The Bastards' Paradise

by Kathe Koja

  “One can never trust the lovestruck, they’re so prone to sudden swerves. That’s his agnes right there, isn’t it? The Italian girl?”

  “I thought she was Spanish. Perhaps he’s planning to arrive with his inamorato, that player fellow he’s so hard for—”

  “Hard for? He’s over the moon, is Childe Rowland.”

  “Remember him at the Pale Ophelia? ‘It’s all just bums and willies, isn’t it?’” the shared and knowing laugh until “Enough of business talk!” calls Frau Richter, imperial in pointed headdress, raising her punch glass high. “We’ll have a toast, then begin our evening’s entertainment,” with a nod to Portia del Azore radiant in green and white, her gaze as radiant: in the place of honor beside her patroness, this room her elevation, this night her peak. The tables are packed with gentry, Roland Smalls is not here to cast a pall, Stephanos is here and continues unusually amiable: to his white-suited helper in the black domino mask, who received for him the payment she was very careful to proffer first; to the simpering maid, the grinning tailor; even to sulking Letty van Syman’s sister, a plump young matron in ermine and red silks, rustling over to Portia with an earnest request —

  Might I be presented to your entertainer, Marchioness, before the performance begins? We’ve met before, though I’m sure he won’t remember. I’d consider it a great favor—

  —and that conversation as easy to broach as to broker, Stephanos gracious in the hallway’s shadows to recall with a bow The garden party, yes. Your mother had peacocks and You do remember! with a little flutter like the girl she had been, always the more romantic of the sisters. That was a wonderful fête, much the best of an unhappy time. My late father was having difficulties then, political difficulties—

  I recall hearing of such. Very sad.

  —but it was like magic, you and that little wooden man! Will you have him again tonight? her eager question to call from Stephanos a completely unreadable smile, a brief pat of her ruby-ringed hand and That comrade is engaged elsewhere, but he’d be pleased to know that he was of service to you. Tonight my associate is called Mr. Castor, and as we are shortly to begin—? looking then to Portia, his gaze swirled black with kohl, all in black but for his pearl earring and a golden cravat, poorly stitched and garish, like nothing he has worn before but You like my regalia? his murmur to her as the van Symans daughter happily departed. Jolly bright for a jolly night…. Where’s our friend the butterfly? as his helper lit for him a last cigarette, past Portia’s shrug of brisk relief—I don’t know, and I don’t care—which made Stephanos smile again, a curious smile and I’m glad to hear you speak so. He’s not the journeyman for you any longer, after tonight you’ll be walking a very different road. Single-minded, with a cloven soul—you’ll go far.

  Thanks to you, her reply as heartfelt as her smile, the smile of a woman who knows the fates are with her; she even reached to squeeze his arm, surprised somewhat by the tension she found there, the rock-hard muscle beneath the black serge as Thank me later. Now it’s time for us to whistle up the gods, a little wink through a little cloud of smoke; forever after she will recall that smell, its harsh perfume, will associate it with loss, defeat, disgrace, as Stephanos turns with a half bow of final farewell to Portia del Azore, fraud herself and would-be trickster, clever Polly who will never guess how this trick shall be played—

  —as Haden stands appalled by Istvan’s pallor: something has gone wrong, killing wrong, but his wary questions have had no answer, though his mutter now at the opening toasts—“She’s in for a harsh night, an’t she”—brings Istvan’s distant shrug: “One must be harsh to someone, and there she is. But she’ll weather it nicely, that young woman is cast iron all the way to her— Ah, not so tight, kit,” a wince as Haden laces on the plague mask as if looping a garrote, Haden having glimpsed in the crowd the face of Felix Krystof; as Istvan then does the same for Mr. Castor, that little mask still too large for Mr. Loup, Mr. Castor who holds in his heart the ancient white knife, his own heart the same, sharp-edged and bloody, a cause of pain no matter how it turns…. Head down, unpresent to all but unpresent Mouse, he kisses his fist, the old sweet gesture, for this last night belongs to Rupert whether he will have it or no, Haden bending close to whisper then from his own worry “Not to worry, uncle. Only play—”

  —as Istvan lifts his head and his gaze along with Mr. Castor, in full command again, the general of the boards and “Aut Caesar aut nullus,” with a fox’s smile for Haden as they step out in tandem, silhouetted for a moment in the archway like messengers from some other, more elemental world, the whore’s black vest Istvan’s vestment, the frosted ivy a moment’s wreath for Haden’s pale hair and “Here’s a party, messieurs et mesdames, to rouse up your spirits! And make a snap of the great beyond!” Istvan snapping his fingers in the velvety applause, advancing to select a handy cup—it happens to be Edmund Gabriel’s—and “A toast indeed,” taking a sip, making a face, handing the cup away to another at the table, that man glimpsing what Roland Smalls must see in this exotic player, his devilish goatee, the black-rimmed sparkle of his eyes behind the mask. “To our charming hostess! Whose fortunes we salute, my associates and myself,” making Mr. Castor bow, Haden bowing beside, his gaze seeking Felix Krystof once again as a finger finds a sore. “We’re honored to play for you here, our very last night in this locale—alas, yes, we must depart, the muse calls elsewhere,” bringing from the guests a buzz, raised eyebrows from Frau Richter to Portia, whose glowing smile falters, then freezes entirely as “The Marchioness,” Istvan nodding her way, “or is it Baroness? Or empress? Whatever rôle, Fraulein Chambermaid, we’re jealous of our stage this last night. You must find another for your show.”

  Frau Richter’s own smile flickers as she looks to Portia—“What does he mean? You’re part of the performance?” but “No longer of mine, madame,” Istvan’s stone-cold player’s wink, recalling a knife and a winey teacup, a plea to make them do things, do just as you wish: in Portia’s stare he sees that she remembers, too; one hand has taken hold of her skirt, a little strangling pleat. “She’s been mounting a play all her own, all this time, with those aped ballroom airs and graces—and the hats!” Mr. Castor tips his own, one shammer to another. “Quite the ladylike charade for a lowly chambermaid, eh? I never should have guessed it out myself, except—”

  “What is he saying?” Frau Richter staring now at Portia, Frau Richter taking a pointed step back as “This is absurd,” says Portia into the sudden silence, her voice too loud, too harsh, a chambermaid’s caw; she is sweating, her white silk neckline has gone grey. “Absolutely absurd! Sir Roland can tell you precisely who I am, Sir Roland and I—” as the men at that table look to the empty place, Roland Smalls no doubt dismayed by this awkward discovery, no doubt the reason he has failed to attend. Herr and Frau Konstantin are staring, Frau Ezterhaus is staring, everyone is staring, Letty van Symans lets out a quick little, spiteful little laugh and “Take your bow, now, chambermaid,” says Istvan, boot-toe tapping, a brisk and heartless tattoo —

  —until at last Portia turns and flees, a Cinderella whose midnight came early, La rose fanée up the stairs and through the portico past the doorway guards, one of whom wonders aloud if she is drunk, stumbling off like that without a cape into the cold, but “They’ll all be gargled shortly,” shrugs the other. “There’s a vat brewed of that rummy punch deep enough to swim in.”

  Still the first guard is prescient in a sense, for within the hour Portia is well on her way to drunkenness, the hotel manager’s bottle of champagne poured down with the port past the tears she does not shed, tears in her throat like acid, grinding licorice drops as she strips off the sweat-ruined gown and rapidly jams her trunks with other gowns and shoes and, yes, hats, the beehive hat again upon her head as she yanks Bijou into the hall upon his false-pearl leash. The young liveried servant waits uneasily at the doors of the lift as Portia stops to hammer at the suite of Roland Smalls, a rageful cry to the silence inside, the would-be lady full
y a scullery shrew—“He’s all yours now, you lavender Judas! You shit!”—before she lurches off in a cab rolling stolid in the direction of the train station, though whatever her true destination, no one in this city will ever know it, for none here will see Portia del Azore again. Yet if not every exit is a final one, nor is every stage a stage: if Polly can play Portia del Azore, Portia may also turn, say, to Priscilla Dell, amanuensis to a needy literary ladyship, or Primrose Dean, companion to a well-heeled elderly gent, aided in such enterprises by a sister found to be equally companionable; and Bijou may learn that romping off leash and chasing rabbits brings happiness greater than stiff satin cushions and little crusts of breakfast toast.

  At the Roman rites, the evening’s zest has faltered past that exit, a long moment’s wavering petulance, a dark refusal to be amused: but this challenge proves a balm for Istvan, who must work to woo, to bully and seduce all back into the properly pliant state of play. Haden patrols the perimeter, gaze behind his mask in constant motion, as Mr. Castor’s entreaty to the gods who make all real—“From wood and stone/To flesh and bone”—causes several of the statues to suddenly smile and bow, sending a rippling frisson, a gasping laugh through the guests to see living flesh amongst the marble, so cunningly still for so long that none had noted their advent to the pedestals.

  Frau Richter is delighted, now, as two youths flank her, a chest undraped, a muscled white thigh powdered whiter, these handsome statues fresh from some gutter Parthenon, as the others circulate amongst the guests to flirt and pout and refill the punch cups, watched by their genial interlocutor with the little wooden fellow as masked as he, reminding all present that all true pleasure “Comes to us from Heaven, does it not?” Istvan whistling a manner of Te Deum as Haden snuffs several candelabra and adds more incense to the censer, crumbled small nuggets that smell strongly of hashish; the smoke increases. “So it’s right that we ought to thank those gods, and how else shall one do so but by admiring their handiwork?” moving amongst the lads to strip them one by one as the little man tickles and prods, skin like a secret uncovered in that roomful of humid smiles—

  —though Felix Krystof alone sits unmoved, notice drawn to him by Haden with a grim whistle of his own, sending Istvan sidling to Krystof’s side, to inquire with counterfeit solicitude if it is “Vulcan or Hades, who damps your spirits, sir? Too shy, or too damned—”

  “Why, neither,” says Felix Krystof, with a smile as counterfeit. “‘Pygmalion’ is a fine tale of the unreal, and your puppet, there, is very nice—Ah!” as Mr. Castor boxes his ear, boxes it hard, Haden smiles and “Was that real?” asks Istvan sweetly. “These statues—and puppets—are closer kin to the gods than we, monsieur, they have more life, and will keep it longer. Yet while we live, let us live!” whistling more fiercely as Mr. Castor accompanies that whistling with a voice so dry—

  “The ancient Greeks in theatre would dress their words in verse

  But these are modern times now! And so we must rehearse

  Our modern ways in modern days and live our modern lives

  And pay the gods for what we want! And thus own Paradise!”

  —it is as if the wood itself is speaking, encouraging a tithe, a love-offering, as Istvan strips an ornament of his own, the pearl earring then affixed with care to Mr. Castor’s lapel. The younger van Symans daughter is next to respond to the challenge—“Oh take this, please!”—tugging off the ruby ring, remembering her own sister’s frolic with two funny wooden fellows, their batting back and forth of a bauble on a golden chain. She offers the ring to Mr. Castor, Istvan bending to kiss her hand, kiss it again before handing her in return a single black cufflink with the head of Medusa, then handing off that ring to the nearest of the boys—it is Benzy—to make of it an adornment in a somewhat surprising place.

  “Have this!” calls Edmund Gabriel, holding out a golden cigar case that Mr. Castor politely refuses, for “This will suit better,” Istvan slipping the rude cravat from his own throat to wrap around Edmund Gabriel’s, who fumbles off his vermilion silk scarf and its diamond rooster pin, to drape one lingeringly around Jakob and fix it in place with the other. Now everyone is clamoring for their jewels and trinkets to be exchanged for the honor of bits and bobs of Istvan’s costume: long black cuffs of stiffened paper, onyx collar studs, the whore’s vest from the Poppy framing Frau Ezterhaus’s décolletage —

  —as Haden pockets the van Symans daughter’s ruby, she the only one of the evening who will suffer no lasting loss, while he nods up Elsa the maid—Elsa who had previewed Paradise in the hallway with Pipper, who passed a cup or three of punch to Johan the manager while sampling the same for herself—Elsa who now obediently ferries the boxes of rice powder back and forth from the kitchen. One box is heavier than the others but Elsa does not notice, so wide-eyed beguiled by the nude youths a-sparkle in the last of the candlelight, several of them frankly aroused—

  —while “Who’d be a god?” Mr. Castor invites, the lads his conduits to anoint all the guests, even Felix Krystof, while the jewels are gathered for safekeeping on one slim body, that prancing, writhing, naked Pipper as “I give you our imperial goddess!” Istvan calls, Frau Richter puffed white as a ghost or a clown, powder thick on her neck, open-mouthed laughing as Benzy and Jakob hoist her to their shoulders, leading an unsteady snakes’ dance between the static statues and the stands of Jerusalem palm, in clouds of hashish and incense and cigar smoke, the sole candelabra to cast them as twisting shadows on the ivory walls as “Give tribute, mortals!” calls Mr. Castor, all the lads but Pipper surrounding Frau Richter, laughing, stroking, kissing, turning to offer the same treatment to the crowding guests. Letty van Symans shoulders Frau Ezterhaus aside, Frau Konstantin’s breasts tumble from her gown, Edmund Gabriel’s tablemate works himself spasmodically beneath the draping cloth—

  —while Pipper dances past the saw-toothed ferns into the archway, to Haden, who swiftly relieves him of the jewels then recedes himself, two powder boxes’ booty transferred to one anonymous bag, several doors wedged firmly open—to the alley, to an unused storeroom and its unlocked windows, to the laundry and its handy, slippery chute—before he hurries back to his waiting-spot, waiting for Istvan—

  —though it is Mr. Castor who brings the evening to its inevitable close, as behind that carven knight’s face, the trickster’s eyes are hooded, a spectator at his own parade, the crowing, capering, staggering toffs become less marks than markers on some ancient gaming board whose rules he has tired of long ago. All he wants, now, is Mouse hale and young, a dark boy on a rooftop, Take a breath, you’re all in and “Congé!” calls Mr. Castor abruptly, as if on the battlefield. “Permission to depart for Olympus!”

  —that word the signal to send the lads instant from pack to scatter, barefoot skidding on the marble, galloping down the parquet hallway with Haden hustling behind to count heads and hand off trousers and make sure all safely depart: while Istvan passes straight through the fogged and reeling crowd to pause at the top of the stairway, a distance immense and unbreachable, Orpheus might have looked so as he headed off with his lyre and “Mesdames et messieurs,” with a bow he will never better, tipping his top hat, letting it drop to topple and bounce down the steps like a severed head, as Mr. Castor flings a last white puff into the air, stale rice and fairy dust, “groundlings, merci and adieu—”

  —and as Istvan exits to applause, a quick brisk nod to the door guards—Another coatless one! Is it the fashion, now, to freeze?—to turn the snowy corner, strip free his mask, and bolt, joined several blocks beyond by sprinting Haden in a greatcoat with the puppet case and bag, it is Letty van Symans’s husband, cravat gone, weak eyes watering from the smoke, who suddenly recalls his wife’s pearl earbobs, heirloom pearls, completely priceless and “Here, now,” he says, looking around for the youths, finding only the empty scroll of a dropped draping, the censer guttering out. “Here, now!”

  The curtain must be drawn on the guests’ collective and bewildered fury, on Frau Rich
ter’s hysterics, on her husband’s ire—“You’ve been played for an utter fool, Madeline. Twice! On the same night!”—that will demand her banishment to the family’s country house before the week has ended. It is Herr Richter who has the telephone brought by the frightened manager, Herr Richter who places a private call, whose voice, unsteady with rum and anger, apprises Martin Eig of the evening’s distasteful events, for “The last thing we need is more scandal and suicides. Will you send someone, will you—What’s that?” as Roland Smalls’s name, Roland Smalls’s demise is communicated, the sparse and sordid details that, coupled with this farrago, seem to comprise an even more criminal tale. Two officers of the Protectorate shortly arrive, to question the dusty and hiccupping victims, while a pair of constables is dispatched to take into rough custody the shoemaking Cassandra, that upstanding citizen and friend of decency, who weeps and shudders like any villain in the grey-walled Protectorate room, as more constables search the street and square for the miscreants.

  Meanwhile other censers of the same design send their smoky orisons to heaven, via the evening choir service at St. Mary of Dolors, itself hectic with the last of the pageant preparations, the triple stages built within the sanctuary, Heaven, Hell, and the earthly plain between. In the pewbound crowd a watcher might have spotted Samuel Ridley, his gaze appraising the statues’ eyes in the dimness—however are they made to shine so? Just painted glass, and yet they look so real—while beside him, Frédéric, script pages folded in his satchel, skinned knuckles folded in prayer, offers his humble thanksgiving for the dangerous job brought to this quick conclusion. He would never dare to foist such a farce upon the stage, but there it was: the maid Consolata so easily distracted, Ridley promising to make her his model—Look, see this picture? See how pretty the gown!—as Frédéric, heart thudding, edged past them into the well-polished hallway, its lights in cold electric burn, to climb the silent stairs, test then tease open the remembered, and unlocked, study door, and see upon the desk—beside basins of soaking tea and twists of paper, a spidery letter hung carefully to dry—his own neatly clipped script, set apart as if left there solely for the finding; truly, it was a miracle.