Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings (20 page)

And so forth. It is the job of the police both to keep track of Rasputin’s behaviour and to keep it under wraps. But one day he goes too far. After praying at the tombs of the saints, he visits his favourite restaurant, the Villa Rhode, with a boisterous group of followers. They drink heavily, particularly Rasputin himself, who starts to brag about his relationship with the Tsarina. He points to his embroidered blouse and says that ‘the old woman’ sewed it for him, and goes on to make increasingly lewd comments about her.

A fellow diner questions whether he is really Rasputin: can he prove it? In reply, Rasputin unbuttons his fly and waves his penis around.
⁸⁰
This, he boasts, is the way he behaves in the presence of the Tsar. He adds that he has often had his way with ‘the old girl’. He then hands out a series of notes with mottoes such as ‘Love Unselfishly’.

By chance, the British Ambassador to Moscow, Robert Bruce Lockhart, is present in the same restaurant that evening. ‘A violent fracas in one of the private rooms. Wild shrieks of a woman, a man’s curses, broken glass and the banging of doors. Headwaiters rushed upstairs. The manager sent for the police ... But the row and roaring continued ... The cause of the disturbance was Rasputin – drunk and lecherous ...’ Eventually, Rasputin is dragged away by the police, snarling and vowing revenge.

The news reaches the Governor of Moscow, who makes a report to the assistant minister of internal affairs, Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, who submits
a bowdlerised report to the Tsar, who in turn places it, unread, to one side. But then a new minister of internal affairs, no friend to Rasputin, commissions a re-investigation by Dzhunkovsky, incorporating it into a much more detailed report on Rasputin’s way of life. This final report is once again submitted to the Tsar, who this time reads it all the way through. What is to be done?

On June 21st, the Tsar sends for Rasputin and demands an explanation. Rasputin says that he is only human, and as much a sinner as the next man, but he would never have exposed himself or referred in any way disrespectfully to the Imperial Family. The Tsar is far from convinced, and orders him to leave the capital. As he departs, Rasputin mutters to one of the guards, ‘Your Dzhunkovksy is finished.’ Leaving Moscow with, as it were, his tail between his legs, Rasputin nevertheless remarks to his escort that ‘life for seekers after truth and righteousness can sometimes be very hard’. On the steamer home, he gets into a fight with two fellow passengers, accuses the steward of theft, and falls into a drunken stupor.

The Tsarina is handed Dzhunkovsky’s report and immediately bursts into tears. She calls it a pack of lies, and breathlessly urges the Tsar to sack its author. ‘I long knew Dzhunkovsky hates Grigory ... If we let our Friend be persecuted we and our country shall suffer for it ... I am so weary such heartache and pain fr. all this – the idea of dirt being spread about one we venerate is more than horrible.

‘If Dzhunkovsky is with you, call him, tell him you order him to tear it up and not to dare to speak of Grigory as he does and that he acts as a traitor.

‘Ah my love when
at last
will you thump with your hand upon the table and scream at Dzhunkovsky and others when they act wrongly – one does not fear you – and one
must
– they must be frightened of you otherwise all sit upon us.’

Once again, the Tsar changes tack, and acts on his wife’s advice. In September, he dismisses Dzhunkovsky, allowing Rasputin to re-establish his place at court. The Tsarina pens a letter to her husband reminding him to hold Rasputin’s holy trinkets for good luck: ‘Remember to keep the Image in your hand again and several times to comb your hair with His comb before the sitting of the ministers ...’

IS TRICKED BY

Kremlin Square, Moscow

May 23rd 1903

The Tsar and Tsarina believe in magic. Séances and table-tappings are
de rigueur
among their court, and no palace is complete without its domestic ghost, ready to play a suitably eerie tune on the piano whenever a member of the family is dying.

Over the years, Nicholas and Alexandra have allowed themselves to be guided by a succession of
wolshebniks
, or miracle men, the more outlandish the better. The roster includes Matronushka Bosoposhka, ‘Matrona, the barefooted one’, who, it is thought, can tell the future; Vasili Tkatchenko, an elderly soothsayer much given to grave pronouncements on foreign policy; and Philippe Vachot, a former butcher’s assistant from Lyons, who offers the full range of spiritualism, hypnotism and faith healing. M. Philippe, as he styles himself, is a dab hand at conjuring up the spirits of the Tsar’s predecessors, who encourage the Tsar to be vigorous in his suppression of dissent. But M. Philippe’s reputation for determining the sex of unborn children takes a tumble when the Tsar’s next child turns out to be not a son, as predicted, but a girl, Anastasia. Two years later, M. Philippe declares once again that the Tsarina is pregnant with a son, but this prediction too proves faulty: she isn’t pregnant after all. Vachot is paid off, and booted back to Paris.

In May of the same year, Harry Houdini, the greatest magician the world has ever seen, sets off from Berlin for Russia on the next stage of his European tour. ‘We leave for Moscow this evening, and I hope they will not send me to Siberia,’ he writes in his American newspaper column.

His welcome is decidedly lukewarm. At the border town of Alexandrowo, patrolmen ransack his luggage. When they find a selection of burglary tools, they cut up rough until Houdini produces the necessary permit.

Houdini does not like travelling in Russia. ‘I think that a butcher in America would hesitate before he would ship his cattle in one of these third-class trains. There is nothing that I have ever witnessed that has equalled it,’ he tells his readers.

But the Russians are soon captivated by him. In Moscow, he manages to escape from a Siberian Transport Cell in the old Butirskaya prison, even after a full body-search that is supervised by the head of the secret police. The newspapers say it can only be explained by Houdini’s extraordinary ability to dematerialise. In fact, he wears a false finger, in which he stores a miniature metal-cutting tool and a coil of wire with sawed teeth, of the type used by surgeons for cutting through skulls. The wonders never cease. After a private performance, a Moscow newspaper gasps, ‘Mr Houdini, in front of a serious committee, was able to turn into a woman, then turn into a baby, then come back to his regular appearance.’ People believe what they want to believe.

Small wonder, then, that Houdini is soon summoned to entertain the royal household. On the evening of May 23rd, the Tsar and Tsarina attend a performance at the home of the Tsar’s uncle, the Grand Duke Sergei, which overlooks Kremlin Square. After a few mind-reading tricks, Houdini asks each guest to jot down on a piece of paper an impossible task. The papers are gathered and placed into a hat. Houdini then asks the Grand Duke to fish one out and read it to him. The Grand Duke looks at the piece of paper he has picked, and shakes his head.

‘I am afraid that this task will be impossible for even such a wonder-worker as you,’ he says.

‘To make the impossible possible is my job,’ replies Houdini.

The Tsar is impatient to know what the task is.

‘Can you ring the bells of the Kremlin?’ reads the Grand Duke. The women in the room start to giggle. They all know that the bells of the Kremlin have not pealed for over a century, and the ropes have all rotted to dust.

But Houdini remains unabashed. He walks over to the large window overlooking Kremlin Square and beckons his audience to gather around him. He pulls a handkerchief from one pocket and a container full of purple powder from another and proceeds to sprinkle the powder onto
the handkerchief. Then he waves his handkerchief in solemn arcs, and recites this mysterious incantation:

Powder travel through the night
,

Your assignation before dawn’s light
,

From Seventh Heaven to deepest Hell
,

Do your bidding and ring the bell!

With that, he throws open one of the great windows. There is a pause, and suddenly the bells of the Kremlin begin to ring. Everyone is amazed. It is, they declare, a miracle.

Oh no it isn’t. Unbeknownst to them, Houdini’s new assistant, Franz Kukol, was standing on a balcony of the hotel across the square. At the sight of the prearranged signal of the handkerchief being waved, he aimed an air rifle at the bells and fired a volley of shots, causing them to ring.

After it is all over, the Tsar is particularly impressed by the way Houdini refuses any sort of payment. What he does not know is that the magician has been tipped off by Grand Duke Sergei’s wife that the royal family regards anyone who accepts payment as a menial. Instead, Houdini accepts a variety of gifts for these private shows: an antique champagne ladle, expensive rings, a fluffy white Pomeranian called Charlie.

Houdini performs again for the Tsar. On his return to America, he boasts that the Tsar wanted him to become an official adviser, but that he refused, saying his art was not for one family, or even one country, but for the world. Grigori Rasputin soon steps in to fill this void. Before very long, the Tsarina grows convinced that he has been sent by God. In 1912 Houdini is contacted by suspicious Russian court officials, who want him to come and expose Rasputin. Houdini, who enjoys unmasking charlatans, considers making the trip, but decides to stay put.

BAFFLES

SS
Imperator

June 23rd 1914

Houdini is finding it very hard to recover from the death of his mother last year. It has affected him deeply. Spending Christmas in Monte Carlo, he tries to assuage his grief in the casinos. He wins 2,000 francs, but feels no sense of elation. Instead, he is drawn to a special graveyard in Monte Carlo, filled with the corpses of those who committed suicide after losing their fortunes to roulette and cards.

‘A terrible feeling pervades the first time one sees the graves, and thinks of the human beings who finish their lives in this manner,’ he writes in his diary. He has heard that the casino workers place money in the pockets of suicide victims so as to suggest that penury has played no part in their deaths; the casino pays for the shipping of the corpses back home in order to keep things quiet. Sometimes it seems that all human life is full of such dirty tricks.

Harry and Beatrice Houdini celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary by taking a cruise back across the Atlantic on the SS
Imperator
. The ship sets sail from Hamburg on June 17th, stopping en route at Southampton to pick up more passengers. On the night of June 23rd, two days before they are due to dock in New York, Houdini tops the bill of a charity benefit being staged for the German Sailors’ Home and the Magicians’ Club of London.

Among the audience is Theodore Roosevelt, the rumbustious former President of the United States.
⁸¹
The onboard entertainment kicks off with
the Ritz Carlton Orchestra playing selections from
La Bohème
. They are joined by the celebrated soprano Madame Cortesao, who sings an aria from
Madame Butterfly
. Finally, amidst much excitement, the great Houdini takes to the stage.

He warms up his audience with a couple of tricks involving silk handkerchiefs and playing cards, before announcing that he will now be performing a séance. ‘I was asked to give an entertainment,’ he later recalls, ‘and the subject of spirit writing came up. A number of other well-known men were present, all of them having intelligence of a high order. Certainly it was not a credulous audience. I offered to summon the spirits and have them answer any question that might be asked.’

He tells the audience, ‘As we all know, mediums do their work in the darkened séance room, but tonight, for the first time anywhere, I propose to conduct a spiritualistic slate test in the full glare of the light!’ A hum of anticipation ripples through the audience as Houdini distributes paper, envelopes and pencils. ‘If you will be so kind as to write upon the blank paper a question that you would like the spirit world to answer ... then fold the paper and seal it in the envelope so there is no chance whatsoever of my seeing the particular query,’ he says.

Houdini approaches Roosevelt’s table and asks him to write down his question on the piece of paper, then to fold the paper over, place it in the envelope and seal it. Returning to the stage, he says to the audience, ‘I am sure there will be no objection if we use the Colonel’s question.’ The audience murmurs its consent.

Houdini now shows Colonel Roosevelt a small wooden frame containing two double-sided chalkboards. ‘Can you confirm to the audience that there is absolutely nothing written on these slates?’ he asks.

‘They are blank,’ confirms Colonel Roosevelt.

Houdini asks him to place his envelope between the two slates.

‘Can you please tell the audience what your question was?’ he says.

‘Where was I last Christmas?’ states the Colonel.

Houdini opens the slates, and holds them up for the audience to see. On one slate there is a map of Brazil: the River of Doubt in the Amazon is highlighted. The other slate carries the message: ‘Near the Andes’. It is signed by the committed spiritualist W. T. Stead, a campaigning British journalist who met his death two years ago, on another cruise liner, the
Titanic
.

‘By George, that proves it!’ shouts Roosevelt, jumping up and waving his arms. Last Christmas, he had indeed spent his time exploring the River of Doubt in Brazil. He laughs until tears run down his cheeks.
⁸²
The audience gasps and screams in amazement.
⁸³

Houdini’s extraordinary success is the talk of the ship. An account of the evening is transmitted by the radio operator of the
Imperator
to Newfoundland, and from there to New York. Before the ship docks, Houdini’s extraordinary feat is all over the American newspapers.