The Rebel Angels tct-1

by Robertson Davies

  “I know a better riddle than that,” said Mamusia. “Now pay attention to what I say, or you will never guess.—It is a thing, you understand? And this thing was made by a man who sold it to a man who didn’t want it; the man who used it didn’t know he was using it. Now, what is it?—Think very hard.”

  They thought very hard, or seemed to do so. Mamusia slapped the table emphatically and said, “A coffin!—A good joke for a priest, eh?”

  “You must tell me more Gypsy riddles, Madame,” said Hollier; “for me such things are like a wonderful long look into the far past. And everything that can be recovered from the past throws light on our time, and guides us towards the future.”

  “Oh, we could tell secrets,” said Yerko. “Gypsies have lots of secrets. That’s what makes them so powerful. Look—I’ll tell you a Gypsy secret, worth a thousand dollars to anybody. Your dog gets into a fight see; both dogs trying to kill other dog—Rowf-rowf! Grrrrr!—you can’t get your dog away. Kick him! Pull his tail! No good! He wants to kill. So what you do? You lick the long finger good—make it good and wet—then you run up and you shove your finger up the arse-hole of one dog—not matter whether your dog or not. Shove up as far as you can. Wiggle it good. Dog surprised. What the hell! he think. He let go, and you kick him good so no more fight.—You got a good dog?”

  “My mother has a very old Peke,” said Hollier.

  “Well, you do that next time he fight. Show who’s master.—You got a horse?”

  Neither of the professors had a horse.

  “Too bad. I could tell you how to make any horse yours forever. I tell you anyway. Just whisper up his nose. What you whisper? Whisper your secret name—the name only you and your mother know. Right up his nose, both nose-holes. Yours forever. Leave anybody he living with when you do it, and follow you. Spit in my face if I lie.”

  “You see my daughter’s hair is uncovered,” said Mamusia to Darcourt. “That means, you know, that she is without a husband—not even spoken for, though she has a wonderful dowry. And a good girl. Nobody lay a finger on her. Gypsy girls are very particular about that. No funny business, like these shameless gadji girls. What I have heard! You wouldn’t believe! No better than putani. But not Maria.”

  “I am sure she is unmarried by her own choice,” said Darcourt. “Such a beauty!”

  “Aha, you like the women, though you are a priest. Oh but yes, you priests marry like the Orthodox.”

  “Not quite like the Orthodox. They may marry, but they must never hope to become bishops if they do. Our bishops are usually married men.”

  “Much, much better! Keeps them out of scandals. You know what I mean,” Mamusia scowled. “Boysss!”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so. But bishops have so much of other people’s scandals I don’t think they would care greatly for that sort of thing, even if they weren’t married.”

  “Will you be a Bishop, Father Simon?”

  “Very unlikely, I assure you.”

  “You don’t know. You look just right for a Bishop. A Bishop should be a fine man, with a fine voice. Don’t you want to know?”

  “Could you tell him?” said Hollier.

  “Oh, he doesn’t care. And I could not tell him, not on a full stomach.”

  Cunning Mamusia! Slowly, but not too slowly, Hollier persuaded her to look into the future. The apricot brandy had been going round the table and Hollier was more persuasive, Mamusia more flirtatious, and Darcourt, though he protested, was anxious to see what would happen.

  “Bring the cards, Yerko,” she said.

  The cards were on the top of a cabinet, because nothing in the room was ever to rest higher than they, and Yerko lifted them down with proper reverence.

  “Maybe I should cover up Bebby Jesus?”

  “Is Bebby Jesus a parrot, to be put under a cloth? Shame on you, brother! Anything I can see in the future, He knows already,” said Mamusia.

  “Sister, I know what! You read the cards, and we tell Bebby Jesus it is a birthday gift to him, and that way there can be no trouble, you see.”

  “That is an inspired thought, Yerko,” said Darcourt. “Offer up the splendid talent as a gift. I had not thought of that.”

  “Everybody owes a gift to Bebby Jesus,” said Yerko. “Even kings. Look, here are the kings; I made the crowns myself. You know what they bring?”

  “The first brings a gift of Gold,” said Darcourt, turning towards the crèche.

  “Yes, Gold; and you must give my sister money—not much, maybe a quarter, or the cards will not fall right. But Gold was not all. The other kings bring Frank Innocence and Mirth.”

  Darcourt was startled, then delighted. “That is very fine, Yerko; is it your own?”

  “No, it is in the story. I saw it in New York. The kings say, We bring you Gold, Frank Innocence, and Mirth.”

  “Sancta simplicitas,” said Darcourt, raising his eyes to mine. “If only there were more Mirth in the message He has left to us. We miss it sadly, in the world we have made. And Frank Innocence. Oh, Yerko, you dear man.”

  Was it just the apricot brandy, or had the room taken on a golden glow? The candles were burning down, and all the dishes except for plates of chocolates, nougat, and preserved fruits had been removed to the kitchen by me. These trifles were, Mamusia said, to seal up our stomachs, to signal to our digestions and guts, of whatever length, that there would be no more tonight.

  Mamusia had opened the delicate box of tortoise-shell, and was preparing the cards. The Tarot pack is a beautiful thing, and her cards were fine ones, more than a century old.

  “I cannot do the full pack,” she said. “Not after what I have eaten. It must be the Five Cards.”

  Quickly she divided the pack into five smaller packs, and these were the Coins, the Rods, the Cups, and the Swords, set at four corners; in the centre was the pack containing the twenty-two Higher Arcanes.

  “Now we must be very serious,” she said, and Darcourt suppressed his social smile. “The money, please.” He gave her a twenty-five-cent piece. Mamusia then covered her face for perhaps thirty seconds. “Now, you must shuffle and choose a card from each pack, leaving the middle cards for last, and you must lay them out as I have done here.”

  So Darcourt did that, and when he had made his choice what we saw on the table was a pentalogy, which Mamusia read as follows: “Your first card, which sets the tone for everything else, is the Queen of Rods, the dark, serious beautiful woman who is much in your thoughts. . . But next we have the Two of Cups and it comes in the place of the Contrariety; it means that in your love affair with the dark woman, one of you will make a difficulty. But don’t worry too much about that until we have looked at the rest. . . Ah, here is the Ace of Swords, so you will have a worrying time, much to rob you of your sleep. . . Then last of your enfolding four is the Five of Coins, and that means you will have a loss, but it will be far less than a greater gain that is coming your way. Now, all of these four are under the rule of the fifth card in the middle; it is your Great Trump, and it influences all that you have been told by the other cards. . . And yours is the Chariot; that is very good, because it means that everything else is under the protection of the Sun and whatever happens will be for your great gain, although you may not see it until after you have had some hard times.”

  “But you don’t see a mitre for me? A Bishop’s hat?”

  “I have told you; a great gain. What it will be is whatever would look like a great gain to you. If that is a Bishop’s hat, perhaps that is what it will be. But unless I did the full pack, which takes at least an hour, I couldn’t come any nearer. And it is a very good destiny I have found for you, Father Simon, in return for this quarter, which isn’t even silver any more but some kind of government shoddy. You think about what I have said. This beautiful dark woman—if you want her the Chariot is on your side, and it could lead you to her.”

  “But Madame Laoutaro, be frank with us; you attach meanings to these cards which I suppose are arbitrary. Whoever chooses
them has the same fortune as myself. I am sure what you do is much more than a feat of memory.”

  “Memory has not much to do with it. Of course the cards are of a certain meaning, but you must remember that there are seventy-eight of them, and how many combinations of five does that make? There are twenty-two of the Great Trumps alone, and they influence everything in the other four. Without the Chariot I would have given you a much less happy prospect.

  “But all this is under the cloak of time and fate. You are you—if you know who that is—and I am who I am, and what happens between us when I read the cards is not what will happen with anybody else. And this is the night after Christmas, and it is already nearly ten o’clock, and that makes a difference, too. Nothing is without meaning. Why am I reading your cards at this special time, when I have never seen you before? What brings us together? Chance? Don’t you believe it! There is no such thing. Nothing is without meaning; if it were, the world would dash to pieces.

  “You are not to be left out, dear Hollier. Let me shuffle the cards again, and then you shall make your choice, and we shall see what next year will bring.”

  Darcourt had been willing, but Hollier was eager and his face glowed. This was what he called the Wild Mind at work, and he was in the presence of a culture-fossil. He chose his cards; as Mamusia looked at them I saw her face darken, and I looked very carefully, because I know something of the cards and I wanted to see if she would tell the truth as it appeared, or sweeten it, or perhaps change it altogether. Because you have to be very careful at the Tarot, even if you are not reading the cards for money, and therefore in danger from the law. You must not be too explicit about the Death card, for instance; that ugly picture of the skeleton with a scythe reaping flowers, and human heads and limbs, should not be associated with the person who sits across the table from you, even though you see death plainly in his face; much better to say, “A death of someone known to you may influence the future,” and then perhaps the poor soul will jump at the thought of a legacy; or emancipation, if it is a woman whose marriage is hollow. But with Hollier she was honest, though she softened some of the blows.

  “This is very interesting, and you must not think too much of the outcome of what I am going to tell you until I am finished. This Four of Rods, now, means that something that is difficult for you now will be doubly difficult soon. . . And here, the Four of Cups—you are a great man for fours, Hollier—means that somebody, some third person close to you, is going to make great trouble for you and the person who is even nearer. . . Now here, where your fortune comes into the place of discussion, is the Three of Swords, and that means hatred, and you must be on your guard against it because whether somebody hates you or you hate somebody, it will make very bad trouble. . . But your fourth card is the Knave of Coins, and a Knave is a servant, somebody in a position to work for you, and who will send you a very important letter; how it will work with the hatred and the trouble I cannot tell. . . But here is your Great Trump, and that is the Moon, the changeable woman, and she tells of danger, so as you see the whole thing is very complicated and I dare not try to sort it out for you simply with these cards. So I shall ask you to choose one more card from Major Trumps, and we must all very earnestly desire that it will throw some light on what you have chosen here.”

  Was Hollier looking rather white? I know I was. I had expected Mamusia to fake his fortune, which I had seen was a dark one, but she must have feared the cards too much to do that. If you cheat the cards, the cards will cheat you, and many a good fortune-teller has become a charlatan and a cheat in that way, and some have even become drunkards or killed themselves when they knew the cards had turned against them.

  Hollier chose a card, and rather slowly laid it down. It was the Wheel of Fortune. Mamusia was delighted.

  “Aha, now we know! You have put it in front of me upside down, Hollier, so we see all the creatures turning on the wheel, and the Devil King is at the bottom and the top of the wheel is empty! So all your hard fortune will turn to good in the end, and you will triumph, though not without some severe losses. So be brave! Keep your courage and all will be well!”

  “Thanks to the Bebby Jesus!” said Yerko. “I was sweating from fear. Professor, have a drink!”

  More apricot-brandy; by now I seemed to have lost my crown entirely and was living from my root. I suppose I was rather drunk, but so was everybody else, and it was a good drunkenness. To work with the cards, Mamusia had kicked off her shoes, and I had done so too; barefoot Gypsy women. Quite how things developed next I don’t properly know, but Mamusia had her violin, and was playing Gypsy music, and I was lost in the heavily emotional contradictions between the lassu, so melancholy and indeed lachrymose, and the friska, which is the wild merriment of the Gypsies, but in the true, somewhat mad, and undoubtedly archaic style, and not in the sugary mode of such gadje confectioneries as “Die Czardasfürstin”. As Mamusia played a friska it was not the light of the campfire and the flashing teeth and swirling skirts of musical-comedy Gypsies that was evoked, but something old and enduring, something that banished the University and the Ph.D. to a stuffy indoors, something of a time when people lived out of doors more than indoors, and took the calls of friends for auguries, and felt God about and all around them. This was Frank Innocence and Mirth.

  Yerko fetched his cimbalom, which he had made himself; it hung from his neck by a cord, like a large tray, and he hammered so fast at the resounding strings that his sticks flashed like the whisk of a cook who is beating cream. At four o’clock in the afternoon, when this party was still a dark shadow on my future, I would have cringed from this music; now, when it was after eleven, I thrilled to it, and wished I had the courage to spring up and even in that crowded room to dance, slap a tambourine, and give myself to the moment.

  The room could not contain us. “Let’s serenade the house!” Mamusia cried above the music, and that is what we did, parading up the stairs, singing, now. What we sang was one of the great Magyar songs, ‘Magasan repül a daru’, which is not a Christmas song, but a song of triumph and love. I took my two professors, one on each arm, and sang words for three, because Darcourt sang the tune in a very good voice, but only with la-la-la, whereas Hollier, who seemed to have lots of spirit but no ear, roared in a monotone, and yah-yah-yah was his syllable. When we came to

  Akkor leszek kedves rózsám atied,

  I kissed them both, because the occasion seemed to call for it. It occurred to me that in spite of what had happened between us, I had never kissed Hollier, nor had he kissed me, till that moment. But it was Darcourt who responded with passion, and his mouth was soft and sweet, whereas Hollier kissed me so hard he almost broke my teeth.

  What did the house make of it? The poodles barked furiously. Mrs. Faiko remained invisible, but turned up the volume of her TV. Miss Gretser appeared in her nightdress, supported by Mrs. Schreyvogl, and they nodded and smiled appreciatively, and so did Mrs. Nowaczynski, who had been in the bathroom and made an appearance without teeth or wig that embarrassed her more than it did us. On the third floor Mr. Kostich looked out on the landing in his pyjamas, and smiled and said, “Great! Very fine Madam,” but Mr. Home burst out of his door in a fury, shouting, “Jesus, isn’t anybody supposed to get any sleep around here?”

  Mamusia stopped playing, and gestured with her bow towards Mr. Home, who slept in his pyjama jacket only, so that his shrivelled and unpleasing privy parts were offered to our view. “Mr. Home,” she said, grandly; “Mr. Home is a male nurse.”

  As if a button had been touched, Mr. Home screamed, “Well I sure as hell ain’t a female nurse! Now stop that fucking row, willya, or I’ll beat the bejesus outa you all!”

  Yerko approached Mr. Home very softly. “You not talk like that to my sister. You not talk dirty to my niece, who is a virgin. You not make ugly when we sing for Bebby Jesus. You shut up.”

  Mr. Home did not shut up. He shouted, “You’re drunk, the whole bunch of you! Maybe it’s Christmas for you, but it’s a
work day for me.”

  Yerko advanced upon Mr. Home, and nicked him sharply on the tip of his penis with one of the long, supple hammers of his cimbalom. Mr. Home danced and screamed, and I forgot to maintain my virginal character and laughed loud and long as we retreated down the stairs, where the poodles were still barking. It came to me that Rabelais would have enjoyed this.

  Mamusia remembered that she was appearing to my friends as a great lady. In a voice pitched to reach the ear of Mr. Home she explained, “You must pay no attention. He is a man of low birth and I have him here out of pity.”

  Mr. Home’s rage could find no words, but he shouted inarticulately until we were back in Mamusia’s apartment.

  “That song we were singing,” said Darcourt; “the tune is familiar. Surely it comes in one of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies?”

  “Our music is much admired,” said Mamusia. “People steal it, which shows its value. This Liszt, this great musician, he steals from us all the time.”

  “Mamusia, Liszt is long dead,” I said, because the University girl was not wholly overcome in me and I did not want her to appear ignorant to Hollier.

  Mamusia was not one to admit error. “The truly great are never dead,” she said, and Hollier shouted, “Magnificently said, Madame!”

  “Coffee! You have not yet had coffee,” she said. “Yerko, give the gentlemen cigars, while Maria and I prepare coffee.”

  When we returned to the living-room Hollier was looking on, as Darcourt was handling one of the Kings from the crèche; Yerko was explaining some detail of his work of ornamentation.

  “Here it is! True Kalderash coffee, black as revenge, strong as death, sweet as love! Maria, give this to Professor Hollier.”

  I took the cup, and handed it instead to Darcourt, because he was nearer. I thought I heard Mamusia draw her breath rather sharply, but I paid no heed to it. I was having a little trouble not to weave and stagger. Apricot brandy, in quantity, is terrible stuff.