If You Are There Page 20

  “I will show you. Give me your hand.” Lucia hesitated, but Madame Palladino would not be put off. “Do not worry about them. They can wait.” She took Lucia’s hand in hers. “Now, concentrate.”

  The medium stood there with her eyes shut until Lucia grew restless.

  After a moment, her eyes opened. “There. Did you feel that?”

  “What?”

  “It is like a humming. A vibration. You know vibration?”

  Lucia shook her head.

  “It is power. You have it, dolcezza. That is why John gave you the rose. That is why he likes you.”

  “Me? No. I’m just an ordinary cook.”

  “Very strong. I knew it when I first walked into the parlor last night. True, it is undeveloped, but it is there.”

  “I do not think so.”

  “It does not matter what you think. You have it.” Palladino took up her hand again. “Now, be quiet. Listen. You will see that I am right.”

  Lucia stood in the little bedroom, her hand in Madame Palladino’s, her eyes closed.

  Nothing.

  All she felt was an urgent need to get the medium to the séance room and to get this night over with. It crossed her mind to lie, to say that she felt whatever it was that Madame Palladino wanted her to feel, but she did not wish to lie and, besides, she thought Madame Palladino might know if she did.

  “You do not need to lie to me. Pay attention. It is there, a little something. A twinge perhaps.”

  Lucia did feel something, or at least she thought she did.

  “It is so little you cannot be sure if it is there. Let it take you. Let it live inside of you.”

  Lucia felt her hand vibrate, not much, a moment. Then it was gone. She looked up.

  “You felt that.” Madame Palladino kissed her hand and then released it. “It is a start.”

  “Was it real?”

  “Of course, my child. It is more real than anything in this world.”

  Lucia nodded, unconvinced.

  “Ah, I see that you still do not trust. Sometimes it takes a little longer. Soon you will understand.”

  Lucia delivered Madame Palladino to the sitters, but she would not stay inside the room. Instead she went down to the kitchen where she was bound to find a stove, a sink, cupboards, pots and pans—a safe haven comprised of the ordinary and predicable ingredients of her world.

  She recognized the kitchen at once, the enormous black range, the impressive cold cupboard. She recognized the cook too with the glittery bluebird pinned over her heart. Fortunately, the cook didn’t recognize her. There was no mention of the girl who had been turned away for want of a character reference. Instead the woman welcomed her as the cook of Monsieur and Madame Curie. She was invited to sit down and was offered a cup of tea and fresh croissants with homemade strawberry jam. They spent the next hour or so comparing recipes, complaining about the quality of local seafood, and commending the few vendors they both agreed had exceptional produce. For a time Lucia was able to forget the madness Palladino was summoning upstairs.

  A few days later Lucia received word from Madame Palladino requesting she come to her rooms at the Hôtel Balmoral. Lucia had all but decided not to go when a delivery boy arrived at the front door with a bunch of perfect yellow roses. They came with a note that just said: Please.

  She took a taxi that evening driven by an odd little man who had to stretch to see over the steering wheel. She noticed by the lamps along the boulevard that the man’s hair at the nape of his neck seemed to extend down his back inside his blouse. She told him where she was going and without a word he put the motorcar into gear. The boulevards were busy and the café-concerts were still doing a brisk business even at that late hour, but the smaller streets were deserted and even the ones she knew well seemed unfamiliar, melancholy, and even a little peculiar at this late hour.

  “It is just the two of us. I hope you will not feel awkward,” Madame Palladino said, showing Lucia into the private sitting room. “I had them set up a little table for us. I thought it might be more useful if we were alone.”

  “Useful?”

  “Sit here.”

  Lucia took her seat across the table.

  “Now, are we not comfortable? And was I not right to order the table?”

  A stack of blank newsprint sat on the table alongside a vase full of pencils. At first there was no mention of it. Madame Palladino talked about small, unimportant things: a visit to a friend’s house in the 8th arrondissement, a new kind of water for her health, complaints about the hotel staff. Then, indicating the stack of paper, she said: “By the way, this is for you.”

  Lucia could not imagine why this strange woman was giving her a stack of blank paper, but she thanked her all the same.

  “Have you ever heard of automatic writing?” the medium asked, looking up at her with a quiet intensity.

  Lucia shook her head.

  “It is when the spirits speak through the medium and she writes down what they say. They guide her hand. It is very popular. I thought you might want to try?”

  It was proving to be such an odd night: the late hour, the sitting room with its flickering candles, Madame Palladino with her probing black eyes and that strange streak of white in her hair. Lucia wondered why Monsieur Arlington was not with them. She had not said two words to the man over the course of the sittings, and yet, she liked him. There was something comforting in his large frame and forthright manner. She found herself trusting him, even though she had no reason to.

  “I don’t think so. But thank you for the offer.”

  “Please, you try.”

  “No, I am sorry. I follow the word of God. I have no wish to contact the spirits.”

  “Nonsense. What has God to do with it? I go to Mass. I go to confession. It is not a sin. Here, I will show you how it is done.”

  Lucia felt hot and prickly. “I cannot. Please . . .”

  Eusapia Palladino held out the pencil. “Just once for me.”

  Lucia eyed the pencil as if it were a dangerous animal. Then she shook her head.

  Palladino regarded her with a thoughtful expression. She smiled faintly, the corners of her mouth lifting, and nodded as if to say she understood. A platinum snake curled around her wrist. She twisted it around so the cool emerald eyes were facing Lucia.

  For a while there was an uncomfortable silence between them. At least, it was uncomfortable for Lucia, who at that moment felt obstinate and difficult. Palladino didn’t seem to mind though. In the half-light Lucia could see the medium gazing at her, studying her with those penetrating black eyes. She felt self-conscious under the woman’s scrutiny, until she realized that Madame Palladino wasn’t really looking at her. Her body was present; her eyes were on Lucia; but she was far away.

  Then Palladino’s eyes began to close and for a moment Lucia thought that she was falling asleep. Lucia would have welcomed this lapse in manners. If the medium had fallen asleep, then she would have slipped out the door and gone home. She longed for her little cupboard in the kitchen, to be back in boulevard Kellermann, back in her own bed with the one candle and her book of mystery stories. Safe near the red flower and her mother’s cross.

  “I see a river,” Palladino said, her voice dreamy and vague. Her eyes didn’t close all the way but remained glittery slits in the candlelight. “It is a wide river and cold. You know this river?”

  “I know lots of rivers.”

  “It is summer and it is hot, but the river is cold. There are many boats on it. Brightly colored row boats bobbing on the water.”

  Lucia began to feel uneasy. “That could be any river.”

  “I see a little girl and a fat woman. They wade into the water. They are washing clothes. They have their skirts tucked up into their waistbands. Their legs are bare and brown from the sun.” Here Madame Palladino paused: “No, I am wrong. The woman, she is not fat. She is with child.”

  Lucia’s heart leaped. She looked up, breathless for the moment and unable to
speak.

  “Soon she will have a baby. Any time now. She has golden hair like the child. The child tries to climb up over her belly. The woman laughs. She lifts up the child and kisses her. The child wraps her legs around the belly. They are very good together, this mother and child. So much love. Very touching.”

  Lucia’s eyes filled with tears. She could feel them sliding down her cheeks.

  “She is your matka, yes?”

  Lucia nodded.

  “She has a message for you.”

  “A message? What kind of message?”

  Here, Eusapia Palladino hesitated. She sat there for some time and then slowly opened her eyes. She rubbed her face and stretched. “I must have dozed off.”

  “What is the message?” Lucia wanted to know.

  “The message?”

  “The pregnant lady.”

  “Oh. I do not know. It is gone, my child. Did I say something about a pregnant lady?”

  “She has a message for me.”

  “She does? Oh, I am sorry. I don’t know no message. Sometimes I cannot remember when it is over. It is like I wake up and cannot remember a dream.”

  Lucia’s face went still as she brushed away her tears.

  “Oh, do not look so sad, mia cara,” Palladino sighed. “If you really want to hear this message, all you have to do is ask.”

  “Ask? Ask who?”

  Palladino picked up a few pieces of newsprint and laid them down in front of Lucia. “Ask her.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  She handed her a pencil. “You draw circles on the paper. That is all. You draw these circles and they will help empty your mind. The circles will free you, and the message will come through.”

  Lucia gave her a sidelong glance but took up the pencil with a sigh and began to draw a circle. She knew that nothing would come of it, it was a waste of precious paper, and worse, it would make her look ridiculous in the eyes of Madame Palladino.

  She stopped and looked up.

  “Go on.” Palladino urged. “Draw another.”

  She drew another and then another. The circles were easy, but her mind kept going. She thought about that day at the river and that night when her mother’s screams would not stop. Then they did and she remembered the anguish on Babusia’s face when she came to tell her that her mother was in a better place.

  The pencil went over and over the same lines; the circles got darker and soon the whole page was covered with them. As soon as she filled up one page, Madame Palladino replaced it with a clean one. In this way Lucia went through three, four, five sheets of paper, covering them with scribbled circles. She found that the faster her hand moved, the easier it was to stop the thoughts. For the next few minutes her hand flew over the sheets of paper, filling every inch with circles, wearing down the pencil points or breaking them, forcing her to reach for another.

  Then, without warning, she wrote: Listen to her. She looked up in alarm.

  “What does that mean?”

  Eusapia Palladino gave her a little laugh and took her hand. She stretched out Lucia’s arm and using the tip of her finger like a pencil pretended to write something on the inside of her arm. “It is time for you to go, mia cara. It is late.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “Go home. Get some rest.” Palladino rose and got Lucia’s coat. “I am exhausted. I do not know why I am so tired lately.”

  That night Lucia let herself into the house and hung up her coat and hat on the rack by the door. She found her way to the kitchen in the dark and lit the candle that she kept on a shelf above her bed. She unbuttoned her blouse and slipped out of it. She was about to take off her corset when something on her arm caught her eye. She held up the candle to get a better look and was surprised to see blue writing on the inside of her arm just above the wrist. She held the candle closer so she could see what was there.

  It said: Listen to me.

  CHAPTER 10

  January 1904

  Lucia woke the next morning to find that the writing on her arm was gone. A slight tightness on her skin confirmed that it had not been a dream. She didn’t know if it was an invitation, a signpost, a divine message, or perhaps something darker without a name. She wished she could write to Babusia. Her grandmother would know what it meant. That was impossible, however, because then she would have to admit to Babusia that she had attended séances, that she had a private meeting with a medium, where she had somehow acquired the strange writing on her arm.

  She spent the early hours of the morning scrubbing the kitchen floor, polishing the chrome in the new bathroom, and cleaning out the woodstove and its flue in the parlor. It was the first time in weeks that she had a chance to clean the house properly. It had been full of visitors since the prize was announced, so many comings and goings that she couldn’t keep up. That day the house was empty. The doctor had taken Iréne to the opera house to a children’s matinee and the Curies were off with their plans for the new laboratory to meet with the builders.

  By late morning she finished her work, put on her hat and coat, plucked her market basket and umbrella off the hook, and, after skirting the mailbags that kept arriving every day, stepped out into the steel-gray morning. It had been raining for two days. The front yard had turned into a small pond. Fortunately the walkway was still above the water, so she was able to keep her shoes dry. Out on the street she saw Monsieur Arlington striding toward the house. He recognized her at once and lifted a hand.

  “I’m sorry you’ve come all this way,” she said. “The Curies are not at home.”

  “It’s not them I came to see,” he replied, smiling down at her.

  He seemed eager and that made her nervous. “You came to see me? Why? Did Madame Palladino send you?”

  “Not exactly. Can we go inside? I think it’s about to rain again.”

  “I’m on my way to the market and if I don’t get there soon, the produce will be picked over.”

  “Never been to a French market. Mind if I tag along?”

  “It’s just a market, monsieur. I’m sure it’s no different from what you have in America.” She didn’t especially want his company, but when it appeared that he would not be put off, she led the way down to the avenue d’Italie where they waited at the stop for the omnibus. They had to stand well away from the curb or run the risk of getting drenched by the passing traffic. The avenue was busy at this hour, even this far down in the 13th. The wide street was crowded with delivery carts packed with merchandise, barrels of dry goods, lumber, bolts of fabric, heading up to the prosperous neighborhoods, to the fancy shops and the building sites.

  “Do you know very much about Madame Palladino?” he asked her.

  “She talks to the spirits.”

  “Yes, and she’s quite good at it. But she does more than that.” He took her arm at the curb and helped her over the flooded gutter. “She helps people. They come to her when they’ve lost a loved one. She gives them comfort. She helps them see that death is not necessarily the end. She’s a good person, Lulu.”

  Lucia wondered why he was telling her this.

  “Yes, I know she’s eccentric. And believe me I know she can be difficult, but she has a fine gift. And she truly cares. Do you know anything about her early life?” It began to rain and they opened their umbrellas. His was beautiful with a carved ivory handle. Hers had a bent rib.

  “She was a laundress, I believe.”

  “She was an orphan. Did you know that?”

  Lucia nodded.

  “She was orphaned at twelve and sent to live with a family who put her to work. It was a terrible life. They worked her hard; she didn’t get enough to eat. You never get over something like that. Then she married her first husband, not a nice fella from what I gather. Then came number two, and he was worse.”

  The omnibus arrived and they climbed aboard. Arlington dropped a few coins in the box, while Lucia found them seats inside. They settled across the aisle from a man in a dusty overcoat an
d top hat. He had a bulky sack at his feet full of plaster statues. Seated next to him was a student with a heavy book satchel, and further down the bench, a matron dressed in furs held a little dog wearing a yellow rain cape. The dog was trembling all over, so she wrapped it in her fur to keep it warm.

  Lucia looked out over the heads of the passengers to the street, to the factories, poor shops, and empty fields strewn with trash.

  Arlington went on: “Sapia looks strong on the outside, but in many ways she is like a little girl. She’s scared. She’s needs comfort and reassurance. She needs people around her, who look after her. Otherwise, you don’t know what she’ll do.”

  Lucia turned to him. “What do you mean?”

  Glancing out the window, he stood. “Isn’t this our stop?”

  They clambered off the omnibus and ran to catch another just as it was pulling away. The neighborhood had changed in just a few blocks. Here the street held respectable shops and restaurants and was crowded with carriages and even the occasional motorcar. When they got off at the market on rue d’Alésia they found it so thronged with people that it was hard to navigate the aisles of stalls and carts. She scolded herself for not coming earlier. She might have avoided the crowds and the weather, and perhaps even Arlington.

  They passed stalls selling winter vegetables: beets and turnips, carrots and squash. There was one selling country cheeses and another just for honey and candles made from beeswax. Arlington picked up a chunk of creamy white cheese and smelled it. “You don’t get this in Cincinnati.” He took Lucia’s market basket and held it for her while she filled it with eggs and butter. “She likes you, Lucia. And what’s more, John likes you.”

  She stiffened at the mention of his name.

  “I know, he’s no sport, but you don’t have to be scared of him. He’s harmless. And she trusts him. They’ve been together for a long time.”

  Lucia moved on to the butcher stall and waited her turn. “How can she trust something like that? He is not even human. I do not know what he is.”

  “She trusts you too.”

  “Then she is very trusting, monsieur. She doesn’t even know me.”