The Bastards' Paradise

by Kathe Koja

  “And you as well,” as he descends, as they shake hands, Mick surprised to see Mr. Rupert all greyed up like an old wolf, though his back is still soldier-straight, Rupert noting that little Mickey now stands nearly eye-to-eye with him, who ever would have guessed it? with a rooster’s shock of hair, and a good strong grasp, no doubt from all the playing. “We missed you on our visit. And your Pimm,” to Lucy, who crosses then to claim her own welcoming embrace, who rests her cheek, eyes closed, against Rupert’s chest as “Our Mr. Pimm,” Mick says, “I’m that sorry to say that he’s passed on, sir. It’s why we’ve closed up the theatre, and come here.”

  “Was it that sickness you wrote of?” Tilde asks, as Lucy’s tears begin, those tears drawing Istvan to set aside the Faustus, to stroke Lucy’s bent head as she weeps in Rupert’s arms: the trio in tableau for a long sad moment, Tilde’s gaze veiled with pity, Mick’s eyes to Tilde and his back still to Haden, Haden who watches without understanding—And who now is dead Mr. Pimm?—until “How I wish he could have seen you so!” says Lucy finally, handkerchief tugged from her sleeve to dry her eyes. “But Mick’s come in his stead, hasn’t he. And you,” to Istvan with resolute cheer, “you’ll be that pleased to see what he does with your old fellow, it’s the best turn-out in town. ‘Save it for Skipjack,’ right,” nodding encouragingly to Mick—

  —who flushes as Tilde looks his way for the first time with any interest, those eyes! and “I took a bit here and there from the old routines, just like you taught us,” Mick says, speaking to Istvan but looking to the case, his reaching hands to the locks, every motion more rapid and sure, as if it is himself he unlocks now, makes ready to put on show. “Me and Didier, remember Didier? And those puppets you cut for us, the devil and girl and whatnot? And then I spun it up my own way…. It’s true to say that it’s been popular, quite popular,” Van rising like a well-spiffed stranger from the blue silk lining, all of them watching now but for Rupert, who watches Istvan only, resting his hand upon Istvan’s shoulder as “‘Save it for Skipjack,’ that’s his line,” as Van in his brocade cap nods to Mick in comrades’ agreement. “And don’t they bawl it out when he does! The henhouse and the peanut-slingers go wild,” making Van bow with a fluidity, a rude and graceful brio that recalls his origins and refines them, a révérence to his godfather, who nods, accepting the tribute, noting the neatly trimmed hair and gold-buttoned waistcoat of this mec, the lovingly crafted boots, better boots than Mickey’s! and far better than ever he wore before: boots that make a little skip, yes, there in the air, kicking out like a Russian dancer as “Save it for Skipjack,” Mick chants in a sudden jolly baritone, “give it to Skipjack, just like a dog with a bone!” Mick freed by the appearance of this Van who once was Pan, Pan Loudermilk and someone else besides in the long-ago, who has played more shows than Mick has himself, who is shy of no man and no crowd and certainly unafraid of this place, with its old-fashioned lamps and singed-up curtains and seats to fit barely fifty watchers, when the two of them are used to playing for three times that a night! And making the cash that kept the Blackbird flying, how many times did Pimm tell him so himself? man to man there in the kitchen and She likes to have those little ones about her, it eases her heart to teach ’em. But it’s you who cooks the bacon here, son, and that’s a fact. How glad would Pimm be, may be is in some all-seeing Heavenly hen’s roost, to look down on Mrs. Lucy smiling so again, reunited with her friends, and brought to it safely by himself, who will watch out for her in this dangerous city, until they may leave for home once more —

  —so “Save it for Skipjack, it’s in his knapsack,” the boutonnière bell ringing, the jigging feet flying, a complicated polka as Mick taps his own foot in rapid rhythm, as Lucy claps her hands, Tilde clapping in time, Istvan watching with arms folded as Rupert murmurs in his ear to bring a sidewise smile—perhaps it is a memory of Marco that he shares, or of the Misters, perhaps some frolic still to be—Istvan brightening further as he murmurs back to Rupert, and “Let Skipjack carry it home!” Van flinging out his arms to toss a flowery tribute: not to Istvan after all, but the rosebud from his buttonhole, a wink of pink paper that arcs to drop at Tilde’s feet as neatly as if it were placed there and call from her the smile first seen in a rainy Paris park, when a flying horse was put through his paces for her pleasure, to the tune of another song that promised to lead its listeners home.

  Past the applause, enthusiastic and augmented with stampings from the lads, applause in which Haden pointedly does not join, Tilde tucks away the little rose and sets the pot on to boiling, sits Lucy and Rupert at the table, Mick to settle Van back in his case and take the third chair, where he perches at the edge of boasting with tales of the Blackbird’s popularity: “They fill up, every seat of ’em, even on the quietest nights, everyone from the mayor on down. Don’t think you do so here, do you?” and “There’s a war on,” Tilde notes briefly, cutting black bread, Haden’s gaze cutting to Mick before Istvan beckons Haden toward the stage, their very quiet conversation overlaid by the gambols of the boys—

  “Time to stake the stake, yeah? Parolet, or what’s it called here, cocking?”

  “It’s a wonder no one’s tried it sooner—old Caesar’s riddled up like a rotten cheese, we can go in and out six different ways if we like.”

  “We won’t need so many, but it’s good to know. Did you happen to mark where they keep that second moneybox?”

  —until the alley door opens once more, snatched by the wind with a crash to startle the little audience, send hands to pockets and Lucy’s hurried for the muff—though it is only Frédéric, Frédéric limping inside as “What’s all this?” Haden’s gaze narrowing at once to note the torn shirt collar, the fresh-blooming bruises but “It’s nothing,” Frédéric hasty and trying to evade Haden’s approach, Haden’s hands on him roughly checking for other hurts. “Really, nothing at all—”

  —but as he speaks his knee collapses, he almost falls, Haden seizing him upright in greater alarm—“Who did this!”—while the lads, no longer larky players but soldiers of the streets, drop their props to gather at Haden’s side, to ring them both while the yellow stare pins Frédéric’s own until “The play script,” Frédéric groans, as if confessing a crime. “I meant to copy it, I never thought— It was to be a surprise! But now—”

  “What are you saying, are you knocked in the head? Who the fuck—”

  “Tell what happened!” Tilde snaps, Ru scrambling to her skirts as “I do beg your pardon,” Frédéric suddenly seeing, suddenly startled by the presence of the strangers, neatening his coat in ragged parlor reflex but “They’re friends,” Rupert says, and “Players,” Istvan seconds. “Only say what’s happened—you promised to call out, recall?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. —There was a disagreement, an editorial disagreement. And Felix Krystof, or rather his servant— But you needn’t all involve yourselves, we shall get it back,” his look now for Haden alone, a gaze of such pure confidence that Haden feels his heart expand, chambers unto chambers, love and rage and the flare of memory, the ranting rentier, blood and amethyst and “Pipper,” he says, calmed now by the violence to be, “you and, what’s it, Jakob, ready up, we’ll go pin that fucking papermonger to the wall. You,” to the tallest boy, a new recruit, “can follow for a peeper—Not you,” as Frédéric girds himself, wipes his face with his scarf. “No need for you to take another beating.”

  “But you won’t know, you won’t be able to find— My script,” the color struggling to his face, urgent past the pallor. “For the pageant! That’s what’s at stake here, that’s what we must retrieve—”

  “Script? You can write fifty scripts, what does that matter? We’ll give that gamy bastard a role to play in— What?” at bay together and face to face, the twinned intensity of very different beasts as “Listen to me!” Frédéric’s shout nearly a cry. “Listen, you don’t understand!” but “Look at you,” Haden through his teeth, wrung anew by the smeared spectacle of the blood, the sluglike cheekbone swe
lling, and half kneecapped in the bargain! “What did I say about that fucking pageant? And Kristof? You an’t even be fooling with such, you don’t belong—”

  “I belong where you are,” gone from shout to murmur, even Haden barely hears that last as Frédéric, his eyes enormous, turns away, and as Haden grasps again for him shoves back, a stiff two-handed thrust to Haden’s chest, nearly toppling himself from the force of it—

  —and Haden turning up a face as white as bone, his lads scattering back wary as young wolves as with a curse less word than snarl he seizes at the fourth and empty chair, as though he will hurl it, smash it to bits but “Stop,” from Rupert hard and quiet, a lifetime’s command in his stare, fixing that stare on Haden, who glares back, teeth clamped to his lip —

  —while Istvan calls out, inscrutable, glacial—“Marquis”—one gloved finger beckoning Frédéric, who veers crookedly toward the stage, as Haden slings the chair aside to storm to the alley door, Rupert instant to follow, put himself between Haden and that door and “Be wise,” forcefully, still quietly, careful not to put hands on Haden. “To stop now means now, not never. And there are better ways to take a man than by the throat—”

  “You say it!”

  “I do say it, I’ve done it, and seen worse harm come in its wake,” with a thumb jerked at Istvan, his gaze remembering a room, a knife, a letterbox, a quiet gentleman in a bedside chair; playing the puppets, yes. “I’d have done better to hit less, but harder! Only be wise,” again and in appeal, not an order, Haden’s gaze murky with wrath, but he is listening —

  —as Istvan puts his mouth nearly to Frédéric’s ear, his breath there warm, rapid, oddly soothing as “No notes saved, or any such? Ah, it’s a great pity! But all can still be well, I never wrote a line and still we managed to play—”

  “That play was for him,” says Frédéric, staring at the damp-warped floor, as if his next actions might somehow be written out there. “Herr Krystof paid me, he was to pay again today, but— It was to save us.”

  “There can be many saviors, many mansions—sur l’pavé, yeah? And comedians, too, more all the time,” looking musingly over his shoulder to Mick as Frédéric looks to the lone Israfel on his hook, the still avenging angel and “Here, wash it all away,” Istvan proffering the flask, Frédéric drinking the yellow brandy in a gulp great enough to make even a seasoned tippler choke; he does not choke; the color settles warmer into his cheeks. “And tuck in your nuts, we’ll make a way to make your play,” as Frédéric nods, though less to Istvan than at him, limping off then to the stairway, with a rote bow to the ladies as he passes by.

  It is Tilde who sets the Faustus to one side, his wooden head lolling back amongst the tea cups and mismatched spoons, as if he were a guest overcome by emotion or strong drink, as she shrugs darkly to Lucy—“You see how it is here”—before adding with urgent diffidence, “Ought I pick up a sticker for you to use, madame? There’s a Frenchman by the sewer gate sells all kinds, some just as small as a finger bone,” an offer that brings Lucy’s sharp little wink, passing to Tilde the silver-chained muff—“See how that fits”—watching as Tilde’s fingers find the pistol inside; she smiles; Lucy smiles too and “A lady needs to be prepared for anything,” says Lucy, pouring out the tea that has steeped brown as curbside mud—

  —with a cup untouched for Mick, who sits in unaccustomed stillness, feeling as if he has entered some clockwork pageant in its middle, unsure of the story line or what role he ought to play. Though he has played at last, he and Van, before Mister Istvan! who clapped, he did clap, he knows what he saw, yet surely knows too that there is so much more to show? Mick’s gaze finds the hung Misters, that gaudy plaid cravat; then roams to the backstage, the flies and catwalk, taking the measure of the space: that pocket stage, there, might they play it some night together? while Mrs. Lucy starts up a tale of the old days, of the Lady de Metz—“Isobel, dear, you know”—and evil General Georges, all those strange and perilous events that took place beneath the Blackbird’s roof. Yet to him, and Didier and the rose-red sisters, those days were mainly playtime and scamper, whoever can guess what a child thinks or sees? See this little boy, now, tugging manfully at the chair flung by that cat-eyed fellow in his snit: Mick reaches to set it right, gives the boy a reassuring smile—

  —that Ru ignores entirely, for the man is not a friend to Hay, this man who has brought with him another puppet, a stranger puppet with sad eyes and a bell, though he is not really sad, that puppet, not at all. Ru knows, has always known without another’s telling, that puppets have their own world, their own lives: he has seen it himself, the way the angel lightly flexes his wings when no one else is watching, or the devil creaks and twists in the sunlight, as if its heat feels pleasantly to him. And the others, the Castor-and-Pollux, when one moves the other moves too, always…. It is something like the brave horse with wings in the Park, who misses the air, with no one ever to ride him: high over the trees and the Bridge and the clock tower, all small below like pictures in a storybook, the stories that Hay sometimes brings him—

  —Haden who nods angrily, grudgingly to Rupert, Rupert nodding back—“Wisdom for now. And when it’s time you’ll tell me, messire”—so “Come on,” Haden curt then to his lads. “We’ll go deal some fucking faro, hurt someone that way,” slamming the door behind hard enough to rattle the ninepins, as Mick watches with mystified contempt: Cards, what good can cards be! And this is Mister Istvan’s fine lieutenant? But he says nothing, only busies himself, as the ladies talk, with a bit of colored newsprint, fashioning another petite and cunning flower: Van already knows a pretty song or two, even a love song, though Mlle Tilde doubtless has a fellow—if neither of these new fellows, looks like—yet surely some man, that little lad has to have a father. But still…. His gaze rises as if pulled by a string, to note how fine she holds herself, shoulders up like a regular princess, even if she is wearing some manner of trouser-pants; and those eyes, Lord what eyes, just as blue as a bluebird’s wing.

  Alone upstairs, past the cold and bloodied basin water, Frédéric slowly rummages for the arnica, tearing an already-ragged shirt to strips to bind his knee, so swollen now that he can barely tug up the trouser leg, itself marked black from John Abram’s thick-soled boot. Within the armoire lies a stack of neatly folded handkerchiefs, including the one wherein he has hidden the Christopher medal, which he now removes, to reverently kiss, then clasp around his neck; he will never be without it again. Piled beside those handkerchiefs are Haden’s abandoned cravats—such vivid things, all gold trim and gay garish patterns, here a sunburst plaid, there the azure one from the Opera—it is that cravat that he selects, tying it as carefully as if he is summoned to an audience at court. Then he adds more pen and paper to his gypsy bag, he adds a flimsy, rusty, horn-backed knife, he crosses himself three times: once for Haden’s safety, once for his own return, and once for the folk of the Mercury, including the visitors, whomever they may be. Then—forgetting to add to his change of coat the necessary, the essential red pin—he turns for the stairs, to go not down but up, as stealthy as a thief if never as nimble, to the third floor, the hatchway from which, if the climber is daring and cautious, he might quit the building entirely, and no one to know that he has gone.

  The only one to observe this highly hazardous exit is Alban Cockrill, but the sight from below is so dim and improbable—a body on the icy rooftop, now crawling like a crab, now skidding like a panicked squirrel, now hanging like an acrobat from the fire ladder—that Cockrill puts it all down to the snow and his aging eyes, bad light and conditions worsening by the day; he is living off dried chestnuts and mincemeat, has not dared a show in the Park for weeks. Though today’s good news has him bold to make his way to the old Mercury, even if that little Missus there puts the boots to him: for the news is out, the great M Hilaire, now called Marcus, is to play a special show at that high-tone Roman club! Elsa, the maid who sits the door, told him so, in between complaining about Johan who runs the place and th
e dirty old lordship who stuck his finger in her stinkpot, Up to the knuckle, is that dirty, you tell me! but I’ll do anything, he had begged, and for a bag of paste jewelry that used to adorn his own girls but sits sadly out of place on Mrs. Gawdy, Elsa has promised that she will ease him into the building If you’ve got a nicer coat than that to show. And better boots! so at this very moment he steps into the shoe shop to have false gold buckles added to his clodhops and make himself look somewhat more like a livery man and somewhat less out of place.

  The shoe-shop woman is always full of forebodings, but today she is even more dire, warning that the omnibus drivers are about to mutiny, Prussians have taken over all the tea stands, and some strange new tenants are roosting at that theatre-that-was, a fancy-type man who looks remarkably like another man who cheated her on a boot blacking, and this very day “Two others,” she reports. “Some lady—if she is a lady—and a younger, foreign fellow, Klaus Karel told me himself, can’t speak a word but gibble-gabble. Why must so many foreigners come here!”

  And Alban Cockrill shrugs, wondering whom that foreign-type lady and fellow might be, as a ’bus whose driver still recognizes the authority of the state rolls slowly up the avenue, its exterior need of repairs felt keenly by those riding inside, where the cold wind penetrates along the cracked window seams, though not thoroughly enough to efface the odors of very cheap pipe tobacco, unwashed wool, runny newsprint ink and “Sardines?” offers the man jammed next to Mr. Blum, who is staring out the window with his jaw so tight it might crack—the indignity of it, an omnibus, not even a proper cab! To be pinched so in spending, at his time of life, it is well-nigh unbearable —

  —past his wife, whose head is swimming from a mixture of fumes and excitement, her heart lifting as she sees the hallowed spires of the Cathedral of St. Mary of Dolors, where a great pageant is about to be presented, half the people on the train had talked of nothing else—and where her dear Frédéric may even now, this moment, be in its choir! It is a sign, this pageant, surely. At first she had been frightened that Frédéric’s failure to answer her last and all-important letter meant that something dire had occurred, but this city so rife with beggars and barricades must mean that he never received it, which will make this visit a true miracle to him. As for the strumpet wife —