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View of My Employer's Wife...........................................3
View of Kala Murie Stepping Out of Her Black Dress..................24
View of Kala Murie Eating Wedding Cake..............................55
View of Kala Murie and Me Asleep Together...........................80
View of Kala Murie Cutting In on Ghosts............................111
Esquimaux Souls Risen from Aeroplane Wreck.........................129
People, Aghast, Watching a Resuscitation...........................164
Portrait of a Dangerous Man........................................188
View of Kala Murie Drinking Chinese Coffee.........................201
The Verificationist David Harp.....................................224
View of Kala Murie Advising Endless Prayer.........................246
View of Mrs. Sorrel Crying Out, "Merciful Lord—Mr.
Harp's Been Killed!"..........................................267
The Haunting of L..................................................298
View of Kala Murie Taking the Sea Air..............................321
Chapter One
VIEW OF
MY EMPLOYER'S WIFE
In the four-poster bed, my employer's wife, Kala Murie,
lying beside me, the world seemed in perfect order. It
was four o—clock in the morning, March 13, 1927. I almost
drifted off to sleep. But then I felt a jolt of unease. This
was natural to my character. It occurred to me that hidden
deep inside my sense of the world in perfect order was the
fear that the worst was on its way.
It was snowing. The room had light only from the coals
in the fireplace and the streetlamp outside the window.
The world in perfect order. My room at least. I was living
in room 28 of the Haliburton House Inn on Morris Street,
Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Herald for March 12 carried
the headline: TEMP. DROPS TO COLDEST IN 50 YEARS.
There was a photograph of a man wearing a thick overcoat,
face invisible under a knit cap, leaning into the terrible blizzard
that took the city nearly a week to dig out from under.
The caption of that particular photograph was Postal Employee
Dirk Macomb heads home—the right direction? A little humor
in the bleakness.
Also on page 1: the British ambassador to Canada would
stay in Halifax until the weather cleared. The Shipping Page
announced that a Danish steamer, the Lifland, after delivering
sugar for the Woodside Refinery and lying in harbor for a
week, was locked in ice and couldn't set out for Glasgow via
London. Also on the Shipping Page: "The schooner Annabel
Cameron was at first waterlogged but within a day ice-logged,
and the entire crew finally rescued by heroic dory-men
navigating a barrage of needle ice and fog." I remember
thinking that that sentence had a nice ring to it.
More important to my immediate situation, though, was
the brief article on page 11: Expert to Lecture on Spirit Photographs.
That expert was Kala Murie.
Kala and her husband—my employer, Vienna Linn—and
I had arrived at the Haliburton House Inn on January 8. Our
train journey had originated in Churchill, Manitoba, and had
taken a total of nine days, the last leg of which, Winnipeg-Halifax,
was all fits and starts. The blizzard hit mercilessly
hard on that stretch. Half a dozen times the engineers had to
stop the train and with the help of porters hack away at ice.
"You get a thousand miles of snow on a roof," a porter
said—he was clutching a cup of hot tea, his boots caked
with frozen slush—"I've witnessed it cave that roof in."
Vienna and Kala at first occupied room 5 together in the
main building. My room was number 28 in the annex,
a building with a separate entrance next door. But by
early March Kala had moved to room 20. As Kala put it,
their marriage was "a loveless sham—always had been, I suppose."
She could be quite blunt. To describe it in the simplest
of terms, Vienna was a photographer and I was his assistant.
He had persuaded the proprietor of the Haliburton House
Inn, Mrs. Bettina Sorrel, to rent him use of one of the
pantries directly off the kitchen as a darkroom. Ten dollars a
month.
I had been away from Halifax since September 1926.
When I returned, I never once walked past the house where
my mother, aunt, and I lived together, at 127 Robie Street. It
was as if the past would judge me. The house would judge
me. That merely looking at it would somehow cause me to
calibrate my life, and in all aspects of usefulness I would
come up short.
Next to the bed in my room was a square oak table. On
the table was a round doily, a heavy iron candleholder, a
white candle in it. The housekeeper always put a new candle
in, if need be. Otherwise, there were oil lamps set about. The
armoire was nearly six feet in height, a few inches taller than
I am. It was situated across from the bed in the left-hand corner
of the room, next to a window overlooking Morris
Street. For Halifax, Morris Street was steeply inclined. One
late afternoon I looked out and saw a daredevil boy ice-skate
down. The street was glazed in ice. The boy disappeared into
the fog extending up from the harbor.
Also in room 28 was a thickly braided, oval rug stretched
partly under the bed. And a writing desk, with a blotter,
inkwell, drawer full of Haliburton House stationery.
On the evening of March 12 it had taken me half an hour
to get the room's temperature at a comfortable level. That is,
pleasing to Kala. We were talking all along. I finally took the
Bible from its drawer, propped the window open using the
upright Bible, and that did the trick. "Just enough cold air let
in," Kala said. "Thank you. Now the bedcovers have a purpose."
I was not a photographer. I didn't have much talent for
that, or ambition. But all the time I was inventing captions
and thinking hard about captions. On any given day—long
before I ever met Kala and Vienna—I might be, how to put
it, preoccupied by captions. The habit could some days nearly
wear me out; it was pitiable, like talking to myself in captions.
So that, for instance, if I left my raincoat inside on a
rainy day, I would immediately think, Man Who Forgot Raincoat
Standing on Street. Now and then I would startle myself.
One time I stepped up to the counter in an apothecary and
said, "Man with Headache Asking for Help." Stepping back a
few cautious paces, the pharmacist said, "Are you asking for
headache powder, son?" He looked as if he might call the
police at any moment. "Yes—yes," I finally said. "That's exactly
what I meant."
After we'd made love on the night of March 12, I slipped
from the bed and stood by the window and watched Kala
sleep. At one point deep in the night, I held my arms outstretched,
pointed my thumbs upward as if framing a scene
that I was about to photograph, and thought: View of My
Employer's Wife. Why I didn't think something more intimate,
such as View of Kala Murie Sleeping, I don't know. She
slept on her stomach, her dark red hair fanned out on the
pillow, her face all but hidden. She had turned the bedclothes
down to her knees. More than once she'd told me
that the only part of her that ever got cold was her feet and
legs up to her knees, and that it had been that way since
childhood. "I always thought—when I was six or seven—that
my knees were full of ice or something like that. Strange
what a child will think. That my knees kept everything below
them cold. I may have dreamt it, I don't remember."
Though she kept a nightshirt close at hand, Kala slept with
nothing on except for woolen fisherman's socks, sometimes
two pairs. In fact, just before dinner on March 12 I'd accompanied
her through the blizzard to Springs All-Purpose, a
store at the bottom of Morris Street, where Kala purchased
three new pairs of socks. I often took a walk with her. During
one, she asked to see the house I'd lived in, and I quickly
said, "It burnt down. It burnt to the ground." It was a lie that
caused me such remorse that the following week I visited
my mother's snow-covered grave in the Robie Street cemetery
and apologized out loud.
The evening of March 12 had gone like this: Kala and I
had returned from Springs All-Purpose at about five
o'clock. It was already dark. We each set our boots by the
fireplace in the sitting room, to the left of the front door, directly
across the foyer from the dining room. Kala then went
upstairs to her room. Then, at seven o'clock, I met Kala and
Vienna for dinner. I don't know, really, how we managed to
remain so civil, this little ritual of ours. Having dinner together,
I mean. Yet we did maintain a certain civility—for a
time. One night, while I was working side by side with Vienna
in the darkroom, he said, "Despite what's happened between
us three, I do hope you and Kala continue to join me
for dinner. It's not so much to ask, is it, to let a man, for an
hour or so, be absolutely certain of his wife's whereabouts?"
When Vienna asked that, I felt he was being so civil he
was about to explode. He was capable of instilling such tension
in a single sentence, I often felt that the first word of
that sentence was a match lighting a fuse. That as long as he
kept talking, we'd be all right. His silences, however, made
me want to dive under the table.
Anyway, Mrs. Sorrel showed us to our usual windowside
table. She was a tall, slightly stooped woman about sixty years
of age, I would guess, with gray hair pinned up in circular
braids. Always acting the gentleman, Vienna pulled Kala's
chair out for her, waited until she sat down, then sat down
himself. He always sat next to Kala. I sat directly across from
Vienna. Odd how, even in the face of tremendous betrayal
and under insidious restraint, his little rituals kept going.
Holding out a chair, asking, "And how was your walk, dear?"
Once we were all seated, Mrs. Sorrel said, "I hope you
enjoy your dinner, you three. Excellent lamb stew tonight.
And, special treat, we have pearl onions. Mr. Linn, there was
developing fluid on the kitchen floor again. Merely a footprint's
worth, but still— I don't mind you working through
the night most every night, it's just—" She cleared her
throat. "Well then, bon appétit. My son Freddy's waiting tables
as usual." She returned to the kitchen.
"She always surrounds her complaints with niceties," Kala
said. "I admire Mrs. Sorrel's talent with people. I don't have
that talent."
"It's an innkeep's talent," Vienna said. "The position requires
it."
"Still, it seems to come naturally to her," Kala said. "Her
chattiness. The way she looks you in the eye."
"Perhaps the way to put it," Vienna said, "is that your talent
lies with more than one person at a time."
"What do you mean?" Kala said.
"Your lectures. Your ability to stand up and speak in
front of an audience. Your public talent. I'm sure Mrs. Sorrel
couldn't manage that."
We each of us ordered the stew. After Freddy, a sullen
man about thirty years old, half dropped, half set our plates
down, he went outside for a cigarette. In plain view of our
table, he leaned against the wall, flicking ashes, staring at the
snow. "According to the newspaper, these are some of the
coldest nights of the century," Kala said. "And yet look at
Freddy. He's out there with no hat or scarf or gloves. Glutton
for punishment—that's his type, isn't it. That's the type
Freddy is. Poor Mrs. Sorrel."
Kala took a bite of stew, looked at me, and said, "Peter, has
Vienna told you his promising news?"
"What promising news?" I said.
"Quite promising," she said. "My husband's finally received
a reply from his benefactor, Mr. Radin Heur, in London.
Actually, it's from a man who works for Mr. Heur. A
miracle any letter's gotten through in this weather. I simply
can't believe the stinginess of it, Vienna, your not telling Peter
the promising news." She looked directly at me again.
"You see, Peter, Mr. Heur is quite interested in determining—yes
or no—the authenticity of the photograph Vienna
took of the airplane wreck up in Churchill. The one that by
the grace of God I survived. The photograph of the aftermath
of that plane wreck, I mean. I'm sure in your letter you sent
Mr. Heur that you described the photograph beautifully,
dear."
"Kala, I think that's quite enough," Vienna said.
"Mr. Heur intimated a large sum—if the photograph's
verified as authentic," Kala said. "Isn't that how it was put in
the letter?"
"Verified as authentic," Vienna said. "That's precisely how
it was put."
"If there isn't some—manipulation," Kala said. "Some technique
responsible for showing visible souls rising from those
poor shattered Eskimo bodies." She lifted a piece of lamb
with her fork, then let it drop again onto her plate. "And to
think how narrowly I escaped. To think it might have been
my soul rising, Vienna. How dreadful to think it. Really, I'm
losing my appetite. Peter, I would bet Vienna has the letter in
his pocket. Do you have it in your pocket, dear?"
"I happen to, yes," Vienna said.
"And since so much money is at stake—" Kala said.
"How much?" I said.
"My assistant here doesn't need to know business details,"
Vienna said.
"Oh, that's where you're mistaken," Kala said. "Because
you risk Peter feeling left out." She looked at Vienna while
speaking to me. "Peter, the letter mentioned the sum of
twenty thousand dollars Canadian." She now reached across
and took hold of Vienna's wrist, which she often did when
about to defy him. "In the least, enough to get us out of debt
to Mr. Heur, and then some."
"Better if we discuss this later," Vienna said, almost wistfully,
as if it were already a lost cause. Then, guaranteeing to
rile him even more, Kala said, "Peter, be a dear and rub my
feet. They're killing me." She arranged herself slantwise, still
close to the table, but with her legs now set across my lap.
"Don't think anything of this, Vienna. It's only that Peter's at
a more convenient angle."
I was massaging her foot with my left hand. "I thought
you were left-handed," Vienna said in a measured voice.
"Can you manage with my wife's feet and still use your fork
properly?"
I picked up my fork with my right hand and took a
bite, carrot in broth. "Actually, I'm ambidextrous," I said. "I
thought you'd noticed."
"Well, I notice some things and don't others, apparently."
"Look there," Kala said. "Freddy's on to his next cigarette."
But neither Vienna nor I looked at Freddy.
"Perhaps my wife's feet are aching less now, do you suppose?"
Vienna said.
I had my hand along Kala's thigh, and she said, "And since
it is a fake. Since Esquimaux Souls Risen from Aeroplane Wreck
is a complete fraud. An excellent title, by the way, Peter.
Brilliant. Vienna, you should be grateful. Especially nice
touch, the antiquated use of the French Esquimaux." This
turn in the conversation seemed to pique Kala's appetite;
she took three quick bites of stew. "Anyway, since the photograph's
a complete sham, it's all the more interesting—No.
No, that's not the word. Perhaps nerve-racking better fits
the situation. Nerve-racking is more to the point. It's all
the more nerve-racking that Mr. Radin Heur is suggesting
that he send his very own personal photographic expert—what's
his name again, dear, the man who actually wrote the
letter?"
Vienna shifted in his chair, took a sip of wine; his entire
countenance relaxed when he now saw me press the loaf of
bread to the breadboard with one hand, pick up a knife and
cut a slice of bread with the other. "Bread, anyone?" I said.
"Not for me, thank you," Kala said. She turned, sat stiffly
facing Vienna. I glanced down and saw her slip her shoes on.
Vienna didn't reply about the bread. He reached into his
woolen suit coat's pocket. He always dressed formally for
dinner—at all times, really. He took out the letter, unfolded
it, scanned down the page, and said, "David Harp."
"David Harp. David Harp," Kala said. "Harp's a world-renowned
verifier. Verificationist. That's the word he used to
describe himself, a verificationist." She reached her knife over
to a separate plate containing slices of tomato, cut a slice into
three parts, then impaled all three parts on her fork and ate
them. "He works for the British Museum, Mr. Harp does.
He verifies photographs all day long, isn't that so, dear?" Kala
hovered her fork over the remaining tomatoes but denied
herself any more. "Oh, just read the thing, Vienna."
So Vienna read the one-page letter:
Dear Mr. Vienna Linn,
Your letter was offered for my expert opinion, under
circumstances separate from my work at the
British Museum. I read it with great interest.
I could even imagine a benefactor offering as
much as £20,000, should circumstances warrant.
In my capacity as independent verificationist, then,
I shall arrive in Halifax on the liner Winifredian, March
18. I shall, as per your suggestion, register under my
name at the Haliburton House Inn. I hope to then begin
my work as soon as possible.
With all professional interest,
David Harp
"Notice he doesn't actually mention the name Radin
Heur," Kala said. "But he works for Mr. Heur. This David
Harp is the one Mr. Heur relies on. To determine the truth
of things. To say fake or not fake."
"He'll see it's a fake right away," I said.
"The question is, what purpose might it serve David
Harp to say it isn't," Vienna said. "Twenty thousand dollars
split two ways, for example. If Mr. Heur relies on David
Harp to the extent I believe he does, then he won't ask for a
second opinion."
"What do you have to lose, except, eventually, your life?"
Kala said.
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. Through the window
Freddy saw that we were done eating. He came back
inside and cleared away our plates. He smelled as if cigarette
smoke had frozen on his clothes.
"Well then," Vienna said. He wiped his mouth with his
cloth napkin, set the napkin down, pushed back from the
table, and stood. "I'm off for a drink with my newfound
friend, Sergeant Maitlin, of the esteemed Halifax Police Department.
Where else would I be off to? And later there's
work to be done in the darkroom. Sleep well, dearest."
He altogether avoided looking at me. Yet he addressed me:
"I won't absolutely require your assistance tonight, Peter,
but as you know, work has piled up. It's up to you, naturally.
I'd understand if you chose to retire for the rest of the
evening."
As if to fend off the slurring effects of the wine, he said all
of this slowly. It all but made my skin crawl, the civility. He
leaned over and kissed Kala on her forehead, took a sip of
wine, then took along the half-filled glass as he headed toward
the stairs.
Kala and I sat until we saw Vienna leave the Haliburton
House Inn. "Shall we have some Goldwasser?" she said. It
was a Polish liqueur. I'd never heard of Goldwasser until Kala
introduced me to it. "This stuff is very useful on cold
nights" she'd said. We were in my room in the Churchill
Hotel. "And so many nights in Canada are cold, aren't they,
in one way or another. Except now, here, with us together."
Goldwasser was slightly bitter, cool to the tongue. A sediment
of gold flakes slid about the bottom of its squarish bottle.
When we arrived at the Haliburton House Inn, Kala had
bought a dozen bottles and asked Mrs. Sorrel to secure them
in her office.
"I'll go in and get a bottle," Kala said. "I'll bring it to your
room."
By ten o'clock the candle was guttered, the fireplace logs
burnt down to cinders. Snow had begun to fall heavily. Kala
had three shot glasses of Goldwasser in quick succession.
Once I'd gotten the room at a comfortable temperature, she
slipped out of her clothes. She sometimes allowed me to undress
her, but in either case, she let me know her preference.
When making love, Kala insisted I look into her eyes, and in
the midst of it, I felt I had little choice. Kala was direct in her
appetites, is how I thought of it. Direct in what she wanted
and in saying it without words. Afterward, right away almost,
Kala would lean over, press an absentminded kiss onto
either of my hands, pick up her leatherbound copy of The
Unclad Spirit: Chronicles of Spirit Photography, and begin to
page through it with great concentration. She'd study the
photographs, muttering favorite passages under her breath.
For over five months now I'd seen this was a book Kala
returned to the way others might the Bible.
The Unclad Spirit was published in 1882. The book's author
was Georgiana Houghton. She was Kala's mentor and
model of intelligence and strength of character. Kala called
her "Miss Houghton." Over the months I came to know
Miss Houghton's passions for spirit photography—her beliefs.
Kala would read long passages—sometimes entire chapters—to
me in bed. The Unclad Spirit consisted of Miss Houghton's
journals, letters, anecdotes, other assorted entries based on
years of investigation into the phenomenon of spirit photography.
I'd never heard of a spirit photograph until I'd met
Kala.
A spirit photograph is one in which someone whom
Miss Houghton called the "uninvited guest" was present.
On the occasion, say, of a wedding, funeral, birthday, family
reunion, baptism, no one actually sees or speaks to this
person—the person isn't even vaguely recalled. Yet when the
official photograph of the event is developed, there he is, or
there she is—the uninvited guest.
In her well-traveled researches, Miss Houghton discovered
that the uninvited guest was seldom a complete
stranger. In fact, most often it was an estranged wife or husband,
a cousin, an aunt or uncle, any of whom had done
something so unforgivable they'd been forbidden all contact
with family. However, it wasn't always a relative. When
describing the appearance of a wife's secret lover in her
wedding-day photograph—she was photographed standing
alone under an elm tree—Miss Houghton wrote: "The illicit
paramour now attended the wedding in perpetuity."
Eventually Kala read what she called the human interest
stories in The Unclad Spirit to me so often that I practically
had them memorized, which would've pleased her no end. I
once commented that people back in the 1880s could be
pretty merciless, kicking a brother or cousin or sister out of a
family like that.
"Only back then?" she replied.
I have Kala's copy of The Unclad Spirit in front of me. I
quote from page 47:
Alas, even if the photograph is burned, its ashes scattered
to the wind, still, the memory of actually seeing
the uninvited guest often long persists and can drive a
person quite or near to madness. I myself have interviewed
people broken by this experience and therefore
in hospital.
At the end of The Unclad Spirit is a glossary. Miss
Houghton had invented a vocabulary to define all kind of
situations relating to spirit photographs. For example, the
agony caused by seeing an uninvited guest—the sheer torment
of it—she called "a haunting." The complete definition
read: "Haunting. Wherein a mental image never leaves the person
alone with peace-of-mind."
Halfway down page 33—let me find it—a woman named
Martha Ritner offers her own testimony, which Miss Houghton
calls an epitome of a haunting:
My sad yet unspeakably loathsome cousin, Franklin
Ritner, appeared in a photograph taken on the occasion
of my fifty-fifth birthday. There he was, just to
the right of my beloved husband. However, Franklin
had died two years earlier. I tore to shreds the photograph
the moment I saw it. Now, ever since, when I
wake up in the morning, deplorable cousin Franklin
wakes, as it were, with me. When I sit down for
dinner, he sits with me. When I say my evening
prayers, godless Franklin listens in; I often pray he'll
disappear. Franklin is a constant—should I read aloud
a letter to a friend in order to hear if it sounds as sincere
as I meant it, I have, therefore, against my will,
read it aloud to Franklin. I very much love writing letters,
but now feel I must refrain—at my desk, Franklin
looks over my shoulder. The letter becomes an indiscretion.
Kala's eyes always teared up when she read this passage. "I
suppose Martha's life could've turned out worse, though,"
she said. "Because finally she did come back to her senses.
She carried on bravely. She finally got cousin Franklin out of
her mind."
Already for five or six years by the time I first met Kala
on September 11, 1926, in Churchill, she had earned a living—annually
a pittance, with the occasional windfall—composing
what she called "dramatic presentations" based
on the writings of Georgiana Houghton. She usually performed
these in private homes for small gatherings of spiritualists,
groups like the Progressive Club of Toronto, whose
membership also held séances.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE HAUNTING OF L.
by Howard Norman.
Copyright © 2002 by Howard Norman.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be
reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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THE HAUNTING OF L.