GS Marlowe - I Am Your Brother

by (epub)

  “Where’s my tie?” sings Mr. Ritornelli. “Studs, collar, and buttons!” In Wagnerian fashion. “It was over there on the table, now it is gone. Oh, Parsifal, where are your maidens?” And he goes on dressing, and finally he looks like an undertaker. Very much so indeed, when he puts on black gloves.

  “Don’t move,” says Mr. Esmond, “I shall find my shirt. Don’t exhaust yourself. Think of your condition.”

  And Mrs. Esmond in bed, cold compresses on her head, medicine bottle on the table beside her, sighs: “Of course you will. And don’t forget to tell me when you come home what Mr. Spencer and Viva looked like.” And quite faintly: “Regards to Mr. Shark.” Even in her condition—one doesn’t forget one’s dear ones.

  “Mr. Shark,” pleads Coco into the telephone, “Mr. Shark, how do I dress? What do I put on?” And turning around: “Amy, leave me alone. Wizard, shut up! I can’t understand you, Mr. Shark. Shout, Mr. Shark. It’s Coco. Amy, don’t grab me. . . .”

  But Amy is obviously after him, and why she’s in Coco’s humble little room, and why she is half dressed, is nobody’s business.

  Shark bangs down the receiver. “Damned fool,” he says to himself, and no wonder he is so excited, for he is standing in his undershirt, far from dressed, and it’s nearly eight o’clock.

  “Shark, are you ready?” shouts a voice through the door, and it turns out to be Ritornelli.

  “Is that you, Ritornelli? Hah! ready? Haven’t even started.”

  Ritornelli enters. “How do I look?” he asks.

  “Where did you get the flower?” says Shark, trying to tie his tie.

  “Bought it,” says Ritornelli nonchalantly. “I always wear a button­hole on this sort of occasion. It puts me in the right mood. Continental custom,” he adds. Trrrrh . . . trrrrh . . . trrrrh! “Shall I answer?” says Ritornelli obligingly.

  “Wish you would,” says Shark, forefinger between adam’s apple and stud.

  “Who are you?” asks Ritornelli, and quickly turning round; “It’s Bailey.”

  “Ask him what he wants.”

  “What is it you want, Bailey? He wants to know if you are going to make a speech. If you like, he doesn’t mind doing it.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know!” shouts Shark, nearly strangling himself trying to attach collar to shirt. “This can’t be my collar . . . got mixed up in the laundry, damn it! It’s always the same.”

  “Let me try,” says Ritornelli. “Come on, let me try.”

  “It’s always the same,” sighs Shark. “Hah! don’t pinch me. Easy, easy . . . oop! I’m killed.” And he sits down heavily on the sofa.

  “All right?” says Ritornelli, smiling. “That’s done. Oh, we forgot all about Bailey. Bailey,” he shouts into the receiver, “are you there?”

  “Amy, leave me alone,” pleads Coco on his knees. “I swear, nobody ever told me. How should I know, Amy? I was never married.”

  But Amy seems to be having the time of her life teasing him with whatever it may be. “All right,” she says, standing before the mirror. “We’ll drop the subject. And besides, I must go.”

  “Must we?” says Coco, surprisingly refreshed. “It’s only ten to eight. We have plenty of time.”

  “Fool,” says Amy. “We’re supposed to be at Luigi’s at eight.”

  “That’s why I said we have plenty of time,” said Coco.

  “Come on! No, you can’t take the Wizard along. It’s not a dog’s party. Hell, why do I bother about you, Coco?”

  “I don’t know,” says Coco wistfully.

  “Where’s that pin?” shouts Viva. “It was here a minute ago.” And nervously: “Haven’t you got a pin, Peggy? I can’t hold these flowers in my hand.”

  “Like a bride,” adds Miss Williams.

  “Now don’t you make fun!” shouts Viva. “Where’s that pin? These lovely orchids. . . . Julian must have spent a fortune on them. Real flowers . . . Oh, here’s the pin,” she says, quite humbly, as it was stuck in her dress all the time.

  And Miss Williams, who is kneeling on the floor searching under the bed for her shoes: “It’ll be Thursday the week after next before I find those blasted shoes.”

  “Thursday, the week after next,” repeats Viva, absent-mindedly, pinning her flowers to her dress.

  Julian is dressed for the evening, and although the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece show it is eight, he is still slowly walking up and down. Sometimes he stops, then shakes his head again, and on he goes with his restless walking up and down. Stops again, and the only sound in this room and house is the ticking of the clock. Two minutes past eight. Three minutes past eight. Julian stops again. And now: Quickly he walks over to the sofa, where there is an enormous bundle. Unwraps it. Paper and more paper. Plain, stiff brown paper. And occasionally some pages from an illustrated weekly. John Bull. Tit-Bits. Daily Herald. Crumpled-up, grease-proof paper, and finally a hideous mess: congealed blood smeared all over, and neatly in the middle a few kidneys and a hunk of shining liver. And it really isn’t much—just a meal for the Brother.

  A man in dress clothes, spotless white tie and waistcoat, a broken-down sofa, masses of crumpled-up paper, blood, liver, and kidneys, and it’s ten minutes past eight.

  Julian reaches in his pockets, and he takes out a little bottle, and suddenly his head drops as if in pain, and he sighs. And he corks the bottle again, and he shakes his head. He can’t. No, he can’t. And what’s more, he won’t. . . .

  “Kill him,” says a voice. “Kill him. Kill him now, do it now!”

  “No, no,” murmurs Julian.

  “You, too, will have a chance,” says the voice again, “if he is killed. You, too, suffer from headache, neuralgia, rheumatism, biliousness. . . . Ha-ha! But it’s all in your head! Do it now!”

  And then there is no voice, but only the ticking of the clock and the noises from the street, all quite subdued. And finally Julian takes up the bottle. . . . “Brother, Brother!” he murmurs ecstatically.

  Now don’t put it back in your pocket, Julian, take the cork out. . . .

  “You too,” says the voice again. But this voice is drowned as the whole of the furniture starts giggling with laughter. Look at the sofa! How it gurgles with laughter! Deep and hearty, like the vicar, when you’ve secretly told him a joke. And the two chairs on high anæmic legs . . . he-he! quite convulsive, like two spinsters. . . . And the clock on the mantelpiece, sinister and subdued. . . . Hoo-ha! like a judge on the bench. . . . Like an owlish solicitor, after his woman client has gone. . . . Ha-hoo-hee! All over the room, and all the corners shriek with laughter. And the lamp on the ceiling swings on its cord, like a long-armed gibbon screaming out its love. . . .

  Then sudden silence. And soft and deep: “Julian. . . . Brother Julian . . .

  The tinkle of forks, spoons, and glasses. Knives, napkins and laughter, and the moving of chairs, and shouts: “That’s your place, Shark.” “Come here, Mr. Esmond.” “I’m sitting next to him.” “Mario, where are the little cards?” “What an occasion!” Tuning of instruments, and this is Luigi’s again, and it’s all beautifully arranged. A long table and flowers in common vases, baskets, and pots. And at the head of the table: Viva. And she is all prettily dolled-up. “Exquisite.” “Here he comes.” “Gorgeous, let’s get up.” And Shark turns around, and he is all maître de cérémonie, and he turns to the leader of the orchestra: “Come on, quickly . . . the wedding march . . . you know . . . daa-de-da-daaa . . . strong!” But the conductor is nervous and he didn’t get this quite, so he turns round, and with a tiny voice he says: “What march? Any march?”

  “Wedding!” shouts Shark, and he feels quite at home, Stage Manager all over again.

  “I see,” says the conductor slowly. “You want a wedding march?”

  Now that’s too much for Shark, and he gets up: “Listen!” he says with restrained fury. “Not any wedding march, the wedding march!”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” asks the conductor. And the orchestra: “Daa-da
-da-daaa . . .” But it’s only Bailey, fat and greasy as ever. Short-fingered. Enormous watch-chain just across . . . dangling little horse in the middle . . . and everybody feels very disappointed, and dead silence falls on that gay and happy gathering of artists.

  Shark looks at his finger-nails. Viva whispers something to Miss Williams, who is sitting on her right, but one can’t hear what she says. It’s just a dead silence. Funeral-like. Even Coco doesn’t make any foolish remarks, but is only quietly interested in the construction of a carefully-pleated water-lily made out of a table napkin. And when Mr. Bailey clears his throat with a quiet and humble “Hmmm,” it’s like a shot. Ritornelli pulls himself together and he may say something—in fact, he wants to say something. No, he says nothing. He doesn’t say anything, and it’s dead silence and waiting for Julian Spencer. . . .

  Ritornelli suddenly leans forward, and he looks at Shark, who sits at the other end of the table, and says quite suddenly, with a terrific effort to break this ghastly, nerve-racking silence: “Shark, I say, have you heard the one about the . . . ?”

  But Shark doesn’t look up from his plate, and all he says is: “I did.”

  Whereupon the girl giggles, and Coco bursts into hail-like laughter, but it’s quite short, and that strange silence submerges everybody and everything in this room. Suddenly: a voice from the cloakroom, the opening squeak of a door, and: Ah! at last. . . .

  Darkness. And sniffing . . . and sniffing again . . . it sounds like intoxicated ecstasy . . . and the Brother slowly approaches a half-opened parcel. . . . What a lovely smell! And he snaps at it violently. . . . Those are the poisoned kidneys, kidneys . . . but did you ever see the shadows of two kidneys? For it is a very strange sight, like two exotic fruits, fig-shaped, and so very juicy. . . . And how he gulps them down, swaying his head. Gulp . . . gulp. . . . Afterwards wiping his mouth with his sharp-nailed claws. And those kidneys slide down his throat. The throat is quite puffed up and big and bulgy . . . but they stop—they come up again . . . and suddenly it’s agony . . . it probably hurts like the devil . . . it probably burns . . . and that’s why this strange sound . . . this hissing sound comes from the Brother’s sharp-rimmed mouth. And the hiss turns to a meeiaow, like the sex-loaded meeiaow of two gigantic cats heavily gripped in the throes of love. And it gets louder and louder. Cry and thunderous outburst, and in between, whiningly: “Julian! Brother Julian . . . Julian!” And over and over again . . . and it’s all covered with darkness. . . . Thunderous roaring. . . . It’s the poison. Mind you, that poison. It takes quite a lot to deaden a body like this, and it smelt so lovely and so strong . . . those kidneys . . . can’t you understand? All so unexpected; but of course you can’t understand these lines, these words, their meaning, for everything gets lost in the agony-stricken outcry of the Brother: “Julian! Julian!”

  Music playing. Soft sweet music—quite a small orchestra: four men and the conductor. You can hire them at any time for any occasion. They’re perfectly willing to come to weddings, cocktail parties, and funerals; but they’re quite good, and if they weren’t so good it wouldn’t matter, either, as the dining-room at Luigi’s is filled with laughter and talk, and moderately coarse jokes fly to and fro.

  Coco is again the target. Julian Spencer talks to Viva, and Miss Williams, who is buttering a piece of toast, is listening attentively. Bailey has his arm around one of the chorus girls—the one sitting next to Ritornelli—and he listens to what the pretty-pretty is saying, but is more interested in the décolletage of this female, so he nods his head, eyes on bosom. Ritornelli, on the other side, wants to join in, too, so he pours some wine into the girl’s glass, just to make himself sociable. In comes the waiter—as a matter of fact there are two—one enormous one, fat and husky. He brings a platter with a gigantic capon hidden in a forest of parsley, little artistic silver spear stuck in its soft behind, white paper frills on its little legs. The other one has a bowl of gravy, and two dishes with vegetables: little shiny green peas, and hunks of roasted potatoes. And he starts serving at the upper end: that is, by Miss Viva, and everybody stops, as roast capon is more interesting and fascinating than any joke or merry remark.

  “It’s a lovely hen,” says Coco, whereupon Amy shouts from the other end of the table: “It’s a capon, Coco!” And Coco, quite blank-minded: “You’re so right, Amy.”

  Amy giggles and turns to Shark: “You know, he doesn’t know a damn thing. . . .”

  “Quite,” says Shark, tight-mouthed, and dry as a squeezed lemon.

  They all start eating. Potatoes are squashed into the dark gravy, and the buttery peas stuck on to the prongs of shining forks. Wings, and white pieces of breast, and sinister dark parts of the capon’s anatomy are sliced and cut and tasted and chewed and swallowed and gulped down with a sip of red wine. Mouths are wiped with napkins, and dainty little lace hankies, and Bailey takes out a toothpick, as his teeth are far apart and full of deep treacherous cavities. But the five men in the orchestra—they are condemned to hard work while the others indulge in food, drink, and broad pleasure. And they fiddle and doodle ‘Valencia’ and it’s quite old, but oh, so easy on the ears. One of the girls is already quite tipsy and she conducts with her fork, tired of eating and drinking, with cold fogged eyes. Esmond sees her, and leaning over to his neighbour, an oldish and very unattractive chorus girl, he makes a remark, pointing at her drunken colleague. She shrugs her shoulders: What can you do? Esmond certainly doesn’t like it. He’s so very respectable at present, as the missus is making him a father all over again, and though one is perhaps a bit surprised at first, it makes a man want to live clean, and even if the old girl has gone to pieces a bit, at least she never behaved like that. In public. But Shark, that lecherous old traitor, quietly mauls the parson’s nose.

  Faces: some eating, some laughing, some listening, and some drinking with half-closed eyes, leaning back so that the red fluid may flow down more easily. And Coco is choking and coughing—it may have been a splinter, sharp-edged and long-pointed: “I am dying,” he gasps, and over this grave statement he bursts into laughter, which makes him cough again, so that his beady eyes bulge out. And a girl hits him on the back and offers him a piece of soft bread. “Thank you. I’ve had some,” he sighs.

  And Bailey takes the toothpick out of his mouth, sucking it with a squeaky noise and putting it in his breast pocket. “I’m perfectly willing to make a speech . . . I needn’t prepare . . . we from the theatre . . .” And a long-necked girl nods her head; quite sincerely impressed.

  Old man Esmond turns to his neighbour: “Three or four days . . . I hope to God . . . and she . . .”

  Miss Williams is pleading: “You must make a speech, Julian.” And she changes her voice, and is quite coy: “You don’t mind me calling you ‘Julian’?”

  And Julian, with awkward, false gallantry: “After all, you’re one of the family, one of us. . . .”

  “Sweet,” says Viva, “men are such pets.”

  And across the table Miss Williams tries to convey something to Mr. Shark, pointing first at Viva and Julian, then at her mouth. Aren’t you going to say something? Where’s the speech?

  Shark points at his chest . . . me? And quite bashfully he shrugs his shoulders. . . . Oh, not me.

  Miss Williams tries to encourage him with her eyes. He waves his hand. No, Miss, not me. But he is quite flattered and he adjusts his white tie anyway. All right, he finally gestures, and picks up his neighbour’s knife, drains his glass quickly—gulp-gulp—up goes the knife, here is the glass, and . . . what’s that? Somebody else wants to make a speech, and of course it’s old Bailey. He hit the glass first, and he really wasn’t asked. . . . So Shark knocks on his glass—ping-ping-ping! But Bailey does the same again, and this is outrageous! After all, he is almost a stranger, he has no right to . . . and they both look at each other—two angry profiles. But thank goodness, that silent fight of viper-like glances and furious eyes is cut short as all the merrymakers—as a matter of fact, every one of them—hits
his own glass—and this is quite a jazz band. And they all start laughing. So Shark gets up:

  “Ladies and Gentlemen . . . my friends . . . to-night is the night . . . it is, if I may say so, the dress-rehearsal of a perfect marriage. No two people could be more suited to each other as our famous Julian Spencer”—he corrects himself—“our old friend Mr. Spencer, and the star of our show, Niva Valdi . . . Vita Nalvi . . . anyway, in short, Viva—Miss Naldi!”

  Giggles and laughter. Never mind, Shark, go ahead.

  “There is only one thing,” he continues, “which might make it rather difficult for them, and that is . . .”

  The dark attic. The Brother has fallen on his back, and he is still vomiting . . . “Julian!” And like a frightened child, softly and still in agony; “Brother . . .”

  “That’s what I call a danger,” continues Shark. “Both are children of great talent. But they both have great understanding, and we all know how love builds bridges over the widest gulfs. I know you will all join with me in wishing these two great happiness and success. So, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to rise with me and drink to Viva and Julian!”

  “Bang—doodle-do-bang!” from the orchestra, as the conductor has been waiting with raised bâton for the conclusion of Shark’s memorable speech.

  So they all get up, their glasses raised: “Viva and Julian!”

  Everybody shouts, and Viva and Julian nod their heads in great appreciation of this kindness. Viva is quite overcome, and looks at Julian, and then quickly down at the tablecloth. They sit down again, and Luigi hisses: “Avanti! Avanti!” to the waiters, and out they rush again with a castle made very artistically of ice and little wafers and tiny uneatable clap-trap: porcelain pigeons, paper flowers, and silvery butterflies. Stuck in. Whispering and laughter again: Bailey quickly exchanges a look with the leader of the orchestra, whereupon the orchestra shuts up altogether. Tinkle of Bailey’s glass, and up he gets:

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, I was just thinking . . .”