Hubert Haddad - Rochester Knockings - A Novel of the Fox Sisters

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.