The Confabulist (34 page)

The spiritualists Houdini hated so much capitalized on these memories. Or at least that’s what he believed. But the ghosts of our dead don’t need to be used against us by mediums or fortunetellers. We do it ourselves. We measure ourselves against ghosts. I’ve done this. I see that now. It’s left me alone and remorseful. I’ve denied myself a life in the attempt to appease my flawed remembrances.

Alice reaches into her purse with her free hand and retrieves a small, leather-bound notebook. I recognize it as the book I write in to help me remember. Inside it is a square of newspaper. She hands it to me and I take it. Her left hand still grasps my right, so I hold the paper in one hand and squint to read the tiny type.

Clara Strauss: March 28, 1947–September 2, 2010

Clara Strauss passed away peacefully of natural causes at the age of sixty-three. Clara was born in Montreal, Quebec, where she lived and worked as a
registered nurse. She is survived by her daughter, Alice, and predeceased by her parents, Isaac and Judith Weiss. No funeral services to be held.

I hand Alice back the obituary notice. I remember sitting in a waiting room, wanting to go inside, being told I was too late. I left everything too late. I had once woken up beside her on a cold morning, I had sat with her while our child cried, and I had left her. No, none of that is right. My confabulations are closing in. My head buzzes. I am dizzy.

I refocus on Alice. “There should have been a funeral.”

She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and returns the clipping to the notebook. “She didn’t want one.”

“Why not?”

Alice shrugs. “She didn’t think anyone would go.”

“Was she right?”

Alice thinks about this. “No. Lots of people would have gone. Everyone loved her. She just never believed they did.”

“I think,” I say, “it’s important to put people to rest properly. I never went to my mother’s funeral. I found out about her death a month after the fact in a letter from my father.”

Alice nods. “I know.”

I don’t remember telling her this. But Dr. Korsakoff has warned me not to trust my recollections. I should heed his words.

“All these things you say about Houdini, Martin. The flaws, the way he treated people. You do know that you did all these things?”

“Yes, I know it. It’s ruined me, and I’ve let it ruin me. I wish I’d known how to be better.”

“You want there to be a moment. A grand mistake, like punching Harry Houdini, that is the cause of your leaving her. But there isn’t.”

Alice lowers her chin and turns over the hand she’s been holding onto. She opens my palm and plucks out the coin.

I smile. She hadn’t fallen for the trick at all; she’d detected the false transfer right away.

“Well done,” I say.

Alice smiles back at me, and I realize that she looks a little like my mother. Funny that I’ve never noticed that before. “I’m my father’s daughter,” she says, and drops the coin into her bag.

“Then you know that magic isn’t real,” I say.

“Yes,” she answers, leaning in to rest her head on my shoulder, “but I never stop wanting it to be.”

I exhale and close my eyes. It’s a sunny day and I’m here on a bench with Alice. It’s not a picnic with my mother and father, and there is no packed lunch and there is no reassuring breeze, but it’s just as good. Better maybe. This, I’m sure, is real. Maybe soon I’ll have cause to doubt it, but for now there’s no questioning it. I am happy.

“That dog that took your toy when you were a child,” I say.

“My rubber chicken.”

“Someone should have chased that dog down and got it back for you.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t do that,” I say.

“I am too.”

Her voice cuts through my tinnitus and my mind clears as though a strong wind has blown fog out to sea. I picture Alice and Clara sitting on a blanket in the sand, can hear the gulls screaming and the
waves collapsing on themselves. I hold out the rubber chicken, still wet with the dog’s drool, and Alice takes it from me, relieved and content. Clara hasn’t seen me yet, preoccupied with something off to the side, but soon she’ll turn and see me. She’ll laugh as I wipe my hands on my pants and sit down beside them on the blanket.

“This doesn’t make up for anything,” Alice says.

“I know.”

But she leans in closer, and I feel something shift. The past isn’t gone, it never is, but that doesn’t matter. The spiritualists were wrong and Houdini was wrong and I was wrong. I had to lose my memories for me to understand. Magic is believing in what we understand is not real because we want it to be. Magic is that tiny fraction keeping you from infinity. And this, right now, is magic.

The ice cream orderly strides through the automatic doors. He is intent on something. He turns and looks at me and taps his finger on his watch in a way that feels familiar to me. I can tell we’ve done this before and I understand that in a few minutes I will have to get up and go with him back inside the hospital.

But not yet.

Author’s Note

Martin Strauss would have been intimately familiar with the major works related to the life of Houdini; particularly William Kalush and Larry Sloman’s
The Secret Life of Houdini
, Kenneth Silverman’s
Houdini
, and Ruth Brandon’s
The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini
. These texts were certainly invaluable to me, as were many others. The writings of Jim Steinmeyer are where I learned most of what I know about magic, and Greg King’s
The Man Who Killed Rasputin
was an invaluable source of Russian intrigue. Houdini himself wrote many books on both magic and spiritualism, all of which give good insight into both their subjects and their author.

Where possible I have attempted to use both Houdini’s and Arthur Conan Doyle’s words, sometimes slightly edited. Lady Doyle’s transcription of her Atlantic City séance with Houdini is one example; Houdini’s speech to the audience containing Martin and Clara in Montreal is another (though he didn’t say those words in Montreal).

Most of what you read in these pages is made up, though many of the people did exist in one form or another. Regarding the descriptions of methods of magic, I make no claims of veracity.

I am indebted to Kevin Baker, Joseph Boyden, David Chariandy, Andrew Davidson, Jennica Harper, Lee Henderson, Nancy Lee, Keith Maillard, Diane Martin, John K. Samson, Timothy Taylor, Miriam Toews, John Vigna, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Katherine Wagner for suffering various drafts and offering invaluable comments, to Taylor Brown-Evans for some terrific researching, and to John Cox of
wildabouthoudini.com
for help with an issue regarding locks. To Kevin Patterson and the Sea Mouse Writers’ Trust: your hospitality is magnificent and helped me immensely. Thanks as well to all my colleagues at the University of British Columbia for providing me with the best place on earth to spend my days.

My editors and friends, Louise Dennys, Michael Heyward, Sarah McGrath, and Ravi Mirchandani have made me happy to be a writer; my agent, Henry Dunow, is simply the best guy around. Thanks to Anne Beilby, Nina Ber-Donkor, Marion Garner, Anthony Goff, Liz Hohenadel, Amanda Lewis, Nicola Makoway, Yishai Seidman, and Sarah Stein. It is a privilege to work with each of you.

Lara, Katharine, and Margaret Galloway have seen me vanish while writing this book, and have worked hard to forgive me and let me reappear. I hope to repay their faith.

Steven Galloway
is the author of
Finnie Walsh, Ascension
, and
The Cellist of Sarajevo
, which was a national bestseller; won the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature and the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award; was a finalist for the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; and was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia and lives with his wife and two young daughters in Vancouver, British Columbia.