The Manual of Darkness Page 8

  He never talked about the classes to anyone. Never mentioned them at school, and gave only basic answers to the questions asked by his mother, whose help he needed in order to pay Galván for the lessons.

  Often, the whole lesson would go by without them so much as touching the cards, talking instead about the great magicians of history. On the pretext of explaining some crucial development, some theoretical shift that fundamentally changed the history of magic, Galván would slip into the nebulous, extravagant rhetoric befitting great deeds and legends. And Víctor would listen as though Galván were telling him his own life story.

  He knew that Galván had a daughter much older than he was, but nothing more. They almost never spoke of anything that did not concern magic. Yet he felt as though he knew the man intimately. Every furrow, every wrinkle on those hands. He could have drawn the half-moons of those fingernails with his eyes closed. The irritating nicotine stain on his index finger. At some point, usually very late, the maestro would announce that the lesson was over, give him his homework for the next lesson and say goodbye. Víctor would leave, always dreading that he might miss something important, as though some once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon might occur on this mist-shrouded island during his absence. The weeks seemed never-ending. The maestro always stayed behind to tidy up. Víctor cannot remember the first time he ever saw Galván outside this room, but he knows that it was months, perhaps a year, after they first met. And although they went on to share a lifetime of endeavours and success, although Galván became the father life had denied him, even now, the very sight of Galván takes Víctor back to a time when four elements – mist, hands, mat, cards – were sufficient to fashion a world. A world which would quickly become his world.

  The Seybert Commission

  Since he started taking the pills the doctor prescribed, he feels as though his dreams have changed. They are more peaceful now and, even when he cannot understand what is happening in them, they seem to have some sort of order, some internal logic. What is more, he feels conscious, experiencing every moment of his dreams as though the medication has put him in a state of waking sleep in which he never completely loses control. Today he is walking quickly across a tightrope, a wire stretched across an abyss, but he does not experience any anxiety. If he feels himself leaning too far one way or the other, rather than spreading his arms out and waving them theatrically like a tightrope walker, he stops, takes a breath, then carries on. Suddenly, he hears behind him the flint of a lighter being struck. He turns around. Floating in the air, lit by an overhead spotlight, is a long table at which are seated ten men, nine of them completely motionless, their shoulders hunched, chins resting on their chests. Víctor wonders for a moment whether they are dead or merely asleep. However, the tenth man, seated in the middle, is sitting upright, his eyes wide open. He has Galván’s face, but is short and tubby. And he is wearing a cassock.

  ‘Since you have managed to find your way here,’ he says, after clearing his throat, ‘we can only suppose that you have a basic knowledge of magic.’

  ‘A little, yes,’ Víctor answers with a smile.

  Simply hearing the tone of the man’s voice, he knows he is facing a tribunal, but he does not feel apprehensive. There is no question he fears he will not know the answer to.

  ‘And its history.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you will know who we are.’

  ‘The Seybert Commission,’ Víctor answers with complete confidence. ‘And, assuming that the hierarchy of the commission has not changed, you must be the Reverend Samuel Fullerton.’

  ‘Very good, my son.’

  ‘Don’t call me your son.’ Even Víctor is surprised by the self-controlled rage in his voice, but continues, ‘You are not my father.’

  ‘Forgive me, my son, you are right.’

  Fullerton traces a spiral in the air with both hands as though urging Víctor to go on, but before he can speak, the man falls forward, his forehead strikes the table and he sinks into the same sleep as his companions. If he does not split open his head it is only because a thick green mat has taken the brunt of the blow.

  ‘In 1883, the University of Pennsylvania received a posthumous bequest of seventy thousand dollars from a local millionaire named Henry Seybert, for the establishment of an endowed chair in “Moral and intellectual philosophy”,’ Víctor explains to a nonexistent audience. The confidence with which he speaks, while still moving up and down the tightrope, makes him sound, not like a student at an oral examination, but a professor teaching a class. ‘One of the conditions of Seybert’s will was that whoever occupied this chair should personally, or under the aegis of the university, appoint a commission to investigate all moral, religious or philosophical systems that presume to represent the Truth, particularly Modern Spiritualism.’ Víctor took a deep breath and gave a satisfied smile; he is confident that he has quoted the text verbatim. ‘It was like a quest for the philosopher’s stone,’ he adds, ‘a remit so ambitious that it was even beyond the scope of the entire doctoral body of the university, with all its knowledge of history. But you, Reverend Fullerton, were the first person appointed to the professorial chair and secretary of the commission because, together with the nine other members here present, or should I say here absent, you were able to read between the lines and focus on what truly mattered to the sponsor.

  ‘At this point we should linger for a moment on the character of Henry Seybert,’ Víctor went on with the self-assurance of someone who has told the same story a hundred times and knows how best to relate the sequence of events, which inflections to use for maximum effect. ‘Seybert was the son of a prominent chemist and mineralogist, a Republican member of the House of Representatives for several terms. Henry also studied chemistry but abandoned this at the age of twenty-two when his father died, leaving him an orphan with a considerable inheritance. His mother had died giving birth to him. Henry Seybert’s calling card never mentioned a profession; in directories, his occupation was listed as Gentleman. Meaning rich, and idle. However, if one can judge from appearances, he was not happy. There is no reliable evidence to explain why this young man of scientific bent became a follower of spiritualism, so we can only speculate. Perhaps he believed he saw the ghosts of his parents at some point. Perhaps he fell into the clutches of one of the many spiritualists practising at the time, who, exploiting the moral and intellectual doubts of their victims, used crude trickery to convince the latter that the dead wished to communicate with them. Perhaps not. All we can say is that he spent his whole life yearning to make contact with the great beyond, and it was precisely because he did not succeed that he bequeathed his money so that the search might carry on. Or maybe, terrified that he might one day find himself a soul in torment, he wanted to leave the door open for his own return.

  ‘Although I think I know a great deal about this episode in the history of magic, it would be stupid to claim I know more than you do, since, after all, you were involved in it.’ Víctor turns to look at the table and does not seem to think it remarkable that all of the members of the commission are still asleep. ‘Anyway, you worked out that the only thing Seybert was interested in was the truth about spiritualism and that, if he had lumped it together with other religious, philosophical and ethical systems, it was only to place it within a scientific context. As you know, before inviting self-professed spiritualists to demonstrate their powers before the commission, you decided to limit the enquiries to two concrete points.’

  Víctor stops walking and looks up. For some reason, he feels the need to prove to the tribunal that, in spite of the exactness of his account, he is not referring to any notes.

  ‘Firstly, you had to determine whether the phenomena in question were real or imaginary. By which I mean, whether they were something that could be seen, touched or heard or whether they existed only in the mind of the witness. Secondly, you assumed responsibility for confirming what produced these phenomena. Natural forces? Supernatural? Human intervention
? Spirits?’

  As he says the word ‘spirits’ he hears a strumming behind him and notices a sudden change in the air temperature. He turns and sees an amorphous mass in the sky, like a cloud that is not fully formed, trailing behind it a line of chalk which reads ‘Preliminary Report of the Commission appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to investigate Modern Spiritualism in accordance with the request of the late Henry Seybert with a foreword by H. H. Furness, Jr, 1887’. He is not particularly surprised, he knows the document almost by heart.

  Víctor waves his hand like someone turning the page of a newspaper and begins to recite the introduction: ‘The commission is composed of men whose days are already filled with duties which cannot be laid aside, and who are able, therefore, to devote but a small portion of their time to these investigations. They are conscious that your honorable body looks to them for a due performance of their task, and the only assurance which they can offer of their earnestness and zeal is in thus presenting to you, from time to time, such fragmentary reports as the following, whereby they trust that successive steps in their progress may be marked. It is no small matter to be able to record any progress in a subject of so wide and deep an interest as the present. It is not too much to say that the farther our investigations extend the more imperative appears the demand for these investigations. The belief in so-called spiritualism is certainly not decreasing. It has from the first assumed a religious tone, and now claims to be ranked among the denominational faiths of the day.

  ‘What chutzpah!’ Víctor cries. ‘But it was a brilliant tactic.’ When he turns he discovers that the ten men have vanished, together with the table at which they were sleeping, yet he continues to address them, his tone accusatory: ‘In other words, you made no progress but wanted to continue with your investigations for as long as a single dollar remained to be spent.’

  He continues turning the pages. His fingers are covered in chalk dust. When he comes to the index, he realises that his suspicions are unfounded. The chapters of the report are in fact the minutes of dozens of meetings held by the members of the commission with so-called spiritualists, during which time they rigorously recorded every statement by those present, every movement perceived or intuited, from notes taken by Fullerton himself in his role as secretary. Faced with the need to systemise the investigation, they decided to divide up the subject according to the most prevalent manifestations of the time. The first of these was referred to as ‘independent writing’, in which messages from spirits were transcribed on the concealed surface of a slate held by the medium. For these, they used two pieces of slate, hinged so they could be closed like a book. A piece of chalk was placed inside and the slates were sealed with a screw so that it was clear that any writing that appeared would have occurred without the physical intervention of the spiritualist.

  The first two chapters give an account of two sessions held with a Mrs Patterson, a local star in the field of ‘independent writing’. In both cases the supposed medium held the sealed slates in her trembling hands for an hour and twenty minutes, under the table and out of sight of the investigators, but she proved incapable of anything but an almost illegible scrawl. Attributing this failure to the supposed negative energy generated by some of those present, she asked to be allowed to make the attempt alone, in her own home. After long deliberations, the commission gave her a pair of hinged slates sealed in such a way that any tampering would immediately become apparent. Patterson took the slates away and brought them back six months later, after considerable pressure on Fullerton’s part. She even had the nerve to ask for another pair of slates and the commission agreed. When she returned them after two months, with clear evidence that the seals had been tampered with and marks where a knife had been inserted into one corner, Fullerton noted that ‘The Spirits had not taken even the precaution to wipe the broad knife clean from rust or dirt.’ Víctor looked up and was disappointed that Fullerton was not there so he could congratulate him on his irony.

  The second spiritualist summoned before the commission was Dr Henry Slade, the highest authority on independent writing, for whom they had to pay travel expenses and a two-week hotel stay, sufficient time to determine that his mediation with the spirits was more effective but just as fraudulent as that of Mrs Patterson. Suffice it to say that one of the investigators, exasperated by all this trickery, concealed a pocket mirror in his hand so that he could observe what was happening under the table. In the report, he described seeing ‘the reflection of fingers, which were clearly not Spiritual, opening the slates and writing the answer’.

  As he reads, Víctor wavers between laughter and indignation. In spite of the good intentions of the commission, the report is a catalogue of cheap con-artists performing tricks worthy only of a sideshow puppeteer. Third-rate typists attempting to pass themselves off as pianists. By contrast the commission’s tenacity and consummate zeal in pursuing the investigation seem both admirable and irritating. The report is offensive to his passion for doing things properly. Víctor knows what the spiritualists of the time were capable of.

  Fullerton himself, in a separate chapter dealing with the difficulties of his task, explains that they could not find a spiritualist who could justify the considerable success achieved by the movement. From time to time, they would put an ad in the Boston magazine Banner of Light, the leading spiritualist publication. These ads were answered by curious characters such as a Dr Rothermel, who claimed to be able to produce sounds from a series of musical instruments merely through psychic force. The instruments were housed in a small portable cabinet covered at the back by a black screen. Rothermel sat on one side, his hands tied to a chair, covered from head to foot with a black curtain. After a few seconds, there was the clear sound of scissors. ‘The Spirits are cutting me loose,’ the charlatan exclaimed, pretending through various twitches and convulsions to be in a trance. Then a hand suddenly appeared in the cabinet and played each of the instruments in turn. ‘We had no difficulty in believing,’ Fullerton wrote in the report, ‘that the hands which were dexterous enough to play the zither with very remarkable skill, under such conditions, behind the curtain, were deft enough to sever the cords.’

  The next chapter of the report is devoted to a Mr W. M. Keeler, famous for his mastery of what at the time were called ‘Spiritual Photographs’, in which mysterious figures of angelic or diabolical aspect would appear next to the subject of the photograph. Receiving a letter inviting him to appear before the commission, Keeler responded, agreeing to perform three séances for the sum of $300, payable in advance, the fee to be non-returnable whether or not his efforts proved satisfactory. He also clearly stated that there might be no results because of ‘the antagonistic element which might be produced by those persons not in perfect sympathy with the cause’. In addition he wanted guarantees that he would be alone when developing the images in the dark room since the spirits were particularly vulnerable at such moments.

  Víctor is growing impatient. He doesn’t believe in spirits, nor did he expect that he would stumble on some astonishing revelation in the report, but he did expect a modicum of professional dignity. He goes back to the first page and checks the date again: 1887. It seems impossible that the commission could not find anyone capable of doing a decent job. It is as if a literary commission could not find a single decent poem in the whole of the seventeenth century. He begins to skim through the report, lingers only over the beginning of a paragraph or the capital letters indicating someone’s name, until he gets to page 77, where he stumbles on Harry Kellar. Knowing that he performed an independent writing illusion in his stage show with sealed slates similar to those used by Slade, the commission asked him to appear. Kellar, it goes without saying, did not pass up the invitation. On the contrary, he was more than happy to impress the commission, and he did not do so with some illegible scrawl, but with seven sealed slates on which appeared sentences in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Chinese, Japanese, classical Arabic and Gujarati. The report
even includes good old Fullerton’s regret that the last three cannot be reproduced since his machine does not have the requisite characters.

  Víctor stops reading and thinks about Galván. The maestro always insisted that Kellar was little more than an imitator and a braggart, but he must be given credit for his ambition: when he set himself to a task, he pulled out all the stops. Víctor goes back to his reading. It seems that one of the investigators dared to voice an objection: clearly the texts were quite long and exquisitely calligraphed, had been written beforehand, and Kellar had made them appear by some simple sleight of hand. Unruffled, the magician took out a double-sided slate, showed both sides to those present to prove that it was indeed blank and handed it to the investigator, asking him to write down a question, which he did, handing it back face down so that Kellar could not see it. The investigator wrote: ‘How tall is the Washington Monument?’ Kellar took the slate and a piece of chalk, and held it beneath the table for only a few seconds, during which time the investigators noticed no suspicious movements on his part. When he showed it to them again, on the other side of the slate were the words ‘We have never visited the Washington Monument, therefore can not give its height.’ Brilliant. In spite of his insolence, it has to be said that of all those summoned to appear before the commission, he was the one who did a good job. Although the report never deviates from its neutral, pseudo-scientific tone, it is possible to detect the investigators’ pleasure that, after decades of cheap tricks, they have finally witnessed something pure. Not because Kellar did not use trickery. On the contrary, of all those who appeared before the commission, he was the only one to admit to doing so. And his frankness proved such a devastating blow to the spiritualists that the investigators never met again. Only one of them, a man named Horace Howard Furness, continued with the investigation on his own. Although the basis of the commission was such that only those sessions at which all members were present were valid, they granted Furness the right to add a series of appendices to the report, in which he recounted his attempts to obtain one single proof of communication with the spirits in whatever form. Moochers who claimed to be able to read a letter without taking it from the envelope only to return it, with a sizeable invoice, and clear signs of tampering; queens of the underworld who charged recently widowed women exorbitant sums for reciting supposed messages from the beyond, closing their throats to produce voices that sounded both masculine and ghostly.