by Kathe Koja
Alban Cockrill has also spent the night in vigil, in martyrdom to his belly that yearns for the pot-brewed liquor at the cardsharps’ hideaway, only to reject it, always, after not a few hours have passed; but his morning is a pleasanter one, as he reflects with growing certainty that the men he glimpsed wagering faro, the one with the goat’s eyes and the other with the goatee, were no matter their other disguises the once-upon-a-time spy St.-Mary and, yes, the great puppeteer M Hilaire—though some rumors had him half a world away, and others in twain with his old fellow, which cannot be so, it only goes to show what rumors are…. Alban Cockrill felt his fingers twitch to watch the man’s own as he manipulated his cigarette and cards, there is no mistaking that kind of artistry, no! so “He’s back,” says Cockrill, “our prodigal son,” to Gawdy, who sits, or slumps, sidewise against the eyes-closed hunk of Mrs. Gawdy, whose rounded leather bosom has suffered for attention in these lean times, but who is soon to undertake a mission that would astonish those who have seen her in action before.
Cockrill nearly shares his exciting news with the young lady in line before him at the tea stand, that Nella who takes in sewing, she has done so more than once for him; today she must have a plenty, for she hoists a bag, and a grip, and what looks like a folded blanket, Cockrill offers some help in its toting but “Ridley’s the one who needs help,” says Nella with fine bright bitterness; has he read her farewell note yet? will he even see it, the fool, before he notices that the fire is out and there is no bread nor tea, no hard-working, devoted assistant beside him at the counter, or in the bed the ticking of which is so old that even the fleas refuse to infest it? Does he see anything beyond his dodgy and perilous pictures?—well, she will never know, for she will never see his studio again, or Crossways Street or the hair-selling barber or the toothless tobacconist whom she touched not half an hour past for a loan, a loan she never will repay, for she is leaving this city, she has a cousin three stops down the train line who has offered more than once to take her in. And not a minute too soon, with tea four times the price it was last winter, and spirits roaming in the darkness: the tobacconist’s assistant swore she had seen one on the night just past, eyes blinking in a ceiling corner where no eyes should ever be. Let Ridley look to himself, he can bunk in the Cathedral if he wishes, and worm his way deeper into that pageant—though the priests should not even hire someone so heartless and neglectful, or pay him anything if they do! so “I said, no thank you,” with a brittle nod to Cockrill. “You’d better go see Ridley, Samuel Ridley the photographer. He’s the one who needs help!”
Ridley himself has not in fact registered the loss of Nella: he is back at the Cathedral, hat in hand consulting with the bishop’s third curate, a young man with brown teeth and a trusting nature; and if last night that trust was somewhat—“abused” is too strong a word, say instead “jostled,” then Ridley has surely made up for it by a moment’s honest prayer and a handful of coin jangled into the poor box, the extra-meritorious widow’s mite and “It’s an honor to make your sister’s wedding pictures,” says Mr. Ridley, “and I’ll not charge a penny more than it costs me, with expenses. A shame she can’t be married here,” pointing overhead to the church itself, themselves now crossing through the catacomb hallways below, wherein all the vestments, incense, lock boxes, church records, baptismal candles, and other holy incidentals are stored, but “It’s what Mother dreamed of,” says the third curate unhappily, “but the wedding’s too close to the date of the pageant. Did you get all the properties and such you needed, yesterday?” Ridley and the third curate busily rummaging for portrait materials while the two helpful workmen moved crates and held doors and toted this or that candle stand or dunking stool or whatever was necessary, reverent to remove their caps when the small bright bells rang out above, and to receive the third curate’s blessing when their evening’s duties had come to a dutiful end.
The morning’s services are ending now as Ridley and the third curate again ascend the chipped and winding stairs, stone stairs very old, narrow to pass, easy to hold in a battle; the usual attendees, ladies and Widows and stout devout washerwomen, restless infants and stooping old pensioners, disperse through the much wider doors, their thoughts overtaken once again by this day’s freshly burgeoning cares. If the carried whiff of incense or a heartfelt moment’s prayer should shield them from the worst of those cares, then religion has fulfilled its function; if those prayers moved one or two to imagine the cares of their brothers and see them as one with their own, then the spirit has done its work as well; though which have received these benisons and which have exited infested by seven fresh devils, there is no way for the casual watcher to tell.
Other churches in other places similarly send their worshipers into the world, the broad avenues of the city or the smaller, more constricted streets of smaller, more constricted towns, one the town in which Frédéric’s mother marches home to inform her husband that she has written both to Frédéric and to a moderately priced hotel in the terrible city, to announce her intention to stay at one until the other is ready to escort her home for good: “You may come along or not, as you please,” says Mrs. Blum to Mr. Blum, who has not slept all night, whose pile of duties becomes daily more hellish: the Jamaican suppliers stating outright that they will offer no more merchandise on credit, the leak in the warehouse boiler requiring parts made in England, to double if not triple the cost of repairs. Mr. Blum rubs his eyes, drinks the last of the tea, then informs his wife that a trip to the city is an idea worth considering; he has already written to a few hotels himself, but it will not do to let the woman think she has swayed or changed his mind. But he knows without further argument that he needs his son here, and if the price he must pay is to have the boy’s whorish wife and woods-colt underfoot, well, the child is half-Blum at any rate, and the girl can doubtless be put to some use; perhaps she can do the mending, or cleaning, and they can let Dolly go…. There is a train timetable on his desk that Mrs. Blum does not see, busy as she is with her maternal oratory; he slips it underneath some past-due accounts—
—as a similar timetable is consulted by the Widow Pimm and her sturdy traveling companion, Mick, who, after Pimm’s passing, has taken that surname as his own: A Pimm’s got to make the Pimm’s Palaces, right? to Lucy whose tears then had been of assent and joy in the tribute, this young man her son more than ever now, and for good. It was he she consulted before putting into action her plans, born on a sleepless pillow, confirmed by the daily silence—I can’t bear to see that stage now, all I see there is poor Pimm—though Mick had persuaded her to shutter the Blackbird, not sell it outright: A roost is a roost, and you might change your mind. And even if you don’t, you can always sell it later.
And in the meantime have some play, and some heart’s ease. You’re right, with a grateful nod, Mick’s nod in echo as he echoes her feelings, if not quite so sharp nor so deep: the Blackbird is a hall of silence, its dragon one more powerful than any George can ever master, so why not take to the road, pack up stout-hearted Van and the lady puppet—though Mick argued on that one and lost: she is unwieldy, she is old-fashioned, but Mrs. Lucy would have her, so: build the box to carry her and strap atop it Van’s own elaborate fit-up, and wheel them both with their bags and Noah’s-ark trunk to the train station where “What’s the freight?” the baggage master asks, ticking off a list.
“Puppets,” says Mick, very much the gentleman in his costume bowler and trig new suit, the vest finished by Mrs. Lucy only the night before, perhaps just a notch or two too tight in the armpits—but “Puppets?” asks the baggage master, eyebrows raised and “Poppets,” corrects Lucy firmly, her own dress impeccable and very wisely on the plain side, not to say dull, no ornaments beyond the little ermine muff with its dangling silver chain, no earrings nor goldfish brooch nor, even, her precious pearl wedding ring, packed away for the duration between the safekeeping tits of Miss Lucinda; poor old girl, she is ready for some frolic again, after all these years! “Dressmaker’s
poppets, for sewing and fitting and such. Mind the handles on that big one, she’s antique,” and, as they board and settle in their seats, noting in careful murmur to Mick that “Not all places let a body play in peace these days. Tilde’s sent me cuttings,” tales from the more lugubrious of the penny papers, several tucked into the last letter tucked into her bag, the one advising her arrival sooner rather than later, seeming to mean more than Tilde could bring herself to write; she had read that letter again and again, seeing as she did Istvan’s gaze when they parted, its balm and challenge both…. If even half those tales are true they will want to be careful indeed when they come to that Mercury Theatre, and the best time to start to take care is right now, though “Don’t worry a minute,” Mick says firmly. “I’ll watch out for you,” to bring her own smile, thinking of the little pistol slipped into the muff: not so many of the girls of the Gaiety District had such any longer, but one did, an old one with a pearlized grip and a Shot like thunder, the girl assured Lucy, pocketing her payment. They’ll hear it when you squeeze that trigger, ma’am!
So “We’ll watch out for each other,” Lucy says. “But remember, we’re just haberdashers,” tugging a tiny loose thread on his collar, then settling herself for the long ride with her hoop and embroidery needle, the thread bag an Eden of gorgeous greens and peacock blues, rose red and silver, with a duller silver tucked below, the flat pewter flask that used to be Pimm’s, its gin a friend on the nights that the grief keeps her from sleeping.
If Mick has his own sleepless dawns, they have only increased as the prospect of this trip has gone from idea and talk to tickets and motion: fussing unto midnights over Van, his cap and costumes, his internals, this fellow Mick’s own passport and weapon, honor guard into the halls of the Mercury Theatre—which, Mick imagines, must be a place of much marble and many seats and, may be, ushers and other players who will look askance at a fellow come from a smaller sort of palais, even if he does wear a fine new suit and have a history with the owners, one of the owners in particular, whose old carving tool is part of the fit-up, and the very old nesting puppets too, devil and girl and “’Save it for Skipjack,’” Mick murmurs, to assure himself that he is no longer the boy tugging at Mister Istvan’s coattails, that Istvan who will at last see his show, see Van in action, the skipjack prince who has changed with the times but not so much as not to recognize his maker, no, nor the other way around. But what routine shall they offer, he and Van, to announce their arrival, to demonstrate their fitness to play on that marble stage, with that man? as Mick leans his head against the smeary window, seeing nothing past the stage behind his eyes—
—as the busy platform now begins to recede, the station and its porters, the city’s backdrop, the trees an arch and then no arch, the open sky become bluer and bluer still as if in benediction for this trip and its travelers, who seem to feel that sanction strengthen as the miles between themselves and their destination decrease. If Lucy finds herself humming a bawdy old song from the Poppy, and she does, and Mick’s fingers execute a complicated dance, and they do, their fellow passengers withhold all commentary, as there is something different about these two, this bourgeois lady and her grown son who are not, somehow, son and mother, nor bourgeoisie, in some way that the watchers find impossible to parse; although most never notice the two at all, being caught up in their own worlds, their own news—
—that is the same news as always, of desire and distress, black comedy, wars and rumors of wars, rehearsal for Armageddon, and the threat of conscription passing at last from rumor to hard reality: any man over fourteen years of age will now be eligible for the militia rolls, to offer to God and country his service in the current emergency, and whatever weapons he may currently possess. Possessing none is an offense in itself, and places a man under suspicion, perhaps in league with those legions of foreign spies already in the streets—another of those rumors that spread less like the wind than like oil, or blood, seeping here and there, sucked up by the porous imaginations of the fearful and credulous, many of whom hold positions of not-inconsiderable power or notoriety, several of whom have committed mostly quiet self-murder the night before the conscription notices are published. One is a banker, an old friend of Morris Robb’s, who seemed to have gotten religion rather violently; another is the primary doorkeeper of the ostensibly shuttered Music Ministry; a third is a prominent author, whose last essay, printed in many newspapers and discussed in many more, seemed to conflate the sellers of contraband and the denizens of the bounce houses with lambs being led to the slaughter, or possibly Judas goats, the metaphors being somewhat mixed and the imagery unclear; the author’s brains having punctuated the papers atop his desk, he is unfortunately no longer available for explanation. A half-dozen more suicides are recorded by the Protectorate, but these—men and women tumbling from Crescent Bridge, drinking prussic acid, knotting the noose in the midnight kitchen—are of little notice and no moment; war always brings out the cowards, and no one mourns a coward, at least not in public.
What all this will mean to the hastily armed man in the street is still to be determined, but the crude recruiting signs for Libbys and Savvys pop up anew on buildings and fences, like advertisements for an entertainment no citizen dare miss, and booths blood-red with bunting appear across from the Cathedral, for every patriot needs his special sash and holy cross: “Lace that on your mister’s bonnet, and bring ’im home safe,” advises one seller to a weepy-eyed young lady who is quick to purchase two, one for her fiancé, another for the man she loves; and she is neither the first nor last to do so. If there have actually been no relevant, or even demonstrable, attacks upon the city, only the frantic snapping that a dog might give its own hindquarters, that fact is as invisible as the smile beneath the grime on the statue of Mercury, his winged feet still poised between Olympus and the train terminus, and as unlikely of discovery in the current climate, where a petition even now circulates to replace that heathenish statue with a more correct and edifying representation of “Liberty Repelling Her Foes,” a petition gravely notated in an office where the hind end of Minerva, herself notably unchristian in both outlook and behavior, continues to present itself—which may be an Olympian joke as well as a backhand blessing, for this unhappy city needs all the humor it can muster, and all the gods, and goddesses, it can get.
A joke may also be considered a manner of tale, though truncated, especially one told by M Boilfast: a comfortable and now fully bald M Boilfast in his comfortably appointed theatre office, papered with posters and playbills of the popular and the evergreen, three warm stories above the chilly tumble of a wet Parisian street, years removed from the pocket stage and cheap cheroots and endless intrigues of the Fin du Monde; a joke offered with a dry little smile as he leans forward to light the cigarette of his old friend M Dieudonne, himself appeared at the backstage door three nights before, as if he had never left: Why is a street corner whore like an old boot? They both have round heels. —You’d not believe how loud they laughed at that chestnut, last night.
I can believe anything just now, as Istvan sits at a moment’s ease, his festering hand doused with cologne to mask the odor, legs extended toward the grate so his own round-heeled boots may begin, a bit, to dry. And I’ll thank you once again for the chance to play. Here, sliding across the desk a knotted handkerchief, give this to your lads, the helpful stagehands but Not a bit of it, says Boilfast, sliding it back; he has taken in the surprising austerity, not to say dilapidation, of this princely entertainer, and knows there is a tale to it that he has not heard and likely never will, likely several highly interesting and possibly felonious tales, but M Dieudonne plays every card so close to the vest that sometimes one cannot see the cards at all. They don’t need tips, I pay ’em plenty…. So, where do you go, monsieur, from here? to call forth the offhand smile—Elsewhere—that brings his own, shading then into a neutral nod as You travel a bit of a hard road, it seems. And solo these days, since the fire at that place you owned, with—
Heard of that, did you? Yet I can’t believe that you believe everything you hear, that simply isn’t like you. But yes, times are hard, as he looks past Boilfast’s blue serge shoulder, his impresario’s chair, to the window beyond which, if he could see so far, Rupert also considers the rain from the much smaller window of the two-room above the boîte, considering as well its ill effects upon the venerable concertina, sticking keys and a decidedly off-key honk. And yes, we have still a ways to go—
—to a destination held for no little time in mind, his mind, confirmed firmly in mind by watching Rupert struggle with that damp unmusical instrument, in the confines of yet another sad little room; by the sight of Rupert bedding down in their last accommodation, the cold crack-windowed pantry—A softer floor than last time, eh, messire?—bundled like a tramp beneath that window, the dew fallen on his face like tears. They had walked miles even to arrive there, not coin enough for a berth on a cargo train, then after only a night in the tavern’s cramped playhouse came a former chambermaid of Isobel de Metz who recognized them at once, asking after the folk at the townhouse, so We’d best not linger, Rupert’s shrug in the dawn, shouldering up the traps to resume the walk and its endless dodging, a show playing night after lockstep night, This rascal’s the one who charts our course, your wheel to spin though all he had ever asked of Istvan was a roost, domestic bliss, A moment’s fucking peace before I die—yet he had died already, had he not, and still there was no peace…. How noble he looks, when he sleeps, no matter where he sleeps: like a knight in a painting, the silvered hair and forehead carved to lines of care relieved, and how like a boy when he is wakened by kisses, by a puppet’s joking hand, that shy and stalwart, unchanging smile that only Mouse can offer, smiling even past the hardships and the chilblains and the cough—Istvan had quizzed the surgeon on that cough, in the half-apothecary, half-barber’s den where he had ostensibly trekked to get his own hand doctored, that really rather vile-smelling wound made by Miss Prudence’s stab with the opal, a puncture that had refused so far to heal; opals are unlucky, after all. The surgeon had squeezed and fumbled, rubbed in something like kerosene, counted his payment as Istvan bound up the bandage again and It might be consumption, he had said to Istvan’s questioning, his full and worried list of symptoms. Or just a cough-o’-the-lung from sleeping with the windows open. Does he sleep with the windows open? Fresh air is very bad in such cases.