The Troupe (14 page)

He called again, yet still no one responded, so he walked in and laid a hand on the lamp to turn on the light. But before he could, a deep, rattling voice with a twangy accent growled, “
Go away. You’re not welcome here.
”

George jumped in fright, and ran out as fast as he could. He ran until he found Franny, sitting on her chair and staring into the wall, and he sat next to her to catch his breath. When she asked what was the matter and he told her, all she said was, “Ah. Well, I guess the professor’s right. They’re getting harder to control every day.”

George wished he could spend more of his time with Colette, who was now clad in the dazzling tights he’d first seen her in, yet the moment she entered the theater she became nothing but business. She encountered some difficulties with the stagehands, who, like the men from the billiards hall, mistook her for a colored, and she again had to forcibly inform them she was Persian. After she’d sent them hustling she told Kingsley he needed to cut two minutes (and nominated the bit about the puppets’ being real as what needed to go), and she told Franny to move her bit with the safe on the rail to the end, since that was a much bigger finish than the statues. Franny nodded obediently, hardly paying attention, but Kingsley protested at first: that was their favorite part, he said (though he never explained who “they” were), but he eventually agreed. Colette then monitored their rehearsals, and when she ran into issues with the orchestra and the pianist George literally leaped forward to volunteer.

“Wow,” she said after George played along with their act. “That was…”

George leaned forward. “That was?”

She nodded, impressed. “That was good.”

“Good?” he asked. “Just good?”

“Yeah. That’ll definitely work,” she said, and turned to other business.

George was miffed to hear her call his playing
workable
, but he supposed any compliment from Colette was better than none at all. It was more than Silenus had given him so far, at any rate. Silenus seemed to have other business, some he deemed more important than the rehearsals. His brief appearances at the theater were always terse and impatient, as if the show was an irritating distraction and he had other places to be. He spent much of his day in his office in the hotel, though on the few occasions when his door could be found George heard no voice or noise within. Silenus claimed he was doing research, but when he emerged in the afternoon George could have sworn he saw snow on the man’s shoulders, yet Alberteen had gone without snow for nearly a month.

But whatever Silenus’s endeavors were that day, they seemed to be going badly. He was more and more agitated each time they saw him, and began snapping and barking at the slightest provocation. When Kingsley complained that his dressing room was too high in the theater and there was too much of a draft, Silenus shouted, “What should I do, tell the sun to fucking shine down and warm you? Build another fucking theater? Or are you asking me to scale the walls of this one here, and plug up its many faults?” Kingsley was too stunned to reply, and Silenus simply fixed him with a cold glare before stumping out.

Once more George wondered what Silenus would say if he ever heard the true reason behind George’s presence. He could hardly see what his mother could have found desirable in this man.

But whenever Silenus stormed through their ranks, Stanley was always there in his wake, tending to bruised egos and patching things up. Stanley would smile, think upon it, and write down a mere handful of words that would somehow make sense of everything. After
Silenus’s outburst at Kingsley, Stanley consoled him with:
FOUND SOME FUR COATS IN A CLOSET UPSTAIRS. WOULD THAT HELP
? To which Kingsley agreed.

Stanley seemed an eternal source of comfort for the group. There was a quiet calmness to him that was somehow infectious. George or other troupe members would sometimes just sit next to him without saying a word. It was pleasant to simply be there with him, letting the seconds slip past you. And unlike the others he almost never asked anything of George: while Kingsley, Silenus, and Colette would have orders whenever they saw him, Stanley only had an apologetic grin.

He and George also shared a similar appreciation for music. George’s one peaceful moment on that first day was when he got to listen to Stanley practice the cello, whipping through scales and arpeggios with a fluid ease. He paid incredible attention to every tone and stroke of the bow, and his long, delicate fingers were able to search through the strings and find the purest pitches.

“What was that?” George asked when he finished playing one piece.

Stanley showed him the music.

“Claudio Merulo,” he read. “I’ve never heard of him before. Will you play it tonight?”

Stanley shook his head, and wrote upon his blackboard:
ONLY EVER PLAY ONE SONG
.

“Yeah,” said George, disappointed. Vaudeville players rarely changed their acts. Many played the exact same show for years on end. If the act worked then it worked, and doing anything different was unthinkable in the face of success.

Stanley seemed to sympathize, and was pleased to find a fan. He took out his blackboard and wrote an appreciative comment for George’s audience, yet as he crossed his legs to support his writing George saw his feet were bare and his soles were burned black, just as Silenus’s were. When he held up the blackboard (
IT IS NICE TO HAVE
SOMEONE WHO TAKES TIME TO LISTEN
), he saw George staring and quickly put his foot back down. He erased the blackboard and wrote:
SOMETHING WRONG
?

George swallowed. “No,” he said. “I guess there isn’t.”

That night their first performance went off without a hitch, and for the third time George let the song in the fourth act wash over him. The memory of the hollow hill did not violently overtake him as it had before, but he still felt it rise inexorably in his mind until he could almost smell the moist earth and feel the gray light upon his neck. It seemed as if the song’s stupefying nature was less and less effective on the listener the more they heard it, which would explain how the troupe themselves were not spellbound each time they performed.

When they were done they packed up and hurried back to the hotel, leaving the people sitting stunned in their seats, each one lit by the curious light and colors that seemed to mark the Chorale.

“What will happen to them?” George asked.

“You saw it from the audience before, didn’t you?” Silenus said.

George admitted that he had.

“Well, what happened then?”

“They… stood up and filed out. But they seemed different. They seemed…” George struggled to avoid the word he’d thought of, as it was so trite and meaningless, but he could think of nothing else: “Happy,” he finished.

Silenus nodded. “Exactly.”

“So you’re making people happy?”

“Why not?” said Silenus. “We’re performers, ain’t we?”

Their remaining shows went by without issue. George became so well versed in their acts that Colette eventually asked Silenus if they could make him a permanent fixture, as his playing was a welcome reprieve from what they usually had to contend with. Since she was in charge of their budget, she knew they had the financial room for him.

Silenus considered it. “Where’d you train, kid?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” George said, a touch proudly. “I am self-taught.”

Colette scoffed. “That can’t be. No one gets to your level all by themselves.”

“I did,” George said. “I never had anyone to teach me in Rinton.”

“So you just figured it out, did you?” Colette asked. “All on your lonesome?”

“Well, yes.”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, George. Be straight with us. Who’d you learn under?”

“No one,” said George, coloring. “And I’m not lying!”

Before Colette could say more, Silenus raised a hand. He studied George for a moment, and said, “If he says he’s self-taught, then he’s self-taught. He has no reason to lie, and I see no reason to doubt him.”

“What?” Colette said. “Harry, you can’t possibly believe this, can you?”

“I can,” said Silenus. But though it was the first positive thing his father had said about his playing, George was not comforted; there was something distant and cold in Silenus’s face.

The next week they continued on to Milton and went through nearly the same routine. Almost nothing changed, except perhaps for Kingsley’s health, which seemed to decline a little, though he refused all attentions. On Sunday Stanley and Silenus again disappeared with the steamer trunk and just as mysteriously returned, though they seemed more pleased than they had in Alberteen. And after that came Hayburn, where they did it all over again, though exactly what they were doing George was never told.

It must be said now that George was not a stupid young man. On the contrary, when he was not getting in his own way he had a great aptitude for cleverness. But he was, perhaps to his own misfortune, overwhelmingly used to getting what he wanted. His grandmother had tried her hardest to keep him cloistered throughout his upbringing, and her best tools for this had been flattery and bribery. And after fleeing her grasp and following his father, George had wound up at Otterman’s, where his superior skills had given him a great deal of leverage. So far in his life he’d experienced very few obstacles, and it was only natural for him to think that he
deserved
such easy treatment through some innate quality of his own.

In the third week with Silenus he began to suspect he deserved a lot of things he wasn’t getting. First and foremost, he felt he deserved an explanation. Had he not risked his life for the troupe? And had he not turned his back on a lucrative and cushy career in order to join them? The least his father could do was tell him what they were
really
doing.

But Silenus did not. In the final of their three weeks, George’s father became more distracted than ever, spending more and more
time in his office, and seeming more and more frustrated whenever he emerged. The only time George could ever talk to him was right after their nightly performance. And though George knew better than to ask outright about the song, or his memory of the barrow, or the men in gray, he began to ask innocent questions or make leading comments that he thought just might entice some truth from Silenus.

“I hope they make it home all right,” George said after one performance, gesturing to the audience. “Are they sensible enough for that?” To this, Silenus only shrugged.

“Are the acoustics of this theater too poor for the Chorale?” he asked after another. “Will it be too muffled, maybe?” This question was met with a terse order to mind his own business.

“Has anyone ever died after one of your performances?” he asked after their final performance, on Friday. “The shock seems like it might be too much for the weak of heart.”

“No!” shouted Silenus. “But you just might be the first if you ask another of these goddamn questions! I told you, three weeks, and with no
rounding up
. You’ve got a handful of days left. Let’s see if you can spend them in quiet, hmm?”

George, humiliated, looked around. The entire troupe was watching him. He flushed magnificently and muttered an apology.

That night he was so angry that he could not even sleep. He changed out of his pajamas and into some winter clothing, went downstairs, and headed out into the streets for a late-night stroll. He knew it was much too cold, and going out was rash, but he did not care.

He grumbled to himself as he kicked his way through the slushy streets of Hayburn. He had been a fool to come with them, he told himself. He had been a fool to withhold the truth about who he was, and his relation to Silenus. And he’d been a fool to take their orders and abuse without ever sticking up for himself. The more he dwelled on his problems the more poisonous and malicious they seemed.
Eventually he began to suspect that the true purpose of the Silenus Troupe was to make life very hard for one George Carole.

But then he stopped and looked up, and realized he’d gone perhaps a little too far.

He had no idea where he was. It was very dark, and there was no one out. And even though he’d been here a week, he’d done nothing to study the layout of the city.

He began to walk toward where he thought the hotel and the vaudeville house were. But as he did the night sky turned dark and bruised, promising snow. When the first flakes drifted down he groaned and began looking for shelter. Yet there seemed to be nothing open, and soon the air was thick with white.

George trotted down an alley into a surprisingly large courtyard, and looked around in vain for some cover. The snow intensified until all he could make out was a frozen fountain and a lone streetlamp in the courtyard, which turned the falling snow into a magnificent pearl of radiance. Then he noticed a shutter for a coal cellar, and in his desperation he pried it open and slipped inside to sit on the mound of coal below.

If George had been paying attention he would have thought the courtyard a very curious place: the buildings around it were very tall and the walls facing in had no windows, and the fountain in the center featured four people riding chariots. The sculpted figures faced out toward the corners of the courtyard, and their cheeks were ballooned as if blowing enormous gusts into the sky. If George had seen the fountain he’d have thought it a strange addition to this very drab and empty courtyard, but as it was he simply sat on the coal with the shutter open, waiting on the snow and cursing himself.

It was then that George’s exceptional hearing again alerted him to something abnormal: from the sound of things, the snow was lessening outside until it became a slight trickle. But then, if he listened closely, the roar of the flurry seemed to still be going on somewhere around him. He poked his head through the shutter and saw that it
had not stopped snowing; rather, it seemed to have stopped snowing only in the courtyard. When he looked to the four passageways leading out, he saw the snowstorm continuing just beyond. It was as though the snow stopped just where the courtyard began.