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

Pearl, in a sweeping movement of shoulders and hips, had settled at his side without arguing this time for the right to drive the racing car.

“Take me you know where,” she said.

At the moment of releasing the brake, he noticed that it only took a few seconds for the perfume of an elegant woman, albeit in sportswear, to reclaim her empire. And with Pearl it was more than a perfume, it was a kind of balsamic grace that emanated from her entire being, a sort of evanescent favor granted, he didn’t know by what miracle, by his fondness for her. .

“What are you thinking, William?”

“Nothing, stories of grandmothers.”

The fields marched by, lined by beech and ash trees, leaning into the light around the hills of the Iroquois that dominated the horizon. Two kilometers away from there, on Long Road, Pearl marveled at the hitches blocking the path that led down to the pond. One could make out a group of people around the clapboard buildings.

“They’re doing some kind of work,” said Pill, pulling over to the median to park.

“It brought back awful memories, for a moment, all these people. .”

They walked down to the farm without saying a word. Apart from this curious influx, nothing had changed in a good half-century. Pearl caught a glimpse of the dark water behind the barn and shuddered. The farmers were returning from a block, heading in the newcomers’ direction, an embarrassed and suspicious look on their faces. They all seemed to be under the blow of an intense amazement. A young sheriff and a plump little man in a black suit were giving contradictory orders to the workers camped among big chalky sacks filled with earth and rubble.

“So, do we take it out or what?” a man in coveralls grumbled through his moustache.

“Bring it up!” ordered the little man.

“That’s not legal,” replied the sheriff. “I will put it in my report.”

“Make all the reports you’d like, young man! As mayor and owner of these grounds, I demand that this body be exhumed. .”

The laborers at work in the cellar soon brought to the surface a big canvas tarp that they were holding by the four corners. Without further ceremony, they opened up to the public view a complete, though scattered human skeleton.

The excavator come up in his turn from the cellar set down a small salesman’s suitcase next to the remains.

“We found it next to the body, nestled deep into the foundations of a wall. It really took a lot of work to knock it down. .”

Everyone a little bit of a gravedigger, the farmers came closer to get a better look.

“That goes back at least to the War of Independence,” said one of them.

“You’re crazy!” said an old woodcutter crouched down over the skull of the remains. “The house didn’t exist back then.”

“One thing is certain,” declared a third man, even older. “Ghosts or not, those little Fox girls had a fine nose!”

Taken with dizziness, Pearl touched the shoulder of her companion. He immediately understood and the both of them, with his hand around her waist, walked cautiously back up to the road.

When the automobile was on its way back to Rochester, William Pill sighed with relief. He started to hum a tune known by him alone:

They were both joyful spirits

Returned from a haunted castle

They believed they were alive

Death is a well-kept secret

Pearl Gascoigne, fully recovered, apologized for her illness.

“It’s bizarre,” she said. “It had to happen to us today, ten years after the death of the Fox sisters, as if to mark a kind of anniversary. .”

“I see it as a sign, Pearl, my dear. A message from the beyond. Are you finally going to start believing in spirits?”

“Not any more than you do, you damned old charlatan!”

The translator owes a tremendous amount of thanks to Megan Wilson, who helped undertake the substantial research that enabled this translation to exist.

Thanks also to Katherine Mannheimer, who helped come up with “Irondequoit” for the dog’s name, and who kindly listened to numerous elations and doubts during the translation process.

Hubert Haddad was born in Tunisia and is the author of dozens of works, including the novels Palestine (winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie), Tango chinois, and La Condition magique (winner of the Grand Prix du Roman de la Société des Gens de Lettres).

Jennifer Grotz is a poet and translator from the French and Polish, as well as the editor of Open Letter’s poetry series. She is a professor of English, creative writing, and translation at the University of Rochester, and is also director of the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference.