by Tom McCarthy
Miss Dobai claps her hands together rapidly. The secretary scribbles more. The master of ceremonies opens his hands to the audience, inviting their participation. Someone near the front shouts out:
“Is there anyone else with you, Tilly?”
Miss Dobai, eyes still vacant, rotates her head slowly to first one side then another. Two-thirds of the way through its rightwards turn it stops, and Tilly’s voice gasps:
“Oh! The temper boy.”
“Was that ‘temper’?” asks the secretary.
“Temper, tempra, temper-ture,” says Tilly. “Mercury rising. He’s telling Tilly it’s a P.”
A woman to the hall’s left stands up; so do a couple to the right.
“Peter?” asks the solitary woman.
“Tilly hears him say it’s P, then A.”
The solitary woman sits down. Not the couple, though: they’re clasping one another more and more tightly as Tilly continues:
“P, then A; then there’s another one, then L…”
“Paul!” the wife says, her voice breaking. Her husband asks, in a more authoritative tone:
“Paul, is that you?”
Miss Dobai’s head turns a little more, trying to locate either the man who asked the question or the girl who’s answering it, or both. Tilly’s voice comes from it once more, saying:
“Died of influ-, influ-, influ-ence. Paul said it’s very hot. And wet. But now he’s happy again. Hello, Daddy; hello, Mummy. You were always good to me.”
The voice has altered halfway though this last speech: it’s still a child’s, but seems more serious than Tilly’s.
“If this is Paul,” the husband says, “then tell me: do you remember, in the playroom, the big object? The one with the tail?”
“Oh, toy,” Paul’s voice answers. “Yes, indeed. A rocking horse.”
“Well, that was at the nursery school,” the husband says. “But I meant at our house. The object pinned to the wall, with the tail…”
“A bird,” Paul says. There’s a pause, then he adds: “Not a real bird. One made of fabric. With a tail… and string… long string to fly.”
The wife, sobbing, has sunk back to her chair.
“Kite bird,” Paul says triumphantly. “Pinned to the wall. You got it for my birthday.”
Now the husband starts to cry as well. Audrey looks at Serge as if to say “See?” Returning her gaze, he feels a hot and cold rush moving through his veins. Paul’s voice, still issuing from Miss Dobai’s mouth, says:
“You’re having a painting done. Of me.”
“Yes!” chokes the husband through his tears. “Can you see it?”
“Oh yes. I like it. I can see it, and I’m beginning to see from it as it goes on. And it makes Matilda smile, just like the photo. How I like the soldiers in a row, like toast and egg!”
The voice is slipping back into giggly mode. The secretary, scribbling furiously, asks:
“Is it Tilly again? Are you seeing a painting or a photo?”
Again Miss Dobai’s head slowly rotates, getting its bearings on her interlocutors. The grotesque smile returns to her face as Tilly says:
“Two rows of soldiers. Like in school, when the man came with the velvet and the bird. The front ones are sitting, and the back ones are standing.”
Several people have stood up around the hall.
“What regiment are they from?” someone shouts out.
“ ’Jiment?” Tilly’s voice repeats. “The writing has an E in it. And an I, and an L… ”
“Is it the Leicester Rifles?” someone else asks.
“Oh, they’ve left their rifles to the side,” Tilly giggles. “One of them has got a stick, though: in the back row, one, two, three from the left. But he’s not the one who plays with her. It’s the other one, in the front, the raifle boy.”
“What did you call him?” asks the secretary.
“He told her that a part was gone, and he was choking for a bit, then getting better. He was frightened, like when it’s dark; then he passed over, and was comfortable again.”
Two men call out, almost simultaneously:
“What’s his name? What’s he called?”
Miss Dobai raises her hand from the table’s surface and traces in the air an M. Beside Serge, Audrey tenses up. Miss Dobai’s hand then air-draws O. Audrey slackens again, disappointed. The next letter’s R; then S. The hand pauses for a while.
“ Mors: means ‘dies’ in French, doesn’t it?” someone behind Serge mumbles.
“Is that right?” Audrey whispers in his ear.
Serge, veins still tingling, shakes his head. “Dies” is meurt. Mors is “bit.” He thinks of the birds in the woods after he was shot down: the grey, fleshy crumbs they all had in their beaks. Miss Dobai’s hand twitches back into action and traces an E.
“Was he a telegraphist?” someone calls out.
His question goes unanswered as the hand sketches two more letters, an N and a T
“Tilly,” the secretary says, “I’ve got MORSENT. Do you mean that more men were sent to rescue him, when he was choking?”
Her last few words are drowned out by the gasps of another couple, two of the people who stood up when Miss Dobai first started talking about photos.
“It’s us!” they shout. “Morsent’s our name. The photograph arrived last week!”
Tilly’s voice breaks out of Miss Dobai’s mouth again:
“Photo-graph, that’s it. He’s in the front row, in front of the stick-man: Raifle.”
“Oh, Matthew: it’s our Ralph!” the woman shrills, hugging her husband. She pronounces it “Rafe.” “It’s true: there’s a man with a walking stick behind him in the photo!” she adds, for the enlightenment of others in the audience. Addressing herself first to Miss Dobai, then, shifting her aim slightly, to the air above her, she continues: “Ralph! Are you okay now?”
“Oh, Raifle’s happy as a boy can be,” Tilly responds. “He has a house, all built of bricks, and there are trees and flowers, and the ground is solid, not all mud. He’s met a girl.”
“A girl?” the mother asks. “What girl?”
“Ralph wasn’t very polite to her when he first came over,” Tilly says, giggling. “He didn’t expect a grown-up sister here. He asked me: am I a little brother, or is she my little sister? She calls me her big brother, but she’s like little sister. What’s that, Yafe? You can’t have two. Now Tilly doesn’t understand.”
“Can you ask him-” the father now assumes the role of questioner-“if he’s still missing any parts?”
Miss Dobai’s head bobs around a little, as though looking Ralph up and down. “Has he got legs and a head?” Tilly asks, answering almost immediately: “Oh yessie-yes! And ears, and eyelashes and eyebrows, all just like before; mouth and tongue too. It all got rear, rear, sembled.”
“And his house?” the father pursues his line of enquiry. “If it’s built of bricks, then what are the bricks built of?”
“Emma,” Tilly begins. “Emma…”
“Is there someone else with you?” the secretary interjects.
“Emma-nations,” Tilly finishes the word with difficulty. “Raifle says things rise up, atoms rising, and consol, consolidate when they get up here. We collect them, and make them solid again. There’s always something rising from your plane; when it comes through the aether, other qualities gather round each atom, and our people manor-factor solid things from it.”
A man to the hall’s left stands up now:
“I have a question,” he says. “If you need the atoms of living things to reconstitute them, why do those things not disappear from our world?”
“Oh, your world sheds bulk,” Tilly responds. “You’re losing weight right now, so that I and the others may borrow it in order to become present to you.”
People in the audience look down at their bodies. Serge raises his back, to see if it feels lighter. Oddly enough, it does. Tilly continues:
“And think of all the things that die,
and decay: they’re not lost. They may form dust or manure for a while, but that gives off an essence or a gas, which ascends in the form of what you call a ‘smell.’ All dead things have a smell. That’s what we use to produce duplicates of the forms they had before they were a smell. So decayed flowers make new flowers; rotting wool makes tweeds; dung makes food…”
Throughout this little lecture Tilly’s register and tone have both become elevated, like so many atoms, gathering scientific gravitas. She catches herself now and, giggling once more, says:
“Yes, all right, Yafe: Tilly will go back now. Table-talkie can take over. She’ll have sweets, because she did, and she said she could if she did.”
The static hissing rushes through Miss Dobai’s lips again; then the lids slide down over her rolled-up eyeballs, and she slumps back in her chair and stays there, seemingly unconscious. The audience remain completely still, waiting to see what will happen next. It’s the master of ceremonies who makes the first move. Rising from his own chair, he addresses them:
“My friends, these channellings have quite exhausted Miss Dobai. Nonetheless, her comatose state indicates that she is still receiving. With your help, we shall, as the control suggested, move on to the table-tilting method.”
He strides across the stage towards the large round table, behind which Miss Dobai sits collapsed and, laying his hand upon its surface, continues:
“First, to dispel any suspicions that the table is mechanically controlled, I would request that a member of the audience, a gentleman rather than lady, step onto the stage and help me lift it.”
There’s a pause; then a man near the front rises from his chair, mounts the stage and, grabbing the table top’s rim while the master of ceremonies clasps the thick stem-leg, helps him raise the whole thing from the floor. The two of them then walk the table round the stage.
“As you can see,” the master of ceremonies says to the audience, his voice a little strained by the exertion, “no strings or wires or any other mechanism connect this object to a point from which lever or switch might influence its movement.”
He motions to his volunteer to set the table down again, in its original spot. When they’ve done this, but before the volunteer has left the stage, he tells him: “Stay here, sir, if you will-just here, beside the blackboard.” He positions him accordingly, between the table and his own spot at stage right, in front of the easel-mounted board, before continuing: “And if a second volunteer would be so kind as to make him- or herself available…”
Two people rise from chairs: one male, one female.
“We will use the lady,” the master of ceremonies says. “Your task, madam,” he continues as he leads her by the hand onto the stage and places her beside the secretary, “will be to call out, slowly and clearly, all the letters of the alphabet, in the correct sequence. Should the table respond at any point during your recitation, you shall pause; the gentleman shall mark down the letter you’ve just called out; then you shall recommence pronouncing all the letters, beginning once more with A. Have I made the procedure clear to both of you?”
Both gentleman and lady nod. The master of ceremonies moves back to his spot at stage right, casts a glance across the now quite populated stage-the blackboard-staffing gentleman with chalk in hand, the soporific medium behind her table, the mousey secretary at her desk and the nervous lady standing beside her-and, satisfied, instructs the lady to begin. Blushing, she calls out:
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G…”
Serge shifts his gaze back and forth between the table and Miss Dobai. Both seem perfectly inanimate. The nervous lady moves on through the alphabet’s middle stretch:
“L, M, N, O, P, Q…”
Still nothing’s happening. When she pronounces Y though, the table top dips-unmistakeably, a clear forward tilt towards the audience, who gasp in amazement.
“Mark it down,” the master of ceremonies instructs the man at the blackboard. He does so, drawing a Y in its upper left corner. The table top tilts back until it’s even again.
“How can it do that?” Serge asks. The tingling in his blood is growing stronger. It’s not a sensation he’s experienced before; nor is it pleasant: it’s a bad type of tingling, as though he’d been injected with a mixture that was somehow not quite right.
“Shh!” Audrey whispers back. “Just watch.”
The nervous lady composes herself and starts again:
“A, B, C, D, E…”
This time it tilts at O. Then U. After five minutes the blackboard is displaying the sequence YOURLOVEBRIDETYPEKILL. Then, as the alphabet loops round two more times, the table stays quite still.
“We have ‘YOUR LOVE BRIDE TYPE KILL,’ ” the secretary says, speaking directly to the table. “Is that message correct?”
The master of ceremonies nods at the nervous woman, who recommences calling out the letters. Again, the table tilts at Y, then O, then U, and spells out the same sequence as before-until it gets to the E of ‘BRIDE’: this it replaces with a G; then the E comes, followed by S, the tilts continuing until the blackboard bears the more intelligible phrase YOURLOVEBRIDGESTHEGAP.
“ ‘YOUR LOVE BRIDGES THE GAP’ is what we’ve got now,” calls the secretary. “Is that what you meant? Perhaps you could give one tilt for yes, or two for no.”
The table tilts once. The secretary asks:
“With whom are we conversing now? Is it still Tilly?”
Two tilts provide a negative response. On the master of ceremony’s cue, the nervous lady embarks on another set of alphabetic recitations, which coax from the table the word SCIENTIST.
“What type of scientist are you?” the man who asked the question about atoms calls out.
ALL, answers the table. CHEMISTSPHYSICISTS.
The blackboard’s pretty full now. Casting an inquisitive glance at the secretary, who nods at him that she’s got it all down, the transcriber picks the duster up and wipes it clean. As the letters of the alphabet are paraded by aloud again and again, a new sequence is written out on it:
FINEAETHERIALMATTERVIBRATES.
The top half of the board is wiped again as the message continues:
WEHAVEINSTRUMENTSPICKUPVIBRATIONS…
The tilting and transcribing take a long time, but all the people in the hall are rapt by it. The very voice in which the alphabet’s letters are called out seems electrified by the possibility that it will, at any point, prompt a new tilt.
… SYNTHESISENEWMASS, the table continues.
“Who makes these instruments?” the atom-man calls back.
INVENTORS, the table answers. ENGINEERSSS.
The alphabet runs round three more times, each time stopping at S. In the gap between each nervously enunciated letter, Serge can hear his heart beating. He can feel it too: it’s fast, making his chest throb against his shirt. As it does, he grows aware once more of the object hidden in his inner jacket pocket: the ammeter. He looks around the hall: everyone else, Audrey included, has their eyes glued to the table and the blackboard. Slipping his hand beneath the lapel and pushing the jacket’s breast out, he eases the instrument up until its face is visible to him. The needle’s at zero. He’s about to let the thing fall back into the pocket once more when it leaps right up to twenty and hangs there, suspended, for three or four seconds before dropping, just as suddenly, back to zero.
“A, B, C…” the nervous lady’s voice intones. As it pauses on N, the needle again leaps to twenty. Serge looks up, and realises that the table’s tilted forwards. As it straightens, he looks back down and sees the needle drop, again, to zero.
“A, B, C…” the letters start again. Once more, the needle leaps as they are stopped, at T, by a new table-tilt; once more it falls back as the table’s upper surface straightens and the lady’s voice restarts. Serge looks around the hall again, scrutinising each member of the audience intensely. While their heads are all pointed the same way, one of their bodies’ postures stands out. It’s the man in the fedora a few yards in front o
f him: his shoulders are tensed in a different way from all the others. His elbow’s different too: it’s twitching just before each table-tilt, each needle-jump. Running his eye along the forearm, to the point where the hand disappears into its own jacket, Serge sees why: the fingers are manipulating something secreted within this just like the ammeter’s secreted in his own.
“Wireless control!” he says, almost inaudibly.
“What?” Audrey asks him.
“Nothing,” he whispers back. He knows immediately how they’re doing it: he read about it in The Broadcaster a month ago. A small transmitter sends a signal to an even smaller receiver that, in turn, activates a mechanism in the object to be acted on: the technique has been used in music halls to play pianos without pianists, or make model airships fly around above the stalls and dock unaided in their moorings on the stage. The article’s author speculated that it could be developed to make guns fire remotely, or have sirens sound, or even to command an entire warship, bypassing the need for sailors. The table’s still tilting, spelling out the sequence DECAYEDSUNLIGHTRECONSTITUTED…
“Is the sunlight bright, or dark?” the atom-man is asking.
LOVERAYSNOCOLOUR, the table’s answering. ANDWHEN…
Serge’s pulse is still racing, but now it’s with fury. He wonders if he should jump up and denounce the sham. How many people in the room are in on it? The secretary? The transcriber? Atom-man? He looks at Ralph’s parents, then Paul’s: they’re hanging on the table’s every tilt, the blackboard’s every slowly transcribed word. So is Audrey; so is everyone apart from him. The isolation makes his heart beat even faster, so fast that he starts to worry that he’ll have a heart attack and die: he spends the next ten minutes, while the letters flow, halt and restart, trying to calm himself down. He talks to himself internally, telling himself that “pass over” would be the correct spiritualist terminology for “die,” which sends a nervous laugh up from his chest into his throat which he then has to stifle. By the time he’s coaxed both mind and body back to a safe state, the table’s stopped tilting and the session is being wrapped up by the master of ceremonies, who, after thanking all “collaborators” in the séance, helps Miss Dobai from her chair and supports her as she falteringly walks across the stage and disappears through the side-door from which she first entered.