“I’m bothering you, I know.”
He held up his hand. “You are?”
The small, calloused hand remained in front of my face. I noticed a scar across his palm, a pale pink lightning bolt that contrasted with the nut-brown flesh. Appleton’s homespun celebrity who grandly announced himself the world’s greatest entertainer. Brash, and a little presumptuous. I hugged my reporter’s pad to my chest. He watched me, a faint smile on those thin, dried-up lips. A staring contest between us, Houdini and me. The great Houdini himself. A smallish man whose physical strength seeped, sap-like, through the rumpled summer suit he wore: sinew and muscle and tendon, a compact body with a thick neck. Blue-gray eyes, as deep as lake water, purposely holding you, mesmerizing, a snake charmer.
Feeling oddly calm in his presence, I decided I could outlast this overgrown yeshiva boy in the poorly assembled flowing tie, his diamond shirt stud gleaming in the sunlight. On his head an incongruous sailor’s cap.
I broke the silence. “My name is Edna Ferber and I’m a reporter at the Appleton Crescent.” I actually pointed across the street to the sign. But Houdini refused to follow my hand. His eyes never left my face. “And,” I beamed, “I’ve been told you’re not granting interviews.”
“So why are you talking to me? I ain’t a man to change my mind.” Said with that thickly accented voice. There was something else there now-a real humor.
“Because I assume entertainers want publicity.”
His eyes smiled. “You sound like my wife Bess.” He still hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Is she in town with you?” Bess was his stage partner, the fearless woman sealed in boxes behind curtains.
“No, she’s in New York.”
“You’re just here with your brother?”
“Are you conducting an interview?”
I waited a bit. “Seems like it.”
“Ferber.” He squinted his eyes. “Your father is Jacob?” His face relaxed a bit.
That startled me. “Yes. How…”
“I’m staying with David Baum, over on Oriental. David mentioned your father…”
“Why?”
“Is this part of the interview?”
“I’m curious.”
“We were talking of the Jewish families of Appleton. The old days when I was here. The new families.”
“Yes, I’m his daughter.” I rushed my words.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Ah, Miss Ferber, another question but an easy one to answer. I spent my young years in Appleton. I got friends here. I visit. People talk.”
“But your family left before the Ferbers arrived.”
“David likes your father and mentioned him. They used to go to concerts together. He also mentioned the young daughter who rushes around town like a crazy chipmunk writing her stories and…”
I pursed my lips. “Are you saying I’m odd?”
Now he chuckled. “No, Miss Ferber, I’m the oddity. I let people tie me up, chain me, lock me in dark containers. I’m the odd one. You’re the town scandal.”
I could see he wasn’t being serious, so I relaxed. “Sir, I get three dollars a week running up the streets of the town.”
“Handcuffs pay better.”
“I’ll stay with my flowery accounts of afternoon teas with the Ladies Benevolent Society, sir. Less wearing on the wrists.”
He crossed his arms. “A secret, Miss Ferber, though not a big one. Two days ago, my dear, David pointed you out to me as you interviewed a visiting lecturer at Lawrence. You were in the library, and David and I were meeting a friend there.”
“You watched me?” I did not like this.
“Fascinating. A girl reporter. A young Jewish girl, at that.”
“And?”
“You’re…unrelenting.”
“Meaning?”
“You have a lot of energy. You overwhelmed the man.”
“What?” I was not happy.
“You were a delight to watch, Miss Ferber.”
“Meaning?”
“I mean that you are a spunky girl. You tackle the trivial as if you was having dinner at the White House.”
“I take my job seriously, sir.”
“But it’s Appleton, Miss Ferber.”
“It’s important to me.”
Houdini ran his tongue over his upper lip. “Of course it is. Everything is important to you. But Appleton’s routines are a lot more boring than your life should be.”
“My job is less dangerous than handcuffs and sealed coffins, sir.”
He got serious. “Safer is not good for the soul.”
“What?”
He looked up and down the street. “Are these the boundaries you set for yourself, Miss Ferber? You’re a bright, clever girl. That’s obvious. Look around you. You don’t take no risks. Where would I be if I didn’t tackle the world out there?”
“Sir, if you don’t think being a girl reporter in Appleton is a risk, then…” I waved my hand in the air.
He tipped his hat. “Ah, point taken, Miss Ferber.”
“Thank you.”
“So you and I are alike then.” He bowed dramatically. “As I suspected. Two souls running after the horizon.”
“I’m not saying that. I like my job here. Appleton can be lively, filled with…” My voice trailed off.
“But you’re young. Don’t be bound by College Avenue. It’s easy to be trapped by what’s easy.” He pointed his hand across the street.
What were we talking about? Strangely, I felt as though he were interviewing me, for I deliberated, weighed my responses, felt the need to satisfy him…to provide him with information from my unheralded biography. Mine was an uneventful life story. Houdini seemed bigger than life, a mountain of a man, the world’s adventurer. Me? Nineteen years old, and…what? An Appleton scourge, peeping Tom, prier into peoples’ mundane lives. Tillie Eisenhower will display her embroidery at the Masonic Hall beginning…
I needed to refocus. “So I can interview you, Mr. Houdini?”
He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying our exchange. “You already are.”
Something had just happened here. We liked each other. He was flattering me, I could tell, but more so-yes, he was flirting with me, innocently, trying to charm me. And I felt pleased, a little intoxicated. Men didn’t flirt with me, the drab, plain girl with the bushel-basket pompadour and the round nosy face. And certainly not older men…and famous ones at that. Was it that easy for young provincial girls to fall prey to such idle flattery? Obviously it was; I was ready to follow Harry Houdini to the ends of his handcuffed universe. Well, maybe not.
For the next fifteen minutes or so we chatted like old friends, Houdini wanting to help me, this young intense girl, and a good measure of our talk was silly and frivolous. I’d been training myself to remember conversations, word for word, believing that a notepad suddenly thrust into the space between me and the soul being interviewed served as a wall. So, instead, I listened to his boisterous anecdotes and made mental notes.
Yes, he was in town to visit old school chums, David Baum especially, the boy he hung out with as a child, the two of them stealing peaches and crabapples from the farms out by Little Chute. Yes, he was here for a week, enjoying his hometown, traveling with his brother Theodore, and he’d try out his new show at the Lyceum-a “few surprises,” he hinted-as he prepared to head back to Europe later that summer. He described his fascination with handcuffs, leg irons, ropes, and nailed boxes. He was animated, twitching, nervous, and he spoke loudly, boasting of his stupendous salary. “I make sometimes two grand a week.” He got a little sentimental when I asked him about his boyhood, his embryonic magic shows, what he recalled from the old fields across the tracks in the Sixth Ward, a contortionist act, three silly performances managed by buddy Jack Hoeffler, who paid him exactly thirty-five cents.