(THIS IS NOT) DAVID COPERFIELD
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my
own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages
must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was
born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at
night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry,
simultaneously. In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was
declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had
taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility
of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky
in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these
gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either
gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
According to these fateful expectations and as
an appropriate portrayal, my general anatomy was developing, throughout the years
of my childhood, a mystical gloomy air, fairly emphasized by the deep look of
my dark eyes. When I was old enough to become conscious of my appearance,
little could be done. My back had already grown a bit arched and my chest sunken;
my head tend to be bowed and my hands hidden in the trousers-pockets; and all of myself was held up by long thin legs which insisted on creeping most of the
time to my mother’s opinion, as she often expressed in her blunt manners: “damn
boy!, do you want to kill me in a fright?”
Had those old hags failed in one of their ominous
predictions, I would have consider myself lucky. However, the truth is that I have been carrying the weight of the questionable ability to get on well with
ghosts, goblins, phantoms and other spectral creatures through my entire life. Being
surrounded by this unusual company, you, kind reader, could easily imagine that my
everyday matters get worse and worse. Never can I enjoy a single moment of
tranquility and relax. Never can I follow the course of a simple conversation
without some disgusting ectoplasm interrupting me.
A few years ago, I decided to turn the
necessity into virtue founding a business on spiritual contacts. I prepared a welcoming
office to receive my clients who were eager to ask or be answered by their
loved deceased. But contacting with the right ghost and making him or her to
behave properly was almost impossible, due to the typical essence of spirits. Obviously,
they don’t care about human wishes, questions or anguishes. When I invoked one of them, usually, a crowd
of bored floating souls came to the meeting with their animated talk, silly requirements or sour discussions. Sometimes, the correct one answered my call,
but most of the times, he or she had forgotten my client, or the things which
my client was worried about. Often, a joker ghost, just to enjoy himself for a while, pretended to be the one I was waiting
for, confounding me till desperation.
Those awful spectral games finished with my
business and my nerves. At last, my rare, and I have to confess, sometimes
violent behavior during my spiritualism séances, caused my forced confinement in this mental hospital where I have been living until now. If living could mean this kind of existence. Here, time passes slowly in the company of mad men, who
pretend to be Mozart, and the ghost of Mozart, who has forgotten who is who.
