If You Are There Read online

  Lucia saw at a glance that there were only men in the room and that they were all scientists of one sort or another. She recognized them as colleagues and friends of the Curies. There was Perrin and Paul Langevin, Georges Gouy and Sir William Crookes.

  She stood a few steps behind Monsieur and watched as their host came over to greet him. Here was Gabriel’s brother. She recognized him at once, the same agate-flecked eyes, same closely cropped hair, and tawny moustache, only his was carefully groomed, a badge of pride. He lacked his brother’s reckless smile. There was nothing playful about him, nothing exciting. She scanned the room looking for Gabriel and was disappointed when she found he wasn’t there.

  Since Lucia was mostly ignored, it gave her a chance to observe the others. It struck her how well respected Monsieur was in this circle and how proud she was to be a member of his household. Men exchanged a few words and remarked on this bit of news or that. The talk was mostly about the electricity that their host had recently put in. Richet showed off the light switches and plugged an electric fan into a wall socket. The fan was a little marvel.

  Sometime later an older woman swept into the room accompanied by a tall balding man, who tried to appear comfortable, though he was too rigid for a man at ease. He was easily the tallest man in the room, and he occasionally wiped sweat from his brow with a fine handkerchief. The woman glided here and there greeting the guests with a proprietary air, as if this was her room in her house and these were her guests. Lucia assumed that this spirited woman must be Madame Palladino. She was an interesting-looking woman, not pretty, but imposing with her armored bosom stuffed into a satin shirtwaist and her thick middle cinched by a cloth belt. She wore a voluminous skirt of the same material decorated with lace medallions and flounces.

  The room seemed to have been made for her. With her flashing diamond rings, her confidence and power, her dark eyes outlined in black pencil and the odd streak of white in her black hair, she looked like a fairy queen, a being from another realm, mysterious and magical.

  At some point the medium came over to Lucia and said: “Come along, chérie, we mustn’t keep these big heads waiting.” She reached out and took Lucia’s hand and in that instant Lucia felt a thrill, a jolt as though she had just grabbed a hot pan.

  The woman led the way out the door, turning back once to make sure Lucia was following. Lucia had no idea where they were going and finally asked when it was clear they were about to climb the stairs.

  “To the bedroom, of course,” the woman said, a little impatiently. “Where else would we be going?”

  Lucia wanted to ask more questions, but wasn’t sure she was up to it. There was something so imperial and imposing about this woman. She felt small and insufficient next to her.

  “So, tell me, chérie, how do you know the Curies?” Madame Palladino asked, leading the way past several closed doors. Their way was lit by electric sconces, mischievous cupids holding glowing alabaster bowls. There was a stained-glass window at the end of the hall that portrayed a fairy queen sitting atop a lily throne.

  “I am their cook.”

  “Their cook. That is good. They are very famous.”

  Lucia smiled shyly.

  “So, what is your best dish?” she asked.

  “I have many best dishes.”

  “Tell me one.”

  Lucia thought about it and shrugged. “Canard à l’orange, I suppose.”

  “And what is the secret of this dish. There is always a secret, n’est-ce pas?”

  “The oranges. They must be brightly colored and very sweet. I cut that sweetness with red wine vinegar. That way you get a complicated flavor. Dainty and layered.”

  “You really are a cook.”

  Lucia nodded proudly.

  “I was a laundress once. A servant like you.”

  Lucia’s eyebrows flared. She couldn’t imagine this woman serving anyone.

  The medium led the way into a little bedroom lit by an electric lamp. It was simply furnished, except for the leopard skin rug on the floor and the vase of glass flowers on the overmantel. While Madame Palladino struggled with the tiny buttons on her blouse she chattered on about how she was orphaned at twelve and taken in by a family who put her to work doing laundry. She paused and looked at Lucia. “What is it, chérie? You look a little lost.”

  “I don’t know why I am here.”

  “Did not Monsieur Curie tell you why they wanted a woman?”

  Lucia shook her head and Madame Palladino burst out laughing. It was a hearty, inviting laugh, deep and full of vitality and appreciation for the situation. For a moment Lucia saw a flash of the peasant in the medium. Despite her diamonds and eccentricities, there was an informality, an intimacy about her that Lucia found familiar and comforting. At heart Madame Palladino was a woman of Lucia’s class and no amount of silks, gold, and precious gems would change that. Lucia had known her kind all her life. They belonged to the same world. Fellow travelers.

  “You must think I escaped from the madhouse.” Her plump white arms jiggled as she struggled to remove her corset. “You are my control, dolcezza. You have to make sure I have nothing hidden in my skirts. No rope, masks, that kind of thing. They have to know that the experiment is upright. Upright, yes? You must search my clothing and say that I hide nothing.”

  When Lucia understood what was being asked of her she relaxed and even laughed a little. She searched Madame Palladino’s clothing and found nothing in her skirts but a little velvet box containing a crucifix, a Saint Benedict’s medal, a pinch of dried monkshood, and a pinch of basil.

  “They keep me safe from the bad spirits.”

  “My grandmother talks about them,” Lucia said, lowering her voice in case they were listening. “She told me to stay away from them.”

  “She is very wise, your grandmother. The spirits are just like the living peoples. Some are good and others are bad. How do you tell them apart? Very difficult. Very confusing. You think one is good and, no, he is bad. They do all sorts of harm. They can be most unpleasant.”

  Palladino noticed that Lucia’s eyes were wide and fixed on her. She picked up the box. “No, you must not worry. I keep everyone safe with this. You understand? I never let on. They are scientists. They know nothing about such matters.” She dropped it into her pocket.

  “I won’t say anything.”

  Madame Palladino squeezed her hand. “Have you ever been to a sitting?”

  “No,” Lucia said quickly. “Nor do I want to. It is wrong in God’s eyes. And anything can happen.”

  Palladino dismissed her concerns with a wave of her hand, the rings catching the weak light of the room. “You have something,” she said. “Inside you. Do you know that?”

  Lucia shook her head.

  “Ah, but it is true. You felt it earlier, when I took your hand. Do not deny it. You have a power, and for that, I will keep you safe.”

  Palladino took her downstairs to the séance room and announced to the assembled that her little friend would be in attendance. Her companion, the nervous balding man, took her aside to whisper his objection. There was some urgency in his words, but they seemed to have little effect on the medium, who ignored him and showed Lucia to a chair. After that Palladino took her place at the head of the table, sitting down in front of a smaller table where a toy bugle, an accordion, and a guitar sat next to a tray of wet clay.

  Richet had already taken his seat on Madame Palladino’s right, Monsieur Curie on her left. The others settled around the table wherever they could find a place. Crookes installed himself over by the window at another little table and acted as stenographer.

  Then turning to Lucia, Richet asked: “Is the control complete, mademoiselle?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Was everything in order? Did you find anything on the medium?”

  “No, monsieur.” Lucia flushed at the small lie. It was wrong, but necessary. Saint Lucyna would understand.

  “Have the record state that the medium was
searched thoroughly and nothing was found on her person.” Crookes wrote this down in the battered laboratory notebook and then looked up waiting for more.

  Lucia recognized the other Englishman seated next to her at the table, a physicist named Lodge. He was an older gentleman whose mouth was completely hidden in the dense thicket between his gray beard and moustache. She remembered him as a quiet presence at the Sunday gatherings who had, nevertheless, earned the respect of others, for what, she could not say.

  When it came time to begin Richet took up Madame Palladino’s hand and directed his remarks to Crookes. “I have Madame Palladino’s left hand in my right. My right foot is directly on top of her left boot and I can feel her left leg against my right knee.”

  Monsieur Curie added: “I am holding Madame Palladino’s right hand in my left. My left shoe is on top of her right and I can feel her leg under the table.”

  Richet continued. “The door is locked and I have placed the key on the table in plain sight. The control is complete. We are starting out at number one lighting. The light is good enough to read small print. The medium has requested that we not use photography.”

  “It is John, not me. He does not like the bright light.”

  “Flash,” said her companion.

  “Yes, exactly. He does not like the flashes. I do not mind them. I am used to them. But once he settles on something—” Here she shrugged helplessly.

  After that she lapsed into silence. Her eyes gradually closed and her head sank slowly to her chest. Next her shoulders slumped and her limbs went limp and as far as Lucia could see she had slipped into some kind of trance. The silence in the room was broken only by Richet’s frequent observations to Crookes. He called out any unusual sounds or impressions, any drop in the barometric pressure or temperature change.

  Throughout, Lucia stayed alert to every sound, bracing herself for something dreadful and terrifying, anticipating the worst, but also a little impatient for its arrival. Down the hall she heard a door click shut and bits of a conversation. Below in the street a motorcar rumbled by. Then came something she could not have imagined. It was nothing like the séances Babusia described. There were no spirits or floating heads, no fluttering shrouds or shimmery apparitions. Instead, Madame Palladino began moaning, quietly at first, but then with a growing intensity, until she was writhing in her chair and making suggestive motions with her pelvis and breasts. Richet and Monsieur had to move quickly to keep a grip on her wrists. She began to call out for someone named John, pleading with him to make himself known to her, all the time breathing hard and fast and behaving like a woman of the lowest character.

  Lucia tried not to appear shocked by this display, even though she could feel her cheeks blazing. She was too uncomfortable to do anything but keep her eyes on her hands that lay folded on the table. Not one of the gentlemen seated there registered anything but a dispassionate interest in the woman’s behavior. If they were shaken by what they saw, they didn’t show it. They acted as if her conduct was customary and to be expected. Through it all Richet continued to dictate his observations. Monsieur added remarks of his own; commenting on the proceedings without judgment, impassively, methodically, in what Lucia supposed was the scientific way.

  A few minutes later the table began to rise and there were several sharp raps.

  “He wants the lights lowered,” Palladino said.

  Richet lit a lantern made of red glass and turned off one of the lamps. “Medium states her guide has requested that the lights be lowered. We are now at two and unable to read small print.”

  More raps on the table and several on the wall directly behind Lucia, startling her, her heart juddering, her hands trembling. She wanted out of the room and away from this place.

  “He wants them lowered again,” Palladino sighed regretfully. “He wants the electric off. He does not like the electric. He says it hums.”

  Richet turned off the last lamp and dictated to Crookes that they were now at three. The only light in the room was Crookes’s candle and the red lantern.

  A moment later Palladino gasped, thrust her arm into the air, and struggled to get up from her chair. “The door! The door!” she called out in alarm. They all turned to the door just as something began pounding on it. Richet continued his dictation, raising his voice to be heard over the hammering. Monsieur Curie shouted that he continued to have complete control of the medium’s feet and hands.

  Lucia held fast to her chair. The pounding was so loud it seemed to come from inside her. The drumming of her heart matched its rhythm, while her breath came in shallow bursts.

  The pounding stopped.

  “He is coming,” whispered Palladino. “Quick, the key!”

  Lodge observed that the key was gone. Even in the gloom of the half-light Lucia could see that it was missing. Before she had time to react, the locked door flew open and a rush of cold air swept over them.

  Lucia screamed, a strangled yelp, and crossed herself.

  “The cabinet!” cried Palladino.

  An accordion hung in midair over the top of the cabinet. A moment later faint sobbing could be heard coming from somewhere in the room.

  Lodge suddenly lurched forward and fell off his chair. “Something just pushed me. I felt a hand on my back.”

  Lucia reached down to help him up and when she straightened she saw an object floating nearby, possibly a quilled pen; she couldn’t make it out in the gloom. Whatever it was kept a steady progress toward her, creeping closer and closer at eye level. She knew it was something dreadful and alive. Finally, she saw that it was a single long-stemmed rose, a yellow rose, plump and fresh, inching toward her through the darkness. She wanted to leap up, to get away somehow. But she couldn’t. Her limbs would not move. Never before had she felt such fear—not in the slums of Powiśle, or that snowy night on the bridge on her way to Babusia’s house, nor that day Madame Clos threw her out on street. She leaned back in her chair to get away from it, but the rose kept coming, until it stopped right in front of her face.

  “Go away,” she whimpered. “Make it go away.”

  It caressed her cheek. The petals felt like velvet against her skin. Impulsively, she shoved it away and it disappeared into the darkness.

  For a while nothing happened and Lucia thought the worst was over. Then Eusapia Palladino began to writhe again, muttering the same phrase in Italian over and over. In the next instant the door slammed shut. Lucia jumped.

  “The key,” exclaimed Crookes. It was back on the table. A fine mist floated up to the ceiling and drifted over to the door where it seemed to dissolve into the wood. After a few moments Madame Palladino lifted her head, opened her eyes, and announced that nothing more would happen that night.

  The lights came on and the sitters talked over each other, excited by what they had just seen. They got up in ones and twos and began to file out of the room. Lucia wanted to go with them, but she worried that her legs wouldn’t hold her up. She wanted to call out to Monsieur to wait for her, but he was engaged in an animated conversation with Professor Langevan. Madame Palladino rose from her chair with a look of triumph on her face, her eyes lit with something Lucia could not name. She bent down to Lucia, close, hot breath in her ear.

  “He likes you,” she said.

  Lucia leaped to her feet and hurried to catch up with Monsieur. She would not be left alone in that room. She glanced down the hall at the fairy queen in the stained-glass window. Her gracious smile had turned into a smirk. The cupids holding up the globes seemed to follow her with their sly, smiling eyes. In the parlor she noticed that one of the fairy glens under the bell jar had withered and died. She tried to remember if it was like that when she first arrived. Fortunately, Monsieur was too tired to stay long and soon they were at the door gathering up their things. Their host went on ahead and waved down a taxi in the street. Lucia was grateful to be outside again as she took in a gulp of the cool night air.

  The next afternoon Monsieur announced that Madame Palla
dino had put in a request for her little friend to come back that night. Lucia shook her head. She would not return to Professor Richet’s house on any account. Monsieur did not argue with her. Instead he went to have a talk with his wife. Madame Curie came into the kitchen a while later to ask Lucia why she did not want to go. She listened to Lucia’s objections, her fears of stirring up the dead, how it was unnatural and against God.

  “I don’t want you doing anything you’re not comfortable with, but if you could find a way to go I would be grateful. Think of the séances as experiments. And you would be a part of them, a valuable part, adding to our knowledge about the aether and its functions and properties. We are attempting to understand the nature of radioactivity, where this energy comes from and why it’s independent, self-generating. Maybe it comes from the same source that these so-called spirits come from. We don’t know. Will you help us?”

  Lucia could not answer at first. She wanted to say, yes, of course, anything to aid madame’s work, to be a part of it, to make a contribution. But the truth was she did not think she had the strength to go back.

  “You will be safe, I promise,” Madame Curie said. “My brave girl.”

  Moja dzielna dziewczyna.

  That night Lucia lit a fire in the woodstove with an old newspaper of the doctor’s. She noticed that the headline of the front page made mention of Madame Palladino. As the nascent fire curled the edges of the paper she recognized a picture of the medium sitting at a table that seemed to be floating above the floor.

  Lucia returned to Professor’s Richet house and to the little bedroom on the second floor to search Madame Palladino before the séance. This time Lucia brought her rosary.

  “Do you know why I wanted you to come?” Palladino asked.

  Lucia shook her head. She unbuttoned the medium’s dress and helped her step out of it. She wanted to hurry her along because the scientists were waiting for them.