Things Invisible to See

by Nancy Willard

  Now she recognized him. It was Herr Death, he whom the Ancestress had taken her to see, he who had rebuked Goering for his greed. Don’t you know that to those who serve me the power is already given? When she visited him—how long ago the Ancestress had traveled beside her, over the water!—he had seemed as dangerous and remote as an iceberg viewed through binoculars. Now the space between them was gone. He had sought her out. Had he come for her?

  Too terrified to speak, she felt her body draw back from him of its own will, as if his very breath could kill her.

  “Delighted to meet you, Mrs. Bishop,” he was saying, “and your sister. And Davy, and Clare. And—”

  “Ben Harkissian.”

  “Of course.”

  “He recognized us,” whispered Nell to Helen. “What did I tell you?”

  That was evidence of intuition but not of great powers, thought Helen. She took Mr. Knochen’s black umbrella, which he had not opened, and his coat and his fedora, soft and flexible as a cat, and hung them on the coat rack beside Hal’s hat, while he stood first on one foot, then on the other, and pulled off his thin overshoes.

  He’s done well for himself, thought Helen, appraising his three-piece suit. Black serge. Aloud she said, “Your overshoes are just like Hal’s. I’ve never met anyone who had overshoes like Hal’s, Mr. Knochen.”

  “They’re Brazilian rubbers,” observed Mr. Knochen. “Hard to come by, with the shortages.”

  Davy admired his shoes, so highly polished they shone like silver.

  The fire crackling in the hearth drew the three guests, who held their hands out to warm them. Cinnamon Monkeyshines stretched himself out to his full length, and Mr. Knochen leaned down and stroked his ears.

  Why, he’s nearly bald, thought Nell. The way he combs those white strands over the bald spot. Making the most of what he has.

  “You have nice shoes,” said Davy, and knelt and patted them.

  “Now you’ve seen him,” said Nell, taking Davy’s hand. “And now it’s your bedtime. Say good-night to the company.”

  “I’m not sleepy,” said Davy.

  “Da-vy,” warned Nell.

  “G’night, company,” said Davy and allowed himself to be bundled off to bed.

  Mr. Knochen surveyed the room as if he intended to buy it.

  “I see you have a table all ready, Mrs. Bishop. Splendid table. Leather?”

  “I don’t know,” said Helen. “It was a wedding present.”

  “And an exquisite decanter. Crystal?”

  Helen shrugged. “It’s been in the family for years. I don’t even remember where it came from.” She recollected its purpose and added, “May I give you some Harvey’s Bristol Cream?”

  An amused smile crossed Mr. Knochen’s face.

  “No, thank you. Perhaps the ladies—”

  “None for me, thanks,” said Mrs. Lieberman.

  “None for me, either,” said Mrs. Clackett.

  Hal came into the room.

  “Mr. Bishop, delighted to meet you,” said Mr. Knochen. He shook Hal’s hand warmly, as if they were old friends.

  Everyone sat down.

  “I’m very interested in what happens tonight,” said Hal. “I’ve never had any experiences along this line myself, but my sister had several of them.”

  “You never told me that,” said Helen.

  “You never asked,” said Hal.

  “Would you care to tell us about your sister’s experiences?” asked Mr. Knochen.

  “When our father died, my sister saw him in a sort of—vision. He was a thousand miles away from her when he died, and yet he appeared to her at the exact moment of his death.”

  “Did she know he was dead?” asked Mrs. Clackett.

  “Not at the time. She was working in her garden. She stood up to brush the dirt off her hands and saw him walking backwards down the path, away from her, waving. Ten minutes later she got the call saying he was dead.”

  “Dead,” mused Mr. Knochen. “I’m told they do not like to be called so. It’s we who are dead to them. We cut ourselves off from them.”

  Why, why, thought Clare, has he come?

  “I wish we could find a good doctor in the next world,” said Helen. “The doctors in this one haven’t done much for Clare.”

  Hal turned to Mr. Knochen and inquired, “Have you heard of Benjamin Rush?”

  Silence.

  “I thought perhaps you might know the name. The Rush Medical College in Chicago is named for Benjamin Rush.”

  “And did he find a good doctor in the next world?” inquired Mrs. Lieberman, smoothing her dark hair, which was drawn into a bun.

  Hal smiled.

  “Dr. Rush died in 1813. Through a medium in New York, he offered his services to patients pronounced incurable by the doctors living on this side of life.” He raised his right hand, as if taking an oath. “A woman dying of stomach cancer accepted his offer, through the medium. Dr. Rush told the patient to go to bed and pray for her recovery. While she slept, he would examine her, for of course he could not diagnose or prescribe without an examination.”

  “And did he examine her?” exclaimed several voices, astonished.

  “From the other side”—and here Hal raised his left hand—“he did indeed examine her, and through the medium he told her that he would handle her case. He prescribed a regimen of rest and prayer, and said that while she slept, he would perform the operation. She remained in a coma for one night and when she awoke, she knew herself to be healed. A spot of blood on the bedclothes was the only trace of the operation. And when her regular doctor examined her, he found she was completely cured.”

  Mr. Knochen turned to Helen. “Mrs. Bishop, have you ever spoken with anyone in the other world?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You have an aura around your head.”

  Helen touched her hair. “You see something around my head?”

  He nodded. “It is a good sign. I do not see auras around the heads of those who have not yet learned to trust me.”

  I shall never trust you, thought Clare, and longed to wrap her arms around her mother. Around all of them.

  Behind his back, Nell slipped into the room.

  “Ah, your sister has rejoined us. We can begin.”

  From his pocket he brought a small paper dial rimmed with the letters of the alphabet.

  “A one-handed clock,” he said and smiled, to let them know he had made a joke. “Some spirits choose to speak through mediums. Others spell their messages, sending vibrations through our fingers, tapping them out on the table through us. We must provide for both preferences. If you will all draw your chairs around the table, please—”

  There was a scuffling and scraping of chairs. Ben, who did not like Mr. Knochen’s unctuous manner, wheeled Clare as far from him as he could and found places for them between Helen and Hal. Mrs. Lieberman sat on Mr. Knochen’s right hand and Mrs. Clackett sat on his left. Nell squeezed her chair between Mrs. Clackett and Hal.

  Mr. Knochen stood up.

  “I always like to sit by the young people,” he said, and with one swift movement of his chair, he parted Ben and Clare, felt in his pocket, and then glanced at the floor.

  “What have you lost?” asked Helen.

  “It’s odd,” said Mr. Knochen, “but I seem to have lost one of my good-luck charms. Has anyone seen it? Here’s the mate.”

  And he drew forth a silver coin. They all bent forward to examine it.

  “Is it Greek?” asked Mrs. Lieberman. “Isn’t this Hermes in the winged cap?”

  “If it were lost in this house, I’d see it right off,” said Helen. “A thing like that.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t lose it here,” suggested Mrs. Clackett. “You could advertise in the papers.”

  “You could offer a reward,” said Nell.

  “I could offer a reward,” agreed Mr. Knochen. “But whoever finds it must give it to me of his own free will. Stolen charms never serve the thief, do they?” He nodded
at Ben.

  In the jungles of Ben’s childhood, the lost coin had shone on his father’s palm like the wise eye of a magic animal. Ben wore it now, on an elastic string around his neck. His eyes met Clare’s, and her terror paralyzed him. He could not utter a word.

  “If you happen to find it—” said Mr. Knochen.

  “We’ll let you know right away,” said Helen. “I understand how awful it is to lose something that’s been in the family.”

  “Could we have the lights turned down, please?” Mr. Knochen said. “The firelight will be ample.”

  From lamp to lamp Nell walked, pulling their chains, sending them into darkness. A low, restless light from the fire flickered over their faces.

  “Now, if you will take your places again—thank you. I want you all to rest your fingertips on the table, as I am doing. The little finger of each hand should be touching the corresponding finger of those on either side of you. We want a closed circle.”

  A movement of hands answered him, barely perceptible, like the blinking of birds. Clare’s finger brushed his. It was cold and dry, and the touch sickened her.

  “My dear friends,” said Mr. Knochen in a low voice, “I ask that each of you come to this table as innocent as a child. Let yourselves be led by whatever happens here. Believe me, there is nothing to fear.”

  Helen, who had lowered her head, stole a glance at him. His eyes were closed, his whole body still as marble.

  “Perhaps you are wondering why the dead must talk through borrowed mouths. Is their need so very different from ours when we use a telephone? Our voices are too small for the great distances.”

  Everything grew still. Even the lively fire danced behind a curfew of silence.

  I don’t hear the clock, thought Mrs. Clackett nervously.

  “Perhaps some of you have said, ‘If visions are real, why haven’t I had visions? If those I lost are alive, why haven’t I heard their voices?’ My dear children, how easy it is to see and not see, to hear and not hear. Let us never forget St. Paul: ‘There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.’ What was mortal has put on immortality.”

  A rising excitement gathered them together, like pulses in an unbroken current. It seemed to Hal that the air had become too pure for breathing; every familiar sound and smell was being swabbed away.

  Who left the door open? Such a terrible draft, thought Nell, but she could not rise to close it.

  To all of them Mr. Knochen’s voice sounded thin, an echo thrown from the top of a mountain.

  “I believe the invisible will not always be hidden from us. Tonight, let there abide among us faith, hope, and charity. And the greatest of these is hope.”

  Not charity? thought Helen. She prided herself on knowing the Bible.

  He stopped talking. He rested his hands on the table as lightly as on a keyboard seconds before a long and difficult performance.

  A clean wind blew across Ben’s face and brought him close to tears with the old sensations it stirred in him: that first fresh fragrance things gave him when he and the world were new together. Then the first mingling of fragrances became a strong smell of Sen-Sen and the sweaty leather of his father’s Rawlings glove, and that other smell of games played and lost by his father long before he was born.

  “Dad?” he whispered.

  Nothing answered him. Even the tapping ceased. The rejection stung him, embarrassed him.

  “Call again,” urged Mr. Knochen.

  “Dad? It’s me, Ben.”

  The comforting presence in the room began to withdraw.

  “Don’t go,” said Ben, louder this time. “Please don’t go.”

  Suddenly a crash made them all jump. Something struck Nell on her foot and rolled away, and she scrambled under the table after it.

  “The Harvey’s Bristol Cream!” she shrieked and held up the decanter. It was cracked straight down the middle. For half a second it appeared to relax. Then it split into neat halves, as if a diamond had cut it. With trembling hands, Nell placed the two halves in the middle of the table.

  “Empty!” exclaimed Nell.

  “Fortunately there wasn’t much in it,” said Helen.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Mrs. Lieberman. “It was a full bottle.”

  “The spirits are welcome to it, I’m sure,” said Helen.

  “Children,” said Mr. Knochen, “take hands.”

  Again they rested their fingertips on the table. Ben found that every part of him was shaking except his hands, which felt as if they were in another corner of the universe, dabbling and dipping themselves in the streams of no-time.

  “I once had a very pious cook who told me she could smell bread baking in heaven,” observed Mr. Knochen.

  Is he laughing at us? Clare wondered. She was no longer afraid of him. In the firelight, his smile flickered back and forth between kindly and terrible. The smell of new-mown grass—did no one else notice it? No one. Clare glanced around for the Ancestress. No, she would not show herself here. Not now. A great desire to be comforted came over her, and she turned toward the fire. It crackled, it hissed. As a child she could sit for hours watching the dancers in the little theatre of the hearth, shifting from beast to human, from human to beast. But the figures she saw now were clearly human, a pageant played in the fire rather than the fire itself. She saw the image of Death wrestling with a woman. She saw the white scarf wrapped around the woman’s head; she saw the bodice of her dress covered with medals, winking and glittering, so closely set they seemed a single fabric. The woman was taller than Death by about a foot.

  Hal’s voice broke the silence and the two players vanished.

  “O spirits who have honored us by your coming, who among the living or the dead can heal Clare Bishop?”

  Clare started at her own name. It lingered in the still air like smoke.

  Tap, tap. Very slowly, the pointer moved; something behind it was groping for speech. Mr. Knochen named the letters.

  “C-O-L-D.”

  Tap, tap.

  “F-R-I-D-A-Y D-O-N-E.”

  “Cold Friday Done,” said Mr. Knochen.

  “D-I-E-D. Done died,” repeated Mr. Knochen.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “F-I-V-E.” Pause. “T-I-M-E-S. Five times.”

  Nobody breathed. No further messages came forth. The pointer stretched lifeless on the little dial.

  “Well, there you have it,” said Mr. Knochen.

  It’s all a game, thought Helen. A hoax, after all.

  But Hal would not give up. “Is the one we seek among the living or the dead?” he asked.

  The pointer jiggled along eagerly, and Mr. Knochen spelled and muttered under his breath, and when the pointer stopped moving, he repeated the whole message.

  “Cold Friday on Catherine Street.”

  “Catherine Street!” exclaimed Mrs. Clackett. “Why, that’s a block away from the Farmer’s Market.”

  “Is this Friday in the future or the past?” asked Hal. “Can you tell us more?”

  But the pointer grew listless and would not move at all.

  Mr. Knochen looked around the table. “You can’t force them to speak,” he said. “Is there anyone else you would like to ask for?”

  Nobody spoke.

  At last Helen broke the silence. “Mr. Knochen, do the people in the next world grow old?”

  “I do not think they grow old,” said Mr. Knochen.

  “But who takes care of the babies?” asked Helen and realized that she was not addressing him at all but the darkness behind him.

  And he, understanding this, did not answer.

  Clare’s head sank to her chest. Ben looked at her anxiously. She had fallen asleep—at such a time! Helen cupped her hand to her ear, and though they heard nothing yet, Nell and Hal cupped their hands and listened also.

  “Here comes the sandman

  Stealing away on the tips of his toes.”

  Now they all heard it, the voice of a child singing.

  “He sc
atters the sand

  With his own little hand

  In the eyes of the sleeping children.”

  Davy? Nell said to herself and knew it was not Davy.

  “Go to sleep, my baby.

  Close your pretty eyes.

  The mother moon will watch you

  From out the darkening skies.”

  Peace folded its great wings over Helen.

  So you did hear me! So you do remember! She saw herself holding her firstborn, his life seeping away, herself crying, “Come back! Come back!”

  “The little stars are peeping

  to see if you are sleeping.

  Go to sleep, my baby—”

  “Clare!” cried Ben.

  “Go to sleep. Good-night.”

  Clare slept on. The voice of the child was coming from her open mouth.

  Mrs. Lieberman, Mrs. Clackett, and Mr. Knochen left the house in silence, as after a funeral. Improper to ask questions, unseemly to burst out weeping. Nell hurried to her room without saying goodnight, and Helen and Hal went to bed like estranged lovers, each sealed in silence from the other. Clare was crying as Ben carried her upstairs. She had caused this silence, had gone out of herself and brought it back like a sickness. And of her going forth she remembered nothing.

  They sat on the edge of her bed, under her father’s stars, holding hands.

  “You don’t remember anything?” asked Ben.

  She shook her head.

  “You sang about the sandman. Your voice sounded so strange.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Silence.

  “Mr. Knochen is Death,” said Clare suddenly. “That’s who he is. Death.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve met him before. With my Ancestress. I saw him with Goering.”

  “You dreamed you saw him with Goering.” Ben corrected her.

  “No,” said Clare. “I saw Goering’s marble desk and his tapestry—we came in through the tapestry. Death was looking for his silver coin, and Goering offered him a counterfeit—”

  She broke off with a cry. The coin, on its elastic thread, was shining on Ben’s open palm.

  “He knew I had it,” muttered Ben. “Whoever he is, he knew I had it. He’ll be hounding me for it. What good will it do me now?”