Possession

by A. S. Byatt

  Left alone with Leonora, Blackadder was apprehensive. Leonora plumped down beside him, her thigh touching his, and took his copy of Ash from him, without asking.

  “Better read this now, I guess. I’ve never gone much for Randolph Henry. Too male. Long-winded. Old hat—”

  “No.”

  “Obviously not. I tell you what, a lot of us are going to have to eat our words when this all gets out in the open, a whole lot of us. I should put this book away, Professor. Uh-hunh. I guess we’ve got three minutes to make out the importance of all this stuff to the great greedy public and that don’t include illustrations. No, you’ve got to make out your Mr Ash to be the sexiest property in town. You’ve got to get them by the balls, Professor. Make ’em cry. Think what you got to say and get it said whatever that pretty creature out there tries to get you to say. If you get me—”

  “Oh yes. I—get you.”

  “One thing you’ll get said in the time, and that’s your lot, Professor.”

  “I see that. Mmn. One thing—”

  “One sexy thing, Professor.”

  In Make-up, Blackadder and Leonora lay back together, side by side. He submitted to powder-puffs and paintbrush, thinking of the hands of morticians, watching the fine grey cobwebs round his eyes being blocked out by a fine brushload of Max Factor Creme Puff. Leonora had her head back but spoke on, indifferently, to him and the girl.

  “I like a lot of colour at the edge of the lids there—load it on, I can take it, I’ve got huge features and striking colouring, I can carry it off OK—as I was saying, Professor, you and I have to have a serious talk. I guess you’re as keen as I am to know the whereabouts of Maud Bailey, hunh? That’s great, how about some of that thundery dark pink under the brow here—and I’d like a manslaying scarlet lipstick, which on reflection I’ll get out of my own bag, you have to be careful with communal body fluids these days, in the nicest possible way, of course—as I say, Professor, or as I didn’t say, I’ve got a pretty good idea about where that young woman’s gone—and your researcher with her—I showed her the way—have you got any of those metallic spangles you can dust on here and there, ma’am, I like to strike the odd shaft of light across the screen, show that the scholarly world’s got its glitter … Red in tooth and claw I am now, Professor, but calm yourself, I’m not out to get you. I’m out to strike a blow for Christabel and a punch in the guts of that bastard Mortimer Cropper, who wouldn’t have Christabel on his course and threatened to sue a dear friend of mine for defamation, he really did. I guess all this makes him look a bit of a fool?”

  “Not really. These things happen.”

  “Well you got to say it makes him look a fool, if you want to keep those papers, don’t you?”

  Shushila sat between her guests and smiled. Blackadder watched the cameras and felt like a dusty barman. Dusty grey between these two peacocks, dusty with face-powder—he could smell himself—under the hot light. The moment before the broadcast seemed eternal, and then suddenly, like a sprint race, they were all talking very rapidly and as suddenly silent again. He had only the vaguest recollection of what had been said. The two women, like gaudy parrots, talking about female sexuality and its symbols when repressed, the Fairy Melusina and the danger of the female, LaMotte and the love that dared not speak its name, Leonora’s huge surprise when it seemed that Christabel might have loved a man. And his own voice: “Randolph Henry Ash was one of the great love poets in our language. Ask to Embla is one of the great poems of true sexual passion. No one has ever really known whom those poems were written for. In my view the explanation advanced in the standard biography always looked unconvincing and silly. Now we know who it was—we’ve discovered Ash’s Dark Lady. It’s the kind of discovery scholars dream of. The letters have got to stay in our country—they’re part of our national story.”

  And Shushila: “You won’t agree with that, Professor Stern? Being an American?”

  And Leonora: “I think the letters should be in the British Library. We can all have microfilms and photocopies, the problems are only sentimental. And I’d like Christabel to have honour in her own country and Professor Blackadder here, who’s the greatest living Ash scholar, to have charge of the correspondence. I’m not acquisitive, Shushila—all I want is a chance to write the best critique of these letters once they’re available. The days of cultural imperialism are over, I’m glad to say.…”

  Afterwards Leonora took his arm. “I’ll buy you a drink,” she said. “You need one, I guess. So do I. You did fine, Professor, better than I thought.”

  “It was your influence,” Blackadder said. “What I said was an awful travesty. I apologise, Dr Stern. I didn’t mean to imply that you influenced me to travesty, I meant that you influenced me enough to make me articulate at all—”

  “I know what you meant. I bet you like malt whisky, you’re a Scot.”

  They found themselves in a dim and beery bar, where Leonora shone like a Christmas tree.

  “Now, let me tell you where I think Maud Bailey is.…”

  21

  MUMMY POSSEST

  Look, Geraldine, into the stones of fire

  I spread my hands out on the velvet cloth—

  Come closer, child, if you would learn to scry

  And read the hieroglyphics of my rings!

  See, how the stones glow on the milky skin—

  Beryl and emerald and chrysoprase—

  The gifts of lords and ladies, which I prize

  Not for their cost,” but for their mystic sense

  The subtle silent speech of Mother Earth.

  Your hands, like mine, are sweetly soft and white.

  I touch your fingers, and the electric spark

  Springs twixt our skins—you sense it? Good. Now see

  The shifting lights move on the stones and see

  If any vision show itself to you

  As, it may be, a mystic Face, all flushed

  With floating radiance of actinic light,

  Or, it may be, the interlacing boughs

  Of God’s unearthly Orchard of Desire.

  What do you see? A spider-web of light?

  That’s a beginning. Soon the lines will form

  The blessed showings of the Spirit World.

  Lights are Intelligences in our minds, whose force

  We no more comprehend than here, in these

  Glittering jewels, we can say how rose

  Or sapphire blue or emerald steady shines,

  Or what makes all the brilliant colours glow

  Along the throat of the Arabian bird,

  Whilst here, in milder air, her neck is grey

  Or in the Polar void a brilliant white.

  Thus in God’s Garden the stones speak and shine.

  Here we may read their silences, or scry

  Eternal forms in earthly blocks of light.

  Take up the crystal ball, sweet Geraldine.

  Gaze on the sphere. Observe how left and right,

  Above, below, reverse themselves in this

  And in its depth a glittering chamber lies

  Like a drowned world with downward-pointing flames,

  This room in miniature, all widdershins.

  Look steadily, and you will see all shift

  Under the veils of spirit vision, see

  What is not here, but comes from o’er the bourn.

  My face, reversed, shall bathe in rosy fronds

  As in her rocky cave, Actinia

  The sea-anemone, puts out a cloud

  Of hidden halo of odylic force—

  And after mine, you shall see other Forms

  In other lights, come swimming into view,

  You shall, I swear it. Still be patient.

  The force is fitful, and the vital spark

  Which kindles in the Medium and lights

  Conductive channels for the venturesome

  Friends in the Spirit, leaps and dies again

  Like Will-o-the-Wisps, or marsh-lights flicker
ing.

  I have called you here to teach you certain things.

  You made a good beginning, all agreed.

  Last Sunday’s trance was deep and absolute.

  I held your fainting form against my breast

  Whilst spirits jostled at those pretty lips

  To speak their pure consoling speech, though some

  Forced through their vileness that your innocence

  Could never in its waking hours have framed

  In thought or word. To these I cried “Avaunt!”

  And fought them off, and in my listening ear

  I heard the spirit voices bell-like sing

  That you were chosen as their crystal cup

  Their bright translucent Vessel, where ev’n I

  With all my weary wisdom, might drink deep

  A draught of power, and sweetness to refresh.

  I mean that now I choose you to conduct

  My seances with me, my partner sweet,

  My Helper now, and in some future time

  Who knows, a Seeress of Power yourself.

  You know the ladies who will come tonight.

  The Baroness is exigent. She mourns

  A fat pug dog, who gambols in the Fields,

  The flowery fields Beyond, and can be heard

  To yap in satisfaction, as it used.

  Beware of Mr Holm. He is a Judge,

  In whom the injurious Sprite of scepticism

  Dies hard, and rears his head, once laid to rest,

  At any sight or sound that’s untoward.

  Most promising—that is, in spiritual terms—

  Most heart-torn, and most sorrowing, is the young

  Countess of Claregrove, who has lost her child,

  Her only son, a year since, when he was

  Scarce more than lisping Babe of two years’ growth

  Snatched by a fever in a summer Tour.

  His small voice has been heard in broken sounds—

  He makes, he says, perpetual daisy-chains

  In wondrous meadows—but she weeps and weeps,

  And will not be consoled, and takes with her

  Where’er she goes, a lock of his bright hair

  Cut from his marble brow as he lay cold.

  More than all else she longs to touch his hand,

  To kiss his little cheek, to know he is

  And was not claimed by Chaos and the Dark.

  I tell you this because—I tell you this—

  In fine, I tell you this, because I must

  Explain how we, to whom the Spirits speak

  Eke out their wayward signals and the gifts

  Vouchsafed from time to time of sight and touch

  And otherworldly hearing, with our own—

  How shall I say?—manifestations

  We fabricate to demonstrate their Truth.

  Sometimes, ’tis true, our Visitors ring Bells,

  Lights dance about the room, and heavenly Hands

  Touch mortal flesh. Sometimes there are Apports—

  Glasses of flowery wine, or fragrant wreaths,

  Or snapping Lobsters from the ocean Deep.

  Sometimes the Power falters and is dumb.

  Yet on these blank days, when my aching frame

  Is lumpish flesh of flesh and no voice sounds—

  The anxious Seekers gather with their Cares,

  Griefs unassuaged, and incredulities—

  And I have asked the Spirits and been taught

  A way of helping out, to improvise

  Display and substitute the mysteries

  And thus console the sad, and thus confound

  The savage sceptics with a visible Proof.

  White gloves and gossamer threads move and amaze

  As disembodied hands do; angel-wreaths

  Descend on finest threads from chandeliers.

  And what one Medium may do, my sweet,

  Two may improve on almost endlessly.

  Your figure is so fairy-fine, my Love,

  Could, at a pinch, glide between these two screens?

  Your little hands in kidskin could take hold

  In teasing mode, of sceptical male knees

  Or stir a crinoline, or brush a beard

  With a hint of wholesome perfume, could they not?

  What’s that you say? You do not like to lie?

  I hope you may remember who you are

  And what you were, a pretty parlour-maid

  Whose mistress did not like her prettiness

  Or soulful stare at the young man o’ the house.

  Who helped you then, I ask you, gave you home

  And home’s essential comforts, bread and clothes,

  Discovered talents in you quite unguessed,

  Cosseted you and turned your soulfulness

  To use both spiritual and lucrative?

  You are grateful? So I should suppose. Well then,

  Let Gratitude hold ope the door to Trust!

  Our small deceptions are a form of Art

  Which has its simple and its high degree

  As women know, who lavish on wax dolls

  The skills and the desires that large-souled men

  Save up for marble Cherubs, or who sew

  On lowly cushions thickets of bright flowers

  Which done in oils were marvelled at on walls

  Of ducal halls or city galleries.

  You call these spirit mises en scène a lie.

  I call it artfulness, or simply Art,

  A Tale, a Story, that may hide a Truth

  As wonder-tales do, even in the Best Book.