Escape (25 page)

I didn't bother taking any other books out. I wanted to read this
extraordinary book in a pure state, untainted by another point of view.
This was the right one, the one that struck to the centre of me.

Clara came up and twined herself around my hips. 'There was a
lady storyteller,' she told me. 'She's got black hair under her arms like a
man. Why does she got that?'

'Look at
this
man,' I said. 'Harry Houdini.'

'Scary eyes.'

'No, he's just concentrating. He's a magician, like Daddy.'

'Daddy's a
poet
,' said Clara, sticking out her lip. 'Can we borrow
a book for me too? I like this one. It's about a pussy cat. Why can't
we
have a pussy cat?'

In
Truth and Myth
there is a photo of Harry naked, biceps clenched,
manacled hands furled over his genitals like a posy. He's standing in a
police cell, chained at the ankles and wrists. He seems unaware of his
iron burden, his eyes looking straight at you, defying you to find an
escape tool anywhere on his body. The bars of the jail were drawn on
later, together with his bathers. Harry has full lips, soft and vulnerable
in his heart-shaped face. Shortly after the photo was taken, probably
in under three minutes, he'd sprung himself from that cage like a wild
animal.

In the photo next to this one, we see a back view of Harry, his
hands padlocked and held together by a thick iron bar and chain. His
ankles and elbows are chained too, and there are no bars or bathers
this time. He has perfect round buttocks, like ripe apples. He's looking
back over his shoulder at me, I mean the viewer, with a half-smile that
is both innocent and knowing. You want to see what happens after the
photographer leaves, what he looks like when he turns around; it's so
hard, in fact, to leave that photo.

Harry was always ready to take off his clothes before any
performance. He was remarkably honest, as magicians go – he
dedicated much of the later part of his life to exposing mind-readers,
mediums and psychics who claimed to have spiritual powers rather
than good technical skills.

'But how can you leap from bridges and survive, melt walls, stay
buried alive for an hour?' the media would demand. 'You
must
have
special powers!' He always denied it. 'I am not a wizard,' he declared
truthfully. 'I just have my secrets.'

Harry became
my
secret. The more I read about Harry Houdini,
the more I fell under his power, as if I were his personal audience only
inches away. His boundless courage, his unfailing ability to resurrect
himself was so reassuring. When I lay in bed reading and afterwards
when I switched off the light, I fell sweetly into that swoon before
proper sleep, half dreaming, imagining, conjuring situations of
pleasure. I didn't think of Guido's impatience or Clara's schoolwork or
my deadline. I just thought about Harry, and what it would feel like if
he reached out one of those hands, sprung fresh from his manacles, to
touch me.

I hadn't thought about sex for a long time. Sex didn't happen
very often now and mostly I forgot about my body from the neck
down. I walked around like something without a gender. But
around dusk my mind clouded over and images of Harry lurked
behind the pot plant near the dining table, or in the dark spaces of
the linen press. I began to feel warmer around dinner time, moist
under the arms and even between my legs, as if in preparation for
the hours alone with a lover. I began to look forward to solitude, to
being alone with Harry. I had never liked to be alone before – well,
not since I was a child.

But I wasn't alone, I was sure, in being attracted to Houdini.
He was a marvellous physical specimen. Harry had a strict exercise
regimen which some described as fanatical, but maximum fitness was
necessary for his survival. In the photos, his chest muscles look as hard
as the iron chaining his wrists. Often he clenched his forearms and
torso so that you could see the contour of all the individual muscles,
reminding you of God or Noah in a Michelangelo painting. One
reporter who was allowed to feel his forearm described it as 'amazing,
as massive and hard as a granite pillar. His neck, too, is large, and
corded.' Harry had to train himself exhaustively to remain calm and
not panic about his breathing. And he was only able to do this if he
could rely with absolute confidence on his body.

Harry used every one of his physical idiosyncrasies to his
advantage. He was compact, with slightly bandy legs. This space
between his knees allowed him the essential bit of slack needed to get
one hand free, no matter how tightly he might be trussed. In his thick
wavy hair he hid shims or picks and his prehensile toes could pick up
anything.

The first trick Harry performed for an audience was
Metamorphosis. It involved a large trunk that Harry and his partner
brought onto the stage. Usually the partner was Bess, his wife, who
he married when she was just sixteen. They stayed married all his life,
travelling together to perform all over the world. Throughout their
marriage he constantly wrote her letters and notes, always addressing
her as sweetheart and darling. At the back of
Truth and Myth
there are
some of his letters and poems. I liked the little domestic notes he wrote
to Bess most of all. Sometimes I whispered them aloud, imagining I
was Bess. Oh, lucky Bess!

Adorable
Sunshine
of my Life,
I have had my coffee, have washed out this glass, and am on
My way to business.
Houdini
"My darling I love you"

At first I thought the quotation marks were a printing error and then I
saw that he used them often, perhaps to make more emphatic his most
passionate declarations. I didn't show Guido, of course, who would
have smirked at the cliché and the domestic references.
I
didn't mind
the cliché at all. I could picture Harry at the sink, with perhaps just
an apron tied around his waist, washing up with remarkable dexterity.
Ordinary tasks would become extraordinary, with Harry. His firm
buttocks wouldn't even tremble as he moved. Bess would probably
have come up behind him and put her arms around him. She'd have
rubbed her breasts against his back. Her nipples would become long
and pointed with desire and he would turn to her and pluck them, as if
she were a beautiful violin.

In their Metamorphosis trick there was a sack inside the trunk that
Harry climbed into, his hands cuff ed, his body bound. The sack was
tied up securely and placed in the trunk, which was then chained and
locked. A screen was drawn around the trunk and the assistant went
behind it. Only a few seconds later, the screen was pulled back to reveal
not the pretty partner, but Harry Houdini himself! Where had Bess
disappeared to? Harry invited people up on stage to inspect the trunk
and its chains, straps and locks – all still intact. Slowly, painstakingly,
he then loosened the ties around the trunk to reveal exactly where his
partner had gone – inside the securely tied sack!

The trick was known in magician circles as the Substitution
Trunk, but I found Houdini's title far more romantic. It was as if man
and woman had truly merged, taking on each other's shape at will, so
similar were they in their essence. I'm sure Harry liked to view the
act like this – all his letters and poems show how much he loved and
needed his Bess. In
Truth and Myth
, the author pointed out that 'the
Greek gods used to regularly metamorphose into different forms to
attain the object of their desire'.

To the outside world Harry appeared to possess the powers of
a shape shifter. He did such perfect magic – there were no seams,
no mistakes, not a beat off time. He would have been wonderful
to me if he
had
been magic, but the fact that I understood, with
every page I read and digested, that he was so good not because he
was a Greek god but because of his dedication and aspiration to
perfection – which he achieved! – made him unique. I found his
success heavily erotic.

The photo of Harry in jail highlights his bow-legged stance. That
picture was usually the last one I looked at before switching off the
light. In the dark, behind my eyes, I saw how my hand would slide over
his knees up into the space between his thighs. There'd be the shock
of soft ness in the pouch at the top. Under my fingers the flesh would
become taut and I'd move up, through the wilderness of his private
hair, to trace his hardening length.

Most nights I watched him undress, hiding behind a stage curtain.
It was made of that heavy velvet, dark red like blood. Against my bare
shoulders it was soft but weighty. He was stripped down to his bathers.
As he bent to pull them off he sensed me breathing behind him. Or
maybe he always knew I was there. He picked up the manacles he'd
just flung off and turned towards me.

His mouth opened in desire. He threw me down on the bed and
placed my hands above my head. He chained me to the bedposts. I
protested but he continued just the same. There was nothing I could
do, he was far too strong, so my body relaxed. I submitted. As he
reached over me I could see his dark hair curling in his armpits. It
was damp and silky, lying in perfect spirals. With his eyes and lips and
voice he put me in a trance and my eyes closed. He was chanting the
same thing over and over,
Adorable Sunshine
, like a prayer, and then he
went quiet. The air was charged with his breathing. I thought he was
lifting the hem of my skirt. I was floating, holding my breath, hardly
there. It was as if he was worshipping at my temple. I could feel his
fingers, warm and smooth, inching up my leg. The skirt was above my
hips. He was looking at the dark triangle of me, his eyes fixed on the
bushy hill sloping gently towards him. His breathing changed, heavy,
and he crouched on his knees, on the bed, at my feet.

'Open your legs,' he commanded. I obeyed.

'Further,' he said. He put his hands on each of my knees and pulled
them apart. I heard him gasp. His eyes were fixed on the centre of me.
He pushed up my knees so that they were touching my breasts. His
face was so close, his mouth only an inch from the secret part of me. I
could feel his breath, hot on my flesh.

'You are so wet,' he said, 'you are shining. My darling, I love you.'

With his finger and thumb he pared the lips apart. He slid his
finger down, slipping it into the wet flesh. He slid it in and out, in,
out, and back up to the clitoris. His finger whirled in circles around
it, dipping back down and into the damp opening again. I could feel
the bud at the top swelling, my flesh expanding and closing around his
finger. I felt such a need to push against him. My darling, I love you!
I slitted my eyes and saw him pull his bathers down with one hand
while still he rotated me with his finger, keeping the tension. His finger
was feathery, insistent. I was the lock he was opening. He grasped his
hard penis and spat on it – the spit fell in one long pure line. There
was the slick sound of saliva on flesh. With the other hand he opened
me. He stared at the pink welling into crimson, the dark hair glinting
in the stage light. He grunted and lowered his face. I could feel his
tongue flicking, his nose in my hair. His tongue was entering me! The
wet sound of rubbing grew quicker. I lay on the bed, my legs open, my
mind willing him to enter me. I could feel myself dripping, his hand
sliding and slipping over my thighs. But I said nothing. His desire was
everything. I rocked against him, the long pole of him corded like his
straining neck and then I felt him enter me, massive, filling, and the
empty ache was gone. I lay in the dark, my mouth open, receiving the
divine.

Metamorphosis. It was always my favourite trick of Harry's.
Sometimes I'm not chained to the bedposts, awaiting him – I am Bess
in a mermaid costume and Harry is tearing at it, sweat standing out
on his forehead. He struggles at my waist, his face contorting with
anguish as it does when he's escaping from the straitjacket. He plunges
a hand inside the costume, wrapped tight like a bandage and my legs
miraculously appear, opening at his touch. He plunges inside me,
inside the sack, inside the trunk, while the audience outside hold their
breath and gasp as my secret merman and I swim down to the depths
of our passion, together.

Mary rang me again and wanted to see what I'd written so far. Her
phone call was like an alarm clock jolting me from a deep sleep. With
great effort I left Harry's letters to his wife and his mother, to whom
he was also affectionately loyal, and turned to the practical aspects of
magic.

I settled down to focus seriously on the section entitled 'The secret
of Houdini's handcuff escapes' – but while I read Harry's eyes lowered
under those dark brows to meet mine. The dream of Harry kept me
topped up, warm and slightly blurred, the way a couple of glasses of
red wine soften the view of a threatening world.

'On stage,' I read, 'Houdini took on all challenges. He promised to
escape from any type of cuffs thrust upon him, inviting the audience
to come up and handcuff him themselves.'

Harry had a vast experience of locks and keys. That was his secret.
In Berlin, he'd worked for nothing repairing locks for a locksmith
called Mueller. 'Herr Mueller soon discovered,' Harry wrote, 'that his
thirty-five years of experience were nothing as compared to my trick
in opening locks, and soon he had a thriving trade.' Harry worked
for around ten hours every day, 'and soon, with the assistance of four
marked picks, I could open any lock . . . ' How admirable was his
determination, his focus, his ambition! Imagine having that trained
upon
you
!

Houdini showed extraordinary skill in the way he manipulated
the key in the lock. 'The primary lesson is to learn to use both hands
with equal facility.'

Images of Harry's dexterity, the words associated with his escapes
– 'release, enter, manipulate, opening leg-irons, using both hands' –
were terribly arousing to me. Later I read more detailed passages about
lock picking: how you must 'insert the tension wrench into the bottom
of the keyway, feather the tension on the cylinder with one hand, fire
the pick gun with the other, feel the pins and plug moving with the
index finger or, if you prefer, the thumb' and I thought of Guido and
how he used to plunge his thumb so deep into the core of me, I could
have been a plum he twirled around. As I read I was in a continually
charged state, as if my skin had rubbed against nylon on a windy day.
The hair on my arms stood on end, the cord between my groin and
belly twanged.