Under the Poppy (36 page)

“It’s a skill you may need someday, Master Guerlain,” says the General, one warm hand out for “Hanzel,” squeezing, smiling. “I had some hopes I’d see you here.”

“Well met,” says Istvan, with a genial smile, his hackles rising as surely as a fox penned in a ditch; another actor, oh yes, this old man for whom the whole world is too small an arena, who never ceases to play. See him in Brussels, insistent as a hound on the trail, and now “You’ll excuse us,” the General dismissing a disappointed Pinky, leading Istvan from the drawing-room into a more private hallway alcove, his annexation not lost on Isobel, whose eyes narrow in sudden memory—

—though Rupert sees none of it, Rupert on the garden path now, whiskey in hand as “This mask,” says Benjamin, as they step past the willow tree, feel the evening’s rising breeze, “must be made of sackcloth, it itches so.” Tugging it off, an imprint of the strings left at his eyes, a harlequin’s mark. “Yours fits you well.”

“It’s cut from felt,” Lucy’s scraps she stitched up for him, but he does not say this, has nothing, really, to say to this boy, has no business here at all, if Istvan must be so foul he can come to these soirees alone from now on.
Frolic with the quality
, Jesu…. Though the young man—what is it, Benjamin—played the host well, introducing him to all they passed on the way to the whiskey and the door: men who bowed and meant nothing by it, women who smiled and meant even less. Although Madame de Metz seemed genuinely pleased to see them,
jolie-laide
with that dry little smile:
Your presence seems to have a good effect on him, Monsieur. He admires strength.
Well, why should he not? Strength would be a pleasant novelty, no doubt.

Seventeen—recall himself at, what, seven years, or eight? in the orphan school, monastery, whatever it was, cracks in the bed board, doves on the roof. And the stern Latin-speaking men,
Tacio, recite!
Striking him across the face for every word said wrong, it made him a swift scholar; and swift, too, to slip the gates when nothing more of use could be learned, take to the road he never left or meant to, he thought he would roam his whole short life away—

—until that winter’s day under the viaduct, ducking in past the pouring rain, to find that antic, teasing, lost little smile; Istvan’s smile. Boots too large for him, no heels and half a sole, wiggling his toes frozen white in the rain and
What’s your name?
shivering, smiling. Six pennies in a folded scrap of velvet, some rag of a lady’s reticule. And the damp head nestling at last into his shoulder, breath warm against his skin:
Where you going? I’m going, too.

Now this boy, looking up at him from another world entirely, what can he know of loss? or any sorrow greater than a dry-mouth after drinking? Rupert tugs at his own mask strings, stuffs the silly thing into his pocket as Benjamin speaks of his comrades, of “Hugh,” with a lofty shrug, “and Pinky, Achille, that is—they’ve a positive mania for masking. It’s juvenile, really—”

“And you’ve outgrown it, Master de Metz?”

“Benjamin,” correcting. “Benjamin is what my friends call me. I hope you think me a friend…. Your friend, now, he doesn’t like me.”

Rupert’s half smile; he cannot check it. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true.” Taking from his own lapel the folded rosebud, fixing it instead to Rupert’s coat. “You missed your favor, Monsieur.”

His hands are still on Rupert, pinning and unpinning the little bloom: long fingers, the knuckles sharp and scarred. Those strange eyes, like water in a country stream, so much deeper than it looks—as Rupert asks, to say something, “Is that one of your sister’s roses? Or are you a gardener, too?”

Benjamin’s frown comes fleeting—“I grew up in a garden”—with a darkness he himself does not seem to mark, but that Rupert takes in like a sudden scent, at once aware, as an animal is, of a smell he knows and understands—

—as, in the curtained hallway alcove, black brocade worked in martial lilies, two ebony chairs set tête-à-tête, the General and Istvan circle one another without moving, the General’s mild smile and “Javier,” he says, “was sadly puzzled when you and Mr. Bok decamped. Was it the weather that drove you away? All that rain?”

“Brussels is a likely town,” Istvan’s tone in answer cordial, both he and the General know what comes next. “And we were desolate to leave Mr. Arrowsmith’s—sphere. But we are players, after all. We require motion.”

“Yet you’ve come to some rest now, in the Blackbird Theatre—with your young lady, what is it, Lucy? A favorite of my sergeant’s, I recall.” That smile unchanged behind the domino, the war in it, the stench of piss in the Poppy’s lobby, the drift of snow through broken windows. “I hope you’ll like it here. I hope you’ll stay. For the plain fact is, you’re needed, Hanzel. I told you so before—”

Before, yes: in that quiet sitting room, Arrowsmith on the balcony lighting Rupert’s cheroots, talking of finance, of this and of that, as inside, on the ivory settee, the General offered brandy, and tea, and servitude:
The actor mounts the play the—producer provides; call it so, if that sweetens the taste. Come, Hanzel, where’s your sense of humor? Or adventure? All the world’s a stage, is it not? I can place you on that stage, and make your part well worth the playing. I was a bit of an actor myself, in my youth, I understand…
. There is never an end to it, say yes once and they believe they own you forever, why do they think they can buy what was never for sale? and use for a thoughtless tool what breathes, and bleeds, on its own? Istvan would never treat a puppet of his own such. And the General should know better, who himself has such a long memory; perhaps power corrupts the reason, as well.

“—but you,” still smiling, “you proved a bit of a slippery fish, eh?”

“Not at all,” his own smile so winning it might be Feste’s. “A mere minnow in your sea. You’re a master angler, you’ll easily hook another.”

“The wiliest swimmers are the most to be prized. In this matter, time is short. And what I ask is not at all onerous, only to do as you did before—”

—but keep the messages, this time, not carry them, tuck them in a puppet and hold for retrieval, by whom and why? Who knows what schemes he spins now, in that spider-sac of a mind, or to what ends? It must be cold in this alcove; Istvan feels his shoulder ache. “ ‘Before’ I was another man. Now I am—retired, let’s call it—”

“You appear at the Blackbird Theatre. And Le Veau d’Or. Weekly. On Tuesdays.”

And the Fin du Monde, when the deeper urge arises, but this it seems the General does not know. “Retired, that is, from the venues I used to frequent. I’ve done with the lords and burghers,” an ironic little nod, “and the ladies in their drawing rooms; here, tonight, I am just another guest. My play these days is solely to please myself.”

“Before those empty-heads from the arcades? Or do you mean your chippie’s fairy tales? Credit me, Hanzel, that’s a fairy tale itself—”

—dropping his voice as people pass by the alcove, servants calling to one another for more candles in the drawing room, another tray of punch, and where has Otilie strayed off to? as behind the curtains, as if cordoned backstage, the two men stare at one another, the General leaning forward, Istvan’s face still and calm as a carven mask: “I do credit you, sir. Credit me, or else accept my answer as pure caprice.”

“And that answer is no?”

“To this request, yes.”

Now the General truly smiles, the odd, hard lines about his mouth and “Come, it’s no request.
Quid pro quo
, why act the virgin now? Do you remember Jürgen Vidor?” as if they recall together the name of a departed friend, a name Istvan has not heard nor spoken for years, a name stored in the mind like a letter in a chipped enamel box, lock box and “Your Mr. Bok,” says the General genially, “
he
remembers. Especially the mode of the man’s passing. Must it come to that, Hanzel, or will you do for me this very simple thing?”

—as simple as fingers on strings, strings of gut, human gut, human blood on a knife in an empty theatre, a packet of money shared out in the dark—but it was never for money and it was never for them, their intrigues or their interests: it was for him, to save him, keep him safe, too late. To Mouse, those drummers were Vidor’s, but there lay another truth in Arrowsmith’s bedside gaze,
hors de combat,
drugged as he was still Istvan saw it there, feels it now in these scars he bears. And that same truth lies in the lock box letter,
Pepper, Rawsthorne, Prussia
—

—so “Begging the General’s pardon, no task of yours is ever simple.” Brussels they ran from, well, let the strings be cut here finally and for all. “I was more than pleased to serve you in the past. But I am only a player now, and I only play for myself.”

A servant’s voice close by the alcove, a woman’s hand on the drape—“Madame, your guests”—as the curtain parts and “Is it hide-and-seek?” says Isobel, both men rising as she steps inside. “Well, I’ve found you, gentlemen. For my forfeit, you’ll come and dine, and resume your play later.” Her voice she keeps even, though even a moment’s glance shows that this is no play, tension sour in the air between them, what in the world or the world below it could Hector have to do with this puppet-man? as “Certainly, Madame,” Istvan rising with a player’s grace, his shoulder now aching abominably. “May I take you in, or would you prefer this cavalier?” bowing to the General, who bows in return: “Hide and seek, yes,” taking Isobel’s left arm as Istvan takes her right. “Or
rouge et noir
, perhaps we’ll deal out a hand with the brandy, eh? It’ll suit your décor, Isobel. Though to win,” his nod serene to Istvan, “one ought not bet too steep against the house.”

As they turn for the dining room, joining the straggling stream of guests, at the end of the queue come Rupert and Benjamin, stepping in at last from the garden, both bare-faced, Rupert wearing the little red rose. Rupert looks at once to Istvan, who after one swift glance turns his gaze away, as each takes his place at the table, Istvan beside a baron’s lady in a peacock headdress, Rupert masked again next to Benjamin, as the servants carry in the soup of pureed pheasant, the rice-and-egg pastries, a bug-eyed German salmon poached in pepper and champagne. String music is played throughout, by a trio tucked hungry into a nook off the dining room: a bit of Bizet with the salmon, a drop of Liszt with the rosewater-almond sorbet.

The very last guest of all does not arrive until the others have eaten, drunk, stripped their dominoes, and gone, the musicians vanished, even the servants abed, all but the lady’s-maid, gulping back her yawn as she unlocks a gate that opens from the garden, at the very end of the greenhouse path, a gate to a hallway to a set of stairs unused now by any except the servants and “Madame,” rapping softly at a door wide enough, it seems, only for a child but “Your guest,” fits it ably, cane and all, bringing a smile to Isobel, wide awake though dressed in a wrapper, waiting at a tiny table in a room itself as small as a bower: once the chapel of the house, its altar holding only flowers now, roses so purple-red they are black in the candles’ glow. On the table are Assam tea and cigarettes, he offers the light but she waves him away, no ceremony, they are very old friends after all.

And it is as a friend that she may lean across that damasked table, press his hand with her own in its glove and “Liserl,” she says, “that was dreadful news. You must miss her sorely.”

“She was like a little—bird, to me. A little bird with a little song. Now all is silent.” Dressed in sober gray, like any businessman upon the streets; no one would mark him, except perhaps for that opulent cane, the griffin’s head worked in heavy silver, his hand cups it absently as “It has made me thoughtful,” he says, “that silence.” She says nothing, their eyes meet, her sympathy, his grief, until “I understand that Hector was here,” he says, in a different voice. “By invitation?”

“My father sent him.” She does not trouble to hide her bitterness. “To see Benny.” The steam from the tea makes a faint perfume, mingling with the bower’s scent of roses and cigarette smoke; Isobel herself gone tonight into the smoking-room, a bit of an impropriety amongst the gentlemen, but how else was one to keep an eye on Benny, first with M. Bok, and then Hector? Watch him in his blood-red mask, approaching sidewise like a crab, Benny oblivious and all aglow—until M. Bok took his premature leave, the brief and courteous apologies echoed by his colleague, the jester whose smile had gone entirely false; Hector’s spoor again, and “I knew,” she says, “I knew I should recall him, that M. Dieudonne. In Brussels, once, Prosper Boulan hosted an evening with some dancers—
filles de joie
, you know, and a puppet-show after. He was called Marcel there, I believe.”

“Yes, he has many names. Hector calls him Hanzel; to me, he is Dusan. But M. Bok is always M. Bok, no matter where he goes,” watching her over the rim of his cup, is there a little spark, there, to match her brother’s? One hears that the boy is smitten. “Your friend the asp, she says M. Bok is very masculine, tres maîtrisé,” to bring her smile, a spark indeed in that unfortunate face, poor Isobel who laughs as “Fernande, yes,” pouring out more tea, the cups rimmed in gold, trimmed with a pattern of garlanded roses, scarlet and deepest green. “She’d gnaw his bones in an instant, though she’d done naught but complain, before, about players at a ‘proper’ dinner!”