Poe must die

TWENTY-FOUR

Jonathan,dressed in the white robe and beard of Paracelsus, handed Mrs. Viola Sontag a highly polished piece of steel exactly the size of a saucer.

“The mirror of Solomon,” he said to the horse-faced woman, who wore a black veil to hide skin pitted by smallpox. “With it you can divine the future.”

She took it from him gently, using both hands, inhaling softly and seeing her reflection in it with brown eyes kept fashionably bright by squeezing orange juice into them nightly before going to bed. This beauty custom, long favored by Spanish women, was now popular among certain wealthy and well-travelled New York women. Jonathan found it idiotic, since the juice burned the eyes and stained the pillowcase. But then, so much about the widow Sontag was idiotic.

Caught up in the enthusiasm for spiritualism now sweeping New York, and also to amuse her friends during dinner parties, Mrs. Sontag, forty-nine and as rich as she was thin and ugly, wanted to learn to read the future. Jonathan had agreed to accept her for a series of sittings, all of which had been lucrative for him while filling Mrs. Sontag’s boring life with something of interest. She was his first sitting this morning and as usual, paid in gold, in advance.

Jonathan slowly placed his white-gloved hands down on the black marble table. “You must slice the throat of a white pigeon and with its blood write the names Jehovah, Adonay, Metatron and Eloym at the four corners of the mirror.”

“Yessss.” Mrs. Sontag hissed through loose false teeth, as pleased with the piece of steel as if it had been a new Christmas toy.

“Keep it in a clean white cloth.”

“Oh yessss. Yessss.”

“Daily gaze upon the sky the first hour after sunset and when you see a new moon, repeat the chant I have written out for you. It commands the spirits to obey and aid you in reading the future from the mirror you now hold.”

He could see her large teeth through the veil like marble columns dimly visible in the night. The woman was hideous, insisting upon wearing crinolines everywhere, those corded petticoats lined with horsehair and reinforced with straw. From her servants Jonathan had learned that she also wore several muslin petticoats over that, meaning from the hips down she was several yards wide. Fortunately Jonathan’s home had large doors. During the sitting, Mrs. Sontag sat alone on a couch, covering it with her tentlike skirt and petticoats.

She clutched the steel mirror to her flat chest. “Oh Dr. Paracelsus, I cannot tell you the excitement that I feel! I cannot wait to follow your instructions.”

“Follow them carefully. The prayer, the perfume I have given you-”

“To be sprinkled upon burning coals as I say the prayer, yesss?”

“Yes. Then breathe upon the mirror, uttering that name you are never to reveal but are to speak only as so instructed.”

“Yesssss.”

“Make the sign of the cross upon the mirror for the next forty-five days without missing a single day.”

“Oh yessss. Will Solomon himself appear to me?”

He has not as yet appeared to me, you brainless bitch. Why should he reveal himself to you? Jonathan folded his hands and closed his eyes. “Who can say.”

“May I continue my sittings with you during those forty-five days?”

He nodded. And keep the gold flowing from your bony hands.

Later, Jonathan spoke to Sarah Clannon. “Five hundred in gold for aiding that ridiculous woman to become even more of a fool than she is. Well, to business. You will not appear to Lorenzo Ballou in a dream tonight. He is to be denied your body, which so far he has lustfully accepted as that of his sluttish dead wife. I want you to become Virginia Poe once more. Dear Eddy needs another jab from the sharp needle of personal agony.”

Sarah Clannon spooned strawberries and champagne into her small, sensuous mouth. She had no questions. If Jonathan felt she should know the reason for the change, he would tell her.

He did. “Rachel Coltman is more drawn to Mr. E. A. Poe than she is willing to admit.”

“Love?”

“Perhaps the dawn of it. Perhaps not. Her feelings for her dead husband reflect as much guilt as affection. Survivors often feel guilty at merely being alive when a loved one has died. Guilt or imagined love, both are enough to create a state of mind in which she sees herself as passionately involved with her dead husband when in truth she is not. It would not take too much prodding from Mr. Poe to get Rachel to place herself more in his camp than mine. Neither of them know this. However I know and I cannot afford to have it happen. Find Mr. Poe and appear to him as darling Sissy. Let it be one more reason for him to believe that the dead do indeed live. Damage his mind a little more so that he aids me in obtaining the Throne of Solomon.”

Sarah Clannon, in black corset, black stockings and lace boots, bit a strawberry in half. “It is enjoyable to disturb the mind of Poe. It is such an easy task.”

Jonathan stood naked in front of a long mirror, shaving with a straight razor but without soap or water. “His life has not been a joy. Father deserted the family when Poe was a babe. Odd man, dear pater. Lawyer turned actor. Bad lawyer, worse actor. Could never accept criticism, much of which was deservedly negative. Always threatening violence to his critics, a trait continued somewhat in dear Eddy.”

Jonathan shaved gently under his nose. “Mother dies when Edgar is two. Then there was brother William Henry, eventually to become an alcoholic and die of it, while sister Rosalie still exists in the prison of insanity, a fear our Poe is never without. When mother dies, he is sent to the household of John Allan, a rather cold and penny-pinching foster father. Eddie and John will not like each other and throughout his life Eddy will avoid using the name Allan, preferring the initial A.”

Jonathan leaned back to admire himself, running a hand over his smooth cheeks. “John Allan, businessman, wanted to be a writer. No talent. Possibly jealous of Edgar who did have talent and intelligence. Takes Edgar to England for five years, where the lad is exposed to culture, history, esthetics of one sort of another. Back in America, dear Eddy with high opinion of himself, attends school in Richmond, Virginia, where he has to defend himself against southern aristocrats who insult him upon learning his natural parents were travelling players.”

Jonathan snapped his razor shut and continued to stare at himself in the mirror. “Death, desertion, snobbery, criticism, a stone-hearted Scotsman for a foster father and a brother and sister who were of questionable mental health. His sadness started early. Allan beat the boy once or twice, never an endearing trait in a parent and I speak from experience.”

He walked across the room, kissed Sarah Clannon, removing a champagne soaked strawberry from her mouth. “Poe was born sad, has lived most sadly. He has appeared on stage himself, you know. Fairly skilled. He has fought a duel, been buried alive, that by mistake and it is a most horrid story which I shall tell you at another time. In college he gambled, lost, and father Allan refused to pay his debts. For that reason, Poe left college and existed in the army as Edgar A. Perry. Made sergeant major. Was good.”

Jonathan picked up a strawberry with his fingers. “He is something of a liar, sad to say. Lied about going to Europe to fight in the Greek revolution. On occasion, he has stolen the work of other men and used it in his own and one can only look with narrowed eyes upon his having married his first cousin Virginia when she was merely twelve and he twenty-six. But for all of that he is a hard working poet, newspaperman, critic and writer of highly imaginative short pieces. He is ever in need of love and sympathy and his drunkenness is easily caused by as little as a half glass of spirits. His reputation as a guzzler is undeserved. I am familiar with him because he is important to me in my quest for the Throne of Solomon. I also find him interesting in a bizarre way.

“He has failed, primarily because he is a man out of time. This is a barbaric, uncultured nation with no use for talent such as Poe’s. He has fought the good fight, as the bible says, with nothing to show for it except monumental bitterness. Rachel is his last chance and I fear that once she becomes fully aware of this, she may succumb to pity, which when combined with her growing affection would give Poe total power over her and I must assume this would mean the end of my securing Justin Coltman’s body.”

Sarah Clannon licked a strawberry, then placed it in Jonathan’s mouth. “I shall touch his mind once more. Virginia will come to him tonight.”

“Always in darkness, my love. Always, always in darkness. Meager light aids mystery and prevents precise identification. I killed my father in darkness, you know.”

“Yes.” She’d heard the story before, but no matter. Let Jonathan tell it once more. At times he told it so intensely that he frightened her.

Jonathan sat down, his eyes staring at nothing. “He was a travelling player, merely passing through Rouen on his way to Cherbourg and the ship that would take him from France to his native England. My father. A magician, a sorcerer, a madman. He raped my mother and went away. She was only fifteen.”

He opened the razor, gently laying the flat of the blade against his throat. “Raped her and went away. I was ten when I finally found him and he never knew who I was. For three years I travelled Europe with him, learning the black arts from him, finally surpassing him as I was destined to do. It pleased me that he was aware of my knowing more about the world of darkness than did he. My mother. When he, when he … ”

Jonathan looked at Sarah Clannon. “He had destroyed her mind, though he never knew it. His pleasure was all that mattered, nothing more. Once we spoke of France and of Rouen and he told me that it was the town in which Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for witchcraft. An illiterate mystic who died for the political ends of men more mad than she could ever have become.

“In my mother’s madness, she knew me. Knew me. And she was all I ever loved and I killed my father because of her. In darkness. Killed him in darkness and I never told him that my mother, in her insanity, had also burned to death in Rouen, as had Joan the mystic maid.”

Sarah Clannon took his hands in hers, as he said, “I have travelled the world over and I have done more than the mind of man can imagine or dread, but I have not shed tears since that dark night when I killed him.”

He held up his hands. “Not even when these were cut off as offerings.”

She looked at the spaces where his fingers should have been.

Quickly, he grabbed her wrists, jerking her closer to him. His grip was painful and she was frightened.

“I did not weep for him, you know. I wept for her, for my mother.”

Sarah Clannon nodded.

Jonathan said, “Evil be thou my good.” His eyes pleaded with her. “I have nothing else in my life now but evil.”

She took him in her arms. Jonathan her obsession. Jonathan be thou my good, my all.

She held him close to her and they stayed that way for a time.