Rebecca Makkai - The Hundred-Year House

In the distance, the fire pile began to glow. Small spots around the lower edges first, then a few thin arms of fire. Now the whole thing, a consummation. Marlon ran back to the terrace, to view his creation from a distance. “A fine fire,” he said. “The best work I’ve done here.” And it was true, he saw that now. He shouldn’t have let himself sober up. He could suddenly see his whole book, the shape of it, the bulk of it. It was a monstrosity, a tangle, a snake swallowing its own tail. He took a White Lady from Armand, and with the drink he walked slowly back down the path, back to where Viktor stood staring at the blaze.

Up on the terrace, Armand filled Gamby’s glass before it could get half empty.

Gamby didn’t seem to doubt that the high spirits were genuine. That these women would naturally want to surround him and regale him with stories. That these artists were simply dying to share their liquor.

Somone did find the Ouija board, and Marceline climbed down from the wall, pulled a chair close to Gamby’s, convinced him to press his knees into hers with the board between them. Here was some hope: If Marceline was as gifted an improviser as they all supposed, she might manage to nudge the planchette toward some helpful message. Something about ghosts of artists past, or the ghost of his mother. Saying she loved the art created here and wanted the colony to stay. But all Marceline knew of his mother was that horrible attic story, nothing personal that would shock him into compliance. She couldn’t even recall her name.

From behind Gamby’s head, Fannie mouthed it: “Violet! Violet!”

Josephine whispered, “Watch, she’ll spell it with a W.”

Gamby’s short, stout, pale fingers on the planchette, Marceline’s long ones. She said, “I haf done the Ouija von time before. At a Hollyvood party, vith my dear friend Lon Chaney. I vill tell you, he used the board to proposition me!”

Back by the fire, Marlon and Viktor. Marlon said to him, “I might burn the novel. The whole thing.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s a doorstop. I’ve sat here six weeks and made a doorstop.”

“Then burn it.” Viktor regarded him with something like spite, a look Marlon hadn’t anticipated. “Did you know, you can’t burn a dance? There are quite a few things you can’t burn, unless you burn yourself, unless you jump into the fire yourself .”

“Let’s step away from the fire.”

“Look at her up there, offering herself like—”

“Who? Sobriety doesn’t suit you. Good God.” Marlon handed over his own drink. “It’s delicious,” he said.

Viktor looked down at it. “I don’t drink.”

“You don’t?” Marlon thought through the past weeks, and took back his glass. “You mixed the vat last night. And you’re always dropping things. You’re the drunkest man I know.”

“I’ve never touched the stuff. I couldn’t dance.”

“But when you were younger?”

“I started training when I was eight.” Viktor poked the fire with a long branch and said, “Tell me something. Tell me why I could walk down a street in the city and see two faces in the crowd. And one of them — a stranger — it might be a beautiful woman — for one of them I feel nothing, I remain intact. And the other, no more beautiful, no more spectacular: When I see her, I fall through the universe. And only because of our past, only because of some promise my idiot heart made itself years before.”

“Why don’t you try a drink.”

“The truth is, there’s no such thing as love. There’s only history .”

Zilla was pouring her drinks off the far side of the wall. She needed to stay clear.

Alfie ran yapping between the terrace and the fire, the terrace and the fire.

“The Ouija dates to Pythagoras,” Ludo said.

Zilla said, “Ludo’s our encyclopedia.”

Gamby laughed. “That’s funny, it says here William Fuld Talking Board Set . Was Mr. Fuld a follower of Mr. Pythagoras?” Marceline smiled up as if the two of them alone were in on the joke. Gamby addressed the board. “What horse shall I pick at Saratoga next summer?”

“No, no,” Marceline said, and she attempted to make even that one word flirtatious. “Let us ask the spirit’s name.”

She aimed for the V . She was halfway there when Gamby jerked the planchette down to the bottom, to the number 2.

“Hell of a name!” Gamby said. Pleased with his own joke. “You should get your money back from Mr. Pythagoras.”

Marceline said, “It must mean there are two spirits!”

Samantha closed her eyes.

Gamby said, “Are you men or women?”

Before Marceline had time to think, the planchette slid to the sun face on the top left, with the word YES beneath.

“Well played, Miss Horn.” Devohr waggled his eyebrows. “One of each, male and female! Are we ourselves the spirits, by chance?”

“I am not mofing the pointer, Mr. Devohr. Are you?”

Fannie and Josephine swayed to the music. Ludo changed the record, and, returning to the terrace, did a shuffling little solo dance to “I’m Saving Saturday Night for You.”

Samantha, next to Gamby but silent, relied on Marceline’s and Zilla’s social graces. She wrapped her hands around the iron arms of the chair, let the metal cool her fingertips. Or rather, her fingers transferred their warmth, electron by electron, into the chair. An important distinction. And when she was gone, when there was no visible trace of her at Laurelfield, when the lawn was filled with matrons drinking tea, her electrons would remain in the chair. That was something, and she pressed harder. That was something.

Alfie slept, at last, under her.

Zilla watched Marlon lead Viktor back to the terrace. She said, “There ought to be marshmallows.”

Viktor said nothing. He swayed a bit. Marlon had never seen a man sway from sobriety. He led him to Armand. He said, “We need to fix this fellow up.”

Marceline had asked again for spirit’s name. They all watched.

G

G

G

The planchette circled the letter like a bee on a flower.

“I think you are writing your own name, Mr. Devohr.” She wanted to push back harder on the planchette, but then the whole idea was for him to believe it had moved on its own.

“No, too many G’s!” he said. “Gagog. It sounds like a caveman. Gagog the Horrible. Gilgamesh!”

Fannie said, “Ask how she — ask how it perished. The spirit.” And they did.

S

C

R

F

C

“Scarface!” Marlon called, unhelpfully. Josephine aimed a plump elbow into his ribs, but he didn’t understand. “Maybe they’re two of the fellows Capone got! Ask if they died on February the fourteenth! Ask if the last thing they saw was a warehouse!”

Marceline tried to think quickly. “Perhaps it means sacrifice . Perhaps — it is von who sacrificed a great deal for, for the colony.”

But she was going off course, wasn’t she? Violet hadn’t had a thing to do with the colony. She felt the looks around her, a net of disappointment. She said, “Vhen did you lif?”—not certain where she’d aim the thing even if she could wrest control.

NO

Gamby said, “Well that’s terribly uncooperative! Tell us, brave spirits, when did you walk the earth?”

NO

NO

NO

GOOD BYE

The planchette stopped and stayed on that “good bye” at the bottom as if its motor had run out. Gamby lifted his fingers.

“But NO was on the moon picture!” Fannie said. “I think it meant ‘Many moons ago!’ Don’t you?”

Josephine said, “It’s useless.”