Rochester Knockings (16 page)

               
The king's page from neck to sole

               
Swims flat on his belly all the way to the North Pole

“What gibberish are you saying now, Katie?” asked the skinny Amy Post, sandwiched in the middle.

Without answering, suddenly perfectly consoled, she thought back to the elf with scraped knees from the woods and streams of Hydesville. But childhood had swallowed those days like spun sugar. A young woman should find her strength in the folds of her gray dress rather than on the swirling flimsy checkerboard of
her dreams. However, speak of the devil! She squeezed up close against her noisy old ally. Right, Mister Splitfoot?

Big dry knocks resonated in the cramped lodging of wood and leather, provoking a burst of anxiety among the passengers.

“Oh!” their mother exclaimed. “That's the announcement that we'll be arriving soon!”

Kate wasn't the only one noticing the quantity of beautiful coaches, carriages with inlaid mahogany, curricles, and horse-drawn vehicles of every kind being slowed down by a mixed crowd, where groups of bony and bearded Puritans lurked menacingly next to great ladies in hats and rather cheerful old men dressed like dead trees. But where were these multitudes headed? Isaac Post stuck his long narrow head outside the coach.

“What could we have as competition? A well-known choir, surely, or a preacher of the Second Coming . . .”

“Giddy up, old girl!” Amy Post exclaimed, crazy with exaltation. “This beautiful crowd is here for us, for our cause! O sweet Lord! It's hope that brings them!”

VI.

Assembly at Corinthian Hall

I
t had been a long time since the high walls of Corinthian Hall had been the scene of a mob: the place was overtaken and conquered beyond all expectations and the organizers, starting with the director of the hall, were already envisioning future events. People crowded in through every entrance to save a numbered seat or to claim ones for themselves. Public rumor, amplified by the telegraph and the press, had brought together everyone the state of New York and its environs could call
amateurs
—the erudite or the merely curious—nonconformists or the rebellious enticed by the sulfurous scent of a new Reformation, astrologists and itinerant hypnotists passing through Flour City, most of them fervent followers of Franz Anton Mesmer, credentialed scholars, men of letters, and academics envious of their merits—all these people in tandem with the Puritans who were swarming like ants, not yet knowing if they should applaud or boo.

In the first rows, protected by guards from the invasion, important personages were taking their seats after entrusting canes, top hats, and furs to the cloakroom. Students and preceptors gathered
in the aisles of the balcony waited patiently by putting names to faces of the more or less elite who, one by one, slid like playing cards behind the backs of velvet armchairs. The wealthy cart manufacturer James Cunningham could be made out, as well as the banker Sylvester Silvestri, and the businessman Henry Maur, joined by a famous actress dressed in perpetual mourning. Also in attendance were the very influential director of the
New-York Tribune,
Horace Greeley, and Alexander Cruik, the famous evangelist suspected of occult collusion with the Redskins, worshippers of the Great Spirit. Political luminaries campaigning in Monroe Country preferred to keep their anonymity by hiding in the corners of back boxes. In this way, the presence in a personal capacity of the old lion of the Whig party Henry Clay, current Speaker of the House of Representatives, went unnoticed by journalists. The solemn entry of Judge Edmonds, eminent lawyer, of the chemist James J. Mapes, a professor at the National Academy, or of his colleague Robert Hare, aroused less interest than the arrival of local owners of mills and textile factories. The town mayor, grandson of Colonel Rochester, and his lymphatic wife, received applause and whistles . . . Nobody noticed the numerous figures of spiritual renewal scattered throughout the room, some accompanied by their disciples: the Adventist visionary Ellen White, all dressed in white and wearing a headband; the publisher of the deist Thomas Paine, author of
Age of Reason,
which threw the baby Jesus out with the baptismal bath water of the Gospels; the withering Andrew Jackson Davis, already devoted to the picturesque Leah Fish; and many others who had no celebrity yet—not to mention a host of merrymakers interested in various illusions, and dubious fortune hunters focused on finding the deal of the century or at least of the evening.

Among the latter, settled down now in his seat after being rudely jostled, William Pill was smoking a foul-smelling cigar while meditating on his immediate prospects. Thanks to the amnesty of good soldiers and his military certificate, done with the High Plains, he had nearly repaired his reputation in the Rochester gambling houses. But those fine winnings from time to time only allowed him a modest lifestyle, easy women, and a whiskey that was just drinkable. During his escapades in Texas, returning home from pacified Mexico, he'd had some more extravagant days. But now here as elsewhere, luck taunted him. Money, that wind in his hands, only brushed through his fingers until his next ruin. The only thing still in his possession was a Bible recovered from a shipwreck, aside from the smallpox that had hailed down on his face. Reading the
Rochester Herald
announcement of the spiritualist demonstration that day while in the barbershop, he had hardly suspected the connection to the mischievous Hydesville girls until the journalist's acerbic comments had refreshed his memory. This “buffoonery of knocking spirits” was an ingenious idea: he estimated eight or nine hundred people had crowded under the columns of Corinthian Hall, the largest auditorium in town, which must have brought in around a thousand dollars, minus the fare-dodgers like him and free entries granted to those in the first rows. William Pill knew how to appreciate mystifications. In Ontario he had known a conjurer in a cabaret capable of swapping the heads of his subjects, chosen among those who'd imbibed the most alcohol. In Philadelphia, he'd had the privilege of observing a ventriloquist up close, the fallen disciple of the Utopian William Abbey, very clever at stripping the bourgeois of their pocket watches while declaiming, with mouth closed, the
Declaration of Mental Independence.

Between two Puritan women pale with nausea, his cigarillo stuck to his lip, Pill yawned to unhook his jawbones. The evening running behind, he let himself grow sleepy in the good warmth of the place. Immediately, the gallop of a horse carried him off to an immense dreamed prairie. He too was visited by a ghost, always the same one. Met in the street corner or viewed in an interior, it was a young, very blonde woman, too beautiful to be described. The only thing for certain was that he didn't know her from Eve and yet loved her madly. Nothing, nothing made sense on this Earth where anything happens except what one expects.
A stranger before me who once was me in another time, before an unknown young woman tells me: who are you, faceless man, and what do you want of me with your empty hands, your hands like two corpses . . .

A voice thundered now from somewhere unplaceable. Eyes half-closed, he perceived on the illuminated stage a character dressed in a swallow-tailed coat, with an olive face and raven black hair, who had the formal appearance as master of ceremony. Pill pulled himself out of his somnolent paralysis with a start. The show was finally beginning.

“I have the honor to present to you tonight Corinthian Hall's invited guests . . .”

With these words, Lucian Nephtali discerned the plump face of the coroner in the third row. He hadn't seen him since that night of oblivion at the Golden Dream, after the funeral of his friend. The shudder of surprise that suspended his voice for a second was perceived, he thought, in the fleeting ironic grin of the police officer. But he pulled himself together the second after, while imagining a grave veiled in opium smoke.

“Listen to the prophet Ezekiel! It's on Spring Hill that he was summoned to call back to life the many Spirits of the dead: ‘The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones . . . and He said to me: “Son of man, can these bones live? . . . Prophecy upon these bones, and say unto them: O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord” . . . Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; “Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.” So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. And Yahweh ordered me: “Prophesy unto the wind . . .” And the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.' Like Ezekiel, like Ulysses or Hamlet, we have all been in contact with the soul of a lost one, that of a little child or of a beloved spouse, or of a very dear friend . . . It is now possible to provoke at will this gratification of Providence.”

“If only someone would make the undertaker shut up!” a mill-worker shouted unexpectedly.

“Cormorant!” added a sailor, while imitating the bird's cry.

“Dead body packer!” cried a slaughterhouse butcher, for the sake of balance.

From the back of the room, jeers and laughter continued.

Undaunted, thinking about the challenge thrown down by Leah and her friends in search of a speaker, a challenge that he had accepted with some cynicism but in the manner of a perfect gentleman, Lucian raised his voice:

“The integrity of the Fox sisters has unnecessarily been called into dispute under the pretext that one could counterfeit certain phenomena or attribute them to physical or even psychic causes. But beware! The Fox sisters are championing no sectarian fantasy. With modern spiritualism, we are witnessing the collapse of a wall of silence that separated us from our precious lost ones. This is about a moral revolution that is going to change the face of the planet . . .”

Boos redoubling by this time in all the rows, Lucian Nephtali told himself that he could stop there, that the damn service requested by Leah and her accomplice Charlene had largely been rendered.

One arm stretched toward the wings, he almost danced his gesture of retreat.

“Present here tonight, the Fox sisters will now perform for you according to the rules an authentic demonstration of spiritual telegraphy . . .”

Gaslight lanterns and Fresnel lenses were dimmed, leaving the stage lit only by two astral lamps with bluish globes. Assistants lugged a beautiful oval walnut table, tall chairs, as well as an imposing armoire onto the middle of the stage as if some theatrical drama were about to begin.

There was a sudden spell of calm in the room. The bursts of laughter had stopped; the disruptive ones were themselves taken by surprise at the sight of the three sisters in somber and austere dress making their way from backstage at a mesmerizing pace. Leah, whom many took to be the mother of the other two, separated from the group and broke the silence.

“The world of Spirits pre-exists us. Spirits surround us, they are your dead children, they are your fathers and mothers! Most
of them are willing to respond to our call. There are some that are caring, so close to being angels; others, tortured by their terrestrial sins, come back to haunt the scene of the crime. Some of those who suffer most don't even understand they have died. But all, without exception, journey toward perfection. After their many wanderings the Spirits will reach deliverance at the breast of the Supreme Being. All of them will be saved . . .”

Muffled mutterings and sobs rose up from the crowd. Kate and Margaret, withdrawn in the chiaroscuro of the lamps, waited for the signal from their older sister. The youngest considered the abyss of the auditorium with the same fright she'd had discovering Lake Ontario shaken by a violent gust of wind. An elementary power was at her feet, blind despite its thousand eye-sockets, ready to swallow her up. Who was she to risk such a confrontation? And what more did she know than other girls her age? The surrounding tension was so intense, her skull received such a nervous influx that she thought about fleeing by any means, fainting or hypnotic crisis. However she clenched her fists and invoked Mister Splitfoot with all her might.

Next to her, Margaret, noting her sister's pallor, discreetly pressed her shoulder. She was also uneasy but despite everything was still amused by the enormity of the phenomenon: an even greater wonder than their story of the knocking spirit was this crowd who had paid just to see them! She told herself, knees shaking, that secrets would abound under her pen as soon as she opened up her diary. Wasn't she, a silly girl, living a pure moment of History?

After a solemn warning to the skeptics who risked scaring off the Spirits, or even of making them dangerous, Leah returned as rehearsed to their side.

“Margaret and Kate Fox will sit at this table under your inspection. In the name of God who has granted them this holy gift among us, do not disturb the mediums in their channeling of extra-sensory powers . . .”

On the brink of panic, Kate and Margaret glanced furtively at one another. The mischievous smile of one behind the shelter of her palm recovered the other's serenity, while electrical vibrations were already traveling from the depths of their bowels to the ends of their hair, hands, and feet. “Oh oh! Mister Splitfoot, don't leave me!” Kate begged. For she had no doubt that the peddler's spirit had followed her all the way from Hydesville. She imagined his cloven foot as being incredibly swift, able to leap in a single bound the distance between the Earth and Moon. In the blink of an eye, Mister Splitfoot could save her from the bottom of a well or from the mouth of a brown bear. Moreover, here he was now leaping without anyone's knowledge on the table as if to say: “But what do you want from me now, naughty little girl!” “Wow! Did you see that band of ogres and mean crows out there? Here we are, Maggie and me, in a terrible position . . .” “You sought it out, I swear it on the slit of my throat! So let's talk! What are you waiting for?”