Under the Poppy (34 page)

And of course Belle, if she knew, would doubtless frown, and bring up Petkov, as if that could compare! It is an insult even to think it. Petkov was a comedy, just something to pass the time—he knew a great deal of poetry, could recite it by the hour, did recite it by the hour, in fact, on those canal-boat rides, mildly pleasant in a way—the swirl of the water, the man’s accent making that old warhorse Shakespeare sound new:
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
But only tiresome in the end, as they all turn out to be, sighing and pestering, just as well that Belle sent him off when she did.

And that other fuss, about the moral code, penal code, whatever was that all about? How is it a “vice” to dally with these fellows—if anything it is a kindness, never he who begins it after all, is it? And if the talks and walks and boat rides, if all of that is so reprehensible, so predictable, then why keep engaging tutors, or riding masters or whomever it may be? Though where Belle found this new one, awful pink-eyed Englishman or whatever he is, Mister Entwhistle with no sense of taste or humor at all—Droning on and on about the duties of a gentleman:
You must always remember your station in life, Master de Metz, you must seek to do the greatest good possible for those under your authority.

Widening his eyes, a mockery of interest:
You mean as my father does?
That ended
that
lecture…. The old man, with his endless unanswerable letters, his tomb of a chateau, and Charlotte the Harlot with her smiles and sweaty hands, no wonder her houseman looks so fatigued. If Belle knows, she feigns not to; of course she hates the old man heartily…. What an ogre he looks in that absurd painting. The first act of the new master of the house, whenever the old man finally condescends to die, will be to burn the thing in a bonfire, a fine big bonfire, so one can see the flames for miles. Perhaps the house, too.

Until then he has other tasks to take his time—such as today’s, the insipid round of calls to return, he and Belle at the Chamsaur’s,
Adele is quite accomplished on the pianoforte, is she not?
Thumping out some Chopin, rolling her eyes; if they think he is going to marry that idiot, or anyone like her, they had better think again and then once more. Whoever he marries must be cut of a different cloth, she will have to understand that he is as he is, that he must have what he needs—not fools like Petkov, but—passion. Passion is like air, or whiskey, without it he cannot live. Will not live.

But love—love
is
passion, yet so much more, so very much that he had begun to wonder if he would ever know it, or if he was destined to roam forever like a vagabond in a poem, wandering, searching the world with empty hands—Until that night at the ball; until now. Now he knows. It is not a feeling, it is a world, as it says in “Seven Questions”: “Is love a sea? Yes. Is love a sky? Yes.” Oh yes. And it has no end, it winds like a path around the heart, a garden path with dark angels in the air, a path where every turn leads to the same destination—

But what to do about it? besides follow the carriage, peer at the windows, and think, and drink, and sit here at this table with his journal in his pocket, waiting for the clod Antoine to finally, finally step offstage, so the night’s real performance can begin: that of M. Etienne Dieudonne, provocateur and puppeteer, his rival.

Backstage, such as it is, Istvan adjusts his mask, not the relatively genteel plague mask but a new, cheap black domino, to go with his black beadle’s garb, anonymous and unadorned. It is noted that M. Dieudonne is moody tonight, less approachable than normal, although he does share out some gin, a better quality than that served by the Calf that is “Fit only to pickle onions,” he says, taking back the bottle from the bar-girl, taking one last long pull. “Or as a morning douche.”

“Good advice,” says the girl, leaning to kiss his cheek, then smudge away the pinkish lip-rouge mark. “
Bonne chance
, Monsieur, they’re a quarrelsome crowd tonight.”

“We’ll see about that, yeah?” not to her but to the slender figure he brings forth from some hidey-hole in his cloak, a face made for mirth, a pair of rolling eyes that stare, now, as coldly as the puppeteer’s as together they take the stage, to the hoots, grunts, and general disorder that generally greets each new performer, the attention of the audience a gift to be won—

—but the man onstage seems not to know that, or, knowing, not to care, speaks now exclusively to his puppet friend, mouth against the tiny carven ear that is ever so slightly pointed at its tip, like a lynx cat’s or a devil’s, murmuring to bring the puppet’s murmurs in return, its sighs and its snickers, impossible not to want to overhear and so despite themselves they quiet, table by table, until the room is still, until one can plainly hear the puppet’s croon, a little song with lyrics that at first seem familiar—

“The philosophy of vice is seldom very nice

Unless it’s watered well with cum and tears.

A little spot of sorrow will serve us till tomorrow

And light the glow of memories throughout our elder years.”

—a neat pastiche of a popular poet’s latest broadside, “The Philosophy of Vice,” in which the pursuit of disorder, well-fueled with liquor and visits to the cabarets, is celebrated as a gateway to life-changing enlightenment. But as the puppet continues, demure in his master’s hands, that master’s head tipped sideways, white line of teeth showing in a foxy smile—

“In the wild cafés we gather, work ourselves into a lather

Announcing fierce pronouncements while we suck our fucking gin.

Conversant with anarchic views, yet purblind to the daily news,

For what’s the fun of suffering when suffering’s not sin?”

—a backwash mutter starts on the floor, half chuckle, half grumble, the scruffy poets acknowledging the truth of the puppet’s taunt, but the bulk of the audience—the
haut monde
couples slumming, rings turned inward to hide the stones; the students from the Academy; the toff boys in the back of the room—growing more and more dismayed as the song rolls on, mockery upon mockery, naming names—“
Esprit de corps
is opéra bouffe, the Golden Calf’s a golden youth—” as verse by verse, the devotee’s pursuit is revealed as ridiculous, a posturing idiocy of the sheltered and the dull, to whom real risk is anathema, a silly child’s-play of rebellion revealed—

“—on the very lip of Chaos, as the dragons sent to slay us

Are really Papa’s coachmen, and sometimes Mama’s whores,

Dressed as sluts the serving-maids are more than willing to give aid

And lick the crusts of toffee from our fingers and our floors.”

—but if they cry out their protest, the patrons and the boys, they thus admit the insult, admit that they are, yes, those very play-acting idiots: a twist that twists them in their chairs, turns them finally in frustration on each other—“Be still!” and “Your hat, take off your hat I said!”—until a shoving match breaks out, two men too drunk to do real harm but their ladies shriek and the poets laugh and the master of ceremonies, Jardin in his black slouch hat, must come scurrying onto the floor to quell that fray—as yet another erupts, a wine glass flung, a table overturned, a growing pandemonium that seems to please the man onstage: he and his puppet share a smile, their last courtly farewell lost in the crowd’s noise: then they are gone, with no act entering to follow them, just the hectic limelights shining on the emptiness onstage.

“Is
that
your light-o’-love, de Metz?” cries one of the boys, overcome with laughter and confusion, Benjamin turns on him a furious glare—as here he comes, side-skirting the melee, toward the table where the boys all sit up straight at his approach, even “Master Cupid!” as if surprised, sans puppet now though still in his domino. “Was it a proper young man’s show, do you think?” Pausing, as if awaiting the verdict that does not come, only Benjamin’s stiff bow as Istvan takes his leave, stopping off at the back bar to buy a round for all the bar-girls, and a little taste of whiskey for the cab ride home.

“This is a pleasant spot,” says the man with the cane, leaning back in the dappled light: a
patio,
as the Spaniards have it, flagstones and a table and chairs, sun enough even in this cool late afternoon to make for an enjoyable tea, Assam tea served very hot and “Just a step from the city, all the joys of the countryside,” agrees the General, lighting a black Indian cheroot. “You chose your lodgings well. Or was it your lady’s doing? Is Liserl here?”

“No,” with calm regret. “I think I did not tell you, Hector—Liserl had not been well for some little time, a malady of the blood, her doctors said.” His gaze is not for the General now, nor for the patio, but the middle distance, and a distance even further afield. “She went very swiftly, in the end.”

“Why—my condolences, Javier. She was a lovely little sprite.” He is surprised to have this news so belatedly, but that is Javier these days, every card played so close to the vest one barely sees the cards at all, though on closer inspection there is, yes, a new weariness in his eyes, a faintly haggard air. “Does Isobel know?”

“No need for that,” says Mr. Arrowsmith. The breeze stirs the potted orange trees, their leaves still bravely clinging, glossy green. A bird calls dreamily, four descending notes. “I’ve not seen her, nor mean to while I’m here.”

“Then you don’t attend her fête?”

“You do, naturally.”

“Yes,” with a frown, “I do, and you ought as well.”

“Ought?”

The General’s frown disappears, replaced by an expression of such neutrality it could mean anything, or nothing at all. “Yes. Time is not our ally here, our colleague in St. Petersburg has wired me twice. And I’ve just the courier in mind—Hanzel is in town.”

“Dusan?” The tea’s steam rises. “I’d thought we’d seen his soles for good in Brussels.”

The General waves a hand. “Bah—players are inconstant, it’s their nature. And as I told Isidore—”

“Isidore. I spent one full day, sun till sun, with Isidore. And his lady.” Moist hands, moist glances, scented like a Cheapside strumpet, he could have had her then and there in her little boudoir-sitting room, the creature is so bold; desperation will do that. She may well whelp a child, but it will be the coachman’s. And Isidore—threescore-and-ten, three wives, and what to show? One sadly maimed daughter whom no man has ever offered for, called “Madame” now though forever “Mademoiselle,” and one rakehell son with no taste for the ladies—though the boy has the proper provenance, as well as his late mother’s beauty, and so carries the full burden of Isidore’s dynastic hopes.

The General seems to echo that thought, saying now how “Family is much on Isidore’s mind these days—too much, I think. I’ve offered to look after Benjamin, take him into my service perhaps. The military is a good place for a youngster so dissolute, it will put virtue into him—what’s that smile about?” as Mr. Arrowsmith salutes him with the cup: “You’ll have a fine skirmish on your hands—with Isobel, I mean. She’d no sooner see him with you than back with Isidore. Why does she loathe you so, do you know?”

“Who can parse a mind like that woman’s?” who even as a girl was subtle as a snake in the grass, in the garden, yes…. Never pretty, Isobel, not even in those nubile years when every girl wears some luster, the gleam of fruit ripe upon the tree; no other gleam about her, no money—the boy had been born by then, the heir—so no suitors, all she had was her mind to offer, and that saber tongue, what man would reach willingly for that? Though she was lean as a willow-sprig, wasn’t she, and shook like a bowstring on that darkened garden path…. He was a younger man then, his tastes a bit perverse, but the vigor of her had its own appeal, the silent urgency of her denials; she cannot have been fully a virgin then? or perhaps, after all, he was her first, the first in a very short line. The idea is amusing. She remembers, he knows. He remembers, too.

Now “Isobel,” he says, with an avuncular shrug. “Isobel must understand, the boy is fairly grown, this playhouse life of his must come to an end. He may never be Isidore’s equal—who is?—but it is with him that we will have to deal in the years to come, you and I—and still you smile! Now what?” but “I salute you,” says Mr. Arrowsmith, raising his cup again. “You plan to live forever, I think, Hector.”

“I do,” says the General, with a smile of his own. “Not in my skin, though I’ve some years still to accomplish. But at my age—our age, Javier—a man must do as I’ve done so often in the field, and send the scouts up ahead.”

“Like Benjamin de Metz?”

“Benjamin, yes, and others. It’s well to play on every stage one may.”

The two men regard one another across the table; the sun continues its retreat; a silent manservant brings candles, and takes away the dregs of the tea.

“Tell again about the dragon,” says the young man in the suspenders, comfortable over his cup. “I can’t fathom it out, how you got that behemoth to work, Miss Bella-Bell,” as Lucy shrugs with pride: “It took a bit of work, but work’s not what truly made it go.”

Alone together in the little backstage pantry, the Blackbird quiet now in the lull between the day’s work and the evening’s, she and Pimm with their tea and the biscuits he brought for her, delicate iced biscuits shaped like flowers, from the Tea-Rose Bakery in the heart of the arcade where he hawks his little fabricated country houses, planed pine strips and tiny twists of metal, real-glass windows behind which paper dolls the size of a thumbnail dance their motionless gavottes:
Every man a king with a Pimm’s Chateau.
It is a weekly ritual now, this tea-and-biscuits, to which both of them have grown much attached; as well as the walking-out on Sundays, sometimes down to the arcades but more likely up toward the river, the long and pleasant promenade, to take the air, to wander past the statues of this king and that saint, their noble heads bespeckled with pigeon shit and grimy verdigris, to talk of many things and nothing, to place a gloved hand upon a well-brushed woolen elbow; it is purely wonderful, how much a person can enjoy these simple things.

A simple life, indeed, can be the best, being only what you are. A whore, like a player, must be many in one: temporary relief, container of secrets, punching bag—though that was never Lucy’s lot—and midnight crying-pillow, and surely she has had her share of those: the ones who aimed to spill their sorrows as well as their spunk, the ones who wanted her to play at being wife, or confidante, stroke their foreheads for them, tell them everything would be all right. They are what she misses least, though the fucking was no treat, stinking armpits and gravy-stained beards, bodies like sacks of split grain pinning her to the mattress; but her good nature felt the strain most with the snivelers, the ones with wife and kiddies safe at home, work enough to put frolic’s money in their pockets, yet still they whined and bemoaned. As if her own lot as a whore was one to cherish! Sometimes it made one sour on all the men, though she tried not to feel so—it is the worst fate of all, to have one’s heart harden up that way, the private heart that belongs, always and only, to the girl in the bed, and never the customer above her. She is glad, so glad, that she has kept her heart whole, one never sees where the road will lead, and who here knows she was once a dollymop? No one. And if the mistress of the Blackbird Theatre is not most men’s first desire, what of it? See Pimm, now, more gentleman than any titled lord, never once has he even tried to kiss her, let alone angle for a fuck. And a kindly heart he has as well, she has caught him sharing out shillings for her troupe, once or twice a bag of chocolates, a posy each for Snow White and Rose Red. He is a good man, is Pimm.