by Kathe Koja
A different and more muted laughter echoes, now, from a group exiting a restaurant, the blue-draped Metropolitan in which they were the only patrons, the luncheon arranged by their hostess in feathered toque and marten fur, very vocally annoyed: “I should never have chosen this place, that champagne was undrinkable. And the chops were dry as dirt,” though “Bijou adored them,” says Portia del Azore, bringing a chuckle from the diners, Bijou in fact half asleep in the arms of Roland Smalls, the last guest to exit, whose own laughter is a noise as rote as the moving hands on the restaurant’s clock, as he stops to watch another minute tick by: nearly half-past four, in a bare hour they shall be together…. He and Stephanos, Stephan, may I call you Stephan? to bring the half-smiling reply—Why certainly, call me whatever you’d like—taking, at last, the silver cigarette case from his jacket, extracting a smoke lit at once by the serving boy who had been waiting, it seemed, for just this moment, to lean in very close to that face. Pure chance even to have seen him at all, on another of Portia’s calculated rounds, slumming in the half-empty café: Stephan who has not returned to the hotel, the suite that waits for him so Will you come? he had asked finally, boldly, ridiculously, unable not to, the smoke stinging his watering eyes (such cigarettes! Are they made out of tree bark and iron sulfur?). Tomorrow? I must speak to you.
We’re speaking now.
Alone.
A theatrical glance over his shoulder, that little smile, and As you like. But it will have to be early, I’ve another engagement, though one unbrokered by Portia, Portia turning several interesting colors when afterward informed—Did he say where? Or for whom?—having watched them together, straining forward in the wobbly metal chair the way Bijou strains after squirrels in the Park, that rundown Park with its hooligans who have not even the decency to be picaresque, its roaming packs of bully-constables—
—one of whom has suddenly appeared now in his path, a young specimen, stiff collar rubbing a sore spot on the pudgy jaw and “Hold up, pin-picker,” loudly, rudely. “Let’s see your papers.”
“I beg your pardon,” as another constable steps to his side, this one grinning with contempt at Bijou, awake now and trembling in Roland’s arms. “I don’t need such credentials, I’m a visitor—”
“Puppy dog,” says the second constable, jabbing a finger into Bijou’s side. “Can it swim?” nodding toward the river as he grabs for the yelping dog’s collar, as the first constable loosens his truncheon: “I said papers! Now!”
—and “What is this idiocy?” the hostess even more annoyed, she and Portia to flank him, Portia claiming her dog, the hostess cold to the suddenly sullen constables: “I am Frau Theo Richter, this man is with me,” as she takes Roland by the arm, the constables’ snickers as “Oh dear,” says Frau Richter peevishly, stepping back, Roland’s shirtfront wet and odorous from frightened Bijou but “There are worse anointings,” says Roland; his voice is even, he is proud of that. “But what a churlish pair! Is it always this way?” to bring Frau Richter’s headshake, embarrassed now by her city’s crudity: “It’s only because of the war. But how they had the audacity to approach you—” as a cab is summoned at once to the sidewalk, the group climbing safely inside, rolling off in the direction of the Hotel Baron St. Williams while the constables watch them go; constables it seems on every corner, even the corners of the august avenue on which Frau Richter will alight, the high-gated townhouse where her husband sits reading through a flurry of new dispatches, half listening to her complaints until he lifts his gaze above steel half-glasses: It’s well things went no further, Madeline. Now is not the time to antagonize—
“Antagonize”? I did nothing! We did nothing—
It’s what you appear to be doing, and whom you do it with, that matters. Have your luncheons at the club from now on. Or here, nodding to the hallway where the house servants stand, a pair at the top of the stairs, a pair at the foot. They are there night and day, those men, in rotating shifts from inside to outside, each of them fully armed; some used to be constables themselves, until opportunity beckoned their way; a few others were mercenaries. None of them respect any man who is not some manner of soldier, whose hands lift only pens or liquor glasses, they have their own ways of punishing such men—
—though that punishing encounter has now become just a wry anecdote, offered, past the pop of another champagne cork, to amuse Istvan, in the safety and privacy of the hotel suite, Stephan busy sorting through his old leather trunk. He is dressed again in curious motley, heavy workmen’s boots but a shirt of impeccable linen, the coiled-snake cufflinks (a wounding detail, paired with the presence of the cigarette case, but never mind), a fine cane and hard-crowned bowler that he removes to reveal, tucked inside, a deck of faro cards, a cunning little sleeve fashioned to hold them so, for “If one is searched on the street, say,” with a nod in his direction, “the hat’s checked last of all, if at all. —If you plan on leaving this fortress much, you might want to start taking notes.”
“However do you know such things?” gold bubbles pouring, cascading into crystal: Novy Svet, not the best, but at least not the sorry domestic. He has changed his own soiled shirt of course, has spiffed and spruced with an ardor that would do a young romeo proud, his mustache hastily clipped and waxed, his scent of Barbados palm. “Such outré things…. You’ve been everywhere, yet you share so little of your most interesting past.”
“The past,” beckoning past the glass for the bottle, “is only a story,” as this room could be any or every room he has ever made sport in, boudoir and drawing room and jail cell, windows that lock and the rent paid by someone else; toujours perdrix, this stifling fucking repertory! yet again the stage is dressed, the bottle is in his hand so “Can you care so much for what I was?” tipping that bottle’s lip against his own, his tongue to regulate the flow, watching Roland through his lashes until “I care,” says Roland, through a tightened throat, “profoundly,” reaching at last to place his hands on those strong lean shoulders, as that story, or one story of that story, is performed: a kind of passion play of boxy anterooms and beckoning doorways, lies told and pleasures squandered, the whole a farrago far more satisfying than mere fucking ever could be to such a specimen as this, this man almost in tears of joy at the removal of a shirt, linen sliding past old aches and scars—
“Oh my dear—whatever happened, there? May I—”
“You may not,” backhanded to knock those hands away, to tell instead another story, a tale of that wounding that has less than nothing to do with its truth, that brings the stars to Roland’s eyes, imagining foul brigands and bright derring-do, like something out of Ivanhoe or the penny papers, Christ! can the man really be such a fool? Or has he spent his life, this hothouse flower, with his petals pressed up against the glass? Yet glass keeps out the elements, keeps a room warm, and flowers fresh, or almost so, that outside would die in an hour’s cold…. “The pretty little whore was a dab hand with a needle, but alas, I had to ride so hard her sewing popped, every stitch of it. It was the Russian margrave laced me up again,” forgetting as soon as the words fall what was said; he is watching the clock now, gauging its motion past the man’s ragged breath, like timing a masher to a carriage ride—
—but then Roland does something surprising: he stops, to perch again on the settee, his body trembling but his voice very steady as “Stephan—I know quite well that I’m nothing you could want, but that doesn’t stop me wanting you. We agreed that you would come here, and stay—not for long, perhaps, but—I would ask that it be longer. I’ve made my life to my own choosing, its circumstances and its comforts, and now I offer the same to you,” though what he offers most truly, this man, whether he knows it or not, is the great calm temptation of ease: the stateless, thoughtless ease that lucre always brings, champagne when one is thirsty, a curtain to draw against the darkness of the road, of night, death, suffering, the certainty once offered in Eden or Olympus, that one can live as the gods do. Would that it were true, and that one could share
it as easily as opening a pocketbook, stealing a pocketbook, a little lad in a backroom might once have thought so but “Many thanks,” looking through his lashes as if from very far away, a distance never to be bridged. “But I have all that I need.”
“Can you think so? You deserve so much better than those cramped townhouse affairs—I would gladly, gladly undertake to finance a proper showcase for you. A theatre, say—” confused and wounded then by Istvan’s unpleasant smile, a baring of the teeth swift and ironical, nothing he could ever understand, nor Istvan’s laugh: “Il Paradiso! Butterfly, don’t try to buy me—”
“Never say such, never! It—it insults us both, dreadfully.”
“And yet it’s so.”
“It is not so! How can you think such a thing? I only mean to give,” proffering the envelope to add to the envelopes set aside, the fat folded hoard in the teakwood box, money to line a fine nest for Mouse, a cushion on which to lay his head, there in the room that once was theirs; has Milady kept it for them as Puss did, the rosewood landscape? This room is warm but his shoulder aches like fury, Roland’s hand gropes moistly for his own—
—as a knock comes to the door, brisk and sharp to still that hand, to knot the quilted dressing gown as Roland rises in frustration, trepidation, while Istvan at once tucks the money away, in case some foolishness should be in the offing; resuming his own shirt and cravat, a quick subtraction from the trunk as “I won’t quash your little party,” hatted head thrust halfway past the threshold, “but if you know where he is, then you must—Oh!” as a cold droll mazurka then ensues, Portia stepping forward and Roland stepping back, each aiming glances at the other, suspicion and dislike as Istvan considers them both, as if they are the show and he the audience: one can learn a great deal just by watching, that observation has been made before. So “Our business here is already concluded,” Istvan hat in hand with a bow to Roland, “so I’ll say bonjour. Or more properly bonsoir, for the sun’s set, hasn’t it—”
“Not quite yet,” lips thinned beneath the trim mustache, a scrim across the eyes. “Au revoir, Stephan.”
“—and you’ve business for me, Baroness, I can smell it,” one hand to the door of her suite now, separate rooms for separate plays, this room’s yellow draperies still open to frame the cityscape: that sepia cast like antiquity, the grandeur that was Rome, how much longer will these buildings stand? as “Business,” she says, “yes, very much so, and very good news,” rustling past in her narrow silks the color of cornstalks, the foolish hat set carefully upon a mahogany stand. “Frau Richter—Frau Theo Richter! Surely you know who she is—has invited us to an evening at Caesar’s Court.”
“Live and learn,” bending to pat Bijou, who, understandably still nervous, nips sideways at the reaching hand. “I was certain that the fellow was dead.”
“Caesar’s Court is a supper club, the most exclusive in the city,” jabbering on about chaise-reclining diners and marble baths, details to which Istvan pays no attention, attending instead to the look on her face, the way she pulls and tugs the lovelock, that absurd curl, the avid shine in her eyes when she talks of the quality, what they have, what they buy, what they might provide, past the gleam of the bed’s lemon-silk hangings, the smell of licorice in the air and “Why do you eat those?” he interrupts, pointing to the tin she holds. “Bellyache?”
“When one’s hungry, licorice keeps the—innards from rumbling. I learned that as a girl.”
“And the tin’s easy to palm from a sweet shop—you learned that as a girl, too, didn’t you,” to bring a different sort of smile from Portia del Azore, as if a well-worn mask might be suddenly peeled aside at one tight corner, an admission to rouse something nearer to his own authentic grin—“Ah, Baroness, I knew we had something in common! And I’d bet you can bunk like anything if you need to”—that in turn calls from her a tale familiar to Istvan, who seats himself at the table, the audience again, hands clasped at his knee to display the silver cufflinks, a display she eyes with gratified pride as the changing light from the window changes her face from brittle striver’s to a chambermaid’s on the make, Portia once Polly to chew her licorice and note that “Life’s hard, you’ve got to drink your share of the vinegar. But you can drink from a chipped cup or a goblet just the same, and I’d rather it be a goblet. Carried to me by a servant! As soon as I knew there were places like this,” one hand to indicate the draperies’ dangling tassels, the scarlet carpets, the lace that veils the coming of the dark, “I knew I wanted to spend my life there. Who wouldn’t? Dresses from Worth, traveling as you please, bijoux—” The dog’s ears flick. “There are paste jewels on his collar—Mme Ezterhaus has a leash all over pearls…. Once, in London, I saw a whole dressing table covered with pearls, and the bedding to match the walls, pea green and ochre, and pink Venetian lace. And a statue of Venus from Rome, holding a bunch of grapes made of gold, solid gold! Who wouldn’t want such things!”
“Some wouldn’t. Some don’t give a brass-assed farthing.”
“Don’t you? Were you born in a place like this?” knowing he was not, and he knowing that she knows, flashing then his own gutter breeding, presenting another little play: call this one perhaps “Dusan in Paris” as he makes a puppet of a butter spreader plucked up from the table set for tea, its handle ornate with raised silver roses, the design making it difficult to manipulate with dexterity, but he manages, since his wounded hand has healed so well; soon there will only be a scar, just another of many. And what a spot-on choice, a knife for this Portia!—for who can say when she herself might have turned the knife on someone, in someone, on the way from cup to goblet…. The knife dances from hand to hand to tabletop to teacup to a bottle of port, left there from yesterday’s supper, untouched as the tea gone cold but “Have a tot?” asks the knife in whining Cockney; she shakes her head but the knife insists, it dings and tings along the bottle’s rim as Istvan with his other hand splashes the wine into two cups, china as thin as the skinned ice on the puddles outside though “No,” says Portia, trying not to mar the mood, the odd playful malice as the knife and cup execute a small gavotte, Istvan’s face calm and almost pleased above, as if for just this moment he has lost himself in play, a trusted respite from heartache, from the dark’s devouring edge until “No,” Portia again and more strongly, sharp to turn her chin as if she truly is assaulted, the butter spreader pressed hard to her throat as Istvan holds the cup to her lips, his touch there very gentle, almost a lover’s; he can feel her heart pounding.
“No,” she says again, then “Please.”
“In vino veritas,” with a shrug, Istvan or Stephanos or whomever he might be at this moment; perhaps he is a young man with a broken heart on a bed, gazing at a middle-aged whore with bounteous tits; as Portia is both Portia and Polly, and a mink tensely watching a fox. He balances the knife upon his palm, as if he plays a different game now, with gravity, with certain loss; picks up the other teacup, drinks it empty; then smiles at her, a smile of a certain weight, or invitation; she is still trembling; Bijou begins to bark. “But can you imagine, Baroness, that a leash makes you a lady? Tell me now,” sipping at his cup. “Why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Work for them. Play for them.”
“You play. For years! I’ve heard all the stories, there’s nowhere you haven’t been. And if you’d let me, I’d be right there beside you,” both knowing that she does not reference desire, or if desire not one that leaps from a woman to a man and back again, but a yearning instead to possess, a small gift eyeing a greater, lusting for it, hungry to use it for weapon and whip: to hold that leash, that power that comes from controlling the more powerful still. “You can make them do things, do just as you wish! That faun in there,” nodding sidewise to Roland’s rooms, “he’d jump off a bridge if you said he ought! And we could go it even better, play for kings and queens—”
“You think so.”
“I do. I know so! How else to get on? There is no other way.”