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

But the hellish couple “still young in action” was going to retire in order to quench themselves in the soothing waters of sleep. Haunting the illusory moors, the three witches, made up to perfection like transvestites for All Hallows’ Eve, came to the front of the stage to consult Hecate, mistress of evil spirits, under the faraway rumbling of a storm.

Lucian didn’t let himself watch the interlude, so much did he fear a new setback of a completely falsified reality. The play continued on with these supporting roles. By concentrating on the exterior details as if immersed in the dark gold of opium, he perceived, like a little isolated flame, the face of Kate Fox among the many masks, and was irrationally frightened of some kind of singular collusion between her and Lady Macbeth, who came back on stage in the fifth act in a trance, without even having to mimic the act of sleepwalking.

Out, damn spot! out, I say! — One: two: why,

then, ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my

lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we

fear who knows it, when none can call our power

to account? — Yet who would have thought the old

man to have had so much blood in him?

A murmur crossed the auditorium when, after some hypnotic confessions, Lady Macbeth cried out as expected: “To bed, to bed! there’s knocking at the gate,” for it became clear that the actress had found herself alone under a magnetic influence. Her role finished, she stood crazed in front of the side curtains backstage, while her partners went on with the scene. Clad in the same combination of colors as the decor, a stagehand came to lead her offstage. Charlene appeared to fall down flat, stage left.

In the hands of the makeup artist removing her greasepaint, little by little she regained consciousness in front of a mirror just after the curtain had gone down. The reflection of Lucian Nephtali appeared, smiling tensely.

“What happened?” she asked in a faint voice.

“It’s best to spare you,” he said only.

“I don’t remember being applauded. .”

“The applause happened without you, but it was for you that the public cheered.”

“Are we going to Buffalo Street?”

“The car is waiting for me and Kate is already on board. But you, to bed, to bed, to bed! Go home to sleep. Your nerves are on edge.”

“Not at all! Come, come, come, give me your hand. . ”

The next day, Lucian woke badly with the certitude of having killed his friend Nat Astor. His foggy reasoning led him to believe that this murder was not such a big thing, considering the immortality of souls. Was it really so terrible to push a mortal into eternity? Kate and Charlene had reached no conclusions in front of his friend’s grave: some dematerialized intruder wanted too much to intervene; not counting the destitutes of long ago and the fugitive slaves from the common grave. One legend claims that every cemetery has as its guardian the phantom of the first person buried there. That night, during the ceremony, a Negro dressed in charcoal sacks suddenly appeared a few steps away from Nat Astor’s gravestone. His face lit by oil lamps, he alleged that he was the caretaker of the place, which made the gravedigger paid to guide them laugh maliciously.

“That would surprise me greatly,” he shot back. “Negroes have their own section!” But the shadow returned with a laugh of his own.

“Long ago,” he declared, “in the time of the British Empire, the throat of a Redskin or a baptized slave was slit in secret to ward off evil spirits on the eve of the inauguration of a new white cemetery. This is how I came to be the first person buried here.”

Seated on the couch where he must have ended up last night, Lucian took some time before getting his bearings. The bluish light announcing the sunrise bathed this interior in the unreality of dream. Mounted on the wall above a full-length mirror tilted toward the ceiling, a recent photograph of Charlene in a frightful rhinestone frame left him perplexed, until he recognized the pattern of the carpet, the ebony and mahogany furniture around him. Quietly he put on his shoes and went off to find a spirit or a body, once again surprised by the accumulation of mirrors and painted portraits, drawings or photographs, all of them endlessly reflecting from one wall or partition to another.

He found the actress in her bedroom, lying across the bed, a satin negligee bunched above her naked body. The emotion he felt had nothing to do with the sensual. Seated at the foot of the bed, he contemplated her beautiful breasts, spread apart, and the circumscribed forest of mystery between the groin and the border of her pubis. To him a woman’s sex looked like a cross of burning eyelids with a bloody heart. Could he put his lips there without fear, like on the mouth of a dying man? Gently, he pulled the fabric down over this perfect body and sat next to the sleeping woman. It’s the face that saves a body from monstrosity. Everything becomes spirit in its prism. There is no longer woman or man. A face is the imprint of an angel’s glance. With her eyes closed, this one resembles the one in his dream — a mask drowned in the ocean’s depths. .

“Is that you, Lucian?” murmured those lips between two worlds.

“You were sleeping half-naked.”

“ You should have taken me as dead. I love being made love to in my sleep. .”

“I just woke from a dreadful nightmare. A gravedigger was leading you and me to Nat’s grave. Kate Fox was accompanying us. It was night. Under the gravedigger’s dull lamp, you couldn’t stop laughing, a mad if quiet laugh. Kate was in a state of extreme distress. She asked Nat’s spirit to manifest itself but a shadow stood up before us and claimed to be the guardian of souls. .”

“Is that so terrible? It’s just grief. Nat’s spirit is still linked to yours.”

“I’m the one who killed him.”

Charlene sat up, letting her bare breasts oscillate in a beam of sunlight.

“I was with you on the terrace when he shot himself in the park.”

“I was also in the park.”

“Lucian, Lucian, we were coming home, all three of us intoxicated from the Golden Dream. I recall that Harry Maur was furious when he let us into his house. That bear hates honey. He made us drink some of his whiskey to remind us of ordinary drunkenness.”

“I remember all that too, Charlene. But in the state that you were in, that all of you were in, you could very well have imagined me at your side on the terrace while I was arguing with Nat in the park. In my nightmare, Kate exclaimed: ‘No, no! I cannot hear this,’ while staring at me with horrified eyes.”

“Calm down, Lucian. If all our dreams described exact reality, what place would there remain for spirits? They are who come to visit us in sleep, they communicate with us through great symbols and small insinuations. Not all of them are benevolent. Human dream is the domain of spirits more or less stuck in their memory, and disembodied criminals prowl around there alongside God’s angels. Besides, you can’t have forgotten that we drove Kate back home last night?”

“That was our plan when leaving the theater.”

“In the car, she appeared to have been deeply affected by the spectacle of the witches, those three fatal sisters, and the carnage of Dunsinane. She said a strange thing that seemed to have permanently marked you: ‘All of those around us who die, die by our own fault.’ You threw a startled look at her as if she’d guessed your thought. This I saw quite well, thanks to the passing headlights of a sedan traveling at breakneck speed.”

Emerging from the shadows, a ginger-colored angora cat jumped onto the bed. Out of its slightly opened mouth came the droning of a hive. Intact, a large blowfly escaped from it, which the cat re-caught and bit, wounding it. The stunned insect circled loudly on the bed between Charlene’s legs.