Letters to Dead Authors, #12

Dear Herman,

Something is going on in my school that I don’t understand. The students gather in groups that disperse when they see me coming. At night, the halls pullulate with sleepwalkers. One of them fell down the stairs and was found in the morning, bruised but complacent, staring at the ceiling with a bland and dreamy smile. In class, they look at me with that same smile. The dead pour through them without impediment. The ectoplasmoglyphs pile out at ever-shorter intervals as if with growing desperation, like pleas for help or warnings that are falling on deaf ears, and today, two different children addressed me in what seemed to be my mother’s voice.

That at least is nothing special. Lately everyone speaks to me in the voice of my mother. Mr. Medlar, Mr. Whit, the children, the cook, visiting parents, police investigators. For a comprehensive list please consult the rosters archived in my office: second floor, first right, second door, first cabinet, second drawer, first file, A for Administration: an unexceptionable taxon, bespeaking the shining normalcy of our dealings. I insert this remark for the inspectors, but enough of them. Perhaps in any case I will burn this file before. Before what? Say on. My mother! Imagine my profound lack of surprise at hearing her voice issuing from the blue jaw of Detective Munch, rhymes with lunch, badge number 12345 (a little suspicious, that; someone has been careless about the details), who has taken to hanging around, waiting for someone else to die.

I wonder if others hear her? Of course they hear her, absurd question. But do they recognize that inimitable gurgling moan? Probably not, she died before most of them were born, though I am not sure about Munch-rhymes-with-lunch. It is nice to hear from her, of course. I say this, but is it nice? Not at all. Not at this late date. And what surprises me, too, is that she can get a purchase in all those throats, many of them completely untrained, for what purpose is there in all that we do here if any Munch can open his mouth and emit a message from the dead?

Rubbish, it does not surprise me in the least. What is speech but the endless prattle of the dead? Now what would surprise me, really surprise me, would be if someone actually said something new.

I am beginning to suspect that I do not want to explain about the voice of my mother! I must be rattled. Well, you would be rattled too, if a mouse had just issued from the wainscoting, fixed you with an eye like a fresh black drop of blood, and said in your mother’s voice, “Sweet pea, it is getting late.” And if a minute later a moth—I am not completely crazy, I know most moths don’t have mouths, and not one has a voice box. But if in the dry bustle of its body against the lamp glass, you heard the soft clearing of a familiar throat, would you not fumble for the paregoric? It is at the very least surprising, at last, yes, something I can fairly call surprising, that an animal can channel our human dead. Would they not more plausibly channel their own, emitting squeaks first squeaked by an ancient Mus musculus in a little toga? And perhaps I am hearing things, but it seemed to me just now that even the squawk of the desk drawer has something human in it. Go to bed, Sybil.

Next day. It was not my mother. Why would my mother take an interest in a shortage of Graham flour in our kitchen? A bad example, Mother was always trying to feed me. It is, I believe, the principle function of mothers. But that she would concern herself with the national census or the best method of finding the longitude at sea is more doubtful. Henceforth I will refuse to listen.

But say that I’m wrong, say it is her after all: if this is the sort of thing she’s come back for, I will miss nothing by ignoring her. Nothing so juicy as an apology for being so weak-willed as to allow my father to foist me upon a body.

“Foist me upon a body,” that is interesting, for who is this “me”? That a smear of personality builds up around the mouth is well known, but sometimes I suspect myself of recidivist egoism.

Incidentally, I would like to repudiate the suggestion that the principles of my science are the mere sequelae of a morbid melancholia or what you might call a “hypo” with its roots in early childhood. This to say that while I have my humanities, as you wrote of another, they serve my vision. Not the other way around.

Adamantly,

Headmistress Joines