Ragtime (32 page)

Morgan remained in Europe until his agents advised him that his Nile steamer was waiting in Alexandria, outfitted and ready to sail. Before departing he attempted for the last time to persuade Henry Ford to come to Egypt. He composed a lengthy cable. The reply came back from Ford that he could not leave Michigan because he had entered into the most sensitive stage of negotiations with an inventor fellow who was able to power a motorcar’s engine with a green pill. Morgan ordered his bags packed. After giving instructions in the crating and shipping of his acquisitions, he set off. It was the autumn of the year. When he reached Alexandria he came up to his boat, a paddle steamer built of steel, and without more than a glance from the pier he went aboard and ordered the captain to cast off.

Morgan’s intention in Egypt was to journey down the Nile and choose a site for his pyramid. He stowed in the safe in his stateroom the plans for this structure secretly designed for him by the firm of McKim and White. He expected that with modern construction techniques, the use of precut stones, steam shovels, cranes, and so forth, a serviceable pyramid could be put up in less than three years. The prospect thrilled
him as nothing ever had. There was to be a False King’s Chamber as well as a True King’s Chamber, an impregnable Treasure Room, a Grand Gallery, a Descending Corridor, an Ascending Corridor. There was to be a Causeway to the banks of the Nile.

His first stop was at Giza. He wanted to feel in advance the eternal energies he would exemplify when he died and rose on the rays of the sun in order to be born again. When the boat docked it was nighttime, and he could see from the starboard deck the pyramid field silhouetted against a blue night sky of stars. He went down the ramp and was met by several men in the Arab burnoose. He was installed on the back of a camel and taken in this ancient way up to the north face, to the entrance of the Great Pyramid itself. Against all advice he was determined to spend the night inside. He hoped to learn if he could the disposition by Osiris of his ka, or soul, and his ba, or physical vitality. He followed his guides down the entrance corridor. The light of a torch threw great bounding shadows against the stone-block walls and ceiling. After many turns and twists, some difficult climbs up ramped passageways, and several occasions requiring that he crawl on all fours to squeeze through an aperture, he found himself in the heart of the pyramid. He paid his guides half of the agreed-upon price so that they would come back for him for the balance; and receiving their wishes for a good night’s rest he was left suddenly alone in the dark chamber, the only light a dim glimmer of a star or two from the top of a narrow air shaft.

Morgan would not sleep that night. This was the King’s Chamber, long since emptied of its furnishings. The earth was so damp that its chill permeated the wool blanket he had brought to sit upon. He had his monogramed gold box of safety matches but refused as a matter of principle to light one. Nor did he drink from his brandy flask. He listened to the dark and stared at the dark and waited for whatever signs Osiris would deign to bring him. After some hours he dozed. He dreamed of an ancient life in which he squatted in the bazaars, a peddler exchanging good-natured curses with the dragomans. This dream so disturbed him that he awoke. He became aware of being crawled upon. He stood up. Places all over his body itched. He decided to light one match. In its small light he saw on his blanket the unmistakable pincered bedbug, in community. After the match went out he continued to stand. He then paced the chamber, holding his hand out before him so as not to bump into the stone walls. He paced from the west to the east, from the north to the south, though he didn’t know which was which. He decided one must in such circumstances make a distinction between false signs and true signs. The dream of the peddler in the bazaar was a false sign. The bedbugs were a false sign. A true sign would be the glorious sight of small red birds with human heads flying lazily in the chamber, lighting it with their own incandescence. These would be ba birds, which he had seen portrayed in Egyptian wall paintings. But as the night wore on, the ba birds failed to materialize. Eventually
he saw up through the long narrow air shaft that the stars had faded and the rhomboid of night sky had grown gray. He permitted himself a drink of brandy. His limbs were stiff, his back ached and he had caught a chill.

Morgan’s aides came along with the Arab guides and he was helped back to the outside world. Surprisingly, the morning was well-advanced. He was placed on his camel and slowly led down from the pyramid. The sky was bright blue and the rock of the pyramid field was pink. As he passed the Great Sphinx and looked back he saw men swarming all over her, like vermin. They were festooned in the claws and sat in the holes of the face, they perched on the shoulders and they waved from the heights of the headdress. Morgan started. The desecrators were wearing baseball suits. Photographers on the ground stood by their tripods with their heads poked under black cloth. What in God’s name is going on, Morgan said. His guides had stopped and were calling back and forth to other Arabs and camel drivers. There was great excitement. An aide of Morgan’s came back with the intelligence that this was the New York Giants baseball team that had won the pennant and was on a world exhibition tour. The pennant? Morgan said. The pennant? Running toward him was a squat ugly man in pin-striped knee pants and a ribbed undershirt. His hand was outstretched. An absurd beanie was on his head. A cigar butt was in his mouth. His cleated shoes rang on the ancient stones. The manager, Mr. McGraw, to pay his respects,
Morgan’s aide said. Without a word the old man kicked at the sides of his camel and, knocking over his Arab guide, fled to his boat.

Shortly after these adventures Pierpont Morgan suffered a sudden decline in health. He demanded to be taken back to Rome. But he was far from unhappy, having concluded that his physical deterioration was exactly the sign for which he had been waiting. He was so urgently needed again on earth that he was exempt from the usual entombment rituals. Members of his family met him in Rome. Don’t be sad, he told them. War speeds things up. They didn’t know what he was talking about. They were at his bedside when he died, not without anticipation, at the age of seventy-six.

Now, it was not long after Morgan’s death that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand rode into the city of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, to inspect the troops there. With him was his wife the Countess Sophie. The Archduke held his plumed helmet in the crook of his arm. All at once there was a loud noise and a good deal of smoke and shouting. Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Countess Sophie found themselves covered with chalk dust. Dust coated their faces, it was in their mouths and eyes and all over their clothing. Someone had thrown a bomb. The Mayor was aghast. The Archduke was furious. The day is ruined, he said, and terminating the ceremonies he ordered his chauffeur to leave Sarajevo. They were in a Daimler touring car. The chauffeur drove through the streets and made a wrong turn. He stopped, put the gears into reverse and twisted around in his seat preparatory to backing up.
As it happened the car had stopped beside a young Serbian patriot who was one of the same group who had tried to kill the Archduke by bomb but who had despaired of another opportunity. The patriot jumped on the running board of the touring car, aimed his pistol at the Duke and pulled the trigger. Shots rang out. The Countess Sophie fell over between the Archduke’s knees. Blood spurted from the Archduke’s throat. There were shouts. The green feathers of the plumed helmet turned black with blood. Soldiers grabbed the assassin. They wrestled him to the ground. They dragged him off to jail.

In New York the papers carried the news as one of those acts of violence peculiar to the Balkan states. Few Americans could have had any particular feeling of sympathy for the slain heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. But the magician Harry Houdini, reading his paper at breakfast, felt the shock of the death of an acquaintance. Imagine that, he said to himself. Imagine that. He saw the moody and phlegmatic Duke staring at him from under his coif of flattened brush-cut hair. It seemed to him awesome that someone embodying the power and panoply of an entire empire could be so easily brought down.

It so happened that Houdini, on this very day, was scheduled to perform one of his spectacular outdoor feats. He was therefore unable to reflect on the Archduke’s death to the extent he might have otherwise. He left his house, hailed a cab and rode downtown to Times Square. Here, an hour and a half later, with several thousands watching, he was put in a strait jacket
and attached by the ankles to a steel cable and hauled feet first halfway up the side of the Times Tower. With each turn of the winch up on the roof he rose a few feet and swayed in the wind. The crowd cheered. It was a warm day and the sky was blue. The higher he rose the more distant the sounds of the street. He could see his own name upside down on the marquee of the Palace Theatre five blocks to the north. Automobiles honked and trolleys ganged together at Times Square as their drivers stopped to see the excitement. Police on horseback blew their whistles. Everything was upside down—the automobiles, the people, the sidewalks, the police on horseback, the buildings. The sky was at his feet. Houdini rose past the baseball scoreboard attached to the side of the building. He breathed deeply and found the calmness in danger that years of physical discipline had made possible. He had directed his assistants to hoist him approximately twelve stories above the street, truly well up in the air but not too high to be seen clearly. His plan was to wrestle himself out of the strait jacket, fling it away, jackknife his body upwards, like an aerialist, and grab the cable hooked to the chain around his ankles. He would then stand right side up, his feet planted in the curve of the great hook, and wave to the cheering crowd as he descended. Houdini had lately been feeling better about himself. His grief for his mother, his fears of losing his audience, his suspicions that his life was unimportant and his achievements laughable—all the weight of daily concern seemed easier to bear. He attributed this to his new pursuit, the unmasking of
spirit fraud wherever he found it. Driven by his feeling for his sainted mother, he had broken up seances, revealed the shoddy practices of mediums and held up to public scorn the trappings and devices that charlatans used to gull the innocent. At every performance he offered ten thousand dollars to the medium who would produce a manifestation he, Houdini, could not duplicate using mechanical means. The press and the public loved this new element in his work, but that was incidental. It was as if, now that his mother was dead, heaven had to be defended. Embattled, he felt he would soon begin to distinguish the borders of the region where she dwelled. His private detectives visited occult parlors in every city in which he played. He himself went to seances disguised as a gray-haired widow in a veil. He would shine a portable electric torch on the thin wire that caused the table to levitate. He tore the covering from the hidden Victrola. He plucked trumpets out of the air and grabbed by the scruff of the neck confederates hidden behind drapes. Then he stood up and dramatically cast off his wig of waved gray hair and announced who he was. He accrued lawsuits by the dozens.

Houdini realized he was now raised to his assigned height. The breeze up here was somewhat stronger. He felt himself revolving. He faced the windows of the Times Tower, then the open spaces over Broadway and Seventh Avenue. Hey, Houdini, a voice called. The wind turned Houdini toward the building. A man was grinning at him, upside down, from a twelfth-floor window. Hey, Houdini, the man said, fuck you. Up
yours, Jack, the magician replied. He could actually release himself from a strait jacket in less than a minute. But if he did it too quickly people would not believe he was legitimate. So he took longer. He appeared to struggle. He could hear the oohs and aahs rising from the street as he made the cable jerk and spin. Soon his entire upper half, including his head, was entangled in the restraint. Inside the thick duck of the strait jacket there was no light. He rested for a moment. He was upside down over Broadway, the year was 1914, and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was reported to have been assassinated. It was at this moment that an image composed itself in Houdini’s mind. The image was of a small boy looking at himself in the shiny brass headlamp of an automobile.

We have the account of this odd event from the magician’s private, unpublished papers. Harry Houdini’s career in show business gave him to overstatement, so we must not relinquish our own judgment in considering his claim that it was the one genuine mystical experience of his life. Be that as it may, the family archives show a calling card from Mr. Houdini dated just a week later. Nobody was home to receive him. The family had by this time entered its period of dissolution. Mother, son and the brown child, who had been christened Coalhouse Walker III, were motoring upstate in a Packard touring car, Mother at the wheel. They were seeing the Howe Caverns, and their ultimate destination for the summer was the Maine shore at Prout’s Neck, where the painter Winslow Homer had lived his last years. Mother and Father were now
on the most correct and abbreviated speaking terms, the death of Younger Brother in Mexico having provided final impetus for their almost continuous separation. Grandfather had not survived the winter and resided now in the cemetery behind the First Congregational Church on North Avenue in New Rochelle. Father was in Washington, D.C. He had found upon his return to the flag and fireworks plant a drawerful of blueprints that was the repayment of his debt to which Younger Brother had referred, cryptically, in their last conversation at the Morgan Library. In the year and a half of his life before his emigration, Younger Brother invented seventeen ordnance devices, some of which were so advanced that they were not used by the United States until World War II. They included a recoilless rocket grenade launcher, a low-pressure land mine, sonar-directed depth charges, infrared illuminated rifle sights, tracer bullets, a repeater rifle, a lightweight machine gun, a shrapnel grenade, puttied nitroglycerine and a portable flame thrower. It was to arrange for adoption of certain of these weapons that Father had repaired to Washington and become a familiar of high-ranking officers of the United States Army and Navy. What with tests of prototype models, sales contract negotiations, conferences in the halls of the Congress and various expensive lobbying procedures, including lunches and dinners and weekend entertainments, Father had had to take an apartment at the Hay-Adams Hotel. His response to his personal unhappiness was to throw himself more avidly into his work than he had ever done. With the onset of the
Great War in Europe he was one of those who feared Woodrow Wilson’s lack of fighting spirit and was openly for preparedness before it became the official view of the Administration. There was great interest expressed by other governments than our own in the malign works of Younger Brother’s genius, and under the advice of counselors in the State Department Father tended to recognize some of these at the expense of others. To the Germans he was quite rude, to the British friendly and conciliatory of terms. He was anticipating just the final alignment of American sympathies with the Allies that in fact took place in 1917, but which began to be inevitable as early as 1915 when the British passenger liner
Lusitania
was torpedoed by a U-boat off the southwest coast of Ireland. The
Lusitania
, registered as an armed merchant ship, was secretly carrying a manifest of volatile war matériel in her holds. Twelve hundred men, women and children, many of whom were American, lost their lives, among them, Father, who was going to London with the first shipments for the War Office and the Admiralty of the grenades, depth charges and puttied nitro that undoubtedly contributed to the monstrous detonations in the ship that preceded its abrupt sinking.