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

Miss Pearl closed her Bible; a little embarrassed, she looked for a way to harness their attention.

“—God had so much confidence in his creature that he abandoned him to the devil. From this testing, Job will emerge the victor. He who had been rich and had integrity will lose everything, he will become frightfully poor and suffer, but in the end, by the sole force of his faith, he will prevail over the powers of evil. .”

Young Harriett raised her hand and, in the rush of that gesture, knocked off her own wool bonnet. Her copper-colored curls flounced like a fox’s tail.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but does the devil really exist? Does he walk around, like they say, disguised as a prowler, or an old woman, or a billy goat?”

“Satan would not exist without the Lord! Let’s leave him alone and reflect instead on the fate of Job. It was with resignation that the patriarch endured the death of his seven sons and three daughters crushed by the collapse of his house, he endured every calamity without ever denying his master. God also restored his possessions and gave him even more children. .”

Arms crossed at the end of the table, Kate imagined the house on Long Road so weighted down with snow and ice that all the roof beams gave in, making the walls collapse and in their falling, killing in a single blow her sister Maggie and her dear mother and maybe even her father, kept away from the farm by the inclement weather. Would she ask Heaven for another family to replace them? Could one change families in this way without despair? The memory of Abbey, their little brother who had died in Rapstown — no gift of a good God would be able to heal them of that.

“Class is dismissed for the day,” Miss Pearl said wearily. “Bundle up, it looks like it could go on snowing for the next thousand years. .”

Night fell on the little ice castles born of cold and wind. A farmhand from the Mansfield ranch came on horseback to get young Harriett, as did Mr. Fox, sober for once in his stirrups, to fetch his daughter: Kate raised herself up with an arm and sat sideways on Old Billy’s rump. The other students ran along under the awnings of buildings or ventured into the fresh snow to reach their homes in downtown Hydesville.

His face imprinted with a wild exultation, young Samuel Redfield paused momentarily in front of the disappeared roads. He bent down to stir this expensive treasure, eating some snow and spreading it all over his face. Without looking for anyone coming to help, he considered the heights of Long Road, then stepped into the footprints of the last horse with a joyous refrain on his lips:

A nice young ma-wa-wan

Lived on a hi-wi-will

A nice young ma-wa-wan

For I knew him we-we-well

Torrents of rain swept by a gusting wind crashed down on Monroe County. It was one of those random nights crossed with omens between two seasons, one just coming to an end before the next has quite begun. In the upstairs bedroom opening onto the staircase, Kate, seated on her bed, watched the glimmers from the woodstove that sporadically revealed three steps of the staircase and the landing. Through the sheer intensity of her concentration on this scene, an immaterial figure began to float in the thick shadow. The clock struck eleven. There were no other lights on and the house was empty: mother and father were keeping watch in the barn over their only cow, a beautiful Devon dairy cow who was certain to calve this night. Maggie, curious about everything, had demanded to assist them at the happy event for educational purposes. Wasn’t she now a young woman, after all, with her pointed breasts and all she unreservedly revealed on bath days?

Her younger sister tucked the blanket under her chin. Kate’s body had not yet begun to develop, but unusual phenomena were inside her, impatient or annoying sensations all throughout her body, altering her every feeling and mood. Waves of sky beat down against this wooden house like Noah’s ark at the time of the Flood, and she relished her solitude even while spiders of fear traveled a long shudder across the skin of her arms and down her thighs. The image of Abbey, their little brother dead in his bed, forcefully came back to her: at that moment, she had found herself just as alone as now, a little before dawn; her parents had gone out to feed the animals. Maggie, also sick, was asleep on the other side of the house in the childhood bed of Leah, who, more than twenty years their elder, had just left their farming life for good and with no regrets. That was in Rapstown, many years ago. Mother had left Kate in charge of taking care of the little one, for just an hour. His fever had risen the night before and now he seemed to be getting better, his skin fresh and eyes closed gently in the consolation of sleep. But he was no longer breathing. She realized it with the breaking daylight, her scream shattering the glass of a portrait of Grandfather Fox drawn in pencil by a starving artist from some day of revelry.

Kate sneezed. The whistling wind rushed down the chimney, the light flickered with more animation on the landing. It was then that she heard a repeated banging; she counted out a dozen strongly hammered knocks followed by three even more powerful and spaced out, exactly like the brigadier’s knocks on the floors in old theatres, signaling the Apostles and the Trinity. She thought for an instant that a nocturnal visitor was announcing himself at the door and leapt out of bed, half-naked and panting. Worried, quickly putting on her nightshirt, Kate ventured to the staircase. All the noise had ceased, the winds outside were holding their breath, even the storm had paused its rumbling downpour on the roof. This sudden silence worried her even more. It was in this way, with a wolf’s step, that an assassin might worm his way in. Overtaken by chills, her legs gave way despite herself and she found herself seated in the dark, on one of the winding steps. Those raps, regular, distinct, determined — there was no doubt she’d heard them. If no one was knocking at the door, who or what could she attribute them to? Certainly not the clock or the stove. Taken with the urge to pee, Kate ran toward the landing, bumping against the wall and knocking over a vase that rolled under the bed. The sound of spilling water was almost reassuring. She rubbed her shoulders, thinking of the hostility of strange houses. How it takes time to coax them, to no longer be hurt by their teeth and claws.

Certain long-poisonous houses seem indifferent, bored with human lives, and then one eye half-opens suddenly from the depths of their comatose sleep. Shivering at this thought, Kate had the impression of being thrust inside the jaws of a wolf : with its steep steps, didn’t the staircase have a toothy look? Maybe it was about to snap shut with a large jerk and grind her ewe’s-flesh between its wooden teeth. However the knocks started up again, this time muffled and from under the staircase, from the basement it seemed, she could feel their vibrations all the way into the little bones of her skeleton. Never again would she go down there: basements belong to houses’ pasts, all of them are cursed just like the painted crypts of Roman Catholics. It was because of death that the first one was ever excavated — it was to make Abel’s grave.

There were nine knocks this time. Tiny in her big nightgown ruffled with lace, one eye on the stove’s grate where embers were still glowing, Kate believed herself hostage to one of those hallucinations once attributed to madmen and witches. She shook her head, hands over her ears, and started to recite a prayer. Taken aback, she continued the act of grace in a low voice, invoking in her way Reverend Gascoigne’s austere divinity. May it gently come to assist her in that barbaric loneliness of children.