The Confabulist A Novel (Steven Galloway) by Steven Galloway

Author:Steven Galloway
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307400871
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2014-04-28T21:00:00+00:00

MARTIN STRAUSS

Present Day

AND NOW I’M ANGRY AGAIN. THIS BENCH, DR. KORSAKOFF, my own mind—it all boils up. I want to hit something or scream or pick up the trash can and throw it through the automatic doors, sending pebbles of glass skittering across the lobby. I haven’t been this mad in years. Not since my father died, at least. No one could make me as angry as he did.

Do we ever really get over the things that our parents do to us? There was no grand cataclysm that marked my childhood, but the sum total of it left an echo that is still here. My mother was everything gentle. She made things better, she fixed what went wrong, and she remains what I conjure when I think of goodness.

My father was not a villain, though he did villainous things. He was cold, distant, and had no time for children. At his best, he was an actor playing a father. At his usual, he was a man who endured his children. At his worst, he resented us.

He often appeared as though he wished he were elsewhere. He’d stare out the window, look at his watch, complain that we needed to go no matter where we were or where we had to be next. We were perpetually arriving early and leaving early, trying to keep up with his restless feeling that something was about to happen elsewhere. I imagine it exhausted my mother. I know it exhausted me.

Until I started to become like him, at about the age of fourteen. I ceased being a mere hindrance to him and became an adversary. A young man has options in life an older man doesn’t. I would get out of our town, see the world, and do things he knew he would never do. My ambition diminished him, but I couldn’t see that. Every time he reacted to me with jealousy, I redoubled my efforts to become free of him.

I should be going. There are all sorts of minor tasks I need to accomplish. I have a half-dozen books due back at the library. One of them is a new Houdini biography. I read these books on Houdini with great interest. A lot of them come remarkably close to the truth, but no one knows the story quite like me. I imagine that by now I might be the only one left alive who knows the truth, though it’s possible that there are details in some archive or government file that would lead a curious investigator to the correct conclusion. Either way, as far as I know I’ve read every single book ever published by Houdini or about Houdini, and no one’s got the whole story yet.

Aside from the obvious reason, I’ve stayed interested in Houdini because of his escapes. He became the world’s most famous man in an era when it was hard to be world famous, because he was able to get out of the most impossible setups. Nothing could trap him. But of course this isn’t true—all of his escapes were manufactured.

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