The Music of Razors (8 page)

“I’m giving you some of my bad habits, staying up so late.”

“What other habits do you have?”

“Well,” he says, stepping inside and closing the door, keeping his voice low. “I do tend to get myself into trouble from time to time.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Oh, you know. This and that.” He crouches by her bedside, and Millicent wonders what he expects. “I’ve traveled here with a friend of mine, actually. We came from Mexico. Do you know where that is?”

Millicent shakes her head. “Were you in trouble there?”

Father smiles. “It’s part of the game we all play. You know what it’s like.”

Millicent shakes her head. “I used to make mistakes when I was making the roses, but I have become much better since then.”

“Roses…?”

“Mama and I work at the milliner’s.”

“Ah. Ah yes, of course.”

“I make roses mostly, and Mama helps the mantua maker.”

“Yes, yes, but what about when you’re not doing that?”

Millicent thinks about that. “Then we come home.”

Father’s brow furrows with disbelief. “Do you not have friends?”

“I have Papa and I have Mama. They are my friends. Papa and Mama will be sending me to a school next year,” she says. “After we save enough.”

The eager smile fades from Father’s face and is replaced with something else. Millicent wonders if she has been impertinent, if Father is about to become angry.

Father stands up with a calisthenic sigh and looks about the tiny little room. He says, “Well well well,” in a way that tells Millicent he wants to change the subject. He looks at the wet walls, the cloudy little window with its view onto the street, the bedside table that Papa made, with its single flickering candle in a holder of green iron. “Well well well,” he says.

She moves to placate him. “I like making roses,” she says.

“Hmm?” he says. “Oh, yes, I’m sure they’re lovely.” And then he is down to her level again, in a shot, and urgently hissing, “God’s wounds, haven’t you done
anything
?”

Millicent flinches backward, her father’s face like a mad mask in the darkness before her, unsure what he will say or do. She has never had a grown-up speak to her like this.

Father lowers his eyes and looks away, defeated. “Never mind. Are you tired, Millicent?”

Millicent shakes her head, frightened.

“May we talk for a while?”

Millicent is very sleepy the next morning. Papa makes her toast and tea and asks what it was she and Father talked about all last night. Papa heard Father leave the house at about four in the morning, and he hasn’t returned.

“Father was telling me about when he was a boy.”

“Oh yes?”

“It wasn’t very nice. His mama kept him locked up all the time. Made him tell people things for money.”

Papa forgets his plate, leaves it on the sideboard. “What?”

Millicent puts her toast down. “When she made him tell people things he went away, in his head.”

At that moment Mama comes down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“Your Dorian’s mother was a spirit-rapper, did you know that? A cheap confidence artist, just like him.”

“His family was very poor,” Mama says, sliding a pin through her hair. “I’m sure they did what they had to in order to get by.”

Over the following days the house changed. Out went their old things, the tattered old love seat by the fire, the chipped and worn table that Papa had made for the kitchen, the battered old kettle and blackened pots. Out went Millicent’s little bed. And in came everything soft and bright and new. Almost the only thing that survived the forced evacuation was Papa’s old armchair, which he refused to part with, and his own bed that he had slept in through marriage and loss. Curtains fell and drapes were raised, and legions of men came to scrape the windows and roll out new rugs.

Through it all smiled Mama, buoyed to new heights by each new gift and arrival. Papa kept himself away from it all for as long as it happened, returning each day after dark smelling of clipped grass and lacquer, and the first thing he would say would always be “My chair and bed best still be here,” and Mama would always reply, tired and patient, “Yes, Papa, they’re still here, same as they ever were,” as if there was no avoiding it. And through it all Millicent kept out of the way of Mama and Father and the workers who came and went, as the house she grew up in washed away, piece by piece. Millicent was not so attached to the old things that their leaving cast a sadness upon her. What left her quiet from the moment the first new chair came through the door was the notion that if Father should leave there would not be one thing in the entire house—except Papa’s bed and chair—that would not remind Mama of Father. It was the thought of that sadness falling upon her mother that kept Millicent silent and to herself through all the days in which the house changed.

They do not eat at home now that Father has returned. Nor do they spend any of their evenings in their new home on any of the nights that Father is not away talking to his friend from Mexico, or conducting business about the town. (“Who does business of a nighttime?” Papa demanded to know.) And then, on a night they were meant to attend the ballet, Father did not come home for them. Mama waited, then fidgeted. Papa put the kettle on and that made her angry. (“We don’t have time. The performance begins in less than an hour.”) And then an hour passed, and Father did not come home, and Mama did her best to smile and shrug and told them there would be other ballets, other performances, and went upstairs and closed her door.

A little while later Millicent puts on her nightgown and Papa comes and they say their prayers together. Then Millicent is tucked into her new bed, which is twice as long and twice as wide as her old one, stuffed to bursting with goose feathers and down. Papa reads to her from
The Beauty in the Sleeping Forest,
which she always liked, and then she goes to sleep.

Millicent Athelstane, aged eight, will see her father one more time. That very night she wakes to find him crouched by her bedside, smiling as someone who is just learning to make friends. “I’m sorry you missed the ballet,” he says. “A rather inconvenient thing has transpired.”

“Trouble, Father?” Millicent says, sitting up and rubbing one eye.

Father smiles again and looks at the floor. “You know how it is.”

It is very dark, and very cold.

“I have to go away,” Father says. “But before I do there is something I would like very much to give you. Something grander than clothes or a bed or any of that tedious rubbish. I know you weren’t very much taken with them.”

“Don’t go,” Millicent says.

Father falls silent, like someone hearing very bad news. “New…new furnishings can’t be of very great interest to a young lady with her whole life before her,” he says, continuing as though she had never spoken. “And I want to leave…leave you with something that will make you happy.”

“Mama will be so sad if you go. We don’t work at the milliner’s anymore. She has no one to look after her.”

Father stands and extends his hand to her. “Won’t you come and see?”

Millicent feels like she wants to cry, her mouth all hard and wobbly, but she nods yes. She pushes the blankets off herself and slides her feet into her checkered little slippers. She puts her hand in Father’s—soft and smooth—and follows him out of her room and down the stairs. From the top of the stairs she sees that someone has lit the sitting room with a great many candles.

“Now,” Father whispers. “We must be very quiet. What I have made is for your eyes, and my eyes, and the eyes of angels alone.” They are at the bottom of the stairs and all Millicent can see through the sitting room arch is all the new furniture lit by that rich, warm glow. Her father squeezes her hand. “Now then, come with me.”

They walk into the sitting room.

Her father squeezes her hand again. “Surprise.”

Kneeling there, upon the Persian rug, between the two leather settees is…

Millicent is unsure if she wants to take a step closer.

The ballerina is mostly mechanical. Her arms, legs, and chest are hollow, ornate, wrought. Millicent can see right through them, through the fancy and filigree, to the fireplace that lies behind her. Only her head is real, and that is down—facing the open hatch in the cage of her chest, and the corrugated ruffle that divides her upper from her lower. Her body and limbs are constructed entirely of bronze; the candlelight makes her glow.

“She’s waiting for you,” Father says. “Come.” Father leads her across the room and crouches down so that he is head height to Millicent and the ballerina. “Look,” he says. “Her heart is still.” He points to the ornate, filigreed box resting in the center of the ballerina’s chest, contained within a sphere made of three silver hoops. It rests there, in the space of the ballerina’s chest. “She is waiting for your touch to bring her to life.”

The ballerina’s hair is dark as dark can be, slick and close to her fine white head, tied back with a scarlet ribbon. Millicent cannot see her face, doesn’t know what to say.

“Do you not like her,” Father asks anxiously. “I made her for you. To abide by you. To be with you for as long as you may want her. A secret for you and I alone.”

Millicent says, “Thank you, Father,” all the time wondering how Father made this thing before her.

“Remember I told you I knew something was missing from the world that I had to find?”

Millicent nods.

“Well, we found it, myself and my friends from Mexico. Do you see now why I must leave, to discover what other things I might achieve?”

All Millicent can think of is how the sitting room smells so very different now, of fresh varnish and new leather and snipped flowers.

“Reach out,” Father urges. “Touch her heart. Say hello.”

So this is how it is to be.

She reaches out and—hesitantly, tremblingly—places a fingertip upon the box at the center of the clockwork ballerina. The polished wood is warm, the metal cold. The tide of her blood is a whisper in her ears.

Something clicks, inside the dancer. Father gently draws Millicent’s hand away. The three-ring sphere in which the ballerina’s beautiful box-heart is housed begins to slowly and comprehensively spin, building speed, faster and faster, until light begins to creep from the box. It is now a silver spheroid blur, growing brighter by degrees, and as that first scintilla of light makes itself known, so do other soft sounds come from elsewhere inside the ballerina: her joints, her fingers, the ball of her neck. As the light becomes a soft and constant glow—all of the quiet, tiny parts within her coming to life—her face slowly rises.

Skin white as milk, lips red as love. The ballerina opens her eyes. They are deep and dark.

She looks upon Millicent as if there were nothing in the world but Millicent.

“H…hello,” Millicent says.

The lips smile a smile and, from between them, her first breath. The ballerina’s eyes shine.

“Hello.” Her voice is warm.

“My name is Millicent,” says Millicent. “What is yours?”

The ballerina tilts her head. “My name is Nimble.”

“Nimble…,” Millicent repeats, getting used to the name.

And she hears the front door close.

This is life from knee height. You are either with Millicent, or you aren’t; you are either in her world or—for the time in which Millicent is in the company of others—you wait in the Drop for Millicent to be alone once more. It is always a bit of a rude shock, talking with her or playing or clapping hands, and then suddenly finding yourself somewhere else completely.

Nimble sits herself on a waist-high, man-long slab of dirt—like a sarcophagus, almost—and waits for Millicent to be alone once more. She lowers her chin and feels the heart-box spinning within her chest-cage, listens to its faint and constant song.

The hollow latticeworks of her arms and legs are filled with a scarlet mass of red silk roses. Millicent made them, one by one, and decorated her friend with them. When Millicent’s mother leaves, Nimble will return and they will continue playing and singing.

Once in a very great while Dorian comes through the Drop on his way to one place or another, or to fetch the instruments that he keeps in a chamber of their own. It was the instruments that Dorian had used to create this place, and to create Nimble, and others. More often than not, though, he sends his curious little manservant, Tub, to fetch what he needs or to go somewhere on his behalf. At first Nimble thought perhaps maintaining contact between father and daughter was one of the reasons for which she had been created, but in the months since Nimble first awoke she has decided that this is not the case. Rather than existing in order to ensure Millicent’s father is never forgotten, Nimble has decided she was created in order to ensure that Millicent’s father is never missed. It is to that end that Nimble strives, and takes joy from each laugh or smile she receives.

Tub is a nice enough fellow, if hopelessly naïve. Takes the world at face value, he does. In a way he and Millicent would be a good pair.

In another universe Millicent says Nimble’s name. Her mother has left, she is alone now, and Nimble goes to her.

Millicent’s room has bookcases from which Nimble has memorized many stories. There is a wide bed, soft and full. A few dolls look on from corners and chairs. It is a beautiful room, but may not remain beautiful for much longer. In the time Millicent and Nimble have been together a veil has descended over the house. The spirit of the place is becoming sour, and a bit wretched.

“Here I am,” says Nimble.

Millicent sighs and says, “We must take the roses back.”

“Oh? Whatever for?”

“Mama doesn’t believe that we were dressing you with these roses. She thinks I have lost all the silk she gave me.”

“Oh.”

“Oh Nimble, I get so tired of not being able to tell anyone about you, show you to anyone…”

Millicent is becoming sad again, and Nimble plumbs anxiously for something to lighten her mood. “Come,” Nimble says. “Let’s cover the bed with them. That’ll give her a surprise.”