Crossings

by Alex Landragin

  ‘Madame Jeanne, the beauties of your body have been immortalised in verse and in paintings. You have been a muse to great works of art. Men who knew you still dream of you today. Though no longer the body it once was, it is a desirable body all the same, a jewel whose tarnish only adds to its rarity. Your face is still the face of a great beauty, one who has lived a singular life. My proposal is simple. Perhaps you have guessed it already. I would like to offer you my body, and half of my fortune, in exchange for yours. If I had a choice, I would no doubt choose a younger body, a healthier body, but I don’t have a choice. A crossing into your body is the only crossing I will ever be able to make. I would like to take that chance, even if it means I will not live as long. I am not in love with life itself. I don’t desire to live a long life. I would rather live a life of sensuality and pleasure. I would gladly give up this body and half the fortune it was born into to be kissed by Mademoiselle Adélaïde the way she kissed you last week, even if it is only for a few short years.’

  I could scarcely believe my ears. ‘You would like to cross with me?’

  ‘Yes. On one condition. I do not wish it to be a blind crossing. I must be able to remember my previous body, and bring across with me all my memories. I must be able to remember who I am, who we are, after the crossing. Can you promise me that?’

  I assured her that such a crossing was indeed possible, even when crossing for the first time.

  By the time the coach left, several hours later, it was loaded with luggage, and there were two women in the carriage: Madame Jeanne and Mademoiselle Adélaïde.

  {31}

  Édmonde de Bressy

  Born 1845

  First crossing 1864

  Second crossing 1900

  Died 1900

  ‘DO YOU BELIEVE in metempsychosis?’

  It was mid-afternoon on a bright day in late March 1900, and I was in the parlour car of Union Pacific’s Overland Limited, hurtling across the American Midwest. Through the window, a snow-dusted prairie sparkled under a wintry noonday sun. I was lost in a daydream, seated in a leather armchair with a book in my lap, selected at random from the car’s library shelf, when I heard those words repeated in French in a deep, beguiling voice:

  ‘Madame, do you believe in metempsychosis?’

  I looked up and beheld a handsome, olive-skinned man seated in the armchair opposite mine, sporting a thick walrus moustache for which he was much too young, wearing a purple smoking jacket and a carmine turban, gazing at me intently with eyes of Japanese lacquer. It was odd, I thought, that he should address me thus in French.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

  ‘Metempsychosis – do you believe in the existence of such a thing?’

  ‘The transmigration of souls after death? Young man, I’m quite sure it is none of your business.’

  ‘On the contrary, it is more than my business, it is my living! Behold, my name is Hippolyte Balthazar,’ he said, extending his hand across the aisle of the carriage and holding it there a few seconds until I could not help but shake it. ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance.’

  ‘Madame Édmonde Duchesne de Bressy,’ I said, and instantly regretted it.

  ‘I am an Orientalist,’ he said.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Why, a scholar of the Oriental races! I have an especial interest in the question of metempsychosis, and have just completed a lecture tour of the United States and Canada, during which I spoke at length on the subject.’ A part of me had taken an instant dislike to Monsieur Balthazar. Another was already in his thrall. My natural instinct was to stand and leave the buffet–library car at once, but in the confinement of journeys by rail or sea it is necessary to be diplomatic with one’s fellow passengers. It is no small inconvenience to avoid a passenger for the entirety of a long voyage all because of a slight or a cross word. ‘Madame de Bressy,’ he continued, ‘as a student of the Oriental arts of meditation I have become adept at the perception of aura. Do you believe in such a thing, madame?’

  ‘Monsieur, you keep asking me questions on subjects to which I have never given a moment’s thought.’

  He leapt out of his chair and came to sit beside mine. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I noticed your aura at once. Behold! It is a most remarkable aura, perhaps the most remarkable aura I have ever come across, more so even than that of President William McKinley, with whom I dined only a few months ago, and who really has a most magnificent aura.’ And so he continued in this way for some time longer, and offered to read my aura – at no charge, of course – an offer that I refused with more firmness than politeness. But he continued all the same, despite my entreaties, until I determined to leave the buffet–library car, at which time, just as I was leaning forward to stand, he said something that arrested me.

  ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘there is a way out of the hall of mirrors in which you are imprisoned.’

  I sat in that chair for some time looking at the young man, lost for words, before I lifted my veil and said to him, very slowly and low enough so that only he could hear: ‘Monsieur Balthazar, as you can clearly see, mirrors are of no use to me. If you speak to me again, I will see to it that you are ejected from this train.’ I stood and, simulating an unhurried determination, walked off in the direction of my compartment, where I spent an agitated day and a restless night. A way out of the hall of mirrors . . . The phrase ricocheted in my mind.

  I did not venture from my compartment the following morning, but had breakfast delivered to me. After breakfast, a steward came to the door holding a silver bucket, inside of which were a bottle of champagne and a champagne glass.

  ‘Compliments of Monsieur Balthazar, who requests the pleasure of your company in the dining car for luncheon.’

  I sent the steward away with the unopened bottle and the glass, but all the same, all morning I hesitated about accepting Balthazar’s invitation. By midday my resistance was beginning to wilt. This strange young man was possessed of an equally strange power, compelling me to do things I did not wish to do. At one o’clock, I made my way to the dining car. I found Balthazar sitting alone at a table for two, a contented little smile playing on his full lips.

  ‘Behold!’ he exclaimed, beaming with pleasure. He stood to greet me, kissed my hand and helped me into my seat before returning to his. ‘I’m honoured you decided to take up my invitation, madame.’

  ‘My curiosity got the better of me. You seem to be able to make me do things no one else can. How is that?’

  ‘In the course of my studies, I learned the art of mesmerism from a Sufi dervish in Cairo. I am an expert in the technique, madame. I have hypnotised the great and the good across the world, not to mention certain members of Europe’s most illustrious royal households.’

  ‘I see.’ It was impossible not to be charmed by the man. ‘And so is it with mesmerism that you make people do what they don’t want to do?’

  ‘No mesmerist is capable of such a thing, madame. It is not the mesmerist who mesmerises, it is his subject who wishes to be mesmerised.’

  ‘Are you saying I wanted to come to dinner all along?’

  ‘Of course you wanted to come. You said it yourself. Curiosity got the better of you. Perhaps other urges too, which are more deeply buried within you. We are all conflicted creatures. There are things we want that we don’t want to want. Yet we want them all the same.’

  ‘And what do I want from you?’

  ‘At a guess, solace. It’s what most people want.’

  ‘If I am like most people, why take a particular interest in me?’

  ‘You are not like most people. On the contrary, madame,’ he said, ‘you are most interesting. You have a unique presence. You conduct yourself with the dignity and grace of an ancient soul.’

  ‘And I suppose you consider yourself an expert on the matter?’

  ‘Most assuredly! I have devoted my career to it. I have made it my life’s work.’

  I admit I was more than a little amused that so youn
g a man could refer to his life’s work. Despite my veil, I felt more than usually exposed by the candlepower of his gaze. ‘So let me ask you this,’ I finally ventured, ‘is there such a thing?’

  ‘As a soul? Most decidedly.’

  ‘The work of a certain Englishman concludes against it.’

  ‘Monsieur Darwin? I completely concur with all his ideas. The man is a genius. But on the subject of the soul he has nothing to say.’

  ‘What do you have to say on the subject?’

  He stroked his walrus moustache for a moment as he considered his reply. ‘I myself have nothing to add to the body of knowledge that already exists on the subject. But I concur with the Persian poet who said, A soul is more than the sum of intellect and emotions, more than the sum of experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three.’ He leaned forward, holding up an index finger for emphasis. ‘It is an inner faculty that recognises the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance.’

  And so Balthazar began to tell me about his life, which, though young, overflowed with event and variety. It was a pleasure to listen to his tales, which followed each other like brightly painted carousel horses. He told stories with all the gifts of those raconteurs that, at that time, could still be seen plying their trade in coffee houses and taverns from San Francisco to Peking. His brief but complicated existence could be summarised thus: he was the son of a Hungarian duchess, a famous beauty who had fallen in love with an Armenian maritime painter. His mother died giving birth, when Balthazar was eight. In his childhood he had been given, in his words, the finest education possible, consisting of Sufi poetry, the Arabian Nights, the writings of the ancient Greeks and the algebra of the great Muslim mathematicians. He was a polymath: right now, he said, he was writing the music to a ballet that would represent the synthesis of all his teachings. He spoke seven languages: French, Russian, Magyar, English, Italian, Armenian and Ancient Greek. He had learned hypnotism and mesmerism at the hands of French neurologists and Oriental mystics and claimed to be a master of the yogic and tantric arts. It was impossible to tell if he was an ingenious fraud or if he truly believed his preposterous claims.

  And now, said Balthazar, he was returning to Europe, and then to Alexandria, travelling up the Nile to Khartoum, where he would attend the marriage of his sister to an Ethiopian prince. After that, he declared, he intended to settle in Paris, where he was determined to establish himself as a mesmerist. It was his life’s work, he said, to help others.

  ‘And how may I assist you, madame?’ he asked, leaning forward with his great brown eyes wide open, chewing on candied chestnut pudding.

  ‘Give me peace,’ I said, once again finding myself ceding to unknown desires I could not control. ‘Give me consolation. Take away this burden I carry within me, I beseech you.’

  ‘What is the nature of this burden?’

  ‘Its name is heartbreak.’

  That evening, I dined with my travelling companion, Lucien, who had a cabin of his own. It was a bittersweet affair for me because I suspected it would be the last time I would see him, and I was very fond of him indeed.

  After breakfasting alone in my compartment the following morning, there was a knock at my door. It was Balthazar. He entered my compartment with a smile, locked the door and sat in the armchair. I was already lying on the narrow bed, sitting up on a pile of cushions.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ he asked after we had exchanged pleasantries. I nodded. ‘By the time I count backwards from ten to one,’ he said, ‘you will be asleep. Then, when I ask you a question, you will open your eyes and look into mine. You will answer it as honestly as you can.’ He counted slowly, looking me directly in the eyes. When he had finished counting, he asked, with the softest imaginable voice, ‘Tell me about the happiest day of your life.’

  ‘The happiest day of my life was the twenty-second of March, 1881, almost nineteen years ago to the day. It was the day I was finally able to return home.’

  ‘And where is home?’

  ‘The island of Oaeetee. It is a small island in the eastern Pacific Ocean, between the Sandwich Islands and the Marquesas archipelago.’

  ‘This is where you were born?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘And you left there when you were young?’

  ‘I did, not realising how long it would take to return home.’

  ‘How long did it take you?’

  ‘Lifetimes.’

  Balthazar hesitated. ‘How many lifetimes?’

  ‘I am now at the end of my fifth.’

  He leaned back. ‘We are not playing a parlour game, Madame Édmonde,’ he said with a look of poorly concealed annoyance. ‘Mesmerism is not something to be undertaken lightly or frivolously.’

  ‘I am not being frivolous,’ I replied. ‘I am utterly sincere. It took me ninety years to return to my island.’

  He narrowed his brown eyes, cocked his head sideways and clicked his tongue, lost in thought. ‘What is this strangeness? Yesterday you told me you believed in neither metempsychosis nor the existence of the soul.’

  ‘Metempsychosis is the transmigration of souls after death. As such, what I am talking about is not metempsychosis, because there is no death. I call it “crossing”.’

  He considered what I’d said a moment before his face lit up with epiphanic joy. He knelt by my side and took my hands in his. ‘Behold!’ he said. ‘I was certain that your soul is uncommon – and this is the proof!’ He kissed my fingers rapturously. ‘Please, madame, do me the honour of telling me about your lifetimes. All of them.’

  I knew I was within striking distance of my prey. But I also knew that outwitting the trickster would not be easy. I would need to lull him into dismantling his defences, and there is no better way to lull a professional charlatan than with feigned guilelessness. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But the story will take all day to tell, and I will brook no interruptions.’ I began at the beginning, with Alula and Koahu.

  On the twenty-second of March of the year 1881, standing on the deck of the Equator, a trading schooner that plied the waters between Tahiti, the Marquesas Islands and Oaeetee, I truly believed my long journey of several lifetimes was finally nearing its end. For this was the day I returned to the place I’d abandoned so thoughtlessly, a place to which I’d dreamed of returning ever since. The veil I wore in public concealed more than a disfigured face – it hid more than a century of memories. At thirty-six years old and still unmarried, I was considered an old maid. Thankfully, my considerable fortune shielded me from ostracism, for the merest whiff of a fortune can magically transform a defect into an idiosyncrasy and impudence into eccentricity. But money does not soothe every distress.

  Hours before the lookout’s call of Land ahoy, I had sensed signs of our approach all around: I recognised the shape of the clouds and the scent of the winds. The night stars, the breezes, the way waves played on the water’s surface – all of these were signs to me that my return was nigh. I recognised those carmine-red flying fish, the ones with two sets of fins that leap out of and into the water with the simple joy of being alive. When the island came into view at last, no more than a blue smudge on the horizon, my heart began to beat wildly. When I caught sight of terns up ahead, diving repeatedly into the sea in search of food, it almost leapt out of its cavity altogether. The more we neared the island the more of its forms I recognised: the obelisk-shaped rock at the southern tip called the Black Crane, the countless forested valleys and hills, the waterfall known as the Silver Tear, the belltower-shaped pilasters and, looming above it all, the mountains.

  My joy was mixed with trepidation, for along the way I had seen enough of other islands to fear the worst for my own, and its people. I had learned that the island was ruled by a king called Mehevi, but it was the French who had made him king, and he was a king in name only. The island had, for almost half of my absence, been a part of the French empire.

  As the ship moore
d at a jetty extending from the same beach where I had left the island all those years ago, I was grateful to be wearing a veil, for I did not wish anyone else to guess that, beneath it, tears trickled down my disfigured face.

  Upon disembarking, I was immediately mobbed by a throng of young children and infants. Evidently these children were unused to the sight of a woman in a black riding habit, top hat and veil. I cursed myself that I had not thought to pack toffees to offer them. An official brushed the children aside and ushered me into the customs building, one of several dockside tin sheds. Inside, it was intolerably hot. The official sat himself behind a rickety desk and introduced himself as Lieutenant Perrault. Perspiring profusely, he hunched over a large ledger, murmuring the words he scrawled under his breath as he wrote. I was questioned on my background and my intentions. I replied, truthfully, that I was a wealthy woman dedicated to the instruction of native children, and that I intended to establish a school. This gave him a start. He sat back as if he had just been given troubling news. As a frown of disapproval congealed on his forehead, I took from my purse several letters of introduction from important personages in the colony of New Caledonia, recommending me to King Mehevi and the island’s Resident-General. The official, with the immaculate instinct of self-preservation universal among colonial officers, refused them, instead advising me to take a room at the only hotel on the island, the Hôtel Hibiscus, to await further instructions. In the meantime, he said, I was to stay within the confines of Louisville under all circumstances. ‘This is no place for an unmarried woman,’ he added, ‘of any age or description.’