Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [197]
My friend, I have already abandoned my first letter of the evening. It was to a woman of our mutual acquaintance. Always with her I am obliged to hide something of myself, in order to preserve her good opinion. In this case there was a name I must not mention for the sake of her jealousy—I understand that. But even so the details and events that I described—some trivial, some essential—had split so sharply from reality by the end of the first page, that I threw down my pen. And then no sooner did I lie down in darkness than I found myself fumbling for the lamp, gasping for breath, with an elevated heart rate. There is no sleep for me tonight.
Now I will try again. Perhaps what I am about to say, I can share with none but you.
The purpose of my previous letter was to allow me to distract myself with nocturnal fantasies so that I might forget my anxiousness. Perhaps you will be relieved to hear I have given up hope of that. My current missive has a different cause, though I will begin with the same base of fact, the root of every possible narrative—it has not stopped raining since my arrival. I am staying at the house of a Creole gentleman, a narrow, three-storey mansion in the Rue Dauphine. He is the sponsor of my lectures, a tall, thin, dignified, and upright person who is also, as it happens, quite insane. His name is Maubusson, and he owns an indigo plantation outside of the city, an enterprise that he himself must know is doomed to fail, because of a recent artificial synthesis.
Despite the weather, this evening I was well disposed. My host was generous enough to buy me supper at a restaurant that might not have offended even you. I observed during the meal that he seemed distracted and glum, but he showed no obvious lunacy—my dear, he was just lying in wait! After coffee we proceeded to the ballroom of a nearby hotel. Three-quarters of an hour afterwards, I had finished my lecture and then rapidly disposed of several infuriating and irrelevant questions about the origin of species. My friend, I thought I could perceive the finish line, when I espied his outstretched hand. “Sir,” he said, “I would like to ask you news of some earlier experiments, in which you corresponded with the spirits of the dead.”
I grimaced, then cut him off. “I do not like to dwell upon my failures. You understand—”
Alas, he understood nothing. He was not satisfied, and so obliged me to persist: “You speak of a line of inquiry that is several years old, during the course of which I must admit that I allowed my personal desires to dominate my scientific objectivity. It is true that through the use of electrical stimulation, I was able to prolong consciousness in a small number of recently expired subjects. But the accounts of these experiments were distorted by a sensationalist press, and I am now convinced that I was wrong in my conclusions. The boundary between living and dying is not as firm, perhaps, as we imagine, or at least as I imagined at that time.”
While I was speaking, still he had not lowered his hand. His smile was skull-like, and exposed his yellow teeth. Because he was my host and benefactor, I was compelled to let him speak. “But I recall a description of a scene at the bedside of a Parisian lady—I forget her name—when she was reconciled to her niece and nephews, and was even able to explain to them the terms of her estate . .