My love for my daughter is at the heart of this story. My delightful daughter. My sunshine. I know every father says this, but she truly was special. Even in this world she was visibly living a higher life. I had seen her soul. It had touched me. In this world of misery, suffering and horrible injustice, Didine was my own wonder, my own happiness. And in Jersey, she became my own madness.
After someone you love so dearly dies, you are absent from the world for a time, living only loss. The pain of existing without the other is too hard to bear. Only slowly do you return to life. To being hungry, not just eating for sustenance. To pouring a glass of good wine, not just drinking to quench a thirst. To hearing the words of those around you and answering. To being stirred into having indignation at the statesmen, at the clergy, at the government. One returns slowly. And then one dawn as you watch the sun rise, you realize your daughter is dead but you are still alive.
What I didn’t know then was that an ache, as steadfast as my love, would remain. My grief for Didine is a living thing. My longing to see her again has never abated, never lessened. I never stopped yearning to hear her speak, to watch her eyes fill with laughter, to feel her lean over my shoulder to read what I am writing. Oh, if only I could just once more engage in conversation with my daughter about my ideas-my ideas that were hers also.
For all these years I have ached to dream about her just once. To have her visit me even behind my closed eyes. I prayed to the terrible God who had taken her to allow me to see my daughter again. Even if only to say good-bye. To apologize to her for not being there when she was buried. To tell her I grieved even more because of that. I prayed to him who is not kind or just to let me glimpse where she was so I might know she had passed through his gate and was safe in heaven’s arms. Not even in sleep was I allowed a visitation with my dead.
So it was that shortly after our own arrival in Jersey, on the anniversary of Didine’s death, my childhood friend, the playwright Delphine de Girardin, arrived from Paris for a weeklong visit. Along with all sorts of delicacies and delights she brought with her a devilish sort of alchemy. And nothing has been the same since.
My daily rituals in Jersey are not that different from what they were in Paris. We dine en famille most nights. Usually a simple meal of fish, vegetables, fresh bread, wine and then a pastry. Our cook here is every bit as good as the woman we employed in France but younger and more comely. Caroline’s tarte framboise is as delicious as her lips, which she has occasionally allowed me to taste.
For Delphine’s first dinner, Caroline had made a feast that began with a fine lobster soup and ended with a perfect chocolate mousse. All as superior as you would find at Grand Véfour in Paris.
No one referred to Didine’s death anniversary as we ate. My wife and I lived with our loss daily; we did not need to honor this one day above any other. And there was no reason to spoil anyone else’s evening with morbid talk. Instead, Delphine filled us in on the gossip from Paris. How our friends were. Who had moved to the country. Which plays had succeeded, which had failed. The affairs of the heart and the scandals. Which new restaurants had opened. Which had closed.
And then she told us about a craze that was sweeping the city: a parlor game called talking tables that allowed you to speak to the dead.
The single word echoed in the dining room. Did Delphine notice how my wife stole a glance at me? How I looked away after seeing the pain in Adele’s eyes? How my son Charles drank too quickly from his goblet. How his brother, François-Victor, cleared his throat. And how my youngest, also Adele, named after her mother, looked down in her lap, tears immediately flowing from her lowered eyes.
If Delphine was aware of our reactions, it wasn’t obvious to me. Breathlessly, she continued on, describing the séances she’d attended and the spirits who had actually visited the assembled guests.
I had always been curious about the mind’s ability to reach beyond its bony confines into the beyond. One of my experiments had led me to form the French Hashish Club with fellow authors Balzac and Dumas. The sweet cannabis did in fact produce dreams beyond anything I’d imagined. But I’d felt I was traveling further inside my own mind instead of venturing outside it. And that was what I yearned for, to leave the narrow boundaries of my own reality.
I also experimented with Friedrich Anton Mesmer’s provocative theories. The scientist believed our bodily fluids link us to each other and the universe and that their balance affects our mental and physical health. Firsthand, I’d witnessed magnets recalibrating my son François-Victor’s fluids and restoring him when he was ill. I’d even allowed an expert in mesmerism to attempt to put me into a trance, hoping I would emerge more perceptive to the point of being able to divine the future. Alas, I never reached the state for which I yearned.
Now Delphine’s le spiritisme sounded promising. The father of this new movement, Hippolyte-Léon Dénizart-Rival, who now called himself Allan Kardec, believed we can communicate with the dead. He claimed we live plural lives. That we have been here before and will return again. In his talks, he explained that he’d learned about reincarnation during his lifetime as a Celtic Druid and then in another lifetime in ancient Greece when he knew Pythagoras.
The man’s heritage struck me as a curious coincidence and I told Delphine about the hundreds of Celtic ruins here in Jersey. “It’s common while taking a stroll in the woods or on the beach to stumble upon remains of their temples and graves.”
She asked if I would escort her the next afternoon on a tour, and after I agreed she continued telling us about the séances she’d attended in Paris.
“But how do you contact the spirits through les tables tournantes?” my wife asked.
“We choose a medium, who places his or her hands on a small three-legged stool you put atop the table. When the stool is ready, the spirits speak by tapping the stool’s legs in code. Speaking to the dead,” she said, “is in vogue.”
We all bombarded her with questions, which she answered patiently. “There’s really no way to explain it,” she finally said. “It would be better to let me show you. We can attempt a séance ourselves.” She looked around the table. “Yes?”
Everyone but my wife was enthusiastic.
“Bien,” Delphine said, “there are six of us; at least one of us will have the ability to make a connection.”
The idea seemed harmless enough. I was intrigued but doubtful. It sounded too playful, too frivolous a way to communicate with the spirit world. And so it began.
That first night, I did not sit at the table myself but watched as each member of our group attempted to bring forth a spirit from the four-legged stool. No one succeeded, but all were gripped with the desire. Now that they had tasted the possibility, determination had set in. So the following day, after our tour of some of the island’s strange monuments, Delphine asked if I’d take her shopping so she could purchase a smaller séance stool. Perhaps, she told me, our square one was the impediment.
But when we tried again, the new, smaller, three-legged version didn’t solve the problem.
After four days, bored with the game, I encouraged everyone to give it up for the folly it was.
“Just one more try,” my eldest son pleaded. “This time, Papa, you come sit at the table too, and I’ll put my hands on the stool. That’s the only combination we haven’t tried.”