Pinkerton's Sister (87 page)

“I will die bravely,” he should be saying, “like a smug bridegroom. What! I will be jovial.”

(“I never expected this to happen!” the grinning mouth was exclaiming, giggling. “How astonishing!”)

“O my dear father!” she should be saying, kissing those lips. “No cause,” she should be saying, “no cause,” and weeping.

(She said nothing – nothing came of nothing – and tears were frozen inside her. Attempts to weep would damage her eyes, rupture her tear ducts. Even then, she was experiencing Difficulties With Tears, had been having difficulties for years.)

Blood soaked through the full depth of the half-melted layer of ice and snow, the color of pale, water-soaked raspberries. A refreshing fruit sorbet cleanses the palate between the courses of a rich meal, enabling one’s guests to appreciate the subtle, delicate flavors with more discernment.

Yum-yum, say they.

(
STAB EVIL SINNER.
)

The
idée fixe
– so much more satisfying a term than leitmotiv, so much more
psychological –
was insistently emphasized each time it
appeared, guiding her toward the correct answer. Think of something French! Something French! The guillotine blade glinted, fell.

THWUNK!

5.Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat (A Witches’ Sabbath).

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Ay, sir, all this is so.

His head was angled back toward the open window behind him, like the head of someone trapped inside a structure filling with icy water, not snow, and straining for the only remaining source of air, opening his mouth wide to suck. His arms, like those frozen in mid-gesture by rigor mortis, seemed to be held out yearningly behind him, reaching for something beyond his reach, the swimmer in rising water. He appeared to be filling his lungs before a plunge into the depths of dark water, sucking the air desperately into his mouth. He was as wet as someone who had plunged repeatedly, searching for something over and over again, scrabbling to find what he wanted, trying to identify it by the sense of touch alone, unable to see, a broken-nailed pearl fisher tearing at the oyster shells with bruised hands. Something about his posture made her see him as Lockwood or Heathcliff, his hands moving past a window ledge covered with names scratched into the paint – the same names repeatedly, like the pages of old schoolbooks filled with hour upon hour of handwriting exercises – breaking through the glass of the casement to snatch at the hand of a lost, sobbing child outside in the snow. “Let me in – let me in!” the child begged. He was reaching blindly back, his hands over his shoulders. He would pull the child’s wrist – the child was “it,” not “her”
–
onto the broken pane, and rub it to and fro till the blood ran down.

“Who are you?” Lockwood asked frantically, as the small ice-cold hand clung on to his.

“It’s twenty years,” mourned the child’s voice, “twenty years, I’ve been a waif for twenty years!” There was her face, reflected in the dark interior of the window, looking in from outside. Twenty years. Her whole life. If she spoke, she would speak with the voice
of a child; she would gurgle with the sound of a child not yet able to speak coherently.

She’d be like Archer Italiaander, Junior, summoned back from the realms of the dead to greet his mama.

“Mama,” she’d be saying. “Mama.”

Archer Italiaander, Junior, was
very
young for speech, even for the speaking of a single word. You imagined him as Archer Italiaander (Junior), the “Junior” enclosed in brackets like something whispered and suppressed, barely audible. His mother insisted that this was the word she had heard him speak. Quite distinctly. More than once. He’d
looked
at her as he said it.

“Mama.”

“I’m very surprised to be dead,” Papa would say, with a note of dissatisfaction. He never demonstrated an emotion, but always identified the one he purported to be experiencing. “I’m very angry indeed,” he would say, in that same calm, unraised voice, as if he were casually remarking, “Pleasant weather for the time of year,” or, “Rather cooler than yesterday.” “I’m happy,” that’s what he would have said in order to alert observers to the presence of happiness, had he ever been happy. It was not an expression he had, in fact, ever been known to use, but he would have spoken it in that same cool tone of voice, a voice tentatively attempting to give a name to something faintly recollected from long ago.

The piles of books in front of the window moved; thrusting forward, as if a character in a novel were bursting through into real life.

She moved forward like a Madame Defarge – yet another Madame – hastening for a closer look, click-click-clicking with her knitting needles, careful not to drop a stitch, using her time constructively – not wasting a moment – to shape warm garments in the icy coldness as the tumbrels rolled.
Click, click, click
: the knitting needles were the sound of iced-over twigs rattling together in a storm. If it wasn’t stitch-stitch-stitch, it was click-click-click.

She couldn’t see his face, but snow would be filling the open eyes, the open mouth, the nostrils, the seashell convolutions of the ears, layered across the miniature landscape of the pale face, Madame Tussaud forming wax around the dead features to make a death mask. The blind white faces of the dead were all around her in Carlo Fiorelli’s workshop. She heard the ripping of the cloth for the life cast, all the fabrics in the room being torn up like the papers, removing everything that was soft or comforting. She should close her eyes, not move, breathe slowly, as the layers were constructed upon her face; the muted splashing sound as Mama dabbed her face, soothing away pain.

When a horseman passes, the soldiers have a rule
…

Her heavy-laden face was pulled downward, fixed in one place, incapable of expression. Her mouth was covered, her ears; she could not speak, could not hear.

But another pleasure enchantinger than these
…

Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
began to play again, louder, faster, enthusiastic crowds encoring the orchestra, as an opera rapidly approached its great, climactic death scene. It was strange to know the endings in opera and in Shakespeare, to watch the characters, and wait for the deaths of those who were going to die. From the time that they appeared, you knew that they would die, and every word they sang or spoke drew them closer to that moment.

Papa was slumped back, exhausted, after his death, after the demanding final aria at the end of a long night of singing. He had sung of his approach to death, of his crossing through the dark borderlands into silence, and the crowds applauded his dying, and the manner of his death. In the moonlight, he had invited the statue of the man he had murdered to a banquet, and the statue had appeared. The cold of an Arctic December had spread throughout the room, as the marble hand of the statue had seized hold of his hand.

“Repent!” the statue had ordered. “Repent!”

Death had drawn close, and the words had been the words of a foreign language.

This was what he was singing, as the demons dragged him down to hell like another Doctor Faustus. Just as “
Sie kommt! Sie kommt!
” in
The Magic Flute
made you feel fluent in German, so “
Che inferno! Che terror!
” sounded comfortingly comprehensible to those who had once thought they couldn’t understand a word of Italian. Mozart wrote in a language that a citizen of any nation could understand. Sometimes his librettist wrote in German, sometimes he wrote in Italian, but Mozart’s unchanging language of music was universal, and words were not needed, barely heard. Liking Mozart was a slightly odd, esoteric taste, something that might perhaps be better not expressed if you wished to impress.

There was the end of a plug of absorbent cotton sticking out of Papa’s nearer ear, his left. It looked like something inserted hastily, with no thought for how it looked, no attempt to press it neatly out of sight. The inner part was darkened, yellowed with oil, the outer part as fluffy and white as the edges of springtime clouds. I wandered lonely. The daffodils fluttered and danced, beside the lake, beneath the trees. He must have been in pain from an earache. The cotton was as smooth and bright as the snow that settled around it, upon it, but it would be soft and warm. It would soothe and lull into sleep, and deaden sound. If she called his name, he wouldn’t hear her. The cotton would deafen him, his ears sealed so that he could not be disturbed, so that he could sleep, a Ulysses freed from temptation as the Sirens sang alluringly. For many years he wandered, and after all his years of wandering his own child would
eventually kill him.

She knew he could not hear her, but she still called his name.

“P-P-Papa,” she said. “P-P-Papa.”

(Alice leaned toward the black kitten, as she wound the knitting-wool into a ball, like an Ariadne drawing her way close toward the monster at the heart of the labyrinth.

(“I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire – and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, we’ll go and see the bonfire tomorrow …”

(The ball of wool grew larger, as she drew in the thread and wound it round and round.

(“You know I’m saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week – Suppose they had saved up all
my
punishments? What
would
they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came.”

(She drew in the thread, drew in the thread, tugging as she pulled.

(“Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow
loves
the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’”

(If the kitten was not a good kitten, she would put it through the looking-glass into the Looking-glass House.)

She was Miss P-P-Pinkerton, the Shipping Merchant’s Daughter. That thought came to her again, as it had that morning.

As you gathered the members of your Happy Family you had to say “please,” you had to say “thank you.” If you forgot, you were not given the card, and you lost your turn. This thought kept going through her head. You had to be polite. Whatever happened, however much Allegra cheated, you had to be
polite
. Miss Ericsson had been very firm about this, a doomed attempt to instill civilized
behavior into Allegra and Edith.

“What is the magic word?” Miss Ericsson would ask.

The answer was not “Abracadabra!” or “Open, Sesame!”

“What is the magic word?”

Please.

That was one of the magic words.

Thank you.

Those were the other magic words.

Please.

Thank you.

You spoke those words, and the spell-bound door was opened, revealing all the treasures hidden within.

With the help of Charlotte that morning, she had been able to recollect twelve of the Happy Families, the happy families that all resembled one another. Who were the members of the thirteenth and final family, the Mr., the Mrs., the Master, and the Miss? She had known eight before Charlotte had called, and – between them – they’d managed to recollect two more before they’d gone to All Saints’, and two more in the church (such was their concentration on the spiritual guidance offered by Dr. Vaniah Odom and the Reverend Goodchild).

There was Mr. Bun, the Baker’s family. Everyone could remember the Bun family.

“Could I have Miss B-B-Bun, the B-B-Baker’s D-D-Daughter, please?”

The magic word.

(She sometimes stuttered more with nouns. It was as if she could feel their solid shape in her mouth, blocking the movement of her tongue, an impediment to fluency. Perhaps her stuttering was caused by the perpetual coldness, her shivering slurring the words she tried to speak.)

“Miss Bun is at home.”

“Thank you.”

The other magic words.

There was Mr. Mug, the Milkman’s family.

“Could I have Miss M-M-Mug, the M-M-Milkman’s D-D-Daughter, please?”

The magic word.

“Miss Mug is at home.”

“Thank you.”

The other magic words.

There was Mr. Chip, the Carpenter’s family, Mr. Soot, the Sweep’s family, Mr. Grits, the Grocer’s family, Mr. Bung, the Brewer’s family, Mr. Block, the Barber’s family …

There was …

There was …

There was Mr. Spade, the Gardener’s family, Mr. Tape, the Tailor’s family, Mr. Pots, the Painter’s family, and Mr. Dip, the Dyer’s family. They were a little apart from the other families, the darkest grouping. They were four-fifths of the innermost circle, and it was in a circle that they were gathered, their backs turned to observers, either to shield from sight what it was they were watching, or because they could not bear to tear their eyes away from whatever it was that drew them there. There was a sense that it was something they should not be watching – a bare-knuckle fight, a cockfight, a summoning of the dead or of demons – or something more exciting, more secret and shameful than these were. The Masters and the Misses had pushed their way through to the front to ensure themselves a good view, and were almost hidden from sight by the backs of the Misters and the Mistresses. (“Mistresses” added to the sense of the forbidden.)

They had gathered around the fifth family of the inner five. They were watching Mr. Bones, the Butcher’s family, as they prepared to play music and sing.

Most of the Bones family was left-handed.

Mr. Bones, the Butcher, his face averted, his eyes closed (more, you felt, to luxuriate in the sensation of slicing than to express
revulsion), was carving through a great red cut of raw meat with a huge broad-bladed knife held in his left hand. The mightily bosomed Mrs. Bones, the Butcher’s Wife, the very spit of Mrs. Albert Comstock –
Spit! Spit! Spit! –
towered like the
Alice in Wonderland
Duchess turned homicidal. She’d spoken roughly to her little boy, she’d beaten him when he sneezed, and now she was all agog for slaughter, her appetite roused for stronger meat. She held aloft a great joint of blood-flecked flesh, and in her left hand grasped a cleaver with an air of enthusiasm. That large apron straining across the lower part of her body would not retain its pristine whiteness for very much longer. Master Bones, the Butcher’s Son, the only dextral member of this sinister family, whistled insouciantly as he walked along with a gigantic squelchy joint – it contained more meat than the whole of his body, and
oozed
blood – resting over his right shoulder. He looked like a murderer – happy and fulfilled in his work – ambling along to dispose of a body, a Burke or a Hare on his way to pay a call upon Robert Knox and claim his seven pounds, ten shillings. He had the same hairstyle as his father: a dark upturned flick of hair on either side of his face, like horns. Miss Bones, the Butcher’s Daughter, was feasting upon a bone the size of a baby. She clutched it in both hands (it was hers, hers,
hers
) – a distinct possibility of ambidextrousness (was there such a word?) here – and was applying the end of it to her mouth. She was like someone about to play one of the larger brass instruments – a euphonium or a serpent – though you felt that what was going on here was sucking rather than blowing, a determined attempt to extract the marrow from the bone that was bigger than her two legs combined. The meat had been nibbled entirely away from the surface of the bone, and now it was time to slurp out the jellied tissue inside it.
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
… Her eyes were almost crossed with concentration. You could imagine her tongue rooting ruthlessly about in its quest for fresh sustenance, seeking that elusive raspberry seed in the hollow tooth at the back of the mouth. She was a figure from one
of the darker Central European fairy stories. She was an infant Samson, musing a while in pensive thought, resting from her slaughterous labors with the well-wielded jawbone of an ass.
With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, With the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
She smote them hip and thigh – she especially enjoyed smiting them on the thigh, the satisfyingly fleshy
thwack!
– with a great slaughter.
Heaps upon heaps! A thousand men!
The bone was the exact shape of one of the bones on a pirate’s skull-and-crossbones flag, as white, as bare, as symmetrical. She’d have them walking the plank, as she chewed all the while. She’d have them skewered on cutlasses, ready for a barbecue, dribbling in toothsome anticipation, cannibalistically keen. She’d have them hauled off and keelhauled.
She sucked until her lips were sore
… Her dress was dyed a deep uniform red, the blood seeped out of the chewed-off meat and into her clothing. She should have been sitting in a spreading pool of blood, dabbling her fingers, holding up her bloodstained palms for inspection. They were a Happy Family. Everyone could remember the Bun family, but – once she’d called them to mind – it was the Bones family she remembered in most detail, Brudder Bones and his brooding brood playing dementedly in their blood-soaked minstrel show.