“Harry,” she murmured, “we said we were never going to do that again.” She did not want him exploiting people’s beliefs.
He had responded to Dr. Stone’s warnings in some unconventional ways. He had purchased the original Martin Luther Bible, with Luther’s own notes in the margins, and placed it upon Edgar Allan Poe’s mahogany writing desk, in his study, as if to make some kind of point about dark and light. He had also had his father reburied in the family plot he had purchased in Machpelah Cemetery, insisting on viewing what was left of the body. “There was nothing but skull and bones,” he told Bess, rushing eagerly into the house after the process was complete. “Father’s teeth were in surprisingly excellent condition.”
Now he frowned at her accusations. “This isn’t the same as making up stories about people’s dead cousins, Bess. This is different. It is the Great Mystery.”
“What is the Great Mystery?” she asked him.
He smiled his serene, magician’s smile. “Where I go when I am gone.”
On April 14 the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg during her maiden voyage. The Carpathia, which had rescued some of the survivors from the water, came into port in New York a few days later. Forty thousand people waited on the docks for their arrival, Bess and Harry among them. The mood was frenzied. Some of those waiting recognized Harry and asked if he could communicate with those lost. Harry looked stricken by the suggestion; on flyers thin as tissue paper, representatives of the Metropolitan Opera distributed advertisements for a benefit concert in which the opera star Mary Garden would perform “Nearer My God to Thee.”
The solemnity of the tragedy bled into the summer, and even the fall. One could not travel without fear anymore. Bess and Harry said good-bye to Mrs. Weiss in New York the week following Harry’s diagnosis. He had been invited to Copenhagen to perform for the Danish royal family. It was a pearl-gray morning in October, and a large crowd had gathered at the dock. There were to be two celebrities on board the ship—Harry Houdini, famous magician, and Theodore Roosevelt, former president of the United States. Neither Bess nor Harry had ever met the president, but Harry was determined to make his acquaintance, and Bess had dressed herself carefully that morning in preparation. She looked about the dock for Mr. Roosevelt but did not see him.
Mrs. Weiss looked awfully small, Bess thought, against the massiveness of the ship floating at the pier. She was dressed in black silk, as she always was when seeing Harry off, as a way of mourning his departure. She clung to Harry’s arm and shuffled beside him toward the gangplank.
Harry clasped his mother’s hand. “It’s only for a month,” he said. “John Sargent is going to look after you, and he can arrange for anything you need.”
“You know, I’m old,” she replied with a small smile. “Perhaps when you come back, I shall not be here.”
Harry laughed. “Nonsense. You only like to say those things so I will tell you I love you.”
Bess kissed Mrs. Weiss’s cheek. “Good-bye, Mother.” She picked up her bag quickly, before Harry could do it. Neither of them had told his mother of his kidney, and Bess didn’t want him to wince and give it away; it would only worry Mrs. Weiss. They had argued through the night after Dr. Stone left, and Harry had promised her they would take a three-week vacation after Copenhagen, and he would rest in Provence, on the condition that she keep the secret from his mother while he recovered.
Mrs. Weiss shook her hand free of Harry’s. “Go.”
Harry turned to the crowd that was watching them. “Look, my mother drives me away from her!” They broke out in laughter. Bess flushed; Harry was always the performer, even at the most inconvenient moments.
Bess envied Mrs. Weiss that she had a son like Harry; but at the same time she felt sorry for the woman. Mrs. Weiss was seventy-one already and increasingly fragile each day, and she had spent the majority of her life saying good-bye to those she loved—her husband, her oldest son, and even Harry, for months at a time, when he traveled around the world doing his magic. Bess, at least, could say that she’d been by his side every night since they met.
“Just go quickly,” Mrs. Weiss said, patting his hand, “and come back safely.”
Harry pulled Bess up the stairs onto the ship’s deck. The passengers were waving their hats and cream-colored gloves, shouting and crying. On the pier, the crowd of Harry’s admirers cheered and called his name. The passengers on the boat threw out lines of red paper streamers toward those on the dock. Mrs. Weiss caught Harry’s, and as the ship glided slowly away from the dock, Harry leaned farther and farther over the rail, the long wisp of paper dangling between him and his mother, until it snapped and the ends wafted into the murky water.