Tom McCarthy - C

The wife, sobbing, has sunk back to her chair.

“Kite bird,” Paul says triumphantly. “Pinned to the wall. You got it for my birthday.”

Now the husband starts to cry as well. Audrey looks at Serge as if to say “See?” Returning her gaze, he feels a hot and cold rush moving through his veins. Paul’s voice, still issuing from Miss Dobai’s mouth, says:

“You’re having a painting done. Of me.”

“Yes!” chokes the husband through his tears. “Can you see it?”

“Oh yes. I like it. I can see it, and I’m beginning to see from it as it goes on. And it makes Matilda smile, just like the photo. How I like the soldiers in a row, like toast and egg!”

The voice is slipping back into giggly mode. The secretary, scribbling furiously, asks:

“Is it Tilly again? Are you seeing a painting or a photo?”

Again Miss Dobai’s head slowly rotates, getting its bearings on her interlocutors. The grotesque smile returns to her face as Tilly says:

“Two rows of soldiers. Like in school, when the man came with the velvet and the bird. The front ones are sitting, and the back ones are standing.”

Several people have stood up around the hall.

“What regiment are they from?” someone shouts out.

“ ’Jiment?” Tilly’s voice repeats. “The writing has an E in it. And an I, and an L… ”

“Is it the Leicester Rifles?” someone else asks.

“Oh, they’ve left their rifles to the side,” Tilly giggles. “One of them has got a stick, though: in the back row, one, two, three from the left. But he’s not the one who plays with her. It’s the other one, in the front, the raifle boy.”

“What did you call him?” asks the secretary.

“He told her that a part was gone, and he was choking for a bit, then getting better. He was frightened, like when it’s dark; then he passed over, and was comfortable again.”

Two men call out, almost simultaneously:

“What’s his name? What’s he called?”

Miss Dobai raises her hand from the table’s surface and traces in the air an M. Beside Serge, Audrey tenses up. Miss Dobai’s hand then air-draws O. Audrey slackens again, disappointed. The next letter’s R; then S. The hand pauses for a while.

“ Mors: means ‘dies’ in French, doesn’t it?” someone behind Serge mumbles.

“Is that right?” Audrey whispers in his ear.

Serge, veins still tingling, shakes his head. “Dies” is meurt. Mors is “bit.” He thinks of the birds in the woods after he was shot down: the grey, fleshy crumbs they all had in their beaks. Miss Dobai’s hand twitches back into action and traces an E.

“Was he a telegraphist?” someone calls out.

His question goes unanswered as the hand sketches two more letters, an N and a T

“Tilly,” the secretary says, “I’ve got MORSENT. Do you mean that more men were sent to rescue him, when he was choking?”

Her last few words are drowned out by the gasps of another couple, two of the people who stood up when Miss Dobai first started talking about photos.

“It’s us!” they shout. “Morsent’s our name. The photograph arrived last week!”

Tilly’s voice breaks out of Miss Dobai’s mouth again:

“Photo-graph, that’s it. He’s in the front row, in front of the stick-man: Raifle.”

“Oh, Matthew: it’s our Ralph!” the woman shrills, hugging her husband. She pronounces it “Rafe.” “It’s true: there’s a man with a walking stick behind him in the photo!” she adds, for the enlightenment of others in the audience. Addressing herself first to Miss Dobai, then, shifting her aim slightly, to the air above her, she continues: “Ralph! Are you okay now?”

“Oh, Raifle’s happy as a boy can be,” Tilly responds. “He has a house, all built of bricks, and there are trees and flowers, and the ground is solid, not all mud. He’s met a girl.”

“A girl?” the mother asks. “What girl?”

“Ralph wasn’t very polite to her when he first came over,” Tilly says, giggling. “He didn’t expect a grown-up sister here. He asked me: am I a little brother, or is she my little sister? She calls me her big brother, but she’s like little sister. What’s that, Yafe? You can’t have two. Now Tilly doesn’t understand.”

“Can you ask him-” the father now assumes the role of questioner-“if he’s still missing any parts?”

Miss Dobai’s head bobs around a little, as though looking Ralph up and down. “Has he got legs and a head?” Tilly asks, answering almost immediately: “Oh yessie-yes! And ears, and eyelashes and eyebrows, all just like before; mouth and tongue too. It all got rear, rear, sembled.”

“And his house?” the father pursues his line of enquiry. “If it’s built of bricks, then what are the bricks built of?”

“Emma,” Tilly begins. “Emma…”

“Is there someone else with you?” the secretary interjects.

“Emma-nations,” Tilly finishes the word with difficulty. “Raifle says things rise up, atoms rising, and consol, consolidate when they get up here. We collect them, and make them solid again. There’s always something rising from your plane; when it comes through the aether, other qualities gather round each atom, and our people manor-factor solid things from it.”

A man to the hall’s left stands up now:

“I have a question,” he says. “If you need the atoms of living things to reconstitute them, why do those things not disappear from our world?”

“Oh, your world sheds bulk,” Tilly responds. “You’re losing weight right now, so that I and the others may borrow it in order to become present to you.”

People in the audience look down at their bodies. Serge raises his back, to see if it feels lighter. Oddly enough, it does. Tilly continues:

“And think of all the things that die, and decay: they’re not lost. They may form dust or manure for a while, but that gives off an essence or a gas, which ascends in the form of what you call a ‘smell.’ All dead things have a smell. That’s what we use to produce duplicates of the forms they had before they were a smell. So decayed flowers make new flowers; rotting wool makes tweeds; dung makes food…”

Throughout this little lecture Tilly’s register and tone have both become elevated, like so many atoms, gathering scientific gravitas. She catches herself now and, giggling once more, says:

“Yes, all right, Yafe: Tilly will go back now. Table-talkie can take over. She’ll have sweets, because she did, and she said she could if she did.”

The static hissing rushes through Miss Dobai’s lips again; then the lids slide down over her rolled-up eyeballs, and she slumps back in her chair and stays there, seemingly unconscious. The audience remain completely still, waiting to see what will happen next. It’s the master of ceremonies who makes the first move. Rising from his own chair, he addresses them:

“My friends, these channellings have quite exhausted Miss Dobai. Nonetheless, her comatose state indicates that she is still receiving. With your help, we shall, as the control suggested, move on to the table-tilting method.”

He strides across the stage towards the large round table, behind which Miss Dobai sits collapsed and, laying his hand upon its surface, continues:

“First, to dispel any suspicions that the table is mechanically controlled, I would request that a member of the audience, a gentleman rather than lady, step onto the stage and help me lift it.”

There’s a pause; then a man near the front rises from his chair, mounts the stage and, grabbing the table top’s rim while the master of ceremonies clasps the thick stem-leg, helps him raise the whole thing from the floor. The two of them then walk the table round the stage.