It's close to midnight on a dark and stormy night, and with this oddly reassuring allusion, I slip into my warm, virgin-wool black coat, down to my ankles, wrap my battleship-gray cashmere scarf around my neck twice, and march outside, hoping to suspend disbelief, since I don't hold it in abeyance for other performances, unless they are awful, but I want mindlessness and mindfulness, too. I'm less worried about which residents will attend, as some of the worst have announced their disdain, so I can expect a congenial crew who have fewer prejudices, less fear, or more curiosity and recondite wishes. No one is in the main room, all the lights but one are out, I can't see any of the photographs and paintings on the wall, there are some embers burning in the grand fireplace, and without hesitating I start toward the stairway to the Rotunda Room. I'm excited and scared, the way I was entering kindergarten, but then I walked beside my mother who left me at the door and didn't accompany me into the classroom to meet the new teacher, the way the other mothers did, I had to push open the heavy door and present myself alone, but my mother doesn't remember this incident, along with mostly everything about me, except that I did things fast, and now she has little short-term memory through no fault of her own, but my mother remembers her name, my name, that her husband left her alone, and also our family cat, but not that she, without mercy, put the cat and my dog to death.
Birdman crouches, in shadow, at the bottom of the stairs, he's just driven in from the airport, returned from Italy, and smiles beatifically, showing his gold-capped front tooth, reminding me that he is mostly a happy man, seemingly not oppressed by severe complexes, except that he must care for any sick bird he finds, that he is driven, day and night, by worry for animals, sometimes he has become ill, his intestines in a twist for weeks, bordering on colitis, about the fate of a wounded baby sparrow or precious falcon hawk, and he buys worms or whatever food they eat and nurses them as if he'd birthed them. Birdman, or Desmond, lean, blond, and tall, his oval face set off by large navy-blue eyes, with dark lashes, his fingers long and graceful, has a good complexion, though somewhat sallow, but his skin is leathery from exposure to the elements, he probably doesn't moisturize his skin as many men do. He asks why the lights upstairs are on, and I explain what's happening, concerned about his response, since he might take exception, too, but he appears not to care.
-I don't tempt fate, he says.
-Some of the residents are angry about a seance happening here.
-Judge not lest you be judged, Birdman says.
-Really? I ask.
-Did you get my postcards? I sent four.
It was Birdman, I realize with shock. Birdman.
-I got three, one today, I say.
-Just today? I mailed you four.
-Just you?
-Me and my shadow.
No wonder his scratchy signature was familiar, residents sign in and out on a register and see each other's first names daily, so I ponder Birdman, with brand new eyes, that's what my mother would say, brand new eyes, consider his mailing me cryptic, thoughtful notes as he traveled far away from here, venturing in distant lands. The night we sat on a couch in the library, he told me he grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, radiated charm and helplessness, which allied with his determination and grit, and I liked him, then didn't and did. His father was taciturn, kept secret his beliefs, since in his thirties Birdman's father joined a white supremacist group, which offered his father's flaccid white rage terrifying, subversive expression. Birdman was furious with his father, his mother, who was silent, then an impervious world that anyway engulfed their alienated patch. He wandered back in time, his eyes rolled to the left, reliving the war with his father, when any pity for the man turned into a violent hatred, as they watched, in the 1960s, the riots on television, Watts and Newark, because his father laughed and laughed, so Birdman stiffened into rebellion, did every drug he could get his hands on, fled at sixteen, traveled to Los Angeles, New York, then Austin, was a short-order cook, wrote plays, though he'd not seen one until he was twenty, and gave that up, also, when he rescued and cared for his first bird. Every gentle bone in him responded to that bitty mess of feathers, he said, he didn't know himself, he was one with a baby sparrow, with its wounded wing, a tiny being who couldn't fly, who needed him, but he needed the bird more, it was a white-throated sparrow, he soon learned, and, almost as a lark, he started a tourist company, with a partner, so he could travel and support himself and his avian causes, Birdman reveres even the relatively common raven, in some parts, he's told me, it's considered the prophet of birds, and, curiously, at least to me, he and the young married man, an ornithologist, have nothing to do with each other. Birdman no longer hates his father, who has Alzheimer's disease and doesn't know his son. He urged me, his sallow skin pinkening, to give up anything and everything, to leave it all behind, to follow my instincts, but I told him I wasn't sure what they were. That night, he and I were stationary on the couch, intimate and sedentary, so long, we might have triggered a relationship of some kind, slow or fast, but it's not wise or healthy to be involved in this community, it's discouraged by the staff, and I've been in love, its terrain isn't novel or untrodden. More, I hoped to sunder myself from, not adhere to, objects and people, to break things down into elements even senselessly, since I might discern something about an object's integrity or necessity in the process or by its result, and now I might rather die for an idea, since there's a liberty that chooses death.
Birdman and I keep company at the bottom of the stairs, when a prolonged silence settles into a profound ambiguousness, so I stare at the floor, embarrassed the way an English person might be, recalling each of his three postcards and my not having a clue it was he who wrote them, I hadn't once thought of him, and the mounting minutes cement our impossibility, so I swear off any further intimacy. With this, the spell breaks, some potential is buried, I can feel it diminish in breadth, collapse, and the loss of its potential and energy debilitates me. "I'd better go upstairs," I tell Birdman, "since they're probably waiting for me." He nods, exhausted from the rapid rise and fall of intensity, and also because he suffers from severe anemia, in which the hemoglobin count in the red blood cells is very low, often dangerously so, hemoglobin is composed mostly of iron, which accounts for his sallow complexion. He and I would have been a mistake, this relationship another blot, most start as mistakes, with promise, they might have possibility, but they begin as accidents, any relationship in the universe is, some can't be avoided, some are embellished, raided for treasure by a lover's piratical need, drained and dropped, or taken up for life, people balance good and bad on a human scale usually weighted against the other, since they demand love, wanting more, rarely getting enough, wanting everything, and they can't stop themselves. I've teetered on the verge and gone over, when an imperious love, overwhelming and magnificent, raised me from despair to a blind ecstasy. But an intimacy's death in infancy, like mine with Birdman, is irrevocable in my experience, which is, in a way, all I have, or nothing much at all.
The Rotunda Room is lit with an assortment of strategically placed and motley, unimportant small lamps, as well as tall, white, tapered candles in brass candleholders, but the large room and its objects are mostly dark or in shadow, especially since the green damask curtains are drawn nearly to the bottom of the windows. On the stage, there are two artisanal metal candelabras from Mexico and in front of the stage, a large, round walnut table that could be Mission furniture or a good copy. The sitters: the Magician, the Count, Contesa, Arthur and Henry, the Turkish poet, Spike, the young married man, the disconsolate young woman, our Felice, anorectic and psoriatic, the tall balding man, our KaAca, whose posture saddens me, and Moira, the odd inquisitive woman. The presence of the young married man and our Felice is a small surprise, which I appreciate. Without pomp, the Magician motions to a chair, one of the Green Lady's, and, first moving its pillow into a better position, I sit down between the tall balding man and Spike, and everyone says hello in a manner unique to each, I remember the Turkish
poet's gold ringed hand touching his heart and Contesa's fateful double wink. Then we, eleven of us, await instruction.
The Magician explains that we are supposed to center and open ourselves to what is out there, way out there, and also in us.
-Death is the master of transformation, he says in his mellow, nasal voice. Some believe there is no death, and the spirit or soul continues after death. We learn from physics that matter doesn't die. You could say we survive death, because human beings are matter. In the 17th century, the scientist Emanuel Swedenborg believed that when a person dies, they're welcomed by angels. In the hereafter, they live the style they did on earth.
-The same lifestyle? Is this patter? Spike asks.
-Please don't interrupt him, Contesa urges, gently.
-I get your skepticism, the Magician says, but what I'm trying to do with you here-actually I'm not sure what it is. I'm not above entertainment, that's true. But, for what it's worth, I recently lost my mother.
-I recently lost my best friend, the young married man says.
-I lost my older sister, Contesa says.
-I lost my wife, the Count says.
Is the Count's wife dead, I wonder again, lost, literally lost, or is it figurative, she's lost to him?
-My dog died two weeks before I got here, the disconsolate woman says.
-I don't know anyone, no one I love, anyway, who's dead, says Spike, her unmarked face an embarrassment of riches.
-I can see that, Moira adds gravely, lowering her eyes.
The Turkish poet exhales operatically, straightens up in his chair, and begs the Magician to get on with it.
-Please. I am inspired by you, my blessed, extravagant companions.
The Turkish poet's hands are outstretched, palms peacefully up.
-And by whatever spirits come, even if they don't. I've lost ... I am not so brave anymore to admit, maybe like you.
-Everyone, please, close your eyes, and let's be quiet now, the Magician says.
I shut my eyes reluctantly and reflect on the history of spiritualism that lives in this room, which we twelve now occupy, in a building not far from where witches burned at the stake in the 17th century. I consider that if there's death in life, that is, we recognize death will come and live with it, there might be life in death. In Zulu the verb fa means to die, the noun fa means inheritance, which encourages solace, since when someone dies, there's something you inherit, death leaves a gift.
A blast of Arctic air sets me shivering.
-Everyone here, the Magician goes on, except for Moira, Violet, and me are nonbelievers. In the 19th century, mediums didn't allow nonbelievers into a seance, because of their negative energy.
-Everyone wishes to speak to the dead, Moira announces, definitively. It is a universal wish.
-Good, the Magician pronounces.
The Magician says you have to want to believe, and then, to my surprise, the Count admits that against reason he hopes for belief, at least now, since belief might soothe him in time, though it's time that might heal, but he can't let go of reason.
-What's so great about reason? our Felice demands.
This leaves Arthur, Henry, the young married man, our Kafka, Spike, and me.
-What are we supposed to do? Spike asks. Believe or not not believe?
The young married man cracks up.
-We're not supposed to do anything, Contesa says.
-Double negatives, Arthur intones dolefully. We're here, right. Is our belief really essential?
Arthur speaks, at once serious and ironic, on both sides of the issue, then he and Henry, in unison, look with a passive or benign contentment at the Magician.
The Magician rises slowly, not to alarm us, and walks around the table, demonstrating that there is nothing attached to him, and, as he does, he explains that in the 19th century it was revealed that many mediums were hoaxes, the seances rigged, that the medium had helpers, which he doesn't have, that the medium might have a signal or two for the helper, and that the notorious ectoplasm, a luminous substance believed to ooze from a spiritualistic medium's mouth, was sometimes regurgitated surgical gauze, that mediums who suddenly levitated were discovered, when the lights were switched on by nonbelievers, to be standing on a chair, but he had no tricks up his sleeve or under him, no assistants whose voices doubled for him or our loved ones. Some probably still fear that the Magician will pickpocket them again-I notice the Count clutch his Breguet in his right fist-but soon the Magician extinguishes the candles on the table and has the tall balding man turn off the various lamps in the Rotunda Room. In the semi-darkness, there's easy and labored breathing through the nose and mouth, bodies shifting and settling in their chairs, shoes tapping and shuffling on the hardwood floor, legs shaking in place, and rocking, and I feel uneasy, everyone must feel uneasy except Moira, the Magician, and Contesa, who have experience with spiritualism and its manifestations, but apart from a narrow beam of light coming through the windows from the moon, the lantern on the lamppost outside, or an occasional car's headlights, the near-dark cloaks us, and, separate from each other, we are shapes, shadows, or shades of our corporeal selves.
-Be still, everyone, be still, the Magician commands. We must keep still. Empty your minds, release yourselves, open yourselves up, stop thinking, and breathe. Don't move around. That's important. Remember everything you can about the loved one you want to contact. Feel their presence beside you. Will It. I will act as your conduit, your medium, to the great beyond.
There's a single guffaw, probably Spike's, a few more minutes of freighted silence, during which, my eyes shut, I hazard believing or not disbelieving, because when I adumbrate my various zeals, that chairs communicate ideas, emotions, and values, that democracy is conflict, that justice and truth are often opposed, or that a subtle design could one day cause a revolution, though subtlety is usually derogated, I see myself avow one idea, drop another, see that I change my mind, but not easily. In the here and now, I could momentarily embrace spiritualism, as I could, in the abstract, a poorly designed or uncomfortable chair.
Contesa's head drops or falls onto her chest, she may be asleep, but then her head flops from side to side, and, adjusting to the darkness, my eyes fasten on her, as she begins to mutter phrases just beyond decipherability. Her voice is a strangled or undulating moan. The Magician whispers that Violet is in a trance state and we are to continue our reveries and investigations, to let her be wherever she is, to follow our memories to our loved ones and feel their presence beside us, to let go of the now and reach out to a world with no past or future.
The odd inquisitive woman, Moira, erupts into the stillness in a voice that sounds drugged, hers is a thick, slurred speech, which may signal her submission to or immersion in the other world, or this may be the otherworld's speaking voice, since if the dead speak, their speech must undergo transformation, too.
-Your aura, Ataturk, I see it.
With her eyes shut, she delicately indicates the Turkish poet.
-It is blue, sky blue. The color of hope, yes, there is hope in you and for others.
The Turkish poet acknowledges her murky address with a rich sigh.
-I am no Ataturk, he says mournfully. I wish for him.
-Everyone wishes to speak to the dead, Moira asserts again.
Silence. Breathing.
Then Moira, agitated, shouts: "Get off me, leave me. Go to her! To her!"
Contesa awakens or, rather, lifts her head, and she also speaks slowly, as if drugged, dragging her words and placing many breathy pauses between them: "What, what? You've come, my sister, you're back. I did NOT steal Mother's ring. She gave it to me. You're the selfish one. Your husband is terrible. He ... No. Yes. Stop it, that's not true. No, I didn't turn my back on my people. Never, no. But don't go. Can't we . . . ? Please stay."
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