Kamchatka (7 page)

The house was full of mismatched cast-offs and second-hand furniture in different styles and colours. The living room alone had a fake Louis XV sofa, two wooden chairs – one pine, one mesquite. The coffee table was made of wicker and the TV stand was orange Formica.

Papá stood, captivated before a broken grandfather clock. He slipped his hand inside the case and ding, dong, ding sounded the chimes – a little ominous, a little magical.

All houses retain something of their former residents. People shed traces of themselves everywhere they go, the way we constantly shed and renew our skin without even noticing. It doesn't matter how efficient the movers were, or how thoroughly the house was cleaned. The floors might smell of wax polish and the walls might be freshly whitewashed, but a vigilant eye will still detect the clues left by history: the floor, worn where it has been walked on, a dark groove on the windowsill where someone set down a cigarette as they gazed out at the gardens. Marks on the floor indicated where the original furniture had once stood.

We didn't know anything about the people who owned the house. All papá told us was that it had been lent to some people and they were now lending it to us. Maybe this was where the mystery lay. What was the logic behind such generosity? Were these cigarette burns made by the owner or by one of the brief tenants of the house? Why were there so many signs that the house had been recently occupied: a jar of mayonnaise in the fridge that was still within its best-before date, the March issue of a magazine? Who were the last tenants here, how long did they live here and what had forced them to leave?

Still dripping wet, I started to look for hidden clues. Mamá said I looked like a ghost in my big white towel and told me to dry myself right away before I dripped water all over the house.

First I explored the living room and dining room, opening all the cupboards and all the drawers. I didn't find any personal items. One
of the drawers was lined with a piece of paper that fascinated me, it was covered with a magician's props: top hats, white rabbits, magic wands. I thought of Bertuccio's word, the game of Hangman and I wondered where I'd put the piece of paper he had scribbled the word on. I thought I remembered stuffing it into my trouser pocket and that calmed me.

There was an old radiogram with a record-player that looked even cheaper than the cabinet it was in. The bottom shelf was full of singles. There was nothing I liked, it was mostly stupid instrumental stuff by Ray Conniff and Alain Debray, along with a bunch of singers I'd never heard of like Matt Monro and some guy with a name like a tongue-twister called Engelbert Humperdinck. It was Engelbert's record that slipped out of its sleeve and fell to the floor.

I bent down to pick it up and noticed something odd underneath the radiogram. It looked like a scrap of paper that had slipped down behind the cabinet and got stuck between the skirting board and the wall.

It was a postcard of Mar del Plata: a typical photograph of the
rambla
. It was dated that summer, the summer of '76. The sentences were simple and the handwriting was terrible. ‘
My dear little Pedro, we hope you are having a lovely holiday. It's good to have fun once in a while. Tell your mamá you can come and stay with us for a few days if you like. If you need anything, just call. You can both come and stay. You know how much we love you. Xxx
' and it was signed Beba and China.

I wondered who Pedro was, whether he was a kid as the postcard made it sound. But the line I found most disturbing was: ‘
It's good to have fun once in a while
'. Was this Pedro a really serious kid, or was he ‘special' (deformities, extra-sensory powers, pustules all over his body, the sort of thing that makes a family lock their son up in an attic so no one ever sees him)? Or was there some tragedy in his
past? A tragedy that still loomed over him, much to the regret of Beba and China?

I took the postcard with me, a damp ghost seeking the privacy of his room.

Our room was at the back of the house. From the window you could see the washing line and the small hut that served as a tool shed. Papá was wandering around, collecting wood for a barbecue. I called out to him through the window screen and asked if the people who had lent us the house had a son called Pedro. He said no, he didn't know any kid called Pedro.

The bedroom had two mismatched beds, a bedside table and a wardrobe. Otherwise it was completely empty. The drawers weren't even lined with paper. I put the postcard on the bedside table and sat down on the bed. Under the bedspread, the mattress was bare.

It was sheer frustration that prompted me to go to the wardrobe and stand on the bedside table to check a high shelf that, from what I could see, was empty. I had the bright idea of blowing hard to clear the thick layer of dust and almost blinded myself. I rubbed my eyes until they watered, but when I opened them again, it seemed to me I could see colours on the shelf that hadn't been there before.

Pedrito had left a book behind. I used the bedspread to wipe off the dirt and opened it. The proof was right there on the first page. It read ‘
Pedro '75
' in what was clearly a child's handwriting.

The book didn't have many pages, but it was big and had colour illustrations on the title page. It was called
Houdini, the Escape Artist
.
Inside the book were a number of colour plates printed on glossier paper than the text, and at the bottom of each photo there was a caption. The first one read: ‘
Harry practises his first escapes with the help of his brother Theo
'. (Houdini's first name was Harry.) Another caption read: ‘
In the asylum
' and showed Houdini in a padded cell, his arms strapped into a straitjacket. Another caption read: ‘
The Chinese Water Torture Cell
' and the photo was of a glass box filled with water, with Houdini inside, upside down, his wrists handcuffed.

Everything I knew about Houdini, I had seen in a TV film. Houdini was Tony Curtis. He was kind of like a magician and he escaped from all kinds of places. I remember them throwing him into a freezing lake, in a big trunk, I think. Houdini escaped from the trunk but nearly died because the lake was frozen and he couldn't find a hole in the ice to get out. He had practised in his bathroom at home, filling his bath with ice cubes. (‘
Houdini on the rocks
.')

I read the book until I felt cold; then I got dressed and went back to reading. After a while I had to turn the light on because it was getting dark.

This is a list of the things I found out from the book about Houdini:

Houdini was born in Budapest on 24 March 1874 – a little more than a century ago!

Houdini's name wasn't really Houdini, it was Erik Weisz. His father was Mayer Samuel Weisz, he was a rabbi (they're the ones who breathe life into the Golems) and his mother's name was Cecilia.

Houdini's family emigrated to the United States when he was four years old, and they were really poor so he had to go out to work shining shoes and selling newspapers when he was still a kid. In New York, he worked as a messenger boy and cut cloth for a tailor's called Richter & Sons. But the only job he was any good at was being a messenger boy. Not only was little Erik fast, but he had a lot of stamina for his age; he could run and run practically all day. And in the spring, when the frozen surface of the Hudson had barely melted, he was always the first to dive in: swimming was his great passion.

When Houdini began his career, he called himself Eric the Great, but later on, inspired by his famous French forerunner RobertHoudin, he decided to call himself Harry Houdini.

When Houdini first started performing, his assistant was his little brother Theo.

Houdini met Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner in 1894; they married two weeks later and after that she was always his assistant. (In the film, she was played by Janet Leigh, who was Tony Curtis's wife in real life.)

Houdini offered a reward to anyone who could defeat him with handcuffs, straitjackets, shackles, by locking him up in cages, in jail cells, in coffins, by throwing him into water weighed down with chains, claiming there was nothing he could not escape from. He was right; he never paid out a single reward. He often escaped from prisons to the mystification of dozens of journalists and the cheers of prisoners delighted to see that it really was possible to escape.

Houdini's most spectacular escape was the Chinese Water Torture Cell, where he spent four minutes suspended upside down underwater, escaping from his bonds before the very eyes of his enraptured audience.

Houdini's mother Cecilia Weisz died in 1913, plunging him into terrible grief.

Houdini kept on going in spite of everything and became the most famous escape artist in history, a true artist, a man no one could contain, who made freedom his vocation.

One not insignificant distinction made in the book (it opened my eyes) was the difference between what we call a magician (who is really just an illusionist, he has no magic powers, he just pretends he has) and an escape artist. Houdini belonged to the second category. He hated illusionists because they sullied the purity of his art: illusionists claim they can do things they can't actually do whereas an escape artist only claims to be able to do things he actually can do, using no tricks apart from his peak physical condition and his ability to control his body. This was not a minor distinction to Houdini, who expended enormous effort on unmasking tricksters and frauds. Magicians deal in lies. Escape artists, on the other hand, dedicate themselves to the truth.

Although at the time I didn't notice anything missing, I should mention here that the book didn't give any information about certain things that, as time went by, would come to obsess me: for example, the reason why the Weisz family decided to leave Budapest and cross the Atlantic. Or why little Erik was inspired to try his hand as an escapologist. Lastly, and most importantly, the thing I wanted to know more than anything in the world, the one thing I longed to know, the question that kept me awake at night, was how the hell did he do it?

In deciding on a barbecue, papá made two mistakes. First, he had forgotten to buy charcoal, and second he went ahead anyway, figuring sticks and small pieces of wood would do. The fire burned out far too fast, which not only meant eating half-raw steak for dinner, it also meant having to sit through a lecture from mamá on the different combustible properties of wood and charcoal.

In desperation, the Midget and I resorted to eating fruit. In general we only liked bananas and mandarin oranges, which could be peeled easily, or grapes – any kind of fruit we could prepare ourselves because unlike other mothers – Bertuccio's mother, for example – our mother was incapable of so much as peeling an orange for us. But that night hunger got the better of us. We would have shelled a coconut with our bare teeth if necessary. We opted for apples. The Midget started massacring his fruit. Mamá lit a cigarette and cleared her throat.

It was at this point that she told us about the new rules. We didn't know how long we would be staying here, she explained; it might be a couple of days, maybe a week, maybe longer. She told us that we wouldn't be returning to school for a while. On Monday, she said, she would have to go back to work at the laboratory, but papá would take a few days off and stay at the
quinta
with us.

Given our new circumstances, there was a set of basic ground rules we had to observe. We were not to go into the pool without telling a grown-up first. We were not to open the fridge or turn on the TV if we were barefoot or wet from swimming. And since the only water in the
quinta
was from the water tank, we were not to drink from the tap, spend more than ten minutes in the shower or leave it running for no reason. This last instruction signified an additional responsibility for me as the older brother. (mamá promised to show me how to fill the tank if it was empty.)

But there was another set of rules too, that related to our curious status as fugitives. For example, mamá explained that on no account were we to use the telephone. We were not to answer the phone and we were certainly not allowed to ring anyone. We weren't allowed to call Ana or grandma Matilde or Dorrego, and under no circumstances (this proscription was emphasized by a serious tone and stern look) was I allowed to ring Bertuccio. The best thing we could do, she said, was to imagine we were on holiday on a desert island, that we were the only tourists and there was no post, no phones and we could not leave until the boat that had brought us here came back to pick us up.

The Midget asked if there was a television on the island. Mamá said there was and the Midget threw up his arms in triumph, one hand brandishing the knife that still bore shreds of his sacrificial apple.

I argued that nobody went on holiday without a suitcase, so the only way we could have ended up on this island was if we'd been shipwrecked. (The word ‘shipwreck' made mamá and papá nervous, especially when they saw the Midget was getting upset.) I said, nobody can have fun on holidays when they have to wear the same clothes and the same shoes every day, when they have no books, no Risk, no trading cards and no Goofy (this, I admit, was a low blow), no friends and …

At this point papá interrupted me and said that as soon as the mists surrounding the island had cleared a little, he planned to go back to our house and pick up some things, or send someone with a list and a set of keys. But in the uncertain atmosphere of this new island, I refused to be placated by this news. Who knew how long it would be before this fog that cut us off from civilization lifted?

The grown-ups exchanged a quick glance and then papá got up from the table. For a moment I took this as an admission of defeat (and if papá was defeated, we were all doomed), but he reappeared from the bedroom carrying a bag and handed a shiny gift-wrapped package to the Midget and another to me.