The Mercury Waltz (38 page)

—as Rupert—hoping to snatch back Mr. Castor? trying to drop the curtains on the flames?—grabs past the counterweights for a looping, noosing line but instead stumbles, staggers like a boy overbalanced, and tips backward over the railing, falling through the darkness like a wingless angel, a kobold in the garden, a man trying to do what one lone man never can—save them all, keep them safe—to hurtle headfirst into the seats heaped high with jagged broomsticks, and land with a sound that is swallowed by Tilde’s animal scream.

Benjamin turns white, turns on his heel, bolts. Tilde drops to her knees, then onto her side, still screaming, as if she is giving birth to death. Istvan, Mr. Pollux still in hand—as if the puppet is part of his own body, as if he cannot spare the moment it would take to put him down—leaps to throw himself onto Rupert’s crooked form—“
Mouse!
Mouse, fuck it, sit up,
sit up!
”—as if this is something possible, half turning, the blood black on his hands, to snarl at the staring constable, “Go for help!”

The terrified whores drag Tilde upright through the billows of smoke to the door, past Frédéric frantic now with buckets and a useless cloth—“Help, dear God, oh
help!
”—and into the scrum of constables and crying women and Heads or Tails drunkards, Martin Eig struggling to bring order to the scene with the aid of several lieutenants, as Benjamin de Metz hurls himself into the brougham, sagging sideways and half fainting, retching whiskey and bile onto its floor as it clatters away.

By the time the fire wagon arrives, Haden is there to meet it, with the worst of the blaze already past: puddled water and stench of scorching, Tilde propped dazed on the curb, one hand tight around the locket at her throat, Frédéric weeping openly beside her, head in his hands. It is Haden who speaks to the fire sergeant, hosecart and sooty brass buttons, Haden who tells of the uneven gaslight, who confirms with a leaden nod that two men were left inside, the two owners, but “One fell,” says Haden; he chews at his mouth, his voice is flayed from the smoke. “He was up on the catwalk, and he fell. The other—”

“There’s no one there now,” says one of the firemen. “We looked, sir, we looked onstage and in the seats—there’s a deal of blood, surely! But—”

“Look again,” snaps the sergeant, but in the end they find that the building is empty of the dead and the living, no one is there, not even the jags and scraps of Mr. Castor, presumably scattered or consumed in the blaze. The whores urge Tilde to come to their lodgings—“You can have the whole bed, poor dearie, all to yourself”—but mutely she resists, hunching on the steps as Frédéric and Haden swab the mess aside so at least the doors may close against the weather’s further depredations, the doors that the locksmith, forgotten all this time, points out to Martin Eig: “You still want them fastened down, sir? I can change the locks in a trice,” but “No,” says Martin Eig; his mouth tastes of burning, he spits on the curb. “Not now.”

“Will I still get paid, sir? I’ve been here all evening.”

“No,” says Martin Eig again, climbing into the constables’ wagon as the locksmith turns away, as the crowd slowly departs, no more to see but the futile efforts to make well what never can be restored: Frédéric wiping at his eyes, Haden stony-faced beside him, as Tilde continues to sit and stare at nothing, at the emptying street, at one of the placards discarded in the trample and flight:
FOLLOW
ME
to nowhere in the endless darkness, as inside the smoke drifts and the glittering golden Wheel lies still past its final, dreadful, mortal gamble, with no more revolutions of the Mercury roulette.

CHRISTOBEL DE METZ’S JOURNAL

7 March, 18
—

This morning as always I woke before the dawn, before even the skylarks: it is such a precious hour, at Chatiens, to lean at the casement and watch the stars fade into light, and plan out the day to come. On Friday the guests arrive for Isidore’s name-day celebration—we shall have twenty-four staying,
but the programme I have planned is quite a light one: no bonfires, nor the banquet masquerade, only suppers and some afternoon hunting. B. will be present this year, which will be a joy. And James Aubin, too; he is such a great help, I am so pleased to have him permanently at Chatiens.

Mr. Tallard has just departed, after going over the quarterly accounts, and consulting with myself and Emory. He was glad to note the townhouse figures, but quite surprised to see that I had discharged Damien and nearly all of the garden staff, and surprised as well by my plans to have the greenhouses made over into entertainment pavilions. In his courteous way, he praised me for the change while investigating its reasons:
As always, Madame, your energy is exemplary—and you’ve engaged Artemis Bowles as the architect? A masterly choice! But do you mean to spend that energy wholly outside the gardens? You always seemed to have such pleasure there.

Yes,
I told him,
I did, but the growth of Chatiens itself is what concerns me now. And my husband does not wish our son to learn to romp with the gardeners’ boys.

And boys will be boys, Madame, certainly. —You are very generous to Mr. Damien, I see.

He has been a loyal servant to us, Mr. Tallard. I recognize and reward loyalty.
And Damien has been quite diligent in the matter of the mausoleum garden; he himself has planned its supervision and care, for that, of course, we cannot move or change, that place where Isobel lies, where Javier lies—All the lies! though I have not shared with B. my suspicions of his sister; why should I, when that would only hurt him, as I have been hurt, and more. Let him love her still, and believe that she cared only for his welfare; let him frown when I spoke of changing the gardens, then be persuaded that the change would serve as a tribute to Isobel—

Her memory will always be present there, but the garden walks are so private. If we place the pavilions in a row such that—see, here in the drawings, I’ve just had them back from Mr. Bowles—

I don’t care, I don’t need to see them. Only make sure that no hordes cross her path—keep some places private, Belle.

My dear, I shall,
and I will; and I do. Such as the doubled keys I keep, locked away with what was in that bankers’ box. It was as if M. Dieudonne thumbed his nose at me twice, first with the hidey-hole he chose, that was not a proper bank at all, and drove Herr Robb so frantic in the finding; and then with the contents of the box itself, no cache, no “patrimony”—
If you like, we’ll scribe his name onto the safebox key;
oh, what comedy!
for instead, inside there were only letters. One was my own, to him; one was from Isobel’s attorney, accompanying some manner of bequest (another of her concealments, for there is no corresponding mention of that money in any of our accounts, or any that I may access; Herr Robb is still investigating). And one was from, yes, Javier to M. Dieudonne, all courtesy, all mystery—he salutes the man as “Hanzel,” he references shared, unnamed, unfortunate events, he evinces a last desire to “see
les mecs
again,” and there the letter stops. I bit my lip to read it, and hear again in my mind that kindly, well-remembered voice:
Was
he kindly, Javier, whose hand I held as he passed from this life, to whose stories and counsel I gave such great inner weight? Did he care for us, or did he laugh up his sleeve at us, as wickedly as M. Dieudonne? And did he truly send M. Dieudonne some terrible cache, this letter its instigation, and I am duped of it, though I fulfilled my part of the bargain? Or was that bargain a dupe, itself? To deal with a man like M. Dieudonne is to be lost in a desert of mirrors…. The last letter in the box is much older and unsigned, referencing M. Pepper of London, an old friend of B.’s father, but it makes little sense; perhaps it is in cipher. There was also a brief note from M. Bok, to Isobel, that I burned at once.

I fully meant to tell B. of what I had done, of how I had bartered a sad relic, that sad building for our son’s lifetime peace and safety, as well as our own; and on my own, for I feared his misguided affection—his love, though so despised—would be our undoing still. Had he not gone to the Mercury that last evening, even after all that had passed? If he had been angry, I would have borne his anger, I would have begged his clemency, I would have accepted whatever punishment he might have decreed. But as things stood—The changing of the deed itself was a simple task for Herr Robb, though at first he chafed at the secrecy I sought:
I really ought confirm this transaction with your husband, Madame. You will excuse me for saying so—

You will excuse me, Herr Robb, but my husband has placed this confidential matter entirely into my hands. Will you dispute his trust in me?

Madame,
he said finally,
I will not. I understand that the first Madame, Monsieur’s sister, was occasionally his agent in such—family matters, and I shall stand on that precedent, if Monsieur should later become vexed.
When I told him, then, of the bankers’ box, he begged my pardon to the skies….“The first Madame!” Yes, see her there, in the portrait returned to Chatiens, that portrait that I pass a dozen times a day, “Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time,” her gaze too calm for Venus, is she Folly? If I were to paint myself there, it would not be as Psyche, foolish Psyche who ruined by trespass what she already kept and held. Perhaps I should be Minerva, strong and resolute as a true helpmeet should be, for it was as B.’s truest helpmeet that I accomplished all that I did.

What has happened to that building, with M. Bok now deceased, I neither know nor care. M. Dieudonne is a dreadful man, perhaps even an evil one, and whatever sorrow has found him is only his just deserts; but my heart broke anew for B. at the passing of M. Bok. On that evening, B. never returned to the hotel; it was Emory who wired me of the night’s events, though by then I had heard the servants’ gossip of a fire in the theatre, the performance disrupted, and M. Bok the victim of a dreadful accident. The newspapers were sparing on details, though the word “gruesome” was used. Emory says it was a terrible end, but still I cannot be truly sorry, and if that is a hard and uncharitable feeling, then so be it. M. Bok, living, was a living canker in my husband’s soul—see those poems in that small journal, all that passionate love, poured out for nothing! I had petitioned M. Dieudonne to keep a distance forever between ourselves and the two of them; perhaps this accident was, in some strange way, providential.

James Aubin says B. talks not at all of that night or of M. Bok, and Emory says the same. To me he has spoken only once, and without saying the name. It was after Paris, he was here, at the piano in the drawing room, playing as I sat with my correspondence.
Do you like this tune?
he said to me; he had had whiskey, but was not yet drunk.
It’s called “Eva’s Lie,” as in Adam and Eve. In the Garden of Eden.
He pressed his hands to the keys, the white keys, he made a series of very ugly sounds.
To see what I have seen—Christ! When I close my eyes I see it still!—and still keep on with this endlessness, this—life—And there is not even a grave for me to mark. There is nothing.

I went to him then, I stood behind him and
Play,
I said to him.
Please, my dear, play.

The look he gave then I cannot describe.
Why should I?

Please. Only play,
and after several long moments he did, his hands falling into Chopin, one of the great nocturnes, and as he played I began to weep; I cannot fully say why. Perhaps because he looked so grievous, and so ravaged with that grief; perhaps I wept in his stead, for he has shed no tears, not one, not once, since M. Bok’s passing…. I had resigned myself to having none of him, had given him over with a full heart for his own heart’s sake. And now he is here, he and Isidore, and James Aubin, too, and any others there may one day come to be; but there will be no more M. Boks, no more false loves and players’ masquerades. We have our rôles now, and we shall keep to those, we shall keep all that we have. We are de Metz.

Beyond the letters, there was one last item in the bankers’ box: the morocco wedding miniature of B., that exquisite companion to our own portrait. After Isobel’s death it could not be located; we suspected the servants, of course, and several were summarily discharged. And then to find it so, having been in
their
possession all along—Isobel’s doing, or was it Javier’s? I suppose I should be grateful that it was not sold for grubby gain! I keep it safe now on my desk, with my miniature of Isidore.

Beside the keys and letters, I have packed away the gloves—your gloves, my sister-who-was, after whose life I thought to pattern my own—as I now put aside this journal; I have no time to give to such things any longer. All my time, all my life is to tend my own garden, where my son will grow to manhood, my husband will find ease; our guests will gather to enjoy the pavilions, where lights and music will shine and sound. And in the dark of that mausoleum garden, on silent paths no one shall tread, the years and the flowers—roses, all those roses—will drift, and creep, and cover you, will bury you, Mrs. Arrowsmith, and your lying husband both.

“
Fini,
” says Frédéric, setting down the mechanical pencil, the gilt-silver Eagle on the smudged drifts of foolscap; he rubs his wrist, he pushes back from the backstage table. “I can’t revise another word, I’ll only make it worse. And I’ve still not done with the
Visionary
column, though Herr Philpot says he’s not sure how long he can keep publishing. He told me the
Solon
’s been sold for true this time, and Herr Hebert’s bound for London. He thinks that we ought to go, too.”

“Here,” as Tilde in apron, hair pinned and wound to a menacing height, locket bright, sets down the steaming pot, the stale raisin buns. “They were out of baked mice. —London,” with a queenly kind of scorn; she shifts the baby onto her shoulder, plump cheeks and solemn eyes, like an icon’s eyes, brown and round and unblinking. “There’s no nice carousel in London, is there, Baba? I’ll show you the carousel in the spring,” that is still some weeks in coming: all is cold and unpromising, grit and mud on the paths of the Park, the whores in their woolens dark as dead leaves driven by the wind into corners. All winter there has been a coal shortage, now there is a cabbage shortage, and
kaffee
as dear as gold; there are no shortages of rain, or harsh rhetoric, or tea, Tilde pouring for them both, then reaching into her pocket for her knife, the sharp little paring knife, to slice up the heels of rye bread she soaks in watered goat’s milk for the baby to gum. “And the swans on the Bridge—we’ll drop breadcrumbs for them, and make wishes, won’t we, Baba…. The post is here,” nodding to the piled letters, several of them bills for the building’s owner, the rest but one addressed to Seraphim, Seraphim who has begun to hint in his
Visionary
columns that the smile of the god will one day shine again, that this theatre so steeped in tragedy may stir in its ashes to rise once more. In this plan he is ardently abetted by Alban Cockrill—an occasional visitor past Tilde’s distaste, with his knowledge of puppetry that is helpful if incomplete, at least he knows how to use most of the tools—and by Edgar Rue, who compares the grief between these walls to truest and most tragic opera—

You almost went the way of Drury Lane, eh? And such a loss to the theatrical community! Stefan Hilaire was a star in the firmament, and his fellow—I never knew him well myself, Herr Bolk, was it, but he seemed a good soul, and a good businessman, too. But what else can one do but go on? “On with the motley,”
“Vesti la guibba,”
eh?
—
Have you heard that yet, Blum, that
Pagliacci
? It’s superb! I sang a bit in my youth, you know, I’d not be averse to doing so again, on the right stage.

There are other letters, too,
poste restante
from other places, a place not far by road or train track, a note badly written and worse spelled by Dolly the maid, who assures that all beneath that roof are well, that the letters sent are eagerly read, that
She burns a candel for you sir evry night,
which makes Frédéric smile if sadly; on Sunday last he lit several candles, there in the unpromising dimness of the Cathedral, after an hour spent in the back pews, listening incognito as the choir limped its way, with much throat-clearing and coughing—no shortage of influenza, either—through the “Dies Irae.” A tall white taper for his parents, for the home that once was, and then another for the one who is his home, his beloved, Hadrian—and one for Miss Tilde, too, and her little one; everyone needs prayers, and the light of Heaven’s goodwill. Heading back through the streets filled with slush and splashed pedestrians, fogged buses, a full complement of brown-suited constables—it seems there is a pair on every corner—Frédéric as he walked wondered if he should recognize their faces, those officers from the night of the fire; though that night wears, even in memory, a scrim of smoke and screams that is hard to penetrate. Perhaps someday he will write of it, someday far in the future, when no one can be hurt or hounded by the truth.

He blows on his tea, now, he considers the wounds on the walls from the burning, the scars painted out at the lintels, the several seats soaked so black with so much sticky glycerin that the stains may never be removed. Cockrill is of the opinion that cornstarch, well applied, will make a difference, an opinion that Miss Tilde discounts, Miss Tilde who herself still bears some scars from that night, spent lying on her pallet like another kind of corpse. The truth when produced in the light of dawn brought her upright, but with a different shock, white-faced and hands on her belly; he himself had been terrified that she might go fully into labor, one reads of such things happening, and then what would they have done? Ladies are very delicate, even fierce ones like Miss Tilde.

Of his own plummet of shock and sadness, then the soaring, vertiginous relief when the whole tale was told—by Haden, of course, who else? though
You?
Miss Tilde scathing and in tears.
Sir could have told me, why did he not tell me!
both seeming to accept as a matter of course that he, Frédéric, was not to have been told, though he had thought he
was
told—it is a tale for the stage, certainly, with so many feints and reversals!—but
It had to be so,
Haden hard to Tilde.
No one could know.

You knew.

An’t someone to open the fucking trapdoor, and pay off the cab? Don’t be dim. Anyway,
with honest honor,
you’re the one who sent milord off with your screeching, they said they could hear you all the way in the Heads or Tails. And you,
proudly to Frédéric,
that was some jolly sleight-of-hand you worked, with the fire.

I knew about that part, at least. Though I feared we’d end by burning the place to cinders,
still stinking then of cinders as it did, his own hands smarting from the burns…. A tale for the stage, yes, the tragedy that was not a tragedy but a triumph, the secret still contained for, now, who is to investigate or care that a disgraced puppeteer fled with or without the body of his lover, from a shuttered theatre half-burned and left in its ruins to that lover’s bastard daughter: “Tilde Bok” it said on the papers, and no one more astonished than Miss Tilde, when it was explained by the fellow from the bank, that supercilious Herr Robb in his beeswax-and-lemon-oil office, decorous drapes and bust of Polonius, who looked askance at her, Frédéric could tell, at her mended dress and work-worn hands, Frédéric in the chair beside to summon the air of his father when most displeased to say
We’ll have our own solicitor examine these, thank you,
taking the deed and letter into his satchel-bag, Herr Blum the co-signatory on Herr Robb’s stiff advice:
Unless of course the young lady should marry?
with a nod meant to be significant, a nod that kept Haden hilarious the whole way home:
Herr and Frau Blum, why not? And baby Blum, why you can call it ‘Bud’! And me, I’ll give the bride away, I’ll
gladly
give the—

Piss off, you, I’ll throw you out of my house,
at which they all laughed: and then Miss Tilde put her hands to her face, as if she might weep right there on the omnibus, while the other passengers pretended not to watch, as Haden grinned and cleaned his nails, and Frédéric patted her shoulder, though she seemed not even to notice, she seemed to be a thousand miles away.

Now she tucks a gummy morsel into the baby’s mouth, she pours more tea and “Tell your larky friend,” she says to Frédéric, “to have that roof-mender come again. There’s still leakage, even where he patched,
especially
where he patched—”

“What’s your cark?” as Haden enters, rain-cold and jaunty, from his daily dealer’s stint at the Heads or Tails; he throws down to the table a damp newspaper, two newspapers, their headlines competing as to which may be more dire. “Look, I brought some sweeties,” producing from his pockets a sugar-tit for the baby, and a third of a flask of Armagnac, wildly expensive, nearly impossible to obtain. “And a new book for us to—Shut the fucking door,” calling back to the litter of boys who trail him, shaking rain from their caps, these boys whose roles are doubled now and trebled, still playing on the streets, and groomed for the stage-to-be. Most of them were present on that black-masked night, and can never look at the flashing Wheel, still standing in the corner, without a shiver of morbid excitement, having spread the tale throughout the city in nearly the hour it happened, every servant in every block could recite it by the next day’s end. And if it has grown in the retelling to Guignol proportions—the body’s
thwack!
and the flying blood, the young whore who loved the dead man fainting away at the feet of the foreign lordship in disguise, and the wily actor who loved no one but himself, stealing away in the smoke and commotion with his puppets stuck under his arms—who is to say they are embellishing?
I was there,
those boys can say, and truthfully.
I saw it all.

“Here,” says Frédéric, as Haden shoos the boys stageward, tugging one another’s collars, stomping boots to raise the echoes. “This came for you,” the last letter in the pile, a feminine hand from another city, a short but meaningful missive that seems to speak primarily of that city, how fine it is, how many travelers take advantage of its pleasures—
We’re always looking down the road for more
—and to wish himself and his friends a season as pleasant, from the courteous and ever-faithful Mrs. Lucy Pimm. As Frédéric sets down his cup to go through his newly written pages with the troupe, his troupe, Haden’s busy boys busy with this subtler game—“Come and read it for us, Pipper—no? Then you, Alek, you try: ‘If on the midnight rooftop one should see—’ Boys, boys, pay attention, now!” Haden pours himself a jot of brandy, seeming to examine that letter while instead a scene replays on the stage of his mind, a midnight rooftop, yes, where a man hooded in black thrust himself up and out, as a body—wood and wool and many bags of glycerin—lay spectacularly dead below, as smoke poured and screams rose from the square and that man, Rupert, clambered down the fire stairs to the alley, to Haden’s rough whisper—
Bon voyage
—as with his knife he guarded the door, both doors, while Rupert bundled himself and the packed trunk onto the floor of the waiting cab, as Istvan emerged into the theatre’s alley, mask in hand, Mr. Pollux and the unhurt Mr. Castor in a case beneath his arm. A pause for half a moment, no need to say what had already been said—

The deed’s done, there’s money a-plenty to see you through the winter and more, you two and the chatelaine. Mouse has made sure of it all.

And you’ll be where, uncle?

Who knows? We’ve been pent—I’ve been pent—and there’s plenty out there left to see for two fellows on foot, once we get far enough to start walking. Why, we’ve a whole sorority to visit, should we choose to—Vater’s sister, and Puss at the Blackbird, and may be even the Rose and Poppy; pay a visit one day, our names will buy you a drink and more, if you’re inclined. Though your own angel’s enough for any man, yeah? My, he is sweet,
with a wink,
he tastes like a flower to a honeybee…. Who knows, we may even pop back to see your shows, if they are worth the seeing,
which Haden chooses to believe might be the truth: the world is round, after all, and may someday spin them, like a Wheel, back together to this same spot upon the map.

If not, then that moment in the alleyway must serve as a memorable farewell, the darkness in departure, the stench of burning, and Istvan’s smiling murmur—Merde,
then, kit
—as Haden halted him, put hands on him, grasping through his trousers in ferocious and intimate salute, as Istvan in answer gently brushed his knuckles to Haden’s lips—and then the doors closed, both doors, the cab driver wheeling cautiously away through the crowd that took little notice in the greater disturbance, Haden alone to watch them turn the corner, then turn himself back to the play, the fray, the shouts and the firehouse wagon, a new and nameless pain alive in his heart—

—that he can feel, still, as if it has somehow been inserted, half a seed and half a shard; but soothed when he looks to Frédéric, his good angel, whose sanctity is of a changeable order, as what he writes these days grows from comment to foment. In fact it is quite provocative, this new play called
Pan’s Salvation
, it has made even Haden raise his brows—

That’s a lot of guttery, an’t it? You’ve got them lopping off a head in every other scene. And I used to worry I’d soil you!

It’s not real blood,
with a devilish shrug.
Glycerin and paint, and a little something raw for the stink! And I’m never so innocent as you may think, sir.

Soberly:
All blood’s real to someone.

As soberly:
So is salvation. We have an angel and a devil, and both are both.

—and both of them and the boys in frieze to Tilde, who finishes her tea, and keeps her own pains secret, and her own joys. Chief among them is her baby boy, whose birth was as quick and easy as a lamb’s, her little lamb slipping safe into the world, dark-haired Ru for whom the cards have already told a fine tale: the Jack of Crowns crossed with the book and keys that stand for wise learning, so he will be some sort of well-known scholar, and make his way into the wider world through these theatre doors—for that is there, too, the
jongleur
card they called it always:
Look, Blue Eyes, the
jongleur
is winking at you!
with his cap and bells, his lute, his quill and spill of crushed flowers; in the deck he stands opposite the Hangs-a-man, who spoke of an ending, yes, but in the end brought no lasting death. Like the puppets, the cards tell truly, but one must have eyes to see…. The same as if one had looked into a kindling box to view the remnants of a bloodied, faceless body, with a legless creation beside him, the last show’s unnamed actor and the Snow Youth, finally united, sent together in chunks and pieces to feed the kitchen fire.