From The Snare

BUSTER

If you were a ghost, if you were a ghost, you wouldn’t be here.

HARRY

Pray tell…

BUSTER

…Houdini is dead, he died…

HARRY

…I died on October 31st, 1926 with my dear sweet Bess by my side. I died because of pride and vanity. I died because of my folly and my fame. I died because of a punch in the stomach. This is what happened, this is how it goes. In 1926, a few weeks before Halloween, my fame caught up with me at last, in Montreal of all places. One afternoon, I was relaxing in my dressing room before the evening performance. There were a few visitors there, a couple of fellows from the university. One was an art student and the other was a football star. While the artist sketched my portrait, the other fellow, his name was Whitehead the fellow quizzed me about my physical abilities. He had seen the show the night before and was especially impressed by one of my routines. Volunteers from the audience come onstage and strike me in the stomach with sledgehammers. You see, it was a simple trick to compress the muscles in my stomach, making them like stone. The volunteers, we always chose the strongest men we could find in the house, they would pound away until they were exhausted. After which I would rise unharmed and thank them for their troubles. As I said, one of the more popular moments in the show. This had impressed the young athlete from Montreal. More than swallowing needles, card manipulations, and death-defying escapes. The fellow, Whitehead – white head, white face, moon face — he asked me if it was true, or was it all a sham? I assured him that it was true, that I could withstand even the most brutal blows to my stomach through the power of concentration and will. And, while I lay there, completely relaxed, he punched me, four or five times. I didn’t have any warning, any time to prepare, any time to think.

Pause.

HARRY

A doctor was called, but he didn’t arrive until the house was already starting to fill with people for the evening show. A few minutes before the curtain was to rise, I was looked over hastily and told to get to a hospital for a more thorough examination. My gut was ablaze with pain and I could barely stand upright, but the show must go on. Another standby from the old days, I might add. And so I went on with the show, despite the pain. The show was difficult and I barely made it through the…

BUSTER

…I remember all this.

HARRY

Indulge me, you know so much. Do you remember the Water Coffin? I do. Then, at the close of the performance I am bound in a straightjacket, wrapped in chains, and lowered upside down into an upright glass coffin filled with icy water. In life I could, in addition to my many other abilities, hold my breath for well over five minutes, you know.

BUSTER

I know.

HARRY

Behind the screen, underwater, I work my escape while the clock ticks off the minutes until my impending doom. The band plays lighthearted numbers to while away the time. The Water Coffin. My most difficult escape. A show stopper. The grand finale. And that night it’s where all my skill finally gives out. My stomach full of fire, hanging upside down, holding my breath in an glass coffin banded in iron. I feel my muscles turning to stone as the chill waters draw the warmth from me. There is a hum, a rush in my ears, and a whispering shadow circles me. It circles again. I can hear the orchestra playing. The eerie, submerged music comes to me through the waters like the mingled voices of a choir of retarded children. Then the music drops away, and the shadow falls full upon me at last.

Pause.

HARRY

Imagine my disappointment to wake up in a hospital, bound not by chains but tubes and being pricked with needles day and night, my body full of poison from a ruptured appendix. The punch, you remember. When I wake, I know there is only one escape left for me. I have seen the shadow, it came too close to escape. The curtain was falling, slowly . . . but it was falling. When I wake, Bess is by my side. I can only imagine what it must have been like for her onstage. The stopwatch ticking away, the moments stretching out, growing longer and longer. The band falling away to random notes, panic in the audience when they tear the screen away to reveal me hanging there upside down, blue and cold and still. Women screaming and men crying out for someone to help. The stagehands smash my glass coffin with an axe. I lie there on the soaked stage, stretched out, drenched, unmoving. The world famous Houdini, the greatest magician of this world or any other, brought down by his fame, his vanity, and a punch in the stomach.

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Happy Haloween, everyone. Only seven more months until Whitsundtide.