Rochester Knockings

by Hubert Haddad

  At that exact moment, a dry and unusually violent rapping sound translated into the bursting of a white vase filled with cornflowers, bluebells, and gentians, which scattered all over the table and the floor. With round eyes, Mrs. Fox pointed at the broken glass.

  “That’s the second time!” she exclaimed. “Are you going to break all my dishes like this?”

  In the living room full of people, there was a general movement of stepping back accompanied by a stifled groan of rising fear in everyone’s throats. This panic contrasted with the beginnings of jubilation that had overtaken the crowd gathered outside, for it is true that, even at the worst moments, a few lamps in the hands of good people on a clear night can suffice to put everyone in a festive mood.

  Standing on a step in the threadbare dress suit that he never seemed to take off, Mr. Fox considered his world from a certain height, arms crossed beneath his beard like an easily offended Mormon. Significant events were taking place under his roof, and the idea had gradually occurred to him to take some pride in it. A poor Methodist farmer unknown by his contemporaries and made fun of by his daughters could well, for once in his life, imagine himself chosen for mysterious purposes. For he had been persuaded that a great curse had struck them. Wasn’t he for a long time the sole person in the household refusing to accept all this madness? But a demonic will had imposed itself from another world. There was nothing he could do. A simple man who’s only been taught about God couldn’t know how to fight against such phenomena. And how could he have anticipated the madam his wife would become in a matter of days, more loquacious than Reverend Gascoigne? The spirit had touched her tongue, without reaching her brain! It was she who had sent him to find their closest neighbor, the widow of High Point. Mrs. Redfield, handkerchief trembling, almost fainted when Mrs. Fox finished describing the peddler’s slit throat, especially when at that precise moment a vase that little Katie had just filled with wildflowers shattered into a thousand pieces.

  Mrs. Redfield and all the others turned their batrachian eyes to the floor and the table. First in line was Isaac Post, the only one in the group knowledgeable about transmission. Almost sober, mustache quivering, this good Philadelphian shook his head like a contrary mule. The Dueslers, former breeders who turned to farming after a ruinous epidemic of equine rhino-pneumonia, were only too willing to rush over. It was Mrs. Duesler who gathered all in the area who were still dragging their heels. A respected woman of independent means, the austere Mrs. Hyde—now a septuagenarian and daughter of the founder of Hydesville, an enterprising pastor who had a giant sawmill built in the middle of the valley with the hopes of profiting from the agriculture and its foresters—ascended by foot up Long Road, her servant at her side, a dim lamp in her hand. Mr. and Mrs. Jewell wouldn’t have missed the opportunity, the two of them trembling with a mad hope. And George Willets, the solitary bear the village only just tolerated ever since he instigated his own quest for an inner light and separated from the Society of Friends. Stephen B. Smith, big hunter and lover of guns, was counted there, and his wife Louise who claimed to be a distant relative of Mrs. Fox. As well as the eldest of the siblings, David S. Fox and his wife, farmers three miles from here in the district of Pittsford. The mistress of the event was trying to take it all in, this whole group here on the lookout. Never, not even at church on public confession days, had she found herself to be in the center of such an assembly. Without really planning it, she had invited the village community over to put an end to rumors and in order to share a wonder. Wasn’t it amazing that for the first time since the resurrection of our Lord, the afterlife was making itself known to poor mortals!

  “I asked: ‘Are you going to continue to sound your responses if I gather the neighbors so that they can benefit from this too?’ The spirit answered in the affirmative . . .”

  “In that case, would you allow us to interrogate him ourselves?” interrupted Isaac Post, weary of this woman’s homily.

  “I would like to ask him questions about my dear son,” Mrs. Jewell cried out.

  A good head taller than the circle of farmers, standing firmly in his dusty boots, a solid man with a pockmarked face called mischievously from his corner: “And how can you prove to us that your daughters aren’t both in a closet fooling us with a broomstick!”

  Eavesdropping on the landing since the invasion had begun, Kate and Margaret descended the stairs in a dignified manner to counter the mean laughs bursting forth.

  Isaac Post intervened with his cavernous voice, exhorting his hosts and the public not to disturb communication by unwanted interference. He discoursed to everyone’s boredom on the encrypted codes of the electric telegraph of Morse and Vail.

  “What are you getting at?” Stephen B. Smith interrupted.

  “It’s simple. Because we can now transmit and receive messages from considerable distances, between Washington and Baltimore for example, by the means of electrical pulses, it seems like we could do the same thing with the other world . . .”

  “But because he answers only with yes or no, why would we annoy him with your codes,” grumbled a second Quaker. “A ghost isn’t a little telegraphist . . .”

  A restless murmur ran through the group. The woodstove had been relit because of the cool nights, its acrid fumes emitting an odor of sulfur to the nostrils of the Dueslers and Mrs. Hyde.

  Isaac Post went over to the table and with the knuckles of his fist, clearly explained his system: each letter was assigned a number of knocks, from one to five for the vowels A, E, I, O, U, from six to twenty-six for the consonants B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z. Two quick knocks to agree, three spaced knocks to reply no.

  “Spirit, are you there?” he drummed out, letter by letter, without forgetting to translate orally in good English as assistance.

  The coded response, one of the loudest, emanating indistinctly from the wooden floor and walls, subdued even the most skeptical.

  “What is your surname and first name?” Isaac Post telegraphed with dexterity.

  “7-11-1-19-14-2-20 . . . 11-1-25-16-2-20,” the entity immediately responded.

  Isaac Post continued his investigations without worrying about interjections from the group. A religious silence followed this long sequence of knocks. The man turned finally toward those witnessing like a judge before the jury: “C-h-a-r-l-e-s . . . H-a-y-n-e-s . . . the Spirit is named Charles Haynes! This is a historic moment that we’re witnessing, fellow citizens. For the first time in the world, on this night in April 1848, we’ve entered in direct contact with the dead, which is to say that the doors of the other world have opened for us with the assistance of our Savior. Do any of you realize for a single moment the consequences of such an event?”

  In an eruption of inner light, Mr. Willets suddenly stood tall, saying in a single breath: “I still have many things to say, but none of you would be able to bear it right now. When he comes, he, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you in the whole Truth.”

  His spurs tintinnabulating with impatience, the pockmarked stranger in the leather vest ventured to express some doubts about the mental equilibrium of Isaac Post. Laughing aside, he suggested that each person present ask the knocking spirit a question of a more personal nature that only concerned himself as a way to thwart any possibilities of fraud. More simple than the ex-telegraphist’s coding method, he proposed to the questioner to recite the alphabet in its traditional order and as many times as necessary, the entity being ordered to respond with a knock after each letter as a way to give a response. A volunteer to recite, pen in hand, would transcribe as they went along. The devout colossus George Willets accepted with grace this role of secretary.

  Everything in place, the widow Mrs. Redfield, holding back a breath, spoke hastily: “What sickness is my son Samuel suffering from?” The knocks started to rain down while Willets uttered the alphabet more and more quickly, all while making his pen spit. Reported finally with a certain reserve at the edge of his lips, the laconic one
-word response provoked in the room a hilarious fright and filled the widow with confusion.

  “What is the first name of my oldest son,” asked Mrs. Jewell, very pale, in her turn.

  “John,” Willets transcribed.

  “And what happened to him?”

  “Scalped by the Hurons,” he recited in a dull voice at the conclusion of the drumming knocks and their ritornelle.

  Mrs. Jewell let out a piercing cry and fainted in the arms of her husband. The stranger, in compassion, offered his flask. After Mr. Jewell’s disdained response, he took a gulp for himself instead and declared: “We believe we possess the science of a thing . . . when it is only possible that the thing is something other than what it is, that’s what good old Aristotle said. I propose therefore that the residents of this house sleep at their neighbors’ tonight and that a search committee take over the quarters to verify the constancy of these phenomena . . .”

  Impressed by the eloquence of the newcomer, several approved the idea. Having free rein since his wife was living in Rochester, Isaac Post offered himself straight away to be on guard. The colossus George Willet and Mr. Smith also volunteered themselves as starters for this new kind of vigil.

  “But not you, whom no one knows from Adam!” the ex-telegraphist announced to reserve sergeant William Pill.

  XIV.

  Maggie’s Diary

  My sister Katie is definitely crazy. Or else she’s possessed like the Salem witches. If it wasn’t for her, none of this would have happened. With these dangerous games, she set in motion a strange machine that makes some kind of goat: scapegoat or demon. None of us is going to escape from it however, I can already tell. As if invisible forces were holding us all captive, animals, children, and adults. I’m only fifteen, but I know how to see what hides behind faces, and beneath the polite words of others. Things took an unimaginable turn once Mother had the idea of stirring up the neighborhood, starting with the widow of High Point. Until that moment, everything was happening just between us. Even if we were very afraid, Kate and I were making a kind of game out of these exchanges with Mister Splitfoot, as she calls him. And that Quaker currently far from his wife’s surveillance—everything he believes he invented to communicate with the rapping spirit, we had been doing since the first signs of understanding. At first, we were unaware that a peddler had had his throat slit with a butcher knife in our bedroom about fifteen years ago, at midnight on a Tuesday, before being buried in the basement on the following night. Did we need to know that? Now Kate keeps waking up with a start in the dark, stammering that she sees the murderer, that he’s raising his bloody knife right in front of our bed. What scares me the most is not the murderer who lived in this house, but the ghost with his horrible pains. Luckily he remains invisible to me. It’s plenty to bear all the pandemonium, all of his impatient rapping from the depths of death, and to suddenly see chairs lifting one foot then another, doors slamming shut for no reason, glasses shattering. Sometimes I’m so afraid this is all going to end badly that an icy sweat runs down between my breasts. To top it all off, there’s some kind of infernal carnival around the house, while the inside swarms with a bunch of neighbors I only recognize from having seen in church. From the window, tonight, Katie and I counted dozens and dozens of lanterns. Most of the people assembled kept their calm, but sometimes there were hostile yells. We watched it all in dismay, my sister and I. And whether by spite or anger, is this crowd going to throw their oil lamps through our windows before they go off? You hear of these kinds of stories in the country. It was less than twenty years ago, not far from here, that an old woman was burned alive with her twelve cats under the pretext of witchcraft. There’s a saying that goes something like: There will always remain more ashes than remorse.

  For the moment, we’re in the flames. Not a single day goes by without all sorts of individuals knocking on our door or parading around the house like those people from Asia who get carried away around priceless relics. That famous night in April, my sister and I were separated, one of us at our older brother David’s house and the other with the Dueslers, an impossible couple always making a scene, while Mother went to stay with the elderly Mrs. Hyde, a funny woman who night and day irons the dresses of her deceased mother. The men of the village stayed to keep vigil with Father. Their admitted goal was to inspect the facts and to catch an evil prankster were they to find one. Bizarrely, the knocks didn’t stop that whole night, despite Kate’s absence. Whether he’s called Charles Haynes or Mister Splitfoot, the rapping spirit detached himself from her. In the early morning, unable to hold back, those keeping watch for the ghost went down to the basement with shovels and began to dig, unearthing small bones and tufts of fur, going all the way down until they hit water without finding the cadaver among that debris. It wouldn’t surprise me if those gravediggers were also looking for treasure.

  We all returned the next day a little shaken, Mother and us, we had to tend to the barnyard and our cow, so sullen ever since the butcher had come to take away her little one.

  But another life began for us in Hydesville. Children without much status, we had now ascended to the level of prodigies. The power to communicate with the dead isn’t bestowed to common mortals. Especially since our raucous host was having a field day, to speak frankly. Never had he been so talkative. Kate provokes him mischievously. I don’t dare report all her questions: even a pirate with a wooden leg would be offended by what comes out of the mouth of that naughty little girl. She’s come up with more ideas for a system of conversation than our austere fellows: we snap our fingers, even our toes, to prime the pump. And then we ask our questions in good English.

  “So Mister Splitfoot, are you looking at me when I’m completely naked?”

  “Nudity,” he replied a little sharply, “has no meaning for a spirit who can see inside beings!”

  “Hey, Mister Splitfoot, do you want us to go looking for your wife?” In the hell of a cacophony that followed, we learned that his wife was no longer in this world. A dead person not being able to be a widow, it would have been silly to present him with our condolences.

  Ever since the whole town assembled in front of our farm, the visits haven’t stopped. Father and Mother, acting as if they’ve won a fortune at blackjack, dress properly to receive people, offering them drinks in such a mannered way that one would think they’re bartenders. On holidays, an unending herd of the curious march by in procession, hands in their pockets, laughing or walking solemnly. There are families of geese, the male leading, frightened groups of snooping hares, angrily snorting buffalos, rings in their nostrils, and then more and more, the ladies and gentlemen of the town with their escorts. They park their carriages and wagons up and down Long Road. Everyone wanted to see the haunted house. There was even a sorcerer who’d escaped from Virginia, a black exorcist covered with charms and amulets who claimed to be a pastor, whom we allowed in because of his face and arms, scarred by barbed wire from slave drivers. To make him leave, Father pointed his flintlock at some bats and fired in the air, trying to kill two birds with one stone. The man, driven even crazier than my sister Kate, started to call out to Lazarus and Saint Peter in loud cries:

  Protect us, Voodoo spirit!

  Open the gates of the two worlds to us!

  They say that former slaves keep alive inside them the spirit of their deceased ones deprived of burial. In Hydesville, we lost count of the lunatics on a pilgrimage to replenish themselves. Thanks to Mister Splitfoot, we were keeping a small business alive.

  At the house, everything changed after Leah’s arrival from Rochester by stagecoach five days ago. Leah knows what she wants. “I’ve passed the age of childishness!” she likes to say in response to everything. Bursting into the living room late one morning with her beautiful trunk deposited by a valet, she didn’t take long to get a handle of the situation. “We’ll see what truth there is to your stories,” she immediately declared. My big sister is a fashionably dressed lady from New York. Once she remov
ed her cloak, which was big enough to hide five lovers inside, her chest flat as a chicken’s wishbone in her traveling outfit, she revealed a long skirt swelling with crinoline in the back and little boots of yellow leather that allow her ankles to show. And above all that, placed on the jackdaw wings of her hair, was a pretty turban made of costume pearls and lace. Our eldest sister has religious beliefs and a piercing gaze. She understands everything not through investigation, but by nitpicking. The Lord judges us, she says, with a yes or a no. When she’s around, Mother is never at ease.

  After that night in March, poor Mother had suddenly aged. Her hair had become whiter than refined flour. She and our old father were convinced in their mission: to reveal to all the key to the other world. The two of them, who’d never even left the county! Our good mother usually so modest now takes herself as Anne the Prophetess. Leah, who knows everything, says that she should get some rest instead, leave the farm, settle down in town. The countryside is worthless for farmers. In Rochester, Leah gives piano lessons and appreciates beautiful linen. Despite a personality more cutting than a knife sharpened on a rock, she must not be lacking in suitors with such a corset and those yellow-leather ankle boots. In town, luckily, bigots are like bees calmed with smoke, they sting less often. But I think that Leah is waiting for that rare bird, one with solid gold feathers that prevent it from flying off.