But as I have told you, when the Ghost Chill is upon me, I have to do what lies before me, afraid or not. So I turned the key in the lock, pushed back the heavy door, and walked inside.
There I saw a scene of such complex disorder that I do not know where to begin to describe it. The light was extraordinary, to begin with; it was not the electric glare of the Reference Room, but a wavering blue light, as though I stood in the middle of a gas flame. There was one other living creature in the stacks, and I recognized her with dismay. I cannot reveal her name, for she is well-known to many of you, and I do not wish to involve her in unseemly gossip. I must say, however, that she knows our library well, for she has spent many hours in the stacks, doing some research in Canadian literature for her husband. She stood, tall, straight and unafraid, looking about her in wonder, and as the door slammed into place she turned to look at me.
“You had better step inside this circle if you don’t want to get into trouble,” she said, in the soft, yet deliberate and pleasing accents which tell of a childhood spent in the Hebrides. I saw that she stood in a chalk circle that had been carefully drawn on the floor, and I hastened to her side. She was calm in the midst of the frantic disturbance that surrounded us. I suppose President’s wives are always calm before scenes of despair and tumult; they learn that art at faculty receptions.
“What on earth are you doing?” I demanded.
“I’m afraid I’ve been careless with the books,” she replied, and in her hand I recognized one of Crowley’s volumes, opened at a drawing that looked like a mathematical diagram. “I just wanted to see if this recipe worked as well as the author said it did, and it seems to have caused a little trouble.”
A little trouble! I detest understatement; it always seems to me to be dangerous frivolity. A little trouble! My eyes were now accustomed to the strange light, and I could see that the whole area of the stacks was filled with agitated, insubstantial figures; each one was clear to the eye, but it was also transparent. The floor stood thick with them, leaping, writhing, shoving and jostling as they attempted to stand on their hands and fell to the floor every time with shrieks of despair. Some others danced about on their hands, laughing in derisive triumph, and still others crowded all the space immediately below the ceiling. These were even stranger than the dervishes on the floor, for they were curled into balls, their heads tucked into their stomachs, their legs drawn up toward their bodies, and their hands clasped loosely before them, as they bobbed, somersaulted and turned gently in the air, like hideous balloons. And, most extraordinary circumstance of all, every one of these figures was stark naked.
What does one say under such circumstances? Almost any remark one can think of is unequal to the occasion. Undoubtedly mine was so. “What in the world have you done?” I said.
“Well, I’ve been reading a lot of these Canadian books, getting together material for Claude’s anthology,” she replied. “I got a bit curious about some of the authors—thought what fun it would be to talk to them, and all that—foolishness, I suppose. Then today I came across this book by this man Crowley, and he says it isn’t hard to bring back the dead if you go about it in a respectful and proper manner. For the past two weeks I’ve been wishing I could have a word or two with Sara Jeanette Duncan; there’s a bit in The Imperialist that always sounds to me as if something had been cut out of it and the gap never properly patched, and I thought—”
“You thought you’d get hold of Miss Duncan and ask her,” I interrupted. The leisureliness of the beautiful anthologist’s explanation nettled me.
“Well, Crowley didn’t seem to think there was much to it,” she said.
“I think that before monkeying with Crowley you might have had the courtesy to speak to me,” said I.
“Oh don’t be so pompous,” said she.
Women always think that if they tell a man not to be pompous they will shut him up, but I am an old hand at that game. I know that if a man bides his time his moment will come. “Well,” I said, “if you and Crowley are such a great pair, suppose you explain what has happened.”
“That’s just the difficulty,” she said, with terrible Scottish patience; “I don’t understand what has happened. I did all the right things, and called the name of Sara Jeanette Duncan, and these articles began to appear. Look at them, would you! Did you ever see such a sight in your life? What do you suppose they are?”
This was my moment of triumph. You see, I knew what they were.
It has been a lifelong habit of mine to read myself to sleep. Some people read light books—mystery stories and the like—in bed, but my custom has always been to read works of greater substance before sleeping. And not just to read them once, carelessly, but to read and re-read a group of selected classics over and over again, year in and year out, for in this way they become a part of oneself. For many years a bedtime favourite of mine has been that very famous commentary on the Pentateuch, the Midrash of Rabbi Tanhuma bar Abba, most learned of the fourth century Talmudic mystics and sages. My copy of the Midrash is rather a nice one—a fine tenth century scroll, beautifully illuminated though not particularly suited to reading in bed, because it is fourteen feet long, and as it must be read from right to left this means a lot of winding and rewinding. It is encased at both ends in copper and gold; the rubies on the casing scratch my hands now and then, but I don’t greatly mind. It is a small price to pay for keeping my Hebrew alive. As luck would have it, I had been reading the scroll of Rabbi Tanhuma when the Ghost Chill came upon me.
Of course you have guessed what the explanation was. Not all of you will have read the great Midrash, but certainly you have read Louis Ginzberg’s seven volume compilation of Jewish legends, and will have formed your own conclusions. But Hebrew studies are neglected in the Hebrides and so, for the sake of completeness, I must continue exactly as if you were as much in the dark as was my companion.
She had asked me what I supposed these apparitions were. “Why,” I said, “this is hell, and these are spirits of the dead.”
“Don’t be silly,” she replied, “it isn’t a bit like hell, except perhaps for the noise.”
“What do you suppose hell to be?” said I. “The word merely means a dark and enclosed place, inhabited by spirits. A perfect description of the stacks in Massey College Library. Rabbi Tanhuma says it is indistinguishable from Paradise; both damned and saved pass a few millennia there. I suppose you called up a single spirit, and have received a wholesale delivery; Crowley is a most untrustworthy guide.”
“But who are they?” said she.
“It is only too clear that they are the ghosts of the Canadian authors whose books are here,” said I.
“Then why are they so noisy?” she asked. Every time I think of it, I realize what a wealth of national feeling was compressed into that one enquiry.
“They are clamouring to be reborn,” I explained, for my long acquaintance with Rabbi Tanhuma was at last showing its practical applicability. “Look, you see those who are floating in that strange, curled-up posture; they have placed themselves in the foetal position, so that, when a child is conceived, they are ready at once to take possession of it in the womb, and come to earth again.”
“Whatever for?” said she.
“Perhaps they hope that this time they might be born American authors,” said I.
Our conversation had not been unnoticed by the spirits, who now began to float uncomfortably near us. Ernest Thompson Seton, though foetal in posture, was still clearly recognizable by the obstreperous outdoorsiness of his appearance; one spirit, naked like the rest, was walking on her hands, and it was only by the invincible dignity of her person, back and front, that I recognized Mrs. Susanna Moodie. Robert Ban looked particularly smug, and I knew why; a Junior Fellow of Massey College is making a fullscale study of him, and he was flattered. A floating foetus bumped me—though spectrally—and I turned just in time to see that it was Nellie McClung, avid for rebirth. It was an eerie experience, I can tell you. I had just time to reflect that Canadian authors appeared, on the whole, to have been neglectful of their physiques.