The Mercury Waltz (2 page)

It is a small place, fifty seats all told, with mildly warped floors and a tendency to leak when the rains come hard, on a nondescript
rue
just off déclassé Rottermond Square shared with a café, a shoemaker, a printer of gossipy broadsheets, and the nightly racket of the Bar Pile ou Face, heads or tails, dice or lansquenet, the only constant the unpredictable fate of the fall. Once a bedstead workhouse for cheap horn buttonhooks and combs, then a failed homilist’s lecture hall, then locked and boarded into silence and dust, the quasi-gentleman with the squint who brokered the sale was somewhat dubious of its prospects:
Yer getting it for a pittance, sirs, so you’ve got no call to kick. But unless it’s going to be a dolly house, I don’t think yer’ll get much trade here.
If the taller of the two buyers seemed amused by this prediction, his companion was mildly aghast:
Does it show in the phiz, Mouse, do you think? Are we forever to be pursued by the everfucking Poppy?

We’re pursued by no one, now,
in this narrow box of a building chosen for its modesty, its potential impregnability—two doors, street and alley, no windows at all on the second floor, a handy hatch from the flies—and made over in the year just past by their shared industry, to their own needs and taste, Rupert in charge belowstairs, and Istvan up above:
If we’re going to stay, let it be worth the staying,
the third floor dressed into a kind of private set, mahogany wardrobe and silver clock and silver pots of purplish ferns; a little silver mirror, crazed and cracked and tacked up to the wall; a fine businessman’s desk with many slots and drawers for Rupert; and for them both an imposing rosewood bed, carved with vines and plump with rose-colored satin, hung about with fat braided cords
Like a battleship. Or a catafalque,
Rupert’s grimace when the thing was delivered, the carter’s men raising eyebrows one to another at the palpable absence of a lady in the house: no lady this time at all, no Lucy, no Ag, no shielding agnes, only these two accustomed to doing for themselves, and a maid of all work hired in from the streets.
Jesu, messire, this—landscape is to your liking?

Ah,
juste le monde dans notre lit.
You’ll grow used to it,
though in fact the bed is rarely used for sleeping, both preferring without comment the spare little cot beneath the windows, barely wide enough for two, to lie wrapped close in a single coverlet as once they slept inside a single sheltering coat.

Undiscussed as well is the miniature that sits on the shared dressing table, desert-red morocco and always kept closed: a wedding-day portrait, Benjamin de Metz without his bride Isobel’s penultimate gift, along with a bequest of startling generosity, though in another light no surprise at all:
Mme de Metz Arrowsmith wished you to know that she deeply valued your artistry. Mme de Metz Arrowsmith wished you to know that she forever valued your friendship,
the lawyer’s stiff letter accompanying the cheque draft and silk-wrapped miniature, held in trust in a city neither man cared to visit again, obtained at last via Lucy’s urgent missive when their new locale was finally known:
I have kept this since it came for you, a time ago
; Istvan took one long look at both and then set both gently aside.

I do believe that clever lady loved you. May be as well as—

As well as may be,
Rupert’s murmur, a seeking gaze toward the window as if he might have seen, past the drapes and clouded glass, another room filled with flowers, strange roses of every hue, the wafting smoke of a gold-tipped cigarette.
Does it say at all how she passed?
but that letter did not, nor Lucy’s, though the second in the lawyer’s packet, longer and addressed solely and privately to “Dusan,” was more forthcoming:
It is my very sad duty to convey to you the news
not only of Isobel’s death—her strong heart come at last to falter, though at the very last
she went without pain, knowing no one, believing herself a girl in the greenhouse again; she is laid to rest at Chatiens, beneath her roses—
but of his, Mr. Arrowsmith’s, own true retirement, the great world of affairs become a red jade chessboard, the long-ago limp become a kind of paralysis, the griffin-headed cane beside a bed from which
I expect not to fully arise, despite the physicians’ efforts; busy fellows, surely they try. But nothing is immortal save Art, and it is in the light of that infinite realm that I continue to salute you, Dusan, with respect and regret
for several bygone circumstances, some in his control and others not, all left prudently unnamed beyond the reflection that
Never the military’s ally, nor truly ever mine, still I hold hope that my patronage was and is a useful boon; never fear to use my name if ever it may aid you! Do you travel, still, yourself and M. Bok?—for one of my very few desires is to see
les mecs
once more. Always I found refreshment in their company, and if you recall me, let it be as one who—

—but it was there that the letter was refolded and set aside in favor of the cheque draft, Rupert’s thoughtful estimation,
May be we ought not take this. But it will surely buy us some time,
and Istvan’s more sunny,
A lifetime; two lifetimes.
L’échapper belle! from the last rag of worry that the shows they meant to mount here, in this theatre of the heart, must ever please any but the two of them alone.

Come to this nervous and labyrinthine city, a daily opera of old stone and clanging trolleys, sour wine and fine Kaffeehäuser, chosen as much for its sepia light as for any other reason—Istvan’s dreamy nod from the train window, Rupert’s shrug of assent—having watched their fill of others’ work and play on other stages, Lyon to Bruges to London to anonymous crossroad towns, themselves the only audience at faded Punch and Judy booths, in crowded balconies with “Don Giovanni” sung below by stiff-brocaded marionettes, in closer quarters for more private and ribald orchestrations by troupes of men and boys made of wood and winking flesh, arriving at last as playwright and actor and puppeteer, all three these doubled two: the ironic Feste as Mr. Pollux, as his master is, here, Stefan Hilaire, and Rupert always Rupert, the dark puppet once Puck and now Mr. Castor, fully cleansed of the freight he once carried, old festering letter a souvenir of a world gladly left, itself left in a sidestreet workingman’s bank, as the lawyer’s packet and its great banked cheque made of it a triple farewell.

Now in the morning’s backstage quiet, cold floorboards and paraffin air, Mr. Pollux and Mr. Castor hang silked and companionable as Istvan in scuffed black slippers stoops to unbox “An offering? Or an orphan…”—a puppet left overnight at the doorstep, a devil puppet with sad eyes and stiff gut strings, the clumsy red body of “Oak, is it?” Rupert leaning forward for a look. “No, birch. And poorly put-together, too, see that crack down the back—”

“And here’s another,” tapping the forehead, just between the horns. “No doubt a souvenir from Paradise, it’s quite the fall, after all. —What a sorry piece of work! Carved with a spade, painted by the blind—”

“And who’s the sender?” as Rupert examines the box, a stained wooden fig crate,
For the Mercury
inked across its side. “No mark, or any name—like that donation, or whatever it can be called, Robb wrote to say another one’s arrived. From ‘a friend of your theatre,’ just as before.”

“So you’ve a secret admirer. May be I have one, too,” with a scornful shrug, pushing the crate aside with his heel, reaching for Mr. Castor. “I’d not soil your stage with such rubbish, Sir Knight—we’ll serve you up a nice band of brigands, they’ll fall like ninepins, I guarantee. Or may be I’ll make them up as soldiers, shall I? Soldiers in the army of the Lord? Like that holy crackpot I met last night on the boulevard—bit of looseness to
his
weave, one could see straight through to the bloodybones beneath—”

“I’ve told you before, leave those preachers be. There’s nothing gained by that kind of quarrel—”

“Oh, be easy, it’s only sport. Besides, they like to suffer for their faith.” He makes Mr. Castor to cross himself; he smiles. “Now, do you have our ‘midnight’ bit in hand yet?”

“Not yet,” reaching for a battered leather folder all folded up with manuscript, paging through as Istvan comes to stand behind him, the puppet held waiting to one side. “It still wants something. Another bit of business as they go, or—”

“To me it wants more music,” whistling softly between his teeth, a bawdy air of the street, “
Qu’a-t-il fait?
”
What did he do, what did he do?
“We’ll have in that boy around the corner, shall we? the one who jigs with the bells? Add a bit of dash.” Rupert gives him a look; Istvan gives him a wink. “Or would you rather your urchin with the chocolate?”

“I’d rather just the chocolate,” past a little cough, checking his pocket watch: Swiss and steely, Istvan’s gift. “I’ll have another going-over, then, and be back by noon, no later. You’ll stay in?” as Istvan nods, Mr. Castor nodding solemnly in tandem to bring Rupert’s smile, as a dexterous wooden hand reaches to brush at Rupert’s beard: “‘Silver strands amongst the sable’—it really doesn’t suit, Mouse. Why not shave it off?”

“When you stop baiting those fellows from the kirk,” reaching for hat and overcoat, stepping into the bustle of the street half-shadowed but still bright enough to make him blink past his spectacles and the gray scrim in his left eye, the world forever doubled into glimpses and plain sight. As he goes he is watched by another, unseen actor, hatless and haloed in alabaster blond, a very young man who waits for Rupert to turn the corner before darting to knock at the theatre’s alley door,
tck-tck-tck,
like the rhythm of a tune. At once that door opens, as if he is expected, to be beckoned past the threshold by a nimble wooden hand.

At the café—Die Welt, an ambitious name for such a tiny establishment—Rupert takes the seat he always takes, a table for one, facing the door. He nods to the men at the tables adjacent, the burghers and drapers and watchmakers with their eggy crullers and cups of tea, their pipes and snuff and various newspapers—the
Clarion,
the
Daily Solon,
the
Globe,
the
Gentleman’s View
—and they return the nod as civilly. In this neighborhood he is known, when he is known at all, as a reserved, somewhat forbidding gentleman, theatre owner and close friend of its more flamboyant actor, who is understood to be some sort of Frenchman; beyond that the men at the tables have no opinion of Herr Bok, or none they care to share publicly. The productions he presents are believed to be “artistic,” more description than compliment, and as such never a possible topic for discussion at Die Welt.

Also as usual, a server is swift to approach Rupert’s table,
your urchin with the chocolate
a fixture in his days—but no, this slim thing half-swallowed in the stained white apron, white cap a wimple tugged almost to the eyebrows, is a girl, a new girl: small rough hands, stern blue gaze aimed past his shoulder, an accent he cannot place as “Sir will take
kaffee,
” says the girl, as if it is not a question.

“No,” he says, setting down his hat and folder, “chocolate.
Chocolat, chocolade,
” in differing tones, a little guessing game, “
Šálek cokolády,
” and at that she looks straight at him, startled, a face not pretty but arresting, blunt nose and pale lips, those deep blue eyes.

“Sir, at once.”

Back with the tray, she sets out its contents, meticulous as a priestess at an altar—hot pot and china cup and gleaming spoon just so, the glass of cool mineral water, matches and ashtray for his cigar—seeming startled again when Rupert thanks her with a nod. He feels her watching as he takes out his papers, his mechanical pencil—another gift of Istvan’s, a gilt-silver Eagle, much finer than he needs—thinking again of the strange devil puppet, and the anonymous contribution, the banker openly bemused by Rupert’s caution—
You suspect such good fortune, M. Bok? The disbursing bank is quite reputable
but
Set it aside, Herr Robb,
untouched with the other one, can any fish taste a bounty without a hook?—

—and then puts both and the girl and all else from his mind and is gone into the script, the story, his story of a knight questing in a lonely wood, lost in the patter of rain, the chill of endless solitude, until he finds what he has been seeking all along: a comrade with a smile bright enough to change midnight into dawn, a friend who is also a friend to magic, who can make the cold wood into a dwelling, a palace, a home. It is a story he has told himself many times, over and over in the dark hours spent apart, and again in the warm hours of contentment—though as ever, Istvan can never be content, not even here, not now, and what to do to make him so a tale he cannot parse. All the more, then, let this tale be worth the telling, worth all the pains he takes to make it, his sober scratchings-out and dictionary hunting, feeling keenly his lack of letters, Tacio of the monks who must climb the mountain every time he puts pencil to paper, meaning every time to speak truly of things that truly were, a record—onstage, ephemeral, eternal—of their days; as once he read in a red-spined journal of love sparked and fanned, first love awakened to be cherished and forever lost; he still keeps that little book of poems, unread and unforgotten. Istvan has smiled at this new play’s sentimental heart, but Rupert knows he is pleased, though his continuing suggestions for a change in music or some playful bawd between the characters must continue to be rebuffed:
the dark one tells stories, and the one with the puppet acts them out,
so.