The Bastards' Paradise

by Kathe Koja

  So “No loss,” he says again, for both she and the palpitating Roland Smalls are no longer part of his troupe nor needed on his stage, they have served all their purposes and more. Between the two of them the letterbox is almost full, and with the Caesar’s money box as well Mouse shall be provisioned, well-provisioned…. And if they must hunker quietly behind the hidey-hole Mercury doors, why, there are a thousand other places where a pair of showmen might mount a show whose payment is to be the playing only, a cheery nose thumbed at the powers that be—one must start with the church, of course, but from there it is just a hop to other useful venues, like the Festus Clock, or this dried-up fountain, here, with its black-scrawled naiads and glum company of fellows one step away from the conscript’s line; or that ironwork balcony, where no Juliet has heaved a proper sigh for ages; or this tobacconist’s shop, where, as he purchases another packet of Ravens, the shopkeeper eyes him as nervously as if he were a thief, why he is a thief! a thief with a dozen hands, some of flesh, some of wood, and tonight’s accomplice-to-be, shall it be the Faustus? Or is it Mr. Pollux who shall serve? May be he ought consult with Mick—that will jolly the lad, and keep him on the threshold where he belongs, for this play is no place for his honest heart. The invincible ladies, now —

  But those ladies are not at all in evidence when Istvan turns the key, only the unappetizing smell of burned soup, Ru napping beneath the worktable on a blue puddle of cloak, wearing the pigeon-feather hat, and Mick above with his Van, busy with a tool Istvan recognizes with a smile, an old, old instrument half a knife and half a kind of buttonhook, as “It’s useful still,” he says, coming to stand at Mick’s shoulder, and gaze down into the well-remembered face. “And I still owe you a toss at the Golden Calf. May be we’ll play a show there, one day…. It’s a shame we can’t put this stage to better use,” reaching to jingle, very lightly, the bell at Van’s natty lapel; he looks older, the lines sharp at his lips as he pulls at another cigarette. Mick remembers with a little pang that figure from his childhood, glamorous Mister Istvan, with his wicked Pan and his irresistible glee, who seemed to make of every moment a kind of play, so “You’ve got a stage tonight,” he says, his shrug no shield for his longing. “Why not use him there,” tapping Van, “and me, too? And not that St.-Mary thug, what’s he know of playing that I don’t? Or any other thing!”

  “He knows this city far better than I. And I know him. Though never so long as we two have known each other, recall those ‘Angels on Horseback’?” leading him back to the Blackbird, to memories that give joy to Mick if less to himself; conflating then those times of play with this one, this night, this marshaling of the forces as he selects his night’s companion, the costume he shall wear, costumes for them both, all the ordnance neatly into the case for “You recall that General, who used to devil us? These toffs I feint with are only his shadows, but still I’d have—not a pound, I’m not greedy; call it an ounce of flesh, for an ounce will keep us nicely here, Mr. Rupert and me. Mr. Rupert’s to be no part of this, mind, not a word…. If I could, I’d take you and your gentleman with me into the lists—”

  “I’m not no gent,” says Van, jingling his bell.

  “—but here is where you’re most needed, to step up sharpish if anything should go wrong. You’re the strongest soldier we’ve got, except for—”

  “Step up yourself,” from above, Rupert calling from the darkness of the second landing. Mick’s gaze cuts to Istvan with apprehension, thinking how best to frame the warning, but “Our general himself,” Istvan light from the worktable, easy up the stairs to where Rupert waits, cigar burning, following him into their rooms to shut the door firmly behind and “Our trunk,” Rupert says, folding his arms; the whiskey bottle sits empty; the copybook is nowhere to be seen. “Where is it? Mick went to the station to fetch it, but it’s gone.”

  “Why,” Istvan still easy, fully alarmed and on guard, “there must be some confusion. I’ll go and check myself—”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “—but not just now. I’m expected elsewhere.”

  “For supper,” Rupert agrees with a nod. “But let’s have a smoke, first,” one hard hand reaching into Istvan’s coat, searching him roughly as a bailiff might until he finds the cigarette case, opens it to eye the rubied butterfly, hurls it at the wall so hard its mark will mar that wood forever and “Your trick was here,” as Istvan stiffens, the stillness of pure anger, though his voice is steady: “What, the butterfly? He’s not a trick, he’s the wheels on the omnibus, to get where one needs to go. And I never—”

  “Stop.” The gaslight is feeble, then much too bright; the room swims with stale smoke; Rupert’s spectacles glitter. “Not the same old lie. In Paris I knew, but—You said you’d rather eat beans, you said you’d rather be hanged than—”

  “I would rather. I don’t dance for him, or them, it’s all for—”

  “Not for me, messire, I won’t have it or hear it! I’d go back to the road—”

  “Oh no doubt! So you could leave me as you did before! You and your endless fucking scruples!” Istvan bends to gather up the fallen cigarettes, takes one and lets the others drop; as he lights it, the flame wavers visibly. “How do you think I’ve paid for our prospects all this time? And took such care for—”

  “Prospects?” Rupert throws down his own cigar; his lips twist. “Once a whore, always a whore—I was a pimp, I should know. So now I’m to die, it’s natural you’d seek someone new to keep you—”

  —as Istvan strikes so furiously that Rupert staggers, a great blow to the chest, Rupert crashing back into the desk, arm half raised as if to strike back—but instead he coughs, a dreadful ragged cough that sends Istvan instant to his side but “Get off!” Rupert cries, turning his back, wrenching out his stained handkerchief, coughing till the handkerchief blooms red, a hideous and brilliant color and “Be fucked, be fucked to all of it,” Istvan as white as if he bleeds himself, a ghost’s mutter, out from the room pursued by the sound of that cough, down the stairs for the puppet case as Mick and Van stand tensely watching, both as still as if both are wood as to both he says “Cry havoc,” in a voice as calm as a lunatic’s, then disappears past the alley door.

  Unlike Roland Smalls, he is fortunate to find a cab at once, one just vacated by a cooing couple who, as they step foot into the public avenue, must pretend to be merely a devoted wife and the devoted friend of her husband; although it is telling that that wife, when she stumbles over a bag of wet rags that turns out to be the curled and plundered body of Roland Smalls, lets out a screech and hurls herself into that friend’s arms as if she fully belongs there. And Roland Smalls, if such consideration is possible in whatever kinder realm he now inhabits, might pardon her reaction, considering that though in death he is even smaller—missing wallet, watch, red jade cufflinks and his spats, as well as his immortal soul—he is also in a greater way at last enlarged and ennobled, for in the strictest, truest, most tragic sense he has died for love.

  It is a tragic mask that Mr. Ridley presents to his landlord—“By Tuesday, I swear to you! I’ll have last month’s and this one’s too”—and though the landlord bellows for justice from whatever gods might be abroad on this cold evening, he does not immediately evict Samuel Ridley as threatened, nor force him to toss into the street “Your tenant,” that owl-eyed young fellow, dirty coat and scholar’s satchel on his arm, who follows Ridley into the building. “Now my tenant’s got a tenant! And neither one pays me a sou!”

  “Tuesday, on my mother’s grave. —He’s not a bad sort, really,” says Mr. Ridley to Frédéric, as the landlord clumps upstairs. “Only lacking in imagination. No such lack here,” one proud hand to indicate the silent clutter of the studio, backdrops and portrait props, false garlands and chipped mahogany side tables, and columns just like “The ones at the Athenaeum. Or the Cathedral,” says Frédéric; he seats himself on a wicker stool; his knee aches abominably, though less so than his heart, what must Haden be thinking of him now? t
hat he has run off, run away home? “St. Mary of Dolors…. You’re not to photograph the pageant, then?”

  “No. They said they’d no further use for me, after they saw my portraits,” though less dismayed than he might be; Mr. Ridley is nothing if not resourceful. “But no one can stop a fellow from setting up in the street, can they? And documenting a public show?”

  “Actually they can—there’s a law against ‘interfering with assembly.’ But what difference does that make? A man must do as he does,” Frédéric less reckless than purely resolute; after nearly falling several times from the vertiginous roof, and once more for good measure down the slippery fire ladder, then these last nights sleeping in the Park, harried by Savvys and furtive drunks, dodging the patrolling constables, he feels like Dante, more than at home in hell, though still no closer to his goal. It was Mr. Ridley who stumbled on him hunkered grey-faced on a bench, drew him inside a tired little café, bought him a bun and a hot cup his numb hands could barely hold, to speak ramblingly of various issues—deprivations, translations, the current state of journalism, half the papers being unreadable and the other half a joke, oh for the days of Herrs Hebert and Konrad! and encouraging him to tell his tale of current woe, so “I’ll thank you again for your offer, since what I mean to do is illegal, too, most of it. You’re very sure you want to take part?”

  “Besides the Christian charity of helping a fellow artist in need, that Krystof still owes me,” as Mr. Ridley pulls a cork from a bottle of what seems to be gin, takes a swig, takes another, then passes it to Frédéric, who receives it like the nectar of the gods, his aching stomach expanding; the bun was his first meal today, and yesterday’s only a bowl of boiled eggs small enough to be songbirds’, and a mug of twiggy, questionable soup. “A fortnight’s worth of painting and retouching, and he snaps his fingers in my face, and sets his man-dog on me! No wonder he’s a fine townhouse and I’ve this dungeon, eh?” though with a certain cheer; there are natures that relish adversity, as some prefer to swim in chop and waves. “I’m not surprised he took your work without paying.”

  “He did pay,” says Frédéric, honest even in his anger, “but for its writing only, and only half. And even though it shan’t be given at the pageant, now, I want—it must be played.”

  “At the Mercury?” asks Mr. Ridley shrewdly, happily. “With those puppets, and—”

  “Never the Mercury.”

  “’Never’s as false as always,’” quotes Mr. Ridley, taking back the gin, affixing a lady’s curling hairpiece for a beard, mourning anew Nella’s absence for “It’s always best to have a woman at your side, especially when you’re onto something tricky—Nella dressed so prim, she’d have made a perfect lookout. Why can’t we partner up with your missus, eh? Or get M Marek to charm Krystof silly, while Herr St.-Mary knocks that lunkhead for a loop!” but “It’s easier just with two,” says Frédéric, neither a truthful nor a viable explanation, but in the end this is his play to make or botch. And though there are ongoing difficulties of conscience at involving Samuel Ridley, Ridley himself was quick to invoke quid pro quo and his own portrait ambitions, for he is determined to capture Istvan Marek before the man leaves town again!

  So, beard in place, Mr. Ridley pauses at the door to make sure he wears his militia pin, noting with alarm that “You’ve not got yours?” but “Here,” Frédéric taking up a hard paper rosette, still bravely red, to tear and twist into a fine approximation; from a distance of several feet it is exact, though not as good as the one he had first fashioned from a dressmaker’s pin, plucked from an unsuspecting young lady’s hat on the ’bus. That one must have fallen off in the Park, or the street outside Krystof’s townhouse, as he paced behind a snowy half-wall, watching and waiting for the chance that never came; though John Abram left and entered with a noted regularity, and others entered, too, several of them dressed in clergy’s clothes, suggesting to Frédéric’s mind the Scripture verse about the den of thieves. To warm himself he repeated a different verse, a quote from his own opus—No woman born/Can bring your heart to stand, O Hadrian—imagining it sung out on a stage, a great stage somewhere with shining lights and a chanting chorus, and Haden there beside him, hand in hand to listen, and to smile.

  Now Mr. Ridley checks to see that the landlord is not lurking in the stairwell, and that the street outside is “Clear and ready,” his conspirator’s nod to Frédéric beside, blue cravat his flag of honor, armed with his bag and the rusty-bladed knife, though the thought of using it on someone is more frightful than the thought of being cut himself. As he and his new ally exit, Frédéric asks if “You’re certain that sideway will be open?” and “To us, for certain,” says Mr. Ridley with a little chuckle. “One of the maids is sweet on me, Constance she is, or is it Consolata? Whichever, she’s a pretty one, biggest globes I’ve ever seen outside a fancy house, or at that Cockrill’s Palace. Remember Cockrill’s Palace?”

  —as they step into a transient blizzard, a drift of rooftop snow blown down by the rising wind, up streets whose crowds thin or swell depending on the buildings beside: none for the barber who has closed entirely, more for the lecture parlor where moist-breathing warmth and, sometimes, thimbles of wine can be had, less again for the hotels like the Montblanc or the Baltic, that latter a cold haven indeed for two travelers who, had they looked down from their windows or Frédéric up, might have achieved a family reunion on the spot: Mr. and Mrs. Blum, whose attempts to make contact with their son have so far found no success, the address on the letters having proved to be a postal drop. Mr. Blum has begun to believe that this trip is the crowning tinklebell on the fool’s cap, but “Of course we shall find him,” says Mrs. Blum, writing a note for the hotel runner to take to the tailor down the block; Frédéric’s child will need a traveling suit, something presentable in wool or serge, all the children here seem to go about in tatters. “Why else did we arrive at the same time as the pageant?”

  “What pageant?”

  “You notice nothing that isn’t on a ledger! But the Blessed Virgin will answer my prayers. Even if he’s off about his business—”

  “What business?” sourly.

  “—his—that woman must still be here somewhere, she and the child. Where else would she be?”

  In fact that young woman has herself very recently passed not far from those very windows, trousered and red-pinned Tomik Bok squiring Mrs. Pimm, whose quest too has met with failure: to find the toff hotel was easy, to enter it somewhat less so, the doors all guarded up like a bank! But to persuade the liveried young servant, even with the temptation of Lucy’s money, backed by Tilde’s threatening glower—

  You know M Marcus, you played for him at the Mercury. And I fed you there. Plenty more than your share!

  I can’t let you walk up into some lordship’s rooms! I’d lose my place here quick as quick—

  It’s only for a moment, Lucy’s whispered wheedle, and what he’s got inside is ours anyroad. Just take this, and drop that skeleton key—

  —proved in the end impossible, sending them back empty-handed to the street, the foreign-type lady and her guard with the little mustache, whose boyish affectations rouse Lucy’s player’s spirit anew, for “You’ve got the strut just right,” she says approvingly. “We’ll get you onstage yet!” Arm-in-arm across Liberty Square, skirting for prudence’s sake a little crowd gathered outside the shoe shop, the proprietress strident at its heart—“He was knocking there, knocking and knocking, that lordship! I saw him myself!”—and “Now who might that be?” Lucy peering toward their alley destination, two figures waiting by the Mercury door, a tubby man and a bare-headed woman who looks somewhat the worse for wear, sagging in his grasp, is the lady ill?

  —but “Hold right there,” comes a voice from just behind them: a pair of very young men, just boys, greasy grins and hands-out. “Time to pay the sidewalk tax.”

  “Keep walking, sonny,” Lucy shoving her muff pistol into the nearer one’s snout as Tilde flashes her knife at the other, the
boys scrambling back to the avenue as “It’s Cockrill,” calls the visitor, Alban Cockrill betrayed and defrauded, brushed coat and gold-tinned boot buckles in the end not fine enough to give entry to the much-desired Roman soiree, Elsa there acting the great lady, as if she had never laid eyes on him before! So for solace he sought another lady’s company, Mrs. Gawdy on his arm as he enters the Mercury, brightened at once at the sight of Mick and Van; and Mick’s own defraudment soothed by the chance to instruct so eager and complimentary a pupil, and examine that doughty old lady-player, contrasting her yarn-sewn simplicities with Miss Lucinda’s sophisticated ways; as Lucy, with Ru drowsing on her lap, watches Tilde climb the stairs to the silent third floor, to knock, and knock, and be turned away.

  At Caesar’s Court the mood is very different, very hectic and competitively gay: the ladies flaunting their Romanesque fashions, each more diaphanous and daring than the last—Frau Konstantin is nearly bare beneath her sapphires—while the men compare notes of the day’s battles and losses, mainly losses, some irreparable; it is clear the rate of conscription must increase. Other guests, like Felix Krystof, seem content to sip the rum-and-currant punch and enjoy the decorations, the deep green swags of frosted ivy, spruce, and braided asphodel, the heated drift of censered incense, the pedestaled gods draped here and there as if against an encroaching chill; while a table of visitors new to the city, M Edmund Gabriel and several comrades, arrived specifically to make merry with their old friend Roland Smalls, wonder aloud wherever the man can be—