Under the Poppy (5 page)

Now the spangled girl lifts her overskirt, sheds her overskirt, as, watched rapturously by the dark boy and all the men, she begins to rise: clad now only in leather straps and spangles, wee mirrors twinkling in the candlelight, the candelabra held high by the boy shows her dangling, pink and sparkling, her bare breasts depending like ripe fruit, herself a juicy morsel there for the picking as the soldiers roar, as the dancing couple abandon all pretense of the waltz and devote themselves to erotic battle, Jürgen Vidor’s murmur very close to Rupert’s ear, Rupert who stares fixedly at the stage as the masked man roughly bends his partner over the chaise, right next to Vera and her small suitor, throws the blonde’s skirts up from behind to finish the job where she stands—

—as the little man worms his way deeper into Vera’s arms, head back between her breasts like a pasha on pillows, singing all the while—“Through this dark world I sought your light/Beaming, gleaming, ever-bright—” in a kind of ecstatic cackle, his troll hands disappearing into her skirt-band and she jumps, the watching men confused into sudden laughter, a heated, hectic mirth, and Vera laughs, too—
O you naughty boy
—

—as in her harness Spinning Jennie begins, glittering, to spin: her princess face slack, her arms outstretched to grasp at legs equally extended, she opens herself, splits herself, pink cheeks aimed at the audience, as the troll on the chaise reaches crescendo—

“This shining light of love has shown me true:

I love no other man, my dear, than you!”

—as all freeze in breathless tableau, the utter, utter verge: the masked suitor in mid-thrust at the stiff resistant blonde, Vera’s humping skirt, Vladimir staring upward at Jennie, who, of course, continues to revolve with her own momentum, ass and tits and spangles as the piano pounds fortissimo, the men lurch stageward, the mayor thumps on the tabletop, the curtains swish grandly to meet—

—and a little head pops out, lank-haired and grinning, the cracked hilarious voice: “Thank you, messires, for your so very kind attention! The players will be out directly for your pleasure!”

And
finis.

“Eh,” says Lucy, fingering the salve pot, still in her pale wrapper, its ragged piping loose about her neck. “Those soldiers—don’t they have women where they come from? Or whores? I was up till dawn with the, what you call it. Surplus.”

Omar blows on his tea, little blue cup seeming smaller still in his large hand. Velma has left out teapot and bread in the understairs kitchen, a bowl of slightly wormy apples and pears. “Surplus is the word. We made our fortnight’s quid and then some…. Save some of that liniment for Laddie, poor boy. Velma had to carry him his breakfast.”

Lucy makes a sympathetic face. A pearly noon, Jonathan yawning in the hallway, the rest of the house still deservedly abed: it was a monumental night at the Poppy, the lavish dinner repaid fourfold, even the candles and “When he left,” says Omar, “the mayor thanked me.” Jonathan rolls his eyes, takes a chair. “And that Mr. Franz tried to shake my hand. Jesu. I’d as soon stick it down a snake hole.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Lucy says. “Jen says he’s a rare biter…. There you are,” with pleasure as Istvan, sedate in parson’s blue, enters smiling, bows to the assembled company and “Felicitations all round,” he says. His hair lies loose around his shoulders, he looks well-rested and his eyes are bright. “We tickled their nuts for them, yeah?”

“You’re quite the showman,” Omar says, with a tribute nod. “Puggy told me you worked up that bit, lyrics and all, so’s to fit with Jen on the harness, in just an hour or two?”

Istvan points to Jonathan, who beams. “I had expert aid.”

“But the singing—”

“A minor
coup de glotte.
You,” to Lucy, “you were simply invisible. Better than any actress. I believe Pan may be in love with you.”

Lucy laughs softly, sliding into the chair beside him, sideways to leave most of her shapely legs exposed. “Vera said his hands in her skirt felt funny, even if he is just a doll.”

Istvan plucks a pippin apple from the bowl, reaches into his waistcoat pocket for a little white-handled knife, applies one to the other. “ ‘Just a doll’? Some people say puppets must be possessed by spirits, that is, if the show is any good…. I once knew a fellow who told me that puppets were as old as man himself. He was a slippery old bastard with a silver ring he wore on his thumb, and he claimed that the leftover makings of Adam and Eve, the dust and scrapings ignored by God, were swept up by Lucifer and breathed into a crooked sort of life, not true souls like Man and Woman but nearly as immortal, desiring to move amongst their human brothers and find love—or, denied that love, make mischief. So how different, really, is a man from a mec?”

“I’d rather fuck the puppet,” says Lucy, “than some of those soldiers. They all smelled like gin and—”

“That big one,” Guillame entering, reaching for tea; his face is puffy. “What-you-call-him, the Chevalier, with the big rod. ’Course he’d probably pay in wooden nickels, eh?” and everyone laughs, Istvan winks and “That rod,” he says, “was carved whole out of a mandrake root by a giggling witch who told me she had tried it for herself: ‘Better than any man,’ she said. But no, the Chevalier was elsewhere engaged.” He tucks an apple slice into his mouth. “In jail once I met a man who said he had watched a statue of Christ Crucified bleed real blood over the sins of man at a roadside passion play. He swore that he had seen this, and beat me with his boot when I explained how the thing was done.” Guillame laughs, as if this story is no news to him. “That same man offered me a franc to fondle one of my old mecs, and when I said no, asked was I fool enough to believe in my own magic.”

Guillame grins. “How else shall the magic work?”

Lucy plucks up one of the apple slices, thumbs off a brownish spot. “Which old mec?”

“An operatic lady, her name was La Duchessa. I don’t use her any longer.”

“Why not?”

“She came apart at the seams. There was a man, I believe he was a priest—”

“Oh how
dare
you,” venomous and stealthy as a viper from the floorboards, all of them, even Istvan, startle, Omar almost drops his little cup. “How dare you all sit there and cackle over what you have done?”

“Decca,” Guillame the swiftest to recover, awkward to his feet, a supplicating, warding hand. “Decca, we made money—”

“Don’t speak.” Hair dragged back in a frightful bun, her face a study in mottled red and whey, she stands in the doorway as if to block their communal escape. Too overrun last night to punish them, she has been roiling inside, a brew of outrage and terror and relief. “Every single one of you, lying to me—even you,” one finger leveled like a duelist’s at frightened Jonathan, “you who cannot speak a word, yet found a way to lie. Did you think I wouldn’t know you brought him the music? Or you,” to Guillame, “who engineered the whole mad enterprise? Or you,” last and angriest to Lucy, “who birthed his ugly toy out from under your skirts? Well, you can find yourself another house to tarnish, or go rot in the Alley with the rest of the muck. You’ll not stop here another evening.”

“Mr. Rupert—”

“Mr. Rupert is amazed that things grew no worse than they did! Do you not understand that this was a private party, a special evening for the elders of the town, and for their guests? You could have ruined us all with your capering! There was a military presence—”

“I know!” Lucy shouts. “I fucked most of them!”

“The colonel of the garrison—”

“I fucked him too!”

Istvan laughs, calm again, plying his little knife. The smell of apple is sharp and sour. Decca does not even look at him, addresses a spot on the wall as “You ought to go,” she says, “tonight. Pack up your traps and go.”

“What of Pan? Is he allowed to linger?” but “Quiet,” says a very quiet voice. “Decca, Lucy, you can be heard all over the house.” Rupert in shirtsleeves, unshaven and pale to the lips; he looks at no one but Istvan. “You. Come with me.”

No one says a word, not even Decca, as Istvan, knife and apple follow Rupert up the stairs. Behind Decca’s back, Guillame raises his eyebrows at Omar, who shrugs minutely. Jonathan disappears like smoke in a breeze, Lucy glares at Decca whose gaze is aimed at the ceiling, the parlor office upstairs, the closed door behind which Rupert stares at Istvan who stares back without a smile.

“Hello, Mouse,” he says.

Mouse!
the hiss, the reaching hand from the sliver of dark, black space between two crooked buildings, shit stench, an impromptu pissoir with no exit save the street but
Take a breath,
the breath against the skin, one boy whispering to the other.
You’re all in.

They—followed—me.

I know. I saw, I followed them…. Just breathe.
One arm warm around his neck, thin ropy arm in the ragged greatcoat, silver braid on the collar, Lieutenant Flat-Boy, rent boy, from behind with his hair in braids he can be a rent girl, too. He can be whatever you want, whatever you pay for, for as long as you pay, or until he decides to be something else. Like mercury on glass, Mercury the patron of thieves and travelers, feathers on his helmet, wings on his feet.
Air enough, now? Come on, then.

Where?
but already he’s climbing, swift and vertical on the bricks, his toes and fingers finding purchase to clamber up, up, up to the sway of iron, less balcony than chamber-pot perch but
Up here,
he says,
we can get
to the roof,
and they do, hand over hand to crouch at last shivering and safe, one coat for the two of them; they share everything, these feral boys, on the street where no one else cares except to fuck or rob them, make slaves or toys or servants of them, dispose of them like rubbish when the service is done.

The fox and the wolf, the other children call them. The mercury boy is twelve, perhaps, or slightly younger; he is a general favorite, a joker, a liar, a prankster, he can make an onion cry as he peels it, he can change or throw his voice. The older boy keeps himself to himself, dark melancholy mouse in a hole. He came from an orphans’ home run by monks, or priests, he forgets, it was a long time ago. Men in skirts who spoke a funny tongue, they called him Tacio, the silent one, or in French
farouche
, half-savage and half-shy. But they taught him to cipher, spell his name, even read; now he is teaching his friend. His friend is teaching him things, too.

And helping him, with the help of a little girl, the boy’s sister, half-sister, it is not certain how they are related but certainly they are, the buttoned-up girl in the foundling’s dress who worships the boy, and the boy who visits her on the sly, brings her paper dolls and pilfered ribbons, takes from her coins and woolen hats and wrapped packages of food; she is a clumsy thief, and often beaten, but she never yields. He has taught her how to spell out her name, AGATHA, and FUCK YOU, a useful phrase. He promises one day to take her with him, them, but not just now; not yet.

Now he settles closer to his older friend inside the coat.
Got a smoke?

Wait. The light,
nodding toward the street.
If they’re still down there, they’ll see.
Instead he takes from his pocket a packet of rye bread, a shriveled knob of cheese, and a fierce little flick knife, butterfly knife white in his dark hand, and slices the food, half for each. The knife is scarred, beautiful, and
Real old,
the younger boy says admiringly.
May be a hundred years?

May be… He said that it came from a unicorn horn. That makes it magic.

What kind of magic?

You can’t lose it. Always it will find its way back to you.

Where you get it, Mouse?

He shrugs one thin dark shoulder.
The fat man had had a case, and the knife was one of the things in the case; the others are sold, or in the river with the man.
You keep it,
he says, folding the other’s hand around the hilt.

The other slips the knife into his pocket.
Wish we had some wine, yeah.

Don’t.

Don’t what?

Don’t wish. Only the devil hears wishes…. Anyway they don’t work.

The younger boy laughs, loops his arms around his friend,
pressing close and closer in the cold; is he cold?
You still a monk,
he says.
Are you?

Don’t laugh at me.

I’m not.

Istvan—

The younger boy’s lips are soft and cold; his kiss is a smile, too.

“Sit,” Rupert nodding to a chair, cracked leather and hobnails, a hideous thing; Istvan makes a face. The whole room is like that chair, dreary and unwelcoming: no windows, stagnant wallpaper printed with martial fleurs-de-lis, its furniture meant for stern usage: the dire armchairs permit no lounging, the table is bare, the lamps plain, the spittoon dry. The most abundant article in the room is the writing cabinet, with its piled papers, black inkwell, tufted pigeonholes and spring-locked drawers, steel keys dangling from a chain. This office-parlor opens onto a smaller, even more forbidding room; a bedroom? Rupert closes that door.

“Quite the dungeon,” Istvan says pleasantly. “I prefer the whores’ chambers, on the whole.” He sets aside his apple and knife, shifts, trying to sit comfortably, tries again, then sighs and reseats himself on the edge of the table, close by Rupert who leans back in his chair, away but not far enough to elude Istvan’s touch, two fingers lightly brushing the stubble on his cheek: “No silver, yet?” Both can feel how he stiffens at this contact, see how swiftly he stands and steps away, missing Istvan’s smile, a small and very tender smile as “You look just the same,” Istvan says.

“You don’t,” Rupert arms folded, the table between them now. “Why did you come here?”

Istvan tilts his head, links his fingers on his knee. “Why not ask my dear sister?”

“Decca only sings the song you taught her.”

“And you don’t credit her? Your charming partner in whoredom?—And when did
that
begin?”

Rupert ignores his question. “How she credits you is a wonder, you lie as easily as you breathe. You and your puppets—she’s your puppet, too. And a terrible actress: ‘Throw him out,’ with tears in her eyes—”

“Don’t let her hear you say that.”

“That you came at all—” Rupert stops; he rubs his forehead. “That you decided to play one of your fuckwit tricks—you could have brought disaster to us all, your trusting sister too, did you realize that? That man—”