The Mercury Waltz (8 page)

By the time Herr de Vries emerges, roseate and smiling, the letter is back at the same angle it wore before extraction, tucked beside another, much thinner envelope handed to Haden with a wink that is met by a smile, Haden’s most bogus, roguish grin and “Very nice boy,” says Herr de Vries, “though Lucien is still premier. Give him my greetings, hmm?” as he pulls on his gold-buttoned gloves and departs. Haden leaves two of the envelope’s smaller banknotes on the night table, beside the dozing boy whose rouged lips are now chapped and smeared, and takes himself home—

—to find huddled and waiting on the steps, yes, Lucien in a velvet jacket too large for him, and a fairly ridiculous scarf: “Not trouble? No,” at Luc’s eager smile. “Step up then,” Haden leading the way up the stairs, the windy flue of a narrow old building, to a small but triply windowed garret, the city’s guttering spark and sparkle displayed there like paintings on a rich man’s walls. “Have a sit,” across from the unfresh bed, boot marks and wine stains and others more earthy, one chair at the three-legged table stacked and tumbled with papers and books, cracked leather backs and the dry scent of libraries; poked, the meager stove-fire curls into a kind of life. “That a new scarf? Where are you bound, so fine?”

Luc fingers the cheaply sewn silk, the best that he can afford. “To see M’sieur Stefan. M’sieur Stefan favors blue…. I came to ask—to ask if, may be, if I could have some extra scratch? Just a little bit extra?”

Haden pours from a squared decanter, wine so deeply red it shows black in the uncertain light; vinegar splash, he hands a cup to Luc, drinks half of his in one swallow. “What for? Another scarf?”

“No, I—I would like to do something nice for M’sieur Stefan, may be not a scarf, but very nice.” Smiling as if he is already shopping for the gift, a lovely smile from Luc the loveliest of his boys, much in demand among the lords and the better
rentiers,
his own first choice when the heat strikes; and more spiff, less dosed on pills than usual, is little Luc in love? “And to pay back I’ll do double, the Park
and
the square if that’s your wish, or whatever you wish, I can pay it all back by next Sunday for certain—” Haden downing the rest of the cup, reaching for his billfold while Luc, surer now of the favor, bubbles on of the night ahead: “I think it will be dice, may be at Piggy’s. He likes Piggy’s, he says it reminds him of Puggy’s—”

“Piggy’s is a bunghole. What is Puggy’s?”

“I don’t know. A place he lived before, I think…. Oh ta!” glowing, hand out for the money as Haden smiles, brushing lightly at a soft stray strand: “Sure he’s worth it, your fancy monsieur?”

“Oh, M’sieur Stefan is a real gentleman, a great gentleman!
And
a star,” proudly, “the star of the Mercury Theatre—he plays the puppets there, and he sings, you should hear him sing! And—” dwindling to silence at the change in Haden’s face, in his eyes and “Dice, too?” says Haden. “I do know he likes his cards. So Stefan Hilaire’s your light o’ love!” as his smile changes as well. “Why didn’t you tell me? Tell me now,” keeping hold of the banknote. “Does his man know about you?”

“What man?”

“The owner. His owner. Mr. Bok.”

Luc flushes, an unhappy color. “Oh that’s not true—he is not ‘owned’ that way, they are—He is
not
owned.”

“Is it bad then, to be owned? I own you.” Fingers to Luc’s chin, not harshly, just firmly, lifting that face to face his own: “Who found you in the sewer? Who ran off that old tosser who was beating you like a fucking drum? Whose money bought you this scarf?” one hand now stroking the garish silk, blue as a whore’s painted eyes, tugging it down to caress the white throat beneath and “Love him if you like,” he says into Luc’s ear, scarred lips just brushing the skin. “For me you need to watch.”

Luc’s eyes are closed; his voice is less than a whisper. “Watch what?”

“Him, your M’sieur Stefan—he’s worth the watching, an’t he, a fine cardsman like that?” sliding the shirt from the narrow shoulders, wash of gooseflesh in the chilly room. “Stand up, that’s right. —Him
and
the other, everything that happens there I want to know,” with a kiss to taste again the wine in his own mouth, the boy’s breath ragged and sweet beneath and “No, not that,” as Luc makes to kneel before him. “This way,” to the bed, a coupling brief and even briefly tender, Luc trembling like a fawn in his grasp and “Here,” says Haden afterward, himself retying Luc’s untidy scarf. “We’ll walk together,” arm in arm through the dodge and stroll of the streets to the doors of the Mercury, where the last few patrons hurry in for the evening’s seating; the lamps are lit, it is almost exactly nine o’clock.

Luc, still pale, puts his hand to the door, an anguished look past his shoulder as “Watch,” Haden’s murmur, tucking into the empty velvet pocket several of the larger de Vries banknotes, later used to buy a bottle of
crême soubrette
for M’sieur Stefan, shared out in the warm and private confines of another nonesuch hotel, the shabbier Cocked Hat, after the knight and the trickster have gone again to their reward and the dice have been thrown and the night’s stakes lost and “Did you take pills tonight,
bébé
? You oughtn’t, they make you dull. —Why, you’ve a bruise,” Istvan says, tracing with one fingertip the slim, dampened thigh, while Luc closes his eyes and clings to the body beside his as if it holds the only hope in all the world—

—while Haden sits back at his table of books, the bad wine abandoned for brandy, the lamplight a magic circle in which the circling mind gathers all the strands, the slack and the strangling, to play cat’s cradle with the darkness and so keep the darkness at bay. The rising wind sifts beneath the door and flutters the clippings on the table, the columns of Seraphim carefully assembled as if they were pieces of a puzzle, as without a doubt they are; the challenge is in the fit, to take in the whole of the picture before that picture comes whole. Eig and his whorish lord-master; Luc and M’sieur Stefan the gambler—a bit of luck there!—and the as-yet unmet Mr. Bok; the unmet Seraphim, too, so cagey so far, but he will be found, because Haden will not be fobbed off by the coy invitation to meet via post, or even through the telephone, there is one in the office building that Eig said he might use, but how can a man grasp a man through the air, that way? how can he know with whom he deals, if not through the eyes, the stance, even the smell can tell so many things…. The smell still on his own hands, yes, trace of Luc’s fear and softness, Luc who will do as he is bid past that fear and the fucking and the strut and dazzle of the plays onstage:
It’s nothing you need do yourself
but Eig is not his master, no matter what the man may think, Eig with his envelopes and rooms of inquiry, his bad French and nasty fucking tea, because this business—Haden smells it so—is street play, all the way down to the ground. Which means that it is his play, and it may very well be time to hie over to the Mercury and take in a play himself.

Now in the dark of that theatre, Rupert locks the streetside door, dumps the dregs of tea into the slop jar, and tucks the cashbox underarm to climb the stairs, second floor, third, all the way to the little rooftop trapdoor: it is boyish, foolish, but sometimes he seeks that vantage, the city in windy moonlight and he alone above it, Istvan about some mischief somewhere in the crooked streets below. Tonight he leans on the roof’s hard tiles to smoke and think on the evening just past, a busy one of strong applause and flying blood and the kiss Istvan insists on, longer tonight than ever before, to goad that audience and set it freshly abuzz. And what an audience, an uneasy mixture of drawing room and alley, ladies in silk suits and harsh fantastical jewels, the black-hatted girls from the Virgo Society, the young men in armbands who fancy themselves outliers or outlaws, and two banker-type fellows disputing past insults into shoves and collar-tugs until he must step up, brisk and brusque, to separate them, with Istvan’s brief hilarity afterward—
Why, bravo, my bravo! It’s just like the old days—
to bring his own half-gratified shrug: a deal of heads cracked sideways, yes, in the oldest days of all, but nothing he expected here in their own quiet theatre, with these two civilized misters, Pollux and Castor—

—who down below hang in their own backstage silence, depend upon the verge: their wooden faces masked in silk, the long road behind and before them, the theatre of the real and the
teatro del sacro
that sometimes are all the same place. What dreams they harbor, or passions they contain, distill and mingle in each night’s quiescence, as strong liquor grows stronger in the cask, while the empty platter of the moon gives her light, an impassive courtesan, from window to window, city to city—

—to another city’s backstreets anonymous and rank, a tannery and a tallow stink and a black-bearded man with a knife who, when he is not carving animals, carves different things for different uses, such as “The puppet,” says a different man, clean-shaven chops and modest linen, something odd about the eyes. “It’s done? Box it up, then, and carefully,” handing him money from a master whose name goes unrecorded, the only name on the carver’s note is
Emory:
this Emory who then takes the box and himself to a cab and another street many worlds away, an elegant boulevard of flowering tulip trees, glassy lampposts aglow in the mist like muted stars, a townhouse guarded by gates topped with black ivy and greenish marble griffins, carved
en passant
with empty roaring mouths.

Up a private stairway, passing as he goes a silent street whore buttoning his trousers, he steps into what could be a modern king’s bedchamber: Delacroix on the walls and Aubusson on the floors; a vase of fisty, unfurled white roses atop a little desk of great antiquity, its inkwell worked in a pattern of fleurs-de-lis. Steel-gray velvet curtains are drawn on casement windows, though the room’s air is unpleasantly close, gas and whiskey and semen and “The creature smelt thoroughly of herring,” says the young man lying naked in the bed, a deep, luxurious bed with hangings of gray-shot silk; he is exceptionally handsome, lean and muscled, his dark hair expertly razored, dark smudges deep as scars beneath his eyes. “Herring and cheap cigarettes. Why must they smoke such vile cigarettes? Why did you send him?”

“For your easement, my lord,” says Emory, passing his master a handkerchief of immaculate white lawn; he takes it back fouled, tucks it neatly away. “I hope you’ll be pleased as well to hear that your gift is ready.”

Rustling forward under silk, “Let me see,” the box opened like a thing exhumed to show the angel puppet inside, a white Gabriel with gilt-paper halo and gluey pigeon-feather wings, the painted eyes dull beside the one he takes up, now, in comparison, a wooden eyeball stained a lasting, gaudy green. “Not bad. He and the devil shall be bookends.”

Emory’s hand brushes his master’s, a tiny touch, one the younger man does not mark. “Your choice is an apt one, my lord.”

“Yes—good and evil, in the Garden of Eden,” his smile as he recalls another angel, an angel on horseback, Pinky and piano music, the breathing heat of desire and “I’m looking forward to being the master of a theatre—I used to frequent such, you know, one theatre in particular, I played upon its stage and I walked upon its roof. A very slippery roof, too, in the rain.”

“Remarkable,” says Emory, who has heard this story more than once. “When was this, my lord?”

“A long time ago.” A signet ring gleams gold and black upon one hand, as with the other he turns it round and round, remembering as he does that other ring, the Greek intaglio, the warrior’s inscription,
Je reste avec vous.
“When I was young.”

Beside him in the bedclothes, never far from his reach, is a pearl-gray journal, its many sewn pages onionskin and very old. As Emory reboxes the puppet, then assiduously, almost feastingly, tidies the room’s disorder, soiled boots and flung tailcoat, emptied glasses and bottles, correspondence read and unread—among the pile yet another letter from Javier Arrowsmith, widower and brother-in-law, decrepit
eminence grise
—Benjamin de Metz takes up his pen and writes the continuing notation of what is done to whom, by whom, and what is yet to do: a kind of family history as well as a record that one day, a day perhaps very soon, his own
Maître
shall see and read to
See what I did with the life you left me:
a life like a banquet that never ends, the fare unchanging, the company wearying, the host’s duties immense and ever-growing; with one seat left always vacant for the guest whose presence is felt ever,
je reste avec vous,
the guest whose final coming will put an end to that banquet for good.

CHRISTOBEL DE METZ’S JOURNAL

23 March, 18
—

Tonight’s Ambassadors’ Ball
was a true and saddening bore, as you would have said: the theme was
“Das Spiel der Mächtigen,”
the set was red velvet and armor, and the singers, while pleasant to look at, kept drifting off-key like a boat in the tide. The German ambassador’s wife danced as if she were made from wood, the French ambassador’s wife is a harpy, and Adele Guerlain had far too much champagne and made a bit of a scene, which privately amused Achille and myself. B. left early for his club with James Aubin, who is quite a pleasant young man, and nothing at all like the last one, that dreadful English boy from the casinos. I remember how thoroughly you disliked Edmund Gabriel, and this boy was much worse—you would have uprooted him like a weed!

There is little news here, as winter ends. I have had the glassmen to Chatiens, to repair the greenhouse; the orange trees are flourishing; the jungle terrarium is flourishing; the rose canes in the grand lane will bear doubly this year, or so says Damien’s last letter. How wonderful it would be to be there now—as you taught me, the times of change are always loveliest, when Damien and his men are pruning, and cleaning, making ready for the bloom of summer or the deep rest of winter. I could not miss you more, dearest sister, nor long for you less, no matter where I am, but in the gardens at Chatiens I seem to feel you nearest, as if I might turn a step and find you there in your old green wrapper, busy with the flower baskets and your silver shears.

Did I tell you, I have had the painting cleaned? The colors are almost strangely vivid now, B.’s smile glows like a votive, and you look as wise as a young Athena. It is hung in my own salon, where I sit beneath it with my letters, or this journal, or meet over the accounts with Mr. Tallard. He is as competent a man as Helmut was, and always with an eye to what might be improved; he himself supervised the relocation of the painting
Though I admit, Madame, I was startled at first to see your husband in such an—allegorical pose! Not the sort of thing most men would approve,
to which I replied without thinking,
My husband is not like other men,
which made an awkward pause, Mr. Tallard staring down at his papers, until I led us through the silence by saying
He’s had a superior education in the classics; his sister was most particular on the matter
. And I smiled, and he smiled, and we could speak, then, of other things.

But what would he have said if I had said what is so, what you know, dearest sister, what I knew from the start, of B. and his wants and his habits? That he is
not
like other men, that he rarely sees that painting because he rarely visits my rooms, in Chatiens or at this townhouse or in Paris, and his own rooms to me are as distant, where he sits at your father’s desk to write, or meet with those men to whom I am merely a smiling statue to be bypassed with a bow, the rooms where he finds easement…. He spoke of it only once, in Barcelona, there by the balcony window in that stifling smell of orange blossoms, moonlight as bright around him as an angel’s wings:
We will not live in one another’s pockets, Christobel, be sure I have told Belle the same. But you needn’t worry, I know where my duty lies, I know that we must have an heir…. Come here.
He did his best to be kind to me, then; afterwards I did not weep, I made certain to make a smile.

And I try, as always you tried, to ease the burden of his duties, which is my duty as his wife and helpmeet; what a fine word that is, “helpmeet,” so old-fashioned, and yet so apt and true. This week it was weary old M. Chamsaur, and then Herr Mevsky so tedious with his endless talk of factories and sulfur mines, but I make the attempt, as I make certain we serve the sour peg-cups one favors, and the other’s gluey boar’s head soup. Did I tell you that B. boasted of me to Herr de Vries? He called me “the wife of the Proverbs” and said that my worth was beyond rubies, to which Herr de Vries made one of his needlessly coy rejoinders:
And more beautiful even than her gems,
meaning the rubies B. bought for me in Rome—
en cabochon
and dark as old blood, they would have suited you much better than I. My own family pearls are best on me, but I wear the jewels B. gives to me, those rubies, or that diamond Maharani crown, though I look a bit of a guy in it! Or the emerald bracelets he bought in London—“Deck her in emeralds/Make her your queen,” that is a song, a sentimental ballad they sing at the dinners these days, though nothing such was sung this night. This night was veal dumplings in sherry, and too-tight dancing slippers, and the urge to turn on the French ambassador’s wife and ask if she has ever in her lifetime read anything more challenging than a menu, or had a thought more complex than balcony gossip! These women are so vexing—most of them are twice my age, but they make me feel immensely old.

Do forgive me for complaining, but I know you understand. You alone always have understood me, and B., and how we live, you who taught me everything and gave me everything that I hold dear. If only you were here to share these musicales and suppers, to read aloud together, and laugh and talk with, to be B.’s rock and my own. And to see our little Isau—oh, if only you had lived to see his face! And his eyes, the clearest, sweetest, palest blue, just exactly like your own.