Ghosts by Gaslight (7 page)

“You have excellent hearing,” Angelos said. “Better than mine. It took me some while before I began to make sense of what I thought might even be mice, rustling in the corners late at night. Then I considered whether or not it might be static electricity of some sort, given the nature of my experiments. Finally . . . well. Judge for yourselves.”

He fitted the round end of the stethoscope into a clip on the generator frame, settling it carefully. “Had to fix this with soft solder, took me forever. I’m obviously not a dab hand at this type of thing . . .
there,
now the galvanometer . . .
and
off we go.” He began, slowly and rhythmically, to turn the crank.

“You don’t have to rotate it all that fast, that’s the remarkable thing. You just have to keep it going steadily, evenly. It takes a bit of a while—maybe some sort of charge has to build up. Something
like
a charge. I don’t really know. You’ll see.”

Griffith had been whistling thinly and idly as Angelos went on, toying with his watch and paying little attention to the demonstration. Scheuch and Vordran, however, were watching intently, with Vordran appearing especially rapt, as though he were staring at something beyond the rickety generator and its equally flimsy attachments. To Scheuch, the slow whir of the revolving disc became almost hypnotic, somewhat like the pulse of a sewing machine treadle. The air in the room was close and warm, and he felt himself swaying forward on Angelos’s old settee.

Vordran said, “What am I hearing?”

Even Griffith looked at him. Angelos said nothing, but only kept on rotating the copper disc. Vordran’s voice rose, the terror in it making his accent markedly more pronounced. “What am I hearing? Who is that speaking?
Who is that speaking?
”

The galvanometer needle was jerking on the dial, and Scheuch saw a few small sparks spitting off the edge of the disc, but he heard no voice beyond Vordran’s. It seemed to him that Angelos was turning the generator crank slightly faster than before, but the increased speed made no apparent difference to anyone but Vordran. He was out of the armchair, gaping fearfully in every direction. “Don’t you hear? Does no one
hear
?” He took a step toward Angelos, raising his arms as though he meant to bring both clenched fists down on the generator. “You
must
be hearing!”

Angelos quickly stopped cranking the generator, holding up his hands with the palms out. “No one’s here, it’s all right, I promise you. No one’s speaking, not now.” He reached out to pat Vordran on the arm, a bit timorously. “Really, there’s no one.”

Vordran stood still, shaking his head heavily, like an exhausted animal. He said, “Not now. But there was. I heard. There
were
voices, more than one. None of you heard?”

Scheuch said, “No, nothing, I’m sorry,” and could not have said why he had apologized. Vordran continued to stare at Angelos. “
You—
you yourself—you heard nothing?” Angelos did not respond.

To everyone’s astonishment, it was Griffith who suddenly said, “I did.” Vordran wheeled to look at him in disbelief, and Scheuch jumped to his feet without realizing that he had done so. Only Angelos’s expression remained unchanged.

Griffith had the air of someone who had been shaken out of deep slumber, roughly and without warning. He said dazedly, “How did you do that?”

“What did you hear?” Angelos’s voice was clear and without any particular inflection, but it seemed to Scheuch at the time—though he was never sure afterward—that the medical student was smiling faintly. “Tell me exactly what you heard, Griffith.”

The Oxford man was plainly struggling to retain control of the tone that mattered most to him. Putting the words one after another, like a blind man finding his way down a strange street, he said hoarsely, “There were two of them. I couldn’t understand the woman . . . very faint, you know—rather think she was speaking French, some such.” Vordran nodded. Griffith said, “But the man . . . the man was speaking English, no doubt of it.” After a moment, he added, somewhat more himself, “His speech had a distinct Midlands accent.”

The room was completely silent. All that could be heard was Vordran’s breathing, slow as falling blood. Scheuch said finally, “Old chap, Angelos, I really think you ought to clarify things a bit. Elucidate—I believe that’s the word. What the
devil
is going on here?”

Angelos sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Not good enough,” Scheuch said, feeling himself flushing in embarrassment. “Really not.”

“How are you making those voices?” Vordran demanded. “Where are they coming from?”

“I don’t
know,
God’s my witness!” Angelos raised his voice for the first time. “I’d tell you if I knew!” He was alternately twisting his fingers together and hugging himself. “I don’t bloody
know
!”

Griffith said, surprisingly calmly, “You must have some notion, surely. Are they coming through your electro-thing? Those—what do you call them?—ah,
wave
things?”

Angelos opened his mouth and then shut it again. He stood silent, regarding the three of them with the air, not so much of an animal brought to bay, but that of a lost child in darkening woods. He said, “I think I can bring them in a trifle louder.”

Vordran said, “No,” but Angelos was already beside the generator, turning the hand-crank notably harder than he had done previously. He used both hands at first; then, as the copper disc picked up speed, he freed his left hand to lift the stethoscope and held the end out toward Scheuch, who took hold of it gingerly. Angelos gestured to him to fit the little rubber earpieces to his head.

At first Scheuch heard nothing beyond the hiss of the disc and an occasional tiny sputter of fluctuating electricity. Then, very slowly, a word, two words, at a time . . . a woman. This one, unlike the woman Griffith had heard, was plainly speaking in English, but Scheuch could make nothing coherent of what she was saying. “
. . . Carrots . . . the minister . . . Martin . . . coal chute . . . Martin . . .”
Her voice dissolved into crackle and buzz, and Scheuch looked up to meet Angelos’s inquiring gaze with his own wide eyes. He said, “I heard. Not quite sure
what,
but yes, I did hear . . .” In spite of himself, he let his voice trail away.

“Give it to me,” Vordran said. All but snatching the stethoscope from Scheuch’s hands, he clamped the earpieces on his head, which being larger than Scheuch’s, required angry, hurried readjustment. Angelos kept the generator turning steadily—the galvanometer needle hardly stirred from its near-center point—and Vordran listened with his jaw sagging and his eyes utterly unfocused. Abruptly he tore the stethoscope from his head and hurled it back at Angelos, shouting, “It is a trick, it has to be! This has nothing to do with your electricity, not a thing!” Yet the sound of his words was not so much angry, Scheuch thought, as somehow bereft.

Angelos stopped the generator for a second time. He said softly, “I wish it
were
a trick. Oh, you don’t know how much I wish it were.” The three others stared at him. Angelos said, “What did you hear?”

Vordran shook his head. “Not important. What is important is how you made me hear it. The rest of this”—he waved a dismissive, if slightly trembling hand—“is nonsense. Tricks, like those American spiritualists. Table-rapping.
Fraudulent,
my good sir!” But his eyes were, astonishingly, bright with tears.

Angelos was a long time responding; or at least it seemed so to Scheuch. When he finally spoke, his rigidly calm voice twanged in a way that Scheuch could not recall ever hearing from him. He said, “Whatever it is, Vordran, it’s not fraudulent. I think I wish it were.”

He glanced around the room at them all, his eyes squirrel-quick, squirrel-anxious, never quite meeting anyone else’s eyes fully. “You’re right about one thing. I did start out rather larking about with wireless telegraphy, just out of curiosity, wanting to see if an ordinary chap like me could do it. It’s been pretty well established since the Maxwell equations that electromagnetism travels in waves, and I started by seeing whether I could tap into those waves some way and use them to conduct voices, actual human voices, you know. No experience, no training, no proper equipment—and, of course, no laboratory assistants, except for good old Scheuch there.” He patted Scheuch’s arm, adding, “Eternally obliged, old man.”

“Don’t mention it,” Scheuch mumbled. “Glad to be of service.” Then, louder, “But if you aren’t making them, those voices—”

“Tricks,” Vordran said again, louder than before.

“—and if they aren’t here, some way, in your rooms—”

“They aren’t—” Angelos started to reply, but he caught himself noticeably, and Scheuch pressed on.

“Then, as Griffith just asked, are they speaking through your generator, through your stethoscope, or . . . or
what?
Whose voices
are
they? Where are they coming from? And stop saying you don’t know—you must have
some
notion!” He turned to Vordran on his right, then to Griffith. “I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re not leaving until you tell us a bit more.”

Vordran nodded. Griffith said grimly, “Quite a bit more.” He coughed, longer than he needed to, and then asked, “What about—ah—ghosts? We had a ghost up at Balliol. Old scout, don’t you know—spent his whole life cleaning after students, didn’t have anywhere else to go after he died. Quite true. Saw him myself.”

Angelos did not answer. He began disassembling the generator and its attachments, putting the copper disc carefully back in its linen pocket, folding the stethoscope away. Scheuch put a hand on his wrist. “That can wait, don’t you think, Angelos? Talk to us.”

Angelos clasped his hands together behind his back, rocking slightly from foot to foot as he spoke. “All I can tell you with any degree of certainty is that they are real voices of real persons. That I do believe, however absurd it may seem to anyone else. I also suspect—I’m not sure of this, mind you—that they are somehow being carried to us on electromagnetic radio waves, as Maxwell calls them.” He wet his dry lips, took a long, slow breath. “But what I have also come to believe”—a very small chuckle, nearly inaudible—“which might very well get me stuck away in Northampton, is that
all
voices, every word ever spoken or sung or shouted, everything screamed or whispered . . . it’s all still here, all around us, whether we can hear it or not. The ghosts of voices, if you like, Griffith. The radio waves pick them up—they attach themselves in some way I don’t understand. I can’t say what the range is, or how far back in time the voices go—”

“Oh, by all means, go all the way with it,” Griffith jeered. “Do let us know when you listen in on Adam and Eve.”

Angelos shrugged. “You’ve heard what you’ve heard. Myself, I’ve caught medieval church Latin, I’d swear to that, and a few bits and scraps of English that didn’t sound as though they’d been spoken in this century—or the last one, either. I’ve heard a woman who seemed to be scolding a child, and a man crying and cursing some faithless friend as though his heart would break. German, that last.” He rubbed the back of his bent neck, wincing wearily. “There’s no pattern to it, there doesn’t seem to be any predominance of language or nationality—it’s a wilderness of voices, that’s all I can tell you. If any of you can explain it to me any better, I should certainly appreciate it.”

The room was silent. Angelos began to gather up the teacups and uneaten biscuits. Griffith left without speaking. Scheuch said, “Well, then, cheery-bye,” and followed him out. Vordran, however, stood in the doorway for a long moment before he turned and said, “This is a bad idea, Angelos.”

Angelos blinked in apparent puzzlement. “Idea? It’s not an
idea
at all, Vordran, it’s barely an experiment. I’m only listening, as best I can—listening to people talking as I might overhear them in the street, at the next table in a restaurant. Eavesdropping, if you like. Nothing more structured or scientific than that.”

“Eavesdropping,” Vordran repeated. “Yes. And you do remember what they say about eavesdroppers, Angelos?”

Angelos’s long sigh was dramatically elaborate. “Why, no, Vordran, I
don’t
remember what they say about eavesdroppers. Do enlighten me.”

“That sooner or later they hear something they don’t like at all. Sooner or later.” Vordran was gone.

Ramadan came early that year, the moon giving its blessing on the eleventh of August. For all the country’s postwar fascination with everything Turkish, the monthlong holiday had not yet made its way onto the calendar of the United Kingdom; but Griffith groused daily about the fact that Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, fabled home of good English roast beef and saddle of mutton, always carved at your table, was now offering kebabs and hummus, along with
kofte, doner, kokorec, borek
and
gozleme
. “Not to mention their bloody sweets—rot your teeth just
looking
at them. I promise you, I’d quit the damnation job in two shakes, if there were something else going fit for a white man.” But Mr. Emanetoglu, coming for the month’s rent, also brought delicacies from his family’s celebration, and at least three of his four roomers consumed all their share, without ever learning the dishes’ names.

When he climbed, panting slightly, to Angelos’s top-floor rooms, he shook his head in wonder, as he always did, saying, “My goodness, how do you ever find what things you need?” And Angelos, as always, made his usual joking response. “Oh, I never do, Mr. E. Instead, I find wonderful things I didn’t know I needed. Remarkable, the way that happens.”

“Well and good,” Mr. Emanetoglu customarily replied, “so long as you can pretend you are not looking for the rent, so that you can find it for me.” And they laughed together, loudly enough to annoy Vordran, who lived on the floor below.

But on this occasion, Mr. Emanetoglu felt himself curiously oppressed by the air of Angelos’s rooms. Or perhaps neither
oppressed
nor
air
was the correct word: the effect on him, rather, was of being somehow overcrowded, pushed in upon, whether by clutter, which had never particularly disturbed him before, or by Angelos’s obvious distraction and poorly concealed disquiet. He was not even offered a cup of tea, a drink which Mr. Emanetoglu was determined to like, however long it took him. He asked hesitantly, “Is all well with you, Mr. Angelos? You are not perhaps troubled in some way?”