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Down in the Dirt v056

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Decrepit Remains
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 Decrepit Remains, the 2008 Down in the Dirt collection book
Weisz Words

Pat Dixon

    “. . . On October 31, 1926, Houdini [Erich Weisz] died of acute appendicitis in Detroit, Michigan. On every Hallowe’en night for the next sixteen years, Bess, his widow, attempted to communicate with Harry’s spirit, but with no verifiable success.”
    —“Houdini, Harry,” Encyclopaedia Michigana, 17th ed.

“I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list. . . .
The task of filling up the blanks
    I’d rather leave to you.” ��—W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado

1


    “Beatrice, hold my hand tighter, dear. Yes. Yes—our spirit contact says that we have Harry now—that he’s finally ready to send you his secret code-word. It’s—it’s—it’s the word ‘Wilhelmina’! Yes—it’s ‘Wilhelmina.’ Does ‘Wilhelmina’ mean anything to you, dear?”
    “‘Wilhelmina’? Yes. Of course it does. I’m sure that you know that it has meaning for me, Madame Shovitsky.”
    “Yes. Yes—I felt very confident that this time our contact had finally spoken with Harry—with Erich—and that we at last would get the proof all of us have been longing for. If any person could contact us from beyond the grave, the world’s greatest magician and escape artist—Harry Houdini—would.”
    “Wilhelmina—that was my real name—the name I had when Erich and I met. It is what Erich always called me in—in private, you know. Yes—and Beatrice—that was only my stage name, the name I took when I began working as his assistant. Often, in front of others, Erich would shorten Beatrice to Bess. But he—he never called me by either of those names when we were alone together. Always either Wilhelmina—or just Mina for short sometimes—when he was feeling—you know—affectionate.”
    “Oh—this is such a breakthrough, then, Beatrice. It—it is all right if I continue calling you Beatrice, isn’t it? You don’t wish me to call you—Wilhelmina—do—you?”
    “You may call me Beatrice. It is what most friends and acquaintances call me—when they are not calling me Mrs. Houdini—or—or the Widow Houdini. My rabbi often calls me ‘Widow Weisz,’ but Beatrice is a nice name. You may continue calling me that, Madame Shovitsky, if you are comfortable with that.”
    “Whatever you prefer, dear. Are there any questions you would like to put to—to Harry—to Erich? I—I would think, as long as we finally have made contact with him, that you might—you know—might wish to know something about the spirtual plane or his current feelings—or other things.”
    The widow shut her eyes for half a minute and seemed to be in deep thought. Madame Shovitsky gave her right hand a reassuring squeeze and said nothing. At last the widow spoke.
    “No. This may seem odd to you, for I am certain that hundreds, perhaps thousands of your previous clients have been brimming over with questions they put to their loved ones. Last Hallowe’en, the fifteenth anniversary of Erich’s death—his ‘crossing over,’ as you call it—I was prepared to ask him one or two things about his beloved mother, but this Hallowe’en I have no questions. I prepared none. I was certain that we would fail again. Like other people, I have been more concerned in recent years with the news of the war—the horrors of what the Japanese have been doing, but especially the horrors of—of Jews being rounded up by Frenchmen and handed over to—to—I cannot speak their name. It is too painful to me.
    “I fully understand, Beatrice. Perhaps you would like to ask—Erich—what the Lord has planned as far as the—the war is concerned? It has been my experience that those in the spirit realm often can see something of the future and can guide us or—at least reassure us. Would you like to ask about that perhaps?”
    “Thank you, but no. I think I shall continue to take comfort, such as I can, from the public words of President Roosevelt and from the more personal words of Rabbi Rumskopf—and, of course, the broadcasts of both Mrs. Roosevelt and that brave Mr. Churchhill. I doubt that any words you might convey to me as dear Erich’s would do anything but sadden me.”
    “Because you fear he can see only pain and misery for the Allied cause, Beatrice?”
    “No—because I am certain that you would be bullshitting me, Madame Shovitsky, and I would not like to subject myself to that experience. It would be a mockery to my husband’s memory as well as to the religious beliefs I hold dear. I regret to say that I see you, if you will pardon my bluntness for a moment, as one more charlatan, one more opportunist who is trying to separate grief-stricken people from their money when they are most vulnerable. I have decided that tonight, October 31st, 1942, will be the very last time I shall make any attempt to have contact with my beloved Erich. The experiment ends tonight. If he and I are to be reunited, it will be whenever I myself have ‘passed over.’”
    “Am—am I to understand—are you giving me to understand that—the word—the name ‘Wilhelmina’ was not the special code-word that you and Erich had agreed upon.”
    “It is common knowledge what my real name is, Madame Shovitsky. And I am equally aware that my name was printed in dark ink on a slip of paper that was sealed inside an envelope that has rested inside a heavy glass belljar in my living room for many years. I know this, because I put it there myself—and often look in at it to see the many ways that forces other than the wind have moved that envelope just ever so slightly. I am confident in my own mind that Erich was not in touch with us tonight—just as he has never been in touch with us on any previous occasions.”
    “But—do you mean to say that ‘Wilhelmina’ was not the correct word? I—I was certain that—that my spirit guide had found Erich for us—and that we—you and I—had at last succeeded where others—had miserably failed. I—I am still certain of it!”
    “Alas for you, then, Madame Shovitsky. I shall be leaving now, and I shall be announcing to those reporters waiting outside that we again have failed—that this experiment will not be repeated in 1943—whatever else might, for good or ill, take place in that year. Or at any other time in the future. Now—Mr. Epstein and Mr. Kellock, will you kindly accompany me to meet briefly with the press and then see that I get home safely?”
    These men rose from their seats and assured the widow that they would do so.

2


    The next morning, newspapers carried a brief story on page 17 that yet once more the Widow Houdini had failed in her attempt to bridge the gulf between the worlds of flesh and spirit, adding that, as per her desires, no further attempts would be made.
    In the early afternoon, the widow went to the belljar in her living room and removed the sealed envelope. Glancing calmly at its wax seal for fifteen seconds, she took a deep breath and then tossed the envelope onto the burning logs that warmed the room. Above the mantle of this fireplace hung a portrait of her late husband. She stared into his intense, penetrating eyes, while the envelope and its slip of paper were silently consumed.
    “I am so sorry, Erich,” she said in a soft voice.
    a. “You’ve done the right thing, Mina,” he replied. “There are some kinds of knowledge without which mankind is better off. It would not be proper for us to attempt to subvert the Lord’s will. As Dante so often tells us here, fortune-tellers and mediums of any kind are His enemies and must not to be aided or credited in any way.”
    b. For a brief second, as the envelope burned, the slip of paper was laid bare—and it was blank.
    c. Erich Weisz put his barely visible hands out despairingly.
    “Mina! It will work! I know! You must try again on the twentieth anniversary! Anything less is considered shallow love by our Creator!”
    The Archangel Gabriel glanced over at him and shrugged, knowing for a fact that Mina Weisz herself would be dying on February 11, 1943.
    d. Mark Twain slapped his hand silently at—and partly through—his ghostly knee and looked gleefully up at Voltaire and Rabelais, who quietly grinned back.
    “Damn, Volley! She-it, Rabby! I jest cornvinced that Madame Slippery-Ski that she had it. Damn! I don’t know when or how we’re gonna have this much fun ag’in. If I still had any feces in me, I’d’a’ messed m’self f’r shore!”
    e. The widow opened a small safe that was set into the wall behind an oaken panel. She lifted out a sealed envelope with contained the maiden name of Erich’s mother, written in Erich’s hand. With a sigh, she tossed it into the fireplace and watched as the flames consumed it.
    f. Erich, if he could still be said to have an individual identity, floated up to the spirit of what had once been know as Jersey Lily—singer Lily Langtree—and for a brief period of time “blended” with “her,” totally unaware that it was Hallowe’en once more on earth.
    g. Saint Peter leaned over the Great Abyss and called downward: “Yo. Adversary. I guess you’re not lettin’ the Great Escape Artist take a call this Hallowe’en either, huh? The Big Guy doesn’t really give a crap one way or t’other, but, with the World War keepin’ us pretty busy an’ all, some of us were wondering if you’d even thought about this year. Yo.”
    h. Then the widow sat down in an overstuffed chair and read the morning mail aloud to herself: “My dearest Mina—I trust that you have kept your promise to end this ‘nonsense’ with mediums. Once you’ve put that part of your life behind you, there can at last be ‘us’ in the truest sense. Fondly, Samuel.” Pressing the paper to her nose, she decided that his note, like his previous notes, possessed a “very manly” odor, and she felt no regrets.
    i. The Lord figuratively rubbed what would have been “His” “chin” (had “He” had any chin) in what figuratively was a mediative manner. How odd, “He” “thought” to “Himself.” These mortals still believe that there is an afterlife of some sort!
    j. Erich Weisz “sat” at a poker table with the famous French magician Jean Eugne Robert-Houdin—the unwilling progenator of the stage name Houdini. As Erich attempted for the ten-thousanth time to play one of the aces he had hidden in his “sleeve,” Robert-Houdin remarked, “Oh, by the way, Sharpy-Schmucky, you had another call from your wife last ‘night.’ But I guess you can wait till next year to answer her, huh?”
    k. The Creator “gazed” about the void that surrounded “Her” and “thought,” How odd—these creatures still believe that “I” am capable of granting eternal life to them.
    l. Dante Alighieri, who, as usual, was “manning” the “switchboard” of Heaven on Hallowe’en, decided it would be amusing to “screen” Erich Weisz’s calls. With grim humor he replied for Erich, using the first word that came to his “mind.”
    m. Wilhemina Weisz picked up the morning newspaper and stared in horror at the headlines. Admiral Yamamoto’s fleet was counter-attacking in the Solomon Islands, and Field Marshall Rommel was giving Mongomery a bad time at El Alamein. Tears welled from her eyes, and once again all thoughts of her late husband were driven from her mind—just as they had been during the spirit-crushing years of the Great Depression, which Erich had been able to “escape.”
    n. Erich “stood” slack-jawed, insofar as he still possessed anything resembling a jaw, and wondered how he could have been such a forgetful dunderhead: he had erroneously sent the word “Wilhelmina” instead of “Mina.” He felt his ears, insofar as he still had anything resembling ears, begin to burn with embarrassment.
    o. The Creator “gazed” at the Horse-Head Nebula, unaware that life, let alone what was calling itself “sentient” life, had arisen on Earth, and “thought,” Gee! That’s rather pretty!
    p. Bert Reese, Jr., son of the once famous British psychic, smiled to himself. It had worked like a charm! His contact had easily been able to “tap the lines,” pretend to be Harry Houdini, and provide Madame Shovitsky’s contact with false information, thereby thwarting Houdini’s spirit. That, he thought, should pay him back for making a mockery of my dear father’s séance with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
    q. The Lord “smiled” to “Himself.” Yielding to a “momentary” anti-Semitic impulse, “He” had chosen to disrupt this year’s experiment, too.
    r. While Madame Shovitsky’s two sons twisted the widow’s housemaid’s arms, Madame S. slapped her senseless for deliberately supplying the wrong code word.
    s. The Creator angrily shook “His” “fist” at “His” creatures, displeased that yet another attempt to use one of them (literally) as a “medium” of communication had failed. Well, “He” thought, back to the “drawing board.”
    t. In the old Mercury Theatre, a Hallowe’en-night radio dramatization of Bram Stoker’s Dracula had broadcast the word “Wilhelmina” just as Madame Shovitsky was about to reveal this year’s guess.
    u. For a few minutes, the Archangel Michael “sat” before the vid-screen and watched the widow and Madame S. attempting another annual experiment. Then, with a deep sigh and a small shrug, he turned his attention to something of more interest: his own proto-Pac-man game.
    v. The Adversary “shouted” at Madame Shovitsky (AKA Sarah Klein, Marcia LaTour, Nadine Steinberg, Cynthia Gordon, and Susan Litman), “Don’t blame me, you silly cow! I gave you the right word. Whatever happened after that was out of my ‘hands.’ Why did you say ‘Wilhemina’ instead of just plain ‘Mina’? Just don’t forget our bargain!”
    w. The Creator’s “young” “cousin”—who had been “watching” the “store” for eons while the Creator took a “break”—had clumsily disconnected the medium from the message while “poking around.”
    x. The silent, uncreated void dimmed slowly as planet after planet was engulfed by stars which went nova, swelled, and then shrank. Fortunately for the so-called sentient beings, all of their species extinguished themselves long before this with their own little nuclear holocausts.
    y. The Creators rested—occasional snorts and snores incidentally creating small galaxies, while occasional farts—seven or eight per Creator per “century,” on average—caused black holes to form. Left on their own, the galaxies seemed to breathe—moving outward for, say, half a trillion years, a small percentage of them spontaneously evolving life forms—and then moving inward again.



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