Under the Poppy (20 page)

“Nor to detain you. Safe passage, gentlemen,” the half bow as correct as a courtier’s, up the stairs as they descend and “The men say he’s queer,” Andrew whispers. “But he seems a fair sort to me.”

“Brussels,” says the General, “will teach you many things…. Mr. Arrowsmith has a town house there, on the Rue des Orfèvres.”

Mr. Arrowsmith’s hotel suite is brisk with disorder; as they enter, he is in shirtsleeves, tugging open a trunk burly and battered with much use and “My apologies,” as he slips into his coat. “Will you have a drink, gentlemen? Or tea?” that tastes faintly of the smell of burning, the everlasting smolder in the air. “I thought to be finished before you arrived.”

The General takes the room’s one unpiled chair. “When do you leave?”

“No more than a fortnight, I think. Past—” an event that both seemingly await, though Andrew does not, neither does he mark the pause between them. “How are you finding your new quarters?”

“Unnecessarily cold; last night the piss pot nearly froze. I shall have to speak to the mistress of the house…. Andrew, step downstairs—I find I’d like some whiskey after all.” As the door closes: “My horse has the best of it. I may have to relocate to the stables.”

“They ought to swaddle you. The safety you provide is beyond price.” Mr. Arrowsmith adds a fat cap of sweet brandy to each teacup. “I broke my fast with Vidor this morning—now he’s hinting it’s been his sop all along, your biding there.”

The General shakes his head, as if something, not Mr. Arrowsmith, amuses him. “One gets so deep, sometimes, one can’t tell the surface from the scum.
Amour fou!
At least his lucre still runs, but if we must one day do without it, we shall, eh? Other sources,” lifting his cup in tribute, “are equally generous…. At any rate the building’s nicely placed, and hard to overrun in a fight. And the whores go about in their drawers, so the men are pleased. All in all there are worse places to quarter than a brothel. This hotel, for instance.”

“You’ll have no argument from me on that score.”

Musingly, holding out his cup for more tea, “I’d thought to turn them out, at first, but Mr. Bok is so useful. And then our Hanzel barefaced asked—”

“Ah. I’d wondered. Well, love makes a man bold.”

“As was noted at breakfast?”

Mr. Arrowsmith’s frown is sudden and surprising, two thin brackets at his mouth and “What disturbs,” he says, “is the sheer—rancor. Cannot one step away with restraint, if not with grace? Must the field be sown with salt and dragon’s blood?”

“Dragon’s teeth,” suggests the General. “Mr. Bok ought not be underestimated.”

“Mr. Bok ought not be destroyed.”

The General shrugs. “Mayhap he needs a bravo like Vidor’s. Who wears his own like a lucky charm.”

“He’ll need another, now: I saw them bring that giant in last night. Piecemeal.—Yes?” setting down his own tea as Andrew, with a knock, reenters, faintly panting, pink-faced from the cold and “I’m very sorry, sir,” setting down the bottle, “I had to go all the way back to the room to get it, sir. I mean, gentlemen.”

The General pours into three cups, as Mr. Arrowsmith gives the boy a courteous nod. “You haven’t seen the show yet, have you, Andrew? At the Poppy?”

“The puppet show, you mean, sir? With the girls? No, sir.”

“
Salut
,” as the trio drink, Andrew’s stiff-wristed bolt a practiced gesture, though the peat whiskey is more potent than he is used to having; he chokes a little as the General smiles and “Do so,” says Mr. Arrowsmith, “front and center at the next performance. It will be something to tell your children, one day.”

The day of rest descends on the Poppy like a biblical dove, a foggy, grayish dawn where a bundled Velma pokes the fire alive, sets the kettle steaming, as the soldiers in the lobby snore and groan, one blinking trooper left as watch who, watching, still does not see Decca, black silk, black wool wrapper, entering as silent as the night just past.

Outside are the birdcalls, insistent, strange, and true even in the midst of the human skirmish, like an older world calling to itself. Faint smoke rises; a wagon creaks its way up the road, toward the dark of the treeline. Few lights show in the town windows, though the mayor is awake, red-striped nightcap and close to the grate, busily writing a requisition for sundry supplies that he intends to present to the General later in the day, in the company of Mr. Franz, himself abroad in the darkness, trousers askew, back pressed to the freezing wall of the Alley while the girl in his grasp suffers his teeth and swears to herself that she will leave this place before the week is through. Down the street, at the Gaiety, the last of the actresses gathers her bent ostrich-plume hat, her traveling valise, stuffs her reticule with notes and coins not wholly hers; she too had promised herself to flee, and, unlike her unlucky sister in the Alley, will do so this very morning on the passing train.

Likewise, the General and Andrew are already in the saddle, heading to Archenberg, attended by two sharpshooters keeping a watchful stride beside. At the hotel, Mr. Arrowsmith still sleeps, his well-worn trunk packed and ready, his suppositions ordered and his plans in place. In Jürgen Vidor’s rooms, a hand of patience lies half-played and waiting on the tray, a bottle of Bordeaux, the last, nearly empty beside the bedskirts. The ormolu scatter of trinkets and objets looks dusty, now, the room itself more bunker than traveler’s resting-place, the heavy coverlets bunched and twisted, as if his rest has been disturbed.

In Decca’s little sitting room all is in perfect, if shabby, order, damask and petit-point, stern cracked-plaster Athena and her vigilant owl. The adjacent bedchamber, though, is a tableau of neglect, the bedclothes jumbled, a teacup and crusted spoon balanced beside a pile of mending skewered with a shiny needle untouched these last few weeks. The pince-nez lie, closed eyes, atop the room’s holy writ, the Poppy’s account books, as if she has been reading them to lull herself to sleep. On the tiny dressing table are her silver combs and ancient hairbrush, the selection of jeweled pins, opal and silver, and the blue enamel eye as blind as love itself. Draping the mirror is another kind of silver, a gilt-paper chain so frail it can barely be handled, woven years ago by a boy’s clever fingers. A case made for a fine lady’s jewels keeps instead a careful collection of bows and silk ribbons, butter yellow, pale pinks and fading blues. Beside it, a tin box painted with a scratched and blooming rose holds several scrawled letters, the paper faint with the scent of old sachet.

Decca herself now sits upright on the bed, eyes closed, numb fingers linked; she might be praying, if ever she prayed, or lost in painful thought. All night she could not sleep, for the cold, the ache of it down her legs and back; sometimes she thinks she will never be warm again. More than anything she longs to go to her brother, to his lover, to send one on his way and keep the other close, to save them, save herself and what she has made, the Poppy rescued from Mattison’s grave—for without it, where would they be, any of them? Where would Rupert have ended, where would Istvan have returned, homing bird, raptor rapt to his master’s wrist like a hunting hawk? Last night she heard them through the walls again, quarreling whether to stay or go…. She will not go. No matter what happens, she will not go.

Around her, the house is waking, feeling its way into the unaccustomed day: no customers to service, no show to prepare, only the few essential daily tasks, most of them Velma’s to accomplish, the rest are free to do as they wish with their leisure and “All thanks to you,” Omar’s thump on Puggy’s bundled shoulder, the head above as prickly-brown as a hedgehog’s: he is growing back his hair, for added warmth, he says. “What will you do with your holiday, eh? I think I’ll get good and rolling drunk, myself.”

“Work is play, if you do it right. Isn’t that so, Lucy?” who nods over her tea and toasted bread, wide-awake and gleeful for a day spent sorting through the stuffs and threads and winding strings, backstage where the redpoll sergeant and all the others cannot enter, where she need not stop what pleases her to go please someone else. She has a list in mind of what must be discussed with Puggy—possible skits and dances, props and costumes to construct—who himself has his own growing, budding, convoluted list: shows he would like to fashion, songs he would like Jonathan to learn; it is curious, but the town’s chaos has made more fertile the creators at the Poppy, opened wider their eyes and their minds. Perhaps it is because, in war, the lid comes off, all crawls or seeps or bursts to the surface: life struggles more vibrantly than ever just to live since it is so easy, now, to die. And time, forever in short supply, is more plainly shown to be so.

Whatever the spur, Puggy and Lucy spend a happy day together, as do Laddie and Vera, both choosing luxurious sleep, though Laddie takes a noontime break for a saved chunk of smoked hashish, and Vera wakes at tea-time to have a lukewarm wash and try to plait her hair the way they do in Paris, or what she imagines as Paris, a cross between Heaven and a superior chocolatier’s. Velma’s day is least rewarding, though she has been very quiet, Velma, since Jennie died, and seems not at all to miss her chance at play.

Jonathan, of course, is at the piano, practicing first, then, with Pearl’s encouragement, playing tune after tune, old songs recalled from his childhood, nursery rhymes and ditties, and later days at the kirk—“Lovely On the Shore,” “Until the Trump Shall Sound”—and then other, more sentimental ballads, concerned with more carnal loves, that make Pearl sigh and sidle closer on the bench, bring sweet tears to her bright eyes: “No Other Love Than Yours, My Charmer,” “Cupid’s Garden,” “Fair Marie” to which Pearl, delighted, knows the words, singing in a faulty soprano that enchants them both:

“Fair Marie, why do you weep, on the Dover cliffs so steep?

I am crying for my lover, gone away.

He was a lord of high repute, in his spurs and leather boots,

And he swore to me that always he would stay.

But one night upon the Strand, as he held me by the hand,

His passion such that I could not say nay,

We stole away to—

—
oh
,” ceasing with a blush, Jonathan’s fingers stilled to her silence as both see, in the wings, Istvan, arms-folded and smiling, like an older brother watching babies at play. Pearl slips off into the wings, but not before kissing Jonathan’s cheek, as Istvan crosses to the bench and “My apologies,” he says. “It was such a pretty picture, I couldn’t help but peep.”

Jonathan smiles and shrugs, a mimed resignation to the moment’s loss. Not for the first time, Istvan considers how eloquent he is, this tongueless boy, how much he can convey by expression alone. Between that and his musicianship, he could have a fine career, far away from this sad little town, if only he would take to the road.

So Istvan speaks, in an easy manner, of the places he has visited, the towns he has played, how sometimes one is pelted with flowers and others with shit or pebbles, but always it is “The thrill,” he says, as Jonathan’s fingers gently touch the keys, the chords, one soft sound after another, in plaintive, haunting counterpoint. “The thrill of bringing it to life, the tale, song, puppet, what have you—that’s what draws one on. The ancillary pleasures, well, yes, one does like the lucre, and one does like to travel and see the world, or I do, at any rate…. There is so very much of the world to see, yeah? And a young fellow like yourself must have some dreams?”

Jonathan’s hands leave the keys, slip into pockets for scrap paper and stubby lead, printing a note he gives to Istvan:
I would like to play the chello.

Istvan reads and nods. “I would like, someday, to hear you play the cello, in a proper hall, with a proper audience. The piano, too. For today, I would like to quit this fucking place. But here is where we are…. What do you make of our shows, Jonathan? Is it to your liking, the mecs mixed in?” to bring his instant, emphatic nod, fingers raised like a maestro’s, upping the tempo, the volume, confirming what Istvan has guessed from the start: the puppets have changed him, woken in him a new kind of theatrical ambition, who knows how far it could reach? “Did you like that Shakespeare I lent you? ‘Now, gods, stand up for bastards!’ That’s from
King Lear
; you ought to read that one, too. A most unhappy old man, my lord Lear. Many old men are unhappy, have you marked that?”

Another scrap, neatly printed:
Veedor.

Istvan laughs. “Yes, Mr. Vidor is a miserable old crock. But may be our next show will cheer him. He ought to recognize its provenance, perhaps he will feel flattered.”

He claps Jonathan gently on the shoulder, noticing, as he departs, a slim figure reappearing to seat herself again on the piano bench. Up the stairs he goes, silent as a practiced thief, pausing to note the scent of smoke, the voices in Decca’s parlor, Rupert and his sister, expenditures and disbursements, yes, of time and energies much better spent elsewhere; though they ought not have wrangled so dismally yesterday, Mouse will be gloomy tonight…. Still he cannot stop himself, always it is Istvan who begins, Rupert who retreats:
Why can you not see? They depend on me, here.

They do? And what of me?

Not meeting his eyes, head turned away, the curve of his neck a rampart wall.
What of Decca?

What the fuck of her! She’s happy here, it suits her to give orders. But you
—

Stop, I tell you. Now is not the time
—