The Mercury Waltz (5 page)

“Fortuna,” he says, to the banker, to the table, to the opulent black
donna
of the card, “sometimes called Tyche. A clever bitch. She enters through the
porta fenestella,
” taking a drink of his brandy-stirrup, as from the dimness, from nowhere, a woman’s laugh is clearly heard, a woman’s voice: “
Bonne chance,
messires.” One of the watchers, startled, scrapes his chair, another as startled swears; Haden blinks. The banker stares hard at Istvan, who makes the lady of the card to briefly bow.

“She favors the bold,” he shrugs, by way of explanation.

“Yes,” says the banker grimly, “boldness, yes. Monsieur, my bet.” With his palm he pushes in a stack of chips equal to Istvan’s, then greater, a teetering, taunting tower of black and gold. “I call sudden death, monsieur.”

“Ah. Then sudden death it is,” staking the last of his chips with one hand as with the other he snaps down to the scuffed green felt his final card: the red-eyed, red-caped Lord of Hearts.

The whole room lets out its breath in a whistle, a cry, a sigh. The banker’s lips thin to the thinnest possible smile, as if he has by a hair’s-breadth escaped some lasting harm: “Hearts,” he says, unnecessarily. “You had me fooled a moment, I think, Monsieur.”

“Did I?” says Istvan, who has not ceased to smile, as the slavey of the table brings a signing board and chit whereon he scrawls his name in debt,
M. Hilaire.
“Well, the wheel spins as she lists,
regno, regnavi,
” while the banker gathers the pile of chips as hungrily as if it were a woman’s pliant body, “
regnabo….
One more spin, would you, messire? Doubled or naught.”

One of the watchers laughs as if in disbelief; Haden sits up straighter; the banker freezes. “Sir, the game is ended.”

“Surely it is, if you fear to play further.” Istvan’s smile has gone gentle. “Surely I would understand, would we not all understand?” half swiveling in his seat to raise his voice, brush his gaze across his audience: the importer still hat in hand, the avid men in the chairs, Haden who, as Istvan’s glance touches his own, holds the look as if compelled—

—as Istvan pauses, similarly struck, what a stare on that young sharper, yellow eyes just like a cat’s, so “What say you, dealer?” Istvan asks him. “Does Fortune favor the bold?”

Haden shrugs theatrically. “Only the ones with ballocks.”

Back Istvan turns to the banker, waiting, the whole club is waiting, even the servants stand against the walls and stare until at last “As you say,” the banker snarls, shoving in again his chips against the signed chit-board. “But not Sudden Death—Champignon. One hand,” to Haden, who nods and deals four cards each, the fifth face-up: the banker’s is the lady of diamonds, Istvan’s the six of hearts. The banker is pale to consult and then, smiling with vast relief, lay down his other cards, the first two, two more ladies, three queens in all: “Fortuna,” he says, “as
you
say, Monsieur. What have you to show?”

All watch Istvan’s hands as he shows his hand; only Haden watches his face. One by one the cards turn up red, all red, all hearts.

A shout goes up from the men at the walls, the importer laughs aloud like a boy and “Well played,” says Istvan to the banker, stiff now as if freshly poisoned, shoving as stiffly from the table, so enraged he bolts the club without coat or hat, a servant dispatched to chase him down as another tears the debt chit in two, pays out Istvan’s winnings and “It’s good evening, then, gentlemen,” Istvan says, “or good morning, rather. And a good morning to you, too, kit,” exiting past Haden’s nod—“The same, uncle”—lips pursed into a soundless whistle as he gathers up and squares the cards and “That ought to keep his playhouse running for a while, eh?” the importer’s wheezy chuckle in the draft of the closing door—

—beyond which Istvan frees his knife as he steps into the empty street, one last chrysanthemum in skip and roll across the curb: tithe to blind fortune, is that the echo of a woman’s laugh? Loosed at least from this night’s burden, he turns toward home as the wheel of the stars wheels toward dawn, winnings folded fat against his chest, a fine paper torrent to spill upon Mouse—

—who is, yes, still up and waiting in their bedchamber, dark dressing gown and spectacles a-shine, smoking and reading until “For you, Herr Knight,” says Istvan as he plucks away the newspaper, tosses down the money, laughs to see Rupert’s surprise—and see again the great banked power of him, this man who has been knight, yes, so long for them both, bravo and bulwark and heart’s desire, why should he fear anything, ever or at all?—and smiling still to doff his jacket and cravat, and lead the way to the tufted rosewood landscape where together again they lie, scarred and one-sighted with one heart between them, the mingling tastes of brandy and tobacco, the continuing heat of Eden engendered to moaning bliss—

—until at last Istvan sleeps like a satisfied child as Rupert lies beside him, listening to the sparrows sing in the daybreak, another kind of roundelay: the green sward and fair hills of the streets and the rainswept gutters, the silent bar and the waking café, the noise of the news vendors joking and pissing in the alleys off the square. When at last Rupert dozes, it is to wake in the fitful sun of latest morning, alone again, his spectacles set atop the neatly-folded
Solon,
the bright and faded banknotes still in scatter on the floor.

“One Night in the Forest”

Contributed by Seraphim

If there is any doubt where our city’s finest theatrical artistry may now be found, let your angelic correspondent dispel it at once: Dress your steps in the wings of fleet Mercury, and hurry down to the theatre that bears his name, where a new performance with the delicacy of the scalpel and the power of the cannonade quite astonishes its audience, and plumbs the very depths of the watching heart.

Can it truly be said that a puppet is an actor? Surely Mlle Bernhardt or M. Henry Neville might disagree, or our city’s own M. Edgar Rue! Yet how can it
not
be said, when these two actors, styled as always in the playbill as Mr. Castor and Mr. Pollux, enact a pair of rôles: the hero of the road and the magician of the forest, two travelers whose journeys find their flowering each in the company of the other. Made only of humble wood and operated by strings and levers (your correspondent would dearly like to know how they are so operated!), yet in the playing a fuller life takes hold and they become, nay, they
are
the men in peril as brigands attack, as each uses the weapons he knows best—for the Knight, his trusty swordstick, for the Magician, his sway over the lunary goddess—to vanquish those who would harm them, and make safe their own way into the world.

And it is not only as heroes that these wooden creatures taste of the spring of Life: they have hearts as well, and allow those hearts to lead them as they must. If there was a certain consternation amongst some in the audience as these two found a sweeter consolation in close company, let it be only a flickering echo of a fading medieval darkness, as the applause was a bright Diogenes for the better time surely to come. For in this late, late age, when the world herself has grown so weary and so wise, may we not allow all the anthems of the heart, howsoever they shall be sung? If Theatre is Truth, surely we can do no less!

Allow Seraphim to be your guide, then, to
One Night in the Forest,
where an hour’s attention will be richly rewarded both in triumphant performance and later private rumination. (Note that shows begin promptly at nine o’clock, and latecomers are not admitted.)

The Morals Commission is in no way architecturally imposing, just another stone façade on an august avenue, neighbored by the Mercantile Exchange with its high Olympian columns, the Clothiers’ and Drapers’ Assembly, and the Municipal Prefecture itself, flags flying beside the stern statue of Minerva, booted feet athwart her motto,
Potens sui.
To seek the pith of that building requires only a short pilgrim’s progress up a second-floor stairway—checkerboard parquet and dusty portraits of lord mayors, a civil sainthood again unimposing—and a brief consultation with the secretary at the door.

If the building’s lower reaches, the half-dozen rooms of inquiry with their gray walls and multiple locks, seed a dread disproportionate to their size, it is accepted by everyone who toils there, from Herr de Vries down to the boy who mops the fluids, that any and all attendant grief—societal censure; financial ruin; trial and imprisonment; the occasional, regrettable suicide—must still be the way of the angels, so often depicted with flaming sword in hand, or, more practically and humbly, the way of the conscientious surgeon, cutting and cauterizing rot before it spreads. It is not that this city is much more wicked than its fellows on the continent, and if its civic heart retains some appetite for the mythic, the gaudy or hysteric, thus are the lees of history, when the world spun more slowly and such tastes were less a threat. Now things are changing, thanks to the efforts of what the newspapers call the “new men,” those administrators and businessmen with their eyes on what the great advancing future might bestow, what fresh powers and surprising prizes, if only they are resolute. As for the man in the street, there may always be a certain measure of allowable folly, of lagers and sporting girls: to clamp the lid too tight invites the boil. But on some matters there can be no debate, and it is the task of the Commission to protect the citizenry from the dangers of moral confusion, and the disruptions to commerce such confusion inevitably brings.

One of the many ways this is accomplished is by daily inspection of the daily newspapers, a task of the secretary looking up, now, from this afternoon’s inky pile, censor’s razor in hand, to note the approach of an agent, and call with a warding gesture that “He’s downstairs, sir. He’s downstairs—” but “I’ll wait,” says Haden St.-Mary, stepping past without slowing into the narrow office with its viewless window and twin pneumatic tubes, dominated by a giant oaken desk: it seems the office
is
the desk, so high are its ramparts, so cavernous its drawers, its chair fully suitable for a minor emperor or up-and-coming pope, though the seat itself is surprisingly uncomfortable: “Tight on the ass,” Haden notes as another man enters, a heavy man with heavy brows and a cherub’s sweet rosy cheeks. “It could give a man the piles.”

“
You’d
say so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means. And Mr. Eig an’t want you sitting in his chair.” From his overcoat pocket, the bravo, Costello, retrieves a dented little tin, camphor snuff unoffered to Haden, who wrinkles his nose at the smell as he glances through the papers on the desk, searching without appearing to search, is that his name there?—no, only St. Mary of Dolors, the cathedral: more fishing for the clergy, another of Eig’s interests, does the man do nothing but ferret and toil? He does make do without the stinky-pink, or at least no one has ever caught him at it, though many eyes watch him to be sure…. Looking up to find himself eyed by Costello in deep suspicion, wiping snuff-drip with a knuckle: “Why you here, then, when Mr. Eig is out?”

“The angels called me. How’s it your business, lapdog?” as Costello’s bear hand tightens on the snuff tin, Haden’s own knife just a finger’s-breadth away—

—but instead the secretary’s loud relief —“Sir, they’re in your office, sir”—as past the threshold in quiet energy enters Martin Eig.

If the monstrous desk is the center of the office, his gaze is that center in his person, a nearly boundless repository of names and secrets, tasks and punishments and obligations, a dark impregnability above a brown beard clipped smooth; there is nothing to grasp on to with Martin Eig, no handholds to be seen. Guardian of public morals, himself a figure of no great presence, a youngish man of medium height in a businessman’s suit, a businessman’s watch that he checks, clicks, slips back into his pocket before nodding Costello out to the anteroom, where that worthy sits to clip and shape his thumbnail to a point, though not before aiming a stare worthy of the alley, in return for one worthy of the gutter from Haden, who shrugs from the chair in feigned apology and, while Eig seats himself, scans a moment through the uncut
Globe:
no censor there, just cant and more cant and the society pages, the drapers’ upcoming spring cotillion, the Ladies’ Benevolent Succor Society to be chaired by the esteemed Frau Eszterhaus, sallow Frau Eszterhaus who still is paying, heart by sapphire heart, for Haden’s continued silence on the subject of her traveling companion:
Send the money, Madame, and you will have back your bracelet,
her husband the Mayor must be a jealous brute indeed—

—as the secretary lugs in a tea tray with two plain cups and a silver pot, an ornate and voluptuous pot much out of place in this room of business and “Bally heavy,” says Haden unmoving, forcing the secretary to arch nervously around his chair. “Mustn’t drop it, now, Bernd.”

“A heartening beverage,” says Eig as the secretary pours. “A man could quite make a meal of it.” He drinks, the pekoe bitter and scalding black; Haden does not. Cup down, “We have a task for you, Mr. St.-Mary,” reaching into the papers on his desk to bring forth a clipping from the
Daily Solon,
reading it aloud: “‘Have we not perhaps seen that same attempt, in some of the newly repressive laws…. Bravo for that puppet actor who fears not to say what the man in the street might well be saying.’”

“What, at Cockrill’s? There’s nothing there but flashpants, and roundheads in from the sticks—”

“Not Cockrill’s Palace. This theatre is called the Mercury.” Eig takes up another razored column: “‘The applause was a bright Diogenes for the better time surely to come.’ You read the papers, don’t you, Mr. St.-Mary? Do you think the man in the street ought to take his marching orders from puppets? Or watch them kill a king, or enact ‘a sweeter consolation,’ whatever that might mean?” He hands to Haden the pair of clippings. “These fellows Bok and Hilaire, where they come from, what they intend—the Commission does not know. You,” teacup raised in brief salute, “will find out, though it’s nothing you need do yourself, at least not yet. One of your fellows will serve, perhaps find a post there, or—Why do you frown? Is the assignment not to your taste?”

“It’s the tea.” Which is true, the smell of the tea
is
nauseating, or it may be last night’s calvados coming back for revenge, or it may be this fucking office, its brown leather and piled papers and piety; to look into the brain-house of Eig, what sort of place would it be? Heaven’s dungeon? A clean clockwork factory? A bustling morgue? like the rooms downstairs, Haden has seen those rooms a time or two, from the safe side of the door. But the business is to know things, his own as much as Eig’s, so “You want a boy at the playhouse when?
Tête baissée?
Posthaste, that is,” somewhat self-consciously, when Eig does not respond. “Your French is better than mine.”

“I believe that translation is ‘headlong,’ though all my French is from books.”

“You’ve never been to Paris?”

“I have never left this city. But my mind has traveled many roads. Yours does the same, I believe,” cup down again to extract from one of the many drawers a pale envelope, extending it just far enough so that Haden must reach to receive it, slip it into his coat pocket, pick up his hat as “You’ll have a boy at the theatre as soon as is feasible. Oh, and Mr. St.-Mary,” to make Haden pause, one hand poised on the jamb. “Did you enjoy sitting in my chair?”

Their gazes meet, Eig’s calm and black as an eel’s, Haden’s narrowed like an alley cat’s and “Not a whores’-hair-worth,” with a little shrug. “Desk work doesn’t suit me.”

“No? But your view may yet be changed, by, what is it, ‘the enticements and uses of power.’ Not all men are made for it, but the ones who are ought not turn away. In the meantime, you mustn’t tease my watchdog,” as both smile now, neither from mirth, and Haden passes with a filthy gesture that glowering cherub in the anteroom, who steps back at once into the office—

“Beg pardon, sir, but that one’s real trouble. That St.-Mary, he’s a nancy and a scoundrel, he’s—”

“There is a saying the Italians have, ‘A nail drives out a nail.’ Costello, that’s Italian, isn’t it?” Mr. Eig sips his tea. “Don’t worry about Mr. St.-Mary, Costello.”

—as Haden makes for the stairs, the doors, the brisk and living air of the avenue outside—coal stink, some café’s
kaffee,
the pink whiff of two trudging posy girls—putting space between himself and that building, legging through the streets to spy a lad of his a moment before the lad spies him: “You boy! Go get me a bock,” from the crush of a nearby tavern, a chipped and slippery mug that Haden downs in three deep swallows, while his other hand reaches into the boy’s shabby trousers, heedless and too hard, the boy trying not to flinch as “A man can quite make a meal of
that,
” with a squeeze and a grainy belch, the boy then forgotten as Haden turns up the avenue, not toward the Mercury Theatre after all but another district altogether, the publishers’ row of newspapers and bookbinders, the cramped confines of the
Daily Solon,
where the air is a-fug with pipe smoke and Voltaire’s portrait hangs in honor above the door. At the foyer stairs, the walls plastered with posters for this lecture and that, all the myriad readings and meetings and literary insurrections, he checks the clippings in his quilted vest pocket, then rings the bell and asks to speak with Herr Seraphim.