So it was all arranged over my objections. Sophie and Father would move into the rooms behind the shop on Haight Street. Erika and I would live at the Robertson mansion. On our way there in their chauffeur-driven car, Erika scolded. “This is exactly what we were hoping for, what Norman said could happen. Owning nothing, charging nothing, we end up living in a mansion in Pacific Heights. And you almost spoiled it. Don’t tell me you have suddenly developed a conscience. You are not quite able to afford that particular luxury yet !”
She was right. I suffered pangs of conscience, at least where the Robertsons were concerned. They were trusting and kind, frequently telling me that they thought of me as a daughter—not a common thing for rich people to say about a girl of mixed race and dubious family. But my feelings went beyond guilt for my long-term deception of them, went beyond questions of whether or not, as Erika insisted quite logically, they wanted to be deceived.
There had been settling upon me, slowly, like a million separate flakes of snow, the cold weight of the longings of all the people who came to hear me imitate a twelfth-century Jew or a prehistoric priestess bringing messages of eternal life. While feeding their longing, I had become infected with it. But mine was a longing without hope. I knew all the tricks for preying upon the longing of others. I gave spurious meaning to their lives; I knew there was none. I believed only fools, gullible people, held any hope that meaning existed. Yet the longing for meaning grew in me. I could never mention it to anyone, not even Norman. I was too ashamed of it, as I had been ashamed of my grief at losing my mother. All I could do was to try to forget it during an occasional weekend with him. (He would telephone the Robertson house, name a date, and I would drive to Half Moon Bay in a car borrowed from the Robertsons.) Those weekends were the only relief I had until the next big break came, in the person of Willy Knauss.
He called himself Doctor Willy Knuass, though he was not a medical doctor. He was a practitioner of mesmerism and magnetism, a theory of healing based on alleged exchange of electricity as the hands of a sensitive mesmerist were passed over (not touching) a body. This theory was losing followers as more became known about electricity and the word lost some of its magic. (All the houses I visited now had electric lights.) Willy Knauss still believed in mesmerism and considered himself an unusually powerful healer. Persistently mesmerizing and magnetizing at every opportunity, he was ostracized by both medical and religious authorities in his native Switzerland. That he was never legally prosecuted he owed to the fact that his family was rich and powerful, owners of a factory which made instruments for astronomers.
To escape the ridi ule (and to the great relief of his family) he began a trip around the world that had lasted more than three years and was now coming to an end. Some travelers search for art treasure or uncharted rivers; Doctor Willy searched for the occult in all its manifestations. He gathered tappings and tippings, keeping a diary of every sound and sight. He collected ectoplasm, pages of automatic writing, spirit photos. He carried on long conversations with spirits through mediums and was especially delighted when the spirit of one of his persecutors (he had already outlived a few of them) came through to apologize for his rational skepticism. He believed everything he saw and heard, and on the few occasions when a trick was so clumsy that even he could not accept it, he forgave the medium. Like Sophie, he believed that only in an atmosphere of faith could the true messages come through. Only in an atmosphere of patience and forgiveness could a medium resist the temptation to cheat, secure enough to wait for the true spiritual message.
He was over fifty when he came to San Francisco: He had already been to New York, Mexico City, Tokyo, Quebec, Sydney, Peking, Vancouver, Manila, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Lily Dale (a spiritualist summer camp in New York). Everywhere he went he took careful notes for a book he was writing about the work of the great mediums of the world. If his persecutors stopped him from getting a publisher, he would publish the book himself.
Doctor Willy had been married, but his wife had left him and lived alone in Paris. There were no children. He had been particularly fond of a dead sister, Greta. He seemed attracted to boys, but was too shy to make any advances. He drank a great deal of beer, but enjoyed wine, ate well, loved seafood. He passionately hated war and cruelty to animals. He believed that orientals possessed the deepest psychic abilities, but had so far been disappointed in his travels to Japan and China. He believed in reincarnation, yet considered himself a Christian. Christian churches were persecutors of true Christianity, which, he said, expressed itself among the spiritualists who devoted their lives to connecting this world with the next. He spoke German, French, English, and Italian. He had been told by two mediums that in a previous life he had suffered a violent death. He was quite free of race prejudice, and strawberries gave him hives.
All these things and many more I knew about Doctor Willy before I met him because he was, of course, written up at some length in the “blue book,” which Erika said might finally reward our investment. He had been in San Francisco for a month, during which his movement from one medium to another had been traced, recorded, transmitted, so that—to use his own words—“the increase of phenomena since my arrival approaches the miraculous.”
On a Monday night in late August we were invited to a very grand house where I had held two sittings already. We rode with the Robertsons in their car. They seemed tense. I needed no psychic powers to guess that they had been told Doctor Willy Knauss might be there. It was Doctor Willy’s habit to use a false name, then to be astounded when a medium told him things about himself “which she could not possibly know, since she had no idea who I truly was.” Of course, every subscriber to the “blue book” had memorized his appearance and his itinerary.
As usual we arrived an hour late to make our high class clients wait for us. We walked through a front garden on a brick path, up three stairs to a wooden door—all these mansions had massive front doors—and were brought into a wood-paneled entry as large as most houses. The sitting would be held in the north parlor, as usual, to our left. I let the maid take my cape. Then, with Erika leading the way, walked between the Robertsons into the parlor, which was a little smaller than the entry, almost cosy, with thick oriental rugs and a cheerful fire in the marble fireplace.
Beside the host and hostess were about fifteen people I had seen there before. Standing near the fireplace was a round, soft man in a black suit whom I recognized at once as Willy Knauss. He stepped forward, made a little bow, and introduced himself as Mr. Long. He had a sweet smile with a sad droop at the edges. I liked him at once; he was a kind man, I could tell. At the same time I was on my guard because it is not always easy to fool a truly decent, simple person.
I sat cross-legged on the rug in front of the fireplace. Most of the others sat in chairs, except for Doctor Willy and Mrs. Robertson, who took pillows and lowered themselves to the floor with me. We sat for a long time without much happening. It had become my practice never to plan ahead what I would “see” or say, which control would come through, or what message I would give to each client. I had learned that I performed best when I kept my mind blank before a sitting, then spoke whatever came to me, inventing, letting one word lead to another.
That night I was tense, and so was everyone else. All knew that I was being tested, though I wasn’t supposed to know. I had the advantage of knowing that and also of knowing that Doctor Willy was not really the rigorous investigator the others believed him to be. Still, he had been run through every trick of the trade dozens of times, and I was determined not to be an ordinary addition to his collection.
After a bit of Greek from my priestess control, I was silent, stuck, and beginning to get a headache. I frowned and put my hand to my head, deciding to dramatize that pain, following my system of making do with whatever came to me. I groaned and closed my eyes.
“What is it, dear?” said Erika, with the protective tone she assumed before an audience. “You’re in pain!”
I nodded and groaned again. Then, with sudden inspiration I stood up, opened my eyes, looked around as if puzzled, then closed them again