Under the Poppy (19 page)

When first I come here, to the Poppy, to the city, I was having some thoughts about him, Mr. Rupert, you know, lovering kinds of thoughts—he is that handsome, and nice-spoken, and he never hits. And I was wild, you know, I’d never been nowhere, I thought the whole world was a pig farm and a water trough, and to be in a city this big, with the street-sellers and carriages and alehouses, a dozen alehouses! And the Gaiety Theatre so loud on the corner, the music pumping out so you thought it was holy doomsday! I was scared and wild both. And I thought may be Mr. Rupert would like me wild…. I was that lucky that it was Lorraine’s cousin who brought me, Lorraine who used to work here—even though
she
wasn’t so lucky, Lorraine, she got the lung-fever and died. Like our poor Jennie. But her cousin put flowers on her, forget-me-nots and white daisies, with her hair brushed back all pretty, and her eyes closed sleeping-like.… Not like poor Jennie. Where could we get a flower, now?

But Miss Decca did give us them ribbons, special ones right from her own room: pretty pink and yellow, I think they was real China silk and
Make her up decently,
she said to Lucy; funny that she gave ’em to her, you know, when they hate each other so much. And Lucy braided up Jennie’s hair, and put rice powder on her face, so that was something. Velma said it was a sin to waste the ribbons,
Who’s going to see them in the ground?
But Lucy got mad and slapped her, and Miss Decca backed her up, Lucy, I mean; so that was funny, too.

Miss Decca’s already mad with Velma, for wanting to put some girl in Jennie’s place, some maid called Nancey from the big hotel, Velma said she was a likely girl but Mr. Rupert said
We will make do with what we have,
and Miss Decca narrowed up her eyes at Velma:
One less mouth to feed,
she said, like it was Velma she meant. But we can’t do without Velma! She cooks and does all the cleaning, even though we girls help her some; and all the washing, why the bedclothes alone are a mortal chore…. Miss Decca came after Velma in the kitchen, quiet-like, when the rest of us were in the downstairs parlor with Jennie; I was sent by Puggy for the bicarb and whatever gin I could find, and I heard Miss Decca say
You have a finger in the pie, do you? You and your hotel whore?
But I don’t know what she was meaning, unless Velma’s stealing food, and anyroad she closed up quick and started rating me for walking in without knocking, even though I did knock. And then I cried again…. I guess we could do without Velma if we had to, may be Miss Decca would take over the cooking. I guess we could do without anybody, except for Mr. Rupert. He’s the one who keeps us a jump ahead of, of everything. Just to see him there in the lobby, all calm-like, makes you feel better, even with all them soldiers; they give us plenty looks, you know, but they never make a grab on us. Mr. Rupert keeps us safe.

I could do without Mr. Istvan, as nice and friendly-like as he is. Though he did good at Jennie’s send-off—Mr. Rupert and Omar and Laddie and Puggy bore her away, and when they came back, Jonathan played so fine, and Mr. Istvan made that Miss Lucinda sing a song he’d writ just for Jennie, about how she was in heaven now, shining down like a twinkling star; I can’t feature how he does it, make a lady’s voice come out so true…. But I don’t like that Pan Loudermilk, even though Lucy and Vera laugh at me:
He’s not real, halfwit, he’s just a doll.
I know that, ’course I know that. But that first time, when he was fucking me—I know, Mr. Istvan said sorry afterwards. But there in that bed, with his hard hand all jammed up inside me, his eyes looked plenty real, and they look real on the stage, like they can see you;
he
can see you. And that’s real enough for me.

In war, even a glancing war like this one, it is less the violence than the sheer disorder that finally confounds, the things one takes in on the streets—a human arm in a garbage pail, still wearing its brown gingham sleeve; piled shoes, dozens of shoes, outside the locked doors of the mercantile; the midwife puffing furiously on a loose-rolled cigarette as she brings a baby in the doctor’s storefront window, ashes dropping on the screaming mother’s knees; the sporadic percussion of battle, somewhere near, very near, very close, but never right before the eyes—those things create a feeling of unreality so acute that everything is both suspect and accepted, nothing can possibly be too strange to be true.

In the kitchen of a silent morning, the players of the Poppy’s latest drama, the house under inner siege, roost as nearly silent: Lucy stirring oatmeal, Puggy sipping tea, Jonathan and Pearl piercing dry bread on the toasting-forks; they have been much together, those two, these last dark days since Jennie died, and the soldiers came, camping in the lobby, spitting on the floors, lingering in the hallways to leer at the girls, who, the General has taken pains to explain, are under no obligation to service them gratis although “Can you work a bayonet?” Lucy asks Puggy. “I’d like to stick that redpoll sergeant—he drinks himself limp, then expects me to make him stand. And all the work I’m to do on the costumes! I don’t have time to fuck, let alone to waste—”

“I had a gun,” Puggy mourns. “But Omar took it.”

“Omar took what?” Omar himself come sour to the table, pouring the dregs of the tea, swearing as they dribble and clog: “God damn it! Is it too much to ask to use the strainer, Velma? Where the fuck is Velma?” as Rupert enters, swift and weary, nodding to Lucy who gives him a smile, eyebrows up at Omar who flushes red in repentance and “I’m that sorry,” ruefully rubbing his bald head prickling now with pale hair, his razor has snapped blade from handle, impossible to repair. “I don’t know what came over me, I just felt I had to break the gaffer’s neck. Did he—”

“He’ll live. But I had to go to General Georges on your behalf.”

“Ah Jesu—my true apologies. It won’t happen again,” as Decca approaches in her fraying leather slippers, the heel has come off the left one which gives her gait a tilted counterpoint,
click-pause-click
like a broken clock and “What won’t? Your silly brawling?” but her bite lacks force; she is tired, too, Decca, rendered nearly sleepless by the cold. The Poppy has become a fugue of cold, and the smell of lye, the soldiers’ jackets vigorous with lice, of watery oatmeal, weak tea, and weevily bread. Velma has been bidden to keep a hard lock on the pantry, though at least they will not starve: the General’s presence has been invaluable, no need to boil the wallpaper or set nets for the birds outside, one less worry among so many that Decca paces as Rupert used to, back and forth as midnight drains to dawn—

—though how long has it been since she smelled the nightlong smoke from his room? that he now so rarely uses, preferring other quarters: at times they can be heard right through the walls, so reckless is their pleasure; everyone knows now, everyone. Even the soldiers, who snigger or make rude gestures, tight circle and poking forefinger behind Rupert’s back, though none will dare to do it to his face, or to Istvan’s either. On his own, each is formidable; together they are feared.

No one fears them more than Decca, whose days end and begin with the specter of their bond resumed; but she has other, more impersonal fears to distract her, other appointments to keep—

“—tonight? Miss Decca?”

Omar speaking, to her apparently, Puggy watchful over the rim of his tea, Lucy pretending not to listen, the pushy witch, backstage all the time as Puggy’s second, as she has always meant to be—but no way to send her packing, now, they need all the whores they have, could do with another though Rupert says no. “What? What is it?”

“I say, is there to be a show tonight?”

“Why ask me?” looking at Puggy, at Lucy, to Rupert whose face shows nothing but calm, a kind of ease these others have never seen in him before, though she knows it very well, knows why, sees the proof come sailing through the door as if the sun shines just for him: his first glance as always for Rupert who feigns not to smile, his wink for Lucy who fairly simpers, another wink for her whose sudden rage rebels and “Why ask me?” again and louder. “I’ve no power here, I’m last on the list, behind playacting whores and vagabonds—” as Istvan leans past her unconcerned, hunting by knifepoint through a peck of half-frozen pears—“We’ve no apples?”—and “For Christ’s sweet sake!” she shouts. “No apples, how can there be apples, this is a war! They are making
war
outside, do you see nothing but yourself and—”

“And what?” Mild, but suddenly utterly cold, half turned to her and in that turn obliterating all around them, fox to fox in the dark of the den; he almost smiles, shows his teeth as “Your desires,” she says bitterly, backing down. “For whatever pleases you most.”

Silence beyond the sullen snap of the fire, no one wants to speak until “We need a holiday,” says Puggy, striving for a tone as mild. “May we close, just for tonight?” to Rupert who shakes his head, not tonight but “Tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll tell the General: a holiday, as you say.”

Lucy claps her hands. “Yes! Let Redpoll dip it down in the Alley for one night. And I can get busy with—” Glancing swift at Decca, she lets the thought die, goes back to stirring the oatmeal as Velma returns with some sheep’s cheese and, yes, apples, two apples, one of which she sets down in front of Istvan—

—as Decca snatches at the second, storms furious into the hall with Istvan’s laughter behind her, Rupert behind that and “Peace,” he says quietly, catching at her sleeve, the apple ridiculous in her grip. “Puggy’s right, we need a holiday, we’re all thinned to the snapping point.”

“Not you,” she says. “
You
seem capital,” and still at ease, warmed by that fire she never has shared, never will share, how many years can one sit shivering by the same guarded grate? “Even though it was you who—” then stops, theatrical, her lips pressed white.

“Who did what?”

“There is no point in speaking of it,” eyes bright, voice soft with spite. “She’s dead, isn’t she?—whom you gave over to him, even though you knew—”

“Knew?” All ease vanished, arms folded tight against his chest; she has hurt him, meant to do so, takes respite in the pain even as she hates to see it, see his face as it looks now. “Do you think if I ‘knew’ I’d’ve ever sent her to him? Laddie he would harm, yes, but Jennie I never—”

“Laddie’s not the only one,” pointing, strange Eve, with the hand that holds the apple, back toward the room where they all sit listening, too quiet not to be listening but now she has begun she cannot stop. “That man wants him dead, can you understand though he refuses? Or are you too bewitched?”

The hallway’s shadows make his face a mask, his voice as flat as “Have no fear on that score. Vidor will not touch him.”

Why? she wants to cry. Because he knows that way he’ll never have you? Instead “You said before you would send him away. Will you do it?” Almost weeping, with anger, with contrition, with despair, he blurs in her vision, a dark form gathered to itself. “I wish he had never come here. His evil toys!”

Movement on the stairs above them, soldiers descending, or the General, or both, to put them on alert, she stiffens and steps back but “Don’t forget,” Rupert leaning closer, his mouth to her ear, his voice a street boy’s murmur. “They are my toys, too.”

Turning his back on her, toward the stairs and gone, as she stands still gripping the foolish apple, blighted skin, chilly flesh, dizzy with a feel of bottomless disaster, as if the ground splits to a mouth before her, to swallow her, the Poppy, to swallow them all…. She has lost them both, now. Now she has lost them both.

As it happens, it is the General on the stairs, attended by an aide lately promoted from the unexpected dwindle of his officers lost to casualties; even Essenhigh was hit, though only slightly. And there have been other reverses: the train-way resupplies are less certain than previously calculated, they are having some difficulties with the rations, and morphine for the gravely wounded; fortunately they still have plenty of shovels. And ordnance.

The aide is a punctilious boy, eighteen or twenty, old enough to understand his very fortunate opportunity as aide-de-camp, the spoils of war, but young enough to be distracted by the passing whores in their lacy drawers and ratty peignoirs as “Andrew,” says the General, “there are lovelier girls in Brussels. And cleaner.” Handing him a folded map-case, pulling on his gloves. “You’ll be seeing them fairly soon.”

“I am sorry, sir,” says Andrew, turning red; he is pale as a pigeon, Andrew, thin-chested but much stronger than he looks. In this he somewhat resembles the redoubtable Mr. Bok, also stronger than he looks, looking deeply out of sorts at the moment as “General, a word,” halting him in mid-descent, the three of them filling the narrow stairway. “My people are in need of a day of rest—I’m considering closing, tomorrow. Will that disrupt you?”

“Not at all. Rest is vital. I only wish I could offer the same to my men in the field.”

“How goes the effort?” said with an effort; it is obvious he does not much care for military maneuvers or the complications of conflict; for this the General respects him. War is not his business, lust is his business, and he is diligent in its behalf. Although if Hanzel is to be believed, by way of Arrowsmith, they used to tread the boards together, the whoremonger and the showman; well, why not? Is not an actor already a kind of pander, and a pimp an impresario of artifice and desire? What sorts of shows they mounted is anyone’s conjecture, but none he would ask of this dark bravo before him, aiming for courtesy though his eyes are dead hard; instead “As well as can be,” says the General. “My aide and I,” nodding toward Andrew, “are about to meet with Colonel Essenhigh, who himself is just returned from a sortie that—But not to bore you.…”