If You Are There Page 15

  The rain stopped three minutes later. The room was silent, until a man’s voice could be heard coming from somewhere up near the ceiling. Sapia was writhing in her chair, whipping her limbs around in an effort to free them. Arlington kept a firm grasp on her hand and shouted to young Richet to do the same.

  Seven minutes later a strong wind blew through the room. Richet called out to Curie, “Make a notation that all the windows are shut and locked. I saw to it myself.” The curtains of the cabinet billowed out, and a man’s face could be seen in the folds. Arlington recognized the face. “That’s John King,” he shouted. Curie marked it down.

  “John, you are hurting me. Stop it. Giovanni, mi stai facendo male. Stop it, John.”

  More flashes. She was writhing now, punching the air with her fists and groaning. As the table came down Arlington heard the same male voice moving about the room. The words were in Italian, but the tone was unmistakable, impatient and reproachful.

  “Don’t let go of her hand,” Arlington shouted. He was worried that Richet’s brother might get distracted. Then he realized he was speaking English. He paused, trying to remember the French for hand. “La paluche! La paluche!” he called out in his best French accent. Later, he realized he was shouting paw, paw into the gloom.

  Sapia seem to deflate after that. Her head slumped forward on her chest, and her breathing became more regular. For a quarter of an hour nothing happened. A distant bell sounded, but it may have been a clock chiming in some other part of the house. Then Arlington glanced up at the ceiling and with a jolt saw two green eyes looking back at him.

  “Up there!” Sapia said, pointing to the ceiling. Everyone looked up. The eyes glowed in the dark. They were animal eyes, the pupils vertical slits, unblinking, cold and shrewd. They were set into a square head. It was a glowing green snake undulating around the coving, confidently moving around the room, its tongue flicking in and out, curious and probing.

  Sapia bent her head and in a moment or two Arlington saw the convoluted folds of ectoplasm just beginning to form above the crown of her head near the swath of white hair. It was pale and lumpy, tortuous like the intestine of a large mammal, and it seemed to be coalescing into a hand. Arlington’s heart beat resolutely in his ears. It had been two years since she manifested ectoplasm. He reached out to touch it.

  “No!” she bellowed.

  He snatched his hand back. He did not know if that was meant for him or some spirit in the room. The loathsome thing continued to grow and soon two hands appeared with three misshapen fingers on each. It made him a little queasy to look at it, yet he couldn’t stop. The fingers were pale and glistened in the candlelight, slithering over her hair like curious slugs, inching forward on her scalp, until they came to rest on her forehead, lying flaccid and white just above the hairline.

  Richet and the others continued to call out the events, while Curie wrote it all down. At one point he stopped to make a sketch, even though it was unnecessary. The cameras kept going off all around them, catching the event from every angle. By the next flash the pseudo fingers were on the move. This time they were slithering down her face.

  The male spirit was back in the room, belligerent and blaming. Arlington could almost make out the words. Even though they were in Italian, the tone was clear. He was furious at Sapia. She pleaded with him, as she had done on the previous night, begging him not to be angry. “What have I done, John? Che cosa ho fatto, Giovanni? Tell me.” The fingers were at her throat now, slowly tightening.

  She grappled with them and tried to pull them off. “Stop it, John. Stop it.” She was choking.

  Arlington and Crookes were on their feet, but before they could reach her, the fingers let go. She clutched her throat and gasped for breath. A moment later, the fingers were gone. Her head slumped forward on her chest, her breathing slowed, until she finally lifted her head and looked around. “I am exhausted.”

  As the sitters filed out of the room their excited chatter filled the hallway. She and Arlington were shown to the door surrounded by the scientists, who were talking among themselves, congratulating Sapia and shaking Arlington’s hand. The only exception was Sir William Crookes, who stood apart from the others, looking a little dazed. “I have never seen anything like it,” he said breathlessly when he approached Arlington. Arlington noticed the man’s hands were still trembling.

  Arlington couldn’t have been happier. His medium had performed beautifully. She had been brilliant, wondrous, and strange; even Richet’s brother had been impressed. As he climbed into a taxi he made a mental note to wire Edith and have her book them into several more cities. Perhaps Milan with Professor Lombardy and Berlin with the German Society. He would leave that up to her.

  After tonight the whole psychic world would be talking about the séance. They would publish the photographs. There would be articles about Sapia, but of course he would be mentioned. He would be in the photographs. There might even be articles about the society. He sat back and absently took out a cigar.

  It was a cold night and Sapia had taken all the carriage blankets for herself. She had been going on about the evening, hands fluttering, rings glittering, the diamond bracelet cuff biting into her thick wrist. She did not seem upset in the least by John King’s behavior. On the contrary, she was proud of his abuse and referred to it as an accomplishment on her part.

  Then she noticed Arlington’s cigar and stopped in midsentence. Tossing the ostrich-feather boa about her neck she said: “You are not going to smoke that, Ar-lean-ton.”

  He realized he had the cigar in his hand, mumbled an apology, and put it back in his waistcoat. He was content to let her prattle on about her triumphs, her special gifts, and her titled followers. He had developed his own talent for appearing to listen while he was actually planning their next tour. The new staff he would hire, and calculating to the penny the generous raise he would give himself.

  CHAPTER 8

  May 1903

  It was a gray morning, damp and gauzy with mist. The Luxembourg Gardens were a blurred collection of shapes, of spectral branches overarching the Médicis Fountain, hazy topiaries, a garden path veiled in fog. The only bright spot, as far as Henri Becquerel could see, was his new yellow waistcoat. It was satin with pearl buttons, perhaps too showy for someone of his station, but he admired it so.

  He hadn’t planned on stopping in on the Curies that morning. He was late to a lecture at the academy and didn’t think he had the time. But then he found himself in rue Lhomond and there was the School of Chemistry, and behind it the derelict shed that once held cadavers and now housed the Curies’ laboratory, such as it was. He knew he was interrupting them the minute he walked through the door. Diebierne was pouring a precipitate through filter paper, Curie’s wife was at the electrometer, and Curie himself was studying the effect of radioactive barium on a mason jar full of ice water.

  “Have I come at a bad time?” Becquerel asked with the air of someone who never worried about such things. Becquerel liked to think of himself as accepting of those who were his inferiors. He always treated Pierre Curie with courtesy, never alluding to the disparity of their social or professional positions. Becquerel didn’t like social hierarchies, believed that he was above them, but what can one say about a man like Pierre Curie, whose highest degree was a licentiate in the physical sciences and who was a teacher at EPCI, an industrial school?

  Madame Curie got up from her work and offered him tea, trying to appear as if she were glad to see him. Even at her best, Curie’s wife was a severe woman. She rarely smiled and was often in a state of hectic disarray in her dirty lab smock, with her wild hair escaping from the pins, fingertips permanently destroyed by the chemicals. He supposed that she would be considered a modern woman. She was nothing like his beloved Lucille, however, who had been sweet and compliant all her life, a paragon of womanhood, until her death in childbirth all those years ago.

  Monsieur Curie made only tepid overtures to Becquerel that day. After a halfhearted a
ttempt to explain his experiment, he returned to it, leaving the social exigencies of the visit up to his wife. Curie was an awkward man, abrupt and inappropriate at times, but he generally wasn’t this bad. Becquerel assumed that Curie’s reticence had something to do with his unsuccessful bid to become a member of the academy. For some reason the man blamed Becquerel for his disappointment. Becquerel had done what he could for Curie, but what could anyone do really? The man didn’t even have a doctorate. The members of the academy were esteemed in their fields. Becquerel himself was the third generation in his family to hold the physics chair at the Muséum National d’Histoire. The gulf was deep and wide, an impossible distance to cross, especially by one so stymied by ordinary social intercourse.

  Still Becquerel had done what he could. He had talked up the man and even delivered two of the papers that Curie had written with his wife a few years back to the academy. Both were met with polite indifference. No one was much interested in the findings of an industrial arts instructor and his student wife, a Polish woman who had once been a governess.

  When Becquerel declined the tea, a shade lifted from Madame Curie’s face and for a moment she relaxed and became almost pretty. Nevertheless, he observed that her relief was short-lived, for there were still the few uneasy pleasantries to get through before she could show him the door. They talked about his recent work with crystals, their ability to absorb and polarize light. He thought Curie might be enticed to join them, given his own passion for the subject, but he continued to work as if they weren’t there.

  When the time came for Becquerel to leave she handed him the glass tube containing the radioactive barium that she had thoughtfully wrapped in brown paper. He thanked her and dropped it into the pocket of his new waistcoat. He was grateful to the Curies for giving it to him. Their technique of fractional crystallization yielded a far more active barium than anything he could buy from a factory. Since he was interested in the properties of the rays and their ability to transfer radioactivity to other materials, it was important for him to work with a highly active sample.

  He spent the rest of the morning at the lecture and at an impromptu discussion afterward with a few of his colleagues. In the afternoon he met Poincaré for lunch at a little restaurant near the academy. They settled into a corner by the window and ordered a bottle of wine. It began to rain and for a while they sat in companionable silence watching the passersby huddled under their umbrellas hurrying to get out of the weather.

  Being with Poincaré was a little like being with a sibling. They had met during their student days at the Polytechnic and had been close friends ever since. The two Henris shared a similar background in physics, although Poincaré was mainly a mathematician. Both came from prominent scientific families, both were currently teaching at the École Polytechnic, both were members of the Academy of Sciences. Poincaré was a citizen of Becquerel’s world, a notable member of his community. Curie, on the other hand, resided in a poor neighboring village.

  When they were well into their coffee and cigars Professor Charles Richet stopped by their table on his way out the door. Pleasantries were exchanged and promises for future meetings were made. When he left, Becquerel sat back and puffed on his cigar to get it going. “Is he still working with his mediums?” Becquerel asked, not bothering to hide his derision.

  “He’s not a fool.”

  “I didn’t say he was.”

  “The Curies are working with him and Crookes as well. Richet found an Italian, and she’s supposed to be the real article. They say she manifests ectoplasm.”

  “Ectoplasm?”

  “That’s what Richet calls it. It’s a substance of some sort. The spirits are supposed to drape themselves in it when they’re in the physical world. They say it’s viscous like mucus and comes out of the orifices of the medium.” Poincaré took a puff on his cigar and smiled at the look of incredulity on Becquerel’s face. “Yes, I know,” he said wearily. “But he has photographs.”

  “You are acting like you are interested.”

  “Curious perhaps.”

  Becquerel shook his head and gave him a little laugh.

  “What?”

  “Sometimes you are curious about the strangest things.”

  Poincaré puffed on his cigar and the smoke swirled over the espressos in their polite little cups. “But isn’t that what we do?” he asked, without rancor. “As men of science. Aren’t we supposed to be curious about the strangest things?”

  Becquerel eyed the contents of his cup, took a sip, and replaced it in its saucer. Then he looked up brightly. “Did you see Rutherford is in town? He’s going to deliver that paper on thorium X.”

  “Transmutation?” Poincaré laughed.

  Becquerel smiled. “Maybe we should start calling him an alchemist. I think he’s on to something, though. Makes sense when you think about it.”

  “You’re backing away from the aether?”

  “Doubts. That’s all. Nothing firm, but I’m interested in reading his paper. Might clear things up. Better than this muddle we have.” Becquerel looked up to find a half smile of satisfaction playing on his friend’s lips. “Yes, I know. You are for the atomists.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” Poincaré said innocently. “It’s just a bit of a surprise to see you jumping sides.”

  That afternoon Becquerel returned to his laboratory to finish up some paperwork and answer a stack of correspondence he had been meaning to get to. He worked into the early evening until he realized that he would be late for supper. He had one last note to send off and that was to his friend Richet. He sent a bleu expressing interest in the Italian medium and asked to be included in the next sitting.

  When Becquerel reached home he found he had just enough time to change before supper. As he relayed it later to the Curies, to Poincaré, and to the others, he was standing in his room, in front of the armoire to be exact, just reaching for a fresh shirt, when he remembered the test tube of barium that he had been carrying around all day in the pocket of his waistcoat. He took it out and laid it on the nightstand next to his bed, thinking that he would bring it to the laboratory the next day. Then he unbuttoned his waistcoat and his shirt, and when he took them off he found a burn on his skin in the shape of the glass tube right on the spot where his waistcoat pocket had been resting on his ribcage. It was an angry burn and yet it didn’t hurt.

  Curious.

  The Curies had rented a proper house on boulevard Kellermann located on the southern edge of the city. It was a square building with a flat façade broken up by tall shuttered windows that opened out onto a garden. The house was set back from the street and protected by a high hedge, which offered privacy and comfort from the carriages and the few passersby.

  That spring Paul Langevin, a colleague of the Curies, came to the house to ask Lucia if she would put together a little party for Madame Curie at his expense. Madame was defending her doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne on Wednesday and he and a few friends wanted to plan a little celebration afterward. When Lucia asked him what he wanted her to serve, he thought for a moment, shrugged, and said: “Meat and cheese, I suppose.” She nodded agreeably, but had no intention of serving meat and cheese. In the five months she had been working for the Curies, she had learned that physicists, mathematicians, and chemists knew a lot about how things worked—still there was a lot they did not know.

  On Wednesday she rose early before the first light when the kitchen was still dark and still smelled of fried onions and fish from the night before. She slept in a little cupboard off the kitchen that was just big enough for a bed. A curtain across the doorway gave her the privacy she had been longing for and there was even a little shelf for her red flower and a candle to read by. Every night she slept beneath her mother’s cross, comfortable in her new routine, still missing Poland, but less so.

  She sat on a wooden chair in the kitchen and pulled on her boots, glancing up through the window at the tentative predawn light. In a few minutes Iréne would be up
, then Madame and the doctor. For now the house was quiet except for the ticking of the grandmother clock in the parlor and the swish of Monsieur’s stocking feet as he shuffled through the rooms. They met in the pantry by the back door as she was putting on her hat. He didn’t look at her, not directly, but he gave her a quick nod as he limped through the kitchen, his legs stiff with pain, his face a grimace of bleak resolve.

  Monsieur Curie spent a good deal of his nights wandering the house because of the pains in his legs. In the last few months his rheumatism, or whatever it was, had gotten worse and this despite the special diet Lucia prepared for him. The pains had come on so gradually that for a while she supposed he had just ignored them. He never complained about them, not until they got so bad he couldn’t sleep. Then there were visits to the doctors, bottles of medicine, diets, hot baths, and electric-magnetic treatments, and still no one knew for certain what was causing them. For a while it was thought he had neurasthenia, and cyanide was prescribed. But when that didn’t help they decided it was rheumatism, although Babusia had the rheumatism and it never looked like that.

  All morning long Lucia cooked and baked a Polish feast that she thought would please her mistress. She made stuffed cabbage, stuffed eggs and pickled mushrooms, boiled crayfish and Kielbasa, almond babas, and pierogies filled with meat and cheese. The baker had been given strict instructions to bring the ice cream at four o’clock. By midmorning she asked a neighbor, Agnès, the Perrins’ maid, to lend a hand and together they set up the tables and chairs outside in the garden.

  That afternoon the crowd from the Sorbonne came traipsing in from the road and Lucia could see right away that it had gone well for Madame Curie. They were a noisy bunch, a convivial pack of scientists and mathematicians either from the Sorbonne or from the ESPCI, many of them neighbors like the Perrins. Although many were members of the academy, they belonged to the younger set and did not share Becquerel’s view on richer or poorer villages. Legitimacy based on diplomas, and the importance of family connections, did not interest them. To them all scientists were members of the same community, a great family of scientific minds, to which the Curies were an integral part.