The Mercury Waltz (21 page)

Meanwhile Frédéric has flung himself in the opposite direction, up the streets to Crescent Bridge and its brown
lethe
current, inviting him to plunge like Icarus—but no, suicide is a sin, everything is a sin, though it is not a sin, is it, to lie to a woman who thinks she cares for you when what she cares for is a handful of letters and an empty suit, a song sung on a bench in a garden he wishes never, never to see again—as he hunches on the bridge to scratch on flimsy an eight-word reply—
Please come. Wire your arrival. Yours, Frédéric Blum
—that he carries at once to the telegraph office, as if it were urgent news of the end of the world.

On the humid paths of the Park, another world has tipped on its axis: Tilde and her loss of appetite, her thickening waistline, her last visit to these mudlark precincts has told her, finally, why. Consulting the gipsy women for help with the cards—so frighteningly fey these last few weeks, as if speaking in a tongue she barely knows—though they did not help her, those women in their headwraps and lapis beads, they could not, already her skills are beyond theirs. But what knowledge they gave instead stunned her like a blow—

You’re quickened, girlie, didn’t you know? Better go and tell your fellow.

I never—I don’t have a fellow.

Some fellow had you!

—so now there is to be a baby? From that filthy creeper in the alley? But she is not—she is a virgin…. Barely hearing as the women proposed several practical solutions, one to do with certain herbs, the other with the Foundling Sisters, the English nuns who will take any infant left in their turn, instead she left them to sit on an iron bench and stare at the passersby, at nothing, afraid to take the cards from the sack, why had the cards not warned her? A little baby. Like rosebud Tanti, crying at the table; like her mother. But how can there be a little baby living in a theatre? How is she to live, now, what is she to do?

It is Rupert who walks beside her on the Park paths, insisting that she take a noon respite from the washing, he had seen her swaying like a reed there over the bluing-pot; as he takes respite from the writing desk, though no writing has been done today, only staring at the paper and paging through the red journal, as if he is caught, like the knight, and cannot fully get free. Strolling and smoking as she sucks the slippery Italian ice he bought her, cold as the “Snow Youth,” and she charmed as a child much younger by the novelty of the treat; she has never had an ice before. Asking now, through lips gone pleasantly numb, “The wooden hill’s all built, so when will we play out the show, Sir?”

“You needn’t do that, you know, call me ‘sir.’ I’ve said before, ‘Rupert’ will do—”

“Sir Rupert,” but that is worse so, half smiling, he shakes his head, leads her to a grassy spot beneath some beech trees, where there are no beggars or pigeons and the sun is mostly veiled. The heat is clearly telling on the girl: despite her industry she is delicate, he has heard her casting up in the mornings, though she is filling out, at least, not so bony as her days at Die Welt—where he rarely goes, though the proprietor always hails him in the street,
How do you these days, Herr Bok?
and what shall he say to that? That he does poorly when the tea drinkers peer over their newspapers to watch as he takes a table; that he dislikes to see the Mercury as the subject of those papers’ editorials, the readers’ letters yea or nay that know nothing and say less; that he meant only to make the plays of his days, his and Istvan’s, under the roof of some place he might end by calling home, after all these years, all those days and nights on the cold, wet, hot, weary, endlessly spooling road. Istvan shrugs at their notoriety, at the license threatened then regained, Istvan who in all their days together seems never to have looked past the evening’s show, the dawn’s embrace, never to have missed the simple joy of safety kept and carried, like the white knife inside the breast of Castor, quietly in the heart. They are not as other men: that he does not question or mourn, Istvan will always be enough. But can there not be, can there never be, the calm other men find in family, for the two of them alone?

See this girl who sits beside him, like a daughter so loyal and fierce:
Mouse’s cat,
Istvan calls her, the stray taken in from the streets. It is always hard for a girl alone, needing some man or his semblance to fence her off from the world: like Decca become “Mrs. Mattison,” Madame Isobel, too, and Lucy; at least those last had safely wed. See Tilde looking at the lads there on the grass, pushing and gamboling like wild young goats despite the heat, and “I have a costume like that,” she says, pointing to one of the boys, a tall black-haired romper in a red-laced vest. “But I think I could not fit it, now.”

“The boys would like you better in a dress,” says Rupert with a smile; Tilde does not smile, turns so her gaze is sideways to his good eye and “Would you like me better,” she asks, “that way?”

“In a vest?”

“As a boy.”

Looking into that strong unpretty face, those eyes so perfectly, unfathomably blue, the child gone for now into the woman and “I like you,” says Rupert quietly, “just as you are, Tilde. You remind me much of a lady I once knew, a very great lady.”

Her hand has crept across the grass; he takes it now, a father’s clasp, a friend’s. “What’s her name?”

“Isobel.”

“Is she here, in the city? Was she—” but she stops herself,
Was she your lady?
but she knows Sir has not had a lady, nor has M. Stefan, the only ladies in their lives the other players from long ago: the one called Lucybell, who writes to them, and some other girls at a place called the Poppy; and a lady puppet, M. Stefan told her once, sitting smiling and idle at the table—
She was called Lucinda, then Lizsette
—as he made a washing cloth to curtsey and flounce about.
A pretty thing! Such a pity we had to leave her behind, but it’s too hard for a lass upon the roads.

I know,
she had said, more to herself than to M. Stefan, who nonetheless looked upon her then with an expression she could not name, M. Stefan who so often comes up in the cards as a Jack of this or that, several times as the Lord of Hares, which is not surprising, he is so restless and ready to be gone. Sir is what holds him here, as he is what makes Sir merry, both of them in play with one another through their puppet-men—like the Pégase in the park,
His name is Jean, like mine
—those puppets who, like her cards, say what they know but not all that they know. But what will they say, Sir and M. Stefan, when they find out—for they will find out, one day they must—about the little baby?

Yet that day is not this day, so she squares her shoulders as Sir looks away, into a past she cannot see, as “When will be the
Snow Youth,
Sir?” as Rupert coughs, drops the cigar-end, helps her rise, shrugging his answer of this show that has cost him his rest, these past weeks, writing into the dawn each final ending only to scratch it out in the morning and try anew, as that face rises again and again behind his eyes, that brimming gaze:
Why will you not go with me,
Maître?
Why will you not love me?
A whole life unlived, like a poem unwritten…. The fatherless boy in the tree, the beautiful youth become a man no doubt as beautiful, somewhere in this city with his wife—what was her name? Madame had been very fond of her—as the newspapers trumpet the foolish competition Benjamin is somehow involved with; thankfully the Mercury has no part in all of that. Perhaps they ought not make this show at all, take that bitter bit between the teeth again; again and again he sets down the pen, he resolves to tell Istvan so. Yet the mountain is made, the Snow Youth is ready. Benjamin is here.

Now he and Tilde cross from green leaves to hard shadow and harder sun, taking the omnibus back to Rottermond Square and their own doorstep, where Istvan stands with the old knife man, scuffed handcart and growling dog, and “Here, sah,” says the knife man to Istvan, white knife in hand, a thread plucked from his sleeve to prove its sharpness: the blade parts it, curling, in two. “It is a very nice knife, sah, very nice, very old. Older even than I, and that is saying something!” with a wink at Tilde, grotesque and meant to be grotesque. “But I’m not too old yet, am I, Missy, for some fun?”

“Piss off,
Vater,
” says Tilde, brushing past him and inside, Rupert following more slowly with the post, another letter from Herr Robb, and a creamy envelope,
CdM
above a rose embossed and below in crisp black ink
M. Bok & M. Hilaire
as “Many thanks,” Istvan says, handing the knife man some coins, the dog hackling angrily at something only the dog can see. “A man does need a sharp knife.”

“Oh yes, sah,” the old man smiling so his brown teeth show, much like his dog’s though not as pointed. “A man needs his knife, what with the reverends and the constables crawling all over everywhere. This city was a better place when I was young.”

“I try my best,” says Istvan, in a different tone, with a different smile, handing him another coin, “to keep apace from those sorts of men, those holy ones and regulators. You’ll tip me, won’t you, if you should see them coming our way?”

The knife man nods, alert, serene—“I’ll see them”—and then resumes his bell and grinder-box, trundling off with his dog toward the passing crowds of the square, in clang and call for all comers to have their edges shaped to rights.

Meanwhile Istvan pockets the knife and steps inside to the backstage barely cooler, shirt open at the collar, wiping his forehead with a handy scrap of costume lace; he has slept poorly, his eyes are glittering and tired. The Snow Youth’s icy mountain is not yet a relief, nor, anymore, his gaming, past his forays into the Park and its gipsy-wheel: by now he has seen every den and room and cardhouse in this city, like riding a carousel, always the same faces, the same wagers, and whether they bow or boo him, what difference? The only tables he has not yet staked are the princely ones, here too genteel to admit outliers like himself, but those roundelays are nearly always crooked, rigged so the winners win; Christ knows he and Mouse have seen more than a lifetime’s worth of that.

And see Mouse still a-struggle with the last go-round, the sharp peak of that private jail, the release as rigged by that youth, yes, now fixed so beautifully on his cross of snow, moving arms and carven lips, the glassy, wounded gaze as noted by Puss in her last letter: Benjamin de Metz and his lady saluted by the Pimms upon the flowery promenade, equals once upon the stage but
His lordship looked through us like we were window glass, Pimm was rare put out.
Yet the past still unforgotten, for see him here, an imported judge, onstage again; whose idea was this competition, whose money pays for it, who gains?

And how and why should any of those questions still be theirs, in this last lifetime, this Mercury world of warped wood and scrubbed teapot, rosewood landscape and devoted small Infanta—as if lasting contentment can ever be obtained in such a setting, no matter how private or fine, as if one could build a house for puppets and call it home! A puppet is an actor made to move; box one, and it becomes only a doll…. Like these two, here on the worktable, who started life so inauspiciously, the spattered angel and grieving imp sequestered, now, amongst the scatter and detritus, their eyes carefully repainted, joints planed and strings restrung—
You don’t mean to play them?
Rupert’s question to Istvan’s veiled shrug,
Only making the fugitives welcome
—as in solitary communion he finds their uses and shapes their edges, yes, to rights, confiding in a letter back to Puss that
I’ve two new mecs, darling, you ought to come and see
these rude attendants to the gods of the roulette wheel, these orphans and gifts of chance, for they shall join in that morality play, ancient
and
modern, the Mercury’s first and last—

—since “All’s play, now, is it not, gentlemen?” Istvan speaking
sotto voce
to the wooden ears as he takes up his hat and an envelope and makes his way into the street, past the empty spot where the shouting priest once hunkered, the Heads or Tails and its doorway where there is only emptiness, where no one waits smiling to take his hand. The envelope is delivered with a wink for stern Voltaire and a nod to the clerk at the
Solon,
a little advert for this Sunday’s edition, announcing that the Mercury Theatre is to present a new tale,
The Snow Youth
brought thus finally to its ending for Mouse, who must, it seems, be brought to end it: for the time has come to cease revising, to set down the pen and let the play play out on its own.

That notice itself will be much noted and debated, first by those at the
Solon
itself—printing it with a black and florid, half-page border—and then the
haut monde
and bourgeoisie and the regulars at Die Welt, the tea drinkers and wine tipplers, the cab drivers and shopgirls and scholars and all: Does this mean that the interdict on the Mercury has been lifted, just in time for the competition? Or are they still beneath a cloud, those men, and mean to perform in sheer defiance? And who or what is a “Snow Youth”? Whatever the answers, Messrs. Pollux and Castor will tread the boards again, and that, no matter what else it may arouse—the yellow stare of Haden St.-Mary and the silent prayers of Frédéric Blum, the smiles of Tilde and Christobel de Metz, the compact nod of Martin Eig and the pursed lips of Herr de Vries—is good news in a city that needs good news, as it needs a storm to dispel the hot miasmas and send the rain like lovers’ tears, wash the wax from its Bridge and the grit from its gutters, and turn the fortune wheel of the year from thick summer to the darker precincts of autumn, the season of endings and departures, of fog and frost and luminosity as false and lovely as any footlights on any stage. The city needs a new show, and it shall have one, the spinning silver waltz of the feast of fools.

Herr Robb is certain that a rat is watching him, something fierce and small with shining eyes beneath a cone of old newsprint; or it may possibly be two rats, crouched there on the slimy alley bricks, but “As you’ll see, the renovations you ordered are complete,” he says to Benjamin de Metz, chilly as always no matter the heat, holding the side door for him to step into the building: theatre once and now theatre again, the Garden of Eden with its gold proscenium and royal blue curtains, its newly varnished stage that “Can accommodate all sorts o’ shows, milords,” says the chief builder to the two in their fine suits and bowlers, out of place amidst the capped and busy workmen. “You’ll find all to your liking, my fellows here have been toiling day and night to have it done.”

“They are being very well paid to do so,” says Herr Robb.

“Show me the catwalk,” says Benjamin de Metz.

Herr Robb trails behind, what is a catwalk?—appalled then to watch as his client clambers up metal stairs to a narrow perch far above, where he peers down with a strange smile, as if seeing something on the stage besides its complement of workers; he takes out his little notebook, he makes his cryptic notes. He is a cryptic man, Herr Robb has learned, and a voluptuary, unlike his austere father and yet in some ways very much the same: swift to punish, slow to reward, most at home in his own company, though young de Metz goes his father one better, and keeps even his colleagues at a hard arm’s length.

Certainly Herr de Vries is finding his visit trying, or so it is murmured in the salons, especially in this atmosphere of hysteria over the theatre competition, as if that outcome should somehow decide the fate of the city itself. Mayor Eszterhaus bemoans his citizens’ escalating complaints—
Half of them write letters, the other half throw stones. And ordure. And all of them blame me! They even blame me for the heat!
—while Tibor Banek complains angrily to Herr de Vries:
See the
Solon
so pleased to trumpet that foul show—that is the doing of Hebert, I know, Konrad is a jelly-spine.
Herr de Vries himself drinks more anisette than usual, and relieves himself less successfully with his fading lily-lad, tended by Jozsef—who cautions
The boy is making himself ill, you’ll need another soon, my lord
—while trying to stay abreast of business in this new landscape of moral mania, Eig acts as if one ought oneself to follow all the laws one makes! He himself had chastised Eig severely for yet another lapse—

You said you’d closed that theatre!

The Commission closed it, sir.

Yet even a clerk knows if a license is valid or invalid. Do you want to go back to the clerk’s bench, Martin?

—while mourning anew the loss of Javier Arrowsmith, who could have helped navigate with this cloven de Metz, who needs must be humored on the foolish competition as he promises to finance other, much greater and more urgent ventures, joint ventures with Herr de Vries, whose own coffers are insufficient to his ambitions; four children and a jewel-devouring wife, it is devilishly expensive to be a family man! Then there is de Metz’s history with those puppet-players, a relic of boyhood, few here in the city even know of it; but all who matter know of the buildings and blocks he has bought, does the man mean to take up residence, then? And taken together, what can it all signify?

The theatre district itself considers the refurbishing of the Garden of Eden, with its flower-frescoed walls and unknown owner, as yet another doomsday omen; the reopening of the Mercury is just one more splash of poison in the cup. Edgar Rue, approached on the sly by Simon Cowtan—
Who but the Bard could deserve your talents in this contest?
—has written a stern polemic against intrigue and envy, published by both the
Solon
and the
Globe
; Mrs. Cowtan, after a screaming harpies’ altercation that could be heard for several blocks, has sent Cynthia packing, but only so far as Gilbert Fairgrieve’s Athenaeum, where
She Wouldst Not
teeters on, its audience of parlor girls decimated by the climate of high morals and festering air. Alban Cockrill has lost Miss Polly as Cynthia’s replacement, replacing her with a white-haired girl who speaks passable French and can balance a china plate on a surprising part of her anatomy. Drawn by news of the prize, several traveling companies have found their way into the city; already one has found its way back out, preferring the known hazards of the road after finding its script-box and costumes mysteriously shredded and burned.

In the offices of the Morals Commission, in the smell of ink and steeping tea, Martin Eig sits over notes of today’s sessions in the rooms of inquiry—an importer of German lamp parts who is neither German nor a manufacturer of lamps; a Belgian speculator with apparent ties to Herr de Vries, though so far he has admitted nothing; and a young man of the Literary Leopards, less beast of the jungle than quivering puppy, whimpering that truly, truly, he does not know Seraphim, no one does but the writer Blum!—while considering, between pages, the possible effect of sending flowers to Madame de Metz. Not sentimental roses, nothing to be socially misunderstood (though truthfully it would be no misunderstanding), but some excellent specimen of plant life, to show that he too appreciates what excels. As he does, oh, he does…. At that overdone banquet, see her modest gown in glorious opposition to Frau de Vries’ strumpet’s display, sitting lovely in white lace like a virgin at the altar—and a kind of virgin still, for, though there is apparently a child, her marriage can be no true marriage, only another instance of the corruption of the lords’ class, this woman sold like cattle to a man who is no true man at all. Observe M. de Metz in his linen and jewels, his hair gleaming like a woman’s in the candlelight, and visibly displeased by the closure of the Mercury Theatre, in natural affinity for his unnatural friends there:
I hear that was your doing, Herr Eig?
with such iron hauteur that another man, a lesser man, more accustomed to licking the soles of his betters, would surely have retreated at its force.

But
her
presence strengthened his resolve, to all the more do what he means to do, to curb de Vries and, yes, de Metz, and demonstrate to her a better way to live, beyond a lifetime’s sham and shame. So he leaned forward at that table and replied without a smile,
I do my duty at the Commission, sir, as surely we all must do every day, yourself not excluded.

And de Metz then turning that withering gaze to de Vries—
Is it his “duty” to lecture me?
—de Vries who rumbled something soothing, then hounded him to the hallway for a scolding, as if he were a child or a cringing menial—

How dare you flout him to his face? And at my table!

I did not flout him. I only—

You “only” must keep still until you’re needed! He may be young, but his family is very old, older even than mine! See that you remember it, Martin.

I remember everything, sir.

And Madame de Metz noting his departure, then, he watched her watching: those eyes as wise as Athena’s, as Minerva’s there outside in the muggy sunlight:
Potens sui,
yes. She has spurred him, more, she has
stirred
him; not only a shining model of real womanhood, but if, when, all obstacles are overcome, she may indeed be the one. The one. All those years on his knees, all that strangling of the base and carnal, and she appears, now, without any effort, or rather as the result of all his efforts, the crowning gift of a lifetime of striving. That day, alone together in the Lady’s Garden, he could barely speak but to tell her of himself, all of himself, a powerful and singular urge there amongst the vines and blooms she favors, that hidden little, wet little navel of Venus—

—as sudden brightness falls from the air, a bright key newly made to a lock as new, the alley door of the Garden of Eden and “Why,” Eig startled as the key drops to his desk, “Mr. St.-Mary—That was very swiftly done.”

“I told the locksmith you’d have more work for him.” Haden sits without being invited; his rib aches but is knitting, the bruising at his eyes has faded from black to yellow-green. With a sour internal smile, he notes that Eig before his entrance was mooning like an idiot, has he finally found a tart to his taste? Good luck to the fool, then. Haden himself has put all that in his back pocket, he is back with a vengeance, as several of his cheating boys have already found, and their genteel, laggardly paying patrons: see that barrister’s face as Haden stepped into the midnight townhouse, fist to the chest of the frightened butler, to gather up with a stare his startled boy and turn that stare on the barrister, who protested, bare and feeble—

Sir, this is—Sir, you cannot simply walk into a man’s home this way!

Call a constable. I’ll wait,
arms folded before the satin-draped bed, before taking all the money owed and a sizable bonus beside, kicking his boy down the stairs and back to the gutter, where tears were shed and punishment delivered, an emphatic example that his other boys are pleased again to follow, very pleased and relieved to see the old Haden at work: no more trips to the church or to the newspaper, no more endless hours at the Bridge, no, he is tending his holdings now, as Eig himself suggested, Eig who fancies himself to be Haden’s master once more; let him think whatever he pleases. Let all of them, Frédéric, the fiancée, all of them, think whatever the fuck they please.

Now “It’s you I have work for, Mr. St.-Mary. As you well know.” Eig sets down his pen, sets aside the half-written report. “Close the door, please.”

“Bernd,” Haden calls, unmoving, “shut the door.” A chair scrapes; the door quietly closes. “Unless the offer’s been changed, the answer’s the same.”

“Everything is changing. That
Snow Youth
show opens tonight at the Mercury—I need you to be there.”

“I’m busy. Have the Commission send Costello. Or Bernd, get him out from his desk for once in a way.”

“It’s not for the Commission that I’d have you go,” with an air that aims for calm omniscience, though the gaze is narrowed and dark, the eel a-swim beneath the waters. “I’ve spoken, myself, to Eszterhaus, assuring him that all is in order, that the theatre may legally operate—”

“Your doing?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you wanted it closed.”

Eig picks up his pen again; he is almost, but not quite, smiling. “‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose….’ Did you know that the mayor’s father was an infantry soldier?”

“So was mine. What difference does that make?”

“All the difference in the world,” pointing the pen like a sword at Haden, “because the world belongs, now, finally, not to those born into a certain parentage, but to men with the will to lead it: men like Eszterhaus, and myself. And you.” Eig leans across the desk, slowly, like a creature emerging from its carapace. “Do you think that I invite every operative of mine to be my special deputy? It’s an honor as well as an opportunity, it demonstrates trust. And you needn’t stay here in the office all the time, if that’s what troubles you. One doesn’t chain a wolf.”

“A wolf?” Haden’s smile is without humor. “Wolves run in packs. Or are you thinking of my boys?”

“I’m thinking to put you in charge of a commission, your own commission, with men beneath you, men ready, here, in this building, to serve you in your efforts, with your own young fellows still at work in the streets. What would you say to that?”

See the man’s eyes gleam! as if what he offers is worth the having: an office somewhat smaller than this one, no doubt, with its own smaller desk and teapot, and a chain no one can see, but a chain all the same. What Eig wants is not a wolf but a jackal, and Haden’s smile is of neither but of something else, as “Those men at the Mercury,” he says, tilting his head so his gaze is through his lashes. “Does the Commission know that they know that lordship de Metz? They were invited up to his box at the Opera—”

“As were you, I hear.”

“I was, and I went. On my own stick. Which is where I’ll stay,” as he rises from the chair and bows, a cold bow very like, if he had known it, one Istvan had once made before the General, a bow Mr. Pollux is in fact making at that very moment in the hot backstage afternoon, watched as he does by several interested colleagues, a quorum convened but “Frédéric Blum,” says Eig; Haden freezes in the bow, as if on the lip of a sudden cliff. “You attended that Opera as his guest. He’s a known colleague of the writer Seraphim, has he ever introduced you to that man?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Because it’s time for the fellow to stop hiding behind a false name and come into the light of truth. And since his editors won’t cooperate, we’ll have Herr Blum into the rooms of inquiry. If you should see him tonight at the theatre—But then, you’re not attending, are you.”

“No,” Haden says again, “I’m not,” with no bow at all this time, hand to the door to pass Costello with his arm still in a sling, Costello who does not look at or engage him, as he descends into the street all filled with clamor, men in flat workers’ caps shouting for something, or against it; the signs bob about so he can barely read them, and what does it matter what they say anyway, what sign ever changed anything? Like “Seraphim” in his newspaper columns, writing ballocks about the truth, or “Cry the Mercury!” and who was it closed the fucking place, then opened it back up again? Eig. Eig with his key and his twister Eszterhaus, whose wife has finally paid off her sapphire-debt, do either Eszterhaus or Eig know about that? And who is Eig finally fucking, or dreaming of fucking, there at his desk with blood on his hands? Does he know that his wants, too, his ambitions and backdoor dealings, can be currency? Or does he think that an office and giant’s desk make him immune to the streets? The rooms of inquiry—