The Troupe (7 page)

The second song, the hidden one, seemed to get louder, and George felt something prickling on his skin. He glanced at the backs of his hands and saw the hair there standing on end. He looked up at the others around him. The stray hairs of the women in front were beginning to lift, and a nearly bald gentleman next to them now had a small, stiff forest sticking out above his ears, though they were all
too hypnotized to notice. The air began to hum with an invisible energy as the second song grew louder, and George somehow grew aware that something was happening on a level he couldn’t see: it was as if there was an umbilical point being established within the theater, two separate and very distant powers twisting toward one another to kiss, like planets brushing against each other in orbit.

George was not sure why he was the only one unaffected by the song, but he didn’t know what he should do. Should he stand up and shout? Rush the stage and stop the performance?

“Hello?” he said, and tapped the shoulder of the lady in front of him. “Hello, ma’am? Ma’am, can you… can you help me?”

A groan rumbled through the theater, yet George could not feel it in his feet or in his back; it seemed as though he could hear it only in his mind. And then something in the theater changed: it was as though everything, the stage and the curtains and the rows and rows of seats, had
flickered
, blinking out of existence for one second, and once everything returned the shadows and edges of light throughout the theater were sharpened, and all the colors had gone blindingly bright. The theater took on a flimsy and insubstantial feel to George, like it was a little toy puppet show and all the people and players little cutouts made from wax paper, and someone had just lifted off the roof and let the whole world spill in from above…

George stood up in his seat, terrified, and was determined to run. He’d have to stumble through the knees of the people along the row, he thought. But he couldn’t just leave everyone here to await whatever was happening. He stooped and shook the man next to him, saying, “Sir? Sir! For God’s sake, you’ve got to get up! You’ve got to get—”

George trailed off. Now there were voices in the second song, high and sweet, though he could not see any new singers in the theater. But he recognized the melody they sang. He had heard it before.

And then he
remembered
.

Old fragments of memories flooded into him. He saw a field lined
with deep ravines next to a small forest. Faces made of roots stood along the ravines on sticks, and they all faced a hill in the center of the forest as though waiting for something. He saw a barrow, wet and quiet, the gray sunlight dribbling down into its hollow to glance across glistening stones. There were cracks in the walls of the barrow, and from one of them came a voice, quietly chanting to itself in the dark. And somewhere inside was a wriggle of light where there should be none, dancing across the dark stone walls, and waiting for someone to touch it, and listen, and
see
…

The splinter of memory released him, and George fell back in his seat, gasping. Silenus kept conducting the two performers, who sang and played as though none of this were happening. The second song grew stronger around them, the voices from the invisible singers intensifying, and then it was like there was a split in the world and George could see out of it, and glimpse the endless machinery that kept the world running. And then, for one moment, he could see even
more
…

There was a rumble, and the lights in the theater quivered. The echoes of the song washed over them, faded, and then were gone. Silenus, the cellist, and the girl stood still on the stage, letting the sound reverberate on, the cellist’s bow hovering inches away from the strings.

George took a breath, still stunned, and looked around. No one clapped. The rest of the audience sat frozen.

Silenus and the two performers stood up, walked to the edge of the stage, and bowed. The cellist and the girl in white gathered up their things and departed while Silenus ambled after them, digging in the inside pocket of his coat. He paused at the edge of the stage and produced a short, thin cigar, which he stuffed into the side of his mouth. He lit a match with the nail of one thumb, held the flame to the cigar, sucked at it, and breathed out a cloud of smoke. Then he glanced out at the audience one last time, a sardonic and bitter look, said, “Fucking smoking rules. Pah,” and left.

No one moved for several minutes. George still felt dazed and slightly sick. Then a few people began to shift in their seats, glancing around as if awoken from a dream. The conductor jumped when he heard the seats creaking, and reached out and poked the first chair violinist. The violinist sniffed and blinked at him, puzzled for a moment, but then hurried into position. The rest of the orchestra followed suit, and halfheartedly started another waltz. A pair of mimes in blue overalls and broad hats stepped out on the stage, looked around as though surprised to find themselves there, and began going through their performance, one pretending to share apples from a basket with the other. They were obviously terrified.

“Excuse me,” said a voice. George looked up, and saw that the man beside him had stood and was trying to get past. The rest of the audience was standing up as well.

George, still confused, moved his knees to let the man by. “They put the shabby acts last,” the man confided as he passed. “To get the audience to clear out, you see.”

Even though George was utterly bewildered, he still managed,
“Well, of course I know
that
. And they’re called chaser acts, for your information.”

The man shrugged, and joined the rest of the audience members lining up to leave. They all had mystified looks on their faces like they’d left something behind, but couldn’t remember what it was.

The pair of mimes onstage abandoned their act, and the orchestra wound down to a halt. None of them seemed upset by this development. Rather, they stared into the air with wistful looks on their faces, and the two mimes eventually shuffled offstage, smiling emptily. After a confused moment George followed the audience out.

Once outside he stood in the street with the rest of the crowd and took a deep breath. The night air seemed much fresher than the air in the theater, and George and the other patrons were desperate to get as much of it into their lungs as they could. But he noticed that there was something different about everything now. The night no longer seemed so thin, or so unreal. The moon did not feel so ponderously close and heavy. And unless he was mistaken, there was something different about the other patrons: they seemed to have more color in them, whether it was the deep grayness along a man’s trousers, or the rich navy blue of a lady’s purse. It was as if the song had put a light in them, one that made their skin and clothing shine much brighter than before.

“It is a beautiful evening,” said one lady with an enormous white hat. “A simply beautiful night.”

“Yes,” said a man. “It certainly is. Just like when I was a boy.”

“That’s it,” said the woman. “That’s it exactly. It’s like a Christmas evening from when I was just a girl.”

They smiled and milled about as if they were sleepwalking. George wondered what had happened to them all. It was as if they’d been hypnotized, though he did not think any hypnotist’s trick could ever make a person’s very color seem brighter.

But then George remembered that the fourth act had not left him
untouched: that song had opened up a memory within him, but it felt totally unfamiliar. His mind was still bursting with scattered images of barrows, and root faces, and a squiggle of light in the dark, and the fleeting impression of summer days and green leaves and a secret corner of the world that only he could find. It was like remembering he’d once been a different person entirely. He felt nearly as dizzy and disoriented as the other patrons.

But the most concerning thing about that memory was the song. Unless he was mistaken, tonight was not the first time he’d heard the Silenus Chorale: he’d heard it once before, long ago, when he was but a child, yet he’d never remembered it until now. He couldn’t understand how this could be.

It took him a moment to realize that the one man who might know was currently packing up in the theater, readying to leave. George turned and hurried down a side alley to the back of the theater.

Though the Pantheon was a superior theater to Otterman’s, the layout was the same, and George slipped in through the loading door for the props. He looked around at the passageways stuffed with ropes and pulleys and curtains and backdrops, wondering which way to go. At first he thought the backstage was deserted, but then he saw he was wrong: there were two stagehands standing in a corner, but they were so still he hadn’t noticed them. They had small, confused smiles on their faces, and were clearly as stupefied as the patrons out front.

Then George heard voices coming his way. He walked to a drape of curtain and pushed it aside to see Silenus, the cellist, and the girl in white making their way toward him. His heart almost stopped, and he dropped the curtain a little and listened.

“Not bad, not bad at all, fellas,” Silenus said as he led them. In the quiet theater it was easy to hear him. He had shed the Shakespearean lilt he’d used in his performance, and instead spoke in a drawling
growl. “Could have been a lot fucking worse, in my oh-so-unasked-for opinion. Ain’t as good as we done it before, that’s the damn truth, but it’s better than we were doing recently.” He puffed at his cigar and began wiping his face paint away with a handkerchief. “Hallelujah, a-fucking-men. Glory and grace and fortune abounds, or am I wrong?”

George was not sure what he should do. This seemed very different from the performer he’d seen not more than five minutes ago. He wondered: should he call Silenus’s name? Step in front of him? The man would surely say something then, and what could George say back?

“Who are you?” said a soft voice behind him. A hand took his shoulder, and though it was soft and small its grasp was iron-hard.

George cried out and leaped in surprise, and his suitcase clattered to the floor, spilling open. Silenus and the other two players stopped where they were. Before George could see any more the hand on his shoulder turned him around until he was looking into a tired, lined face whose many wrinkles were caked with the remains of white paint. It was the strongwoman, though now she was wearing an immense overcoat and a bulky sweater rather than her colorful bandages. She was joined by the professor puppeteer, who looked cold and aloof in his tuxedo.

“Yes,” he said snidely. “And what are you doing here?”

“What’s that?” said Silenus’s voice. “What do you have there?”

The strongwoman turned him around and Silenus approached, his face barely lit by the glow of his cigar. He was now nothing like the impresario from the show: in the dark of the backstage he was ferociously intimidating, his hooded eyes boring into George but betraying nothing.

“A boy,” said the strongwoman.

“A boy?” said Silenus.

“We found him backstage. And he’s awake.”

“Awake, you say?” said Silenus.

“Yes,” said the professor. He looked out the loading door and down the alley. “The rest are all out front, as usual.”

“Hm,” said Silenus, and he moved to examine George closer.

George had often wondered what his father would say when they first met. He had fantasized that perhaps Silenus would know him immediately, and he’d fall to his knees and throw his arms open and cry something about how he’d finally found his lost child. Or possibly Silenus would only slightly recognize him, and peer into George’s face, murmuring about how this young man seemed familiar. Or maybe Silenus would take a liking to George for reasons he couldn’t understand, and, should their relationship progress enough, sometimes profess that you know what, this here kid reminds me of me.

What he’d never expected was for Silenus to say, “Ah, geez. What the fuck are you doing back here, kid?” He looked George up and down. “And why aren’t you sleepwalking?”

There was a pause as George took this in. “S-sleepwalking?” he said. “I don’t… I’m afraid I don’t really understand…”

Silenus sucked his teeth and peered at him. His leathery face crinkled up around the eyes, and he tutted and pulled up the waist of his pants with one hand. “You don’t have any idea of what’s going on, do you?” he said. “This isn’t a good sign. I can’t remember the last time someone stayed awake. We’ll have to look into that later.” He nodded to the woman. “Franny, dispose of this young man. If he’s a thief, beat his ass if you’d like, but be discreet about it. Then we’ll hightail it back to the hotel.”

“No!” shouted George. “No, you can’t!”

“And keep him quiet, too,” added Silenus.

“No!” said George again, and he lunged out and grabbed ahold of Silenus’s sleeve. “You can’t go back to your hotel!”

The strongwoman pulled him back. Silenus ripped his sleeve free of George’s hand and looked up at the strongwoman, indignant. “Are you seriously going to let some fucking kid take a grab at me?”

“He’s just a boy,” she said sullenly.

“Are boys so incapable of carrying knives?” said Silenus. “I’ve seen many a ten-year-old admirably wield a pigsticker, and I ain’t keen on getting cut on by somebody who can’t even fucking vote.”

“He’s just a boy,” she said again. “Please don’t be angry with me.”

“I’m not angry. Don’t get upset, girl.” Silenus turned his attention back to George. “What’s that you said to me? What about my hotel?”

“You… you can’t go back there,” said George.

“And why is that?”

“There are men waiting there for you. Men in… in gray suits. They’re looking for you. Or at least, I think they are.”

That disturbed them. Silenus cast a dark glance around at the rest of his troupe as they all began speaking.

“What is that he said?” said the professor. “Men in gray suits?”

“At the hotel?” said the girl in white and diamonds. “
Our
hotel? You said they’d never get that close to us!”