The Mercury Waltz (14 page)

CHRISTOBEL DE METZ’S JOURNAL

21 May, 18
—

Dearest sister, it has been a lovely spring here, as if in kindly counterpoint to our loss and sorrows. Yesterday, before the evening claimed me, Adela and I went with Isau into the gardens, and Damien brought him a tufted bird’s nest, small as my palm, to touch and see; how we smiled! Adela is as devoted to Isau as if he were her own. Sadly, B. does not like her, nor does he like Isau to spend any time in the gardens:
He’s not a farmer’s son, why raise him as one?
Though to my mind it is useful as well as pleasant that Isau learn to be happy here, as Chatiens will always be his home, no matter where else he may live or travel.

We are to travel again—without Isau, B. was quite firm on that point;
Emory will accompany us, of course, and perhaps James Aubin, too. There was some unkind gossip over his attendance at the funeral Mass, sitting with us in the family pew, but I was glad to have him there, to distract B., and keep him from too much gloom. I was unsure to the last moment if B. would attend the services at all, for he and Javier had been much at odds; we saw him so little that Isau, I am grieved to say, may not remember him in the years to come.
I
will always remember: he was dear to me as your husband, first and foremost, and he used to tell me stories of you as a girl—I loved those stories! And no one could have been more accommodating, or a better friend to our family. Javier was a great man.

I and the doctor were at the bedside when life finally left him—it was just before dawn, for we heard, quite distinctly, the skylarks calling—and it was of you that he spoke at the last, your name again and again, as if preparing for reunion. He held my hand; I believe he believed that I was you. B. told me that it was your wish to have him laid to your left, and B.’s own resting place kept for your right:
But you mustn’t cry so, Christobel, he was glad to go, as crippled as he was,
though it was as much at the thought of someday losing B. as for poor Javier that I wept…. He left me then; he cannot bear weeping. But that evening, B. had brought to my rooms a great extravagance of roses, the Lady’s Blush from our own greenhouses that he knows I favor, and with them a special token: a fob from Javier’s watch, a quaint black iron key. What kindness! Others think B. an indifferent husband, but I, and you, know otherwise.

Since Javier’s passing, B. has been even more taken up with his duties, and this trip we are to make will be no respite: Herr de Vries is hosting us at his
pied
-
à
-
terre
, for B. has extensive affairs to conduct there, and real estate he means to purchase, or has purchased; I heard him telling Emory something of it. There is a special ball we must attend, a grand opera—
Take along all your jewels,
B. told me—though Herr de Vries was rather vague with details, instead full of city gossip, making mock of one of his deputies whom he says we shall meet, a Mr. Martin Eig:
“My Savonarola,”
he called the man, who sounds a fairly unpleasant person. Frau de Vries is a foolish woman, but we shall be busy together nonetheless, at various teas and musicales. I have made sure to have the city’s newspapers sent here, so I may be “in the know” when we arrive; there are several fine lecture halls, one of them sponsored by the Virgo Society, who sound quite an interesting group! And there is a well-regarded botanical garden, too—I wish that you might be with me to share it. But you are with your husband, now.

It must have been a wonderful reunion: just as you were in life, alert and serene, sharing those looks and smiles that mean so much between spouses. In my mind’s eye I imagine further, I see the two of you like those carven angels at the townhouse doors, forever in flight now above the garden, forever together to watch over B. and Isau and me.

Rupert has rarely been to this part of the city before, and never to this building, the Morals Commission so busy but so quiet, his footsteps fairly ring across the parquet floors. The thug before the door, that fellow though a stranger is no stranger, Omar at the Poppy would have known him at first glance, and pounded him at second: for just a moment they size up one another, man to man, Rupert unimpressed by the doughy bulk that speaks of sidewalk living, Costello bristling at the older man’s aplomb. The secretary, in his flurry of newspapers, glances furtively at the notorious Mr. Bok as he enters the office of Martin Eig, who rises to acknowledge him, though not to shake his hand, calling for tea—

“If you drink such, that is?”

“I do. I like tea.”

“Somehow,” with a kind of smile, “I had not expected that you would. Perhaps because of your bent.“

“And that is?” Rupert says, with a mental sigh; he is growing very weary of these kind of feints and passes, like the second, fugitive puppet, and the bumptious constables, and the clerk at the Office of Literature and Entertainments refusing his payment of the license renewal, shaking his balding head—
It can’t be done, sir, it’s marked that way in your file. The Mercury Theatre, it can’t be done
—and now this fellow, this morals fellow whom the clerk insisted he must next see. He is even growing weary of their guardian angel Seraphim, the literary swordplay and protests in the Park, half those “debaters” ended up brawling, then cooling their heels in the bin, and all of it blamed on the Mercury, a further sour fame unsought; could not the boy have found another cause to trumpet in his fucking paper? But then, he is sincere for something other than his own wallet or belly or prick, and that is something. And Istvan liked the interview he made of them, and what he makes of their shows; Istvan likes him, that boy…. Istvan this morning like a boy himself, lying half dressed in the rosewood, slicing up a pear, lazy to watch as Rupert angled the mirror this way and that above the shaving-bowl, aiming for light enough for his right eye without fully blinding the left, concentrating so fully that he almost dropped the razor when Istvan’s hand covered his:
You should have told me, Mouse,
with a headshake and a smile so tender that Rupert felt himself flush, like a boy caught out in a lie, Istvan seeing now the reason for the graying beard he so mislikes. So
Let me
wield the razor and the soap brush, quick and practiced hands to shave him clean, to towel him dry, to tilt and kiss the moistness of his mouth and murmur
From now on, I’m your barber
—though no shaver in a shop ever did what he did next, nor with such pleasured leisure, dressing him afterward in brushed serge and perfect linen—
Good on Mab, she’s blued this to a sheen
—and tying the dark cravat with another kiss:
Now all’s respectable and fine, yeah? to go pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Shall I go with you?
drolly, to bring Rupert’s smile, yes, bring bare Istvan and the puppets, too, what a show for some pop-eyed bureaucrat that would be!

But no Caesar sits across this desk—and such a desk, like a child playing at forts-and-fortress, onstage it would have brought a laugh—with silver teapot and folded hands, this tidy specimen Mr. Eig who says, “Why, a man of entertainments,” as if that is itself some sort of indictment. “I would have thought you might rather a glass of liquor than a plain cup of tea.”

“I would rather learn why I can’t renew my theatre’s license. The clerk at the office said—”

“That it was impossible? Yes,” with a nod. “Or yes and no.” He pauses as someone knocks at the outer door and is sent away; a telegraph machine patters and clicks; the smell of camphor sifts into the room. “It is true that your theatre is a concern for the Commission. Those entertainments, the king and the fox, the men in the forest—where do you find your stories’ inspirations, Mr. Bok?” Rupert says nothing. “And the notice your shows have garnered—it seems that every wall one passes has one of those placards, what is it? ‘Cry the Mercury!’ Not to mention the uproar they have caused, religiously, politically—”

“I don’t play at politics, sir. Or religion.”

“I doubt you play at all.” Mr. Eig lifts his teacup; he looks at Rupert; Rupert looks at him. “You must be aware that a law is pending that, if it’s passed, will much change the way you do business, if it even permits that business to continue. And you have been in business for many years, haven’t you? You and your assistant, who goes by many names—Stefan Hilaire, Etienne Dieudonne—though you yourself use only the one. It makes you,” almost apologetically, “easier to track.”

“He is not my assistant.”

“What shall I call him, then? Your man?” There is a neat pile of documents to his left; he lifts and shifts them to his right, as if in preparation for some other, more meaningful action. “You have played in many places, both of you, for a long time. But these are different times now, and—”

“Mr. Eig,” says Rupert, in a voice neither loud nor impolite but of such pure authority as to halt Martin Eig mid-word, “you and I both work for a living, and there’s much work to be done today. So tell me if you can what delays my license, and then I’ll tell you if Mr. Hilaire and I can give you what you need.” His hands lie loose and almost easy, palms-up on his knees, for all those nights in Madame’s drawing room have this dividend at least, now he can recognize the stink of empire, if he cannot find its reason, here, other than the constant of the hand outstretched, always outstretched, for whatever it finds and does not own. It is an old smell, that reeks of war and winter—
Your house, to do with as you decide
—but in those days he had his knife to count on. Now times are different, yes, the world is growing smaller, as small as this room and this beadle Eig regarding him in a silence so protracted that the secretary’s breathing is clearly heard, a bronchial noise, as if in excitement or alarm. Finally Mr. Eig leans forward from his citadel chair and in a tone of full neutrality says, “Close the door, please, Mr. Bok—”

—and what then is said between them the secretary cannot hear, though he tries, and Costello, too, leaning so close to the wood that he needs must scramble to shift his bulk when abruptly the door opens and Rupert exits, out and down the hall, down the stairs, into the sunlight and its flat black shadows—

—where at once he sees and seizes a startled and blinking Haden St.-Mary, to tow him past the statue of red Minerva, around a brick corner, Haden’s back pinned flat to the wall and “You work for him?” Rupert nodding back to the Morals Commission building; the reserved and formal theatre owner is gone, his voice is all of the streets now, a wolf’s voice, a wolf’s stare. “Spy for him, that Eig?”

“I work for myself. Stop, you’re crushing my arm—”

“Who else do you work for?”

“I work for myself! Fuck!” yanking free his forearm, staring at Rupert with authentic moral injury. “What in hell, what did Eig tell you?” but “Come with me,” Rupert hard to herd him off, past a sudden martial clot of Haden’s boys, all flick knives and lowered brows, Haden waving them away as together he and Rupert turn down a busy alley walkway between the Drapers’ Guild and the mercantile exchange, passing as they go men so entirely of that daylight world—barristers carrying documents, cloth merchants with samples, busy clerks in eyeshades—that they might themselves be invisible, Rupert swift and dark, Haden in unaccustomed mufti, a sober suit to suit his stare when he sits at last at the backstage table, hands jammed in his pockets like a schoolboy before the masters, and “How now, kit,” says Istvan pleasantly, a strip of old leather and his favorite awl in hand; the point is very sturdy, very sharp. “Tell us your tale, won’t you,” as Rupert stands behind him, arms folded, a street enforcer’s stance. “And try not to lie overmuch.”

“Beg your humble fucking pardon, uncle, I’m not a liar.” In passing with a cloth and tin washbucket, Tilde laughs, a nearly silent sound. “And I don’t tell tales.”

“Yes, you do, and yes, you are. But sometimes a liar tells the truth.”

“And wouldn’t you know it!”

“Indeed I would. Now tell us about your school of night,” and amazingly, perhaps, or prudently, Haden does: a few terse sentences of his ongoing dealings with Eig, his intelligencer network of knowledge and boys, Istvan asking then of “That blond
bébé,
” scoring the leather as if idly with the awl. “You sent him here, I know.”

“You mean Luc, Lucien Topps? He was here already, is how I heard it. And I asked him to keep his ears open for me, why not? But I haven’t seen him lately.”

“Well nor I.” They exchange a look in odd and sudden union, from which Rupert is somehow excluded, then “Whatever Eig told you,” says Haden, “that you’ve still not told me, could be what he thinks is true. But the truth is I’m no friend to him, or his fucking Morals house, either,” with a sudden real loathing that takes him by surprise, or at least stops him long enough to take a drink from his brandy flask, a long one, as if he would sluice away some foul and lingering taste. “I work for myself, I always have. And I hear,” looking from Istvan to Rupert, a measuring look, casting the line, “that you do, too. I hear names like de Vries, and,” the letter in the man’s pocket, that toffy letter, what was it? “de Metz—” surprised again by the great and sudden tension at the table, as if he had drawn a weapon, Rupert’s hand to Istvan’s shoulder, and “That’s deep water, kit,” Istvan says, without any smile at all. “I wonder, can you swim. Or may be you ought to take yourself to shore, now—”

“—and keep out of our fucking business,” says Rupert. “Our theatre, too.”

Strangely, Haden smiles then, a true smile of some strange wistfulness, for that one moment it changes his face, makes it a boy’s as “You’d do better to keep me in,” he says. “This play, your play, is in the streets now, an’t it? And I can help you. These streets are mine.”

Rupert’s hand flexes, kneading Istvan’s flesh, the scars unseen; Istvan considers Haden through his lashes; Haden looks back and forth between them both. The room is fully still, the stage untrod, until “One word,” says Rupert, “one word more of us to Eig, and we’ll know it. And I’ll know where to find you. Now go,” crossing in long steps to the door as if he will personally broom Haden out, Tilde in fact is there already with broom and bucket, as “Where do you go?” Istvan says, his tone more even, the trickster’s not the knight’s. “Out in your vaunted streets?”

With much dignity, “I’m going to the fucking church,” passing Rupert with a nod left unreturned, Tilde following him out onto the steps as if he might somehow dodge back inside, flinging her bucket’s freight just past him on the sidewalk, feinting at the knife man’s dog when the barking starts and “Jesu,” Rupert says; without the beard he looks younger, the worried young man in the brothel lobby, shabby coat and polished boots and too much weight on his shoulders. “First the license, now this.”

And Istvan, too, with a young man’s smile, as if picking up stray ordnance on the road, as “That young man,” musingly, “and his toy soldiers—there’s a show in the making, yeah? Exits and entrances…. Now tell me what Caesar said,” the story shared at the table with a meal of pears and tea and pale cheese, Tilde’s good bread, a china cup of brandy, a cigar and “How much does that Eig know of us, truly?” Istvan asks. “He seems too small to have names like Arrowsmith or Georges, or for them to have him. But the kit said de Metz,” and Rupert’s shrug in the smoke, how to say? beyond what the man said for himself, the meager facts of the Mercury and his desire, so plain, to exploit them for his own use: “Talking of that new law, that Morals Act,” and “All our acts are moral,” says a voice, Mr. Pollux commenting from somewhere in the dark, Istvan’s smile as shadowed as “He’ll take the block from our license,” Rupert says, “if we shut down this show; he said as much.” Istvan watches him pour two fingers of whiskey, bright as honey in the cup, and drink it down. “I told him we’d consider it.”

“You’d shift? For them? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“We’ll shift, but not for them. We’ll shut this show, to gain some space to play another—”

“Oh, well then good riddance to those ninepins! We’ll spin the wheel instead, and—”

“Jesu!” palm flat to the table so the teacups jump, “enough of the fucking roulette wheel! I’ve backed your play all our lives, messire, you can give me this, can you not? This stage, for once to do with as I please?” in sudden shout to make a sudden silence, Rupert drawing too hard on the cigar, coughing, Istvan up from the table to set down the paring knife and pick up a set of strings, set them down, too, reach for the nearest newspaper, the
Solon,
paging through in that silence to see the adverts for coming amusements, the lectures of the Leopards and others, the
lieder
recitals, the Chinese acrobat circus, and the “Opera,” he says. “That’s what this is, Mouse, and that’s what we need,” some hodgepodge of glamour and false Egyptian grace,
Cleopatra’s Rapsodia
to be staged not at the Cleo but at the city’s grand Civic Opera, all velvet swags and cherub-wild reredos, a boutonniere for every man and wrist-bouquet for every lady, and champagne served in the boxes between the tragic acts. “We’ll buy ourselves new tailcoats, and go see something silly and fine,” with a very small smile, Rupert’s scowl easing into a sigh and “I’m one,” he says softly, rubbing at his forehead in the old unhappy way. “And I’m weary.”