The Mercury Waltz (15 page)

“‘We are two.’ Don’t think for once, come out with me, let your little Cerberus guard the gates—”

—while quietly Tilde, as quietly come inside, lays aside her broom and pail and dusting-clout and takes herself to her cell above the stairs, to reach from her sleeve the little velvet pouch, spreading the cards on the woolen coverlet as brown and soft and lumpish as new earth, as much to cheer herself—lately she has been feeling oddly unwell—as to look and learn what might be happening beneath this roof: a quick and expert spread, this one is called the Wheel. See first the shy Jack of Doves, that would be Luc, all starry-eyed for M. Stefan though a faun-boy should know better, she told him so herself on the stairs:
Wake up, you
, but he just blinked his big eyes at her, he wants to live in dreams, like opium dreams, like “Annabell”; but that is not this world. This world is the ache in her belly and the Ace of Crowns, and the gorgeous Lord of Flowers, with the Priest between who will tell all he knows—and oh, the Hangs-a-man with his noose and woven basket, who always speaks of endings, final endings; her fingers linger on that card, she sucks hard at her lower lip. Yet here once more is great good fortune, the queen who is not a queen, the Mater, so what can that mean? as she studies the fecund mother at the fork between forest and town, one cloaked arm to cradle her sleeping infant, the other with a wand upraised to pierce the horned and swollen harvest moon.

To lay the cardfall of the past on the present is a sort of shadowplay, or a gateway like the shifting panes between the worlds that, the sages say, all who live must pass through many times before a last
finis.
A boy with a velvet scrap becomes the master of the mecs; a boy with a stick becomes a man who stands guard; a girl who sits at a window, waiting, becomes a woman with a grasp on time unequaled, making every moment pay for all the moments gone.

That window, dressed now in swags of heavy ivory lace, looks out from a three-story building fresh-bricked and orderly, fully part of, if not publicly embraced by, a town ascended to near-gentility: with several quite passable hotels, an ever-growing mercantile district, and soon, the mayor promises, a racehorse course. The woman at that window wears a widow’s black that never varies, though it is daily enlivened by queenly silver pins in her russet hair, and a small universe of jewels—scrolled gold and onyx, an imperfect diamond, a gaudy ruby brooch that may not be ruby at all, more likely polished garnet, that she wears in memory of her daughter’s father. Passed from the world before that baby had ceased to nurse, felled in a drunken doorway altercation that, as bravo
emeritus
, he ought not even have attempted, an aging potentate fat about the middle and shaved about the head: Omar, whose years of brawling were far behind him, but whose appetite for drink and fisticuffs stayed true until the last.

As did he, there at the Rose and Poppy, Omar most often found in the Theatre Guillame, shandy in hand and watching like a friendly father as the parlor-girls and boys tripped up and down the stairs with their evening’s escorts, beside old gnomish Walter Porter (himself found face-up and stiffened by that same door one very early morning, features twisted and pockets empty; the diagnosis was a heart spell and a neatly plundered corpse). Many of those stairway escorts might well have recalled the establishment’s previous incarnation, its saucy stage shows and array of theatrical whores—the last of whom, Vladimir, lost to a cloud of black hashish and some flash fellow who said he was an Arab, he may well have been an Arab, there and gone with Laddie like the genie from the lamp—and dark Bok the co-proprietor and his slippery actor in trio with severe Mrs. Mattison, supposed widow of the first owner of all though
Her babe must’ve come from the angels,
murmurs one of the escorts, to bring another’s shrug:
If she was a real lady, she wouldn’t be here. And neither would we.
It is Mr. Mattison’s picture that, draped ever in mourner’s ivy, adorns the quiet parlor, or a picture of a man very like to Mr. Mattison, the man to whom the woman—the self-named widow, Agatha, Decca—pointed when her daughter first lisped for “Papa.”

If not especially comely, she is an energetic child, a born jackdaw reaching always for the vivid—the brightest hair ribbons, the reddest apples, the painted statue of Athena with the golden breastplate and owl—and enjoying best to plunder her mother’s jewelry casket, drawn by the shiny pins of opal and pinked topaz, an old, immensely fragile, silver-paper chain, and the most favored trinket of all, a blue eye strange and beautiful, that both frightens and fascinates the child. Holding it on her palm, opening and closing her small fingers to make the eye blink, there and gone, there and gone and
Mamma,
she begs,
tell again about the clown.

A jongleur
, says her mother,
is different from a clown
, as she takes from the child the priceless lover’s eye, sent to her hand again in a calfskin pouch by a woman fully now a stranger, “Mrs. Pimm” prim as her pins-and-paper writing, her many unanswered questions—for whom does she ask them? Herself, or some others?—and her own news that might have come straight from a penny novel, the tale of the upstart whore who marries her one true love, the two then together on the stage she always wanted, her every wish granted; a sentimental penny novel, yes.
Say it properly, now, Pru: “jongleur.”

“Jongleur,”
repeats the child as her mother tells again the truncated tale of a tricky man who lived to play tricks on others, who gave her the blue eye and then disappeared to travel the roads beside his great friend and guard
Like the strongman at the sideshow, Mamma? He lifts up the whole world with one hand, his name is Atlas.

Yes. Just like that.

Did they go everywhere in the world?

They saw many places,
and will no doubt see more before they end, hand-in-hand with each other and their box of puppets, though if any mercy is left on Earth this town will never again be one of them. Yet a part of her still longs, with a dry unsparing ache, for Rupert’s steady gaze, her brother’s tilted smile; he is an uncle now, imagine that. Only to Omar did she once confess that, yes, it would be a sort of easement to see them both,
To know if they are well, Rupert especially—

And to watch those mecs again, eh? That ugly little feller, just like a living soak—recall
’
em, Miss Decca, that one time with Pearl, and her all screaming? What a show that was!
on a savoring chuckle,
Omar who never lost his deference for her, who called her “Miss Decca” even when they lay together, those few strange occasions, one of which resulted in this fat-cheeked missy with the coarse auburn curls, whom Decca daily tends with an aloof, ferocious, all-seeing care, brushing those curls until she cries, making her recite her lessons, her numbers and her prayers, making sure she wants for nothing: little Pru to whom one day all of this will belong, the Rose and Poppy and its roster of employees, the whores and the cook and the stableman and the doorman and sour Velma Byrd, all of whom Pru already is schooled not to befriend, to remember that
They work for us—
and the rooming houses, too, those houses bought as income to augment the
Pleasant Entertainments for Fine Gentlemen:
Decca’s whole and tiny empire, beholden to no one but herself.

Yet one day arrived without warning that extraordinary benefice, a cheque draft sent with a letter from a man whose face she barely recalls, though the voice, calm with heat, is one she has never forgotten:
Verbena is such a singular scent. It suits you, Mademoiselle,
in the cold coalless room, his warm hand to the back of her head; yes, she remembers. And he, it seems, remembered, too, that room and that moment, the endless days of the war and
Our mutual friends,
the letter’s bland mention of
Mr. Bok and Dusan, please do keep for them this performance
matériel—a teakwood box with a silver lock—
and when you should see them, tender it with my regards.
His own for her were contained in the cheque, in salute and support of
Your continuing enterprises, in which, Madame, I wish you the greatest success;
that cheque used not only to buttress those enterprises, to buy the second rooming house, but—after long reflection in her own quiet room, the little dressing table with its ancient hairbrush and silver combs, her own face in its time-clouded mirror a sister’s and a child’s—to pay back once and then with interest the monies received from the long-gone General, left for the three of them, kept by herself alone; she who alone had sent the General’s man away—
There’s more where this came from, he told me to say—
saying nothing, waiting out his exit past a hidden Velma Byrd, to whom she noted only
Say a word, and it’s your last here.
So the bankers sent the money, the box she stowed away untouched, in a manner of apology; and how unexpected, and extraordinary, that in doing these things she felt the more prosperous and powerful, not less.

And how gratifying, too, to prove that with money enough even a woman alone—an orphan girl; a madam; a grass widow unwanted by all—can direct banks and bankers to do her bidding, to disburse in secrecy and receive in same, to gather and hold for Prudence whose final patrimony, no, matrimony, will be those bank accounts, the real estate and shiny jewelry: Miss Prudence Mattison, and none to dare call her differently, both the window and the view shall be her own. Someday, Pru shall sit at this desk, her desk, in the dainty duchess chair, its mended petit-point roses retaining the odor of a thousand dead cheroots, and direct the parlor-girls and boys, the endless line of whores whose dried tears and sweat and toilette water float forever in the rooms upstairs, while downstairs hired singers warble at the piano, the newest tunes and old sentimental favorites, like “Paddy’s Lament” and “Lady Angela Takes the Air.”

In the meantime Pru’s mother consults that window past the stolid swags, watching the bustle of traffic below; she sees the grocer’s cart, she sees a constable half-dozing on his corner, she sees the bank’s vice president approaching in the brougham he fancies no one knows is his: every Tuesday noon, he comes and goes, though never too busy to stop and have a cup of tea with his valued depositor and client Mrs. Mattison, himself her client and her actor, one of her many actors, and the brothel and rooming houses her stage: in these later years she has reacquired some appreciation for the theatre, its uses and beguilements; she is her brother’s sister, after all.

Perspiration dots Frédéric’s forehead, his fine new shirt is also damp, though he barely notices, too busy grooming—or call it, yes, prinking—before the scratched and spotty mirror in his little room, making ready for a night at the opera. And such an opera! The tragic
Cleopatra’s Rapsodia
staged at the Civic, to be sung by the great Swedish baritone Tomas, and the Cleopatra herself Miss Annelore Bart; truly, it will be an evening to remember.

He checks again for the tickets, one secured by the
Solon
for Seraphim, though Frédéric plans on attending as a private member of the audience; perhaps that is not entirely ethical, but Seraphim
will
be there, and the review will indeed be written. The second ticket he purchased himself—terribly dear; it cost nearly two weeks’ rent on this room—for Haden, of course, who, though he is amazingly well-traveled—the stories he tells! He has been nearly everywhere—has never yet seen an opera, his shrug almost shy to admit it, but
Why, that’s capital!
Frédéric’s answer in elation.
You’ll give me the full pleasure of a premiere.

And Haden looked away, then—was he abashed?—and bit his lip until it reddened, the pale scar there no disfigurement at all, to Frédéric’s way of thinking, but rather a kind of
mouche,
a piquant enhancement of the beautiful whole…. And then in the little glass his face burns so appallingly that he squeezes shut his eyes, for these thoughts are—they are impossible, and if he thinks them often when he and Haden are apart, and always when they are together, well then he must just try to think of something else, and not let those thoughts and feelings mar the friendship they have made—not at all like those furtive fellows in the Cemetery, nothing like! but instead so sweetly intimate and rare, like something out of his old dear book of the gods.

These past weeks have found them much together, talking of nothing and everything—the crowds at the theatres, the value of travel, the lasting benefits of reading poetry—and how flattering to find that Haden has read all of Seraphim’s columns, has never missed a one! though of course he does not know, cannot know, who the real writer is. And Haden’s own profession has been finally confessed, his tutorial efforts with the wild street boys, trying to educate and help them:
Show them something better of life, you know. Up from the gutter and all that.

Why, that’s fine of you! And I can see you have a great effect,
since nearly everywhere they go there is always a skulky boy or two trailing behind. At first those boys made Frédéric somewhat nervous, with their stares and shoves and curses, “twister” this-or-that, but now he sees them as evidence of Haden’s great good heart: he is a diamond in the rough,
l’ange gauche
as the French would say, a rough angel. And how angelic, too, to spend a whole afternoon in a stuffy pew at St. Mary of Dolors, the tedious choir rehearsal that Haden, hands clasped and flanked by statuary, attended without complaint, saying only at the tea shop afterward that
You’ve got a voice could rouse a dead man,
with a smile that roused Frédéric so thoroughly that he knocked the plate of hot baked mice into his lap.

And last night it was a show at Cockrill’s Palace, Haden’s invitation though he rolled his eyes at the cancan farrago, the frowsy girls, as Frédéric deplored the Gawdy-puppet:
The ones at the Mercury are worlds beyond, aren’t they? Such a pity that they closed the
Forest
show!
and
Why’d they do that?
Haden’s frown, but Frédéric did not know, discussing it together as they walked to Crescent Bridge, to sit beneath the ancient blind-eyed statue of Albanus with his spear and shield—

It’s said that he founded the city on an upturned rowing-shell.

When it hails, the oarsmen say he’s pissing gravel.

—handing back and forth Haden’s brandy flask until both were dizzy and the moon rose high, those oarsmen rowing in, their narrow wakes of rippled silver, to stow up their boats for the night. Then
It’s very late—I suppose we ought go
back together through the streets, Haden whistling some new street song,
I don’t have the words, only the tune,
a saucy tune all the way to Frédéric’s rooming house, Frédéric at the door and Haden just a step below, close enough to touch, to shake hands and say goodnight once and then once again, and again, until the street cleaners’ wagons rumbled by with their noise and effluvial spill…. “Haden,” Frédéric murmurs now to the mirror, thinking of his smile, the lean strength of his arms, the way he walks, that conqueror’s swagger, as if nothing can harm him. “
Omnia vincit amor—
”

—and then, as if he has somehow been overheard—by whom? the sparrows at the open window? the coughing neighbor next door?—he loudly switches to Ovid,
Remedia Amoris,
the cure for love, as he reaches resolutely for the Pinaud’s and his cordovan tie.

All over the city windows are open to the humid scarlet sunset, stately casements and small apartment panes, doors thrown wide in the tenements to catch a breath of the breeze; the stray cats have left the bridge for the shaded buttresses below, where they watch with half-closed eyes the bobbing flotsam, floating newspapers, and quarrelsome ducks, and the whores who sit, their skirts ruched up, to dabble their feet in the water. At the Park the Lady’s Garden is crowded, the fountains of Diana and the leaping fish are crowded, the lemonade booths are sold out, the paths congested with strollers and thieves too enervated to steal since it is “Hot as midsummer,” pants Herr Konrad, the publisher of the
Daily Solon,
as in his stuffy office he fans himself with yesterday’s edition, though yesterday’s visit from the Morals Commission was an occasion for sweat as well.

See that Herr Eig, cool and powder-dry, with his request that was not a request, but not an order, either, which somehow made it worse:
Your theatre columnist, that “Seraphim,”
wondering aloud for the name, the true name for
Why does he write under a false one? And why do you allow it?
And Herr Konrad wavering, about to open his mouth, but the editor, Herr Hebert, fixing his gaze as keen as a rat terrier’s on Herr Eig to say instead that
It’s a matter of moral integrity, sir, aiming to keep free of all corruption. You of all people will surely understand,
the matter left there for the moment but “Perhaps we should have told about the boy,” says Herr Konrad now, as he tosses down the paper to scrabble in a desk drawer, hunting his enamel case of digestive mints. “The Morals Commission, you know what goes on there—”

“Konrad,” says Herr Hebert, who privately despises both the Morals Commission and the sickly odor of digestive mints, “it’s not for me to tell you your business. But Seraphim is a secret people like to talk about, a secret that belongs to us alone,” thinking of the garish sheets plastered on the lampposts and the shouters in the Park, the Virgo girls and their ilk who call Seraphim a hero, the café wits who swear he is a descendent of Voltaire’s. “Do you want to sell newspapers, Konrad?”

“Well,” Herr Konrad sighs, “he can’t get into much trouble at the Opera,” that august and important performance, all the best families will be there, old money and new industrial barons, Herr de Vries himself and his wife are to hold court in the Lords’ Box, and have some sort of private supper after, the kind of event a mere newspaper publisher will never be invited to attend—unless he is Tibor Banek, that turtle-jawed lackey, Tibor Banek who just last week wrote an editorial on the mayor so fawning it was physically painful to read, Tibor Banek who would have turned over
his
columnist, or his mother, in less than half a blink, so “You’re right,” he says to Herr Hebert, snapping shut the enamel tin. “Seraphim is our secret to keep.”

“For as long as we may,” as Herr Hebert tugs at his sticky tie and reaches for his meerschaum pipe. No one will ever guess the boy, as meek as he is, but Blum ought at least be buttonholed, forewarned is forearmed, especially when it concerns the Commission; though why they should care overmuch about either Seraphim or a puppet playhouse is a matter of serious speculation, one that he does not care to share with Herr Konrad. If strict morals are the issue, there are whole streets that would benefit more profitably from the attention, like the gamblers’ row of dice houses, each more crooked than the last, or the old clandestine hovels where the country girls are taught filthy new tricks. Or, if they mean to make a scapegoat of a theatre with their Morals Act—itself so broadly written that it is a stone thrown into a pond with no bottom, and no way to tell where the splash might fly—they might start with Cockrill’s tarts, who flash their globes dependably at least once a night. Blum himself may have a theory or two on the issue, but the boy has been thin upon the ground at the office, ever since that ballyhoo in the Park; and didn’t
that
sell the papers…. For now Herr Eig is gone, and the Mercury Theatre is dark, so time enough to talk to Blum when he turns in his Opera review. For now, Herr Hebert sucks at his pipe and thinks longingly of a glass of ale drunk at the Wounded Lion down the block, where they cool the barrels in river water, and the serving girls wear blouses cut almost as low as Cockrill’s tarts’.

At that Palace that is not a palace, Cockrill himself is currently busy with his Gawdy, the rolling black eyes refusing, last night, to roll at all, one pointing left and one skewed straight down; not that anyone noticed, they were much too busy looking at Miss Mariam’s bouncing melons, all juicy pink-and-white. But still, a fellow ought to do his best when he puts on a show and “You’ve not been pullin’ your weight,” he says with a certain melancholy to Gawdy, who gives no flicker of reply, lying backside-up with his leather-skinned head twisted hard to one side, as “Lookit,” says Miss Mariam to Miss Polly, showing a folded picture in one of the penny-papers. “Just like a queen, an’t she?” Frau de Vries in her feathered cartwheel hat, real ostrich feathers come all the way from Africa, her white satin skirts bustled so high and cut so close you can almost see the shape of her legs, and “A real glass of fashion,” agrees Miss Polly, who shows her own beautiful legs at every possible opportunity. “And we could look just as smart, or almost, if Alban would open up his pocketbook once in a way!”

“Girls, girls. Does this look like the Opera House?” to bring Miss Polly’s sigh, and Miss Mariam’s snort, leaning over to crank vigorously at the window, to let in the hum of the streets if not its breeze, the chatter and sundown traffic and someone passing whistling that naughty new “Cupid” song,
Cupid, Cupid, notch your bow/Shoot it where it ought to go—

—Haden in fact in passing and whistling to himself, a love song, a fuck song, on his way from just such business, one of his boys left sore from the attention; it is a new precautionary ritual he takes before spending much time with Frédéric. Begun that day at the church—and did the holy water boil to have him there beneath the roof? —listening to the choir but seeing only Frédéric, coat shed for the heat, singing the Latin phrases again and again,
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
as Haden watched from the heart of a mute and nervous longing held like a lozenge on the tongue, the secret space of a solitude he longs to share, and sharing cure, there is no name for this feeling but it is very strong. And heading off afterward down the church steps, Frédéric ebullient and flurried to drop his satchel-bag, a tumble of Scout pen and notebook and a letter
From home,
letting Haden when he asked see the envelope: a lady’s stationery, a lady’s hand to ask a mother’s questions, is he eating well, is he working too hard, will he not come home for a visit soon to see his dear parents and Marie:
Who’s Marie?
to bring a different sort of flush, not a happy one, and
A family friend,
Frédéric said, which Haden could see, anyone could see was a lie trying to tell some truth, the truth itself just a few sentences down—
She asks me daily for news of you, she lives for your letters
—as without comment Haden handed back the letter, and Frédéric shoved it deep into the bag.

And then the walking and the talking, as they do, now, never has he spent so many daylight hours on his feet, his business has begun to suffer: for it needs time to listen and prowl, throw dice and deal cards and police his boys, who without him only grow lax, take license for laziness, and waste their days as they used to, winking at
rentiers
and trading punches over who has the green knickers and who greases the rope for whom. And now is not the time to be off-duty, the city all a-prickle with rumors, some of which center on this Opera night, so many toffs come to town with their suppers and balls, masquerades and ladies’ teas—a shame that he has no girls to send to such things; may be he ought to get a girl or two, someone like that iron virgin at the Mercury,
she
looks game enough for any tussle, though she seems to take particular pleasure in slamming the door in his face:
Is it deaf he is, or only stupid? Sir said be off, so be off.