by Kathe Koja
Other avenues of criminal behavior are, if less easy to see, still available, such as the culs-de-sac that open like purse strings upon a covert bazaar, where smuggled goods are sold at sunrise, those hard-to-get items to be savored or swiftly resold at a profit in other anonymous alleys or back rooms—cherished liqueurs, twists of hashish and fat black cigars, frothy lace that lies so well upon a naked bosom—as well as humbler items like linen stockings and macassar oil, turnips without blight, sewing needles and fish knives and, sometimes, pistols to help a man or woman make a way where the way is hard. There are even books for sale, forbidden novels in French and Russian, scholars’ treatises in Latin, one in hand this very moment, the gloved hand of Haden St.-Mary, who turns its pages with a look so bereft that the seller, an old hussy in a red wool scarf, bids him take the thing for free: “That pisspot can’t read it anyway,” nodding to her helper at the table, her husband too busy bagging contraband sausage to take offense—“Finest pork in the city!”—though whether the bluish casing actually contains pig, or any mammal with a name, is a mystery that hunger must ignore. Haden buys a sack with only the briefest haggle, carrying it into the Cathedral to set at his feet throughout the morning Mass, and if his fellow churchgoers cast glances its way and his, and they do, their sin of covetousness is nicely offset by the virtue of prudence, as they nervously note Haden’s hard bearing and military jacket, this creature seemingly too dangerous to be perched amongst them in the pews.
Though when those wary worshipers depart and the curate approaches, Haden like a dutiful schoolboy offers up his book: “Remedia Amoris,” as if unsure of his pronunciation. “May be you could make out a page or two, Reverend?” a task the curate performs to the best of his ability even if “It’s not my usual reading,” both somewhat abashed by the content, those lurid cures for love, Haden pocketing Ovid again as the curate nods: “I’ve seen you before—you’re one of the pageant workmen, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes …. It’s a deal of work,” that stern and gaudy undertaking, staging Heaven, Earth, and Hell, though the curate sadly shakes his head: “Building that jailhouse pen for the ‘demons’! And so many extra choristers just for the ‘Dies Irae’—the ‘Day of Wrath,’” translating again, “it is a great pity. Hell’s uppermost in their minds, I suppose because of the war, but— The people need help, they are sheep without a shepherd, and this will only frighten them further. And already they’re afraid of everything, of shadows—”
“They should be,” Haden thinking of the red pins in his pocket, extras procured for insurance, one for Tilde too, her name on the rolls is Tomik Bok, though Istvan wrinkled his nose—Red doesn’t suit me—and Frédéric put his to the air—Just civic costuming!—so “My friend St. Vitus,” he says, voice lowered nearly to a whisper, so the curate must lean closer to hear. “You know him, he used to sing in the choir. Now he’s busy as a fu—as a bumblebee, with pageant scripts and such, so busy that sometimes he can’t tell black from white. So if you should see him getting into trouble,” with a frown itself so troubled that “Certainly I’ll aid him,” says the curate, adding kindly, “though he’s in safe hands already, with a good friend such as yourself.”
“Safe is as safe does,” a mutter mainly to himself as he proffers in payment the sausage sack—“Finest pork in the city”—that the curate gently turns back: “You needn’t purchase my help,” as he offers a blessing, a protective prophylaxis to carry Haden on his way, his footsteps firm in echo to the choir loft, as far off and shadowed as Heaven itself.
Hatless into the cold streets, he pauses for a breakfast of roasted chestnuts, half stale, but the heat feels fine in his hands: chewing straight from the bag, watching the passing ’buses and constables and scarved citizens hurrying to offices and shops and schools, a ragged boy in a yellow kerchief trying to steal from the chestnut vendor, like the boy he once was himself, not one of his boys…. Pipper was sporting just such a kerchief, some foolishness picked up in the Park, “The Yellow Brigade,” past Istvan’s near-smile—Ah, la résistance! Théâtre de la vie!—but Take that off, Haden’s order. I’ll tell you what to wear and what not to —
—as Frédéric caught his eye, then at once looked away; was he thinking of the Christopher medal? gone missing, then found hidden like those long-ago French letters, by Haden surprised and dismayed—Of all times for Frédéric to be without it! though it is just silver on a chain, still it will make you safe—asking gruffly, the burdened saint depending from his hand What, does it not suit anymore? Not grand enough for a pageant?
Don’t be silly, Frédéric snatching it back but not back around his neck, no, there is some reason that he will not speak, is it the pageant? or something else, something worse? Another subject neither will approach, since that morning after the night of the welcome celebration, Haden drowsy and blinking to see Frédéric watching him sleep, a smile half love and half yearning—My Hadrian, my hero—murmured kisses waking hungry hands, the relief of passion flaring once again, ardent and wild in the bucking bed against the noises of the busy house around them—Tilde’s quick footsteps, Ru’s crow, Istvan’s sharp little whistle—and Haden’s own shout of pleasure a cry of joy; with Frédéric’s smile afterward echoing that joy, lying damp in Haden’s arms, feeling the beat of his heart: Oh, we ought never be further apart than this…. And we’ll be able to do all sorts of shows with our Maître d’art, now, won’t we! Perhaps he has something in mind already, I wouldn’t be surprised —
Oh surely, uncle’s got his own play to make here—biting his lip too late to button it, Frédéric up on his elbows at once, elated: A new puppet play? In secret! But not a secret from me?
And himself pretending then to reach for the piled script draft, not the abandoned “Fortune’s Favorite” but the pageant pages Frédéric labors over and keeps so close—You’ve secrets in play, and plenty, all this you won’t let me read—meaning only to divert his attention—
—but Frédéric then half leaping from the bed, flushed and bare to jam those papers into the armoire drawer—I can’t —You mustn’t—as an envelope fell from that pile to the coverlet, yet another thick missive from Mrs. Salt Merchant, Haden taking that up to hand it slowly back: Here’s another play you keep writing. How many letters she sends a week?
Letters, oh what difference do letters make?
A difference to her—she’d have you back in a tick if she could, an’t she? as the flush stained Frédéric’s face, like a good child unjustly scolded: Don’t be ridiculous. I gave up all of that for you, Fortune’s favorite indeed, favored son born into a life bound tight as leaves in a book, a nice big house with someone else to strain out the tea, and no need there for protection, for mystic medals or theatre of the streets, so May be you oughtn’t have, Haden risen from that bed as if to leave all warmth behind, his gaze made distant—
—distant now too as he considers again that distance between the merchant’s sturdy mansion and the gutter, between true safety and a lonely guard, all the vigilance in the world worth less than a one-way train ticket—as he plucks by the scruff the clumsy little nut-thief, to drop into his hands the half-bag of chestnuts still half-steaming and “Here,” brusque. “Now get yourself home, if you’ve got one,” himself turning not for home but toward the better boulevards, the sentried streets where a man like him, red pin or no, is known at a glance for a stranger, a permanent outlier, beneath façades of marble and gilded iron where a Caesar might hold court, and does: so to make himself plausible he picks up another bag on the way, some half-gone leeks and gnomish carrots to go with the sausage, though “An’t you pretty big, for a grocer’s boy?” asks the maid at the door but “Times are hard,” Haden says, parting his jacket an inch or so to show the easements inside—a pinch of lace, a half-bottle of something to help a girl forget that she is in fact no longer a girl but on the dry side of thirty—that ease his way into the building to deliver his bundles to the cook, then wander slowly back through the echoing rooms, strange and emp
ty in the daylight with their ghostly white statues and hard divans and odd draped hidey-holes, as any man might who has seemingly lost his way.
As he goes he passes a woman, a brisk young woman in tight black-and-white skirts and a hat tufted up like a beehive, whose hackles rise at his regard, haughtier than she need be so “Cheerio, missy,” says Haden with a particularly scurrilous wink. “What you got under that checkerboard skirt?”
“Sod off,” says Portia del Azore, her tone pure Polly, her boot heels brisk on the marble floors as she heads for the main hall where Stephanos shall play, Frau Richter to be in attendance and her husband too, all the civic royalty! and herself to be a Poppaea in a new gown from the last decent dressmaker in the city, plaster-white silk and shining emerald braid, if only she had some real emeralds to wear with it…. Downstairs she assures one last time that all is prepared for “My entertainer,” grandly, casting her gaze around the dressing room, horsehair bench and ancient commode, the branching hallway adjacent smelling of mold and cooked onions. “He needs space to stow his puppet-box, and costumes and such.”
“Yes, missus.”
“He’s used to far finer accommodations, but I shall instruct him to make do here. He always does as I say.”
“Yes, missus,” the house manager resigned, his feet already hurting as much as they will at midnight, and “Yes,” the maid recalcitrant, having had a quick nip from that bottle, knowing in her heart that she would look miles better in a skirt like that, and hat, than this puffed-up ladyship, who plain as she is is plainly well-set-up, a fact the maid notes bitterly to the house manager once Portia has gone: “Money can make anyone a beauty, even a crow-face like that,” as “Puppets,” says the house manager, shifting from foot to foot. “Last week it was those Indian fakirs. May be next week it’s clowns.”
In the rooms of Felix Krystof the odor is again of glue, a strong hot stench of bookbinders’ glue and the pot half-stuck to the worktable, Felix Krystof in a rare foul mood, for the work he does today must be assembled by tomorrow, and it is in nowise ready, this antique tome of antique sermons that took so much longer to write than he had planned—that fool of a scrivener down with what he said was the ague but was likely the French gout, and this substitute, Klaus, with his tardy copy unfit for “The penny papers,” Felix Krystof sharp and terse after half a cursory read. “I paid for a prophet’s treatise, and you give me twenty pages of dancing girls? ‘Salomy’!”
“You said write about the whores of Babylon, sir, beg your pardon but I’ve done just that, and in Latin besides! And I’ve not yet been paid a cent for—”
“Nor will you. You owe for this wasted parchment,” as John Abram steps up to speed Klaus on his way, to offer a kidney punch when he resists, a boot to the back to send him groaning over to the Cornucopia to use the last of his coin on some O-be-joyful and cadge “A pipeful?” hopeful to the restive young man at the next table, who stares at him as if without comprehension: another foreigner, the city is full of them! Whatever sort of pea brain tours a city under siege?
The young man in traveler’s coat and banded bowler, with his case set protected at his side, looks past Klaus and out the clouded windows, seeking once more and nervously the sight of Mrs. Lucy, who ought have been here by now: was she waylaid at the train station, did some other sort of harm befall? Her idea to send him on ahead, You’ll be easier alone to scout the place, and I can have the trunks stowed till we know what’s what, with Mick reluctant to agree, insisting on carrying Van himself—but can that sad hovel be the Mercury Theatre? Half stove-in on the roofside and without a sign to bless it, and dirty-looking purple curtains, they must somehow have bollocksed up the address —
—as Frédéric at the next table sighs a soft but mighty sigh, and rubs his smarting eyes: he barely slept a wink, cannot find rest beside this severe new Haden, an Ajax swathed up in the sheets as if preparing for some battle, what can it mean? He is tempted, almost, to give over that script, let Haden see, Hadrian whose name is on nearly every page…. And what a tale those pages have told him! The task taken up not truly for the coin—though Heaven knows they need it, and Herr Krystof is to give another payment today—but as the only way to pursue his own vocation, in this city, this hour so fragmented and so lost. Yet from the first he had found (and with such surprise that now, recalling it, he feels abashed: how not know it would be so, must be so?) that such pursuit would take him into the chambers of the heart, his own heart, to carry that moral tale: for gods and heroes are not only for the past, old books one reads with longing, they are for today, for every age.
And what joy he has had in these pages! his pen in no labor at all, it seems to fly as he writes this story that is their story—and his private gift and apology, too, for the sad lies told before, his own silence that kept them so long apart. There is a couplet the heroes sing together at the Opera, surely Haden will relish that bit—and in the end be glad for the surprise, the love and honor of it, worth all these cold weeks of disapproval and secrecy.
Though M Marcus, Stephanos, Istvan has intuited his play, or somehow guessed it outright: wrapped like a sibyl in a vicuna morning coat, silver glove and cigarette, sipping tea or something in a teacup beside the unused Wheel of Fortune, asking Where do you go so busily, Marquis? as if he already knew. Or should it be Mercutio? You’ve a very passionate air these days, to Frédéric flustered and shrugging: Well, the pageant, of course—and might you be taking some part in it, too? Haden said—then blushing, more flustered, Istvan leaning forward as if amused, as if pulling him out of a swamp: Why, I’ll do as circumstances suggest, as always. As does Herr St.-Mary. He’s quite the general now, isn’t he?
Yes, he is—and then they had talked, quite easily there in that quiet stage-side corner, that spiral of Turkish smoke, Frédéric’s one hand on the Wheel as if to spin it free of its shrouding cloth, Sum sine regno: but he did not spin it, only ran his hand up and down its curve as he spoke of his own ambitions for Haden—Wouldn’t he make a perfect Julius Caesar? Or Tamburlaine, ‘ye pampered jades of Asia,’ can’t you see it! He’s a secret to himself, you know, he barely knows his own gifts. If one only could persuade him—
Indeed I do know, considering Frédéric then with a regard that recalled Haden’s own golden stare, if keener, cooler, more permanently at ease, though ringed by the shadows that speak of sleeplessness or care; what could bring such worry to him, this man who seems fazed by nothing at all? Our kit’s got the whiskers for any role he chooses. Only keep at him, a hand to his shoulder, an encouraging little shake; Frédéric has seen him jostle the puppets so, like athletes before a bout. The old emperors had their portraits painted with a dagger in one hand and a rose in the other—you two are such, and both are both, yeah? And with a fond heart to spin the wheel, why, how shall it not be well?
Is that how you and Herr Rupert get on? with a diffident smile, remembering a night in this very space, a shared and stormy kiss that set his own wheel spinning, spun him straight into Haden’s arms and You’ll find it all grows easier, Istvan smiling back. Not that, out there, adding a shrug, but one’s own story—and oh, to what a quantity of stories that shrug attests! to bring his own suggestions, then, of all they must have seen “out there,” these men who together have played so many places, stages, rooms of high repute and doubtless danger, returning from Far afield, Istvan’s nod in agreement, that shadow in his voice now, though his smile was easy still. On the way to Elysium, as are we all. But there’s a deal to do yet with the puppets, isn’t there, Misters Castor and Pollux brought home from their temporary lodgings, their coats still smelling faintly of the canals, to lodge beside Israfel and Faustus and One other, or may be two, who’s to say? They do propagate, though their pricks are only pegs, les comédiens de bois…. Will you use mecs in your pageant show?
No. Unless —No, with a resolute frown, for this play must be accomplished on his own, keep the rest of them clear, no more Aleks to go missing! but If you should need assistance, Istvan
placing that gloved hand upon his own upon the Wheel, you’ll call out, as if it were Frédéric’s own idea, Frédéric’s nod, Frédéric’s instruction as Pipper and the boys, with two new lads, arrived in his departure, fraying sheepskin collars and snowy caps, pointing them to where Istvan stood waiting in shadows and smoke: Go on—M Marcus, there, will show you what to do.
That the next hour involved some pleasant if hair-raising hazing with the irregularly rolling bowl and the laughing Faustus was not part of Frédéric’s purview, though at least one of the new boys enjoyed it and even Ru joined in the fun, shouting “Thumb your nose!” along with the others, Pipper the victor drawn aside by Istvan to ask, as if casually, whether or not the lad can properly tell time: “Surely can, sir,” Pipper’s vigorous nod and “A head for heights, too, I know that already,” Istvan giving him the light for his little gipsy smoke, itself containing no more hashish but something more like rabbit tobacco, a greenish perfume in the dimness as Ru romps off wearing a stiff-painted paper crown, and a cautious knock comes to the alley door—
—that knock unheard upstairs where Tilde, in woolen skirt with trousers beneath, bundled to her fingertips, frowns as she fans out the blue bills and farthings: No matter how she counts there is still not enough, but she must visit the butchers’ black market for bones to make stock—Sir greatly favored that soup before, and come from that swampy rooming-house, he must be fed better fare…. On the table before her are the cards, unconsulted today, this week, for nearly a fortnight, as one crosses the avenue to flee the bringer of unwanted news, what she does not or cannot yet hear. Next to the cards lies a rumpled pile of linen, meant to be cut into nightshirts, one for Ru and one for Sir—though he said he had another in his trunk, the traveling-trunk stuck somewhere at the train station, and why is that? Pipper should be sent to bring it home —