The Bastards' Paradise

by Kathe Koja

  Thus she does not speak to him of Rupert, Rupert who had found no way to reach once more his old vantage point upon the rooftop, that door secured to immobility by a long row of tenpenny nails; and so was found by Decca in the quiet hallway, the house asleep around them, Decca who past all tears shed and unshed approached to deliver a little pouch of clean-bleached muslin, the antique and opulent lover’s eye wrapped inside and Take this, quietly, and sell it—it’s worth a great deal. And let the money buy you some ease.

  Is that what yours buys? though not unkindly, looking down into her face as she looks up into his: and if in that face so ferociously composed lives any vestige of the silent child at the orphanage windows, the stricken girl in the alley, dirty skirts and gripping hands, the partner at the table with her account book and scratching nib, the woman in the shawl, who offered one formal kiss then watched as he guarded wounded Istvan and the rest from the broken town, that vestige is fully overlaid by what he sees now—in this prim hallway once so dismal with rot and cold, and she as cold in his arms to say Mine, and I’ll not leave it—this life she has made for herself, the supremely orderly building, the cadre of whores and cowed servants, even the child is entirely her own! So there is no more need to wonder or worry for the prospects or safety or life of the widow Mattison, Decca, Agatha, nor ever to visit this place again; Istvan shall be pleased by that, “Uncle Reynard,” yes, and the child looking at him just as her mother used to, that hungry little gaze, Istvan who still will not forgive…. Don’t worry for us. We’re fine.

  You may not always be, as one hand closes his around the pouch, while the other reaches to stroke his shirtsleeve, fix his cuff: just that: it is the last. Whatever love still lingers, whatever impossible dream of a life unlived—the two of them at that table, he sound and prosperous in a finely tailored suit, she to pour the tea and discuss the business, share the burdens, offer the love—she will neither admit nor acknowledge, will place without further handling into the casket of her heart, like an old chain of silver paper laid away in a jewelry box. And when her daughter asks later, as she will, whatever happened to those uncles, that jongleur and strongman, where they went and where they bide, she will say with truth that she does not know; she has reached at last the end of that tale.

  But believing that its end lay in that hallway and at that table, in the midnight quiet and the sickish smell of molasses, the white stacked against black on the game board, she is incorrect: a fact shortly made manifest by Istvan and this new puppet, this angular Mr. Loup with his hollow eye and dangling arm, who seems instantly to have acclimated to the atmosphere, who shrugs as Istvan does to Rupert’s packing of the traps—

  What, are you so ready to sleep out in the rain again? And leave behind your dear old home?

  You and she—there’s no point in staying longer, is there. Unless you want to find the father of her child. Who do you think it could be? Mr. Loup shrugs again. And this was never my home.

  It was ours for a while—this very bed, if she hasn’t changed out the mattress, yeah? Let’s hope she changed the linen…. My knife works better where it’s dry, cross-legged on that bed, carving as swiftly as if their lives depended on it, and with a boy’s fine recklessness, as if his knife cannot make a mistake. And this fellow’s primed, Mouse, he won’t take no for an answer. There must be a bit of play.

  Already an audience is present, there in the room that has somehow and overnight become the new secret center of the brothel, as if something dormant and alluring has sprung once more to life: the curious whores in their decorous lace and old-fashioned leg-of-mutton gowns, a sorority seemingly more suited to pouring tea than taking down trousers, and the lone young man among them, dark hair, dark eyes, a Spaniard perhaps in his high collar and spandy new vest, a vest he gladly trades for a pair of gleaming cufflinks—Not real gold, of course, but your gentlemen won’t know that—the young man affixing them admiringly to his shirt cuffs, as Istvan slips on that vest of black brocade, winking as he does so to one of the hallway watchers—What’s your name, darling? Don’t tell me it’s Pearl!—while pop-eyed Mary, who calls herself Marie, murmurs to another of the girls He’s a regular stunner, that one! loud enough, she hopes, to be overheard by the man on the bed.

  Even Miss Prudence has found a way into that room, Pru excited and defiant to evade her mother’s edict, even more excited to watch the puppet’s final making, to help costume him in his pointed boots, sewn strips of old black serge, a smooth spiral of new black silk—

  May I hold him, Uncle Reynard?

  No, dear. But you may tie the ribbon, so.

  Shall he wear this, too? It’s called opal, from Mamma’s jewelry box—look! eager to offer the purloined brooch, thrust pin-out and with a point so sharp that Uncle Reynard gives a sudden curse, shakes his hand in pain then stanches it upon the sheet, leaving there a blot as bright as the counterfeit ruby: as if this birth, like every birth, requires a tithe of blood.

  As the sun sets, its own red smear shielded by the clouds, by the bank and the lecture hall and the mercantile’s Grecian façade, the Rose and Poppy’s front-of-the-house man, a strapping blond buck not overly encumbered by brains, is set to watch for the first of the gentlemen—it is Gentlemen’s Wednesday, half price for certain popular services and thus a weekly favorite in town; banker Wooster and his colleagues, including the deputy mayor, will as ever be in full attendance—as Decca finally girds herself to climb up to that room, to stand arms-folded in the doorway, confronting her brother fox to fox and You have what you came for, she says without preamble, so you ought be on your way. I’ll gladly pay for the train tickets, anywhere you wish to go—

  A very generous offer, he says, or is it Mr. Loup who answers? But we’ll leave when we’re ready, as we did before.

  I see. You think to play your puppets here. To spoil all I’ve built, as you did before—

  “Spoil”? You still owe me a bit of sport, Missus, among other things…. Mouse told me you came to him, exposing like a conjuror the lover’s eye from beneath the pillow, the puppet on his lap to stare at her with one eye as dry as a hard-carved nutshell, becoming in that stare every puppet he has ever made, every avatar and lieutenant, accomplice all the way back to Marco, and this one perhaps the most feral of all, that gaze as meaningful as the blue bejeweled in his reddened palm as Spare your care, tossing down the ornament. We don’t need such.

  He needs someone to care for him. He’s ailing.

  He is not. He only needs rest, and rest is what he’ll have, just as soon as—

  Rest how? Sleeping in a ditch, or in some filthy barn? Or a coffin! If he had stayed here—

  What, in this mausoleum? Oh, don’t dare to fucking puddle up, Ag, you never wept before to think us parted—

  You parted from me a hundred times without one tear, her head turned as if without volition to the window, his own gaze flickering then, as if he looks through some other portal, some moment’s older lens. Now go. I want you out of my house, away from my daughter—

  Miss Prudence likes me.

  Go!

  —as Mr. Loup chuckles, one hand to his mouth, Istvan poker-faced above, the doubled effect as fey and menacing as their entrance into the hush and half-dark of the Theatre Guillame, Istvan in the whore’s brocade vest and tailor’s stolen top hat, Mr. Loup sans brooch whistling a nasal “Thumb-Your-Nose” in the direction of the whores peeping from the wings where Pru sits, too, her fingers laced with French silk ribbons, red and pink and slippery blue, while Rupert stands silent at the bar, the trunk and traps beside him, his face unreadable, nursing a glass of beer—

  —as in the hazy blaze of the candelabra, on a humble stool taken from the kitchen, Istvan takes his seat with Mr. Loup, one arm beating time, to look out into that darkness, all the darkness past the candles and the memories and the years, and sing a different song, a croon almost, eerie beyond measure yet beautiful as bones are beautiful, as the listening whores clutch themselves and Pru shivers and stares and Dec
ca halts in her martial advance up the aisle, held by the tune already old when they were all three young together, the wild street boys and the fierce little girl who loved them, stole for them, lied to them, lost them—Mr. Loup singing in farewell and, is it? a kind of absolution, “Lady Angela Takes the Air,” that lady named this time, one last time, as Agatha.

  And when he has finished, when the last cracked treble note has faded entirely into the darkness, Istvan rises, to doff his hat and bow to the still-empty house, kiss his fist to watching Rupert, whose gaze behind his spectacles is very bright; and nod once to his sister, who stands still in the shadowed aisle, arms crossed before her breast while her daughter applauds with all her might, the whores applauding too, the puppet offering one last salute to all before he is whisked beneath the coat —

  —so that when the brothel doors are opened and the gentlemen enter, past their rigidly smiling hostess, all they find are the whores in a rare and excitable humor, and nothing on the stage beyond the still-burning candelabra: while outside, on the corner opposite, a driver loads an old leather trunk into his cab, Istvan and Rupert already waiting inside, the rising wind like a swazzle-voice calling to them down the street. Had they chosen to look back, which they did not, their last sight of the Rose and Poppy would have been its well-lit and busy doorway, more cabs and gentlemen arriving for Gentleman’s Wednesday, and Pru forlorn in the parlor window, lace drapes dragged hastily to one side, her small hands waving and fluttering like the wings of a captive bird.

  A letter, MLLE TILDE BOK to MME LUCY PIMM

  To Mme Lucy,

  I hope this finds yr husband much recovered and you very well.

  I write to give you the knowledge that they are back now, you knowing of the ones I mean. One was like to lose his hand, the other has got the catarrh. How they come to be here they do not say, one says The road is long and yokels don’t tip but when I asked did he wager up all their money he said There’s a lady you should meet, Missus Decca of the iron fist, then laughed. Do you know who is Missus Decca? There was another lady, a great Lady Isabella, do you know her also? I have asked the cards but I can not read it out yet.

  I will be very glad to read the cards for you, when you visit. Will you come? Before the new year would be best, the new year is a bad time to travel, all yr luck can travel away from you then.

  Many thanks for the Pimm’s Palace tho’ Ru does not play with it. He used to like to ride on the Pégase, but the carousel is closed. There was to be a fireworks for St Michael’s Day, but the bishop spoke so long it rained and put out all the bonfires, and then there was fighting. I have a boy costume that I wear in the Park now, it is like being on the stage, also it is much safer to go about so.

  I close with many good wishes and regards, and hoping you will visit us before the new year, you have traveled in war before you say, do not wait too long.

  Yrs most faithfully,

  Mlle Tilde

  The cards, those old waxed squares of colored paper like leaves unbound from a book, sit in a careful stack upon the desk, two drawn and set sideways atop, their faces not yet consulted. Beside them sit the chocolate tin, the newspaper cuttings and letters (though none have arrived, recently, from Mme Lucy; why is that?), and the frail glass thimble with its painted roses; Sir has used this desk once, and will no doubt wish to do so again: like the room, it must be made ready.

  Brisk in boy’s trousers and long apron, hair twisted into a heavy coil, Tilde adds the precious carte-de-visite and Ru’s photograph to the pile. She has already moved Ru’s things to the second floor, across from the hayrick and Frédéric; Frédéric is in there now, on the bed with a letter, so engrossed he barely glanced up as she passed by…. Sweeping vigorously from the corners to the windows, thick purple drapes hooked back, what sun there is falls on the dreary demonstration below, the Widows’ Regiment pleading, with their sad pennywhistles and pictures of the dead, for the return of peace to the streets. Yesterday they were marching on Crescent Bridge when she tried to take Ru for some air, pressing their creased-up pictures into the stones with candle wax, so thick that Ru was wedged between a pair of weeping Widows and a ragged soldier with one arm, and could barely throw his crumbs to the swans—

  Think of what you want most, Baba, and throw the bread—see there, she took it, that pretty one! Now you will have your wish!

  Be damned to wishes, the soldier’s gloom. This whole city is just raven’s bait now—Ow! that soldier corrected to silence by her sharp-jabbing elbow: Don’t speak so to a child, you turd!

  And he was a liar anyway, that soldier, for her own wish is very soon to be granted, as soon as Sir and M. Stefan, or Istvan—so called by that picture-maker, Mr. Ridley as persistent as a buzzing fly, Is he here, M. Marcus, or Marek, oh the name doesn’t matter, he can call himself the Pope if he likes!—will come to roost; it may even be today. She and Sir have had another visit together, another talk: How can you stop in a place like this, look, the rain comes right in through the window! And it stinks in here, the musty mushroom air of rotten wood, merde spattered half down the stairway, to clean it up one would have to burn it down. She made sure he ate the honey and brown bread she carried, as she mended his threadbare cuffs, would have buffed his boots until he took her by the hands and You mustn’t do so, you’re not a servant anymore. You’re Mrs. St. Vitus, his smile inviting her own, her own wry little joke to note that See? Some boys do like me better in a vest.

  This time when she left he walked her farther, past the loiterers on the corners, past the canals, nearly all the way back to the square, the tall man in the greatcoat and the youth in the lumpy cap keeping an eye for constables or former friends, as they tracked through the Park all mud and sodden leaves, huddled beggars and lean pigeons, drunken Savvys throwing stones at the Libbys’ painted placards—TRUE PATRIOTS MEET HERE!—Sir steering her safely past the loudest of them, pausing when a stone struck close by: Why an’t that boy in uniform, or you neither, grandfather! We’re in a hole, we need all the men we can get! And stupid girls there with them too, jeering even louder, girls the left-hand sisters of the departed Virgos, Frédéric calls them Viragos so Put this in your hole, Tilde advised, hurling back the stone with fine accuracy, close but not close enough to start them running, those girls with their ugly dresses a la Liberté, and sharpened nail files stuck in their boots…. She picks up the little thimble, now, with its delicate yellow roses, to wonder with familiar pain if Tanti is caught up with girls like those, little Tanti très jolie and lost to the streets, lost forever by their mother—there are letters from her in that pile, Annabell who was once Annotchka; it was Frédéric, sympathetic, diligent, who finally tracked her down.

  At first Annabell praised the Virgin that her dear Mathilde was hale and whole, she sent pages covered with crosses, kisses, a letter Tilde read again and again, heart pounding; now the thought of those pages scalds her, that she had believed for a single moment a single word. Annabell wrote that she had been deserted by her former lover (that much was true), and that to support herself she ran a sort of workshop, a decoration school, les petites mains where the girls learned lacework and beading and china painting, the thimble enclosed to show their handiwork, and would her dear Mathilde not wish to come and work beside her mother and those busy girls? She might not work for very long, for there were always many gentlemen about to buy the gloves and handkerchiefs and embroidered boudoir pillows, and a clever girl, which Mathilde had always been, and a pretty girl—I know you must be beautiful, you are my daughter after all—could find a well-off husband quick as anything! Or a protector, even better than a husband!

  But once she understood her elder daughter’s situation—the city building, the presence of Frédéric (though not of Ru; somehow Tilde had not written of Ru, some maternal impulse of protective silence)—she advanced other plans, larger plans, for her school needed so many things, so many of the pupils came to her so very poor, those poor girls! And surely Mathilde would want to help her mothe
r, as a good daughter should? Tilde put this letter beside the first, fitting one to the other like a picture-puzzle until Frédéric, red-faced, brought her the puzzle’s final piece: a page from a Lyon newspaper, a backstreet madam arrested for brawling, Mme Pomme, Mrs. Apple with the face of Annabell, whose house of loose morals was a scandal in the town.

  The last letter to arrive was a long one, half a snarl and half a sob: Could Mathilde be so cruel as to desert her own mother, at a time of such piteous need? Had she, the mother, not rescued her from that drunken fool of a father, taken her to Paris, tried her best to feed and clothe her and, yes, Tanti too, is it her fault that the man who swore to do the feeding and the clothing turned out not to like little Tanti after all, to send her and then her mother packing, the swine? How can she know where Tanti is now, or help her if she did—just another girl to feed and clothe, and if Mathilde had any love or Christian charity in her heart she would send for her poor afflicted mother, let her live in that fine building beside the fine husband, and together they could look for Tanti, perhaps, or perhaps open another school, or another sort of business, there must be all sorts of businesses in that city! If Mathilde was not entirely heartless, she would at once send on a train ticket, or at least some money to pay the jailer’s bill!

  That letter Tilde read twice, then with shaking hands boxed up the old unworn memento, flat-faced cameo on blue tulle faded white, along with a reply of such ferocity that Mme Pomme, in her shuttered one-room with the gin bottles lined on the windowsill, did not even read it through to the end before throwing it onto the grate, that letter explaining in a few short sentences the correct way for a mother to treat her child, and promising that If ever I find Tanti I will tell her you are dead. And if you write to me again you will wish you were, signing it “Mme St. Vitus” above a cold black blot, spitting on the curb after it was safely posted, and making the sign against the evil eye; there will come a judgment on her, Annabell, the judgment of Paris, but that is not for Tilde to enact. Now those letters are tied in a separate pile, laced tight with bitter twine to keep them sealed; the thimble she keeps as a reminder, to keep one’s eyes open, and not let what is wished for blind what is there to be seen.