by Kathe Koja
—and nearly there to do so, Puss’s silhouette seen in the doorway, himself nudging Rupert to look, neither seeing then the three who fell upon them, but They never cut him, as Lucy examined once more his own windings, that seeping, swelling wound he barely seems to notice; a jagged cut, Krampus luck that it did not go an inch deeper, two inches to the side, luck and force for He did for the one who tried for me, then he took the other, as if to reassure her that no man, brigand, thief, could ever have bested that great warrior. I nearly took the third…. They never cut him, as Lucy pressed his icy hand, and Tilde carried off the basin, to return with two thick needles and a linen winding sheet.
Sorrow is its own ceremony, individual, universal, and that ceremony commences anew as the sun sets again, the world having rolled through that strange and endless, empty day, its sadness given voice in the theatre’s silence as Frédéric leads them all in song, “No Victory for the Tomb” leading into the more singable “Off to the Gloaming” and “Paddy’s Lament,” leading into a show, yes, with Mick putting Van through his paces, Istvan the audience for once, wrapped in a soiled morning coat, wearing again the raveled silver glove. There are smiles, a bit of laughter; bottles are passed, the hair-raising ale and redoubtable gin, even Ru gets a sip or two in the manner of a baptism, from Haden, who sits the child close upon his knee, kisses his forehead once, then again—
—until “Will you?” Mick bowing to Istvan, his hand and Van’s outstretched in doubled, sympathetic invitation: and all of them—the women, the lads, Haden and Frédéric; Cockrill too, for he is part of the story now—applauding as Istvan rises, making his own truncated bow, taking Van from Mick in the manner of old friends meeting: the dark glimmer of Pan, the lingering shade of Marco. And if that puppet’s limbs and heft and motion, his eyes—especially the eyes—have gone different in the playing, changed forever and for the best, still they are comrades enough that a neat little dance is accomplished, a friendly tribute to “Save It for Skipjack,” Mick receiving his fellow back afterward with a flush of justified pleasure, of pride to carry forever as “He’s all yours,” says Istvan, reaching to take up Israfel instead. “And well-met, I knew it from the start. Now, shall we jig a bit together, Monsieur Pimm, as they used to do at the Golden Calf?”
That play—knockabout, bantering—brings real laughter, Lucy calling out through her tears the happy waystops of memory—“Oh, that’s one for the Brussels crowd, those old battleships!”—with Tilde sitting close beside her, Tilde wearing the opal, the locket, and the lover’s eye, Ru now at her knee; his little face is abstracted, as if he is puzzling out a problem or wrestling with a thought. When Istvan at last draws the dance to a close, Israfel fluttering his wings like a lady with her fan—“One needs refreshment!”—Haden is there at once with the flask, good strong Armagnac procured, who can say how, from the city’s blasted larder, the clandestine churchside bazaar. Istvan drinks as if he is truly thirsty, drinks again, then hands back the flask to turn away—“A moment”—and take the stairs alone as Haden watches, as Frédéric hangs Israfel beside his Faustus friend, as the music begins again, a whistled oratorio of “Thumb-Your-Nose”—
—until Tilde rises as well, to climb to the third floor and stand gazing at the latched roof hatch, fingers clutched to the cards in her skirt pocket; she weeps there, tears like ice, she does not know that she is weeping until “Milady,” from the stairwell, Istvan on the second floor, calling softly until she descends. Music continues below them, whistling and voices but no concertina, Istvan has the concertina and “He’s got the name, your youngster,” Istvan says, putting into her hands the bright and battered little instrument, heavier than it appears; its ivory keys are cold. “He ought have this as well.”
Then she does cry, Tilde, and knows it, a harsh shattering gust, gripping his sleeve with one hand and the concertina with the other, as if she is swept in some invisible sea, black waves no one can navigate; Istvan rests his cheek against the small shorn head, he closes his eyes. Finally, inadvertently, she clutches the concertina so it moans, a sound so fully grievous it is comic, they both must smile then and “Buck up, Mab,” Istvan murmurs. “Last time you thought he fell, well— He’s only gone behind the curtain.”
“There is no curtain,” she says, making him smile in a different way; he chucks her under the chin as Rupert would have; she swabs her face. Then he selects from among the items in his coat pocket a citizen’s certificate, Rupert Bok with its official stamps and seals, for “This is his, too,” putting it into her hands; and steps back a pace, a small, unmistakably formal distance so “I’ll keep it for him,” she says, carefully folding the paper, slipping it safe beside her cards. Though she does not add what the cards might have said, so many destinies foretold so long before: all of them together beneath this roof; none of them; only Haden and Frédéric; instead “Do you sleep here?” she asks. “Tonight?”
His answer is held by quiet footsteps, Haden pausing hand on banister to watch Tilde rise on tiptoe to kiss Istvan’s stubbled cheek, a comrade’s salute, perhaps a daughter’s. In descent she brushes past Haden, sharing a look so brief it barely catches, but says all it means to say, herself calling down, “See, Baba!” bearing the concertina before her as proudly as a hero’s shield. “See what you’re to have!”
—as “Step in a tick?” Haden stepping up to lead the way into the room he shares with Frédéric, a gaze past his shoulder half-diffident, half-keen: he offers the desk chair but Istvan takes a seat on the bed instead, the rumpled sheets and coverlet, waiting; he knows he is waiting.
Yet at first Haden does not speak, fiddling instead with Frédéric’s piled books, the inkwell, the chessboard, its ranks gone incomplete, Ru having made off with several pawns and a queen, until finally “He asked me once,” says Haden, “did I play,” one finger on the black king, the tiny carven scowl. “He said he’d never learned it.”
“No. Though he did take instruction.”
“He asked me to—look to you, if you should need it. To stand your friend,” as Istvan looks to him then, gaze unreadable past his lashes, and “You’ll stay, uncle,” in a rush, Haden stepping from the chessboard to the door, as if he will block the way, as if Istvan is already departing. “An’t you? Here’s as good as anyplace, and when they’ve gone off to their nest—”
“She told you?”
“She an’t need to, that Pimm’s already on her like a cloak on a granny. Wish him joy! And it’s for the better anyway, Ru needs a safer perch than this to grow on. But we,” that yellow gaze open in open appeal, “we can stay here, play here still, why not? The three of us, we’ll pop some eyes—”
“Ah,” but kindly, “three makes a crowd. And two showmen in a house is truly one too many—the Marquis would surely say the same.”
Haden says nothing; he looks suddenly younger, a boy left behind with only a token to keep between himself and harm; he sets aside the king, he chews his lip until it reddens. “Then—what’s your road?”
“‘Il faut hurler avec les loups,’” with a sketch of a shrug. “There’s a bit still to sort out—a pile upstairs, and some books lent to him,” all to be left but the Latin one, Remedia Amoris, its flyleaf inscription in Rupert’s careful hand, Dum spiro te amo, a comrade to the copybook. “Oh, and my papers,” the name upon them his own little joke, Herr Javier Fletcher. “You’ll deal with those—make some mischief with them, won’t you, if chance permits?”
“Don’t,” as Haden steps closer, then closer still, half kneeling on the chilly bed, “don’t go,” and they kiss, Haden’s kiss, insistent, beseeching; Istvan can feel the scar, feel Haden’s heart pounding as he rests his palm there, against the strong young chest, the hand with the glove and “Fox kit,” his murmur, the kiss reversing, his own rough and probing, ravishing kiss, one arm hooked hard around Haden’s neck, painfully hard, driving Haden back against the bed’s old headboard and “M Mundy,” Istvan whispers, brandy on his breath, favoring his wounded side. “We’ll not s
ay good-bye, yeah?”
“No, fuck no…. You’re still to go?” but “Not just yet,” Istvan loosening his hold, then his shirt, Haden rising from the bed to close the door —
—the two denned together then until the moon rises, Haden stepping alone into the hallway to tuck his shirt, smooth back his hair, pinch the bridge of skin between those goat’s eyes, cat’s eyes, lover’s eyes, a stripe of blood fresh upon one trouser leg. Slowly down the stairs, he is watched by waiting Frédéric, who at once notes that stain but does not remark upon it, then or ever; nor the later sound of footsteps leaving their second floor room, nor the matching stain upon the bed where he half-murmurs, half-sings Haden into a fitful, mournful sleep.
As if by shared consent, all seek their rest or some other quiet business; all the lads but Pipper have departed, the street outside is still but for the last passing ’bus. Carrying slumbering Ru to bed, Mick and Tilde pause on the landing to note the light still burning on the third floor, Istvan’s quick footsteps back and forth—
—gathering what he needs, all he needs, so very little, now: tucking the Latin book into the puppet bag, pocketing the steely Swiss watch, slipping a fold of newsprint into his boot, the left one, at the hasp where the leather is thinnest. If he sleeps, it is briefly and on the narrow cot, one arm thrust out as if seeking, the windows stripped to hold him in moonlight, beautiful, indifferent, silver as the cracked little mirror he leaves tucked above that door, as he exits in the stillness just before dawn. Downstairs, Cockrill is stationed watchman, snoring softly as the knifeman’s dog used to snore in the alley; this city is full of such memories, Vater and the Heads or Tails, little Luc; their own choice and creation of this place, this Mercury, fortress to his heart now, though he shall be elsewhere, endlessly elsewhere —
“You’re looking damp, a bit,” Lucy’s voice to halt him, Lucy emergent in her wrapper with the gin bottle; she nods to Istvan’s shirt, the darkish blot half hidden by one of Haden’s vests. “Better let me fix it…. You could wait a day, you know. Or a week, let it truly start to mend.”
“Better for us all if I’m off, in case anyone should come a-knocking. And you’ll be gone soon enough, yeah? May be with some of the lads, too?”
“Some,” offering him the bottle, reaching as he drinks to straighten his collar, nip with her nails a loose thread from the greatcoat sleeve as he pulls it on. “That Pipper’s a rare one, like Mickey come again! But he’s that loyal, he means to stay on here with Frédéric.”
“Poaching, Puss? I am shocked…. Safe travels, then,” bottle down, bending to kiss her cheek, yet she surprising him, perhaps surprising them both by twining arms around his neck to kiss his mouth, a firm and most womanly kiss, the dollymop on the brothel bed and the fancy traveler from elsewhere: she sees that memory in his eyes, her own are filling as “Safe travels,” Istvan says again, lifting the puppets, the Misters and Mr. Loup, the leathern bag and cane, pausing a step to strip the Wheel of its shrouding black, and giving his wink to sleeping Cockrill at the alley door—“Lock it up tight, now!”—as on the stairs Ru, crept down wakeful as a little owl, earns a wink of his own, from beneath the brim of Rupert’s slouch hat. Then the door opens, and closes, and he is truly gone; none of them will ever see him here again.
In the days between this departure and that of the traveling troupe, Tilde hunts for the old carte-de-visite of Sir and M Istvan, hunts with great and baffled industry and urgency, but without success; it is Mick who reports its loss to Lucy, who shakes her head to hide a vagrant smile.
From the introduction to The Strings of Memory
On my desk as I write sit the artifacts of my childhood—an antique concertina, a “Pimm’s Palace” theatre, a tiny goat made of twigs and wool—for it was my great good fortune to be part of that players’ family: at the Mercury with my godfathers, the renowned dramatist Frédéric Blum, and his producer and lifelong friend Hadrian Mundy; then at the famous Blue Bird Theater of the Pimms, Michael and Mme Lucinda, my stepfather and grandmother, and my own dear mother Mme Mathilde. And my natural grandfather is the legendary Rupert Bok, whose own writing fills this book, his private memories of a lifetime spent in performance. If “all kings have princes,” I have tried my best to honor that lineage, and this record you now hold is, as far as diligence can make it, the whole story truthful and complete. As for that consummate showman who played beside Herr Bok, here he is called Istvan, for clarity’s sake, though a litany of names trails him like a comet’s tail.
I wish to thank James Lisle, of Lisle & Sons Publishers, for editorial assistance, and the estate of Samuel Ridley, for the use of his photographs. And I now dedicate this labor to those who taught me by their daily example how a life, and Life, should be played. If it does the same for its readers, I know that those players would be pleased.
RUPERT BOK PIMM, New York 19—
You’ll walk out of here without a penny, says the young man, flat brown soldier’s cap skewed sideways, though he is not a soldier, and increasingly belligerent at losing so many hands to this fellow with the raccoon eyes and bag of wooden dolls. But who has the upper hand now! fanning out the cards on the tin-topped table. Two pair—treys and Queens. Beat that, oldster!
The older man seems foxed at first, thoughtfully stubbing out his black cigarette, until he flips over his own cards to show a line of straight diamonds, with a murmur of Fortune who favors the bold, and a wish to take his winnings straightaway. The soldier seems as if he may dispute that exit, until the older man salutes with his cane, a hard rod with a curious silver topper, more than capable of cracking a skull. The young man subsides with a glower, as the taproom’s owner calls out Sure you don’t want to stay another night with us, Mr. Miracle? It’ll be twice the crowd, and all your drink’s on me—
—but no answer is given for he is already going, the money swept careless into an ancient leathern bag as he heads into the rainy evening, the dull and sullen outskirts of another no-man’s-land. His fit-up is a light one, no more mask or need for it—though he is still a manner of plague doctor, more so now than ever before—just that cane to aid the journey, the bag to hold the one-eyed, one-armed, deathless puppet, and the case the two friends Ruprecht and Steven, one of whom carries inside his sweetly carven heart a pair of very old, very scratched silver spectacles.
In the traveler’s own breast pocket, next to his heart, rests a carte-de-visite wherein two men consider the world from the fortress of their own regard, one nearly smiling, one with two fingers flirtatiously raised: Rupert the Mouse once Tacio, and Istvan, Dusan, Marcel, Hanzel, Etienne Dieudonne, Stefan Hilaire, Stephanos Marcus, Stepan the Miraculous kissing his fist to the moon as he turns toward the town and eternity. For Tilde, as always, spoke truly: there is no curtain. The play is everywhere, the show continues.
ENCORE
STEPAN THE MIRACULOUS
The rooks seem not to mind the rain, or not enough to slow their raucous flutter and dive, calling out to one another like actors throwing cues across a stage. Their choice of rookery is at first glance an unlikely one, this shabby building once a bank or some other institution of trust, its muddied ground floor now a busy combination of vendors’ booths—pamphlets and newspapers, braided shoelaces, penny sandwiches wrapped in brown paper—and an immigrants’ succor society, long lines of orphans and the weary with creased letters clutched in hand; the higher floors gone to locked doors and cracked windows, furtive tramps, and brazier fires lit from discarded financial documents and the stubs of cheap German cigarettes. A sharp eye might descry upon the building’s façade a pair of stone eagles weathered into wingless immobility, their noble heads decorated only by those rooks, ordure smeared and daubed like a bad paint job abandoned; there is more shit on the sidewalks, shit thus on the boots of the gentleman exiting onto that avenue, having descended from the vagrants’ rookery above, sidestepping a pair of sobbing girls and a glum-eyed grandpa, flicking down the smolder of a German execrable in favor of a long-cached Spani
sh cigar.
As he begins the long walk back to his lodgings, he savors that smoke, its taste heartening as brandy, with a biting hint of bitterness beneath. To passersby, or any watching eye, he looks a patchwork creation, much like his puppets in the case and leathern bag: gentleman’s boots and a traveler’s stride, mended greatcoat and elegant cane, lustrous pearl in one ear below the sober businessman’s homburg; it is difficult to say what his business might be. As he walks, he whistles softly, this prince of the boulevards, the lost and smiling boy in the rain; his song is a fine one, you may have heard it, or sung it yourself, if you have thumbed your nose a time or two at whatever seeks to contain you.
That rain finds its way down his collar, past the scarf knit by Mademoiselle Paola: gun-grey wool and lumpish, not at all to his taste, but the cold is so much more an enemy nowadays that he must have whatever protection can be mustered. Scarf or not, greatcoat or not, his shoulder pains him greatly nonetheless, those ancient scars aching, his arm gone past hurt to a queer new kind of numbness that no warmth can seem to dispel. Another strike on the tally, well, never mind; did he not make his small rude god disport with one good arm and a benignly mocking smile, the spare eloquence born precisely from that pain, and enlighten all those beggars with last night’s beggars’ opera? Yes. And did his audience not laugh and applaud till they risked discovery by the police—men’s risk, not the croaking wooden puppet’s, so antique and eternal that it may say anything, to anyone at all—then pay him in hilarious whispers a bounty from their hoard, the cigarettes, an only somewhat moldy twist of poudre de riz, a folder of pictures of ladies who were not at all ladies, showing parts of their persons that no man save a husband should see? Yes again.