The Last Illusion

The day was not quite as stiflingly hot as the one before and I was altogether in a better mood when I alighted from the train at Ninety-ninth. That mood seemed to be radiated from the other people on the street. Old men were sitting on stoops, windows were open with bedding draped over sills to air. The girls were still playing jump rope games and women paused from their sweeping and polishing to look up with a smile, remembering the days when they had time for games.

Houdini’s brother opened the door to me at their house. “Oh, it’s you again,” he said. He didn’t look too thrilled to see me.

“Has Bess come home from the hospital?”

“Yes, but she’s really weak. My mother is making her some Hungarian beef soup.”

“And your brother is here?”

“Ehrie? Yes, he’s with her.”

I hadn’t heard him called that name before. “Ehrie?” I asked.

He nodded. “That’s his name—Ehrich. I guess that’s where he got the name Harry from for his act. Well, I suppose you’d better come in.”

He led me into a dark hallway and then opened the door to a front parlor. It was truly hideous—dark, overstuffed, and Victorian at its worst with velvet sofas, chairs with skirts to them to hide the offending legs, dried flowers and birds under glass domes, in fact not an inch of space that hadn’t been decorated with something. Then I remembered that this was a rented house and forgave the Houdinis for the awful taste. It was also clearly a traditional front parlor, the type that is never used, except for weddings and funerals. The pillows looked as if no back had ever leaned against them. I perched uneasily on the edge of the nearest chair and waited.

Soon brother Dash returned. “They want you to go up to the bedroom,” he said with a tinge of horror in his voice.

As I started up the stairs the mother’s face peered from the kitchen. She shot Dash a sharp question in whatever language they spoke—I wasn’t sure if it was Hungarian or Yiddish or a mixture of both. He answered and she gave me a look of pure venom. Clearly I wasn’t exactly welcome in the Weiss’s household. I wondered if they were Orthodox Jews and I was breaking some kind of taboo. I’d had a brief encounter with Orthodox Judaism early in my time in New York and had learned about all those rules and foods and different sinks. But then Harry and Bess had traveled all over Europe in their profession. They’d have learned to eat and sleep on the road in a variety of circumstances. And I also remembered that Bess wasn’t even Jewish. So that couldn’t be the reason that Harry’s mother resented my presence. I wondered what they’d told her.

Bess was lying propped among pillows. She still looked very pale, but her dark eyes lit up when she saw me. “Here she is, Harry. Here’s our girl,” she said. “Come on in, Molly.”

“Your mother and brother don’t seem to think I should be here,” I said, coming over to take her hand and nodding to Harry, who stood at the window.

“They don’t like the idea of bringing an outsider into the act. Can’t say I do either,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it all night and I am not at all happy about this idea. I can’t see how it’s going to work. In fact, it’s a stupid idea.”

“Just give it a try, Harry,” Bess said, grasping at his hand. “You promised, Harry. You’d promised you’d give it a try. That’s all I’m asking.” She gazed up at him. “Let’s teach her the basic things and if she can’t do it, then fine. You’ll have to go on solo.”

He nodded. “Right, let’s get to work then. The first thing you have to learn is how to move. Have you noticed how the girls move onstage—everything is big and dramatic. They walk like this—” and he crossed the room in long slinky strides. “And always the arm gestures. Light and airy and graceful.” He demonstrated those. “And draw the audience’s attention to yourself and your shape.” He ran his hand gracefully tracing the shape of a supposed female body. It was rather funny to watch this little man pretending to be an alluring female, but I didn’t smile.

“Now you do it.”

I felt horribly embarrassed as I strutted across the bedroom, gestured to Houdini, drew attention to my own costume. It wasn’t until I saw him grinning that I realized how awful I must look.

“Well it’s quite obvious you’ve never done this before, isn’t it? You were never a dancer or acrobat, I take it?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“That’s pretty obvious. Pity. Most illusionists’ assistants can do all the acrobatic moves. The odd cartwheel or split never hurts. But there’s nothing we can do about that.”

“Teach her the signals, Harry,” Bess said. “That’s the most important thing she needs to know.”

“Signals?” I asked.

Harry paced uncertainly. “I’m not sure about this, honeykins. Giving away our secrets to a stranger—to someone we hardly know?”