The Dark (17 page)

“T
his will warm you up nicely, duck,” I said, and set up the foot-stove I had brought, as promised. This was on the tenth of February, the tenth day of our acquaintance. My patient was faring better, as my charges often do for a time before the Glory.

She reached out to the warmth from the fresh-raked coals. “You are Kindness itself, Mrs. Mellon.”

“To that I must disagree. I’ve met paragons of the higher qualities, and I cannot say that I am of their ilk.”

“I see, and what of the paragons of the lesser qualities? Have you met them?”

“Certainly. They are abundant in the world, and impossible to avoid.”

“Then as like you will recognize my family’s nemesis, Chauncey Burr. He was the paragon of Bluster. Of Grandiloquence.”

“Was he, now,” I said absently. I opened my satchel and hauled out my knitting.

“Yes, a veritable carnival of a man, all brass tacks and gall. Leah became quite fixed on him. It was as if she’d at last met a worthy adversary or rather, yes, someone of
her
own ilk. He surely enjoyed machinations as much as she ever did and, of course, he had his own facade to uphold.”

She looked pleased, as one does at a decipherment, then took up her bible box and scattered onto the bedclothes the printed materials about this Chauncey Burr: the newspaper clip-outs and broadsheets
and pamphlets, the pages that seemed ripped from his own rambling journal, with the writing aslant off the page and all-chock with untoward comments and observations and confessions.

I looked over these, quite closely, then took up my needles and yarn. The hour was already growing late, but I stayed while she talked. I must admit, however, to an apprehension that she had come to appreciate my presence too much; for it seemed she thought that as long as she held my interest, as long as I sat there, all-curious, knitting away, she would not pass-on. That is to say, as if she thought me the gatekeeper to Eternity and not a just member of the Medico Society as I so often proclaimed.

W
HAT
C
HAUNCEY
B
URR
wants is to be the apostle of a new and scientific mode of thought.
The Burrean revolution
 … 
It is a Burrish matter
 … 
Chaunceologists will meet at
 … Oh, he has thought of all the permutations. He stoops to the looking glass and pats his stage makeup and practises expressions of dismay, joy, astonishment, all exaggerated for the benefit of distant viewers. He is thickly built, impressively tall. Has a dark beard cut to a slab, dark hair cut unfashionably close. He could be a labourer hurling rock instead of ideas and provocations, except he is light on his feet, as they say; except he moves with the confidence of one who has never been hungry, never unsheltered—though, of course, he’s known both situations intimately.

He stuffs his pirate-head pipe. The pipe is of black meerschaum, the better to show its fire, and is mighty effective when pointed during discourse, a trick he learned when he was a lawyer bleeding dust.

Mr. Abelard Reynolds, the manager of Rochester’s Corinthian Hall, appears in the doorway of the dressing room.

Chauncey directs his pipe: “Mr. Reynolds. What ho! I am a font of displeasure over these.” He slaps a stack of pamphlets. Reads:
Mr. Chauncey Burr and Mr. Theophilus Fiske will commence their lectures at 7 ½ o’clock commencing Oct 15th Year of Our Lord 1849. After each lecture the most extraordinary, surprising, and amusing experiments will
be given in the newly discovered science of Electro-biology that have ever been witnessed in the city
.

“Did I not insist, man, that it should read: ‘The Reverend C. Burr, renowned Editor, Lawyer and Scientist, shall give demonstrations on Electro-Biology,’ et cetera and so bloody forth. And then: ‘Assisted by one Theophilus Fiske.’
Assisted
. I don’t share a damnedo sentence with the man, not neither a conjuncter. He’s the assistant. Note the ‘ass’ in the word, man. Hah! It comes before the mouth, which is I.”

“Scientist?”

“Yes, a scientist, Mr. Abelard Dabbalard—oh, where’s thy Heloise? It signifies a man devoted to the discipline of science, with not even an edgo of philosophy or literature or natural what-bloody-have-you. Are not you up with the fugging times, man.”

“Apparently not,” Reynolds says coldly.

“Or is it that you’ve no respect for science? Why else would you have booked some ghost-talking ladies next moontide. A damnedo insult to the very stage, that. Which is precisely why I demanded new pamphlets. Must I do everything my own self? Science and superstition spin in their separate spheres and—”

“There weren’t no time for new pamphlets to be printed.” This from a man who twists round Abelard Reynolds and into the dressing room. Though young, he has a jolt of grey hair, spectacles, a stoop.

“Fiske Fisko! Where the Hades you been hiding your mop-haired brain? Stop for a dip in a Bordello’s pool, did you? Follow a tart to the very bakery? What of it, man?” Chauncey hurls a pot of grease paint at Fiske, who expertly ducks. The paint spills on the floor. “Bugger and slam,” Chauncey mutters. “I thought it closed tight as an unpaid … Apologies, Mr. Reynolds.” Chauncey calls. But Mr. Reynolds has already left the two to their own devices.

Fiske glares good-naturedly at Chauncey. Not easy, to glare good-naturedly, Chauncey thinks, but Fiske Fisko has a knack for it. And a knack for tolerating the Reverend Chauncey Burr. And why not? The two of them have made a very comfortable living with very little work.

“What have you discovered then, Fisko, by your sniffing and spying? Can’t have the ‘competition’ getting the damnedo jump on us. What of it? Have you got a Hamletian ghost tucked into your odiferous armpit?”

Fiske folds himself into a chair. “No to that. Got some information, though.”

“Spew it out, man! Quit masticating like a half-starved bovine.”

“They’re a lengthy affair, let me tell you, them so-called spirit circles or promiscuous circles or whatever you want to call ’em. Cost me an entire dollar. I’ll expect that out of our takings this night, though.”

“Oh, your dollar shall be returned to your seamy palm. Do not trouble your skull with minute calculations a mortal breath longer. What more?”

“Quite a show, it were. First you sit round a table in a half-dark parlour and hold hands to ‘keep an energy chain.’ The mother, she’s not the key player. No. It’s Leah Fish, the eldest sister, who’s the keeper of the keys, and a Hun in petticoats, I tell you. Anyhow, she droned on for a good half-hour, with prayers mostly. Then there was some music playing. The music was just outside the room, but the ‘sitters’ all carried on like it was angels away at it. The little one, she’s twelve if she’s a day, and looks like she’d disappear in a puff of wind. And the other sister—Margaretta, Maggie? She’s got up like she’s the same age or so, but I reckon she’s near plucking time, given her smirking ways. Dark-haired items the both of them. And I tell you, don’t they look as pretty and sweet as ever you saw.”

“Clever. Clever. They’re working that modern bloody cant that children are sweet little innocents. But we know the truth of it, righto. Demon drink, like the medievalists would have it. No scruples. No nitpicking twixt right and wrong. Sly as cats. Fortunate you were never a child, Fisko, but hatched from some fu—”

“So by this time there’s some sitters in a state and—”

“A state? What ho? State?”

“Much like our electro-biology experimentations, but the sitters are doing it on themselves. Suggest their dead pa is sitting there and they’d believe it. One old feller did in fact. A fat lot of weeping went on then, I tell you, though. Now the knocking—”

“Apparati? Accomplices?”

“Doubtful to that. I asked to investigate. ‘Go on,’ that Leah Fish woman said, ‘if you dare to think us frauds.’ ” Fiske chuckles. “She’s got bollocks, that one. Anyhows, I found nothing. No strings. No levers. No dwarves crouching under the table. Nothing.”

“What ho, then, of the answering?”

“The ‘spirits’ dodge the hard questions. For the main they favour questions of the after-life. They sure go on, anyhow, about how lovely it is. Dead folk say they’re doing swell and ‘how are you?’ That’s the idea of it. They say: ‘you’ll be travelling’; ‘you’ll be happy.’ The usual ‘no’ or ‘yes’ answers you’d expect from some Gypsy. Oh, but didn’t the company think it marvellous, though. One woman started blathering in tongues and everyone looked to her in admiration like she were playing the harp or some such and not looking an idiot.”

“The ghosties talked? Was that it? Aloud in some bloodyo soliloquy?”

“Yes to that, in a fashion. The ladies had a board with the alphabet and letters. The person asking the questions got to work it. They’d move the pointer over the letters and the spirit would rap when they got to the right one. A tedious business, I tell you, though. Another thing: they got a fella to write down several names on a paper, said the spirits would rap when the fella pointed to the one he was thinking of. Got it bang on.”

“Watchful as damnedo vultures over a carcass, those Foxes, what ho?”

“Exactly. Anyone with a trained eye can read a countenance.” Fiske steeples his fingers. “It’s the knockings that were a stumper. They weren’t all pretty little rat-tats. Some were loud as hammer strokes or … or like buckets being hurled at the walls. Some even made the chairs vibrate. They were, yes, a stumper like I told you.”

Chauncey is undecided whether to reply, or hurl something, or both, when Reynolds beckons at them from the door. “Time for this final show of yours,” he says.

Final, yes, and the Corinthian Hall is all-filled. Energy pulsates from the crowd and into Chauncey Burr. This is the sort of energy he would
like to harness. One could set a city ablaze with it. It recalls his days as Universalist minister, a fine occupation that he misses still.

Chauncey and Fiske make their way up to the platform stage. It has no stage wings. No proscenium arch. But then, this is not a theatre for frothy plays, but a forum for serious lectures and the occasional concert.

Once onstage Chauncey thrusts his thumbs in the lapels of his frock coat that is black as coal, then paces ponderously before the audience, as if freighted with thought. Halts up. “Gentlemen. Ladies. I am no magician,” Chauncey booms as if just realizing this for himself. “I am no illusionist. I offer no deception. I am merely a discoverer. We men of the science of electro-biology are set apart from superstitions. Effect without explainable cause? Effect is ever explainable. Mark me!”

And they do, and this because Chauncey talks to the rabble as if they are as learned as he. Reminds them of the Italian Signor Galvani as if they might have shared a grappa with the man himself. “Imagine the hot light of Italy, ladies and gentlemen, this same hot light that illumined the great Galileo as he probed the heavens. Signor Galvini is bent over a table dissecting a frog upon an electrified plate. And then, a twitch of the frog’s legs. Another. The frog near springs from the table,” Chauncey yells, startling the audience. “Apologies, people! That was Signor Galvani’s shocked wife witnessing the vivified frog … She’d planned on frog’s gizzards for supper.”

The crowd laughs.

“But Signor Galvani was no medievalist, was he now?” Chauncey continues. “He did not imagine that frog resurrected, did he? What sort of a religion would that have spawned, eh?” The audience laughs again, there being nothing like a pinch of blasphemy to spice an entertainment. “No, good citizens of Rochester. The explanation is this: electricity had been vibrating through the plate upon which the frog lay. And thus we come around to an understanding of electro-biology. We understand that all living things are sparking with electricity. That is what animates us with life. A man trained in its particulars can control the electric fluids of another and thus direct his movements. Herr Franz Mesmer discovered this, true, but he
believed movement was caused by moontides. We in these modern times, however, know that electricity is the cause.”

Fiske says nothing. Stands stiff, acting as the faintly sinister assistant. Chauncey calls for gentleman volunteers. Up they come—some nervous, some amused—and sit as instructed, looking out to the crowd. Chauncey talks rapidly and softly to each in turn. “You shall be awake. You shall be in full control of your faculties. You shall not be humiliated. Concentrate only on my voice. Do not mind the din of the crowd. Here. Here. Only this. The world was splendid and all’s swell that ends swell.”

Fiske hands the first man a glass of milk. Chauncey tells him it is wormwood. The man frowns and spits. The crowd roars in laughter. Another man is told his leg is caught in a snare. In vain he pulls. Yet another is told he is drunk as a lord. He totters and stumbles and is herded about by Fiske to the claps and cheers of the audience.

The last man, when told to admire the charms of a goat, looks at Chauncey with disgust and strides off the stage.

“Some have less of the charge than others,” Chauncey mocks, and yet he admires the man. Chauncey also cannot not be mesmerized and led about like an automaton. He is master of his own will.