Under the Poppy (54 page)

—as Christobel beside her continues to receive, a gracious nod, the smile of a chatelaine: to Denis de Mercy, the Guerlains, Letty van Symans—dressed exactly like a bourgeoisie, how destitute of fancy!—and M. Guyon, who salutes first his daughter’s cheek, then Isobel’s, as Fernande bobs up behind him, round as a turnip in her turnip-bag of a dress; in truth she makes an excellent fishwife. Her glittering gaze seizes at once on Christobel: “Can one be a widow before one is even a bride? Is that the meaning of your black gown, miss?”

Before Isobel can frame a response—this girl is under her protection, now—Christobel gives a tranquil little shrug: “One’s a maid before either, Madame. Surely you know that? as you are one yourself.” Isobel laughs—Fernande’s crusty old maidenhead! As counterfeit a conceit as her gown—and squeezes Christobel’s hand, that strong young hand with a grip as firm as her own.

In the quiet of the east parlor’s adjunct room, a narrow little servant’s pantry, Istvan waits, his shoulder aching from the cold. He glances once more to his new accomplice, Puck with his paper freight soon to give birth to commotion; and vengeance, his vengeance pick-a-back on those others and their complicated politics. His own is much simpler and more useful, and, in a strange twist, a gift from a man who hated him to a man who thought to be his patron still. Whoever writes the play of life has a sense of humor, that is sure…. Apparently the other Master Puck is once more about, according to Arrowsmith, who passed the news in a whisper, before noting that the General is present as well. So the stage is fully dressed.

Feste as well sports a fresh new suit, suitable for any clime; this show is one night only, but if the reviews are good, who can say where the troupe might travel? As for the others, still swaddled in their various trunks and hanging boxes—the sturdy Chevalier, so long unridden; the other Miss Lucinda; the Bishop; and Pan Loudermilk—Feste, in fact, wears Pan’s black vest, and a buttonhole twist of his hair—they will be a gift to the bride and groom, to further feather the Blackbird’s nest, as Miss Lucy Bell becomes Mistress Pimm, another kind of quick-change, love’s transubstantiation…. Let Arrowsmith and the others play the show they mount; himself, he will pass through unencumbered, there is only one companion that he needs.

Past the door voices mingle, ardent guard Otilie’s and a man’s: Istvan puts his hand to his pocket and the planing knife, but it is only Pinky, dressed as an extravagant burglar, all black woolens and masked in red, and toting a bottle of brandy: “I once read, sir, of a musician, a violinist I think it was, who soaked his mitts in Spanish brandy before all recitals. He swore it kept him nimble.”

“No doubt it did. Many thanks.” Istvan pours for himself, drinks, raises the bottle Pinky’s way: they share a toast. The brandy is French, and excellent, mellow as a long-banked fire. Istvan drinks again as a noise in the hallway, men’s voices passing, makes Pinky jump. “Why, what spooks you so? Have you a bad conscience, young man?”

“No, I’m petrified of the old stick—he swears he’ll send me off if he catches me near a stage again, though I miss Miss Bell like fury, and the Jack show’s near to start. That box is a wonder, isn’t it! Open and close with a fingertip, that’s artistry
….
He doesn’t seem to care a whit what I want, my father, that is. Did you find your own father so, sir?”

“I never did find my father…. I am a bastard,” when he sees that Pinky does not understand. Swallowing one last splash of brandy, it makes him warm; and he smiles, a calm and pleasant smile, letting the rôle take hold. “It’s a shame Miss Bell’s not with us tonight, but we shall do the best we may without her. Here,” taking from his kit a concertina, chipped buttons and spavined bellows, a veteran of many shows at the Fin. “You’ll play the overture?”

Pinky bows, and sets his robber’s mask in place. “Your servant, sir.”

Just past the door, Otilie hears them stir, and tugs her modest décolleté to best advantage: he gave her a tumble once, that handsome player, mayhap he might again. In the west bedchamber, Helmut stirs a brownish syrup into a glass of red wine, a tincture of laudanum and honey, and gives it to his master to drink, Isidore in spotless linen set upright and grimacing in a dark baronial chair. In the drawing room, amidst thickets of roses, stark white and meaty red, Mr. Arrowsmith and M. Guyon raise their tin cups, while Hector Georges makes a bow to Isobel, who returns him an icy nod, as Christobel Guyon gazes up at the Cupid in the portrait, the arrow and the tumbling curls, the naughty, haughty smile. Unseen by all, one last guest, cloaked and hurried, climbs the servants’ stairs, to be bundled at once into Benjamin’s rooms, where Benjamin himself pours the wash-water, and hunts for a shirt that might fit, while Rupert sits blinking in the gaslight, smoking a very necessary cheroot.

“
Mesdames et messieurs
,” says the merry voice, top hat and plague mask, greeting the evening’s house, chairs arranged in a semicircle, like good children promised a special treat. This is an intimate show, here in the east parlor, and much anticipated by its audience, all of whom enjoyed the Twelfth Night
succès de scandale
, and hope for another as memorable if not, perhaps, as grisly. Though not every guest is present, the room is full, with Isobel and Christobel up front in the places of honor, an empty chair set and waiting between them.

“All you joyful beggars, many greetings from myself and my associates,” as Pinky, hidden behind a lacquered black screen that also hides the connecting pantry door, gamely squeezes a gasping tune—it could be “Chanson des mendiants,” it could be of an on-the-spot devising, it could be Pinky is unsure how to properly work the buttons—from the tattered concertina. Both Feste and the little Puck make their bows, a complicated roundelay of hands extended but overshot, foreheads knocked, at one moment the beak of the plague mask becomes a barrier around which both puppets peep and batter; the audience laughs. “Gentlemen, please, you’ll have each other’s stuffing out…. Do you know the very moral tale of the fox and the grapes,
mesdames et messieurs
? You do? Why then, we shall play another,” to bring another laugh that echoes through the hallway—

—though more faintly in the west bedchamber, with its hermetic air of illness, its fire burning high: the room is hot as midsummer, but Isidore’s hand is very cold, yet steady as he directs his several guests to their places: M. Guyon masked in blue, the mummer Mr. Arrowsmith, Hector Georges in his costume of infantry jacket, with one chair kept empty to Isidore’s right. M. Guyon begins by praising the joining of the two families, the engagement to be announced that very night, at which the General, domino tossed aside, makes a hawkish smile: “Oh, felicitations. But who will stand in for the groom?”

Isidore sips from his wineglass, the sediment black at the bottom. “What is your meaning?”

“Come, gentlemen, let’s not waste each other’s time. Will your daughter wed a man in disgrace, Guyon? Mired in scandal and perversion?”
M. Guyon does not reply, looks not to Isidore but to Mr. Arrowsmith, who says mildly, “You are rash, Hector.”

“And you have betrayed me. I had a note this afternoon from M. Sellars—But you know what news it brought. I’ll not even ask how you twisted the mayor’s stones—”

“Not the mayor. The prefect.”

“The prefect…. Well. Touché.—Isidore,” turning in his chair to face him, turning the ring on his thumb, the old silver ring that dates from the Terror. “We have been allies for a very long time, you and I.”

Again it is Mr. Arrowsmith who speaks, still mildly: “We have all been allied for many years, and gladly so. But lately you have cast your own net, have you not? And cast it very wide. You seek not to make kings, but to be crowned yourself.”

“In St. Petersburg—” says M. Guyon, but the General speaks over him, still addressing Isidore: “Isobel may have paid off those tutors and stableboys, but this is something different, this Bok is a known and common criminal—a pimp, Isidore, to be plain. As Javier knows well, and as well a killer, he murdered Jürgen Vidor in cold blood. You ought be glad I had him taken as I did, to spare you from the task. Will you now let yourself be foxed this way? When there is so little time?”

Isidore’s eyelids droop a fraction, like a lizard’s on a rock; he says nothing. M. Guyon steeples his fingers. Mr. Arrowsmith thinks of the puppet show in the parlor, the letter in the little puppet’s gut: if he were a man prone to fancies, he might think Jürgen Vidor present now, as he is so palpably in that letter, here in this very room where, no doubt, he once received instruction, once gave news of tasks attempted and accomplished, that odd, stained, secretive man…. Hear the merriment downstairs! Dusan, as always, must be playing his part superbly. It is a pity not to ease his mind at once regarding M. Bok, but good news can always wait its curtain call. And Dusan is unpredictable, even at the best of times, he might slit through the traces and bolt. Only let him keep the gait a little longer—

“—because the sweetest taste,
mesdames et messieurs
, is always just out of reach, as the poor fox found to his dismay—” while Pan and Puck grasp and bob in tandem for a bauble dangled by the giggling Letty van Symans, a fat pink pearl on a golden chain, not really what a beggar wears but the theatre is nothing if not elastic, a thing is what it says it is for as long as it holds the stage: as a puppet is a man is a lover is a world entire: as the pearl swings like a pendulum, as Istvan eggs her on: “That’s it, my lady of the ashcans! Make them work for it, the rogues!”

“Use your earbobs, Letty!” someone cries, and “Oh!” squeaks the laughing Mme. Guerlain, as her own earbob is popped free, a cherry-colored stone, by the festive Feste, then flipped back to her by decorous little Puck: everyone laughs, then, even Isobel, whose gaze never strays far from the door.

Upstairs, another door opens, very slowly, like a flower in final bloom: the door to Benjamin’s bedchamber, as Benjamin himself steps out into the hall. His face is as white as if he has been bled, his gaze stays fixed as he walks without haste to the west bedchamber, looking back not at all; it is Rupert who stands watching, silent in the aperture, until Benjamin has put his hand to that other door, and disappeared inside. If Rupert sighs, then, it is without sound, a painful inner breath marked only by himself. Then he pulls the cloak closer over the stained suit, the borrowed shirt—from one of the taller footmen, it sits too tight across the chest—and moves in swift purpose down the stairway, toward the happy noise of the audience below.

In the odorous heat and tension of the west bedchamber, the men turn as one as Benjamin de Metz, pale as his father, steps inside, to take the seat at his father’s right hand. Seeing him, a tremor seems to pass through Isidore; he closes his eyes. The General turns back to Mr. Arrowsmith, still smiling, a raptor’s contemptuous smile, as if there had been no interruption: “You say many things of me, Javier, all unworthy of a colleague. Can you prove even one?”

The room is quiet except for the sound of the fire. The General’s smile does not waver. Finally “There is a letter,” says Mr. Arrowsmith gently. “From Vidor. It was found after his death.”

“You have this letter?” asks M. Guyon, as if on cue; it is on cue. Mr. Arrowsmith displays a little black key on his watch chain: “I have access to it, yes. And I have read it myself. In it Vidor speaks of certain—exigencies, of Rawsthorne and Pepper. And he names the author of his end—”

“Javier—”

“You, Hector.”

The General’s gaze flickers, and Mr. Arrowsmith knows he recalls a sitting room in Brussels, a conversation they shared—
some communiqué, some last poetic fillip
—as “I’d see that document,” says the General, no longer smiling. “Before another word is said.”

Isidore leans forward, one hand on his son’s, his voice like a saw on stone. “You can dictate no terms here. You took my servant without my leave—”

“Your servant! Your own father,” jerking his thumb, “he took me from the butcher’s shop, to make of me a better butcher—”

“You took my servant, you yourself must replace him. Unless you choose to make your stand alone.”

“You stand,” says the General, very softly, with bottomless hate, “on the very lip of the grave. Is this where you choose to make war?”

The older men look one to another, a pause in common before response, but it is Benjamin who answers: his left hand still grasped by his father’s, his right is bright with a ring, a signet ring, black and gold and “I am the head of the family now,” he says, with a young man’s scorn for the grave, for those subject to the grave, for the General there before him, and the ageless certainty of his own command; in that moment he is so powerfully his father’s son that even Mr. Arrowsmith is still. “Make your war on me, Monsieur, or do as you are fucking bid.”

From downstairs comes a little shriek of laughter, a pair of voices in tandem chanting a little tune: tonight it is called “The Lament of Reynard the Fox” but it is a barroom sally, very old, with very many titles—“Up-So-Down,” “The Two Croakers,” “Paddy’s Lament”—that Pinky, sweating behind the lacquered screen, labors with pluck if not success to follow on the concertina. The squeaks and yips seem part of the merriment, although the master of the show winces inwardly at the wayward notes, as Puck and Feste mingle their verses—

“For what’s worth most we’ll puff and strain

—Huff and puff and gladly strain—

For the rarest grapes make the best champagne, an oyster barrel full!

And let it bubble to the top

—Keep a-bubbling, don’t you stop!—

For fellows such as we need quite a pull!”

—pulling as well at the ladies in attendance, nips and grabs but nothing too ribald, a purely complimentary sauce: even the prim Christobel Guyon is laughing as little Puck untucks the top lace of her gown, irony’s wink that she cannot appreciate, why should she? Only Mouse should guess that jape—

—as the music jerks, then smooths and finds its rhythm, the concertina chuffing in a jaunty style such as one hears in the arcades when played well, much too well in fact for thumb-fingered Pinky, Istvan’s smile flickering as the puppets swing into a final verse—

“So let poor players have their fun

—A taste of jelly on the bun!—

For our days are short and then they’re done—”

—as suddenly Istvan’s smile blooms, an unguarded, boyish, joyous smile beneath the cloaking mask, past a stolen glance at the tall figure just behind the screen, much taller than Pinky, playing along as Istvan sings, now, with passionate energy—

“—As done as well are we!