Silver

by Graham Masterton

  Edward lay on his back for most of the night, sleeping stertorously. He had after all drunk nearly a whole bottle of whiskey, and he had complained to Henry often enough that sleeping indoors always made him play ‘old Shuteye’s harmonica’. It was the feathers in the pillows, he said, and all that dust, and the farts getting trapped beneath the blankets. Henry slept badly; and not only because of the snoring. At about five o’clock, just as the first light of morning began to break, he pulled on his britches and went out on to the landing, to look for the bathroom.

  He went along the corridor, rubbing his face with his hands, and yawning. When he reached the stairs, however, he stopped in astonishment; and stared. A woman was standing on one foot on the newel-post at the top of the stairs, her arms outspread, balancing. She wore a tight white bodice, and a white ballet skirt, and white wool stockings, and her face was white, with dark hair that was drawn tightly back from her forehead. Her eyes were closed as if she were asleep; and her pretty, delicate features were in complete composure. Henry didn’t quite know what to do; whether he ought to say anything to her or not. It seemed unlikely, but supposing she was asleep, and somnambulating? If he woke her up, she would probably fall straight down the stairwell and break her back. On the other hand, it didn’t seem very wise to leave her there. He approached her slowly, and gazed up at her. She looked quite amazing, balancing there; as if she were a figure sculptured out of the finest white bisque; fragile, unearthly and infinitely calm.

  He stepped closer, as quietly as he could, and raised his hands, in case he needed to catch her. When he took another step, however, she said, in a clear, French-accented voice, ‘I’m not going to fall, you know. I’m just practising. I always prefer to practise with my eyes closed. It is an aid to concentration.’

  Henry lowered his hands, feeling rather awkward and silly. The woman opened her eyes and stared at him, and then smiled. She had very dark, slanted eyes, almost Oriental, with sleepy-looking lids. She said, ‘It was very kind of you, all the same, to think of rescuing me. The West is not exactly a hotbed of gallantry. Most of the men I have come across in the West would have tried to squint up my tu-tu first, and then thought of saving me second.’

  Henry held out his hand, and the woman took it, and jumped lightly down from the newel-post. She seemed to weigh scarcely anything; like a bird, or a child. ‘I should introduce myself,’ she said. ‘I am Mademoiselle Carolista, from the Parisian Travelling Entertainment Show. We arrived only yesterday morning, from Pueblo. Tomorrow, we are putting on a great performance in the street, fire-eating, dancing, trained dogs.’

  ‘And balancing on banisters?’ asked Henry, smiling.

  Mademoiselle Carolista laughed. ‘Tomorrow, it will be more exciting than banisters. Tomorrow, I will walk across Larimer Street from one side to the other, on a high-wire, twenty feet in the air. I will not only walk, but I will dance. I call it my Ballet of the Sky.’

  ‘Well, I shall make a point of coming to see it,’ said Henry. ‘By the way, my name’s Henry Roberts. I’ve only just arrived here, too, from the east.’

  ‘I thought you were too civilized to be a Westerner,’ she said. ‘What brings you here? Are you selling medicine, or looking for gold?’

  ‘I’m halfway to California, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Ah, California! It can be very beautiful in California. Once, I fell in love there, in a town called Sonoma. What a man he was! Tall, handsome, and such a bastard. Are you a bastard?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Well, what a pity. I always fall in love with bastards; and I think I could fall in love with you.’

  Henry couldn’t help grinning. Mademoiselle Carolista was so direct, yet so theatrical; and so feminine too. She was probably two or three years older than him, if he was any judge of a woman’s age; but she was so fit and at the same time so self-possessed that it was hard to tell exactly. Her body was that of an 18-year-old; her mind at least 28. He had never met anyone quite like her. She lifted one leg and touched with the tip of her toe the dado rail around the landing, a graceful and elegant barre exercise; and then returned to balletic feet-apart posture and smiled at Henry with a mixture of superiority and impishness.

  ‘Could you do that?’ she asked him.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not sure that there’s much need for it, not in my trade.’

  ‘What do you do? Apart from travel, and court young ladies on hotel landings?’ She was teasing him again.

  ‘Well, I cut inscriptions on gravestones.’

  ‘Really?’ Mademoiselle Carolista exclaimed. ‘But how dreadful! How morbid! How can you bear it?’

  ‘Chiselling a gravestone is just the same as chiselling any other kind of stone. I don’t often get to see the deceased, except by special invitation.’

  ‘Er!’ Mademoiselle Carolista shuddered with melodramatic revulsion. ‘I cannot bear to think of death. Do you know some-thing, ever since I was six years old, I wanted to be immortal. I used to squeeze my eyes shut and pray to God: Oh Lord, make me live for ever and ever, or at least until I am two hundred and fifty.’

  ‘Why two hundred and fifty?’ asked Henry. ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘Of course! Why pray for anything without a particular reason? If I were to live to two hundred and fifty, I would be able to see the beginning of the twenty-first century, to the very day, and then expire.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s reason enough,’ said Henry. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘I think I would,’ said Mademoiselle Carolista. Then, frowning a little, she added, ‘You should call me Nina. That is my name. Nina Zwolenkiewicz. But, of course, Carolista is easier to pronounce. The children in my village always called me Zwonky. But, I was still the prettiest of all of them!’

  They went downstairs to Mrs Cordley’s kitchen. It was burnished, and immaculately clean, with rows of copper pans shining in the morning light; and a huge black-leaded range, with steel embellishments. Nina opened every cupboard until she found the coffee, and then pumped up water to fill the kettle, while Henry sat on the edge of the table and watched her.

  ‘How long have you been walking the high-wire?’ he asked her.

  ‘All my life. My mother taught me. She was a slack-rope dancer, beautiful, one of the best in Poland. One of the best in the world. I loved her, you know. She always smelled of flowers. You know the sweet-pea? That’s what she smelled like, always. We emigrated to France when I was nine; and that’s why I joined the Parisian Travelling Entertainment Show. My mother died, though, when I was fifteen. Tuberculosis. On her grave, it said, “Ne t’attends qu’a toi seul”—and that means, never depend on anybody except yourself. That was what she always used to say to me, even when I was tiny.’

  Nina spooned coffee into the copper jug, and then sat down at the kitchen table. ‘An epitaph is such a final thing. Surely the dead grow wiser, even as the living do, and feel like changing their minds? One must learn such a lot in Heaven.’

  Henry said, ‘The strangest epitaph I was ever asked to carve on a tombstone was, “Love and Herbs”!’

  ‘“Love and Herbs”?’ asked Nina.

  ‘It comes from the Bible. Something like, it’s better to eat nothing but herbs, as long as you’ve got love; than to have a whole ox, and hatred.’

  ‘Oh, I like that,’ said Nina. ‘Love, and herbs. I like that.’

  The kettle began to boil, and Nina made coffee. There was a calico blind drawn down over the kitchen window, and as the sun came up, Nina was silhouetted against it, her long elegant neck, her ballerina profile, her fingers poised just so, under her clear-cut chin. Henry sat with one elbow on the table watching her; and he found her so friendly, such a comfortable companion, that he felt he could have sat there all day.

  ‘What would you like on your own tombstone?’ asked Nina.

  ‘Just my name,’ replied Henry, still watching her.

  Nina said, ‘You didn’t think me too forward? I didn’t up
set you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When I said that I could fall in love with you. I say that to all sorts of men. I’m only making a joke. You know, just to be friendly.’

  ‘Do any of them ever take it seriously?’

  She looked at him with those dark slanted eyes of hers. ‘Some of them do, of course.’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘It’s up to you. Think what you want. Life is only what you make of it, isn’t it? And it’s the same with love.’

  The clock beside the kitchen dresser struck six. Henry suddenly felt tired, as if he had been travelling without any sleep for years and years. ‘What time is that show of yours?’ he asked Nina.

  ‘Three o’clock. But I don’t get up on to the wire until four. I am the climax.’

  Henry sipped his coffee. It was scalding hot, impossible to drink straight away. Neither of them said anything, but after a while Nina reached out her hand across the kitchen table and laid it on top of his. They looked into each other’s eyes; each of them searching for something; but neither of them knowing exactly what it was. What brings two people halfway across a continent to sit at a table together? Accident, or divine design? When Henry thought of the people that he must have failed to meet; those would-be wives who had only just turned a street corner ahead of him; those potential friends who had hesitated at street corners, and never crossed over to bump into him; it made him realize that the world was teeming with unrealized possibilities, from the spermatozoa which failed to fertilize an egg to the lovers who never quite managed to catch the same ferry. He had believed when he had asked Doris to marry him that they had been meant for each other; and now she was dead he felt as if there was nobody else, not at the right time, not at the right place. Except, perhaps, for Nina. The thought of it was unexpected enough for him to surprise himself. But why else had he stepped out of his boarding-house room at five in the morning, and found the woman called Zwonky balancing on the banisters? Their meeting had all the irrational ingredients of authentic destiny: an accident that, in retrospect, would seem unavoidable, inescapable, an act of fate. (Relieved lovers clasping each other’s hands and saying, ‘My God; imagine what life would have been like if we hadn’t met.’)

  Henry said, ‘Is it dangerous? The wire, I mean?’

  Nina nodded. ‘The better you are, the more dangerous it is. Because, of course, you are always risking more.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t like it in the way that perhaps somebody would like opera, or riding a beautiful horse, or eating oysters, or making love. It is a feeling more personal than that. It is quite impossible to describe, unless you have tried walking on the wire yourself. But it is very uplifting, very strange, as if you have managed at last to defy the laws of nature.’

  ‘Could you teach me to do it?’

  She stroked his hand carefully, tracing the whorls of his knuckles around and around; but he kept his eyes fixed on hers.

  ‘It would depend on how much you really wanted to.’

  ‘And if I were to say that I did want to, very much?’

  Nina shrugged. Then the door opened, and Mrs Cordley came in, tying up her apron, and bustled around putting up the blind, and bringing down the pans she would want for cooking breakfast, and singing, and smiling.

  ‘Glad you made yourself at home, Mam’selle Carolista. You too, Mr Roberts. Can’t stand a guest who doesn’t make himself at home. Too timid to ask for extra pillows, or hides his socks because he can’t pluck up the courage to tell me how much they need washing. That’s why I keep a dog in this place, to hunt down the dirty underwear, once the guests have gone out for the day. Otherwise, this whole building would get up on its foundations and walk, I swear it, from sheer aroma.’

  Henry asked, ‘Anywhere I can get some darning done? Some of my socks have gone through.’

  ‘Oh, I can fix those for you easy. Just leave ’em down on the end of your bed, Petulia will pick them up for you; and you’ll have ’em back by tomorrow, darned invisible. By the way, is Edward still snoozing?’

  ‘Last time I saw him. Do you want me to wake him up?’

  ‘No, no. I’ll do that, just as soon as I’ve cooked up some breakfast. Now, what would you care for? Eggs, bacon, and meatballs? Omelette, with green peppers?’

  Edward spent most of the morning renewing old acquaintances, and taking Henry from one saloon to the other. Denver had boomed since he had last been here, and it seemed that almost everyone they met was eager and willing to stand them a drink. The last time Edward had been here, early in 1859, Denver had been two towns, Denver and Auraria, standing on opposite sides of Cherry Creek; but on April 3 they had merged, and taken the combined name of Denver. Now there were 29 shops, 15 hotels, 23 saloons, two schools, two theatres, and a newspaper; not to mention a Masonic Lodge and a Ladies’ Union; and life had become far more fashionable and decorous.

  ‘You won’t find anything down East as sumptuous and unexceptionable as what you find here,’ one banker remarked to Henry, thrusting his thumbs into his hound’s-tooth business waistcoat. ‘What you have here is class, with a capital K.’

  Denver’s chief source of prosperity was gold; not only from Gregory Gulch, where it had first been found, but from outlying mining communities in the Rocky Mountains. After the first placer deposits of free gold had given out, and the rush of amateur miners had returned despondent to the East, experienced hard-rock miners had started to hack out a fortune in gold-bearing quartz; and production had been further increased by the arrival late last year of a steam-powered stamp-mill, with four 400-lb iron hammers, which could crush the quartz fine enough for the gold to be extracted from it with chemicals. Two more stamp-mills had been ordered for delivery by Christmas, but Denver was already wealthy enough to produce its own gold coinage.

  Henry said to one well-whiskered miner, ‘How about California Gulch? Have you heard anything of California Gulch? Somebody told me there might be rich deposits up there, if you cared to look.’

  The miner winked at Henry with eyes like a weasel. ‘You’re right, my friend, there might be; and there is. It was Abe Lee what found the gold there first; good old Abe Lee, with the smelliest long johns ever, bar none. I used to pan for gold with Abe Lee back in ’56, or was it ’55, but whichever it was I couldn’t stand nearer than seventy-five feet, or forty, with the wind in the wrong direction. Anyhow, he panned good dust up there, late last spring, and now you wouldn’t recognize the place. But you’re way too late, if you’re thinking of trying to stake a claim now. I’d say that every square inch of California Gulch is taken solid. They’ve got shacks standing on top of shacks.’

  Henry glanced at Edward McLowery and raised his eyebrows. It sounded as if Alby Monihan’s deeds might not have been as spurious as he had first supposed. In fact, they might be worth a fortune. Even if the Little Pittsburgh mine had been jumped in the past year or so, by somebody else, which it probably had, Henry still held the official deeds, and could immediately evict them. It was quite possible that he was rich. It was quite possible that he was already a millionaire.

  He stepped out on to the broadwalk. He had shaken hands with too many of Edward’s old friends that morning, and drunk too many tots of whiskey. He didn’t want to say anything foolish, or antagonistic; but it seemed to him that if the Little Pittsburgh mine was already a winner, giving the deeds to Edward was a ridiculous overpayment for nothing more than a few weeks’ companionship on a well-worn trail. Of course, Henry wanted to go on to California, but not yet; especially when he had only just met a girl like Zwonky; and even more especially if he was rich. He could pay just about anybody to take him to California, if he was rich, couldn’t he; and go whenever he wanted? He could pay six men to carry him on their shoulders to California.

  ‘Or six naked women,’ he remarked, out loud.

  ‘Pardon?’ asked Edward, as he came out of the saloon, and closed the door behind him.

  �
�I was thinking, that’s all.’

  ‘You be careful, then,’ cautioned Edward. ‘The way this town’s going, all prim and correct, saying things like that could end you up in gaol.’

  ‘When are we going to take a look at that mine?’ he asked Edward. ‘I thought tomorrow, if we ride out early, and take a tent.’

  ‘Suits me,’ said Edward. ‘Look—there’s Belle McGuiness. I haven’t introduced you to Belle McGuiness. Belle runs the bestest H.H. in Denver, the Mountain Dew Hotel.’

  ‘H.H.?’ asked Henry.

  ‘Can’t you spell?’ said Edward, impatiently.

  It was only as he bent forward to kiss the purple perfumed glove of the lady with the feathered hat that it dawned on Henry that ‘H.H.’ stood for ‘Hore House’. He decided that he could use a strong cup of black coffee.

  That afternoon, Larimer Street was filled by two o’clock with loafers, shoppers, gawpers, and children playing hookey from school. Henry and Edward had already secured themselves a grandstand seat on the balcony of the Cherry Creek Guest House, in two wooden sun-chairs, with a bottle of Taos Lightning and a large tin of corn crackers. The motley waggons of the Parisian Travelling Entertainment Show had been drawn up across the street, and already three or four small spotted dogs were leaping and jumping for coloured balls, while a semicircle of bentwood chairs was set out for the orchestra.

  What was attracting the greatest excitement of all, however, was the shining wire which had been attached to the frontage of the W.H. Armitage Dry Goods store, and stretched diagonally across the street to the chimney of the Pike’s Peak Saloon, twenty feet above the hard, sun-crazed dirt. Everyone in town knew what the wire was for, because they had seen the coloured posters showing the beautiful ballerina dancing on tippytoe halfway across Niagara Falls, and those that could read had read again and again the legend ‘Mademoiselle Carolista, Tightrope Artiste Extraordinaire! Direct From Paris, France! Defies Death! Dances The Entire French Ballet Les Petits Riens (Little Nothings)! High Above The Ground! Without a Safety Net!’