Under the Poppy (2 page)

She didn’t say anything at first, let me wait for a day or two, but I watch people quite carefully, you know, and when you watch them, you get to know about them. It was how I knew when a man was going to be troublesome, waiting in the parlor. Or which girls you could make friends with, and which not to bother with. Or that my father was going to try with me. So I knew Miss Suzette was going to come around, and I started planning how it would be, how I could get her to a certain point in her lessons and then ask for things, ask not to have to fuck so much, or at all, may be even ask for money.

But then she caught the scarlatina, caught it hard, and the house closed up like a fist because Faulk put himself in charge, that greedy, high-nosed, gutter-bred prick. He locked her in her room with a spoon and some laudanum, and put us to work around the clock, receive from noontime till nearly dawn; only Sunday afternoons were we free, and then we were supposed to clean the grates and sweep the rooms, empty the slop jars, peel spuds for Sunday supper; ridiculous.
I won’t do it,
I told Faulk,
I’m a whore, not a housemaid.

You’re not a schoolteacher, either, but you were ready to act that part quick enough. So you can take your turn at the mop with the rest of them.

But I didn’t, I stole away, out into the streets to take the air. It is a big place, and the avenue is long: up and down the vendors selling everything you could think of, pomade and fruitcake, boot-blacking and smelling salts, picture puzzles of the palace and the White Gardens, walking sticks with ivory heads of birds and dogs and tigers, silver ribs for silk parasols, blue crayons to make your skin look whiter. And all sorts of little food shops and wine parlors, it made your mouth water just to see them, but I had no money for those kinds of things. And theatres….
Do you know, I never even saw a theatre before I came here? Once or twice a year a drummer would come through, and Katy and I would give him a penny to crank the concertina, and once there
was a puppet show, a little man with a hook nose and a slapstick, and his wife and baby, and a toby-dog. We laughed so much! The drummer
could make all the puppets talk with different voices, and he even barked, for the dog. They were called Punch and Judy, they were in the book that Katy had, called Droll Tales. It had a story about Cinder-Ella, too, who lived among the ashes until she found her rightful prince, and one about the Mouse King, and the people who live underwater and talk by bubbling, one bubble to another; it was how I learned to read, that book, until our father found it…. I should have killed him, really.

At the Gaiety Theatre there are plays, and dancing, you could hear the music from the street: a real band, with a fiddle and piano, and the ladies bright as butterflies in spangles and lace; I saw it on the sign and I thought, If I could only dance, or sing! Wearing lovely costumes, not going with the men unless you wanted to, unless they bought you roses or scent or jewelry, what a life that would be. But I am not so pretty, and I cannot sing or dance. I couldn’t even afford a ticket to go inside and watch.

But that Gaiety, it was how I ended up at the Poppy, really. Omar was there—I didn’t know him then, of course, but it was Omar, with his bumpy bald head, standing outside the Gaiety having a smoke and
Hey,
I said. You could tell he wasn’t a trick.
Hey, messire, you work in there?

Why? You need a job?
And in the end it was as simple as that, what Jonathan calls the kismet. Omar told me about the Poppy, how it was a kind of theatre, with a stage, and costumes, and plays, private plays for one watcher at a time.
Mister Rupert is always looking for likely girls,
Omar said.
Are you likely?

I put my hands up under my tits and jiggled them.
You tell me,
I said, and he laughed, and I went back and told Faulk to go fuck himself, and I walked in under that black-flower sign, I walked in Under the Poppy, and I never left. I hate Decca’s guts and she hates me, but the rest of us get along fine, and Mr. Rupert treats us very fair. And the shows, the little plays—the ones downstairs, where there is music, Vera and Pearl and Laddie, and Spinning Jennie, she used to be in a circus somewhere, she can hang from the ceiling up-so-down like a bat. And Jonathan plays the piano like an angel. And Puggy can declaim lines and lines of verse, he can read French and English both. Anything you give him, he can read.

And upstairs—well, sometimes the feathers tickle, and the fat bastards won’t properly die, but they finish anyway, six minutes is six minutes. And things happen at the Poppy that would happen nowhere else. Like Mr. Istvan. And Pan Loudermilk. Even the Gaiety has nothing
like them.

“And this one?” Guillame lifts a louche blonde puppet, lips painted primly pink, wires threading its blue brocade skirt and “That’s Miss Lucinda,” Istvan says. “She sings. And cries real tears,” milking a tiny secret bulb so a drop of glycerin oozes from her eye socket and rolls, slow glass, down her cheek. “Although I try not to make her.”

On the narrow bed beside him, Lucy claps her hands. “Lucinda! That’s my name, almost.” She fingers the bright brocade. “This is so lovely.”

They have gathered, the four of them, like curious circling animals, drawn like animals by instinct unspoken to this narrow room at the end of the upper hallway, Istvan inside like a creature in a den, dozing among his things: a meager bag of personal accoutrements, crocodile-toed boots beneath the bed, narrow razor and steel hand-mirror, a clean shirt hanging wrinkled from a peg; all the rest of his luggage is cases and traps for the puppets,
les mecs
he calls them, the
farceurs
: made of wood and sacking-cloth and glue, muslin and plaster, carven eyeballs and hair of silk or boiled wool, strings and wires and levers intricate and odd: a level of cunning construction, fabrication, that the players of the Poppy have never seen before. And Istvan is generous with his secrets, displaying the tear-bulbs and the blood-drips, seeming pleased to answer everything they care to ask.

Guillame has the most questions, proper in a stage manager; he keeps shaking his head in admiration, that pudgy head he has lately begun to shave a la Omar. Now he points to the largest puppet, horse’s head and man’s body, standing tall as a man in the corner: “Now, who is this gentleman?”

“His hair is like yours,” Lucy says, noting the dark chestnut mane.

“His hair is mine. Some of it…. That’s the Chevalier. He is French, I believe. His favorite is riding, but he can do all manner of things.”

“I’ll bet he can,” says Omar, parting the Chevalier’s black morning
coat to show a thick wooden penis, detailed as a man’s. “He must put on quite a show. You put on a good one yourself, yesterday, you and, what is it? Dan?”

“Pan,” Istvan says. “Pan Loudermilk. We met in Paris. Or possibly it was Antwerp? He is a citizen of the world, is Pan.”

“You had me fooled, I’ll tell you that. I thought the little man was arm-fucking Pearl for certain. That voice… And then his head came off! With blood and all. How in the world did you do that, messire?”

Istvan squeezes Miss Lucinda’s tear-bulb again. “Glycerin and rose water,” he says. “One can use it for anything, almost.”

“You had me fooled.”

Lucy laughs. “Pearl too—she had the nightmare last night, I had to wake her. ‘Get him off me!’ ” she mimics, eyes closed, legs cantering against the coverlet, as if caught in deadly embrace, then looks around the room, this smallest receiving room, called the Cell for its narrow bed, its barred ceiling-window; it faces the privy yard. Above, the roll of glum afternoon clouds; it will rain soon, or snow. “Where is it, that Pan puppet?”

“Sleeping,” Istvan says, nodding to the case against the wall, more coffin than carrying-box, sized as if for a dwarf, or a largeish child. He rolls over, leans his body across Lucy’s lap, his long hair brushing her breasts and “That fellow there,” pointing to what looks like jumbled sticks, “wants stringing. Lift him up, messire,” to Guillame, who digs his fingers in the pile to draw forth a mournful skullface, eyeless eyes blank and dire, and a wobbled xylophone of bones, some correctly connected, most not and “The Bishop,” says Istvan, “had a delicate time of it, in the countryside. He used to be the Arch-Bishop, but some yokels demoted him. They take their hymn singing seriously in the countryside,” and “ ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,’ ” groans the Bishop, a bass croon so instant and harsh that Guillame, startled, nearly drops the head, laughs in nervous surprise. “ ‘Let me hiiide myself in Thee.’ Is it not so, Bishop?”

“They struck you with my thighbones,” the Bishop says, seems to say, it is uncanny how the voice draws the eye, even though one knows it is Istvan speaking. “Biblical precedent, mayhap. Or should it have been the jawbone?” Jonathan laughs through closed lips. “Though I am dead, I can yet feel pain at the baseness of Man.”

“As did I.” Istvan lifts his shirt to show the bruising; Lucy puts forth two fingers to touch his yellowed ribs.

“I’ve arnica. In my room.”

Omar chews the end of a bent cigar. “The Poppy’s got a higher class of clientele, at least they won’t pummel you. Much… So, you are here to perform, then?”

“That’s up to your master.”

“Who’ll be wanting me directly,” says Omar, checking his pocket watch, fat silver carapace jingling with cheap-looking fobs. “You too, Puggy,” to Guillame who rises, Jonathan behind them and “Take the
Merchant
,” Istvan says to him, skittish Jonathan who starts at being addressed, widens his eyes and “You were looking,” Istvan’s nod toward the small stack of books, a Greek travelogue, a vampire penny-dreadful, Shakespeare’s
Merchant of Venice
and
Titus Andronicus
, a Latin copy of Cicero’s Catiline orations. “
Tolle lege.
Take it, read it. But not in the jakes, hmm? The smell gets into the paper.”

Jonathan smiles, slips the book into his pocket, gives an awkward bob of a bow. Lucy nods after him, once the three have gone: “He never speaks,” she says.

“Too shy?”

“No tongue,” opening her mouth to waggle her own. “Someone cut it out for him, he’s never said who.”

“It would be surprising if he had. So it’s rough trade, here?”

“Not like that. More like this,” touching his ribs again, stroking the bruises. “In my room—”

“Is it only in the rooms, the acting? Or is it downstairs, too?”

“Oh every night. Puggy is in charge of those shows, they choose the players from among us girls.”

“Are you on the stage, then?” but almost immediately “No, or that is, yes. You
are
the stage, yeah?” and Lucy laughs, she has not heard it put that way but yes, she supposes she is. And they talk of the theatre, the private shows and the ones onstage, how they are different and how so much the same; and of other performances, the Gaiety down the street, the great theatres of the world and “Have you played many places?” Lucy wants to know, sitting up straight now, like an eager schoolgirl. “Where have you traveled?”

“Well,” thoughtful, “since the leaves fell, we’ve played the Capitalia, and the Phoenix, and the Theta Grande—
that
was a disaster—and the one in Syracuse, what was it called?”

A muffled voice from the coffin-box: “It was called the Syracuse.”

Lucy’s eyes gleam with the glamour of the list. “And then you came here?”

“Then we came here. Sub rosa. Under the Poppy. Whorehouse, playhouse, flophouse. Do you like it here, Lucy-Belle?”

She dimples at the name. “It’s a likely place. Better than any other house in town, I can tell you that. And Mr. Rupert treats us all very fair.”

“Mister Rupert,” Istvan says. “Is that so.”

“It is so. He never beats us, or cheats us, or fucks us—”

“No? Who does he fuck?”

“I don’t know for sure. Some people say that he and Decca—”

“People are so base.”

“Sometimes that happens,” says practical Lucy, “when there is no one suitable, sometimes a brother and a sister—”

“Well,” as the door swings open to show Decca on the threshold, “here’s the very image of the idle whore. How have you time to sit and gossip, Lucy, while the rest of us toil? Go on.” Blue silk, black combs, arms folded to watch the girl slide sullen off the bed, the door slammed behind her and “You’ll catch a dose off that one,” Decca says. “Runny cunt. She has the doctor here twice a week.”

“You’re sour, aren’t you.”

“No, only concerned. About you… Have you spoken to him yet?”

“Who? Herr whoremaster? Your ‘brother’?” His whole manner has changed since she entered, as an actor changes coming offstage: he is looser, coarser, he slumps, he yawns. “Not yet.”

“Did you sleep, at all?” He shrugs. “You look wretched in general…. Why are you here?”

“To make magic,” says the muffled voice from the box.

“Stop that.” She takes a seat on the bed, close to where Lucy sat. “In your letter, you said—why did you come, truly?”

“If you wish me gone, why did you let me in?”

She sighs through her teeth, a soft and painful sound. All night she heard Rupert up and pacing, up and pacing, smelled the constant dry smoke of his cheroots. “I thought you would arrive—differently. Your letter—and that prank with Pearl! What on earth possessed you?”

He is looking at her, only that, but suddenly she laughs, muffling her face in her hands, and he laughs, too, one arm around her, his gaze on the door, attending to what? The sounds of the house around them? Footsteps passing in the hall? Whose?

Finally she drops her hands, cheeks flushed; she looks younger now, like the street-girl she once was and “Oh,” she says, “that nasty puppet—and how she squealed! But I thought—”

“You think much too much, Ag.” She does not react to the name. “I said I was coming, well, here I am.”

In silence they consider one another, his arm about her, her hands clasped in her lap. Tears rise to her eyes that, if she blinks, will fall; she does not blink. Finally, in surrender, her near-silent sigh and “Whatever you came to do,” she says, “you must stay invisible tonight. We’re to have a thorny time of it, Jürgen Vidor is entertaining—”

“Who’s Jürgen Vidor?”

“Never mind. I’ll have Velma bring up a bottle, some food, whatever you would like. Only do not cause a disturbance, please, just stay quiet in your room.
Please.
”

His arm is still about her shoulders, now he holds her slightly off from him, gives a sweetly solemn wink and “As a mouse,” he says. “All right? Now send me that little whore again, what is her name? Pearl?”

Warily, “Why?”

“I want to make it up to her.”

“You’re lying, doubtless,” but half smiling in defeat, Pearl appearing a few moments later, skittish and lovely in a red-ribboned camisole, eyeing Istvan from the threshold as “My dear young lady,” his tender half bow, “I must utterly apologize for yesterday’s confusion. You are an actress yourself, you understand, sometimes the play simply gets away from one. But shall we,” easing shut the door, “tête-à-tête now, just us two? And keep the toys out of it?”