened. My father was bent over, his head nodding. Flickering gaslights started popping on, a syncopated rhythm that turned the street into a fuzzy, drifting landscape, a dark-laced panorama that made me think of Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” all that heavy gloom, that slate-gray mist, that…that sense of ending.

  For a moment I closed my eyes. Stop this. No! But I couldn’t shake the gnawing fear. I knew in that awful moment, paralyzed in the street, that my father would soon die—that this shadowy tableau of a slender man huddled outside his home would be something I’d have to flee.

  I swallowed, roused myself, kept walking up the pathway, past the untrimmed lilacs already finishing their shrill springtime bloom.

  “Is that you, Pete?” He leaned forward, expectant, a little irritation in his voice.

  “Yes, Bill. Appleton’s Nelly Bly reporting home.”

  It was our private joke. For years he’d affectionately called me Pete, though he couldn’t remember why. Then a few years back the Elks Convention met in Appleton, and the noisy, rollicking lodge members, bustling with cheer (and beer), hailed one another as “Bill” as they crossed paths downtown. So my father became Bill to me. Pete and Bill cemented a union that excluded my mother Julia and my older sister Fannie, sensible women who had little time for silly nicknames. Edna and Jacob Ferber, daughter and father, I’d long told myself, were the poets in the household, though I kept that news from the others.