The Mercury Waltz (4 page)

The knight is on the road: the road is dark: the dark patter of a sound like falling rain makes the twenty spectators in the seats feel a damp against which they hunch their suited shoulders, slide hands into the shelter of a quilted muslin muff. The knight in black cap and jacket is no stranger to the rain or the road, with no true destination and no place to lay his head, or a way to say how long he has been traveling. Between the trees darker forms await, brigands perhaps or perhaps something even worse, massed figures as solid and menacing as clubs—a clutch of old ninepins painted black and dun copper, with fierce little tin-paper ruffs—who mean no doubt to do this hero awful harm.

But before he can draw his truncheon, the knight’s attention is taken by a sound, a distant whistling growing nearer, Istvan’s whistle through his teeth: a sweet old air of the countryside, “The Flowers’ Roundelay.” The song is as out of place in this scene of peril as its advent is a comfort, bringing smiles of recognition to the audience, though Istvan, cloaked and masked in black, would have preferred something more saucy: these are men, not virgin milkmaids! but Mouse is martial on the subject of music, so let it be. What he can do, what he does, is bring forth the trickster—Mr. Pollux tricked out this time in plague mask and splendid rags—with a decidedly virile approach, a gallant’s swagger: these fellows are soon to be lovers, after all.

Now the two onstage come together, first circling, then meeting, then greeting, arm in arm in another kind of roundelay, as the whistle becomes a sinuous siren’s hum, as the pattering rain falls silent, as the trickster smiles with real delight upon his new companion: “In the hills,“ he says, “it is so fair, Herr Knight, have you been there? All glossy-green, the sward upon which a man might lie with his love all night….”

“I have only ever traveled alone,” says the knight, and as if this is the signal, the ninepin army rattles forward
en masse,
or seems to, Rupert’s work, as is the battle that ensues: a robust clash to make the trees shudder and the pins clatter fore and aft, bright blood splashing on the boards, as well as the coat of a front-row gentleman, who grunts aloud as if he has actually been assaulted. Meanwhile the trickster flies up to the shrouded moon and frees her pale face, so the flooding light illuminates the forest, a beauty so unexpected that the watchers, still caught by conflict, must catch their breath again in awe: each trunk inscribed and intricate with silver, to make of the whole, despite the blood, a crystalline paradise. The effect is quite thrilling, there is spontaneous applause led by a dark young man with a journalist’s notebook, loudest of all from a very young fellow by the door, whose fair hair shines like silver when the bright moon smiles his way.

Meanwhile the knight has splintered his assailants, has put up his club, is searching again for the trickster who, it seems, has flown indeed; at least the knight seems to think so, and perhaps he is right, for where is that motley fellow? No longer in the sky, nor in the gorgeous trees, nowhere at all, so in great sadness the knight turns back for the road, murmuring to himself the little song, the flowers’ roundelay become a dirge—

—until like a bloom sprung in full growth from the soil, the loving trickster reappears unmasked, to greet the knight with a lingering caress—there is some murmuring in the audience at this, growing louder at their brief yet open kiss: “It’s nearly midnight, Herr Knight. Will we have the dawn together in the hills?”—as together they turn, as the forest disappears, as a scrim descends to make a mist behind which the lovers ascend to a passionate Valhalla, two heroes who, to divided applause, loudest again from that radiant boy in the back, return in their everyday weeds, Mr. Castor and Mr. Pollux still arm in arm to make their song of the ancient Greeks in theatre, and to wish joy upon “
Mesdames et messieurs—
”

—and then the puppets are fully gone and the lights go up, the splashed gore on the boards, still wet, is revealed to be glycerin and paint although “It certainly stains like blood,” grumbles the front-row gentlemen to his friend, scrubbing his sleeve as that other shrugs: “How would you know? Are they cutting off heads now at the Morals Commission?”

“Not quite yet, but if Eig should get his way—Will you not excuse me! Popinjay,” a louder grumble as the applauding boy, now leading a girl, pushes against the current in the aisle to fetch up waiting at the edge of the stage. The doors open to disperse the audience into echo, the way a bell’s tone ripples through the air though the bell itself has gone still—

—until another sound, Istvan still in black though having shed his mask, humming a version of that final tune “—give you all you think you want, as long as it’s a boy—” till he catches sight of the two of them, Hansel and Gretel tiptoe at the verge of the dark wood; he shrugs off the draping cape, he smiles.

“Why Luc,” he says. “You brought along a friend.”

“Oh yes, M’sieur! May I present Miss Cynthia, she has been clamoring to meet you,” as the girl makes an old-fashioned curtsey, buttery sausage curls and a narrow skirt prim with Dutch lace: Oh she has never seen such a wonderful show, oh she has never known that puppets could perform so, two men together not quite the thing perhaps but still, oh so very wonderful. And so wonderful, too, to finally meet the great Monsieur Hilaire—

“It is my pleasure, Mademoiselle,” Istvan less than half attending, watching the fall of light on the boy’s profile like some bas-relief on a temple wall: Luc is such a lovely boy, such a good boy, too, though he apparently makes his way with a very bad crowd, the kind of boys Istvan knew as a youth, the kind Rupert used to have to thrash…. Luc, Lucien, well-met in the Heads or Tails Bar, soft-eyed on opium pills, the black pills the boys like to take, bringing him luck when he diced—though it is true that the winnings are somewhat beside the point these days, these days he does not play for stakes or rather decides his own: that night it was, shall he win with no strategy,
Krampus luck
they used to call it, throw the sticks in the air and let the devil decide. And thus the dice brought him Lucien.

Since then the boy has been his bright and smitten shadow, at the tables and the card parlors, the anonymous nonesuch hotels, bringing smiles and kisses and quantities of useless little gifts—tins of Cupid’s relish, handwarmers and cheap handkerchiefs, execrable bonbons bought at the curb—while professing a love as ardent as it is absurd:
I will be for you whatever you want, M’sieur Stefan, only let me try! Say you will let me try!
This girl as well is a kind of offering—“Cynthia can sew, and sing, and she wants to be a dancer”—though Istvan can see with half a look that the chit is on the dodge, all the Dutch lace in the world is no disguise, so “I’m afraid we’ve no place here for a young lady,” he says, watching her gaze shift in transparent dismay; who sent her, truly, through guileless Luc? The same wit who sent that foolish devil? Or one of the rival theatres, Shakespeare Cowtan at the Cleo, or Fairgrieve mourning every penny not his own? “As you say, our shows aren’t quite the thing. And I already know how to sew,” sending her off with another, less florid curtsey, Luc crestfallen as “I am sorry, M’sieur Stefan,” he says, looking up into Istvan’s eyes, his own a troubled dovelike gray. “She asked and asked, and I thought truly you might like her—”

“And why would you think that,
bébé?
” tilting that chin, oh what a Botticelli, what a pity one cannot put him onstage, he belongs on some stage somewhere, shining in the light. “She’s a dodger.”

“
M’sieur!
”

“A dodger,” says Istvan again and with amusement, “as false as her sausage curls—they’re made of wool and gilding-paint, tug one and see. Always beware the eager,” as footsteps cross backstage, the sound of pouring water, footsteps again so “Go,” with a different sort of smile. “Wait for me, I’ll be by directly.”

“At the Heads or Tails?”

“Yes, but not to end there,” for he has a mind tonight for serious cards, and perhaps a moment or two spent on the boy who kisses his hand like an equerry and departs, just as Rupert enters from stage left in shirtsleeves, to bend and swipe at the gobbets of red paint: “I’d thought you were busy at this, messire…. Was that your little friend? I saw him in the house, before.”

“Yes,” half-kneeling to splash a handful from the bucket. “He brought a naughty chippie to apprentice; I told her we’re not hiring. Though I wouldn’t turn away a fine musician—”

“Where are you going?”

With a sideways smile, to divert him, “I’d even have that Pinky back if we could get him, perhaps I’ll send to Puss for a loan, though he was hard-pressed to carry a tune with two hands. Really, must we have that silly roundelay?”

“Yes. It suits. —Where are you going?” again, as the last of the paint is swabbed clean, the stain removed till next time. “Not to dice?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie.” Chucking down the rag, it splashes in the red wash of the pail. “Must we have it all again? When things are not dire, why must you make them so?”

“‘Dire,’” scoffing, drying his hands on the tossed-away cape, taking a step to stand face-to-face with Rupert, who turns his head aside, Istvan turning it back and “I must have a bit of recreation,” coolly, “this is my vice, yeah?” Rupert says nothing. “What troubles you? It can’t be the boy—”

Rupert drops his gaze to the glint of the ring on his finger, the rose gold intaglio, and “No,” he says; he has no authority left on that score. “It’s you—you play, you win, you lose—mostly you lose, I’ve seen the drafts—night after night, what do you want? Like a child in an alleyway tossing dibstones, letting rich fools make a fool of you, or worse—”

“And it’s that gray in your beard that makes an old man of you, seeing trouble in every corner: the dice, the silly preacher, all ‘dire,’ yes, and all less than a shadow in the dawn! What do I want? You have what you want, this place, what you always wanted. Will you write how I’m to live each moment, script that fucking tale, too?” His tone evens, just a trifle. “I play, I win, I lose, what of it? That road,” nodding to the veiled stage, “is a kind of motion; so are the dice, or the cards. What of it?”

“I would see you—happy.”

Silence: and then Istvan smiles, a small, tender, exasperated smile, as “Oh, Herr Knight,” with a fleeting kiss that, to Rupert, tastes of Eden, the boyhood of earth, their own boyhood ever and anew. “Will we have the dawn together in the hills…. Wait up for me, then, I’ll pour my gold into your lap,” kissing his fist in the old way to bring Rupert’s even smaller smile, his headshake and “You take a knife,” he says, “I hope,” as Istvan retrieves the playing-cape, slings it aside and “Always,” he says, he does, he goes into the dark outside as dark as the stage was and as rainy, but the bar is just a step or two away and in its doorway stands like a beacon a smiling face beneath a slouch cap, shining eyes to welcome him, and “Did you warm the dice for me?” Istvan asks as Luc slips a seeking hand into his own.

So the long night begins anew: A rousing round of dice to start, a drop or two of fairly passable brandy, a dozen ardent kisses in the doorway of the bar, past the street priest in collar and cross-topped shako, shaking his handful of tracts—

“Ah, lechery, venery! Sodomy! I say, sirs,
sodomy!
”

“Oh parson,” Istvan’s arm hooked about Luc’s shoulders, “do make up your God damned mind,” giving one kiss more for merry spite—

—then off to a venue where, as it happens, Luc is not to be admitted, a private players’ club stiff with greenish leather and baying taxidermied elk, where Istvan, intent and smiling, reeking faintly of flowery cologne, takes a chair at the worn moss of the gaming table, the scuffed oak of its rails scored to scrimshaw with years of calculation, greed, and hope, beside tonight’s hopefuls—a physician; an importer of Indian spices; a second-tier banker—ready to immerse once more in the retelling of the endless tale of chance. The dealer is new to this establishment, a man much younger than the others, houndstooth jacket and harsh resplendent tie: “Greetings, players,” says Haden St.-Mary, tucking away his own brandy flask after a fortifying swallow. “Cards, chips, and good luck to you all.”

One hand, ten hands, twenty; the physician puffs cigarette smoke, the importer sighs over his faithless cards. Istvan shrugs over his stack of black-rimmed chips, each stamped with a flower, a yellow chrysanthemum, many-petaled and bright as gold, and “Gentlemen,” he says, in an accent that could be his own, its vowels slightly slurred, “
à moi le tout.
”

The banker scowls. “Are you staking lansquenet, sir? This is Sudden Death.”

“Certainly it is,” with a cheerful smile, the near-silent snap of a card, his card, the six of spades; another snap, the knave. The importer sighs once more, surrenders his stake, bows and retreats past the staggered line of chairs to take up greatcoat and hat, though lingering still to watch the next card fall: another spade, the seven. The physician crushes out his cigarette, sweeps his chips into the center, takes his leave. A fourth card: the Lady of Spades. Still Istvan smiles.