The Mercury Waltz (16 page)

Stand aside, scut. I’d see Mr. Hilaire, I know he’s in.

See him someplace else,
and not at the silent theatre; why did they quit that show? It was a good show, it had the city talking, it had lines around the block…. The talk is that it was Eig’s doing, and truly he plays that part, all puffed up about his influence, with a word he can make a place go dark or light it up again. He has begun to put new pressure on Haden, too, a subtle pressure but strong—

Mr. St.-Mary, do you like the view from where you stand? Yet if you were to take a step or two upward, the view could only improve.

Meaning what?

A new man makes his own meaning.

—which in the end could mean anything at all. And Haden takes care how often he is seen to be seen at the Commission office; he has no urge to tangle again with Bok, Mr. Rupert Bok, though he learns what he can, and what he learns increases his respect: a bravo, he was right about that, and some sort of pimp or houseman, too, Cockrill who plays the puppets knows a man who knows a man who had been to a certain whorehouse in the war, Atop the Poppy or somesuch name, and
They threw some cracking shows there,
Cockrill with elbows to the tavern rail, a second gin in hand, bought, like the first, with Haden’s purse.
Diddling with the puppets—have you ever heard the like?—and lovering right there in the seats, that actor Hilaire was the heart of it, and Bok broke the heads and ran the girls,
and made a great fortune that retired them both to this place, this debated, celebrated Mercury that
An’t all so far away from my own Palace, now, is it? Come and have a look-see for yourself,
as Cockrill mournfully offered a pair of tickets to his latest show.

And after leaving that show—Christ, you could smell the girls’ baskets from the second row; how can any man want to rub his johnny in that?—it was himself and Frédéric there in the dark, tie off, perfumed by brandy, bright-eyed on the steps of his rooming house, and just a step or two upstairs would put that matter to rights, wouldn’t it, and give him what he wants, what they both want,
the full pleasure of a premiere.
The taste of that skin…. But he is different, Frédéric, not like Haden at all, a fellow who wants to put the world to rights, who thinks it
can
be put to rights, with a mamma who writes letters and prays for his safety, and some Marie who waits for his return; not like Haden, who, if he were to do as he wants to do, as Frédéric in his terrible innocence urges him to do, with every look, smile, sigh, thigh brushed against his at the bridge, oh, how could he not bring ruin to that innocence, his own darkness contagious and, say it, rather foul. Rather fucking foul. The seraphim-angel and the goat-eyed satyr…. But Frédéric would say that devils are angels, too.

And past that endless, tingling moment on the steps, Haden stepping off to grab and fuck the first boy of his that he saw, hustled into a flyblown alley, eyes closed and very rough, and the boy in tears afterward, tears that Haden mocked—
Wipe your eyes, you little shirley
—then ashamed of his own cruelty, paying the boy like a trick would and then appalled at
that,
what is happening to him? Is this some sort of love?
Cupid, Cupid, notch your bow….
And drunk that night as he has rarely been, on his knees and puking up brown lager at the curb, a pair of white hands appearing to hold his head steady, Luc’s icy hands, Luc’s eyes half-mast from pills—but that was the only glimpse he has had of Luc, then or before, and not a penny paid for, or to, him lately, so how the devil is he living? And where?

Chewing at his scar, he puts it all aside for now, turning the corner to the barber’s shop to have a brushing and a dusting and a going-over before he goes on to meet Frédéric. The barber’s eyes widen at the sight of him, no doubt in awe at his new brocade tailcoat, Medici blue and trimmed in shiny gold braid; it was bally costly, but surely worth the price, there will be nothing else like it at the opera tonight.

In the square before the Civic Opera, set upon the tiering marble steps like a temple on a hill, in the rustle of pigeons wheeling up to roost past the thankfully rising breeze, the little crowd that serves the crowd is arrived and ready: here the snuff vendors with their tiniest tins, just the size of a thumbtip, with a discreet taste to ease a tedious aria; there the cigar-and-cigarette boys, the tea boys, the posy girls with flowers to match a Cleopatra’s tale, deepest reds and tragical white roses, with a few exotic tiger lilies for the daring, and an array of corsage-rings worked cunningly with buds and wire that by midnight will stain the skin a corpsey green. As the lampposts light and the last of the sun departs, the excited ticketholders gather and queue, themselves an affordable spectacle eyed by the sidewalk proles who linger, chewing their chestnuts and paper-wrapped pasties, eyed in their turn by the constables stationed in a loose row beside the trolley tracks; the heat has a tendency to make a theatre of the streets, as well.

In the queue are the show folk, as many as could beg or wangle a ticket, gossiping and rolling their eyes—Tomas the Swede is feuding with his manager! Annelore Bart is in love with her dresser’s assistant!—at their heart the magnificent Edgar Rue and his walking stick, and in their midst, if remote, Mr. and Mrs. Shakespeare Cowtan, in sky-high top hat and trailing skirts of ingénue blue, just a step behind the burghers’ wives in their once-a-year best, the pretty daughters and bored sons of the almost-gentry, and the slow approach of the gentry themselves, the great carriages and drivers in livery, their whips tipped in silver, their gazes sharp for the thieves like brown shadows who already are hunting downwind. From inside the white and bannered building come the sounds of the lobby orchestra playing an endless prelude, some provincial German’s notion of an Egyptian souk, backdrop
rapsodia
to the reign of this queen, a daughter of wit and war and furor, herself the last pharaoh of Egypt, as time like a pitiless dealer called in the old deck for the new—

—as now, arriving not in a fine carriage but a hired cabriolet, like any modest arts-minded citizen might do, Herr de Vries alights beside his lovely wife, she with a smile not a little aided by the glorious new rope of pearls she wears, a gift to equal anything owned by my lady de Metz, who bears her pagan rubies with all the flair of a country governess; poor Christobel so
bas bleu
and unpretty, with no notion of how to dress or array herself properly and her sole attraction that matronly resemblance to Isobel de Metz, or at least that is what Frau de Vries understands: there are many rumors about this Benjamin, and clearly there is no heat between Mme de Metz and her husband, who so highly valued his sister, and who himself is so terribly attractive, and so cloistered, and so cold. Did she not herself sit beside him at last night’s supper, and he without a smile for all her winning little jests? Cold, very cold, especially in contrast to her own lord, who flirted with poor Christobel as a good host should, who smiles now at the common citizens crowding around to smile at him, and a smile for her, too, on a pleasant breath of anisette—

—that smile in pleasant reverie of a very pretty boy, pretty blond Lucien, so much the worse for wear on some sort of smoke or powder that whatever the Lewd Lord found to do he found just as congenial, or at least did not squirm or make a noise, with eyes closed and a grimy blue scarf twined like a noose about his neck. Iffy had said the boy was ailing, had suggested he be sent away, but
Christian hospitality,
came the reminder in a rumble,
is a cardinal virtue. “House the naked,” isn’t it? And now is not the time to be hiring up all sorts of lads, lads talk…. Jozsef looks after him,
that blasé valet who, as the in-town majordomo of Herr de Vries, has seen so much throughout the years that nothing can surprise him, not tucking up a stupored boy whore, nor the girl whores preferred by the archbishop, nor any sort of whore at all—though the de Metz’ man Emory is as dislikable a character as Jozsef has been disprivileged to meet. No greeting or friendly word for the staff, no word for Jozsef himself beyond the orders—orders, mind you!—given sideways from that gill-slit of a mouth:
Hotter water, much hotter. One cannot shave correctly with this milk.
And the de Metz lord there naked to the waist, towels piled by the Quatorze chair already sticky and damp with soap, his own gaze so strange and elated—exalted—that Jozsef was glad to turn away and send up the maids with the water and fresh towels that Emory received like a vizier at a levee, smiling through the steam, alone with his master; James Aubin left behind this time, the proprieties fully observed here, though as he shaved and dabbed at his master’s face—quickly, for already Madame is waiting downstairs, the curtain is to rise within the hour—he felt moved to ask “Shall I find you some easement this evening, my lord? After the opera supper?”

“No,” sharp, Benjamin’s voice rougher than usual, his heart—Emory can see it, anyone could see it—pulsing like a boy’s, the heat bright in his cheeks; a boy in a tree become a man in a high place, young in years but old in blood-cunning, like Cleopatra the daughter of kings, hiding the serpent seed of knowledge beneath her wily tongue. But soon no more wiles will be needed…. Shifting in the armchair as if in restlessness, or warm erotic discontent: “Careful with the edge, you’ll mark me.—You have never seen M. Bok.”

“No, my lord.”

“I saw him first at one of those foolish parties, balls, how I hate going to balls—” as if surprised somehow to find himself shaved and dressing for another one, Emory dressing him in linen and sable brown silk, ruby cufflinks to match the stones worn by Christobel. “He knew what nonsense they are, what all this is,” like the putative purpose of this visit, de Vries wanting solidarity—
Things are changing very quickly, here and elsewhere, all these new fellows to deal with. Pity Javier’s gone, eh? He knew how to make the wheels turn
—and the other meetings with other men wanting other things, money, safety, patronage, direction, his
maître
the only man who never asked nor tasked him, who only gave…. And now it is his turn to give, as once he gave the little red journal, red as his loving heart. His days now are not for poetry, but they will be, oh, they will be, now that the old man is in his tomb and Arrowsmith is in his tomb beside Belle, his own Belle who died and left him to do as he will, his second mother whom Christobel mimics as she can—the gloves, the gardening shears, if he were a different sort of man it would be touching, but he is not touched, only glad that she is so clever, that she knows her place can never be his heart, for that heart was given once and forever, to the man whose leaving he understands as he could not, then, a leaving meant to make him stronger, a leaving now to be remedied at last. With a final glance to the mirror Benjamin takes his own leave, as Emory stands forgotten with the towels and white gobbets of soap, the clutter of lists and invitations and bankers’ letters, many letters, the day’s edition of the
Globe
that takes note of how the Mercury Theatre was silenced, and by whom—

—as that theatre’s quiet industry is locked and left to Tilde for the evening, Tilde at the door to wish Rupert in his new tailcoat a “Good opera, Sir,” while Istvan clatters tardy down the stairs, hat in hand, the pale swing of the gleaming pearl like a little wink to Tilde, whose smile blossoms as “Some time you might come with us,” says Rupert, “if you like,” and “Stay out of trouble, mind,” Istvan nodding to the precarious woodpile that, painted, will become a polar peak for
The Snow Youth,
the fragments growing into this show very soon to be mounted, so quickly it is as if it is writing itself: like a fable, or a dream, of a boy born of the cold kobold mountains, and a traveler caught by his frozen allure, himself mired in the killing cold until hard magic and a foxy warrior set him safely free once more.

In some ways this show is like the others they have staged here, like the oldest days of all—together, working, making—though there has been no discussion at all of its topic or import, Istvan noting only that
One hears there’s general mourning for the
Forest, to Rupert’s one-shoulder shrug,
And how does that matter to us?
Now fully licensed again, the two of them and the Misters Pollux and Castor, and those other clumsy strangers patient still in their own darkness, tutored from that darkness step by step by a master’s hand, as the Snow Youth is constructed into life: half wood, half parchment paper, and all beauty, with stiff lustrous hair and eyes that move and blink and shed real glycerin tears. Istvan has been surprised to find in that construction a kind of wry commiseration, the Happy Prince not so long to be happy, was he, in the alley or on the stage, the Calf and the Blackbird, yes, and the drawing room its own kind of
fin du monde,
the end of one world and the true beginnings of the next. How strange it is to see the past so clearly, as if distance improves the view, that
commedia dell’arte
of secret entrances, acts, and villains, with the cold requisite spill of blood to make an end. And how consummately kind, Mouse’s own work in words with these two fellows, the Snow Youth a silent living poem, and the mercurial warrior who seems at first to abandon his friend to his own enchantment; how like Mouse to give that warrior so much credit, as well as all the best lines.

Stepping past the mountain, now, hat on and into the street, Istvan takes a breath rank with the smell of the heat, of shoemaker’s leather and glue, the aroma of piss and braising meat and “Too bad,” wrinkling his nose, “we can’t bring along your snowman, that opera house will be a real inferno. —And speak of the devil,” lifting his hat in polite burlesque to the street priest, who, tracts in hand, sits sweaty sentry outside the door of the Heads or Tails, hectoring the gamblers and the drinkers and the rowdy boy who jigs with the bells, glaring up at these two vile dandies as they pass in their linen and leather boots and pearls, shiny little spectacles looking down upon one who lives only to spread the word of God and “Sirs, abomination!” cries the priest from beneath his shako, the cross of which has been recently, imperfectly gilded. “The abomination of desolation surely awaits you both!”