🎧 341: After a while . . .

     After a while, not even Herb really had any objection to Mrs. Stolz’s living with them. The ménage was a happy one, and he wouldn’t have done anything to disturb it. Within the first year, he had the den in habitable shape; Mrs. Stolz moved in, and Ella was able to sleep in the room that Herb and Lorna had intended for her. It took Herb another eight years to finish the den completely, but finally he did finish it, and it made a comfortable sitting room and bedroom for Mrs. Stolz. His last piece of work was the hidden entrance. In the hallway, between the door to the bathroom and the door to Herb and Lorna’s bedroom, he built a set of bookcases, recessed into the wall. Among the books on the shelves was a leather-bound edition of The Thousand and One Nights.
     “How do you suppose you get into the room?” asked Herb. He had assembled the household for a viewing of the completed room, but he had kept many of the details and special features secret, none more carefully kept than the method of opening the secret entrance. “How do you suppose you open your door, Mrs. Stolz?” he asked.
     “Oh, I’m sure I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t know at all.”
     “I don’t see any door,” said Ella. She was fourteen. For everything but romance, she had a literal mind.
     Herb chuckled. “Oh, yes you do,” he said. “You just don’t recognize it. Things aren’t always what they seem, you know. The truth is, you’re looking right at the door.”
     “I am?” said Ella. “Where?”
     “This bookcase is a door,” said Herb. “Watch.” He removed The Thousand and One Nights. In doing so, he released a hidden latch. He opened the book as if he were going to read from it. He flipped a few pages until he apparently found what he wanted. “Open, Sesame!” he boomed, and he replaced the volume on the shelf, thereby activating a hidden spring. Slowly, one section of the bookcase swung open.
     “Gosh!” said Ella. She was wonderfully impressed, not so much by the door as by her father’s ability. She applauded.
     Lorna, charmed by Ella’s reaction as much as by the door, reacted just as Ella had. “Oh, Herb,” she said, “it’s magic!” She clapped her hands together like a girl and hugged Herb.
     Over Lorna’s shoulder, Herb winked at Mrs. Stolz, and Mrs. Stolz, convinced that Lorna, batty as she was, really believed Herb had made magic, reacted as Lorna had, the better to keep the illusion alive, or to strengthen it. She clapped her hands like a girl. She was really applauding Herb’s compassion. Her heart went out once again to this wonderful man, this saintly man, who put so much effort into building a crazy world for his crazy wife, a world that seemed to have magic in it, a world where doors were hidden in bookcases and drawers lifted their contents when they were opened, a world with nonsense built into it so that his wife would feel at home in it, a world with unlikelinesses to match her irrationality, a world where she could feel sane.
     From then on, whenever Mrs. Stolz went to her room, she would open the door by removing the leather volume, flipping through it as if she had forgotten the command and had to find it again, come at last to “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and, apparently reading from the book, command the bookcase, “Open, Sesame!” replace the volume, and seem to marvel again at the magic she worked. Lorna, whenever she saw Mrs. Stolz go through her rigmarole at the bookcase, would swallow hard at the poignancy of it, and think to herself, The poor old woman has really lost her marbles.

In Topical Guide 341, Mark Dorset considers Books: Real and Fictional: The Thousand and One Nights; Magic: Magic Words; Interpersonal Behavior: Going Along with the Gag, Going Along to Get Along; and Personality Characteristics and Emotional Stability, Assessing from this episode.

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