The Bastards' Paradise

by Kathe Koja

  The Cathedral with its stairstep saints is even busier than the avenue, with a constant parade of those who pray or wish to be observed doing so, and those for whom the mammoth edifice, its iron-barred doors and golden tableware, gives a solace nothing else can provide. Even Frédéric is there, feeling both at home and a fugitive, on his way back from a talk with Felix Krystof: in a dim strange anteroom of a club called Caesar’s Court, martial stands of saw-toothed ferns and statues draped and undraped, they took their cooling kaffee beneath a pair of marble men posed naked and arm in arm—Hadrian, said Felix Krystof, and Antinous. Quite an artistic example—as Frédéric pretended he did not blush, and Felix Krystof pretended the same, pretending as well an interest in Frédéric’s ideas for the pageant, his earnest explanations: I see it as a pasquinata, wherein the statues of the Cathedral might be used to show citizens the truth of our city’s situation. That vast statue of the angel on the north stairway, say—

  Very different from fellows like these.

  Yes…. It’s an old, truly a classical, way to offer a political truth, as Felix Krystof nodded and asked questions, apparently germane, and shook hands cordially as they parted; his unfriendly majordomo nowhere to be seen this time, which was a comfort; though the candles Frédéric has just dedicated, two thin and oily-burning stalks set before the pale Virgin, brought less comfort than he had hoped they might: one for his own mother, to keep her where she ought to be, and one for Haden, to open his eyes…. Frédéric does not know that Haden is, at that very moment, open-eyed and not twenty steps away from him, watching from the bustle of the nave, his gaze a brooding mingle of ferocity and tenderness, following Frédéric to the doors and then the steps where he stops to tug on his gypsy cap—thinking himself disguised that way, when it only makes him stand out more! And this is the man who believes he can navigate Krystof!—then heads down, pausing halfway to nod to Mr. Ridley waiting there in his disreputable duster, Mr. Ridley who continues to pace and check his watch, and pass a bare two steps from Istvan, whom neither Frédéric nor Mr. Ridley see nor notice at all, that once-a-gent in work boots and cloudy brown spectacles, tapping his cane against the pavement, soliciting alms from the crowd—“Mutilé de guerre! Help an old feller out!”—until “May be you need a better corner,” Haden biting his lip to chase the laugh. “Were you blind already, when you pinched those glasses? You look like a penny-handler on the Bridge.”

  “It was either those or this,” showing in his coat, like a hidden weapon, the plague mask, its whiteness soiled somewhat by the years, like a soul stranded in Limbo. “And either way, one must play, yeah? It’s time and fucking past time.—You’ve got Mouse’s papers?”

  “Yours, too,” taking from his own coat the citizens’ certificates, all seemingly officially stamped and signed. “And I did as you said, but I’ll say again, uncle, it’s bally mad to use that name,” the man’s own name, Rupert Bok but “Why not tell the truth for once?” Istvan slipping the certificates safely beside the mask, near to his heart; he almost smiles. “Who’d ever suspect it? Now, we’re to steal from the church, is that the game?”

  “Almost. I want to see what’s in their pageant box,” plucking up a stray pebble to shy at Mr. Ridley: who starts, peering all around the crowd, finally spotting them to sail over with a crow of “Gentlemen!” so loud that Haden wishes for another stone and larger, and Istvan frowns—“He’s not part of our charades?”—but still is all smiles when Mr. Ridley arrives, Mr. Ridley himself a walking smile of triumph for “I thought I’d never pin you down, sir!” as the three leave the stairs to cross the avenue, past a newspaper bawler assuring that “The Vigilist knows!” to a narrow stand selling the day’s last tea and cross buns, the repast grandly hosted by Mr. Ridley, as somewhere, scribbling and re-scribbling a mounting column of figures, Nella shudders without knowing why. “I thought you might already be on your way elsewhere, M Marcus, and understandably so. This city is a deal too small for you, and the foolish prohibitions on plays—”

  “Shut it,” Haden says, “or be softer. Right there’s a pair of fucking Sanitaries,” come to the booth beside the tea stand, its sagging awning still touting FINE LADIES’ BOUQUETS & CORSAGES, its slatted counter piled with weedy blossoms meant solely to lay at the feet of the Cathedral statues. One Sanitary argues over some Michaelmas daisies—plucked in what was once the Lady’s Garden, now a growing wilderness of wild chrysanthemums, bent rose canes, unclipped yew and spurge—while the other peers more closely at Istvan, who has shed the shielding glasses, tugs the pearl at his ear as Mr. Ridley continues to extol his possible prospects elsewhere, in Paris, or London, or even “America, sir, have you been? No? Oh, you really ought to go.”

  “And do what there?”

  “Why, be a sensation, sir!”

  Even Haden must smile at that earnestness; Istvan laughs; and thus emboldened, Mr. Ridley reaches into the duster’s vast pockets for a few representative photographs, both strange and risqué: a statuesque young lady on a kind of rocking horse, a man on stilts who seems to manipulate a puppet, who is himself a man without stilts and trussed in strings and “That one’s jolly,” Istvan says, hand behind his back to dump out the watery tea. “Did you make that picture?”

  “No. But I would make even better ones, if you’ll consent. In my studio— That little monster of a puppet you showed, he looks quite the spirit! And Nella in a gown, say, or better without—she’s got a figure to make a man’s mouth water—”

  “Softer, I said!” for the Sanitaries are frankly listening, the tea-stand man is listening, all those cocked ears and shared glances, Istvan’s calming wink to Haden as he lights a cigarette, tosses the spent match at one of the Sanitaries, and begins to lead them back toward the Cathedral, seemingly only strolling, explaining his philosophy of performance as they go: “Pictures or playing, it’s all the same—the groundlings want to see the word made flesh. And they need one to be what they wish to be, not a man as they are,” but “You’re not as they are. Not a bit of it,” says Mr. Ridley, a compliment that Istvan accepts as such: with a little bow, a smoke ring puffed into the air, a ghostly dissipating halo. “But how can you perform, sir, when all the show-houses are shut up tight as a tick on a horse’s backend? That’s the conundrum! My own studio—you’ve been to my studio, recall? You and your fellow—oh, and my sympathies, sir. It was a real tragedy, that fire.”

  “Yes,” says Istvan briefly; for a moment his gaze is gone from them, gone back to a broken puppet and a body falling through darkness, screams and flames and the Wheel whirling; that Wheel spun again in his dreams last night, his own hands straining to drag it to a stop, Mouse watching from some corner with a book closed upon his knee—was it a journal, Benjamin de Metz’s old journal? The cover was black, the pages bright red…. And waking again to the smell of sour damp, a spatter—is it? of red on the bedclothes tugged to ward the growing cold, and Mouse in the chair, busy over some writing he thinks he conceals: hiding his copybook as a boy would, a schoolboy, spectacles pushed down his nose the better to see. Before sleep they had wrangled, Rupert stubborn as a boy, yes, folding his arms at the mere mention of a physician, shifting his gaze to the dark-paned window, what did he see in all that night? as We had the doctor for my eye, didn’t we, and all’s still shadow. And you too, that surgeon in Paris—

  That doesn’t count, the fellow was a fool.

  And neither one did fuck-all.

  So do what instead? Drink that silly potion, and— You could at least stay out of the God damned rain!

  All it does here is rain, until it snows. And I’m not so ailing that I need to keep indoors and abed, like some old granny—

  You could keep abed with me. And let me read your little book, but he did not say that last; let there be some sweet secrets still between them, as he keeps his own secrets if never so sweet: the money in the letterbox is quite a sum now, and there will be even more past that Caesar’s frolic, if the Baroness stays true. This frolic, now, the kit’s foray
into the shadow of the Church—

  —as his gaze returns as if from a lifetime’s distance, coming to bear on that backdrop, its blind angels and black marble and “The best way to honor a showman,” he says, “is with a show, n’est-ce pas? Perhaps,” with another halo’s puff, “something with a whiff of the miraculous. For the moment, we have only the notion of such—and my little monster, did you call him so?” taking off his hat to slip out the deck of faro cards, take two between his fingers, a flash of yellow and a wink of blue and “L’une pour l’autre,” making the cards bow to each other, to Haden, to Mr. Ridley, who says “My studio, sir—it’s just a ’bus ride away—”

  —but Istvan is bowing now to a pair of students in ascension, perhaps come to pray that the school doors be kept open and the army from its halls, two very young men in slouch caps and satchels who stand right where he stops them, half-wondering, half-afraid, as if the world they walked in only a moment before has vanished, and this smiling man has abducted them into another: as Istvan makes the cards to flutter at their peach-fuzz cheeks and whisper in their ears, comic things, improper things to rouse their giggles, their glances each to the other—

  “Have you ever done such?” the blue card murmurs.

  “With a lady?!” the yellow card squeaks.

  —as Mr. Ridley watches, his chuckling attention the seed of a growing crowd, Haden watchful and impatient to nudge Istvan as a priest approaches, and “Good evening, Reverend,” says Istvan with a bow, the small impromptu puppets palmed flat, the students his accomplices now to bow beside. “We were just about to offer a prayer for the safety of the city.”

  “You— Yes,” looking Istvan up and down, this pudgy clergyman in coat and peaked hat, smelling of incense, of rubber and potted meat. “Yes, certainly, a very good thing to do. But you should do so inside, my sons, not out on the public steps.”

  “But the Spirit is everywhere,” says a little voice, the blue card’s voice, one of the students laughs and “Isn’t that what Scripture teaches?” the yellow card adds as the priest, flummoxed, looks from Istvan to the students both laughing now, unable not to, believing them the source of the comments. Someone in the crowd says “It’s the tall gent, Reverend,” and “It’s spirits,” cries a young lady in black, a young Widow with a gaunt eye and great improbable bosom. “The spirits of the dead, they come back! They always come back—”

  “That’s heresy,” snaps the priest to the Widow, “that’s a sin,” and then “Disperse,” he says sternly to the students, to Istvan, Istvan whose face wears a look of innocent inquiry, of burlesque contrition, of perfect concentration, this Stephanos more reckless now and less accountable, as if all smaller stakes are behind him, as “’The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,’” ostensibly in answer, “good King James made sure we knew it so. Have things changed so much since those days, that God must hide in a box?” as a balding man behind the young Widow suddenly finds courage to aver that “I saw my old brother plain as day, right there at the Wounded Lion. He was smiling at me, he had both his legs again,” and “I saw St. Uriel,” calls a woman in a faded platter hat, “at a spirit party! He told me himself he was St. Uriel, he had eyes just as shiny as a cat’s—”

  “It was not St. Uriel! That is heresy, those parties are heresy!” the priest beginning to grow frantic, as if he flounders in the depths of a rising wave, other people calling out their own sightings or debunkings, arguments flaring, the young Widow starting to weep in loud gulping sobs: as Haden shoves hand to pocket, nodding hard with his chin to send Mr. Ridley up the steps, Mr. Ridley in a swivet of dismay and elation—if only he had his camera rig! for the pure chiaroscuro, the dying light on these faces, the darkness making of them living masks, just eyes and moving mouths—yet there are soldiers now too, no crowd can come together without soldiers, a pair already on the steps with truncheons out as “If we pray,” Istvan calls, the cards having prudently vanished, “let’s pray that when we meet the spirit we’ll know him, and know to tip him, too. It’s a bally long way from Heaven to here, wouldn’t you say so, junior?” to the nearest constable, who seems to deem him the source of all the trouble, who puts hands on him and then abruptly draws back, as if having thought better of it, who sinks to his knees as if in prayer though his cupping hands are now at his trousers, in the wake of the griffin-headed cane—

  —as Haden’s hands are propelling Istvan up the steps, into that seemingly safer dark that winks its dozens of candles, the faint scent of cut roses, a bride’s bouquet left as tribute by a virgin to the Virgin and “For fuck’s sake, uncle,” Haden’s harsh whisper, “I thought you came to help,” and “Apologies, kit,” apologetically, switching hats with Haden, his hair tucked inside that short-billed cap, coat pulled tight, a proper workman now, as Mr. Ridley, an eager shadow, beckons them at the end of the aisle. “It was just that he reminded so much of that shako priest, the one that Mouse sent packing. He used to roost at the Heads or Tails, remember—Good evening, Reverend,” reverently as another priest pauses at the foot of the choir loft, this one turning to gaze back at Haden, then again as if in greater recognition, bringing Istvan’s murmur—“Shall I give you a moment?”—as Haden seizes his arm, seized with the sudden hilarity one feels wherever laughter is forbidden: “Come on,” while above them the choir rehearsal begins, Schubert’s Agnus Dei accompanied by the noises echoing from the steps outside, that disturbance well on its way to becoming a riot—

  —that sends its ripples down the avenue, then lesser avenues, propelling the nervous more swiftly off the streets, perking the ears of those who still care to hazard when the sun goes down; but not so far as to be heard at the quiet Cornucopia, where several customers sit paging through the evening newspapers, primarily the Civic Guardian although one or two prefer the Fanfare, these men no more burghers and drapers but of less certain or remunerative employments, men who keep their gazes to themselves as they nurse their tea, or beverages somewhat stronger, among them a specialty of the house named the “O-be-joyful,” though it does not seem to be living up to its name; nor does the so-called cocoa that, to Rupert’s disgust, tastes mainly of indeterminate grit.

  He pushes the half-emptied cup past his copybook, and takes a swig from the bottle in his pocket, a mixture of the beldame’s syrup and whiskey, a workable potion that calms the cough if not entirely quells it, and quiets the dry red murmur of the pain. Once or twice he has tried other things: laudanum, and a folded paper of greenish powder picked up on the road, the barroom healer insisting that he take it gratis—I won’t have a cent for it, it’s a gift from the Lord is what it is, they can saw off yer arm and yer’ll never even know it! Go on, try—and he had tried, and had felt that, yes, that powder might have come from another world, but it was a world he had no desire to visit, pain or no pain: that night Istvan had thought him drunk, had been amused and a little puzzled—Why so jolly, Mouse? Are we celebrating?—and worried, too, enough to wake him when he thrashed about in his dreams; they were not good dreams, as if Hell itself were tugging at him, cold hands in stifling darkness, the General’s flat unblinking eyes…. The monks had been quite descriptive of Hell, highest on the roster of punishments justly meted out to sluggards, though less so on Heaven, it being, like the old cook’s sweety-bag, something rarely deployed in the case of orphan boys. Still the saints were there, like knightly St. Martin, men who had done well on earth and were rewarded like good soldiers for the doing; if there were women saints they were less discussed, except for the Virgin and those who died as virgins, the highest possible honor for a girl. Several of the boys made lewd jokes upon this topic, chiefly on the waste of it, and were punished by being made to stand barefoot on the icy cobbles, shouting Pater Nosters till they cried; and Rupert to watch those tears having not joined in the joking, knowing even then that girls and their virginity were not for him.

  A youth now passes the café windows, quick-stepping, then stops as if seized, rocking back on his heels, and enters: a quaint-lo
oking youngster in long coat and cap, leading a much smaller boy whom he aims at once at Rupert, that solitary fellow at the table with his book and pen, sitting as he used to when this café was called Die Welt, when he came each day for his “Chocolat, chocolade,” says the blue-eyed youth, lips fighting a lovely smile, “Šálek čokolady,” Tilde pulling up a chair to seat herself across the table, Ru at her side and “Don’t drink that,” she adds, knuckling the cocoa cup aside. “I’ll make you something much better. —You’re here, then. You’ve come.”

  “To see,” Rupert says, nodding to the half-shuttered window, the Mercury, that sanctuary once chosen with such care; how long ago that all seems, and yet to see it now it is as if only a moment has passed, though the building itself needs serious attention with a hammer, needs window glazing, and paint; surely things are neater inside, Tilde would never allow such alarming shabbiness to stand…. A part of him wants nothing better than to pass again through those doors, take Istvan to those rooms that once were theirs, look out that window and drink whiskey and let his eyes close; they have been traveling so long, a lifetime, surely both of them have earned some rest. If he had had his way, before —But his promise given was a promise kept, if Istvan would have no home but the one they made each night, then very well.

  And in some ways it has been very well, in shouldering the load Istvan has been more than helpful, he has been masterful, not only in his playing—and such playing! Like watching a man not just walk but dance on water, agile on the surface of enormous deeps, giving glee as he takes it himself: in those deeps, in the roll of Mr. Castor’s eyes, in the exhortation to “Thumb your nose!” loud enough for the heavens to hear—but in the plain before-and-after too, keeping the course plotted and an eye on the door, doing as he has not done before yet doing all well; there is no end to this man’s surprises.