Revised 08-01-19
John Roth's grandmother had been a wild flapper during the Roaring Twenties -- an orphan born out of wedlock to a mysterious great-grandmother, one whose name was not known. John often wondered about his roots in childhood and as a young man worked hard in his spare time to fill in what was a short and very sketchy family tree.
John studied genealogy books to learn how to research difficult cases such as his. He eventually went to the town where his grandmother had grown up in an orphanage, but they would tell him nothing until he bribed an official. What he found out from the sealed records was that the woman who had left his grandmother Rose at the foundling home in 1906 had called herself "Maddie Smith" and had given a San Francisco address.
The city was close by, and so he soon traced the address to the old Barbary Coast district. There John discovered that the original building at the address was still standing, preserved as a historical site. But anyone would have realized that this was no home -- it was a place of work. The sign outside revealed that it had been a high-toned bordello whose operation had ended with the 1906 earthquake. It was not currently open for tours, being temporarily shut down for repairs. After a visit to the managing office at city hall, John received permission to explore the edifice, accompanied by a tour guide who knew the very property well.
The edifice that had been called home by Maddie Smith turned out to be a priceless time capsule from an era of opulence, extravagance, and sin, when men were dashing rogues, women seductive sirens, and the well off lived for ostentatious pleasure.
Had his ancestor actually been a made there, or was she an employee in such an establishment, a fille de joie? John should have felt embarrassed thinking that, but instead he reacted with amusement and a bit of pride. It came as a relief to learn that his unknown ancestor had not been some uneducated immigrant servant, nor had she been a drab turn-of-the-century housewife. It seemed like a positive thing that she could have been a flashy bad girl, one who had perhaps liked handsome men and pretty things.
As he and the guide went through the house, a strange certainty developed in his breast that Maddie must have been very attractive to have found work in an upscale brothel. It came as no surprise that a harlot enjoying the high life would have given up her child for adoption. John wondered what what Madeline Smith would have thought if she could have only knew that she would become an important branch on her family tree. John himself thought that his life was unexciting, but something must have been responsible for the red-hot had blood that seemed to animate most of the family. Maybe Grandma Rose had inherited her wild ways from having a shady lady for a mother. With that possibility in mind, John closed his eyes and meditated on his exotic surroundings, trying to get the feel for the gay and wicked lifestyle that his progenitor had obviously flourished in.
In all his genealogical research, John had never visited any building with such a powerful ambiance. The past seemed to vibrate in every drape, in every piece of furniture, the very paper on the walls. Even the glittering sunlight on the windows evoked a kind of magic. He found himself guessing -- usually correctly -- what was around each corner. He got such strong impressions from what he saw that he started thinking about writing a novel about his fantasies about Maddie Smith. It seemed amazing that John felt such an identification about how cat-house girls lived so long ago. John felt started to fantasize that he had actually visited this bordello in the past, perhaps as one of its rakish customers reincarnated.
Coming to an upstairs door, something made him stop in front of it. John guessed -- knew -- what he would find behind the door that seemed to beckon him. He lifted the latch and saw that he had been right! It was a colorful bedroom done in the late Victorian style, preserved and renovated by the Historical Society. He then made the leap of faith, though he couldn't say exactly why. In his gut he felt that this had been the very room where Great-granny once Maddie lived and worked. In fact, if she had been been occupying up until the hour of the quake, she would have been the very last person to dwell there. That might have been why he felt closer to Maddie inside that room than he felt anywhere else inside the cat-house.
When the guide went off to the restroom, John slyly checked out the closet, filled with the daring clothes of a sex-obsessed era. Saloon girls in Technicolor Westerns had worn similar garments and he tried to imagine the living, breathing girl who could have done these colorful designs justice. It filled him with pride to think that his own great-grandmother could have been that very girl.
It was then that John noticed the glint of a small bejeweled pin on a bed-stand. The odd thing was that it was laying in the shadows, a place where there should have been no light for it to reflect. It actually seemed to bit giving off it own light. Was it part of the exhibit? If so, why hadn't it been stolen any one of the many people who must have toured this room?
He picked it up; the jewelry felt warm and made his fingers tingle. At the same time, he felt an enhanced impression of being elsewhere -- somewhere other than in his own time and place. And with that impression came the thought that Maddie Smith must have been a fun girl to meet. "Great-grandmother," he suddenly murmured, "I wish I could have known you."
With those words, old-time music filled the house. John turned, to find out its source, and found himself looking into the face of a beautiful young woman. Her hair was blonde and wavy; she was wearing long gloves and an old-time corset, black and trimmed with red lace. His first thought was that he'd run into a historical reenacter who was working here. He opened his lips for an apology for his surprised stare, but just then he heard a man's booming yell, "Madeline! Get back here!" The shout had come from the hall outside, and John heard distinctly the mutter of many voices underneath that music -- ricky-ticky piano music from the Gay 90's.
As John continued to stare admiringly at the girl, he suddenly realized that he was in fact gazing into a mirror in front of him. It was like he was looking at his own reflection, and that made no sense, not unless he was dreaming. He leaned closer to the glass and the girl moved, too, pressing her face up close to his. Amazingly, he thought he knew what she was thinking. He hadn't had much contact with psychic science outside movies, but what he was experiencing was like a psychic link from the past.
Was this a dream or not? When he experimentally touched the bedpost, it felt solid, not ghostly. He next placed his palm against the cold, hard mirror glass and felt something that combined a cold-flash and an electric shock. He staggered back and fell on the bed. Looking up dazed from that position, he could see his feet and saw, to his amazement, a pair of silk-stockinged legs and a lower body that seemed to be wearing a lacy corset.
He thought for a moment that the girl from the mirror had fallen into bed with him. He couldn't resist touching the bare thigh that looked so lovely, trying to reassure himself that there really was a girl under him and that the vision more than an illusion. What he felt was warm and soft. But not only his hand felt the touch, but so did the leg, as if it were his own. A second later he noticed that the arm that he had reached out with was not his own, but was slender and covered to the elbow by a black velvet glove.
At that moment, too, John realized that Madeline had not really been named Smith, but Dunbar -- a name that meant nothing to him. Had she used a false name, like so many cat-house girls had done? And why had that name leaped into his thoughts so strongly at a moment when he had so much else on this mind? And why was John was sensing -- remembering actually -- other anomalous things that should have been no part of his own memories? He was envisioning faces of people whom he had never known but seemed like people whom he should be intimately aware of.
"Get out here, Madeline," the man with the foghorn voice yelled again, "or I'll come in and drag you out by the hair!"
Jacob -- that loudmouth bastard, John thought. But who was Jacob? he suddenly asked himself. Something -- ancestral memory, perhaps -- seemed to be warning him that Jake was a bastard's bastard, a person that one didn't dare cross. But, at the same time, John felt a profound impression of displacement, as if the year was 1905, not 2019. What made him so sure of that? Had Maddie's ghost reached out and made a psychic connection with him across more than a century of time?
But it seemed much more than that. Without embarrassment, he could vaguely imagine that he was himself Madeline Dunbar. Another mad idea came to mind -- that he was, and always had been, the reincarnation of a cat-house girl in the Nineteenth Century. John had had erotic dreams before often enough before wasn't so straight laced that he couldn't had enjoy them. But no earlier dream had ever thrilled him so much as this was was doing.
John, savoring the lifelike quality of this dream, ran his gloved fingers over himself. He was till feeling a solid body, a warm body. This sensation should have been mind-blowing, but what he mostly felt was satisfaction. Why did this exotic place suddenly feel like a welcome return home after a long absence? The breast of the girl he was touching held a beating heart, he smelled perfumed air being drawn into his lungs, and he shivered a little from the draft coming in from a partially-open window and wafting over a good deal of exposed skin.
There came the sound of a shattering bottle and some raucous laughter from the hall. The noise broke John's train of thought and gave rise to another thought -- a mad thought. What if he was not the reincarnation of one of Maddie Dunbar's customers, but of Maddie Dunbar herself? With that thought came the impulse to meet the dream-people who were filling the corridor outside Maddie's door. The trouble with lucid dreams, he knew, was that one woke up from them the instant that he realized he was dreaming. He wanted this dream to continue longer. He wanted to experience more of it. He left the bed, born along gracefully by a pair of lovely, stockinged legs.
Just before he opened the door, some whimsical instinct caused him to strike a pose, the sort of come-hither pose that he fancied some naughty girl of a hundred years ago would have assumed before she presented herself to a crowd of admirers. He put his hand on his hip, stood straight, and raised his chin with pride. The smile that came to her lips was not planned; it seemed to come naturally to the jovial spirit that was animating her. She was still wearing that alluring smile as she went out the door and and joined the crowd.
The tour guide returned to an empty room; John Roth was soon reported as a missing person.
END
