Rochester Knockings (32 page)

In the weeks leading up to it, Margaret had long had a single thought: to find Katie. Margaret returned in vain to the
sumptuous mansions of old contacts, financiers, and amateur traders in the unknown, but only their vestibules remained accessible to her. In desperation, and banned entrance to Leah's building on Cotton Street, she had humbled herself to beg Leah in the premises of the Spiritualist Circle of Union Square. They unceremoniously kicked her out after her sister had demanded the solemn confession of her crimes toward the cause. “I'll die first!” Margaret had responded. The followers present had carried her out like a sack under Leah's glacial eye. For entire hours that day, brooding over her hatred in the chalky June light, Margaret had wandered in search of Kate between the ponds and hills of Central Park. At the end of one path, under the inclement glare of the sun, a preacher of the end of the world was perched on a bench, holding forth to himself alone:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in like a friend to his friend's house.”

That was just it, she thought, “if anyone hears my voice,” but no one would answer her anymore in Heaven just like on Earth.

At the approach of the month of August, impressive storms sliced with torrential rains didn't diminish the tropical heat wave by even a single degree. The New York newspapers soon announced with various caustic or bemused commentaries, and along with an unattractive photograph, the exceptional performance of Margaret Fox in the grand auditorium of the Academy of Music. Never letting go of the daggers of her anger, Margaret could feel a wave of panic rising in her. Being recognized once or twice in public terrified her like the pronouncement of a curse. Among the bustle of the streets, in one neighborhood or another, she'd stop to catch
her breath at the first shop sign for absinthe or any kind of alcohol to revive the part of her that was dying, and was able to pay thanks to the advance of two hundred dollars burning a hole in her pocket. But it was necessary for her to feed this covert fire day and night without losing control, until the moment of surrendering herself to the invisible, several brutal hours where, poked by myriad waxy demons, the hell promised to the intemperate would welcome her in for an atrocious prelude from which she would escape twenty times over in her sleep, dreaming that she was running after a sleepwalker more elusive than a flickering flame. Finally, eyes wide open, crying voicelessly into a stony silence, she thought she was calling for help. But there was nobody in the world to answer her.

Then, wide-awake, she recognized a little voice:

               
O the good times are all dead and gone

               
Singin' hi-diddle-i-diddle

               
Still I love you dear, my whole life long

               
Singin' hi-diddle-i-diddle

IX.

Poltergeist at the Academy of Music

A
crowd is just a kind of maelstrom of opinion, a whirlwind, an open mouth of hungry souls. Wherever this Leviathan of circumstances arises—cyclonic dragon, serpent of storms—all trace of altruism or of simple humanity disappears and the most one can hope for is a speedy return from primitive chaos, the animal brain, before all cataclysm.

In the grand auditorium of the New York City Academy of Music, the stampede released into the stairways and halls worried the staff of this institution more accustomed to the airy gait of music lovers. Behind the scenes, trying to get a count of heads coiffed or not, Franck Strechen was rubbing his hands together. This was a turnout to dream of, an audience of great opportunity, even if it augured no future, given the poor state of his contractual associate. At least she was abstaining for the moment and letting herself be made up, ready it seemed to demonstrate being a medium with physical effects according to the rules: they could expect some classic conversations with the table, experiences of directed writing from afar, and of Ouija according to the upside-down-glass technique, as well as some levitation exercises using a single support, partial materialization by densification of
the astral body and, perhaps, contributions from the afterlife, a bouquet of flowers or an old Bible, given all the stage equipment Margaret Fox-Kane had taken the time to spread out before the doors opened. Closets, diversions, miraculous escapes: they were all the rage! He was worried only about the effects of the trance on her weak constitution, for he had never doubted the excessive nervous energy Margaret channeled, as much for conjuring tricks as for the embodiment of spirits.

Still camped behind the stage curtain, Franck Strechen began to closely scrutinize the first rows: everyone was there! The spiritualist crème de la crème of New York. He recognized, among other luminaries more or less documented, the unpredictable William Mac Orpheus, Thomson Jay Hudson behind his martial handlebar mustache, clairvoyant mediums from the hinterlands, mediums of Christ more dangerous than the Medusa, a quantity of orderlies from spiritualist organizations, and the most faithful of the faithful, Andrew Jackson Davis in the flesh. The yellow, white, or black faces mingled noisily throughout the auditorium. A candid mass of uncontrollable instincts, the curious people—unusual amateurs, spellbound by principle, enthusiastic laymen—were to be feared more in the case of defeat.

A spectacle had been expected, no doubt, but the announcement, a tad bit sensational, added some spice to the event:

               
Modern Spiritualism

               
exposed for the first time

               
by one of the Fox Sisters

The tremor behind the curtain didn't escape the notice of a spectator from the two-dollar seats who had slipped in between
two blind cohorts. So tiny, unrecognizable, Kate Fox-Jencken hid unnecessarily beneath a floppy hat with folded edges and black veils despite the stifling heat. Hours earlier, checking the hallways, offices, emergency exits, she had tried unsuccessfully to reach her sister to beg her not to put herself into peril. The bottled-up negative energies that they had released without the crowd's knowledge had accumulated to their own loss. Kate was convinced of this ever since her despoilment by the law; after a rebellious and struggling time, she remained concealed in the shadows. It was necessary that she protect herself from a universal conspiracy. Diverted by Leah, the obsessive little fears of Hydesville had taken on a crazy amplitude, disturbing all the dead in cemeteries, channeling millions of slaves to their devotion. Soon the spirits would overwhelm the living. What might happen then surpassed all understanding . . .

Wearing a dark dress with a headband in her hair, Margaret greeted the room after the presenter's disclaimer: it was necessary to observe a religious silence conducive to demonstrations. Very pale in her medium's cabinet reconstituted for the stage, she initially produced the expected effects: various noises and knocks, the movement of objects, the spontaneous combustion of a sheet scrawled with the directed writing in a closed and locked cabinet. One moment she even seemed to take up spiritual telegraphy, her eyebrows frowning as she invoked Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. Then, standing up to face the audience gratified to applaud her, she announced there would be an exceptional second component to her presentation.

To everyone's amazement, she then said very calmly: “Spiritualism is from one end to the other a deception. It is the biggest fraud of our century. Kate Fox and I embarked on this adventure
while still little girls, much too young and innocent to understand what we were truly dealing with, the two of us propelled on this path of deception by unscrupulous adults . . .”

“That's shameful! She's crazy!” someone exclaimed from the front rows.

Before the rumblings and indignant exclamations had time to discourage her, Margaret, back at her cabinet, undertook a demonstration of each of her turns. Calmly, she began to deconstruct for all to see all the phenomena of conjuring and apparitions. Then she revealed her method of knocking by exposing a sounding board installed under her feet and a quantity of compartments under the table top. Barefoot, she cracked her toes together to produce the desired sounds. She proceeded with a clinical determination, as if reconstituting a crime scene. Her slowed-down gestures and the extraordinary expressiveness of her face substituted for paranormal manifestations with a power that seemed even greater. A deathly silence fell over the stunned audience. There was nothing more to see. The theater of the Fox sisters was forever destroyed. “It's madness, a well-planned suicide,” was whispered from one part or another. Strangely, the crowd left the Academy of Music in the biggest calm, as if at the end of some funeral ceremony.

Outside, on the twilit square where the blue lights of the gas lamps danced, people dispersed with lowered heads, not looking at each other, some toward public transportation, whereas others, impatient despite the mildness of the air, waited in the endless line for their horse-drawn carriages. An old man still alert, with large shoulders, showing a slight limp in the weakness of a hip, appeared to be looking around for somebody and, suddenly raising an arm to a retreating figure, walked as quickly as he could in
its direction. Kate found herself caught in a narrow and badly lit street when the individual reached her.

“How you run, wait up!” he said. “Don't be afraid, I recognized you in the stairway of the Academy of Music, wait!”

As the silent shadow went on her way, William Pill, alias Mac Orpheus, placed himself firmly in front of her, blocking her from every direction, and gazed at her, overwhelmed to find again through the wrinkles of the years the face of a Hydesville girl.

“We knew each other well,” he said, “don't you remember?”

“Yes, yes,” Kate murmured, “but let me go.”

“Why did your sister do that? Do you know?”

“I don't know anything about it, it's her problem, now let me leave . . .”

He stepped aside without leaving her, limping alongside her. Kate gave the impression of hardly being aware of his presence. Looking like a raw-boned elf under her veils, she seemed to move outside all reality, in some parallel world where things were perfectly identical, although of a different substance.

They passed vagabonds, puzzled women smoking along shop windows, drunkards in the grip of their demons. Out of breath, misty-eyed, William Pill wondered over the strangeness of this little woman who, despite their lack of acquaintance, was the source of his good fortune. Thanks to her, he had become rich enough to be honest, from his point of view, and had met his angel, the fickle love of his life, a damn bluestocking fled today to Rochester with a trunk of books.

“Were you ever loved, Kate?” he couldn't help but stammer, seized by that uncontrollable emotion of old men.

As she remained silent, he gently took her arm and, while walking, leaned toward her ear.

“Of course you were loved, and even passionately. During the Civil War, in the battle at Chancellorsville, a man who you'd often spent time with gave me, at the moment of his death, his only treasure to give to you. It's an Indian necklace, I've carried it with me for twenty years, hoping to be able to hand it over to you one day . . .”

“A man?” Kate said.

“Alexander Cruik, the preacher,” Pill answered, unclasping the necklace from his neck. “This amulet will bring you fortune, it contains the umbilical cord of a Sioux chief killed in combat . . .”

The necklace held tight in one hand, Kate looked at the slightly vacillating shadow of this secondary actor in her life who'd appeared out of nowhere and who, after walking her to the hotel where she claimed to live, returned to the great residence of oblivion into which disappeared everyone we have met on this Earth. Taking up her way toward the Hudson away from any of the numerous walkers in the summer night who might have tried to bother her, she opened her hand to look at the amulet, which a street child would immediately have run to snatch with the vivacity of a bird. Facing the shifting constellations of the river, while a ferryboat descended to its mouth, all pennants lit, she undid her veils and cape to taste the sea breeze.

Two sailors went up along the dock without seeing her. Falling down drunk, they bellowed loudly an incomprehensible tune:

               
Adieu foula', adieu mad'as

               
Adieu guenda, adieu collier-chou

               
Dou-dou à moi, y va pa'ti'

               
Hélas, hélas, c'est pou' toujou'

X.

With Congratulations from Mister Splitfoot

S
ome years later, all the water in the sky had passed over the memory of men, and the death of Leah Fox-Underhill one winter night in 1890, who was significantly less influential after the family betrayal, was less widely talked about than the excruciating death of William Kemmler, the first person sentenced to execution in an electric chair thanks to the work of Thomas Edison, or the arrest and assassination of the Sioux chief Sitting Bull, followed by the massacres at Wounded Knee and Pine Ridge, which spared neither women nor children, or the vote of new segregationist laws in Mississippi and the southern states, or even the inauguration of the New York World Building, the tallest building in Manhattan. Spiritism, the uncompromising religion that, without recourse to hell or purgatory, assured the salvation of everyone through positive transmigration and the upward path of spirits toward the celestial light, had supplanted Modern Spiritualism and its avatars worldwide. Which in no way caused braggarts, fanatics, or speculators to give up, or any kind of the socially confused, those multitudes without imagination who had never known how to behave confronted by the unknown.