I, Houdini Page 8

  I was just polishing off some extremely tasty berries when I became aware of a small animal quite close to me. Instinct reassured me—there was nothing to fear. Nevertheless I froze and watched it approach through the gloom.

  It was not unlike a much smaller version of myself, except that its nose was more pointed and it had a long thin tail. Also it was of a nondescript gray, rather than my beautiful gold. But it was clearly somewhat kin to my species, and as it came up to me, I realized it was a field mouse.

  It seemed to be in some distress. I sent it a hamster signal. It’s hard to put such signals into human language because, as between animal and animal, words do not really play any part. My signal was a mixture of greeting and inquiry, a Hello-are-you-all-right? sort of message. There was no coherent answer, just a lot of trembling of whiskers and desperate looks. It was afraid of me, evidently, so I wondered why it came so close. Perhaps there was something else it feared even more?

  I looked all around again carefully. Nothing—at least nothing I could see, hear, or smell. But the mouse sensed something. Suddenly it sent me a clear signal that any fool could have understood: “Danger! Run!” At almost the same instant it took off, rushing wildly away in a zigzag dash across the lawn.

  I watched it go, puzzled, uneasy, and yet feeling rather superior, for who with any sense would run into the open like that? Better to crouch in the shadows of the bush until the danger had passed. As I watched, the mouse stopped dead, seeming to shrink into itself, and I lost sight of it for a moment because it was so still in the dark. And then, out of nowhere, out of the very sky, a great winged shape swooped down.

  I lay rooted to the ground, every muscle taut with horror. I saw the broad wings, the spread pinions, the round head—and the outstretched talons. I heard the thin shriek, cut off fur-raisingly in the middle. The predator did not alight. All in one movement it beat up again from the shadowy ground, and a moment later I could see it, outlined against the stars as it soared away on silent motionless wings. I could not see the poor little dead thing it carried, but I knew it was there.

  I did not move for a long, long time. It was not just fear. It was shock. A snail—well, that was one thing. A lower form of life, and after all, we must all eat. But a warm-blooded, furry creature, capable of fear, of pain—to be snatched from life like that before my very eyes—it was just too horrible. It was some time before I could take it in.

  But when I had, I knew for certain that Outdoors was not just another name for freedom. It was a name for Nature, and Nature was a name for sudden death. Death here was not a mere occasional accident, caused by rare and perverse villains; it was part of a pattern, in which any form of life might find itself destroyed before its time, to make sport or food for some other form. Neither sun nor moon nor any other power could prevent it. Speed and caution, wit and cunning might help one stay alive—but in the end, superior strength must prevail. Lying there on the sweet, natural earth, my belly full of the unbloody food of my innocent appetite, I knew the truth: If I stayed out here in the open, if I indulged my longing for freedom, sooner or later I would lose my life. Cat, or dog, or great winged bird—one of them, or some other killer that I had still to meet, would outwit or outfight me some dark night or warm drowsy midday. That is, if I were not set light to, or stepped on, or trapped, or drowned, or in some other way disposed of.

  Now I must face the ultimate question. All my life I had lived for freedom. Now I had it. Did I, when the crunch came, want it at this cost?

  I forced my stiff legs to move at last, and in one panic-stricken dash I regained my cave in the rocks. With fast-beating heart I lay there, asking the question again and again. Freedom—and death? Or captivity—and safety?

  It may seem that I have shown some small degree of satisfaction with myself and my doings throughout this history. If that has been the case, I apologize, for nothing is more offensive to me than any kind of bombast or undue conceit. I say undue because, of course, there is a just conceit, a pride that is deserved, and to deny that is mere imitation modesty, a lie, in fact. For it can’t be denied, even by me, that many of my exploits showed exceptional qualities.

  But now comes the moment in my life of which I am proudest, and even if I had had an even more astonishing tale to tell of myself until this point, I would say that all my bravery, skill, and intelligence till now counted for very little beside the true heroism of my answer to this vital and terrible question.

  I decided to stay Outdoors, and if I had to die for it, well! A short life and a merry one, as humans say. And if not so very merry (as seemed likely after the grim events of the night), then at least—free.

  I celebrated this magnificent decision by emerging boldly from my cave, running to the base of the rock pile, and scampering round it once or twice as if tempting all the terrors of the night to do their worst. So full of courage was I that I swear I half hoped some cat or bird of prey would attack me, for I felt sure I could do justice to myself. I felt a hero and I longed to prove it! And all of a sudden, the chance came.

  And I muffed it.

  Oh, the shame of it! The awful anticlimax! I can scarcely bear to relate what happened, and would gladly skip over it if I were not so honest.

  But was it not an irony of fate that that grand climax of my life should have been all but spoiled by the wretched, humiliating accident that immediately followed?

  It was not even some really ferocious foe that was my undoing. It was a dog. The selfsame fat, lumbering, shaggy beast who had nosed his way up the alley and upset the garbage can. How I came to be caught by such an idiotic slow-moving lump I do not know, and never will. No doubt I was so carried away with my noble decision that my nose and other senses temporarily ceased to function.

  For the creature must have been nearby for some minutes and have seen me come out of the cave and run about with foolish bravado. The second time I rounded the corner of the rock pile, I ran straight into its mouth.

  I made one ludicrous attempt to bite or jump free, but it was hopeless. He closed his jaws on me—I smelled his crude breath and felt the tightening of his huge teeth—I knew it was all over with me, and my last thought (as I supposed) was: At least I will die silently.

  But I did not die! The teeth closed, but only until I was held fast between them. They did not so much as bruise my back. I felt myself being carried quite gently and, opening my eyes, saw that we were approaching the back door of a house. The dog raised a heavy forepaw and scratched. After a few moments it opened and the dog stepped in.

  I was Indoors.

  Chapter 15

  Little did I know, as I was carried through that back doorway, that the worst ordeal of my life was about to begin.

  I have so far described two human homes—the one I call ours, a rather old-fashioned and modest one; and Ben’s, which was very modern and smart, if you care for that sort of thing.

  The house I now entered, all unwillingly, was very different from either. When that dimwitted (but, I must say, gentle) dog deposited me on the kitchen floor, I had a quick look round—and wondered, for a moment, if I was in a home at all, or if this was some sort of roofed extension of Outdoors. But the smell alone soon put the notion from my mind. Outdoors has a smell that I love, and that is principally—from my height—of earth. To some humans, Mothers especially, earth is just another word for dirt, especially when it is on their children’s bodies. But let me assure them that no two substances could be more different to one with a sensitive nose like mine.

  This house simply stank of dirt. It was awful. There was stale food in it, and unwashed human bodies, and dog, of course—a great deal of dog. But there was another smell, one I recognized from that cupboard I was in at Ben’s, the one with all the bottles. Later I learned it was called Alcohol.

  And everywhere was rubbish.

  It was not just the sort of untidiness and mess I was used to at our house. That got cleared up reasonably often (the Father called it a blitz) and the surfaces
under it swept and washed. Soon they were covered with clutter all over again, but that deep stench of piled-up filth certainly never happened there. All my senses fairly reeled back from it when it hit me.

  The whole room was littered with dirty, broken, ugly, uninviting junk. I say “uninviting” because usually, as soon as I see objects scattered about, I want to run under and over them and explore them; but no fastidious animal in his right mind would have wanted to go anywhere near this lot. It looked as if some giant creature had run amok there, knocking things over, breaking them, spilling things all over them—and then leaving them, for a long, long time, to get covered with dust and grease.

  Could the dog have done this? At the thought my blood ran cold, for only an animal completely mad could have caused such havoc, and madness is the most fearful thing in an animal, something we all avoid even thinking about.

  But I reassured myself. The dog who had collected me and brought me in was not exactly a genius among canines, but he was no more mad, in the frightening sense, than I was. At this moment, having forgotten all about me, he was nosing among the debris, sniffing loudly, and eventually he located a dirty dish half-full of unfresh water, which he proceeded to slurp up. I, meanwhile, had taken the precaution of hiding myself under an upturned box, which had one corner propped on an old rubber boot. This lay on its side, offering me a tempting tunnel of retreat in the event of danger. Meanwhile I was not too repelled by my surroundings to want to stay around to see what would happen.

  Something very soon did.

  The door to the room—not the door we had come through, but one leading to the rest of the house—was thrown rudely open, making both the dog and me jump at the crash as it fell back against the wall. Heavy footsteps advanced through the room, and I could hear loud noises as objects, such as chairs, tin pails, and old bottles, were kicked out of the way. Instinctively I fled down into the boot (about the smell of which, the less said the better) and cowered there, hoping one of those clumsy kicks would not connect with my soft-covered hideout.

  Instead, one of them connected with the even more vulnerable behind of my poor old enemy, the dog, who let out a yelp and scrambled into a corner, where I could hear the poor beast whimpering. I was bewildered. Why should an animal return of its own free will to a house where it was ill-treated in such a fashion? I had to learn that whereas a cat, whatever its other faults, has the self-respect to oppose or flee cruelty in human beings, a dog—so much a cat’s superior in many ways—has a craven soul and will lick the very boot that kicks it. I was to be given a sickening demonstration of this revolting trait during my ever-more-unwilling stay in this hell house.

  “You stupid …!” roared an awful voice, using a word I had (mercifully) never heard before, but was to hear frequently during the next few hours. “Leaving the … door open!” (Another such word. Some natural feelings for human language told me that these were words no animal should hear.) The man stamped through the room to the back door and slammed it violently shut. He had a few more choice remarks to make about dogs and drafts roaring through the … house, and then he started looking for a bottle that still had something in it. He opened a little door, like a cupboard, and a new horrid aroma broke out of it, of food gone bad, and then, not finding what he was looking for in there, he left it open and began filling the air with curses as he pulled the room half to pieces hunting for something to drink.

  You may think no other smell could by now triumph over the ones I have already described, but poking my nose cautiously out of that filthy boot, I detected a different one, one if possible even more unpleasant to me than any of the others. It was the smell of animal fear. It was coming, of course, from the dog, which was curled, quivering, in a corner of the room behind a crate, keeping as quiet as it could to avoid drawing its master’s attention to itself.

  Now, it may seem odd that I could feel actual sympathy for a creature who, by common reckoning, was my natural enemy, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor wretch. Fancy living in such an ugly turmoil of disorder, stench, and noise, not to mention the threats and violence. Imagine being tied—in some way I could not fathom—to an owner so unfit to have the privilege of animal companionship, especially a dog’s, on which, as I knew from my boys’ wistful conversations on the subject, humans place a very high value. My boys yearned for a dog of their own, and for my part I sincerely wished they had this one—at least it would be properly looked after. It hurt me to think of any animal, especially such a docile, harmless great thing as this, in the clutches of the human monster who was now slumped by the table, drinking straight from the bottle.

  I decided I must try to leave the house, or at least escape from the room where this horrible human was. I did not know what was the matter with him then; I thought him mad, and getting more so by the minute, and as I’ve said, every creature fears madness. So, making sure his back was turned, I crept quietly out of the boot and headed toward the open door through which he had come in.

  Alas! My kindly feelings toward the dog, whom I regarded as a fellow victim, had dulled my wits to the obvious fact that it had no such feelings toward me. To the dog, I was still nothing but a scuttling intruder on his premises (no doubt he’d already forgotten who’d brought me here). Perhaps he wanted to gain his master’s approval, or perhaps he simply acted from instinct. Anyway, he leapt out of his corner and began to chase me.

  I ran like mad. The house was in darkness, and there were obstacles everywhere. I dodged and twisted; once I had to double back straight between his legs, nearly causing him to fall flat on his face. But for all his idiocy, he knew the place better than I did, with the result that before long he had cornered me.

  I faced him, sending him signals of friendship, which he was too stupid (and also too excited) to interpret. He looked for a minute as if he might be going to seize me, and in no such gentle way as before, so I bared my teeth and sent him a different signal—one of fury and defiance. He got that, all right, and backed off a trifle, but he still stood, barking mindlessly but so loudly that I couldn’t hear myself think. And that was a pity, because I have never needed to think more.

  My best bet would probably have been to make straight at him and dash between his legs again, but before I could gather my courage to do so, the Beast came crashing along the passage.

  “What the hell are you making such a filthy racket for?” he snarled, giving the dog another blow with his boot, which sent it reeling, for all it was so big. Then a light went on.

  For a second the Beast and I stared at each other. He snarled like the dog and made a clumsy dive toward me. As I broke out of my corner he actually tried to put his enormous foot on me, but I dodged and raced back toward the kitchen again, while in my ears rang his roars of surprise and rage.

  “Get after it, you lazy flea-bitten mutt!” he yelled to the dog.

  And would you believe it, that poor-spirited creature obeyed him!

  What a chase! I ran as I had never run before, with both of them after me. Occasionally I could catch my breath by hiding under some heavy object or sprinting from one hiding place to another farther away, obliging the Beast to move things (or rather hurl them) aside—at one point I was in greater danger from flying furniture than I was from either man or dog.

  But in the end one of them would always spot me or uncover me. With a howl and a volley of barks, they would be after me again.

  Of course I was terrified. Yet somehow, in the very thick of my peril, I was exhilarated too. All I had ever learned or trained myself to do came to my aid now: all my climbing, diving, agility, swiftness, and cunning—not to mention sheer courage. I came to realize that, barring bad luck, the pair of them together were no match for Houdini! I would outwit them yet!

  But then I made my fatal mistake.

  I was searching, of course, throughout the whole chase, for a way out. And at last, when I was all but at my last gasp, I thought I’d found it. A door! And to the Outdoors, too! I knew it because of
the cold air that blew through. That that air bore a smell of bad food, I had no time to notice. Of course if I hadn’t been half-blind with exhaustion I would have seen what trap I was running into, but as I felt the dog’s hot breath right on my back, that breath of cold air deceived me. I turned sharply toward it, leapt up a little step—and suddenly—slam! I was in darkness.

  And not just darkness, but cold such as I had never experienced enveloped me. A few moments’ feverish exploration was enough to teach me the ghastly truth. I was not Outdoors—far from it! I was shut into a small, dark, ice-cold box.

  Chapter 16

  Instinct told me I must get out, and quickly, for the cold was so intense that I found myself beginning to grow weak. But for once there was no escape. My brain was active, but my body could scarcely move. Chilled to the bone, I lay on the hard icy floor of the box in the utter darkness and felt a strange darkness stealing over my mind as well.

  I focused my thoughts as well as I could on the sun. How I longed for its kindly, life-giving warmth! But its image faded. No sounds came to me. The great varied world outside was shut away from me as if it didn’t exist.

  I had never had thoughts or ideas about death, for animals, even those clever enough to know about death and to fear it and strive to avoid it, cannot face it in their minds. But now I knew that this was death, this darkness, this silence, this mortal, blood-stilling cold.

  How could a fighter, an escapologist, a genius, lose his life like this? How could I let death overtake me, lying here so patiently and helplessly, with everything fading and growing dim? Yet I had no choice. Could even my great namesake have found his way out of a prison like this? No.

  It was my last conscious thought.

  I woke up slowly. I was lying in soft, blissful warmth. There was light and there were sounds, quiet voices, soothing, anxious …