Following her debut in the afternoon Bess had looked radiant, almost incandescent, her large eyes alight with pride. Any restlessness she had felt would surely now be eased. Yet after the evening show, perhaps because she knew the standard of her own performance had slipped, her mood had been more subdued. Before retiring to bed his wife had sipped not one but two balloons of brandy, clutching the glass with both hands like a woman seeking warmth from a fire. She told him she needed it to calm herself after the thrill of performing. He didn’t object, though she knew he didn’t approve. The empty glass is now on her bed-head. Harry wonders if some kind of sedative, perhaps one of Dr Kennedy’s potions, is what he needs himself to ensure he can sleep. His silk eyeshade is no longer enough.
Reaching for a shoe under his bed, he can feel how one twisted sheet has fallen to the floor. He must have kicked it loose, waking too warm in this airless room. In all of his dreams lately he has been trying to free himself from restraints. And even here, where it is so hot, he cannot elude his recurring dream about being trapped under ice in Detroit. So frequent has it become he is no longer sure which elements of it are based on fact. He is condemned to watch, again and again, flickering images of himself in a frozen river, with the outcome changing every time.
IMPRISONED under the ice, he is strangely calm. He has found a ribbon of air lying on the water. He can suck in shallow breaths as he searches for the opening. He hears a man calling out: ‘Someone help him!’ Then a child’s voice: a paper-seller. ‘Special! Special! Extra edition – “Houdini Dead!”’ Another voice: ‘Quickly – someone tell Mrs Houdini.’ But do they mean his wife or his mother? He finds the opening and gulps air, startling onlookers. He wakes half-sitting in bed, his face thrust upwards.
In recent weeks this episode has ended differently.
He finds the hole in the ice but his path is blocked. It is that corpse again, the woman with no name. This ghastly thing will not let him escape. And when he tries to thrust the body aside its surface is no longer soft and slimy but frozen solid. As unyielding as the timber of this window frame as he wrenches at the curtains. He must look out. He feels shut in. That’s all it is. These phantoms are in his mind. A day on the road will set him right.
Outside, the gloom is giving way to the murky grey of early morning. There is no sign of Jordan. Everything is as still as the statues on their pedestals in the nearby park. He lets the curtains close behind him and stands between them and the glass, looking out. He tries to slow his breathing, pondering how much more difficult it is to train the mind than the body. Through relentless training he has gained control over all his muscles. Each finger is as strong as it is dexterous. He can undo knots with his tongue and teeth and lips. He can close the palm of his hand on objects like a vice. But he cannot master his mind.
Only when he is not working do doubts creep in and he feels he is not in control. He has always been, in essence, a solo performer. He has had stage assistants – a brother, his wife, Kukol and Vickery – but their role is like that of a card-dealer with a poker player. When he first saw a flying machine, the thing that struck him most forcibly was that the pilot was on his own. Now he is chafing to feel that sensation again: to be the master of a machine in the air. His stage work has him bound in chains, trussed with ropes, compressed inside dark spaces. Flying will free him.
Harry eases the window ajar and leans into the opening, trying to get a sense of the weather. The air feels cool and a little damp and smells faintly of manure. There appears to have been no further rain. Impatient to go, he decides to wait for Jordan near the hotel entrance. Harry grabs his jacket, a cap, goggles. He doesn’t expect to fly today, but he has learnt that the goggles are a useful guard against grit and dust or mud from the roads. He kisses his slumbering wife on her forehead and leaves.
Outside, the absence of people or traffic makes him feel like an actor who has wandered on to a deserted stage. His shoes crunch the gravel on the street as he performs his stretching exercises, raising his arms and swinging them low to the ground while keeping his back straight. He is executing the third repetition of this routine when he suspects he is not alone. Has someone emerged from the laneway running alongside the hotel? A tall, solitary figure … Harry cannot see if it is male or female. Any shape has been obscured by a coat. The collar is up, making this person appear to have no neck. Harry straightens, and a slight scuffing noise he makes causes the stranger to turn suddenly towards him – the face is obscured – and then head back down the laneway. Harry crosses to where the figure has gone. But he can see nothing. The lane is dark and reeks of cats.
‘YOU look like a bloke who reckons he’s dropped his wallet after a big night out,’ the driver says, startling him from behind. Harry swings around.
‘I thought I saw somebody come from here, Jordan. But now I’m not sure.’
The driver glances down the laneway.
‘Probably did. Could have been a gentleman who’s been out late playing cards or seeing a bint down the lane. Wouldn’t concern yourself about it.’
‘Seemed to me I saw someone, but when I got here—’
‘Vanished, eh? Well you’d be the expert on that. Now – all set to go?’
Jordan leads Harry back towards the Darracq, which he has parked opposite the Metropole. But before Harry can get in, his driver removes a parcel from the back seat and hands it to him.
‘Take this up first,’ he says. ‘For your missus – the phonograph I promised her. One of them Champions. And some recordings to go with it. Audran had a hand in them. I’ll make sure you fix me up later on.’
‘Of course,’ Harry replies, though he has completely forgotten this promise. He takes the box, which is compact yet quite heavy. Leaving Jordan to check the Darracq’s wheels, one of which has been wobbling, Harry returns to the room. Nothing has changed. Bess and their son are still sleeping. Harry wonders where to leave the package. On the desk? No. He can do better. He takes the flower he had lain on Bess’s pillow and places it on top of the box, which he then balances on her bedside table.
She will see them there when she wakes and he is gone.
33
BESS sits up in bed poring over the contents of the entrancing carton: the lightweight metal horn that takes up most of the space; a compact black apparatus that reminds her of a child’s wind-up music-box; several smaller pieces carefully swathed in paper; instructions explaining how this new model Champion phonograph should be assembled. She is even more fascinated by what has been included in a slim but surprisingly heavy package tucked within the box. After untying the twine securing the wrapping, she removes three single-sided phonograph recordings, each in a flimsy paper sleeve.
The labels on the first two mean little to her: ‘When You And I Were Young’, by Henry Burr, and ‘I’ll Be Your Sweetheart’, sung by Miss Lil Hawthorne. But she studies the other platter as if sight alone could reveal its secrets. The circular label is crimson. On either side of a small hole in its centre are the words ‘VICTOR RECORD’. Above it is a drawing of a small dog looking quizzically into a horn similar to the one lying close to her on the bed. Below, in half a dozen lines of irregular type:
Italian Duet
Boheme – O soave fanciulla (Puccini)
Duo and Finale, Act 1
(Thou Sweetest Maiden)
sung by Melba and Caruso
accompanied by the Victor Orchestra.
She holds the disc with the index finger of her left hand pressed against the underside of the central hole, making a small pink full moon of flesh. This must be it – the duet the composer spoke about at Audran’s dinner. She hasn’t heard it before. How thoughtful of her husband to get a copy for her. Then she considers the label again and shakes her head. Her husband has no knowledge of music. Had he chosen these recordings himself he would surely have left a fulsome explanation of his selections: ‘I’ll Be Your Sweetheart’ is a title certain to appeal to him. But an aria in Italian? Not his style at all. The discs must have been included by her husband’s driver, probably selected at random from an assortment provided by the Champion company. From what she has heard of Jordan he is a man more interested in money than music. But she feels an intense longing to listen to this recording, which means first assembling the phonograph.
She tries, again, to make sense of the instructions. All these parts: tone arm; turntable; reproducer; diaphragm; crank-wound spring … Which are which? In her clumsy fingers they feel like pieces from several different jigsaw puzzles. She needs help. Her husband’s mechanic, the diligent Frenchman more at ease with metal cogs than people, would be able to assemble this thing without difficulty. She remembers him on the deck of the Malwa, always in his hat and tie despite the sun, using a tiny jeweller’s screwdriver and spanner to take apart and then reassemble a travelling alarm-clock while others conversed or played cards or read dime novels. Antoine would be happy to assist her, without doubt, but he is attending to the Voisin with her husband, who is also good with machines.
Audran? No. He has that wonderful reproducing piano but no phonograph.
Of course. A black box with a handle. A metal horn glinting in the light. A tall man keeping time with his hands. Music ending with clicking and hissing until a knob is turned to stop it …
The composer has a machine. He will be able to help her. Surely he will.
Bess places the phonograph pieces back in the carton, the horn last of all and the recordings wedged down one side. Then she pauses. She shouldn’t interrupt him. He is immersed in his work. So if he seems distracted or annoyed she will show him the recording of his music, apologise for the intrusion and then excuse herself. A brief visit: that’s all it need be. But she should do it straight away, lest she change her mind.
She places the package to one side and slides out of bed, wincing as soon as her feet touch the floor. All the muscles in her legs are tender and her hips and ankles are bruised. The Metamorphosis routine has extracted a higher physical toll than she had expected. Yet she has proved she can still do it. She is capable of being more than a spectator. A bath with mineral salts will help to ease any aches, but she doesn’t have time for that right now. So she splashes water on her face, then pokes at her hair with the handle of a tortoise-shell comb. From her wardrobe she selects a lightweight dress that she has already worn at least once in the past week. Then, after stepping into a pair of flat-heeled shoes, she picks up the carton with both hands and leaves the room, feeling like a little girl showing off a new toy on her birthday.
In the corridor, around the corner, she checks to see that nobody is watching before proceeding any further. It feels quite natural to her now to enter the linen closet, and although it is difficult to keep the box balanced and upright with one arm while fumbling for the latch that opens the back, Bess has more room to move than in the trunk the previous evening. Then she is there, standing outside the door without a number. She hesitates before knocking sharply on the wooden panel. There is no sound within. The box she is holding is like a grand dish brought from a restaurant kitchen to a table vacated by customers.
Then she remembers. She knocks again just as Audran had done. The door is unlocked, as if the man inside has been standing close by, listening. Puccini is unshaven and holds a cigarette in his left hand. He is in his shirtsleeves; his collar is unbuttoned. His red-rimmed eyes scan the figure before him. When he recognises Bess his expression lightens.
‘Ah,’ he says, opening the door and standing to one side. ‘Forgive me – I have been told I must be careful. And thought it might be someone else.’
‘I was hoping you might help me with this,’ she says, holding up the box. ‘I need your technical expertise.’
