Under the Poppy (50 page)

—as from nowhere a hand clamps onto his shoulder, another on his arm, a hold he breaks at once by instinct, a street boy’s old instinct but the constables take him again: “You’re Rupert Bok, sir,” not at all a question as he bucks in their grasp, as they march him in lockstep past a pair of peering whores, into a closed police cab, rolling off quietly down the alley into the rain—

—as in a lodging house not so far from the one Rupert has just quit, Mr. Entwhistle neatly repacks a greenish leather bag: some few clothes, his shaving kit and writing case, but most of the cargo is books, Scripture, and the Latin and Greek grammar: more successful with the second than the first, may Our Lord forgive him, but he has done everything he could for M. de Metz. It had seemed a gift from above, to be summoned from the orphan school by a family so in need of his services: the young man and his ignorance, Madame with her mockery, he had been warned of both by the old lord:
My daughter considers herself the final word where my son is concerned. Let her think she has engaged you, but know that your toil is for him, and for myself. You will keep me informed of all his progress.

And without stint he has done so, reporting everything, believing, always, that Providence had arranged at last a way for him to leave this foul city, with its “modernity” and depravity, to teach the children the young madame was sure to bear: the reward a good and faithful servant most deserves, the chance to be of even greater service, and spend his days in sound employ. Why else was he so closely monitored by the old lord? Why else take him to that supper club, if he was not to be taken in due time to the family house?

From the first he disliked Mr. Bok, as a bird dislikes the snake, with his vagabond watchfulness, his whiskey and cigars, his puppeteer friend (
there
was an imp from the darkness), and Madame doting on him like a, like a paramour, anyone could see he was unsavory company for a young man. But once he discovered what truly passed between the man and M. de Metz—! Those disgusting “poems,” and the young man kept a journal as well, a red-bound journal, though that did not come to hand, even though he searched so diligently…. Could any matter be more grave? Could any father fail to reward the hand that saves his only son?

But instead his report on M. de Metz and Mr. Bok was met with silence, a strange unbroken silence, until that gore-crow, M. Helmut, landed, to tell him—to
dismiss
him—
Your service is at an end.
No use to argue or appeal, though he tried both, tried as well to involve Mme. de Metz in her brother’s welfare—and met, there, with talk of a duel! With shears in hand, as if she would start the carving herself! Is it any wonder that he turned to the last help at hand, the civil authority? Though the true Judge will weigh Mr. Bok in the scales, as He weighs all hearts and hopes and actions, all unjust, hateful, ungrateful actions…. He made sure to state, as he signed the citizen’s complaint, that this was no ordinary evil, that the folk involved were of very high degree. Let the whole city know that vice occurs at the heights as well as in the arcades and the slums. Let everyone know that the proud de Metz family harbors a sodomite as its heir—

—as the day’s clouds drift at last from steel to silver to a ghostly ivory, revealing behind a sun as worn and wan descending on Chatiens, as the long velvet drapes are drawn, as sad Charlotte dabbles at her dressing table, as at his desk, eyes hooded, face the color of dried clay, Isidore waits for the sound of the carriage wheels, and sets aside his pen. Beside the stack of letters to be posted and his own gray journal lie several crumpled sheets: Benjamin’s handiwork, to be dealt with this very night, though far sooner would have served far better for them all.

As it is, matters have been swiftly arranged between Louis Guyon and himself, the formal engagement is ready to be announced. In some ways, that Twelfth Night disruption proved quite fortuitous, the earlier connection not as sound as one would have hoped—note Chamsaur’s endless, womanish wails at its dissolution—but one cannot continue to propose marriage contracts that come to no fruition, one will be seen as insincere at best.

And it is time—for many reasons, some of them owing to simple propriety and custom; others, more complex, known to Boris in the Urals, to the councilors in St. Petersburg, to Guyon and Arrowsmith here in the city, all of whom share his own hopes for the future, and his recent conclusions on Hector Georges; and one reason glimpsed only in the dark house of his flesh, where pain claims more space, more boldly, than ever before—for all of these reasons it is time and more than time for Benjamin to become the next master of the family, take up the mantle he was born for, and marry, scotching once and for all whatever filthy rumors may already have begun to fester.

If that incompetent Entwhistle had done the task that he was set, instead of pursuing his own agenda—if traitorous Isobel had not winked at her brother’s escalating folly, allowing such proximity—daily proximity!
Drink me like whiskey,
Maître,
cover me like the garden in snow
.… It is infamous. He takes his son’s writings, he folds them in half, in quarters, each motion painful and precise, as one pounds nails into a coffin lid. They have planted a pretty garden, yes, one he must now thoroughly uproot. This time there will be no leniency and no delay: Isobel will be punished like the unfaithful servant she is, and Benjamin will do exactly as he is told—

—as outside the tired horses shudder and blow, the muddy carriage rolls to a final stop before the chateau doors. Helmut tucks away his accounts, and unbends his travel-stiffened legs, to disembark and shepherd Benjamin—the prodigal son, drunk on whiskey and heartbreak—past the ancient archway, into his father’s house—

—as miles away, beneath a black and ragged sky, Istvan wakes, yawns, rises from an afternoon’s thin sleep to piss and contemplate the evening’s toil. On a pair of flat-bound boards beside the monkish bed, amidst a small scatter of tools, Feste reclines in his purple weeds, while beside him a new courier has taken shape, a puppet’s puppet, a dark little
diable en boîte
with long carven fingers and a little red keyhole for a heart. He has no name, yet, and no function, but the urge to make him was very strong, the work itself a fine companion on these long and aimless nights, the nights that whisper that pain is the only constant, and winter will never end.

When the quiet knock comes, Istvan wraps himself in the coverlet, yawning still, as Boilfast pauses on the threshold, to give him news of a dollhouse girl who watched a man arrested, that in itself is no news but “The man was Rupert Bok,” says Boilfast. “The girl is certain, she says they called him by name. She knows nothing else, what charge, nothing, she only saw him taken. Now, Monsieur, before you act, consider your own situation, consider—”

“
Merci
,” with a smile so feral, so utterly remote, that Boilfast shakes his head, saves his breath, and withdraws as quietly as he came. Istvan—calm with rage, a player released—pulls on clothes, packs a kit with a pair of puppets, several tools, and the planing knife, slides the signet ring onto his finger—too large for his left hand, he must wear it on the right—and slips out into the midnight streets like a fox into the alley, an urchin to the gutter, a man on urgent business who hails the first cab passing and pays the driver triple for double speed, all the way to the fine avenues of oak and linden, to a silent house where the butler conveys him at once to Madame, awake in the tiny chapel, startled and then so grateful to see “M. Dieudonne? Oh Monsieur, you have heard, you know—”

“I know,” as the butler, politely refused the kit case, bows to the unlikely visitor, bows to Madame, and seats himself, with a silent sigh, on an unpadded chair outside the chapel door. What angels fly in the darkness, what lost saints, pass unseen as the butler dozes, and the two friends murmur and confer. Downstairs, in the empty drawing room, the four figures in the painted landscape hold their eternal postures of desire, the hands of the zodiac clock continue their patient march through time. Outside, beyond the draped windows, gray clouds crowd through the night’s last sky, giving way as if in ambush to an absurdly brilliant dawn.

Isobel

M. Sellars is a little man, he barely reaches to my chin, though his coat was very fine indeed for a police commissioner’s; perhaps Hector provided it, it has that somewhat military cut. Hector—I heard his voice in everything M. Sellars did not say, his evasions, his extreme
politesse
. Perhaps to a police commissioner, a civil servant, Hector seems a Jove-like patron, a powerful man with powerful connections.

I am very sorry, Madame
: he must have said it fifty times, there in the parlor with his hat on his knees. He was very sorry that he could not conduct me to see M. Bok; his current status—not a prisoner, he is not in the common jail, thank God, but “detained” in some custodial location—made such a visit impossible for a lady of my stature, indeed for any lady. He was very sorry to cause me or my family any distress, and yes, he would certainly be my servant in the matter of an advocate, an advocate would indeed be allowed to see M. Bok as soon as an arraignment was accomplished, if it was accomplished; but when that might be, he could not yet say, he was very sorry.

You must be overwhelmed by sorrow,
I said.
There is an easy anodyne: let M. Bok return at once—today—to his friends.

I am very sorry, Madame, but there is still the matter of the allegations
—

Made by an unhappy servant, already dismissed; they have no merit. Unless you yourself mean to suggest that my brother as well should be detained
—?

He actually blushed, then, M. Sellars, and looked away, into the eyes of M. Dieudonne, in whom he found no resting place. M. Dieudonne is as self-contained as always, but his gaze—there is something frightful there now; certainly M. Sellars was not its match. Perhaps M. Bok is his tether, his better angel…. The sole virtue in this nightmare is the fortitude of both M. Dieudonne and Miss Bell, each of whom are a comfort in differing ways. M. Dieudonne I have installed here, for the immediate moment, though he chafes—sweetly, but he chafes—at the imposition. Miss Bell, herself sorely distressed, is still stout in assuring me that M. Bok will be freed, that M. Dieudonne will find a way, that Benny will return—my dear, my broken-hearted boy, still missing, no one knows where he is. First the terrible rift with M. Bok, then his flight from Chatiens, from our father—

—who himself has come into the city, though not to the townhouse: ensconced instead at the Emperors’ Club with Helmut, in one of the private suites where I was summoned, to sit in that half dark like a Gorgon’s cave, and hear that Isidore had in no way moved against M. Bok, was as disturbed as I by what had happened, though for a much different reason:
The man no doubt belongs behind bars. It is the evil of the scandal, the damage to the name
—

It will break Benny’s heart.

Oh, the look he gave me then; even Helmut turned away.
You are my daughter, I cannot alter that. But I have altered my will so that you shall inherit nothing beyond my name, itself an ornament you do not merit. And when this matter has been settled, Isobel, I shall sell your town house and you will come to Chatiens, you will live out your life as a servant in my house. As for my heir, my son
—grasping for the little cordial cup, his hand as twisted as his love, whatever passes for love in that dungeon of a soul…. He would or could not speak further; Helmut gave him water, then led me into the hallway, leaning close, reeking of those mints he chews:
The journey here was difficult, Madame. And this is a most trying time for your father, most trying—

Where is my brother? What happened between them, to send him fleeing?

Your father has agents everywhere, they will find the young master.
And that was all, he would say nothing else of Benny, instead returned like the dog he is to Isidore:
He must not be subject to more distress, Madame, truly. His health—

Never fear, Helmut. My father will live forever, it says so in the Scriptures.

I left then, silent through the hall, the dining room—and how they stared, all of them, though pretending they did not; M. Chamsaur, M. Guerlain, there will be plenty of that in the days to come. I was nearly through the lobby when someone halted me,
Isobel
like a sigh at my ear; it was Javier.

He had a cab outside, he put me into it, as tenderly as if I were made of china, as if I might break; sometimes, yes, one would like to break, to give in and shatter from the weight; but that is a luxury for kinder days. Instead we drove to and fro on the promenade, past the tinkers and the chocolate vendors, while he gave me still more ill news: Mr. Entwhistle had at last been located, but would be unable to recant his accusations, as
He was crushed by a train in Valrohns,
said Javier.
A simple accident, it seems, they found his grip bag on the tracks.…It is a pity.