Under the Poppy (47 page)

Did you? Then you may share this as well, call it a poem if you will. I have left the
agora,
I have retired.

And so our matters are to move forward without your help, is that it, Javier? Without your contacts or your—lubrication?

That would be the meaning of retired, yes. We are not the young men we were, Hector. You yourself have found some, call it flexibility, within your commission, have you not?

I do now as I’ve always done. But you—

I no longer nurse the urge to risk all for commerce—

“Commerce”! Is that what you call this?

—and to live for it is even worse. I aim to be a private citizen, and enjoy what private pleasures I may
—

—such as this moment’s, drinking not Assam but robust Darjeeling, watching the dust motes dance in the dying sunlight, and calling to mind a fragment of a poem in Greek, what was that poem? learned so very long ago from his tutor, Mr. Carstairs, fluffy hair and old suspenders, the nervous kindness of a man dependant on the good will of others. Mr. Carstairs, how long has it been since he recalled that name? Dust motes in the sunlight, yes.

Now M. Tillits is nodding, Herr Konstantine is nodding, all the gentlemen in the room are nodding to the man just entered, Isidore wrapped in gray and shadowed by a strange attendant, that odd blond fellow from Isobel’s house, some sort of adjunct to Benjamin. Mr. Arrowsmith gives the man a courteous bow, which he returns much too vigorously, causing Mr. Arrowsmith an inner sigh. Unwrapped, Isidore looks equally gray, a deep, waxen weariness to cloak the energy of his gaze, his claw-hand beckoning for more tea, as he introduces Mr. Arrowsmith to Mr. Entwhistle under another name.

Afterward, alone again in the early twilight, Mr. Arrowsmith summons a waiter, perusing the evening’s bill of fare: “Deviled chicken, and the hare, the roasted beets, yes. And Assam tea.”

“Will Monsieur care for a cordial, or champagne?”

“Champagne,” says Mr. Arrowsmith, surprising himself. “And stationery,” on which he composes a brisk but consoling epistle to Miss Lucinda Bell: unsigned, but making reference in the postscript to a pair of ladies known to them both, one always a queen in this newly shuffled deck, call her today the queen of hearts; the other only a memory, as Liserl is becoming a memory, of red hair and the soft scent of verbena, call her the lost queen, though her name is still a bona fide, and, come to consider it, both queens are cut very much from the same bolt. Liserl… Liserl was never a queen at all, nor would she have chosen to be one, as the violet on the path yearns neither for the rose’s thorns nor the poppy’s intoxication. Oh, dear Liserl: he lifts his champagne to her name.

In the growing dusk, as the chill sets in, the streets exchange the day’s traffic for the evening’s; a timid moon, as it rises, gains confidence to compete with the fires and lamps. Concertinas wheeze, beggars yawn, a pair of shopgirls in matching bonnets scuttle past a ragman’s cart. The windows light up on Dollhouse Row, as the girls in their petticoats and sausage curls settle in with teacup gin for the long night ahead. One of them lingers, just beyond the velvet curtains, to repeat a funny tale to her new friend, of a customer she mislikes, the girls call him the Spotted Monster: “Out front a-pointing with his cane, he was aiming at me—again, and I’d just had him that Tuesday last!—when he rubbed the wrong fellow the wrong way,” a tall dark fellow with a gloomy air, dressed like a toff but “I never knew a toff could hit. And my, didn’t the Monster catch a beating! He’s not been back since,” smiling so wide she shows her missing tooth, inviting Istvan’s thoughtful smile in return—“I wish I had seen it”—as the girl nods: “I wish he’d step in some night, that dark fellow. I’d give him a fancy pull for free.”

She enters into the lighted window, onto her stage, as Istvan turns away. How strange that Mouse should walk this very street, just a peep past the curtains, close enough, almost, to touch—or then again not strange at all, he is out on the town, now. Glimpsed in fact that very afternoon, abroad in the marketplace: Istvan in costermonger’s cap, hunkered down beside a cart full of cabbages, knees up and watching as they passed, together, Rupert looking restless and somber, though Puck has improved his haberdashery somewhat, Puck so dizzy with love he almost walked into a lamppost; well, Mouse will have that effect. Watching until they disappeared into a tobacconist’s, fighting the pull in his heart like the pull of the tide, an undertow, so he must scramble from his cabbage-throne to tuck himself securely elsewhere, quell the pain with third-rate brandy and a five-minute farce, the brandy bottle at war with a soiled serviette, and the whole grog-shop crowding round and clapping, tossing pence and cigarettes, just like old times.

It is the kind of thing that Boilfast strenuously deplores:
Monsieur, when one hides, it means that one is not seen
but
I have to live
, his own mild answer, and to live means to play, even if only stealthily: and so he does, upon a double stage, in fact, since he knows that he is being watched. If the General is quiescent, it is not on this front, Istvan observed not only by clumsy César—whom one would think had his hands full with bravo duty, squiring the General through town, but no, still time enough to skulk and peer around corners like a tuppence villain—but by several more skillful, and rarely the same one twice; perhaps these are not the General’s men, after all. No overt threat has yet been offered; and Boilfast remains diligent at the door, he knows his customers and their friends, and his razor is very sharp. Istvan himself keeps the planing knife ready in his pocket; no one will ever cut him again.

Stepping now past the draped windows, he continues down the hallway, to a prim little parlor where the tricks make their arrangements: pink-striped divans and lace-fringed lamps, the daily papers, little dishes full of candy so old even the mice refuse to nibble. This evening Jardin waits there, in his slouch hat, paging through a theatre broadsheet; he gives Istvan a friendly nod as he passes through to the door. The players’ network intersects with the whores’: it reminds Istvan rather fondly of the Poppy, though the level of artistry is admittedly low. And the wilting regulation of it—that smell of peppermint, the cunt inspector once a fortnight, the licensed bills-of-health upon the wall—must be an enemy to mystery, and thus the more theatrical forms of desire. Except perhaps for a nervous bourgeois.

In this conduit state, screened by both Boilfast and Madame, afloat between worlds, Istvan owns that narrow quantity of freedom, as well as an air of glamour, the leading man in a sad romance: his circumstances, though not fully known, are much guessed at, and he is much pursued. On Dollhouse Row, backstage, there is always someone willing to tip him a drink, lend him an ear, or more. As now, at the Fin, in the early flurry before the evening’s show, one he will only watch: a dandy in measle-red plaid, bright monocle and brighter smile inside his auburn beard, offering whiskey: “The weather’s foul, isn’t it? Warm yourself. Or let me,” with a little wink, reaching past the bottle to put his hand atop Istvan’s, who smiles, and shakes his head, takes his hand away.

“Ah, Etienne,” shrugs the man, “you know me and I know you. Why all these scruples, all of a sudden?”

And Istvan shrugs in return: nothing wrong with this fellow, it is he who is oddly, helplessly chaste, his silent unwilling gift to Mouse, whose own nights are doubtless much different. Still “I’ve taken the vows,” he tells the red-bearded dandy, who returns a philosophical nod: “I thought I smelled incense. Well,
dominus vobiscum
,” lifting his glass, as Boilfast emerges with a bucket in hand, beckoning to Istvan: “A moment, Monsieur?” slipping him a folded note, unsigned as always, on finest stationery, assuring that
All is quiet in the garden, and in the blackbird’s nest, though winter will own its squalls. But we shall hope for finer weather, you and I.

“Good news?” asks Boilfast, beginning to swab some unnamable stain.

“Spring is coming,” says Istvan, freeing Feste from his coat.

The cab is a useless extravagance, Rupert would much rather walk, but “I promised Miss Bell a drive,” says Benjamin. So off they go, through streets still so slick and cold it may as well be deep midwinter, though in the greenhouse the crocuses have already raised their heads, soft purple and glowing saffron, nurtured
By Belle herself,
Benjamin had murmured, he and Rupert standing together in the chilly green.
She likes to make things grow. Like me…. Belle is my sister and mother both, you know, my own mother died when I was very small.

He has begun to share these details, little stories of his past, that brief road to this moment where his master is beside him, these days the happiest he will ever know. He gives them as gifts, like the sealskin gloves, the black China silk mufflers, the silken top hat Rupert will not wear, as he will not wear the rose-gold intaglio ring, carven with a Greek warrior—
But you do favor rings
, Maître—though Rupert has not worn his signet ring for some time. It has gone missing, casualty of a life lived nowhere, adrift between the Blackbird rooms avoided and the townhouse where he never will belong, ought not even to be, a kind of insanity—

—as he ought not be here, bumping along in this silly cab, beside Benjamin whose cold fingers find his own, while offering another little story: of the gardens at Chatiens, a long-ago day spent hiding amongst the paths, kicked and chased by the nurse’s nephews—“They caught me by the goat pens, and rubbed shit in my hair”—until he clambered up a chestnut tree, hiding so long that he fell asleep, wakened by the cries of the frantic nurse “Who never cared a whit for me,” head nestled now on Rupert’s shoulder. “She was only afraid of my father. Everyone is afraid of my father…. It was wonderful, being in the trees.”

“Yes,” Rupert’s murmur. “One feels safer up there.” Idly he strokes Benjamin’s fingers, touches the scars on his knuckles: to prompt yet another tale, of trailing their carriage after that first dinner, silently scaling the roof—“Our roof?” in real surprise, looking down into that smiling face. “That’s slate, it’s the devil when it’s wet—”

“I know,” with a proud little laugh. “I almost lost a finger on the drainpipe. But I had to see where you lived…. I have loved you for so long,” his whisper becoming a kiss that continues, as Rupert reaches backhanded to drag the little curtains closed: more insanity, this endless passion, some days he feels almost drunk with lust. All that young need, and greed, met and matched by his own desire not to think, not to remember—

To go under the poppy, I learned that on a boat.

It means to smoke opium?

It means to forget.

—what cannot be forgotten, only muzzled, muffled by the feel of this mouth against his own, breathing his breath—until the cab slows, and they draw apart, Benjamin flushed and smiling to lead him arm in arm into the Blackbird’s foyer, where Lucy, wrapped in a pretty new shawl, rosy wool and bountiful tassels, peeps out to watch Pinky and the children crowd around them, shaking hands: “We’ve not seen you for weeks,” says Pinky, observing his friend’s brilliant gaze. “You must give us all your news.”

“Where’s Mister Istvan?” Mickey asks. “He promised to take me to the Golden Calf.”

A silence falls. Lucy takes a step forward, Pinky bends to whisper in Mickey’s ear, as Rupert turns away, climbing the stairs with Benjamin following, up into his old rooms, their rooms, empty and dank and unfired. Still in silence, Rupert crosses to his desk, shuffles through the papers left there, the few letters, nothing he cares to see—as Benjamin examines the box of collar studs, the volumes of Shakespeare, a drooping opera cape hung on a silver coat tree, a blazing gold cravat he himself might have worn a month or so before. Beside a straight-backed chair lies a pile of wooden limbs, scraps and detritus, a skein of wire as pliable as gut and “Did you ever play the puppets?” asks Benjamin; he rolls an eyeball in his palm, gaudy green, back and forth. “There’s so much you’ve never told me…. Miss Bell said you trod the boards, in another town.”

“No,” without looking up from the bank draft, the banker’s fulsome letter. “Not the way you’re thinking. And leave those—toys alone.” The white knife still lies where he dropped it; he ought not have come back here, certainly not with Benjamin, whose arms are around him now, embracing him from behind but “No,” again and bleak. “Not here.” He slips the banker’s letter into his pocket, then catches sight of a narrow traveling case beside the desk. “Wait for me downstairs,” he says, bending to unlock the case last used when they left Brussels, he and Istvan and Lucy, the mecs in tow. It seems so long ago—

—as Lucy approaches down the hallway, something soft said to Benjamin—“They’re all clamoring for you”—and then to Rupert, halfway around the door: “Some letters came, I put them on your desk.” She steps into the room, to his side and “You look a bit tired,” she says lightly, shocked and trying not to show it: not only tired but desolate, and overdressed, those toff’s weeds do not suit him. “Are you taking care? Or smoking too much, and burning the midnight oil?”