The Mercury Waltz (10 page)

To the newspaper editors he told only the truth, anxious hands to put into theirs his journals, several years’-worth of painstaking work: and his reward a bound upwards at the forward-thinking
Daily Solon,
when their usual theatre critic is felled by a broken arm—not, as gossip states, from a brawl with an angry actor, but from tripping over a washbasin in the dark. Frédéric’s excellent writing and very modest request for income are both so much more congenial that the job becomes permanently his, its editor edified as well by Frédéric’s nervous suggestion of a pen name:
It will draw fresh attention to the column, I believe
and
Yes,
agrees that editor, Herr Hebert,
and let everyone know that that drunkard has stopped writing it. Good thinking, Herr Blum!—or, that is, Seraphim. Take that desk in the corner, and look out for the mice.

And so begins the tenure of that angel of the boards, eager student of theatre both classical and new, the endless march of Shakespeare at the Cleopatra, the trying lag of ambition at the Athenaeum, its total absence at Cockrill’s Palace, where the girls display themselves in chemise and gartered stockings, and the watchers throw wine corks and spit peanut shells on the floor. Sometimes a fine actor like Mr. Edgar Rue will hold a public reading, rumbling through
Lear
or
Faustus
for a rapt and clapping crowd, and there are many other readings and lectures to attend, a ceaseless rush and tumble of exciting, disturbing, entirely new ideas: about Man, about the government, about the way one ought to chart’s one course through life—though none of that intelligence ever finds its way into the letters home, nor the danger and clangor of the streets, the swearing, shouting tea boys, or the continuing existence of the two French letters, still tucked inside a pair of unworn gloves.

Unshared as well is his new knowledge of the men who linger in the parks, the discreet small bars beside those parks, his own unknowing entrance into one of them, called the Cemetery, where at once a man with a curly beard flanked him at the bar rail to offer a very different act of communion, much surprised and insulted when Frédéric bolted his drink and fled: and slept, that night, a thin sleep, wild dreams afloat on a tumult in the blood; and that tumult felt again, some evenings, many evenings, in the theatres, where one might see not only the men in fine array upon the stage, handsome actors in marvelous voice, but the ordinary men in the seats and stalls who talk together, watch the shows together, leave together arm-in-arm for more conversation elsewhere, men who seem to know each other well and to cherish that knowing. What would it be like, to be with another man that way? He has read a little, more than a little, of such things, though of course all such congress is a sin….

And in any case the engagement stands, as Miss Mariette and her family seem if not content then resigned to wait, and share with Mrs. Blum his letters that tell only pleasant tales of the rooming house, of all the money he is saving, of his spiritual home at St. Mary of Dolors, where, his provincial voice one of many in that metropolitan choir, he sings the praises of Mother Church; and his own mother, if she can, must continue to content herself with that.

Some mothers, of course, are content with even less. Tilde’s own never knows when her elder daughter, cards in pocket, third-hand bonnet on her head, leaves the fitful grasp of dispirited Jeanne and the park’s indifferent gypsies—
You are not one of us, Blue Eyes, you cannot stay—
to make her way through the world, through the months as she may: now a kitchen servant’s servant, peeling and hauling, then a seamstress’ slavey, then a sweeper-girl in the alleyways, trundling through trash and selling what she finds to a fence who finds ragged girls toothsome, who hints that easier work awaits her in his shadowy back rooms, and for more money, too; her answer comes through her hard little fists, in the form of his own blacked eye.

At last she fetches up at one of the
petit écoles
, a dance academy whose cold
maîtresse
puts her to floor scrubbing and lice-crushing until the other maid suggests a better way: the real ballet, where the men sigh for the dancers untouchable in their spangles and silk, then troll the back streets outside for others who, in the heat of a hired coach, might somewhat resemble the same, an easy game but
No,
Tilde’s dark frown, thinking of Annabell.
I’m not a dancer. Or a whore.

So what? You’re not cherry, either, and they give good swag—What, you
are
cherry? Oh that’s even choicer!
And tailor-made for a pair of rôles, two sisters, one a virgin and one not, oh, the men in the alleys will go wild for that! But Tilde consents only to be the ferry to the fence, rings and cigar cases still warm from the other girl’s nook, a growing lump of cash in the maids’ room until the
maîtresse
finally winkles out the scheme:
You!
she snaps at Tilde, pocketing the money as the other maid weeps into her apron.
I knew I never liked you.

What you like or don’t, who cares?

Get out. Take your things, get out
but
You, too—the cards say you’ll be gone before the year is over,
the scornful blue stare so occult and disconcerting that the
maîtresse
stays her willow-handled whip, only shouting
Witch!
from the window as Tilde departs up the winding street. And indeed the cards spoke truly, as the
maîtresse
is soon to meet then wed an elderly policeman, and by Christmastide has closed down the school for good.

Tilde herself spends Christmas in the park, in the dark again, alone again as the rain turns to sleet and then to ice, fingering the cameo as she stands with a crowd underneath a red-stitched awning, watching the fellow with the wooden zoo, the comical monkeys, the flying horse with wings made of real feathers, swan feathers, how wonderfully he makes all the animals move, and singing, too, while he does it:
Oh follow, oh follow, oh follow my lead,
bowing the horse’s head as he bows to the crowd, his dark hair rough as a bear’s and
Hey,
afterward his friendly smile,
hey, little miss, why don’t you go home? You can’t stop here in the park all night.

I’ll stop where I like,
through half-chattering teeth; she is even wetter than he.

Suit yourself,
he says,
but before he goes tosses her his cap, returned to him dry when she returns, her drier nod of silent thanks and
Which you like better,
he says,
my hat or my horse?
making the horse bow for her alone.
His name is Jean, like mine. What’s yours?

Why you want to know?
But the sadness in his eyes at her question, her real question known to them both, and that sadness his answer, makes her shrug and
Tillie,
she says; it is what they called her at the dancing school.
Is the horse’s name really Jean?

His real name is Pégase,
and until the day’s crowd steps up to watch the day’s performance he tells her stories of the gods, of Apollo and Hermes, Athena and Hera and Aphrodite, how the three goddesses strove to see who was most beautiful—
It is what they call the Judgment of Paris—
and
how they live together forever in the stars; she listens with great attention, it is very like the stories of the cards. After the show she stays until the animals are boxed and locked, until Jean nods and starts for home, noting as he goes another man who stands watching, a furtive fellow at the edge of the gravel path until
Hey! You there, quit looking at my sister!
to send the man scuttling shamefaced away. The next day Jean offers, from his somewhat odorous trunk, a wrinkled costume vest embroidered with red and blue crosses, and a short-sized pair of wool trousers from
The acrobat
, he says.
We used to work together; his name was Aleppo. You might want to wear these, Tillie, if you are going to live in the park. It is not safe at night for girls.

They get the boys, too, you know,
she says, the trousers folded across her arm,
there are all kinds come here.
But it is also true that she feels somewhat safer when she tries these funny weeds, her hair braided and stuffed into the hat, kicking stones and spitting as the boys do—and what a look on the fellow’s face who tries to pinch her then, thinking to have what she is not!

Thanks, she knows, are necessary, but what can she give to Jean who already has everything, the flying horse, the songs, the fat little change purse from the shows? so
Jean
, she says,
I mean to read the cards for you,
showing him the velvet sack, the hares and the doves, the flowers and the crowns. But before she can fully assess the spread—lots of knaves, which is bad, the knaves always take more than they give, but there is the Queen of Crowns, who means safety, and the faithful Jack in her train, so the safety is doubled, a fine lady and her man—there appears beneath the awning a plump man with his pretty lady a step or two behind, he with a brass-topped walking stick, she with a wide-brimmed hat, and
You there,
the man says to Jean; his accent is of Lyon, his voice—Tilde knows that voice, and the blond mustachios; her heart begins to pound.
How much for a show at the hotel? My little one sees you from the window,
pointing with his cane, pointing past the woman, Tilde’s face white with cold hope—

—as the woman turns to wave to the hotel window, not Annabell, Anotchka at all but a sloe-eyed Italian girl and
Bastard!
Tilde cries, and wrenching from him his stick she jabs M. Marcel several times in the belly, shouting curses over Jean’s shouts—
Tillie, hey Tillie, what the hell!
—joined by the Italian girl’s
shrieks
—Who is this, Marcel! Marcel, who is this girl?—
the tumult attracting a constable swinging his own stick and shouting for peace, knocking Tilde to her knees with a blow to make her head spin, then hauling off Jean to the magistrate as the likely perpetrator of the fracas, while Marcel and his new wife, new child, new life continue on, bruised but undamaged, back to their hotel.

When she can, as soon as she can, Tilde scrapes together her cards, the jumbled knaves and muddy Queen of Crowns, packs the male clothing and a filched bag of seeded buns, and puts herself on a train as far away as the last of her money will take her,
folle-farine
into this city where she knows no one and no one knows her, where she finds a café to work in and a hovel for sleep; where a creeping man in the fish market alley whose face she never sees knocks her down and steals from her the one thing the world seems to value in a girl, leaving her to wake bloody and in strange new pain; where like a fierce ghost she haunts the Park and the carousel, watching the families and their flocks of favored children, as the Pégase makes his earthbound journeys in circles to nowhere at all.

If in the city winter comes and goes in a swift gray coat of mist and snow, like a secret traveler eager to be off, then true spring takes its time to settle in, adrift and sullen in the rainclouds, unsure if the staying shall be worthwhile. But when at last the sun appears, its warmth spreads everywhere, insistent as the hordes of chattering black sparrows, fecund as the river adrift with life and death, fish heads and flotillas of swans and their cygnets, broken sprigs of pink heart’s-ease sent drifting to mark some lover’s advent or end, tossed by the maidservants and shopgirls in their ribboned serge jackets leaning over the still-cold stone of Crescent Bridge, eyed by the grey-suited bridge patrolmen and the quayside grifters and the stray cats who yawn at the statues’ feet like bored familiars, all teeth and pink gullets in the spill of lemony light.

The warmth even penetrates the great sanctuary of the bank, the paneled offices of Morris Robb, white hands resting on the documents before him, the business of business suspended just for this moment: a sweet springtime moment, even bankers have them. In Herr Robb’s the vision he sees is from far memory, a girl’s pretty, moony face, a drifting boat on the river, the glad stiff insistence of the flesh—

—interrupted by the arrival of his secretary with letters from the city and elsewhere, other banks and other bankers, creditors and debtors, each letter a chapter in a tale told by men with names like Richter and Guyon, Vaubins and de Vries and de Metz. In fact there is in this very pile another letter from M. de Metz, whose latest ventures have been conducted with a speed unusual for the bank, a somewhat reckless speed considering the sums involved, but then M. de Metz is still young in years as well as in business. Herr Robb had, more than once, met the elder de Metz, a man personally unmourned but much missed in many quarters for his vigor, vision, and unforgiving reach, qualities shared by his only son, but to what extent, and to what ends, remain still unknown. Young de Metz (though to call him so, it is said, invites his eternal enmity) was and is possessed of some unsavory enthusiasms, though most have been sanitized if not eradicated by his marriage to an understanding wife; well, could not their own Herr de Vries say much the same? And Herr Robb nods to himself—for money is its own kind of sanitation—as he reads the letter marked from Chatiens, a short missive informing him only that Benjamin de Metz will want to inspect his new properties when next he visits the city, a visit he plans to conduct as soon as travel becomes feasible; this last is code for something that Herr Robb cannot parse, and knows that he cannot, and so drafts his reply carefully and accordingly. If he knew that the traveler was awaiting the death of a close associate, an impatient anticipation of a much-protracted departure, he might have shaken his head, but the utterly respectful, if not outright fawning, content of the letter would not have changed one word.

In the pile as well, though requiring no answer beyond an acknowledgment of draft, is a letter from another bank, whose client, a Mrs. Mattison, has requested anonymity for her donations, still held in trust for the very cautious, not to say suspiciously suspicious, M. Bok, who, one would suppose—at least Herr Robb supposes—ought be grateful for the patronage that this far-off friend, perhaps a kindly matron devoted to the lively arts, seems pleased to provide. Ah, these artistic types, who can ever understand them? That girl in the boat,
she
married an artist, a tin engraver from, where was it, whatever became of that girl…?

—as the sunlight continues its annexation of all the city’s districts, the Park with its riot of white blossoms, its fountains’ fresh greenish gush—the Naiads, the gurgling Pisces fish, the waterfall so old only the living moss keeps its tumbled rocks in place—and its brick paths busy with strollers, dogs, and weaving bicyclettes, to the shining stage-set windows of the merchants’ emporia uptown, displaying French linen shirtwaists and fox stoles with glaring glass eyes and paste jewelry so fine that “No Lady Shall Tell Its Worth!” down to the cab stands where the drivers wait beside their horses, smoking and paging through the penny papers that tell of lurid lives and squalid murders, mainly of the naked by the mad, beside the daytime whores and pickpockets dressed like respectable ladies and gents, the better to share a cab with some unsuspecting merchant or visitor, lured to a ride by the heady springtime air—

—that in the theatre district blends with the smells of scenery paint and thick resinous glue, oily make-up paste in pots stirred with little wooden sticks or greasy fingers; Edgar Rue, it is said, stirs his with a sterling silver nutpick. The lobby of the Cleopatra Theatre smells as well of aged gladioli, two great browning fans of it in stands before the inner doors, just beside the white columns, scrapwood painted artfully into veiny marble, and the gallery of photographic portraits—Edmund Kean, Ellen Terry, Sir Henry Irving—staring as stern in their turn as Vatican saints. In the ticket booth, Mrs. Cowtan counts receipts and dabs at her rice-powdered cheek, the powder thicker than in her days as Cleopatra Blossom, a brief and questionable vogue in costumes as brief and questionable. Now her dress of talcum-scented bengaline befits a middle-class matron, somewhat aslant to the merchants’ class, and several steps beneath a banker’s wife or a physician’s, themselves some steps below a commissioner’s wife, and all below a titled lady; it is a city of many finely parsed striations, and the Cowtans mark them all, though theirs is by far the most respectable theatre in the district, presenting Shakespeare and only Shakespeare, nothing novel or alarming upon this stage! The upcoming
King Lear
will even feature a matinee benefit for the Ladies’ Succor Society, a group Mrs. Cowtan longs ardently to join—

—a group never to be seen at Fairgrieve’s downstreet Athenaeum, whose owner now scratches at the reddish fringe of his round head while perusing a brochure promoting a new variety act, two gray Paris poodles in top hats called “The Barklings,” which he ultimately decides against: no need to shift from
She Wouldst Not
, not with all those parlor-girls lining up every night, some of them have seen it a dozen times and still they keep buying tickets! And a good thing, too, for it is time, again, to visit the Office of Literature and Entertainments, the yearly renewal of a license to present itself a formality of presentation—the tax called a “fee,” for taxes, too, are extra—but without the license no publisher can publish or theatre operate, not even a roundhouse like, say, Cockrill’s Palace: at the thought of which Fairgrieve shakes his head, scratching elsewhere and contentedly, for it elevates every man to condescend.

And Alban Cockrill himself tilts his battered trilby askew in the spilling sunlight, pocked face all frown like old stretched rubber, and “I still say,” with one hand on the theatre door, “that we ought to join up forces, my Palace and your fellows’ Mercury,” his words half lost to the square’s continuing libretto, the black clatter of a passing coal cart, the broadsheet shop warring with the newsvendors’ caw—a Spanish princess is to visit at Eastertide! The Sewer Commission calls for citizen recruits!—all to the staccato accompaniment of the knife man’s barking dog. “An’t we the two most like each other in this whole scotchpot? And an’t the ones who come see me the ones who come see you?”

“May be,” says Istvan coolly, standing arms-crossed in the doorway, “who’s to say? We don’t ask for bona fides, we just take their coin.” Cockrill peers past Istvan’s shoulder, or tries to—he is stumpy as a beer keg, his right leg slightly shorter than his left—at Rupert busy inside, on one knee and hammering on the boards, that Herr Bok who gives him only a nod whenever they meet in the streets, never the time to stop and talk, and him a brother puppet-maker! like this one, too, this dandy actor with his long hair and pearl earring, staring down his nose as if what they do here, folderol of wild beasts and romantic knights-in-arms, is so much better than his own Gawdy and the girls—which is romance, too, the slap and tickle, what else? At least his is not against nature,
and
costs less than half the price for an evening’s show.

So Cockrill tries once more, and louder: “And an’t that high-nosed Shakespeare Cowtan trying to cut us both from the tree? All hand-in-pocket with those fellows from the constables, no constable is never no showman’s friend. Fairgrieve stays out of that shitpile, I’ll give him that, that’s all I’ll give him, but—”

“M. Stefan,” says a female voice, “please to shut the door. The stink,” with a chill blue stare aimed across the stoop at Cockrill, who attempts to give it back, fails at its force, the small hand hard on the wood but “You’ll see,” he says to Istvan rather desperately. “They’ll be the ones closing the doors, they’ll shut it all down, and then where will we be, any of us, where—”

—as the door slams to, nearly catching Cockrill’s callused fingers and “Mab,” Istvan’s eyebrows slightly raised, “you could let the poor bastard finish his thought, he hasn’t got so many,” but “M. Stefan,” the sharp little voice, Tilde’s voice as sharp to him as to Cockrill, “the street’s full of
merde,
you don’t bring it inside,” with a look severe as her apron and peaked cap although not quite so ugly, the strange starched linen finery her own idea of what a gentry servant should wear. Istvan calls it her Infanta’s hat as he calls this girl “Mouse’s cat” with rather more humor than not, though her own humor is stern and perpetual since the moment she crossed the threshold, Istvan’s eyebrows raised then, too, at Rupert:
You asked for this? “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide”?

I’d had in mind the other one, the boy,
but there she was on the doorstep, no traps or luggage, just that stare:
Sir has sent out for a serving girl.
Taking in the rooms with half a look, a measuring peep into the scullery, up the stairs as if she already belonged there but
It’s not the usual,
Rupert’s explanation half a question,
only we two fellows and the theatre, as you see. Will that disturb you, living in?

How should it?
and that was that, begun that very day with admirable industry to make for herself a maid’s room of the second-story alcove, cloak hook and trundle cot and box for her dainties and done; to sweep and wash and burnish, produce long-lost items from their hiding spots—Rupert’s silver acorn cufflinks, the second pisspot, Istvan’s ancient, favorite, much-mourned awl—and serve hot suppers full of beef and bones; serving to Rupert alone a new morning ritual of chocolate pot, spoon, and clipped cigar, no need now to go to Die Welt for his taste, Rupert who earns her rare smiles by not earning them at all, they are his whether he marks them or not.

As now, her inquiry as to whether he might care for “A cup of tea?” poised before him as he looks up from the errant board, nail in his mouth, and Istvan has to smile at her gaze: amazing how Mouse accretes a kind of family wherever they may go, this girl young enough to be his daughter—as Luc, yes, is young enough to be a son, though no one has as yet pointed that out. Luc in fact will be here soon, he is here every day now, so regular and regularly passionate as to make Istvan in private shake his head: he has never before kept a boy, nor been kept himself, so perhaps it is ever this way, the kisses and the clinging, as if every embrace might be the last? To distract him, and make of him some friendly use, Istvan has given Luc little jobs to do around the theatre, little errands to run; Mab, too, has used him as a chore boy, though she continues unamused at Istvan’s winks:
I saw you whispering on the stairs with my young friend. Could be there’s romance in the air?

He’s yours. And I’d rather have that one,
nodding at silent Castor; which she may very well mean, the chit has had respect for the mecs from the start. See her in the wings the first show she watched, fist pressed to lips as if to stop herself from crying out as the ninepin army clattered forward at the knight, and eyes all wide in wonder when the silver forest flashed into view. Afterward she ushered out the patrons as neatly if she had done it every day of her life, then took the broom from Rupert’s hand, diligent to tidy the seats and the stage, her self-given task after every show—

—as she tidies, now, the long heaped jumble of the work table, Istvan’s table, where she seems to know without much instruction what to touch and what to keep from touching, she never makes a tangle or a mess, she might be a kind of Lucy come again so “Mab,” Istvan wonders aloud, “did you ever play with dollies, as a child?”

“No,” flat, twisting a long loop of wire so that the sharpest end points safely in. “I hate toys.”

“You like our toys,” says Rupert, a gentle jest at which she blushes, a delicate petal-pink blush and “That is different, that is like—” but stops herself, one hand to her side, her skirt, and says no more, busied at the table again as Rupert redeploys the hammer, as Istvan peels a hard green pear with a paring knife and ruminates on the duration of the current show: “Cockrill‘s addled—we could turn Fairgrieve thanks to our young friend in the shabby hat. Another sellout tonight! We may have to paint up some more soldiers. But I was at the wheel again—in the Park,” when Rupert gives him a look. “A gypsy friend of mine lets me stake for free—and I do believe he saw us play, this fellow, he says he once watched a lovely lady and a puppet with a horse’s head—”