The Magician's Lie

“I’ll get right to the point. My name is Adelaide Herrmann,” she said, tapping the bowl of her pipe against the heel of her hand. “I have a show. I think you might be suited for it.”

 

“What kind of show?”

 

“Magic,” she said.

 

My first instinct was revulsion. Magic made me think of Ray, who had been convinced he and I both had magic in us and had tortured me for it. But then I realized she probably wasn’t talking about real magic, if in fact it existed. She’d said show. That was a different animal.

 

She was looking at me very closely. She put her hand out and gently turned my shoulder, turning me toward the streetlight. I could feel the warmth of the light on me, against my cold skin.

 

“You have a very classical face, did you know that?” she said.

 

“I suppose not.” No one had told me I had a classical face. Not even the underhanded Clyde, who had admired me, in his way.

 

“You could do a lot with that face.”

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“It isn’t about the face really, of course,” she said. “I need a dancer.”

 

“What kind?”

 

“Your kind. I saw you in the show, and I think you can do what I need done.”

 

“Which is?”

 

“Better that I show you. Come with me.”

 

She turned down Broadway, and after only a moment’s hesitation, I followed. The scent of pipe tobacco was more pleasant than most of the smells of the city, so I was happy to trail behind her in that cloud. I shouldn’t have trusted her, but I did.

 

There were people on the streets, which usually made me feel safe, but these weren’t the people I was used to. It was full dark. Nighttime revelry had begun. There were policemen around, but it didn’t look like they were doing much policing. At least one had a girl in one arm and a drink in the other. I tried to keep myself to myself as we went and trailed Madame Herrmann like a shadow.

 

Ten blocks later, she turned left onto a narrower street and left again into an alleyway, and we went in at a small door.

 

The stairs were narrow and dark, and I followed her pale shape up through the darkness. The room behind the stage was large and mostly empty, except for several trunks lined up against one wall. Madame Herrmann rummaged in a trunk and threw a few things aside. Two kinds of cloth and something furry. I didn’t look too closely. The next thing she found, she held out to me. Long blond ringlets dangled from her clutched hand.

 

She said, “Put this on.”

 

“Ma’am?”

 

“Put it on,” she said. “I may have a very important opportunity for you. But I need you to put on this wig so I can see you in it.”

 

I tucked my hair underneath the horsehair cap and yanked the wig down over the top of my head. It smelled of old sweat. I held in the gag. I knew whatever opportunity this woman was offering me would rely on my doing what I was told, and I had a strong feeling it was an opportunity I wanted to know more about.

 

“Go over there,” she said, pointing toward the brick wall. When I faced the wall, she said, “Turn around,” so I did and faced her.

 

“Should I—”

 

“Just stay still,” she said.

 

I left that ratty wig on my head and didn’t even blow the hair out of my eye although it itched something awful, and I stared at a brick in the wall that the mason had nicked and overgrouted to make up for it. I only blinked on occasion, because when a powerful woman who smells like rosewater instead of dung tells you to stay still, you know everything depends on exactly how still you can stay, and for how long.

 

After a few minutes, she said, “Well done, you can move now. What’s your name?”

 

“Ada Bates.”

 

“Eh, no good. We’ll change that,” she said. “You’ll start overmorrow.”

 

“What will I start doing?” I asked her. “You haven’t said.”

 

“Young lady, you are going to have the most wonderful life with us. You have no idea.”

 

She was dead right, on both counts, as I would later discover. I didn’t think to ask her how she had picked me out of the crowd. I was no more prominent in the show than a dozen other girls. I was the one she had waited for, and I was a fool not to inquire why. But it was an unexpected, mad night, and I was caught up. And perhaps there was a part of me that was afraid it was too good to be true and asking questions might break the spell.

 

“Fifteen dollars a week, first week in advance,” she said and pressed two bills into my hand. Real money. I only made ten fifty in the chorus. If I’d been a giddier girl, I would have run off right then, but I was levelheaded enough to know why Adelaide had given me the money up front. She wanted me to know there was plenty more where that came from.

 

“I still need to know what the work is,” I said.

 

“What you’ll do for this money, it’s nothing you need be ashamed of,” Madame Herrmann said matter-of-factly. “Tell you what. Tomorrow night, come to the Metropolitan Opera House. You’ll see something amazing. And you’ll understand what my magic is about.”

 

I agreed to come, accepting the ticket she handed me. And I tucked the money into my blouse. So whatever ended up happening, I’d come out ahead, just a little.

 

***

 

The next night, I was delayed by some minor tragedy of Clara’s and then by a slow streetcar, and in the end, I was almost half an hour late for the show. I hoped I wasn’t missing the whole thing. Still I paused when I saw the majestic bulk of the Opera House. It was a tall, yellow brick box with square corners and a triangular peak on top, crowned with a rosette window. Its color stood out clearly among the darker bricks of the other buildings nearby. I scurried around the side and in at the nearest door, handing my ticket to a grim-faced usher. I entered the back of an enormous auditorium, rows and rows and rows of seats stretching out toward a stage.

 

Adelaide Herrmann was onstage, I could see in the first instant, and she would have commanded attention even if she hadn’t been facing a sea of guns. Her robes were almost Oriental, but not adorned. Behind her, a series of great Greek columns rose, white on white, and had something less amazing been happening in front of them, they would have been enough to stare at. But there was this woman. And from the apron of the stage, a firing squad faced her, guns at their shoulders.

 

I stared in dumb fascination at first. I simply couldn’t grasp what was happening. And then, I could.

 

She was a great, grand woman facing down a crowd of men with their guns pointed toward her heart, and as I watched, one man stepped forward and pulled back the trigger of his rifle, and I couldn’t help myself—I shouted “No!”—but no one even turned to look at me, and when I heard the loud report of the gun crack through the silent air, I closed my eyes and prayed to God for a miracle.

 

I still had my eyes closed when the thunderous noise began. I grabbed immediately for the door frame, thinking perhaps it was an earthquake, since I’d never seen or heard one, and you can’t understand a new thing until you’ve had the experience of it. But the noise was not an earthquake, nor an explosion, nor a steam engine.

 

It was applause.

 

I’d heard applause, but not from the back of a room this large, so full, so strong. I realized that not only were the seats on this level full to capacity, but I could hear a whole crowd in the balconies above me, clapping their hands together in a waterfall of dozens, hundreds, of individual acts of praise. The firing squad had laid down their guns, except the dumbfounded man who had stepped forward to fire, and the statuesque woman stood there before them. She looked unharmed. She extended her fist toward the audience, turned it so her fingers were facing up, and uncurled them like the petals of a flower.

 

I was too far away to see, but I knew from the presentation what she was showing them: the bullet.

 

The crowd around and above me leapt to their feet, applauding even more wildly. The applause surged and echoed around the high walls and ceiling of the enormous Opera House, and whatever thrill I’d felt from applause before was like a pale shadow of this new, powerful, crackling energy, and I never wanted it to end.

 

***

 

She was still signing autographs by the stage door when I found her a half hour later, and I waited a half hour after that until she’d finished. I couldn’t help thinking she was moving quickly for someone who’d been shot. There wasn’t a spot of blood or gunpowder anywhere on her pale robes. I wondered what the secret of the act was. What if she could actually do magic? Did she have some power that allowed her to snatch a fast-moving bullet out of the air? If there was a trick to it, I certainly couldn’t guess what it was. All I could do was be amazed.

 

Once the last stragglers were gone, I stepped up to her and said, “That was amazing, Madame Herrmann.”

 

“Wasn’t it though?” she said, and from a fold of her elegant robes, produced her pipe. “Adelaide Herrmann, Queen of Magic, first successful performer of the bullet catch in America. Though she is not American. As I’m sure the papers will say. Which is acceptable. As long as they say something, and in large type.”

 

“I have some questions,” I said to her.

 

“I have some answers. Let’s get a drink.”

 

We sat at the tavern for hours, and she answered my questions, every last one. Although she had come to New York City for the bullet catch and sometimes performed here, her magic show was not based in the city. They traveled by train on the vaudeville circuits. She was the star of her show, as she should be, but she used a team of assistants in her various illusions, and they were one short at the moment. A young person with a good amount of talent and a willingness to work hard could find success with the Great Madame Herrmann’s show. Her voice was wistful as she told me that she herself loved the stage and was never happier than when she stood in front of a thunderstruck crowd, performing. And in her words, I heard the echo of that amazing, all-embracing storm of applause, and I knew I was ready to sign on for the adventure. She was offering me another audience, and I was hungry for it. The promised salary of fifteen dollars a week instead of ten-and-change didn’t hurt either. And with bed and board provided—even if that room was on a moving train, it was still no cost to me—I’d have far more of that salary to keep.

 

And still in the back of my mind, the fear of Ray was there, logical or no, and if by chance he came to look for me in New York, he would never find me. I would be on the move constantly. What better way to be invisible than to never be still?

 

When the light began to touch the sky outside, she said, “Settled then. We’re off to the station.”

 

“Now?”

 

“Now.”

 

“My things are back at the rooming house,” I said. “I need to go pack them up.”

 

“Ah, no need,” she said. “I’ll send a boy to take care of it. He’ll get your things. The address, write it down.”

 

I did as she said, printing in careful letters. I wasn’t used to having other people do things for me, but as it turned out, I got used to that quickly enough.

 

 

 

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