Date: 2014-01-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: PERFORMING ARTS / Puppets and Puppetry; Historical
Description: "We’re pursued by no one, now." Having fled their comfortably dangerous brothel-and-theater known as the Poppy, Rupert and Istvan have traveled far to land in a city of sepia and silver, where they make new allies and settle old grudges. Ancient families clash with municipal thugs outside and inside the doors of the Mercury Theatre: the home Rupert has always longed for, with a stage created for Istvan’s wildest tales. Kathe Koja’s compelling sequel to Under the Poppy continues the timeless love and passionate play of its heroes, who can never truly escape their past. As their lives intertwine
Rights: Copyright 2014 by Kathe Koja

THE MERCURY WALTZ
a novel

Kathe Koja

Published by
Roadswell Editions
127 W. 83rd St. #56
New York, NY 10024-0056

First Edition
January 2014

ISBN: 978-1-938263-08-8

Copyright © 2014 by Kathe Koja

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including posting text or links to text online, printing, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher.

Great thanks to Rick Lieder and Carter Scholz for close reading; to Aaron Mustamaa and Diane Cheklich for constant encouragement; and to Christopher Schelling for unique and unwavering support.

To CRS
Comme toujours

If I reach out and touch his wing,
What harm, what help might he then bring?

From “Mercury Dressing,”
J. D. McClatchy

The fox’s hide fits the puppet like a second skin, stitched velvet fur a russet gleam beneath the lights themselves masked into stars, the little theatre stage now become the wide dark world: though a sparsely populated one, not even a dozen seats sold on this, the show’s last night. Beneath peaked ears the foxy man is smiling as, seeming to follow, he feints, he beckons, he leads the outfoxed king deeper down the pale-chalked road into the heart of the empty forest.

“Such a merry fellow,” says the king, a tall puppeteer in white domino and finely cut frock coat, a nosegay of pale green violets, the spring’s first violets, tucked into his buttonhole. His round crown hat is half a wink at current fashion, fashioned fore and aft with a garish and glittering pasteboard crown, observed by an audience of bowler hats and hobble skirts, a second-best businessman’s suit, a red-tipped ermine wrap tucked close in the theatre’s echoing chill: the last breath of winter, all warmth before or still to come just a phantom and a dream. “And such a handsome fellow, too! But do you own no master? Out upon the lonely roads, who feeds you?”

“Those who find me hungry,” says the fox, the voice playful, the accent from elsewhere, undefined. “Those who find me gay.”

“In my court,” the king announces, “I always have need for such a fellow. And always I provide for those who serve me. Still”—chin cocked, gaze measuring behind the domino, in distance as well as artifice all the years, all the antic, mantic, mocking characters, like the endless progeny of some profligate god: how many faces does he see, that puppeteer, a-grin inside that fox’s?—“still, any dog of mine must learn to feed only from my hand, can you do so? You have passed your life in the fens and dens of the woods, you are wild.”

The fox turns his head to the audience, that doubled stare again, or tripled; the long tail twitches, its snow-white tip another kind of wink. “Your majesty… try and see.”

“Come, then,” and as the stars above them darken, the king palms from his pocket a pinkish paper sweetmeat, then another and another, the fox taking from his fingertips as gently as a milk-fed lamb. When the treats are done, the king in his delight begins to stroke the fox, an odd and oddly sensual caress: nose to ears to tail, the quivering back and belly, each motion more lingering until at last he pulls the fox fully into his arms. From the seats comes some nervous throat-clearing, breathy and scandalized, that the pleasured king ignores, the fox mouthing at his hands now, curling and swishing the bushy tail, licking and nibbling at the king’s naked throat—

—until all at once the tongue is teeth, the king shocked into a cry with the fox atop him now in earnest, a wild creature wild for the kill, as the audience gasps at the grue, the ermined lady in the front row gives a little shriek and hides her eyes. While the king slumps into a kind of final swoon, the fox-man roots deftly through the royal pockets, taking the jewels he finds there, the wadded banknotes, as a true fox strips a carcass, at last stripping his own fur to turn it inside out and make of it a treasure-bag, the bare puppet then addressing the audience directly: “His Majesty sets a fine table, wouldn’t you say?”—

—and then as if in sudden inspiration, pausing to pull from his stained nefarious sack a pretty gewgaw, bright diamond made of paste, to offer to the ermine-wrapped lady with such luxurious courtesy—“Cher Madame, one precious jewel deserves another…”—that she reaches like a child to accept it, prevented at the last by her escort, who instead takes the trinket with a frown: as the stars dim even further, as the fox-man points his face to where the moon should be and makes a moan—

—that as the darkness deepens becomes the first note of a tune, a crying squeezebox offstage in tandem, the darkness now so deep that when the moon at last shines forth, round as a silver plate—it is a silver plate—it throws its light onto a different pair, the dead king and his assailant gone and in their place the playlet’s author and his actor-companion, both in puppet form: Mr. Pollux wiped clean and divested of his treasure, Mr. Castor in parson’s black, to bow arm in arm and advise the audience as one that “The ancient Greeks in theatre/Would dress their words in verse/And let the chorus speak for them the truths they would disperse,” Istvan’s tone a silky singsong, Rupert’s sturdy baritone in counterpoint. “While we here at the Mercury another tune employ/And give you all you dream you want, as long as it is joy…. Good night, mesdames et messieurs—”

—as the plum velvet curtain veils the stage a world no longer, just sewn silk and planed and painted broomsticks, the gaslight in flare to show the scrubbed sconces and well-worn horsehair of the seats, as the audience, released from the tale, reenters the wider, less concentrated dark of the square outside. If, as they go, those men and ladies hurrying for home or hailed cabs, apéritifs or cups of China tea, if there are more looks cast over-shoulder, or a bit more shrinking at sudden sounds on the street, perhaps it is because they have taken to heart some lasting import of the tale just told, making of their own world of sidewalk and supper club that forest and its perils, with every feint a wild creature’s and no safety in their king. And if the escort of the lady who received the fox’s gift later finds that he is missing a cuff link, an expensive onyx cuff link carved with a head of Medusa, perhaps he attributes that loss to the prevailing mood of darkness, or as offering to that foxing god whose name the theatre bears.

Once all have gone, Istvan emerges, blood-glycerin spotted down his shirtfront, tugging off the bowler-hat crown: “It’s left a dent in my noggin,” rubbing at his forehead, freeing his bound hair tangled as a boy’s, “one wonders how the real kings tolerate it. Did you see our slumming royalty? that commissioner fellow and his petit frère? The missus must have been elsewhere tonight, may be at the Athenaeum—”

“What’s on there?” says Rupert, broom in one hand and lit cigar in the other, his little spectacles a-shine in the slanted light. “Still She Wouldst Not?”

“Still and always,” on a yawn. “That Fairgrieve’s not the man to turn away a shilling. no doubt they’ll be playing it when the last trump sounds.” He seats himself comfortably in the front row, watching as Rupert sweeps: dandy’s boots crossed at the knee, a pearl gleaming at his earlobe, fine lines about his eyes like some artist’s sketching, the marks of time on beauty’s gaze. “And the Cleopatra’s doing Lear, one hears, better pluck out the eyeballs early…. Talking of that, our little Guignol’s not been loved, has it? I told you it was too bloodthirsty.”

Rupert shrugs, smokes, sweeps; smiles. “It was as I wrote it to be. And tell me there’s no truth to it? Cur fox.”

“Your truth, I never cut them…. What’s next for us, Monsieur auteur? Jolly Tales of the Backstreet Whorehouse? That ought to make the groundlings sit up and bark.”

“It’s just half written,” with another shrug; the broom finds dust, a blot of street dung, a crumpled carte-de-visite; obligingly Istvan moves his legs. “So far there’s a bravo, or a knight, and a trickster he meets along the road—”

“Why, I know that story. It has a happy ending, too,” leaning forward to tuck into Rupert’s vest pocket the fat black cuff link, the Gorgon’s smile, as Rupert shakes his head: “Such foolishness, messire—”

“Such gratitude. I’ll fetch the other for you next time, won’t I,” with a smile that becomes a red-tinged kiss, the knight and the trickster in the chilly, homey, cluttered half-dark of the theatre, their own theatre, the Mercury Theatre of false death and chalk dust, sleight of hand and useless booty, again the world and all the world to these two men and their toys.

“Vulpecula’s Hide”

Contributed by Seraphim

As the Daily Solon’s l’homme moderne du théâtre, it is your angelic correspondent’s duty to seek out and attend as many as possible of the theatrical entertainments our city provides, from the well-known to the obscure. (Seraphim also attended the Music Ministry’s very fine lieder recital, but as a private member of the audience; the reader is advised to consult Herr Arnold’s excellent review elsewhere in today’s edition.) Thus it was that your correspondent last night entered the dark, somewhat dank confines of the Mercury Theatre for the first time, to watch a puppet play.

Yet here was no mere entertainment or fairy-story romance such as one might see in the marionette booths in the park. This was a sharp satire on the enticements and uses of power, one that perhaps could best be understood by watching, as the saying goes, “between the drapes.” The unnamed King—a costumed puppeteer, very adept, though surprisingly uncredited in the playbill—seeks to make of Vulpecula the Fox his cringing follower, as some other “kings” may seek to usurp their citizens’ manhood in other ways; have we not perhaps seen that same attempt in some of the newly repressive laws proposed in our own city? But this onstage king is undone by his own greed and blindness, as well as by Vulpecula’s wit, leading to a fully deserved punition. (Although the spectacle of his ending may be too violent for more timid members of the audience, or for ladies’ gentle sensibilities; consider this a warning.)

Bravo for the fox who fully honors his appetites, that puppet actor who fears not to say what the man in the street might well be saying! And bravo for the Mercury Theatre! Sadly, last night’s was the final showing of this drama, but surely others just as intriguing will soon follow. And having now visited, your angelic correspondent intends to keep upon this venue a happily watchful eye.

It is a small place, fifty seats all told, with mildly warped floors and a tendency to leak when the rains come hard, on a nondescript rue just off déclassé Rottermond Square shared with a café, a shoemaker, a printer of gossipy broadsheets, and the nightly racket of the Bar Pile ou Face, heads or tails, dice or lansquenet, the only constant the unpredictable fate of the fall. Once a bedstead workhouse for cheap horn buttonhooks and combs, then a failed homilist’s lecture hall, then locked and boarded into silence and dust, the quasi-gentleman with the squint who brokered the sale was somewhat dubious of its prospects: Yer getting it for a pittance, sirs, so you’ve got no call to kick. But unless it’s going to be a dolly house, I don’t think yer’ll get much trade here. If the taller of the two buyers seemed amused by this prediction, his companion was mildly aghast: Does it show in the phiz, Mouse, do you think? Are we forever to be pursued by the everfucking Poppy?

We’re pursued by no one, now, in this narrow box of a building chosen for its modesty, its potential impregnability—two doors, street and alley, no windows at all on the second floor, a handy hatch from the flies—and made over in the year just past by their shared industry, to their own needs and taste, Rupert in charge belowstairs, and Istvan up above: If we’re going to stay, let it be worth the staying, the third floor dressed into a kind of private set, mahogany wardrobe and silver clock and silver pots of purplish ferns; a little silver mirror, crazed and cracked and tacked up to the wall; a fine businessman’s desk with many slots and drawers for Rupert; and for them both an imposing rosewood bed, carved with vines and plump with rose-colored satin, hung about with fat braided cords Like a battleship. Or a catafalque, Rupert’s grimace when the thing was delivered, the carter’s men raising eyebrows one to another at the palpable absence of a lady in the house: no lady this time at all, no Lucy, no Ag, no shielding agnes, only these two accustomed to doing for themselves, and a maid of all work hired in from the streets. Jesu, messire, this—landscape is to your liking?

Ah, juste le monde dans notre lit. You’ll grow used to it, though in fact the bed is rarely used for sleeping, both preferring without comment the spare little cot beneath the windows, barely wide enough for two, to lie wrapped close in a single coverlet as once they slept inside a single sheltering coat.

Undiscussed as well is the miniature that sits on the shared dressing table, desert-red morocco and always kept closed: a wedding-day portrait, Benjamin de Metz without his bride Isobel’s penultimate gift, along with a bequest of startling generosity, though in another light no surprise at all: Mme de Metz Arrowsmith wished you to know that she deeply valued your artistry. Mme de Metz Arrowsmith wished you to know that she forever valued your friendship, the lawyer’s stiff letter accompanying the cheque draft and silk-wrapped miniature, held in trust in a city neither man cared to visit again, obtained at last via Lucy’s urgent missive when their new locale was finally known: I have kept this since it came for you, a time ago; Istvan took one long look at both and then set both gently aside.

I do believe that clever lady loved you. May be as well as—

As well as may be, Rupert’s murmur, a seeking gaze toward the window as if he might have seen, past the drapes and clouded glass, another room filled with flowers, strange roses of every hue, the wafting smoke of a gold-tipped cigarette. Does it say at all how she passed? but that letter did not, nor Lucy’s, though the second in the lawyer’s packet, longer and addressed solely and privately to “Dusan,” was more forthcoming: It is my very sad duty to convey to you the news not only of Isobel’s death—her strong heart come at last to falter, though at the very last she went without pain, knowing no one, believing herself a girl in the greenhouse again; she is laid to rest at Chatiens, beneath her roses—but of his, Mr. Arrowsmith’s, own true retirement, the great world of affairs become a red jade chessboard, the long-ago limp become a kind of paralysis, the griffin-headed cane beside a bed from which I expect not to fully arise, despite the physicians’ efforts; busy fellows, surely they try. But nothing is immortal save Art, and it is in the light of that infinite realm that I continue to salute you, Dusan, with respect and regret for several bygone circumstances, some in his control and others not, all left prudently unnamed beyond the reflection that Never the military’s ally, nor truly ever mine, still I hold hope that my patronage was and is a useful boon; never fear to use my name if ever it may aid you! Do you travel, still, yourself and M. Bok?—for one of my very few desires is to see les mecs once more. Always I found refreshment in their company, and if you recall me, let it be as one who—

—but it was there that the letter was refolded and set aside in favor of the cheque draft, Rupert’s thoughtful estimation, May be we ought not take this. But it will surely buy us some time, and Istvan’s more sunny, A lifetime; two lifetimes. L’échapper belle! from the last rag of worry that the shows they meant to mount here, in this theatre of the heart, must ever please any but the two of them alone.

Come to this nervous and labyrinthine city, a daily opera of old stone and clanging trolleys, sour wine and fine Kaffeehäuser, chosen as much for its sepia light as for any other reason—Istvan’s dreamy nod from the train window, Rupert’s shrug of assent—having watched their fill of others’ work and play on other stages, Lyon to Bruges to London to anonymous crossroad towns, themselves the only audience at faded Punch and Judy booths, in crowded balconies with “Don Giovanni” sung below by stiff-brocaded marionettes, in closer quarters for more private and ribald orchestrations by troupes of men and boys made of wood and winking flesh, arriving at last as playwright and actor and puppeteer, all three these doubled two: the ironic Feste as Mr. Pollux, as his master is, here, Stefan Hilaire, and Rupert always Rupert, the dark puppet once Puck and now Mr. Castor, fully cleansed of the freight he once carried, old festering letter a souvenir of a world gladly left, itself left in a sidestreet workingman’s bank, as the lawyer’s packet and its great banked cheque made of it a triple farewell.

Now in the morning’s backstage quiet, cold floorboards and paraffin air, Mr. Pollux and Mr. Castor hang silked and companionable as Istvan in scuffed black slippers stoops to unbox “An offering? Or an orphan…”—a puppet left overnight at the doorstep, a devil puppet with sad eyes and stiff gut strings, the clumsy red body of “Oak, is it?” Rupert leaning forward for a look. “No, birch. And poorly put-together, too, see that crack down the back—”

“And here’s another,” tapping the forehead, just between the horns. “No doubt a souvenir from Paradise, it’s quite the fall, after all. —What a sorry piece of work! Carved with a spade, painted by the blind—”

“And who’s the sender?” as Rupert examines the box, a stained wooden fig crate, For the Mercury inked across its side. “No mark, or any name—like that donation, or whatever it can be called, Robb wrote to say another one’s arrived. From ‘a friend of your theatre,’ just as before.”

“So you’ve a secret admirer. May be I have one, too,” with a scornful shrug, pushing the crate aside with his heel, reaching for Mr. Castor. “I’d not soil your stage with such rubbish, Sir Knight—we’ll serve you up a nice band of brigands, they’ll fall like ninepins, I guarantee. Or may be I’ll make them up as soldiers, shall I? Soldiers in the army of the Lord? Like that holy crackpot I met last night on the boulevard—bit of looseness to his weave, one could see straight through to the bloodybones beneath—”

“I’ve told you before, leave those preachers be. There’s nothing gained by that kind of quarrel—”

“Oh, be easy, it’s only sport. Besides, they like to suffer for their faith.” He makes Mr. Castor to cross himself; he smiles. “Now, do you have our ‘midnight’ bit in hand yet?”

“Not yet,” reaching for a battered leather folder all folded up with manuscript, paging through as Istvan comes to stand behind him, the puppet held waiting to one side. “It still wants something. Another bit of business as they go, or—”

“To me it wants more music,” whistling softly between his teeth, a bawdy air of the street, “Qu’a-t-il fait?” What did he do, what did he do? “We’ll have in that boy around the corner, shall we? the one who jigs with the bells? Add a bit of dash.” Rupert gives him a look; Istvan gives him a wink. “Or would you rather your urchin with the chocolate?”

“I’d rather just the chocolate,” past a little cough, checking his pocket watch: Swiss and steely, Istvan’s gift. “I’ll have another going-over, then, and be back by noon, no later. You’ll stay in?” as Istvan nods, Mr. Castor nodding solemnly in tandem to bring Rupert’s smile, as a dexterous wooden hand reaches to brush at Rupert’s beard: “‘Silver strands amongst the sable’—it really doesn’t suit, Mouse. Why not shave it off?”

“When you stop baiting those fellows from the kirk,” reaching for hat and overcoat, stepping into the bustle of the street half-shadowed but still bright enough to make him blink past his spectacles and the gray scrim in his left eye, the world forever doubled into glimpses and plain sight. As he goes he is watched by another, unseen actor, hatless and haloed in alabaster blond, a very young man who waits for Rupert to turn the corner before darting to knock at the theatre’s alley door, tck-tck-tck, like the rhythm of a tune. At once that door opens, as if he is expected, to be beckoned past the threshold by a nimble wooden hand.

At the café—Die Welt, an ambitious name for such a tiny establishment—Rupert takes the seat he always takes, a table for one, facing the door. He nods to the men at the tables adjacent, the burghers and drapers and watchmakers with their eggy crullers and cups of tea, their pipes and snuff and various newspapers—the Clarion, the Daily Solon, the Globe, the Gentleman’s View—and they return the nod as civilly. In this neighborhood he is known, when he is known at all, as a reserved, somewhat forbidding gentleman, theatre owner and close friend of its more flamboyant actor, who is understood to be some sort of Frenchman; beyond that the men at the tables have no opinion of Herr Bok, or none they care to share publicly. The productions he presents are believed to be “artistic,” more description than compliment, and as such never a possible topic for discussion at Die Welt.

Also as usual, a server is swift to approach Rupert’s table, your urchin with the chocolate a fixture in his days—but no, this slim thing half-swallowed in the stained white apron, white cap a wimple tugged almost to the eyebrows, is a girl, a new girl: small rough hands, stern blue gaze aimed past his shoulder, an accent he cannot place as “Sir will take kaffee,” says the girl, as if it is not a question.

“No,” he says, setting down his hat and folder, “chocolate. Chocolat, chocolade,” in differing tones, a little guessing game, “Šálek cokolády,” and at that she looks straight at him, startled, a face not pretty but arresting, blunt nose and pale lips, those deep blue eyes.

“Sir, at once.”

Back with the tray, she sets out its contents, meticulous as a priestess at an altar—hot pot and china cup and gleaming spoon just so, the glass of cool mineral water, matches and ashtray for his cigar—seeming startled again when Rupert thanks her with a nod. He feels her watching as he takes out his papers, his mechanical pencil—another gift of Istvan’s, a gilt-silver Eagle, much finer than he needs—thinking again of the strange devil puppet, and the anonymous contribution, the banker openly bemused by Rupert’s caution—You suspect such good fortune, M. Bok? The disbursing bank is quite reputable but Set it aside, Herr Robb, untouched with the other one, can any fish taste a bounty without a hook?—

—and then puts both and the girl and all else from his mind and is gone into the script, the story, his story of a knight questing in a lonely wood, lost in the patter of rain, the chill of endless solitude, until he finds what he has been seeking all along: a comrade with a smile bright enough to change midnight into dawn, a friend who is also a friend to magic, who can make the cold wood into a dwelling, a palace, a home. It is a story he has told himself many times, over and over in the dark hours spent apart, and again in the warm hours of contentment—though as ever, Istvan can never be content, not even here, not now, and what to do to make him so a tale he cannot parse. All the more, then, let this tale be worth the telling, worth all the pains he takes to make it, his sober scratchings-out and dictionary hunting, feeling keenly his lack of letters, Tacio of the monks who must climb the mountain every time he puts pencil to paper, meaning every time to speak truly of things that truly were, a record—onstage, ephemeral, eternal—of their days; as once he read in a red-spined journal of love sparked and fanned, first love awakened to be cherished and forever lost; he still keeps that little book of poems, unread and unforgotten. Istvan has smiled at this new play’s sentimental heart, but Rupert knows he is pleased, though his continuing suggestions for a change in music or some playful bawd between the characters must continue to be rebuffed: the dark one tells stories, and the one with the puppet acts them out, so.

As he writes, the café empties around him, the others gone off one by one to their offices and workrooms, quiet descending as the sun lifts past the apartment houses’ Oriental spires, sets the pigeons and the woodlice moving, fills the street briefly with sharp noon light. Having advanced the knight as far as he will go for this day, Rupert sets down pen and cup to take up hat and coat, passing the café owner at the till, who asks with his usual unction if “All was to your satisfaction today, Herr Bok?”

“It was,” noting as he speaks the girl’s reappearance, industrious to clear away his table. “That girl—she’s new here, isn’t she?”

“To the city, too,” nods the owner. “Folle-farine, you know, the chaff blown in from the street, Russian, Prussian, who knows? She says she came from Paris,” but it must be the Paris of the alleys and the sewers, she has that look about her, that scuffler’s tension; how many girls like her has he met on the roads, turned away from the Poppy? so “Give her this,” Rupert says, bill in hand, pitching his voice so she must be sure to hear. “With my compliments.”

Then Rupert is gone and she is on the man like a terrier, both hands out: “Give it, give it! He meant it for me—” so “Take it then,” says the owner with some regret: a small bill, bread-and-butter as they say, still he could have used the extra; to her of course it will be a fortune. “But hey, Tilde, don’t think you’ll earn more by making eyes at that one! I know him, he comes here nearly every day, he’s queer.”

The girl Tilde does not bother to reply beyond a rude gesture, waiting till she reaches the kitchen to refold the bill around a little scrap plucked from the floor, Rupert’s stiff handwriting—In the hills it is so fair, Herr Knight—and slip both into her skirt, her little thief’s sleeve of hoarded treasures: a chamois sack of mongrel coins, francs and pence and shillings; the Taroc cards; the flat-faced cameo on a twist of fading blue tulle. Tipping the chocolate pot to find like a rind, yes, still a thimble’s-worth of sweetness, the smooth half-bitter dregs that she pairs with a heel of rye bread, a tiny luncheon even the owner, that skinflint, will never miss. In Paris she had all the bread she wanted, and chocolat, too, for a while: “Šálek cokolády,” her murmur, before she thrusts the thought away: why think of it ever, Paris is gone.

Across town, at the city’s railway terminus, trains depart for Paris and for elsewhere as others arrive, disgorging in steam and soot a moving frieze of passengers, all greeted or dispatched by a marble statue of Mercury, grime on his white helmet, winged feet adroitly poised between Olympus and the bootblacks and the stall that sells the apple-flavored snuff. Here a medaled old campaigner munching at his beard, there several loitering blue-capped tea boys, now a sallow society matron leading a trio of trunk-laden porters, as, just below the god, a young man waits with a newspaper, lean and trig in a boldly stylish plaid suit, hair as pale as French champagne beneath a coal black bowler. The young man pretends to scan the headlines—GERMAN
MINISTER
TO
VISIT
THE
PREFECTURE—as he watches the matron hurry toward an anonymous cabriolet, its windows thickly curtained and its doors unmarked. Just as she steps off the curb, a tea boy with an empty tray darts up to block her, grubby fingers snatching at her sleeve—

“Tea, ma’am, hey, ma’am, you want a cup?”

—the matron shrinking back to no avail, the boy avid as a rat to climb her skirts until “Madame,” the trig young man suddenly at her elbow, “do allow me,” to briskly cuff the boy sprawling and reach for the door of the cab, his helpful hand at her wrist to conduct her, his gaze meeting that of the man inside—a professionally handsome gentleman, thick pomade and Latinate, in no way the matron’s husband—who instantly blanches and slams the door. The porters fumble with the luggage as the young man steps back into the crowd, palming as he goes the matron’s bracelet of heart-shaped sapphires and “That’s got you,” he says pleasantly to no one, “you liverish bitch—”

—as the urchin pops up grinning like a jack-in-the-box alongside another, wide-eyed boy and “Here,” says the young man, two coins to the false tea boy and one to the real. “Spiff play, both of you.”

“Ta, Haden!” chirps the urchin, handing back to the other boy his official cap and tray, turning to the chestnut kiosk to slap down the price—“Hot bag, quick it!” —as “That’s Haden St.-Mary?” the real tea boy asks. “You work for him?”

“Fucking right I do,” says the urchin proudly. “An’t he pay bona? And he can kick the piss out of a wooden horse.”

Meanwhile the young man, who calls himself Haden St.-Mary, has passed back beneath the god’s column through a drifting litter of ticket stubs, lost gloves, chestnut hulls, and pigeon shit, the noon sun lighting his way through a rusting ironwork arch as he flags the first hack waiting, down the nudge and roll of the congested avenue, patchwork of cobblestones and concrete, larch and faintly greening elm, muddy Carousel Park and the beggars in their aprons crying “Pitié, pitié” and squinting their liquor-bright eyes. As he goes he yawns—the night just past was a long one, dealing faro till dawn in a French laundry, a boy on his lap tipping him sips from a brandy flask—and whistles through his teeth “Qu’a-t-il fait?”, all the boys of the avenue are singing it just now. His whistle is slightly marred by the scar that cleaves the sulky fullness of his lips, a scar he gnaws when he is anxious or angry, a scar a discarded bedmate once called the mark of Venus, revenge from the jealous goddess of love upon a man who loves no one at all.

If he, or for that matter the pedestaled god, had turned his head only a few degrees, he might have noted a family trio dodging a trolley at the curb: a dark young man in second-best businessman’s suit shepherding an older couple, rabbit-fur mantle and muff for the mamma, tightly held train tickets and nervous checking of the pocket watch by the papa, somber then to shake hands: “The time is too short. I should have liked to meet your employers, who work a young man so strenuously.”

“Especially,” sighs the mamma, “since they won’t allow you to travel—Cousin Albertine will miss you at her wedding! And to speak of weddings,” squeezing his arm, “we must set the date. Dear Marie has been so patient.”

The dark young man bites the inside of his cheek: “I know, Mamma,” at a kind of loss, “we will. But things are always so busy here,” as her face puckers, then smooths, she smooths one plump hand down his coat front, a futile, loving gesture, then is led away into the surge of the station crowd by her husband, already on the lookout for sly snatchpockets and other city-dwelling ne’er-do-wells.

Released, the dark young man turns back for the street, the nearest milk-and-tea shop, where he treats himself to gebackene Mäuse, “baked mice,” and a cup of caravan tea, reading, while he eats, the theatre column in the Clarion, a putative colleague whose tastes in entertainment are only slightly less offensive than his prose: For an evening of sheerest delight, one shouldst see again She Wouldst Not! The church bells begin to ring from St. Mary of Dolors; he bows his head a moment, eyes closed, then puts aside his emptied plate and hurries out past some shouting street boys, checkered scarves and dirty hands—

“Give a penny, sah, give a penny for some tea?”

“Suck for a fiver, sah? Half a fiver? Come on, fucking cheapjack!”

—to merge like a native into the purposeful scrum of businessmen and clerks and shopgirls: Frédéric-Seraphim Blum, dutiful son, absent fiancé, devotee of theatre and good writing and God; and another servant, if all unwitting, of that railway god whom the Greeks called Hermes, that rascal lord of thresholds and of journeys, of thievery and hard commerce, of ecstasy and lies.

See time as a deck of cards, the gods’ cards call them: each card a year, or a moment as momentous, each figure thereon an actor in the branching spread of the whole.
See the men of the Mercury; as children they were lovers: a thin dark boy in a black cap and jacket dropping pebbles into the gutter, one, two, half a dozen, before dropping himself from the sheltering ledge and heading off into the rain; solitude seems to suit him, this orphan, even at the monks’ school he was alone. But sometimes, as now, when the rain makes a certain murmuring sound, or he hears a certain kind of wistful song—Come with me, my darling, my darling, come with me into the hills—what can those words mean to him who knows nothing but the road and wants nothing more, no, yet why should his heart hurt so and he long to gather and keep safe, to have and to hold, my darling, my darling—

—until he is breathing fast, until the rain becomes a torrent and a viaduct looms, someone hunkered there already so he loosens the stick at his belt: then sees it is a boy even younger than he, plastered to the skin and pinched at the lips, how long has he been sitting there, and how long already on the dodge for him, the frail mother and ragged small sister, and he the gutter peacock prince who sings songs and makes jests for the gents who sometimes pay, the first words he offers now are a show: See this, making a scrap of old velvet into a mouth, a hungry mouth, it spits out six pennies and then gobbles them back up, spits again, gobbles, overcome each time by such greedy surprise that now Rupert is smiling, now the two boys are sitting side by side, now he gives his name, lstvan, just that and no more, what more does he need with that laugh, and those eyes, and a boast to make a play of anything, this scrap, that shadow, if Rupert will only watch awhile he will see—

—and that is the start of it, the heart of it, the two of them bound from that viaduct as one, as the pennies are carried in Rupert’s pocket and the velvet scrap becomes a hat for a little figure of wood, stub body and arms unmoving, carved out by Rupert with a stolen knife, the skill passed to Istvan who learns so easily and so well, who takes great delight in the pert little man, who in turn teaches Rupert how a show can be a game, can be all sorts of games, can make friends and open doors and urge the coins from one hand to another, their hands, their shows—

Try again, Mouse, take a breath. It’s easy if you try, yeah?

Not for me. I can’t do as you do, change his voice or throw it, or so command the attention of a crowd, it seems all Istvan must do is choose a stump to stand on and people, children, men will stop in their tracks to watch. But he can pick up stories from the streets and sing, a tenor that one day will drop into a handsome baritone; and pass the hat and guard the coins, already he hits well enough to break a man’s bone, and has…. So thus they go, the King of Staves and the Jack of Puppets, those grimy streets the first of all their stages, and hearts trump in every game, every time, no matter what the playing stakes or the reckoning at the end.

But not every boy, wild boy on his own, so sweetly finds his way. Let the cards fall again in a different year, and see another boy beside another gutter, holey boots and knotted spotted neckerchief, flipping rocks at a tavern window, playing a game with himself. Shortly two others, youngsters with bare feet and dripping noses, wander up to watch him, What you doing, Haden? and There’s a man in there, says Haden, says he’ll give me tenpenny if I can knock a bottle off the bar. But these stones I got, showing them in his fist, can’t even crack that old glass that’s broken anyway.

The urchins consult, then I got these, pulling from a pocket a palmful of lead marbles. But you got to give me fi’penny if you win.

If I win, I’ll tell the man it was your stones. Arm cocked for the sling, two hard marbles at once and at once the window shatters, the tavern keeper erupts and They did it! Haden laughing in flight as the slapstick descends, as the urchins howl, as the men inside shake their heads at the petty foolishness of boys when the times are so dire, their own parish in the path of war already: and already, as the sun goes down, the fires begin in the streets.

The flames dance like a lurid show past a cellarside window—this one broken, too, though half mended with stuffed rags, everything in this town is broken or mended—and Oh! Come away from there! his mother’s wail, she is always wailing, he has learned to pay her no mind. They say she is a harlot, they say she gave herself to a wandering spirit to birth this boy with his tangled pelt of hair and eyes yellow as a goat’s, the master of all goats, Pan himself upon some hillside made of foxglove and iron. But truly he is not a bastard, though his father is permanently elsewhere, a so-called soldier of fortune who left behind only a half-flat purse and a half-remembered name, Mundy, and the boy’s own name from a general of the greatest wars.

This war is not a great one, though it is large enough to consume several townsfolk as well as the town’s bakery in the smell of roasting yeast, and send rude men tramping through its streets: like this one in a greasy uniform jacket and suspiciously elegant trousers, half a gentleman’s rig, but this man is no gentleman, nor the men that he calls his soldiers, as he calls himself a corporal: calling to Haden watching from the barred doorway of the tavern You, boy! Show me where’s the jenny-house in this place.

For tenpenny I will, and, paid, he leads the way to the whores’ tired two-room, with its reek of arnica and beetle-browed madam. While his men troop inside, the corporal waits in the street, passing the time with a deck of playing cards, old French cards of hard-waxed paper, flipping through simple tricks as Haden stands beside him, rapt: Keep a good watch on that pale knave, now! Where’s he hiding at, eh?

There, says Haden. No, now he’s there.

You’ve sharp eyes, the corporal considering the comely face, that strange gaze Like a cat’s, eh? Little tomcat, what’s your name? but like a wary cat Haden then departs—

—to reappear as the brigands’ band leaves town, falling into step beside the corporal as if he is used to a martial gait: neckerchief and red-tasseled shawl, his mother’s shawl knotted up into a bindle and Hola, says the corporal, it’s the tomcat! What, you want to join up with us?

With you, and with no more ceremony than a nod and a drink from a wineskin, sour Rheinish gulped down like mother’s milk, he leaves the weary little warren that has been his only home; he never sees it, or his mother, again. Now he is called the corporal’s son.

As a son he has certain liberties: to drink when he will from that wineskin, to wear a fine black-braided kepi, to eat his fill of coarse and bloody brazier-cooked meat, roughmeat the soldiers call it, but the corporal only shrugs: Wild cats, they eat what they can get. And he likes it, don’t you, Haden? The corporal likes that he has had a bit of schooling, can spell his name and read after a fashion, but there is always more to learn: how to ride pillion when a horse can be had, how often a grown man takes his pleasure, how to play all sorts of games—lansquenet, Shut-the-Box, hazard, he shows an especial talent for the cards, with his quick gaze and long fingers Just like a lass’s, sneers one of the soldiers, a ruddy-faced drunkard. He’s already your sweet little lass, an’t he, sir? The other men hoot, and the corporal smiles, offering no defense of Haden who says nothing through the laughter, who waits until the ruddy soldier is fast asleep to straddle and piss in his snoring mouth, a vengeance unpunished but frowned upon by the corporal: Now, now, that’s not how a man does.

It’s how I do, and there the matter rests, though he keeps a wary eye on the ruddy, grudge-holding soldier until a knife fight takes that chore from his days; cold days, now that winter has come, and the fires he is tasked to build grow harder and harder to manage, the foraging, too. Everyone is tired of soldiers, tired of the war, the housewives and maids not so free with their charity, even to a hungry boy in the rags of a uniform—but a hungry, wandering boy in the rags of a red-tasseled shawl, his dear old aunty’s shawl, his poor lost sister’s…. To be given bread is one thing, to steal it is another, but to win it by pure dissembling is something else again.

And more than just crusts and cheese rinds, by this game he earns his first taste of Irish whiskey, and fine clodhopper boots free of any holes, and a curious wafer of silver on a silver chain, he thinks to barter that for better but No, insists the corporal, you keep that: a medallion of St. Christopher, patron of travelers, of men who carry mystery on their backs. You wear it, hear? It will make you safe.

He shifts inside the corporal’s heavy arms. I thought you were to make me safe.

When at last the fighting stops, the soldiers celebrate in the smoky streets of the last town raided, waving their bayonets and laughing, the corporal laughing with them, then frowning, then growing very drunk: he insists Haden sit on his knee, kisses his mouth, kisses him hard and Little tomcat, he says, you’ll be fine, though the sour salt merchant to whom he then indentures the boy—Can’t take him with me, I’ve whelps of my own at home—finds him nothing but sullen and rebellious, a poor and balky toiler, a mocker, in fact, of salt, the very substance of life itself—

Where would we be without it, ha? Tell me that! Our Lord Himself called his disciples “the salt of the earth”—

Then get Him to sweep out your fucking storeroom, easily evading the clout before it comes; he is quicker than ever, more treacherous, too, the salt merchant waking one morning to find a deal of money gone along with a half-bottle of calvados, a bad-smelling kepi crammed into the counterbox, while Haden himself, bareheaded and brandy in hand, heads alone up the mucky road. As he walks he tells himself that all the salt merchants of the earth can go and fuck themselves standing, and all the armies and their corporals, too. With the cards he carries he will make his own way, he will make his fortune and then some, just like the card he most favors, the knave of diamonds with his back-crossed fingers, a crown of broken arrows, and a painted, tilted smile.

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.

“Fortuna,” he says, to the banker, to the table, to the opulent black donna of the card, “sometimes called Tyche. A clever bitch. She enters through the porta fenestella,” taking a drink of his brandy-stirrup, as from the dimness, from nowhere, a woman’s laugh is clearly heard, a woman’s voice: “Bonne chance, messires.” One of the watchers, startled, scrapes his chair, another as startled swears; Haden blinks. The banker stares hard at Istvan, who makes the lady of the card to briefly bow.

“She favors the bold,” he shrugs, by way of explanation.

“Yes,” says the banker grimly, “boldness, yes. Monsieur, my bet.” With his palm he pushes in a stack of chips equal to Istvan’s, then greater, a teetering, taunting tower of black and gold. “I call sudden death, monsieur.”

“Ah. Then sudden death it is,” staking the last of his chips with one hand as with the other he snaps down to the scuffed green felt his final card: the red-eyed, red-caped Lord of Hearts.

The whole room lets out its breath in a whistle, a cry, a sigh. The banker’s lips thin to the thinnest possible smile, as if he has by a hair’s-breadth escaped some lasting harm: “Hearts,” he says, unnecessarily. “You had me fooled a moment, I think, Monsieur.”

“Did I?” says Istvan, who has not ceased to smile, as the slavey of the table brings a signing board and chit whereon he scrawls his name in debt, M. Hilaire. “Well, the wheel spins as she lists, regno, regnavi,” while the banker gathers the pile of chips as hungrily as if it were a woman’s pliant body, “regnabo…. One more spin, would you, messire? Doubled or naught.”

One of the watchers laughs as if in disbelief; Haden sits up straighter; the banker freezes. “Sir, the game is ended.”

“Surely it is, if you fear to play further.” Istvan’s smile has gone gentle. “Surely I would understand, would we not all understand?” half swiveling in his seat to raise his voice, brush his gaze across his audience: the importer still hat in hand, the avid men in the chairs, Haden who, as Istvan’s glance touches his own, holds the look as if compelled—

—as Istvan pauses, similarly struck, what a stare on that young sharper, yellow eyes just like a cat’s, so “What say you, dealer?” Istvan asks him. “Does Fortune favor the bold?”

Haden shrugs theatrically. “Only the ones with ballocks.”

Back Istvan turns to the banker, waiting, the whole club is waiting, even the servants stand against the walls and stare until at last “As you say,” the banker snarls, shoving in again his chips against the signed chit-board. “But not Sudden Death—Champignon. One hand,” to Haden, who nods and deals four cards each, the fifth face-up: the banker’s is the lady of diamonds, Istvan’s the six of hearts. The banker is pale to consult and then, smiling with vast relief, lay down his other cards, the first two, two more ladies, three queens in all: “Fortuna,” he says, “as you say, Monsieur. What have you to show?”

All watch Istvan’s hands as he shows his hand; only Haden watches his face. One by one the cards turn up red, all red, all hearts.

A shout goes up from the men at the walls, the importer laughs aloud like a boy and “Well played,” says Istvan to the banker, stiff now as if freshly poisoned, shoving as stiffly from the table, so enraged he bolts the club without coat or hat, a servant dispatched to chase him down as another tears the debt chit in two, pays out Istvan’s winnings and “It’s good evening, then, gentlemen,” Istvan says, “or good morning, rather. And a good morning to you, too, kit,” exiting past Haden’s nod—“The same, uncle”—lips pursed into a soundless whistle as he gathers up and squares the cards and “That ought to keep his playhouse running for a while, eh?” the importer’s wheezy chuckle in the draft of the closing door—

—beyond which Istvan frees his knife as he steps into the empty street, one last chrysanthemum in skip and roll across the curb: tithe to blind fortune, is that the echo of a woman’s laugh? Loosed at least from this night’s burden, he turns toward home as the wheel of the stars wheels toward dawn, winnings folded fat against his chest, a fine paper torrent to spill upon Mouse—

—who is, yes, still up and waiting in their bedchamber, dark dressing gown and spectacles a-shine, smoking and reading until “For you, Herr Knight,” says Istvan as he plucks away the newspaper, tosses down the money, laughs to see Rupert’s surprise—and see again the great banked power of him, this man who has been knight, yes, so long for them both, bravo and bulwark and heart’s desire, why should he fear anything, ever or at all?—and smiling still to doff his jacket and cravat, and lead the way to the tufted rosewood landscape where together again they lie, scarred and one-sighted with one heart between them, the mingling tastes of brandy and tobacco, the continuing heat of Eden engendered to moaning bliss—

—until at last Istvan sleeps like a satisfied child as Rupert lies beside him, listening to the sparrows sing in the daybreak, another kind of roundelay: the green sward and fair hills of the streets and the rainswept gutters, the silent bar and the waking café, the noise of the news vendors joking and pissing in the alleys off the square. When at last Rupert dozes, it is to wake in the fitful sun of latest morning, alone again, his spectacles set atop the neatly-folded Solon, the bright and faded banknotes still in scatter on the floor.

“One Night in the Forest”

Contributed by Seraphim

If there is any doubt where our city’s finest theatrical artistry may now be found, let your angelic correspondent dispel it at once: Dress your steps in the wings of fleet Mercury, and hurry down to the theatre that bears his name, where a new performance with the delicacy of the scalpel and the power of the cannonade quite astonishes its audience, and plumbs the very depths of the watching heart.

Can it truly be said that a puppet is an actor? Surely Mlle Bernhardt or M. Henry Neville might disagree, or our city’s own M. Edgar Rue! Yet how can it not be said, when these two actors, styled as always in the playbill as Mr. Castor and Mr. Pollux, enact a pair of rôles: the hero of the road and the magician of the forest, two travelers whose journeys find their flowering each in the company of the other. Made only of humble wood and operated by strings and levers (your correspondent would dearly like to know how they are so operated!), yet in the playing a fuller life takes hold and they become, nay, they are the men in peril as brigands attack, as each uses the weapons he knows best—for the Knight, his trusty swordstick, for the Magician, his sway over the lunary goddess—to vanquish those who would harm them, and make safe their own way into the world.

And it is not only as heroes that these wooden creatures taste of the spring of Life: they have hearts as well, and allow those hearts to lead them as they must. If there was a certain consternation amongst some in the audience as these two found a sweeter consolation in close company, let it be only a flickering echo of a fading medieval darkness, as the applause was a bright Diogenes for the better time surely to come. For in this late, late age, when the world herself has grown so weary and so wise, may we not allow all the anthems of the heart, howsoever they shall be sung? If Theatre is Truth, surely we can do no less!

Allow Seraphim to be your guide, then, to One Night in the Forest, where an hour’s attention will be richly rewarded both in triumphant performance and later private rumination. (Note that shows begin promptly at nine o’clock, and latecomers are not admitted.)

The Morals Commission is in no way architecturally imposing, just another stone façade on an august avenue, neighbored by the Mercantile Exchange with its high Olympian columns, the Clothiers’ and Drapers’ Assembly, and the Municipal Prefecture itself, flags flying beside the stern statue of Minerva, booted feet athwart her motto, Potens sui. To seek the pith of that building requires only a short pilgrim’s progress up a second-floor stairway—checkerboard parquet and dusty portraits of lord mayors, a civil sainthood again unimposing—and a brief consultation with the secretary at the door.

If the building’s lower reaches, the half-dozen rooms of inquiry with their gray walls and multiple locks, seed a dread disproportionate to their size, it is accepted by everyone who toils there, from Herr de Vries down to the boy who mops the fluids, that any and all attendant grief—societal censure; financial ruin; trial and imprisonment; the occasional, regrettable suicide—must still be the way of the angels, so often depicted with flaming sword in hand, or, more practically and humbly, the way of the conscientious surgeon, cutting and cauterizing rot before it spreads. It is not that this city is much more wicked than its fellows on the continent, and if its civic heart retains some appetite for the mythic, the gaudy or hysteric, thus are the lees of history, when the world spun more slowly and such tastes were less a threat. Now things are changing, thanks to the efforts of what the newspapers call the “new men,” those administrators and businessmen with their eyes on what the great advancing future might bestow, what fresh powers and surprising prizes, if only they are resolute. As for the man in the street, there may always be a certain measure of allowable folly, of lagers and sporting girls: to clamp the lid too tight invites the boil. But on some matters there can be no debate, and it is the task of the Commission to protect the citizenry from the dangers of moral confusion, and the disruptions to commerce such confusion inevitably brings.

One of the many ways this is accomplished is by daily inspection of the daily newspapers, a task of the secretary looking up, now, from this afternoon’s inky pile, censor’s razor in hand, to note the approach of an agent, and call with a warding gesture that “He’s downstairs, sir. He’s downstairs—” but “I’ll wait,” says Haden St.-Mary, stepping past without slowing into the narrow office with its viewless window and twin pneumatic tubes, dominated by a giant oaken desk: it seems the office is the desk, so high are its ramparts, so cavernous its drawers, its chair fully suitable for a minor emperor or up-and-coming pope, though the seat itself is surprisingly uncomfortable: “Tight on the ass,” Haden notes as another man enters, a heavy man with heavy brows and a cherub’s sweet rosy cheeks. “It could give a man the piles.”

“You’d say so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means. And Mr. Eig an’t want you sitting in his chair.” From his overcoat pocket, the bravo, Costello, retrieves a dented little tin, camphor snuff unoffered to Haden, who wrinkles his nose at the smell as he glances through the papers on the desk, searching without appearing to search, is that his name there?—no, only St. Mary of Dolors, the cathedral: more fishing for the clergy, another of Eig’s interests, does the man do nothing but ferret and toil? He does make do without the stinky-pink, or at least no one has ever caught him at it, though many eyes watch him to be sure…. Looking up to find himself eyed by Costello in deep suspicion, wiping snuff-drip with a knuckle: “Why you here, then, when Mr. Eig is out?”

“The angels called me. How’s it your business, lapdog?” as Costello’s bear hand tightens on the snuff tin, Haden’s own knife just a finger’s-breadth away—

—but instead the secretary’s loud relief —“Sir, they’re in your office, sir”—as past the threshold in quiet energy enters Martin Eig.

If the monstrous desk is the center of the office, his gaze is that center in his person, a nearly boundless repository of names and secrets, tasks and punishments and obligations, a dark impregnability above a brown beard clipped smooth; there is nothing to grasp on to with Martin Eig, no handholds to be seen. Guardian of public morals, himself a figure of no great presence, a youngish man of medium height in a businessman’s suit, a businessman’s watch that he checks, clicks, slips back into his pocket before nodding Costello out to the anteroom, where that worthy sits to clip and shape his thumbnail to a point, though not before aiming a stare worthy of the alley, in return for one worthy of the gutter from Haden, who shrugs from the chair in feigned apology and, while Eig seats himself, scans a moment through the uncut Globe: no censor there, just cant and more cant and the society pages, the drapers’ upcoming spring cotillion, the Ladies’ Benevolent Succor Society to be chaired by the esteemed Frau Eszterhaus, sallow Frau Eszterhaus who still is paying, heart by sapphire heart, for Haden’s continued silence on the subject of her traveling companion: Send the money, Madame, and you will have back your bracelet, her husband the Mayor must be a jealous brute indeed—

—as the secretary lugs in a tea tray with two plain cups and a silver pot, an ornate and voluptuous pot much out of place in this room of business and “Bally heavy,” says Haden unmoving, forcing the secretary to arch nervously around his chair. “Mustn’t drop it, now, Bernd.”

“A heartening beverage,” says Eig as the secretary pours. “A man could quite make a meal of it.” He drinks, the pekoe bitter and scalding black; Haden does not. Cup down, “We have a task for you, Mr. St.-Mary,” reaching into the papers on his desk to bring forth a clipping from the Daily Solon, reading it aloud: “‘Have we not perhaps seen that same attempt, in some of the newly repressive laws…. Bravo for that puppet actor who fears not to say what the man in the street might well be saying.’”

“What, at Cockrill’s? There’s nothing there but flashpants, and roundheads in from the sticks—”

“Not Cockrill’s Palace. This theatre is called the Mercury.” Eig takes up another razored column: “‘The applause was a bright Diogenes for the better time surely to come.’ You read the papers, don’t you, Mr. St.-Mary? Do you think the man in the street ought to take his marching orders from puppets? Or watch them kill a king, or enact ‘a sweeter consolation,’ whatever that might mean?” He hands to Haden the pair of clippings. “These fellows Bok and Hilaire, where they come from, what they intend—the Commission does not know. You,” teacup raised in brief salute, “will find out, though it’s nothing you need do yourself, at least not yet. One of your fellows will serve, perhaps find a post there, or—Why do you frown? Is the assignment not to your taste?”

“It’s the tea.” Which is true, the smell of the tea is nauseating, or it may be last night’s calvados coming back for revenge, or it may be this fucking office, its brown leather and piled papers and piety; to look into the brain-house of Eig, what sort of place would it be? Heaven’s dungeon? A clean clockwork factory? A bustling morgue? like the rooms downstairs, Haden has seen those rooms a time or two, from the safe side of the door. But the business is to know things, his own as much as Eig’s, so “You want a boy at the playhouse when? Tête baissée? Posthaste, that is,” somewhat self-consciously, when Eig does not respond. “Your French is better than mine.”

“I believe that translation is ‘headlong,’ though all my French is from books.”

“You’ve never been to Paris?”

“I have never left this city. But my mind has traveled many roads. Yours does the same, I believe,” cup down again to extract from one of the many drawers a pale envelope, extending it just far enough so that Haden must reach to receive it, slip it into his coat pocket, pick up his hat as “You’ll have a boy at the theatre as soon as is feasible. Oh, and Mr. St.-Mary,” to make Haden pause, one hand poised on the jamb. “Did you enjoy sitting in my chair?”

Their gazes meet, Eig’s calm and black as an eel’s, Haden’s narrowed like an alley cat’s and “Not a whores’-hair-worth,” with a little shrug. “Desk work doesn’t suit me.”

“No? But your view may yet be changed, by, what is it, ‘the enticements and uses of power.’ Not all men are made for it, but the ones who are ought not turn away. In the meantime, you mustn’t tease my watchdog,” as both smile now, neither from mirth, and Haden passes with a filthy gesture that glowering cherub in the anteroom, who steps back at once into the office—

“Beg pardon, sir, but that one’s real trouble. That St.-Mary, he’s a nancy and a scoundrel, he’s—”

“There is a saying the Italians have, ‘A nail drives out a nail.’ Costello, that’s Italian, isn’t it?” Mr. Eig sips his tea. “Don’t worry about Mr. St.-Mary, Costello.”

—as Haden makes for the stairs, the doors, the brisk and living air of the avenue outside—coal stink, some café’s kaffee, the pink whiff of two trudging posy girls—putting space between himself and that building, legging through the streets to spy a lad of his a moment before the lad spies him: “You boy! Go get me a bock,” from the crush of a nearby tavern, a chipped and slippery mug that Haden downs in three deep swallows, while his other hand reaches into the boy’s shabby trousers, heedless and too hard, the boy trying not to flinch as “A man can quite make a meal of that,” with a squeeze and a grainy belch, the boy then forgotten as Haden turns up the avenue, not toward the Mercury Theatre after all but another district altogether, the publishers’ row of newspapers and bookbinders, the cramped confines of the Daily Solon, where the air is a-fug with pipe smoke and Voltaire’s portrait hangs in honor above the door. At the foyer stairs, the walls plastered with posters for this lecture and that, all the myriad readings and meetings and literary insurrections, he checks the clippings in his quilted vest pocket, then rings the bell and asks to speak with Herr Seraphim.

See another cardfall of the past, to show a place not far by road or train track, but to this quiet boy at another window, clean panes and fussy lace, book balanced on his knee, it might be another world entirely, a city imagined bright as the moon from this dim, calm, suffocating little town, where every day is the same as every other: Half-past six, the maid Dolly wakes him for prayers, then breakfast, Mamma in her cabbage-rose cap, Papa in vest and with newspaper, their cups of tea, his mug of heated milk, the cook boils it always with the sickening skin but he does not complain, he peels it carefully to one side with his spoon while Mamma details all the details of the day to come; no one is truly listening, not even Mamma, but it is how the days begin.

Then he and Papa together take their leave, Mamma kissing each as they go: to Papa’s building first, the cocoa importers’, sweet with brown dust and men powdered as brown in rugged caps and work boots; sometimes they smile at Frédéric and he smiles back. At school he is always on time, always diligent, always ready with his lessons and his answers; he is quite a bit brighter than the other pupils, a fact lost on no one but no one dislikes him for it, not even the duncecap boys who pound him without malice, then let him watch as they tussle and run and play whirligigs on the courtyard bricks. At dinnertime he walks home alone, to toasted cheese and more boiled milk; sometimes he takes his meal upstairs, to the very top of the house, the mullion windows in the music room from which vantage he can see all the way to the town square and the church, its steeple a shadow on the road that leads to the city, like a warning finger pointing out the way no one must go.

The music master is from the city, a sad and angry little man who chews horehound candies as he beats time with his fist on the tabletop, as Frédéric sings scales over and over again. The music master once lived in the city, he says, but not to his betterment: No, there they take their music in the opera hall or in the streets, either it’s the high-nosed meistersingers or some lout with a drum. There’s no room for an honest man to make music there.

But you are an honest man, Herr Teacher.

I left, boy, I left.

The music master has counseled Mr. and Mrs. Blum that, if the boy develops his fine though unremarkable voice, he might one day become a chorister or even choirmaster, a lifelong musical servant of the church. Mrs. Blum is thrilled by this prospect, though her husband’s stated ambition is to see their son at a desk in the cocoa warehouse; both imagine him as busy, prosperous, and safely settled in town for life.

Of the boy’s own wants or dreams his parents have not inquired, though he is the pith of the apple of their eye, and even if they had, perhaps Frédéric would not have been able to voice them, only to point, mutely, from the window out to the world: or into the pages of his favorite books, not the grammar and schoolbooks at which he excels, but the ones that speak to him as truly as the friends they truly are: that speech of play and of poetry, of wild glances and terrible vows and half-understood adventures, the Greek gods in their majesty, Apollo of the Sun and his great arms holding steady the steeds of day…. Mamma does not like him to read those books, of heathen gods and suchlike, so he is prudent to keep them hidden, though it troubles him to have secrets from his parents, and even, if he can admit it, from the pastor at the church, in whose confessional he has whispered his small evils of greed and impatience, and received the command to go and sin no more. Truly he tries, he wants to be a good boy, to grow up to be a good man like his papa, but cannot one be a good man and a man of the city? a man of poetry, a man with friends like the cocoa-carriers and the Greek gods, strong, swift, smiling men whose strength and smiles are what he dreams of, what dreams sustain him through the poundings and the lessons and the smell of wax and horehound, the sentinel ticking of the heirloom mantel clock, its fragile gold hands and blue-enameled face, made, Mamma has told him many times, by a queen’s clocksmith in Paris. The geography book shows him Paris, shows him London and St. Petersburg and all the great cities of the world, cities like the city of the gods that he draws on the leaf of his book: quaint walkways and crenellated houses, a city where the white moon smiles on meistersingers and louts with drums, what is a lout? a special kind of player, a player of the streets? And will he ever know, ever hear that playing in a street not at all like the one outside this window, where the greengrocer’s man tips his hat to Dolly who flaps her apron in return, while Papa walks back up the street with his newspaper and Mamma rings the bell below for tea: and Frédéric closes his book on another story, the tale of Icarus who flew too high—but what if it was that he flew not high enough? For if he had only gone a little farther, he might have met Apollo, and landed safely, brightly, in his arms….

And then the bell rings again, as resistless as the priest’s at consecration, next Dolly will come to fetch him so with a sigh he closes the book, his own and precious catechism, and leaves the window and the view; to drink more boiled milk, to sing for Papa and Mamma, to lie by the fire while Papa talks and Mamma embroiders, and dream of faces rising and dissolving in the flames.

“You ought to start reading these, messire,” says Rupert in shirtsleeves and braces, tossing down to the backstage table the previous day’s Gentleman’s View. “This fellow says that our shows are ‘quite well-staged, but all in all troubling.’ Though he doesn’t fully say what the trouble might be.”

“The trouble is there is none. And what troubles me is the minginess,” Istvan regarding with irritation a pillowslip stuffed with household plunder, plucked from the day-servant sent fleeing into the morning’s rain, the girl who just last month replaced the previous servant, that one spooked off by the streetside catcalls of the drinkers at the Heads or Tails; herself replacing the old beldame whose poor punctuality and ripe hygiene daily warred for pride of place, past the original girl whose sense of original sin was pricked as much by the puppets’ oddity and lawlessness as by two men living together and alone. “If a chit’s going to steal, then let her steal something that matters, coin or furbelows or liquor, not fucking teaspoons—”

“And tea,” as Rupert pours himself a cooling cup steeped brown as river water; he seems more amused than elsewise. “May be she was thirsty.”

“And may be one ought to find a real servant, not these worthless come-and-go hussies,” especially now when they are so busy, the estimable Seraphim’s second gust of praise sent them five full houses in as many nights, their first success beneath this roof; the forest show will certainly be extended, despite the clouded Gentleman’s View, or the starchy confusion of the Clarion, or the three complaining letters to the editor in the Globe. Meanwhile Istvan has begun to plot another, wilder tale, working to woo Rupert to its merits, a passionate play on the passions of chance: “Call it Mercury’s Roulette, yeah? with our fellows tarted up as gods on the stroll, and a fine gypsy Wheel of Fortune, I’m for the Park just now to have a look. And for this there must be music, Mouse, real music, whatever you may say—”

“And no doubt you’ve just the musician in mind,” though with a little smile: it pleases Rupert, eases him to see Istvan so engaged, so happily enraged over details, on this, yes, ever-motionless road. “Well, let me ask at the café, then, may be the owner will know of a likely servant for us. And,” slipping into his coat, “before you make your way to the Park, there’s that fellow coming from the Daily Solon, recall, he wants to talk with you.”

“Me?”

“Us. But it’s you who’ll do the talking,” when that fellow summarily arrives, a rain-splashed young man eager as a lad much younger, and somehow familiar in his second-best suit, Herr Frédéric Blum on his plain white carte-de-visite though he speaks for the influential “Seraphim,” perching straight-backed at the backstage table with a little blued leather notebook and a mechanical pencil much inferior to the one Rupert uses, a cheap tin-cased Scout. “I’ve come for the article on his behalf.”

“And welcome on his behalf,” says Rupert, “though we’d be more than glad to thank him face-to-face. He’s done a favor for our theatre, that’s certain—people are lining up to see this show.”

“But never Seraphim himself,” muses Istvan, taking the seat opposite, tugging his morning coat a little closer, his shoulder aching redly as it always does in the chill. “A true man of mystery—he hasn’t lost his wings, has he? Or may be flown too closely to the sun?”

Herr Blum smiles then, a scholar’s smile, perhaps, at the allusion. “No, no. He only believes it’s best to keep anonymous so that he may write the truth, and no one may try to sway his opinions. You might be astonished, gentlemen,” with a stern glance to the newspaper on the table, “to learn how often that is done, even nowadays. Paying for reviews, that’s the old way, and good riddance to it! Your shows, now, are certainly most apt for the temper of the times—have you heard Herr Vickery, on the subject of the ‘Art of Living’? No? It’s very thought-provoking—though not many theatres here follow suit, it’s sad to say. At the Athenaeum—”

“Distressing, yes, that appetite for treacle. We try to offer heartier fare.”

“As indeed you do,” earnestly. “We’re fortunate that you chose our city to make your home, since you come from elsewhere on the continent, yourselves and your—families?” glancing between and past them into the backstage jumble of slats and flats, cracked candle-ends and pots of spangling paint, the usual disorder of the world behind the curtains, as Istvan smiles and “Les mecs,” he says, “are our family—the puppets. We have none other.”

“You are not married men, then?”

“No,” says Rupert.

“Though we did have our chances,” says Istvan.

Herr Blum nods, making the first of many notes, as he then deploys his Scout upon a long and thoroughly thorough list of questions—What is their history as players, as puppeteers? What other playwrights’ work do they enjoy, or deplore? What do they make of the city’s current political climate? seeming to take Istvan’s pleasant, facile feints as gospel while openly hoping for those other family members to make themselves known, for “One sees the puppets as actors, truly, and not as mere objects made by hand. Though of course there’s a firm guiding hand behind them,” with a respectful nod to M. Hilaire, who nods graciously in return, M. Bok sitting quiet now behind his cigar. “Truly, you must have practiced many hours to be so skillful.”

“That’s so, although I wouldn’t call it practice,” says Istvan affably; he has taken a liking to this donnish young man—how young they are, all these young men!—in his plain, staid vest, hair a bit too short, the faint outcrops of a barbered beard—and himself of course a maker, one can see straight through the little fiction to the angelic presence beneath: whose ruse is that, one wonders? Like hiding light beneath a bushel, always a wink must peep through, and this one shines. “Rather it’s a manner of communion, call it, the way close friends are cognizant of one another’s moods and movements. Or more so lovers,” amused to watch as Herr Blum colors rather violently. “A gesture in bed serves as well as a word or better, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I—why, yes, that is, one understands,” scribbling hastily in his notebook, as past his bent head Istvan and Rupert share a look. “Though surely not all players are so—attuned to their partners? Have you ever been to the puppet shows at the Palace? Mr. Cockrill and—”

“Gawdy, yes,” says Rupert wryly, tapping ash. “We went there once—”

“Which was one time too many,” Istvan’s shrug, he and Rupert both annoyed that clumsy Cockrill, all elbows and dry string-work, should be considered any sort of peer, “especially when he drags in those girls in their corsets and sagging pantaloons. Someone’s been to the Poppy, no doubt. ”

Herr Blum looks up from his notebook. “What is the Poppy?”

“Another theatre,” says Istvan smoothly, “in another town, and besides, the wench is dead. Cockrill’s a bit of an ass, Herr Blum, as I am sure you know, and know further that to make any puppet dance, one must dance to the same tune at the same time. Again, like lovers…. Talking of that, I saw that Seraphim’s review approved of our fellows’ congress, if some in the audience did not, even though,” with another glance for Rupert, “the mecs kept themselves all very chastely buttoned down.”

Whatever mild mischief Istvan intends, perhaps to watch that pretty blush again, what comes in its stead is so sudden and sincere that both men are startled as “Sirs,” says Herr Blum, “be fully assured that both Seraphim and the Daily Solon stand resolutely against all undue censorship—all censorship, on the page as well as on the stage. For a newspaper’s much like a play, isn’t it, made to show us the world, so that we may find our way in it, and learn how we are to live?” past Rupert’s deepened silence, Istvan’s murmur—“Theatrum mundi”—and “Yes!” Herr Blum’s passionate nod, “the theatre of the world, yes. And as for the—the other, why, Scripture itself says that if there is not love, a thing is only sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, if we give away our bodies to be burned it is the same! So I further believe—that is, Seraphim believes that love is always worthy to stand in the temple of Art, if it is true love. And your actors, sirs, your puppets, are very true indeed.”

“As is your saying,” says Istvan warmly, while Rupert gives a sober nod, and Herr Blum stares down at the Scout stilled on the notebook page, as if it has written for him lines he did not expect to speak. For a brief and kindred moment there is silence, one of those moments in which, it is said, an angel is passing by.

Then “I must away now, I’m afraid,” Istvan rising, taking up his hat, taking Herr Blum’s hand in a comrade’s clasp, “but I hope you will come again to see us, as often as ever you please. May be with your seraphic friend?” with an irrepressible smile as Herr Blum smiles, too, and “May I,” he asks, reaching for his own severely brushed topper—one more stroke and his head might pop straight through— “perhaps next time see the puppets—that is, here backstage? And watch as you rehearse with them?”

“We can but ask. They’ve got the temperament—actors, you know…. I go by the Park, will you walk with me?” leading the young man to the door, Frédéric’s last question trailing as they cross up the aisle—“Why is it called the Mercury, your theatre?”—to bring Istvan’s quote from “Priapus, do you know him? That is, the classics? I’m sure Seraphim does, it’s a fairly juicy bit,” as the door is closed, as the quote is proffered, as before they part Istvan sees once more that alarmed and charming blush.

Two grubby boys perch on a scrolled iron bench across from that parkside parting, one boy the worse for bottled ether, the other continuing to watch as the younger man hurries off and the older, a tall toff-type, passes without pausing the marionette booths, the carousel with its chipped and toothy horses and gaily painted cavalier’s coach, the dolly-wagglers’ girls who pretend to be lost for the men who pretend to find them, turning down the avenue of larch and budding lady’s-lace into the muddy, pathless precincts of the tinkers’ forest, where wisdom and loss await the gullible, and one can have the future laid bare by the spirits or the cards, and buy all sorts of faintly noxious nostrums to cure or prevent migraine, heartbreak, baker’s stomach, and the worst kind of Chinese clap. The tall man speaks to one of the tinkers, sitting arms-folded beside a somewhat warped Wheel of Fortune; but no money changes hands, and no one else approaches except a drunken beggar in an apron, who sheers off when the two men turn on him as one. As the beggar weaves past the boys on the bench, the watchful one calls out to him—“Hey!”—and waves a coin, like waving a strip of gristle under the nose of a hungry dog. “What they sayin’, those two over there? The toff and the gipsy?”

“What toff?” blinks the beggar, reaching for the coin; the boy hooks a foot around his ankle, trips him to the ground, then yanks his own weaving comrade upright as “Come on,” he says, peering past the larch, but the tall man is only spinning the Wheel, the festal stars, the Venus moon, the climber rising always to tumble back into the dust and rise again. The boy tugs along his listing friend as the tall man at last takes his leave, not back the way he came but through the maze of flower booths with their gray-and-brown striped awnings, their white tulips and green violets, potted ivy and strangler fig, heart’s-ease as bright as brand-new satin, past the stately gated entrance to the Lady’s Garden, past the Cemetery that is not a cemetery, lost at last to the afternoon traffic so “Come on,” the boy says again to his friend, disappointed but resolute. “We got to go tell Haden.”

“Tell ’im what?”

“Tell him you’re fucking worthless! An’t he said, ‘Watch them showmen’? You want to eat tonight or not?” as the boys disappear in the other direction, never having marked the blue-eyed girl there on the bench by the carousel, dipping bread into a half-tin of sauced sardines, noting their actions and interest without any interest at all.

But when a fine maman in a pink walking suit and her pair of squawking sons approach the carousel, and the attendant wipes down the seats and cranks the wheels to make it turn, then Tilde is held rapt by the music, the winged horse revolving to the words of the song: “Oh follow, oh follow, oh follow my lead/Let me lead you all the way home,” until the gallop slows and the wheels stop, and the tune fades out again upon the air. As Maman and her boys turn away for other pleasures, Tilde reaches into her skirt pocket for the deck of Taroc cards: the first card into her hand is the Wanderer, the second is the Lord of Flowers, the third is the Woman Alone on the rock, high seas to threaten her naked legs, black clouds to scour the stars overhead—but this is a card of good fortune, of such rare good fortune that she herself is shocked by its advent, so much so that it nearly drops from her grasp, though still quick enough to draw it back when “What you got there, missy?” asks one of the dolly-wagglers, leaning over her shoulder, breath foul as tombs against her cheek. “Dirty pictures?”

Card palmed, with one elbow she draws the pack safely against her side and “No,” she says, “fish,” flipping with her other hand the sardine tin into his face, greasy sauce and salt and bones and “Little bitch!” his cry, but already she is off the bench and halfway through the crowd, down the lane and back to Die Welt, met at the door by the news that the theatre man around the corner came looking for a servant, a live-in to cook and do the dailies and “I’ll have it,” says a scrawny boy with a certain pride. “I already know ’im, that fella, he gets the chocolate every time—”

—as without a word Tilde pushes past him, drops her untied apron on the counter and “Pay me,” she says to the owner. “Pay me for today, and I’ll be gone.”

“For today? You’ve done nothing today but wash the slop pots and shell walnuts, I’ll not give you—”

“Pay me,” she says, without a change in volume, noted not at all by the few customers dozing over the obituaries or the scourings in their pipes, but the owner sees the little blade in her fist, one of his own paring knives, though he will not notice that special perfidy until later. For now, angry and dismayed, “Take your pennies, then, witch,” tossing into her face less than half a half-day’s wages, but it is enough to buy a fresh flannel and a drop of scent, to make herself more presentable before she presents herself at the door of the theatre, knocking for the writer with the glasses who favors the Šálek cokolády, the dark man who needs a daily girl to cook and care for him.

There are cards and there are cards, and not all decks play out the same: surely her father taught her so, or the man who called himself her father, thick fingers laying out yet another spread between the cracks on the crooked table, while the rain drips tick-tick-tock like a drunken clock and the unfed baby cries: The Four Houses and the Eight Rooms, that’s what this spread is named. Pay attention, Mathilde! as her gaze is caught again by the pretty pictures, the beautiful Queen on Horseback, the blooming Ace of Flowers, the arrowed Jack with his gleaming quiver and bow. What card is this, now? Tell me.

The Priest.

And what’s his job?

If he’s next to a Lord, he tells what will be. If he’s next to a Queen, he tells what might be.

And if he’s next to a Knave or Jack?

He don’t tell anything. Hush, in competent annoyance to the red-faced baby, slipping between the screaming rosebud lips a nursling’s tit, a knot of cheesecloth soaked in goat’s milk and dashed with gin; in a few moments the baby is sucking peacefully. Tell it again about the world that lives in the cards, a story she loves, for the whole world is contained in this deck, not only past and future for the customers who pay, but the colors of the seasons in the four colors of the suits, Hares, Doves, Flowers, Crowns, thirteen trumps for the months and the moon, each Lord his Queen and loyal Jack and scoundrel Knave. It makes a comforting tale for a girl whose daily world turns like a top in the gutter, whose mother, still half a girl herself, dances for tips at the gurdy house in-between the midwife’s visits; the last one died, a little bluish boy who barely drew two breaths, but this new baby is like to live, and so she is Tilde’s charge, Tilde’s half-sister Tanti disliked by Tilde’s father who is not Tanti’s father, who comes each week to see the dancing mother who does not like to see him—

Go away, Vasily, how many times must I say it! This is not the village!

But I love you, Annochka!

—as privately Tilde considers them the Queen of Hares, swift and always running, and the Knave of Flowers, forever offering the nosegay no one wants.

While he waits in vain for the mother, he teaches the daughter the cards: for this dodge a girl is preferable to a boy, a boy they might suspect, they do suspect, those superstitious burghers’ wives and platter-eyed servants, but a girl—made as tidy as she can be in borrowed cap and apron, wild hair brushed flat, face scrubbed nearly clean—a girl will make her way where a boy or man could never enter, make pennies there and more than pennies if she is skillful to understand that They never really want to know what’s coming, says the father, setting down another card, the Knave of Hares with his empty snare and furtive net. So you tell them what they do want to hear, in place.

But how do I know what that is?

That’s where you’ll shine, with much conviction, for this child’s blue eyes—he has seen it himself—miss nothing, she can read a taproom or the faces on a corner like a priest reads the Book, and never miss once. Didn’t she say alone of everyone that Bald Tommy was going to tip himself? And didn’t he tip himself, right off the roof of the church? Put you in their kitchens for a week and you’ll know all about them, upstairs and down, you’ll be coining money, eh? with a lopsided, hungry smile that Tilde does not return. Now, this card, tell me who is he?

—and so on and on through the spread, the deck, the days, she is a very quick study, Tilde, and before her dancing mother forever leaves her father, fleeing in a brewer’s wagon with Tilde and Tanti beside her, Tilde has not only learned all about the cards, she has learned she must keep them for herself, stuffed into a pocket while Vasily wept at the table; a changer’s sleeve they call it, that pocket sewn inside the skirt, where one palms something good to replace with something worthless, but nothing she slips into that sleeve is ever given back.

The brewer’s wagon stinks of hops, it rains all the way to Paris, their one-room is thick with fleas and biting lice: but the dancing mother is happy and soon finds a much better place to dance, she comes home from the Gran-Royale decked in heron feathers and with money in her purse, money enough to get a two-room and real meals—hot soup and good bread, two times a day!—and a real nursemaid for Tanti, who cries less and begins to fill out, plump and chucky in the cheeks, on the streets the Parisian goodwives all say she is très jolie. Tilde at first is at a loss with the cards: there is more to learn, much more, she is sure of it, but Annabell—for such she is instructed to call her mother now, who here in Paris is no one’s mother, but a brave and lovely mademoiselle left with two little sisters to raise, just like “Miss Imogene of the Boulevard”—Annabell will not have her running the arcades, mixing with the mudlarks and the tinkers’ boys, for I need you here, severe as she regards the cameo, a queen’s ivory face on a ribbon of sky-blue tulle, a gift from one of her gentlemen just the night before, one of the gentlemen for whom Tilde tells the cards when they come calling to see Annabell, who twirls so gracefully as she pines for the protector who will one day come to save them all.

And amazingly, he does: truly it is like “Miss Imogene,” the plump man with the blond mustachios who arrives with pink roses and china dolls, piping-hot delicious chocolate from the fine cafés, who promises Annabell, as they lie together beneath silk coverlets—several stitched together, to hide the many holes—that he will care for her now, take her away from the dancehall and the two-room, move her to a fine house in Lyon, she says, as she packs only what fits in her fine new lady’s trunk, green leather and shiny silver locks, what fits her new life. Pretty gardens and a stable, and a nursemaid already for Tanti—

But what about Jeanne? She loves Tanti, she calls her her little pumpkin—

Jeanne will stay here. When Annabell turns her back, it is as if a shadow falls directly onto Tilde’s heart, as if the cards lay spread before her, the Queen of Hares face-up beside the Shadow, the card that means death, or loss, or change, or all three because You will stay with her, says Annabell, still not looking at Tilde, whose hands clench at her sides. Marcel says we will raise Tanti as our own, but he can only bear to have one child about the house. And you—he says you are too grown already. But listen, urgent, turning to knot the cameo about her daughter’s rigid neck, I shall send money, plenty of money, my little Mathilde, you will never want! You understand me? When you are older, you will understand, Marcel has plenty of money—

—and so he does, but after one envelope, delivered by indifferent messenger to Jeanne morose to receive it and more loath to share it, no more is received at least by Tilde, who by then understands that no more will be coming, that Annabell is gone, Tanti is gone, and what there is is the dressed china doll, the cameo, and the Taroc cards in the sack she stitched herself, of dark blue velvet as deep as the midnight sky. While Jeanne drinks vin ordinaire and takes in washing, Tilde takes herself down to the street, to the mudlarks in the painted wagons camped inside the park who, for certain considerations—a headdress of heron feathers, an unbroken china doll—consider it a lark to school the gaje girl, that skinny little blue-eyed devil, and teach her some of the many uses of that potent pack of cards.

The cathedral of St. Mary of Dolors is as old as the city, built at the heart of its crumbling, spooling streets, though some traditions call it even older, the city itself in accretion around it, the holy irritant that seeds the pearl: a thundering cataract of rose windows, incense, marble madonnas, and many cold hundredweight of gold. On this Sunday morning it casts a shadow as cold on the steps leading up to its massy doors, each step inscribed with a saint’s name, a climbing litany of the virtuous and forgotten, Josephus and Uriel and Martinus: “Like you, Martin,” says the large man in the greatcoat, a truly magnificent greatcoat of epaulets and fat black braiding, suitable for a peacetime general or a warlike municipal king. “Calvinist or not, we’ll see you etched here someday—‘Well done O good and faithful servant’—and little children shall light candles to your name.”

“That would hardly be suitable,” says Martin Eig, his own coat much more modest, with a smile equally modest to show that he understands if not shares the other’s humor. “And no servant is ‘good’ who does only his duty: ‘We are unprofitable servants, we have done only that which we ought to do.’”

“A harsh doctrine.”

“It comes to us from Christ Himself.”

“Who also said, ‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’” in a gorgeous basso rumble, complement to the white mane and thick-lidded eyes of the Morals Commissioner, Herr Guy de Vries: the Lewd Lord they once called him, famous in the boudoirs and the dancehalls, serial impregnator of actresses and governesses, other men’s mistresses, other men’s wives; there are half a dozen fathers in this city alone who regard their children with judicious and unhappy scrutiny, parsing a resemblance to the mighty de Vries nose or the drooping and sensuous lower lip. The lord’s own, much-delayed first marriage, to a disappointingly shrill van Symans daughter, ended in fierce private recriminations and a public annulment so shocking—they had been wed for almost three years—that only the long friendships with other notable families, such as the Chamsaurs and the Konstantins, kept social stigma from fully ruining the de Vries name.

It was with his second wife, the tranquil, lovely, stupid daughter of a somewhat less-storied house, that the lord at last found religion, the hand of Mother Church extended in the person of the bride’s great-uncle, an archbishop and fellow traveler who counseled strict fidelity and virtue, while pointing the way to other, less strenuous paths of penitence, paths the lord, lewd no longer, embraced with a convert’s zeal. Within a year the tranquil wife was pregnant, within three years there were twin daughters and a son, within four years the churches of the city had found a new and generous benefactor, and the Herr, “lord” no longer, was a diligent member of the Council for Public Virtue, the forerunner to the current Morals Commission, using his own lamentable past as a warning to others and signal of his worthiness to serve. If his young wife is pleased to blow kisses from her cabriolet as she departs for yet another visit to the countryside, if his children’s nursemaids are fortyish and dry, if he often finds himself in haunts unworthy of a Christian, all of these are proof to the citizens that their Commissioner is a true family man who keeps strict watch on whatever vice may fester, especially in those dens of purchased pleasure, with their gambling and sneak-thieving, cloudy liquor and black opium, pouting girls and painted boys—

—like this specimen a step or three below, a boy with checkered scarf and lacquered lips, outrageous that a creature so obviously foul should loiter so close to sanctity itself but “Suffer the little children,” says Herr de Vries, with a friendly eye. “Look at that hair, yellow as a daisy! One of your lad’s lads, do you suppose?”

Martin Eig shakes his head. “I couldn’t say. —I’ve set him to watch, St.-Mary, at that puppet theatre. ”

“Hmm? Watch what?”

“Everything there is to see,” beyond the simpler fact of the plays themselves, those fairy-tale insurrections that the writer Seraphim praises so extravagantly that others must queue up to see them, too. Of course the Globe, their Globe, has called this latest offering immoral and unworthy of any serious attention, but that does not seem to stem the tide of interest; then let the tide rise, they are fishers of men after all, and when the tide turns, they will be ready. And St.-Mary himself bears closer watching, for he is more than a smirking tough, much more, despite Costello’s view; but not what he thinks himself to be, or not yet, and that process ought be observed, for a resourceful lieutenant is no easy find. ”As it is, the place winks at sedition as well as sodomy—”

“Really. Onstage and backstage, you think?”

“We know.”

“Who is ‘we’…? Regrettable, naturally, Sodom and all that, but at least that act produces no bastards. —Ah, dear ladies, a very good morning,” lifting his hat, as does Martin Eig, to the pair now ascending, mother and daughter in matching silks and petite ivory walking sticks; the daughter’s smile is especially vivacious. “Fraulein Vaubins, how charming…. Such a pity all girls become their mothers, isn’t it? Though you ought to marry, Martin, it improves the digestion.”

Martin Eig makes a thin smile. “I fully intend to, one day. But one needs a certain income to support a family.” He watches the girl enter the larger group of churchgoing mademoiselles, girls of greater families whose connections, both of blood and of interest, could vastly aid a man who would rise high and use all of his God-given gifts to the fullest. But would the fathers of those girls consider a man who, though ambitious, industrious, and recognized by all as virtuous, lacks title as well as wealth? Not even the prayers of the angels can improve the suit of a man like that.

And even if such a mating were possible, a wife, his wife, must be a woman of a certain elevated sensibility; the pedigree of Frau de Vries makes her not one whit the less grating or foolish, and the same can be said of so many of them, ornaments born to breed, not to think. Naturally he expects there shall be children, as many as Providence shall send, but his wife must be his helpmeet, too, and capable of the depth and subtle feelings of which the greatest unions consist, as if she had truly been taken straight from his side, fashioned like Eve from Adam’s breathing bone. For such a woman he can diligently work, and patiently wait, in his rooms with their printed curtains and inferior smallware, their nightly silence in which his own silence flickers and broods: It is not good for man to be alone, Scripture is correct on that point as on all else, but the diversions available to the flesh are ones he will not reach for, repugnant both to the morals minister and the man: bought caresses, the risk of it, the lie of it, some strange woman smiling wetly in the dark…. No, better that he mortify and wait a year, two years, seven years like Jacob, for he shall have her in the end, the woman he longs for, he is certain of that. He shall have all he desires, in the end.

Now Herr de Vries continues on about the Mercury, some show of a wolf, or fox, “Really quite amusing! Vaubins told me all about it, he attended with his boy. A pity one can’t be seen there any longer—the plays at the Cleopatra are so dreary, it’s enough to drive a man to the ballet…. The fellow sounds familiar, that puppeteer, in fact they both do. In Brussels, once, I saw a drawing-room play that—Ah,” as the bell summons to worship, its deep voice even more sonorous than his own. “Pity you’ll miss the sermon—Iffy’s to give it, and he says it’s quite a good one, his curate has toiled on it all week. And afterward he and I will take the air,” with a smile, shaking the other’s hand as he turns for the sanctuary, adding past his shoulder, “Let me know what your lad makes of it all, hmm?” as Martin Eig executes a dry half-bow, turning down the stairs past the yellow-haired boy in the scarf, their eyes meet and “Suck?” offers the boy softly. “Just a fiver, sah, there’s still some time before the music starts.”

“I’d see you in the stocks,” says Martin Eig, “face down.” His face does not change. “Take yourself away from here before I call an officer.”

“Be corked, Mr. Pinch!” but rapidly the boy retreats, a scurry so swift that he almost collides head-on with another hurrying churchgoer, an upright young man who grasps him by the elbows to keep him from a dire backwards fall and “Suck?” the boy asks hopefully—he has not eaten since yesterday and has a very long night ahead—looking as hopefully into that young man’s face, Frédéric who feels the hungry urgency of the look, the boy is so awfully thin, but “No,” he says at once, “certainly not—” yet why do they always call to him, these boys with their sweet winks and shameless little smiles, is it his eyes, his gait, how do they always know?—as he ducks past and up the stairs as if in flight, he is in flight—

—but swiveling back then with his hand out, a hasty handful of coins and “Hurry,” the boy’s smile, “the music’s started,” already the great swelling strains of the organ—

—but the young man has escaped up the stairs again and through the heavy doors, the boy turning away confused and delighted, all this money for “No diddling at all,” he boasts to his mates at the milk-and-tea shop down the corner, shoving the coins across the cloudy zinc counter. “He just give it to me and then off he go. —Two raisin buns, you twister, and a kaffee!” enjoying every bite of the lunch the money buys as well as the gipsy smokes bought afterward—

—while once the Mass has ended, and the choir director has made his farewells, Frédéric lingers, fingering in his pocket—beside a fiery new broadsheet from the Literary Leopards, and several unread letters from his mother and his fiancée—a ticket to the Mercury, not as Seraphim this time but only Frédéric, to see the show again, hear the music, watch the two men leave together for the hills. He kneels at the side altar in the throaty scent of lilies, the candles’ gleam and waver, waiting for the boys outside to go away, praying for guidance and the grace to know himself; and remembering despite himself the verses quoted by M. Hilaire, so bawdy and delightful, he ought not think of them now, how did it go again? The ne’er-do-wells and paltry gods are we/Of rural worship and ’spite modesty/Aye under Jove with balls a-bare we stand—

—while in a well-appointed townhouse library, books of law, books of faith, books of commerce, most unopened, Martin Eig sits over lukewarm tea beside his host, grizzled Tibor Banek of the Globe, and Simon Cowtan called Shakespeare. The latter is an aspirant to this room and this company, men much higher up the ladder than he—Mrs. Cowtan was thrilled by the invitation, herself ironing his handkerchief and specially buffing his shoes—and proud to address with them the issue of the growing crowds at the Mercury Theatre: “It is an odd venue,” Cowtan offers, tugging his mustache discreetly dyed with chestnut stain. “I had a girl of mine over there, as one does, you know,” at Mrs. Cowtan’s urging, Here it is again in the papers. Send Cynthia to have a peep, may be she can get cozy there, and give us eyes! “Just to see.”

“And what did you see?” asks Eig.

“Well—it is odd, as I said. They seem not to care who attends or who doesn’t, they list only the puppets’ names in the playbill—”

Banek narrows his gaze behind black pince-nez, clears his leathery throat. “Something to hide, it would seem.”

“Or a way to drum up interest,” says Cowtan. “People love a mystery.” Privately he considers the fuss just that, a nine-days’ wonder, for in the end what use or worry can it ever be, puppets onstage? They cannot be true actors, they will never replace true actors, especially not in some dingy theatre on dodgy Rottermond Square. And as for their handlers, they are very clearly men from nowhere, with whom no one need reckon at all; only Cockrill has ever marked them, another scrambler at the edge. Much more important is the great question of safety and patronage, he and Fairgrieve had talked it out only the day before: We’ll all need a lord in the pocket, if this new law is passed, what is it, the Standard Morals or something like? They mean to give the ballet dancers breeches, to cover up their thighs —!

The Morals and Standards Act, it’s called, for lewdness in the arts. I’ve no worries, the Bard is above reproach—which is not entirely true, both he and his Mrs. are worried, she most adamant in urging him to Ask them, Simon, it’s God’s own angels give you the chance! so “This new act, now,” cautiously, “concerning morals, can you gentlemen give me some guidance?” to bring Banek’s basilisk frown, “What guidance does a man need beyond a clean conscience?” as “The city supports its theatres,” says Eig, “when they are good citizens. But if they sow the seeds of corruption, it must discipline them accordingly, ” leading them back to the discussion of the Mercury, Banek favoring a sterner editorial condemnation, Cowtan offering a counter-production meant to draw the customers elsewhere, to the Cleopatra perhaps? It is a fruitful meeting, that continues for some hours—

—as by this blue hour, Herr de Vries has shed both the archbishop’s company and his own trousers, and is happily encouched with the daisy-haired boy from the church steps, now tarted up in gussy like a lass, this more energetic meeting brokered by Haden in a nonesuch hotel just around the corner from his own digs: Le Chapel Vert, the name currently underscored by the almost prayerful groans issuing from the inner bedchamber. While he waits in the alcove with its flaking green paint, Haden drinks from the Commissioner’s overcoat flask—some sort of licorice liquor, one he has not had before; it tastes like medicine—and examines a letter extracted from the Commissioner’s breast pocket, a sealed letter, sadly, and here he has neither the time nor the tools to defeat that. All he can do is note the name and crest on the envelope, and weigh its weight on the scale of his palm; whoever he is, this de Metz toff seems to have a great deal to say.

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.

For a time it is a German butcher with whom
Haden lodges, straw bed and salt pork and daily lessons in the proper use of a knife; then a lazy-eyed coiner, unlucky at cards; then a tutor of rich merchants’ sons, met outside a drab pension, spelling earnestly from a dog-eared Bible: Follow along with me, Haden, now, “Blessed are the poor—” But why do you smile so?

Because it’s a joke, an’t it? looking sidewise at the puzzled face on whom the joke is lost, the besotted tutor who teaches next the Song of Songs, who goes without eating to buy the books his new protégé favors—poetry and history, pleasure and might—and whose satchel library Haden rifles when he goes, abstracting a weighty book of plays and speeches—Ovid, Marlowe, Shakespeare—along with the tutor’s previous faith that goodness and beauty are the same.

It is in this makeshift train of temporary men—always men; he has never slept with a woman, crawled beneath that tasseled shawl, he never will—that Haden leaves the last of his boyhood behind, in the rooms and roosts and quiet avenues, the saloons where he dices and deals cards, wins and loses, batters when provoked; and reads everything, gazes and faces as well as broadsheets and books, with a scholar’s growing skill and a stateless creature’s scorn for authority, for all who choose to answer to authority, who take what a meager life gives them without quarrel or complaint: Saving their pence, chewing their daily bread, in a rentier’s high-piled bed, litter of goose feathers across the tufted satin, the Christopher medal cool against his naked chest. So for what? So once a year they can have a bite of beef, drink bad wine, and squeeze the servants’ titties? And then confess it of a Sunday? What a joke.

You’re amazingly cynical for a fellow your age. And speaking of drink, says the rentier not unkindly, you’ve had enough, Master Malapert, don’t you think? at which Haden only reaches again for the bottle, expensive black liqueur sucked between his teeth while the rentier wriggles and paws: a fellow his age just the right age for these men, who seem to find something very piquant about his cynicism, his lean body and wild blond pelt, his perfectly feral smile. One rentier in fact grows so fond that the fondness sours to a maenad’s fury when he finds himself unwanted and his bumbling gifts ignored: Have this, then! coming at Haden with an amethyst pin, horseshoe stickpin aiming for the eyes but wounding instead the cursing mouth, blood everywhere and not all of it Haden’s, its spill the only spoor when the constables arrive to find the rentier slashed and bubbling and the room in ruins; the sticky stickpin palmed to a sidestreet doctor who drunkenly stitches his lip back together, before in pain he makes again for the road—

—to tramp scarred and bare-headed into yet another city, this city of larch trees and rebus streets and mania for gambling, milk-and-tea shops and tea boys with their tin trays and blue caps, Egyptian cigarettes and thieves’ patois—“raven” for a criminal’s lookout and “dove” for his fence, “jay” or “picker” for the thieves—and a changing lexicon of exotica, all the names the boys name themselves: ganymedes and fauns and Black Archies, foresters or parkers for the ones who meet the men in dark parks, men like the rentier, men who are rentiers, and burghers, and ministers and cabinet clerks; men, Haden learns, who greatly value an intelligent, scholarly, amoral young fellow who can hold a conversation as well as squeeze a prick: You’re a different sort, he hears it time and time again. You’re not like the other lads.

But not a lad at all now, is he? nearly grown a man, so how many more mornings ought he wake bare-arsed next to some snoring tub of guts, swab himself with the oversheet, and scuttle back down to the streets? He has read The Prince, read it more than once; he has been thinking. So he casts a cool eye on those other boys, those pickers and dryads, and one by one, by persuasion, by force, and by favors, he gathers the best he can find into a cadre, his cadre: Haden’s boys. Why not? Otherwise they will do as they always do, squabble, play pranks, and die at the curb, tossed out like wilted flowers by the men whose passing patronage they flog each other stupid for the having. Instead he is their patron, giving safety behind the hard blade of his knife, and coin, a boy has got to eat after all. But there is more value, much more, in little gifts like a flash topper, or a packet of gipsy smokes laced with good hashish, or the chance to sleep an hour in a quiet garret room, Haden himself to watch over that sleeper, with a taste of Rheinish and a smile when he wakes; there are boys in these streets who would do anything for the having of that smile alone, from Hadrian Mundy become the road’s Haden Marry, then Haden St.-Mary as befits a patron’s gravitas.

And night by night and day by day, stealthy dawn by afternoon suck by private midnight fête, his little cullion army is noticed, then watched, then finally approached by an elite and judicious handful of older men who, it seems, will pay him to put that army’s eyes and ears in certain suites and card parlors, restaurants and alleyways; and pay well, too, so well that Haden need never again lie in any bed he does not choose. And if their endless thirst for information sends him to doors he would not, himself, have known to open, why not skim the cream of what his boys see there or hear? A whispered name whispered later to a minister’s secretary, the minister himself turning white as whey in his fine office—how easy it is, such a little name, for such a lot of money to spend at the haberdasher’s, or the vintner’s, or the booksellers’ stalls on French poetry; he cannot read it well, yet, but he is improving.

And sometimes one of these men hates another, or fears him, or badly longs for something not his own—a woman, a position, though the thing desired need not be a great one, Haden has watched one rentier ruin another over a shipment of kerosene lamps—so with nimble care, the way a cat walks a slippery fence, he takes that knowledge, too, and tucks it safe away for use, if need be, against these men, these clean and filthy men with their costly gloves and peppermint breath who fuck his boys and would if they could fuck him, too, tame him to a slavey—let them try, he will march in no man’s army but his own; just ask the corporal. And his life is just as he wants it: for pleasure the books, and the gambling—with dice and cards, and the secrets and sins of others, neither stake will ever play out—and for relief his pick of the boys, not always the loveliest, but the ones with a hint of sweetness, the ones whose hearts can still be seen. To play for more, to need more, is to open the door on…what? a darkness and a chaos, the mad glint of a pin, kisses in the smell of burning, love a kind of utter drunkenness no dawn can ever cure….

Yet sometimes, at dawn or at sunset, when he lies on his back in the rumpled bed, when he has drunk the black brandy and still sleep will not come, what comes instead are lines from the poems—“Come live with me and be my Love, and we will all the pleasures prove”—chanting to himself and chewing the scar on his lips, watching the sun cross the sky and die; until at last his eyelids flutter and close, and he enters a deeper darkness where there is no longing or leaving, where he bears and is borne like some saint in the water, Charon, Leander, no hero necessary, to some unseen shore where another waits to meet him, to kiss and rule and savage with, to take into his arms, and make his own.

In another bed, in other dawns, other cherished poems are inwardly recited, the humid, gleaming poems of Ovid, Jove send me more such after-noones as this—before morning prayers to the Holy Mother, though to Frédéric it seems strange if not actually sacrilegious to pray to a virgin for chastity; or perhaps it is not strange at all. Perhaps, as his father says, he thinks too much, has spent too much time Worrying over those books, with a worry of his own for this son who is so different than he himself was as a boy; and not a boy any longer, though his mother seems to want to keep him so, keep him trotting to the church choir with the ladies when he should be learning the importer’s trade. He has excelled at all his lessons, and now it is time to put that learning to use.

For his mother’s part, the prayers sung in Latin—Frédéric’s voice having lost its reedy purity, now become just a pleasant tenor—and the long teas taken afterward are the highlights of her days, the foundation on which she thinks to build a life for her son. In the vestibule after service, she has watched the girls give him their smiles, those minxes, fluttering and squeezing hands, though he is merely friendly to them all. Only one watches with proper ladylike devotion, and sits at tea almost without a word to say, this Marie Mariette with her mother, the head of the Ladies’ Sodality, and her father, the head of the waterworks and already a business friend to Mr. Blum. It is natural for the families to dine together, the young people seated side by side at the table, where Mrs. Mariette may justly boast of her daughter’s needlework skills, A dozen cradle-caps this week alone, for the poor orphans! and Mrs. Blum may ask Frédéric to Sing for us, dear, will you not? as they sit in the parlor over cakes and cherry confit, while Mr. Blum and Mr. Mariette smoke small cigars in the garden and eye each other as potential relatives. It is the womenfolk’s will, that is plain, and Young Frédéric seems quite a steady fellow, says Mr. Mariette, while Mr. Blum offers praise for Miss Marie’s kindness, My wife tells me she can’t do enough for those orphans, since he cannot praise her beauty; no one can.

But she too has a neat singing voice, she demonstrates it in the garden once the men have gone inside, the two young people sent out to wait as their futures are arranged: It’s a pretty song, says Marie, “The Pigeon and the Hawk,” do you know it? and they sing together, “Coo, coo, coo/The pigeon tends her nest,” Frédéric beating time with a twig on the arm of the old-fashioned bench. When they finish, Marie looks up into his eyes, then away, her hands grasp unseen at her skirts and I like pigeons, she murmurs. They are homing birds.

They are city birds, says Frédéric. In Amsterdam, I have read, they quite cover the square with their—then stops himself on “droppings,” he ought not say such to a girl, this girl who, by the end of the day, has officially become his fiancée—though not without a desperate last-ditch battle, his mother is especially shocked: But this is meant only for your happiness! You and she are so alike! and It is natural to worry over taking a wife, says Mr. Blum, when a man has no position in the world. But when you are at the warehouse—

I want to go to the city, says
Frédéric, pulling at his collar and cravat, he feels as if he cannot properly breathe. I want to write.

Write! Write what?

Tracts, he says promptly, instructional moral tracts, the words in brisk march to his mind, as if he is reading from a script, where do these words come from? For the edification of—of readers.

And so, because he has never evinced a single wish or demand of his own, because there is no actual harm in the writing of moral tracts, and because—as Mr. Blum tells his weeping wife (she weeps all night, Frédéric can hear her through the walls)—a young man needs to sow his oats, and it is best, perhaps, if he do so where No one knows him, or his family, thinking he knows what the problem may be, Miss Mariette and her washed-out eyes, her thin shanks—Frédéric boards the train with his father’s consent, as well as an envelope doubly sealed, opened on the journey to reveal, to Frédéric’s startlement, a nice sum of money and two French letters, with a note stiffly instructing him to come home once both are used.

The first thing he sees in the city is the statue of Mercury, the second the city itself. Within a week he has a room in a rooming house, and a job of sorts: a bounder, it is called, as one bounds from newspaper to newspaper, collecting facts and tips and stories to offer to the editors, and also perhaps because the fellows it attracts are not of the highest moral caliber: one takes a deal of money from him at a ninepin parlor, and another tries to steal his bicyclette. Someone else does steal it, right in front of St. Mary of Dolors, when—after a long hour spent praying in that church, in the flicker of a hundred votives, beneath the eyes of St. Mary herself (while adding a shamefaced prayer for Marie Mariette, whose glances he read correctly as his mother had not)—he rises from the green velvet rail to return to his room and write home, that home that seems already as distant as the moon, and announce that he has found a fine position as, yes, a writer of tracts: Though not under my own name but the publishers’, they say it is a shield from pride, again where do these words come from, so smoothly from his pen, so entirely a lie, perhaps it is all those years lying about the book of the Greek gods? It is sinful to do so, surely, but what truth can he tell them that they will ever understand?

To the newspaper editors he told only the truth, anxious hands to put into theirs his journals, several years’-worth of painstaking work: and his reward a bound upwards at the forward-thinking Daily Solon, when their usual theatre critic is felled by a broken arm—not, as gossip states, from a brawl with an angry actor, but from tripping over a washbasin in the dark. Frédéric’s excellent writing and very modest request for income are both so much more congenial that the job becomes permanently his, its editor edified as well by Frédéric’s nervous suggestion of a pen name: It will draw fresh attention to the column, I believe and Yes, agrees that editor, Herr Hebert, and let everyone know that that drunkard has stopped writing it. Good thinking, Herr Blum!—or, that is, Seraphim. Take that desk in the corner, and look out for the mice.

And so begins the tenure of that angel of the boards, eager student of theatre both classical and new, the endless march of Shakespeare at the Cleopatra, the trying lag of ambition at the Athenaeum, its total absence at Cockrill’s Palace, where the girls display themselves in chemise and gartered stockings, and the watchers throw wine corks and spit peanut shells on the floor. Sometimes a fine actor like Mr. Edgar Rue will hold a public reading, rumbling through Lear or Faustus for a rapt and clapping crowd, and there are many other readings and lectures to attend, a ceaseless rush and tumble of exciting, disturbing, entirely new ideas: about Man, about the government, about the way one ought to chart’s one course through life—though none of that intelligence ever finds its way into the letters home, nor the danger and clangor of the streets, the swearing, shouting tea boys, or the continuing existence of the two French letters, still tucked inside a pair of unworn gloves.

Unshared as well is his new knowledge of the men who linger in the parks, the discreet small bars beside those parks, his own unknowing entrance into one of them, called the Cemetery, where at once a man with a curly beard flanked him at the bar rail to offer a very different act of communion, much surprised and insulted when Frédéric bolted his drink and fled: and slept, that night, a thin sleep, wild dreams afloat on a tumult in the blood; and that tumult felt again, some evenings, many evenings, in the theatres, where one might see not only the men in fine array upon the stage, handsome actors in marvelous voice, but the ordinary men in the seats and stalls who talk together, watch the shows together, leave together arm-in-arm for more conversation elsewhere, men who seem to know each other well and to cherish that knowing. What would it be like, to be with another man that way? He has read a little, more than a little, of such things, though of course all such congress is a sin….

And in any case the engagement stands, as Miss Mariette and her family seem if not content then resigned to wait, and share with Mrs. Blum his letters that tell only pleasant tales of the rooming house, of all the money he is saving, of his spiritual home at St. Mary of Dolors, where, his provincial voice one of many in that metropolitan choir, he sings the praises of Mother Church; and his own mother, if she can, must continue to content herself with that.

Some mothers, of course, are content with even less. Tilde’s own never knows when her elder daughter, cards in pocket, third-hand bonnet on her head, leaves the fitful grasp of dispirited Jeanne and the park’s indifferent gypsies—You are not one of us, Blue Eyes, you cannot stay—to make her way through the world, through the months as she may: now a kitchen servant’s servant, peeling and hauling, then a seamstress’ slavey, then a sweeper-girl in the alleyways, trundling through trash and selling what she finds to a fence who finds ragged girls toothsome, who hints that easier work awaits her in his shadowy back rooms, and for more money, too; her answer comes through her hard little fists, in the form of his own blacked eye.

At last she fetches up at one of the petit écoles, a dance academy whose cold maîtresse puts her to floor scrubbing and lice-crushing until the other maid suggests a better way: the real ballet, where the men sigh for the dancers untouchable in their spangles and silk, then troll the back streets outside for others who, in the heat of a hired coach, might somewhat resemble the same, an easy game but No, Tilde’s dark frown, thinking of Annabell. I’m not a dancer. Or a whore.

So what? You’re not cherry, either, and they give good swag—What, you are cherry? Oh that’s even choicer! And tailor-made for a pair of rôles, two sisters, one a virgin and one not, oh, the men in the alleys will go wild for that! But Tilde consents only to be the ferry to the fence, rings and cigar cases still warm from the other girl’s nook, a growing lump of cash in the maids’ room until the maîtresse finally winkles out the scheme: You! she snaps at Tilde, pocketing the money as the other maid weeps into her apron. I knew I never liked you.

What you like or don’t, who cares?

Get out. Take your things, get out but You, too—the cards say you’ll be gone before the year is over, the scornful blue stare so occult and disconcerting that the maîtresse stays her willow-handled whip, only shouting Witch! from the window as Tilde departs up the winding street. And indeed the cards spoke truly, as the maîtresse is soon to meet then wed an elderly policeman, and by Christmastide has closed down the school for good.

Tilde herself spends Christmas in the park, in the dark again, alone again as the rain turns to sleet and then to ice, fingering the cameo as she stands with a crowd underneath a red-stitched awning, watching the fellow with the wooden zoo, the comical monkeys, the flying horse with wings made of real feathers, swan feathers, how wonderfully he makes all the animals move, and singing, too, while he does it: Oh follow, oh follow, oh follow my lead, bowing the horse’s head as he bows to the crowd, his dark hair rough as a bear’s and Hey, afterward his friendly smile, hey, little miss, why don’t you go home? You can’t stop here in the park all night.

I’ll stop where I like, through half-chattering teeth; she is even wetter than he.

Suit yourself, he says, but before he goes tosses her his cap, returned to him dry when she returns, her drier nod of silent thanks and Which you like better, he says, my hat or my horse? making the horse bow for her alone. His name is Jean, like mine. What’s yours?

Why you want to know? But the sadness in his eyes at her question, her real question known to them both, and that sadness his answer, makes her shrug and Tillie, she says; it is what they called her at the dancing school. Is the horse’s name really Jean?

His real name is Pégase, and until the day’s crowd steps up to watch the day’s performance he tells her stories of the gods, of Apollo and Hermes, Athena and Hera and Aphrodite, how the three goddesses strove to see who was most beautiful—It is what they call the Judgment of Paris—and how they live together forever in the stars; she listens with great attention, it is very like the stories of the cards. After the show she stays until the animals are boxed and locked, until Jean nods and starts for home, noting as he goes another man who stands watching, a furtive fellow at the edge of the gravel path until Hey! You there, quit looking at my sister! to send the man scuttling shamefaced away. The next day Jean offers, from his somewhat odorous trunk, a wrinkled costume vest embroidered with red and blue crosses, and a short-sized pair of wool trousers from The acrobat, he says. We used to work together; his name was Aleppo. You might want to wear these, Tillie, if you are going to live in the park. It is not safe at night for girls.

They get the boys, too, you know, she says, the trousers folded across her arm, there are all kinds come here. But it is also true that she feels somewhat safer when she tries these funny weeds, her hair braided and stuffed into the hat, kicking stones and spitting as the boys do—and what a look on the fellow’s face who tries to pinch her then, thinking to have what she is not!

Thanks, she knows, are necessary, but what can she give to Jean who already has everything, the flying horse, the songs, the fat little change purse from the shows? so Jean, she says, I mean to read the cards for you, showing him the velvet sack, the hares and the doves, the flowers and the crowns. But before she can fully assess the spread—lots of knaves, which is bad, the knaves always take more than they give, but there is the Queen of Crowns, who means safety, and the faithful Jack in her train, so the safety is doubled, a fine lady and her man—there appears beneath the awning a plump man with his pretty lady a step or two behind, he with a brass-topped walking stick, she with a wide-brimmed hat, and You there, the man says to Jean; his accent is of Lyon, his voice—Tilde knows that voice, and the blond mustachios; her heart begins to pound. How much for a show at the hotel? My little one sees you from the window, pointing with his cane, pointing past the woman, Tilde’s face white with cold hope—

—as the woman turns to wave to the hotel window, not Annabell, Anotchka at all but a sloe-eyed Italian girl and Bastard! Tilde cries, and wrenching from him his stick she jabs M. Marcel several times in the belly, shouting curses over Jean’s shouts—Tillie, hey Tillie, what the hell!—joined by the Italian girl’s shrieks—Who is this, Marcel! Marcel, who is this girl?—the tumult attracting a constable swinging his own stick and shouting for peace, knocking Tilde to her knees with a blow to make her head spin, then hauling off Jean to the magistrate as the likely perpetrator of the fracas, while Marcel and his new wife, new child, new life continue on, bruised but undamaged, back to their hotel.

When she can, as soon as she can, Tilde scrapes together her cards, the jumbled knaves and muddy Queen of Crowns, packs the male clothing and a filched bag of seeded buns, and puts herself on a train as far away as the last of her money will take her, folle-farine into this city where she knows no one and no one knows her, where she finds a café to work in and a hovel for sleep; where a creeping man in the fish market alley whose face she never sees knocks her down and steals from her the one thing the world seems to value in a girl, leaving her to wake bloody and in strange new pain; where like a fierce ghost she haunts the Park and the carousel, watching the families and their flocks of favored children, as the Pégase makes his earthbound journeys in circles to nowhere at all.

If in the city winter comes and goes in a swift gray coat of mist and snow, like a secret traveler eager to be off, then true spring takes its time to settle in, adrift and sullen in the rainclouds, unsure if the staying shall be worthwhile. But when at last the sun appears, its warmth spreads everywhere, insistent as the hordes of chattering black sparrows, fecund as the river adrift with life and death, fish heads and flotillas of swans and their cygnets, broken sprigs of pink heart’s-ease sent drifting to mark some lover’s advent or end, tossed by the maidservants and shopgirls in their ribboned serge jackets leaning over the still-cold stone of Crescent Bridge, eyed by the grey-suited bridge patrolmen and the quayside grifters and the stray cats who yawn at the statues’ feet like bored familiars, all teeth and pink gullets in the spill of lemony light.

The warmth even penetrates the great sanctuary of the bank, the paneled offices of Morris Robb, white hands resting on the documents before him, the business of business suspended just for this moment: a sweet springtime moment, even bankers have them. In Herr Robb’s the vision he sees is from far memory, a girl’s pretty, moony face, a drifting boat on the river, the glad stiff insistence of the flesh—

—interrupted by the arrival of his secretary with letters from the city and elsewhere, other banks and other bankers, creditors and debtors, each letter a chapter in a tale told by men with names like Richter and Guyon, Vaubins and de Vries and de Metz. In fact there is in this very pile another letter from M. de Metz, whose latest ventures have been conducted with a speed unusual for the bank, a somewhat reckless speed considering the sums involved, but then M. de Metz is still young in years as well as in business. Herr Robb had, more than once, met the elder de Metz, a man personally unmourned but much missed in many quarters for his vigor, vision, and unforgiving reach, qualities shared by his only son, but to what extent, and to what ends, remain still unknown. Young de Metz (though to call him so, it is said, invites his eternal enmity) was and is possessed of some unsavory enthusiasms, though most have been sanitized if not eradicated by his marriage to an understanding wife; well, could not their own Herr de Vries say much the same? And Herr Robb nods to himself—for money is its own kind of sanitation—as he reads the letter marked from Chatiens, a short missive informing him only that Benjamin de Metz will want to inspect his new properties when next he visits the city, a visit he plans to conduct as soon as travel becomes feasible; this last is code for something that Herr Robb cannot parse, and knows that he cannot, and so drafts his reply carefully and accordingly. If he knew that the traveler was awaiting the death of a close associate, an impatient anticipation of a much-protracted departure, he might have shaken his head, but the utterly respectful, if not outright fawning, content of the letter would not have changed one word.

In the pile as well, though requiring no answer beyond an acknowledgment of draft, is a letter from another bank, whose client, a Mrs. Mattison, has requested anonymity for her donations, still held in trust for the very cautious, not to say suspiciously suspicious, M. Bok, who, one would suppose—at least Herr Robb supposes—ought be grateful for the patronage that this far-off friend, perhaps a kindly matron devoted to the lively arts, seems pleased to provide. Ah, these artistic types, who can ever understand them? That girl in the boat, she married an artist, a tin engraver from, where was it, whatever became of that girl…?

—as the sunlight continues its annexation of all the city’s districts, the Park with its riot of white blossoms, its fountains’ fresh greenish gush—the Naiads, the gurgling Pisces fish, the waterfall so old only the living moss keeps its tumbled rocks in place—and its brick paths busy with strollers, dogs, and weaving bicyclettes, to the shining stage-set windows of the merchants’ emporia uptown, displaying French linen shirtwaists and fox stoles with glaring glass eyes and paste jewelry so fine that “No Lady Shall Tell Its Worth!” down to the cab stands where the drivers wait beside their horses, smoking and paging through the penny papers that tell of lurid lives and squalid murders, mainly of the naked by the mad, beside the daytime whores and pickpockets dressed like respectable ladies and gents, the better to share a cab with some unsuspecting merchant or visitor, lured to a ride by the heady springtime air—

—that in the theatre district blends with the smells of scenery paint and thick resinous glue, oily make-up paste in pots stirred with little wooden sticks or greasy fingers; Edgar Rue, it is said, stirs his with a sterling silver nutpick. The lobby of the Cleopatra Theatre smells as well of aged gladioli, two great browning fans of it in stands before the inner doors, just beside the white columns, scrapwood painted artfully into veiny marble, and the gallery of photographic portraits—Edmund Kean, Ellen Terry, Sir Henry Irving—staring as stern in their turn as Vatican saints. In the ticket booth, Mrs. Cowtan counts receipts and dabs at her rice-powdered cheek, the powder thicker than in her days as Cleopatra Blossom, a brief and questionable vogue in costumes as brief and questionable. Now her dress of talcum-scented bengaline befits a middle-class matron, somewhat aslant to the merchants’ class, and several steps beneath a banker’s wife or a physician’s, themselves some steps below a commissioner’s wife, and all below a titled lady; it is a city of many finely parsed striations, and the Cowtans mark them all, though theirs is by far the most respectable theatre in the district, presenting Shakespeare and only Shakespeare, nothing novel or alarming upon this stage! The upcoming King Lear will even feature a matinee benefit for the Ladies’ Succor Society, a group Mrs. Cowtan longs ardently to join—

—a group never to be seen at Fairgrieve’s downstreet Athenaeum, whose owner now scratches at the reddish fringe of his round head while perusing a brochure promoting a new variety act, two gray Paris poodles in top hats called “The Barklings,” which he ultimately decides against: no need to shift from She Wouldst Not, not with all those parlor-girls lining up every night, some of them have seen it a dozen times and still they keep buying tickets! And a good thing, too, for it is time, again, to visit the Office of Literature and Entertainments, the yearly renewal of a license to present itself a formality of presentation—the tax called a “fee,” for taxes, too, are extra—but without the license no publisher can publish or theatre operate, not even a roundhouse like, say, Cockrill’s Palace: at the thought of which Fairgrieve shakes his head, scratching elsewhere and contentedly, for it elevates every man to condescend.

And Alban Cockrill himself tilts his battered trilby askew in the spilling sunlight, pocked face all frown like old stretched rubber, and “I still say,” with one hand on the theatre door, “that we ought to join up forces, my Palace and your fellows’ Mercury,” his words half lost to the square’s continuing libretto, the black clatter of a passing coal cart, the broadsheet shop warring with the newsvendors’ caw—a Spanish princess is to visit at Eastertide! The Sewer Commission calls for citizen recruits!—all to the staccato accompaniment of the knife man’s barking dog. “An’t we the two most like each other in this whole scotchpot? And an’t the ones who come see me the ones who come see you?”

“May be,” says Istvan coolly, standing arms-crossed in the doorway, “who’s to say? We don’t ask for bona fides, we just take their coin.” Cockrill peers past Istvan’s shoulder, or tries to—he is stumpy as a beer keg, his right leg slightly shorter than his left—at Rupert busy inside, on one knee and hammering on the boards, that Herr Bok who gives him only a nod whenever they meet in the streets, never the time to stop and talk, and him a brother puppet-maker! like this one, too, this dandy actor with his long hair and pearl earring, staring down his nose as if what they do here, folderol of wild beasts and romantic knights-in-arms, is so much better than his own Gawdy and the girls—which is romance, too, the slap and tickle, what else? At least his is not against nature, and costs less than half the price for an evening’s show.

So Cockrill tries once more, and louder: “And an’t that high-nosed Shakespeare Cowtan trying to cut us both from the tree? All hand-in-pocket with those fellows from the constables, no constable is never no showman’s friend. Fairgrieve stays out of that shitpile, I’ll give him that, that’s all I’ll give him, but—”

“M. Stefan,” says a female voice, “please to shut the door. The stink,” with a chill blue stare aimed across the stoop at Cockrill, who attempts to give it back, fails at its force, the small hand hard on the wood but “You’ll see,” he says to Istvan rather desperately. “They’ll be the ones closing the doors, they’ll shut it all down, and then where will we be, any of us, where—”

—as the door slams to, nearly catching Cockrill’s callused fingers and “Mab,” Istvan’s eyebrows slightly raised, “you could let the poor bastard finish his thought, he hasn’t got so many,” but “M. Stefan,” the sharp little voice, Tilde’s voice as sharp to him as to Cockrill, “the street’s full of merde, you don’t bring it inside,” with a look severe as her apron and peaked cap although not quite so ugly, the strange starched linen finery her own idea of what a gentry servant should wear. Istvan calls it her Infanta’s hat as he calls this girl “Mouse’s cat” with rather more humor than not, though her own humor is stern and perpetual since the moment she crossed the threshold, Istvan’s eyebrows raised then, too, at Rupert: You asked for this? “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide”?

I’d had in mind the other one, the boy, but there she was on the doorstep, no traps or luggage, just that stare: Sir has sent out for a serving girl. Taking in the rooms with half a look, a measuring peep into the scullery, up the stairs as if she already belonged there but It’s not the usual, Rupert’s explanation half a question, only we two fellows and the theatre, as you see. Will that disturb you, living in?

How should it? and that was that, begun that very day with admirable industry to make for herself a maid’s room of the second-story alcove, cloak hook and trundle cot and box for her dainties and done; to sweep and wash and burnish, produce long-lost items from their hiding spots—Rupert’s silver acorn cufflinks, the second pisspot, Istvan’s ancient, favorite, much-mourned awl—and serve hot suppers full of beef and bones; serving to Rupert alone a new morning ritual of chocolate pot, spoon, and clipped cigar, no need now to go to Die Welt for his taste, Rupert who earns her rare smiles by not earning them at all, they are his whether he marks them or not.

As now, her inquiry as to whether he might care for “A cup of tea?” poised before him as he looks up from the errant board, nail in his mouth, and Istvan has to smile at her gaze: amazing how Mouse accretes a kind of family wherever they may go, this girl young enough to be his daughter—as Luc, yes, is young enough to be a son, though no one has as yet pointed that out. Luc in fact will be here soon, he is here every day now, so regular and regularly passionate as to make Istvan in private shake his head: he has never before kept a boy, nor been kept himself, so perhaps it is ever this way, the kisses and the clinging, as if every embrace might be the last? To distract him, and make of him some friendly use, Istvan has given Luc little jobs to do around the theatre, little errands to run; Mab, too, has used him as a chore boy, though she continues unamused at Istvan’s winks: I saw you whispering on the stairs with my young friend. Could be there’s romance in the air?

He’s yours. And I’d rather have that one, nodding at silent Castor; which she may very well mean, the chit has had respect for the mecs from the start. See her in the wings the first show she watched, fist pressed to lips as if to stop herself from crying out as the ninepin army clattered forward at the knight, and eyes all wide in wonder when the silver forest flashed into view. Afterward she ushered out the patrons as neatly if she had done it every day of her life, then took the broom from Rupert’s hand, diligent to tidy the seats and the stage, her self-given task after every show—

—as she tidies, now, the long heaped jumble of the work table, Istvan’s table, where she seems to know without much instruction what to touch and what to keep from touching, she never makes a tangle or a mess, she might be a kind of Lucy come again so “Mab,” Istvan wonders aloud, “did you ever play with dollies, as a child?”

“No,” flat, twisting a long loop of wire so that the sharpest end points safely in. “I hate toys.”

“You like our toys,” says Rupert, a gentle jest at which she blushes, a delicate petal-pink blush and “That is different, that is like—” but stops herself, one hand to her side, her skirt, and says no more, busied at the table again as Rupert redeploys the hammer, as Istvan peels a hard green pear with a paring knife and ruminates on the duration of the current show: “Cockrill‘s addled—we could turn Fairgrieve thanks to our young friend in the shabby hat. Another sellout tonight! We may have to paint up some more soldiers. But I was at the wheel again—in the Park,” when Rupert gives him a look. “A gypsy friend of mine lets me stake for free—and I do believe he saw us play, this fellow, he says he once watched a lovely lady and a puppet with a horse’s head—”

“Like le zoo mécanique,” says Tilde unexpectedly. “In Paris they have that in a park. A wooden monkey sings songs, and there is a lion, and a beautiful horse with wings, called Pégase—”

—both turning to her then, Istvan with half a smile, “Why, Mab—” but the thought is suspended by a knock at the door, tck-tck-tck, and inside slips Luc in blue scarf and slouch cap, crossing at once to Istvan, seeking hand seeking his—but then, marking Rupert, dropping instead to his coat pocket to take out “The post,” he says. “And twine, here is the twine you asked for, M’sieur Stefan,” the wrong kind as it happens but his gaze is so tragic and so sweet that Istvan tosses the twine to the table without comment, then feeds him a cool segment of pear before sifting through the letters: one for Rupert from the bank, a somewhat shocking bill from the haberdasher’s, and one from “Lucy-Belle,” he notes with pleasure. “A nice long one.” He slits it open with a thumbnail, settling stageside to read as Luc perches beside him, one cold hand nestling underneath his thigh; while Rupert reads the letter from Herr Robb, concerning the street on which the Mercury Theatre resides, an unnamed gentleman having purchased the whole block for purposes of “‘Civic betterment’?” aloud with a frown, as “Puss says,” Istvan looking up from the blotted sheaf—

—but again there is knocking, sharp and brief, Tilde to the door to open on a fair young man in natty black plaid suit, bowler hat doffed “To see Mr. Hilaire,” says Haden with a pleasantly counterfeit smile. “And Mr. Bok.”

“We’re closed, there is no playing now—”

“I know that,” louder, his voice carrying—

—and Luc startling as a dog does at thunder, a quivering kiss and then slipping out the sideway, his scarf dropped coiled on the stage, Istvan bemused to watch him go as “Gentlemen,“ Haden angling past glaring Tilde, “greetings.” He gives a sunny nod to Istvan. “We’ve met, haven’t we.”

Rupert steps forward without a smile—“I’ve not met you”—as Haden advances, hand out and “My name is Haden St.-Mary,” with consummate courtesy, bearing Rupert’s hard inquiring grip. “Mr. Bok, it’s a pleasure. And a pleasure to finally visit, I’m very curious about your shows.“

“Then buy a ticket,” Tilde like a spitting cat beside the door and “Softly,” Rupert softly to her. “But she’s got the right of it, we are closed. What brings you here, Mr. St.-Mary?”

“I’d say my own good taste,” Haden taking his time to answer, taking in the measure of the space, this false world constructed to tell its own kind of truth; and of Hilaire the gambler, too, as if seeing him more clearly in this other gamesroom of artifice and command, puppet strings and veiled faces, beside his partner Mr. Bok, with his proprietor’s air and a hand like iron. “But it’s in all the papers, everyone’s talking of the Mercury. Those shows of the fox and the king, and the two men lovering—”

“‘Lovering,’” says Istvan. “Is that what they call it.”

“They do. And that Seraphim in the Solon can’t say enough about your artistry,” as he and Istvan stand now face-to-face, Haden head-cocked and half-smiling, Istvan gazing en garde through his lashes; when they speak it is as if the speech is somehow doubled, what is said and what is not, like a bout of fencing, or actors trading lines onstage. “I can testify myself, you’re a rare gamesman—a real friend of Tyke.”

“Tyche. And not a friend, only another acolyte—”

“Why, fuck no! A favorite! The last time I saw you—”

“—a lowly, groundling acolyte. In fact—” but whatever else he means to say is interrupted by yet another knock, like some double-door farce that Fairgrieve might mount for here comes Seraphim himself, a smiling Frédéric Blum so freshly barbered he aches of steel and lime, wondering if he might “Interrogate those actors? You said that I should call,” stepping eagerly past Tilde to pull back, abashed: “Oh, but no, you are engaged. My apologies, I’ll come back later—”

“Not at all,” says Istvan, nimble to draw him in, “it’s your master we were just discussing, Herr Blum. This fellow here, M. St.-Mary, knows all about him,” as the two young men turn to one another, as Frédéric puts out his hand, and Haden takes it—

—to hold as Frédéric holds to him, full lips half-parted, brown gaze fixed, a moment tense and rapt and timeless until at last Haden tugs his hand away, and Frédéric’s face flames to the forehead: and Istvan shares a glance with Rupert, who stands, now, beside him, the four placed as if in figure for a dance, or a fray. “Well-met, gentlemen.”

“Yes,” says Frédéric, as if hardly listening to himself, “well-met, that is, you’re a theatre man as well, Mr. St.-Mary? But I’ve not seen you at the shows—that is—”

“M. St.-Mary,” says Istvan pleasantly, “is a devotee of many amusements,” as Haden runs a hand across his mouth and “I am,” says Haden; he makes a crooked smile, a visible effort. “And I plan to be here tonight, hoping to see Seraphim—and you,” to Frédéric. “You know him.”

“No one knows him,” says Rupert wryly. “He is anonymous.”

“But you work beside him,” says Haden, as Frédéric’s cheek grows pale now in place of scarlet. “I’ve been to the newspaper office, several times, and they all say Blum is the one I must speak to—”

“Indeed you two ought speak,” Istvan smiling and very genial, as Pan Loudermilk once was genial, as Mr. Pollux can be genial when he pleases. “And would that it could be here! But we have much to do today, gentlemen, so much that we must postpone the pleasure of hosting you until this evening, our young lady,” with a nod for glowering Tilde, “will gladly admit you gratis when you come. In the meantime,” turning both as one, propelling hands on their shoulders like a fond schoolmaster’s, or a broom to tumbling puppies, “we bid you a very good day,” while Haden’s gaze finds Frédéric’s again and “A bock,” he says, “have a bock with me now. Will you?”

Frédéric tries to answer, clears his throat, tries again. “It’s hardly noon.”

“It’s like a meal,” says Haden, as they walk together blindly to the door, the momentary brightness of the light outside, the silence as it closes, and “Spy,” says Tilde darkly, as “St.-Mary?” says Rupert; he takes the banker’s letter once more from his breast pocket. “I’ve heard of him, the intelligencer. Is that who that was?”

“The kit,” says Istvan. He looks at the blue scarf on the stage, then at Tilde, her gauging gaze between them both and “Be elsewhere,” he says, not sharply but with weight, Rupert’s nod in agreement to send her stoic for her hat and market bag, silent out into the street as “He plays,” Istvan says. “On several wheels, apparently.”

“Like your roulette wheel, is it, or the cards? Is that what brought him here?”

“I’ve seen him at the tables, but who knows why he came. He took away a pretty bonus, though…. Here,” holding out the letter from Lucy, “let Puss sweeten your mood. And there’s a postscript just for you,” seating himself at his worktable, the banker’s letter placed before him as Rupert reads through Lucy’s sheets, the girlish, careful hand: thanking Istvan for his letter sent, his advice about some problem on the boards, I used the linseed paste, and it worked just as you said it would; asking after Rupert; and giving fresh news of the Blackbird, respectable and safe, now, beneath the sheltering wing of Achille Guerlain, I’m the only one who still says “Pinky,” and more popular than ever, They line the street up and down for the Singing Baby’s Stories—I’ve got that old baby working now, recall her? She cries a treat! And lining up as well for “Van,” changed from Pan as Mickey now is Mick, a fine partner for herself and Pimm and their ever-changing family of child actors since We’ve no little ones of our own, still, though Pimm stays hopeful. She, too, is hopeful, for continued good work, for their own prospects, for a visit perhaps someday To see for ourselves that fine palais of yours! And most of all to see the both of you again—we miss you sorely. Until then, believe me ever your friend and faithful, LUCY PIMM.

And at the bottom of the last sheet of flimsy, the postscript’s note of a note arrived in answer to her own: She hadn’t much to say, just that she calls herself Mrs. Mattison now, a widow, and that all goes well at the Rose and Poppy, with a little calling card enclosed, on one side a brownish photograph, a young reclining Venus on a familiar velvet chaise, and on the other an address, Pleasant Entertainments for Fine Gentlemen and “‘Mrs. Mattison,’ Jesu,” says Rupert slowly, as if the name saddens him, his gaze past the letter to Istvan, who wields his planing knife and a hard stick of wood, working one against the other. “And the Rose and Poppy…. Do you think of her, ever?”

Istvan shakes his head, hair loose to make a curtain at his face. “Ag—She’s dead.”

“She had nothing easy.”

“She made nothing easy. Do you know, we were living on the vents when she was born, my mother and I? The laundry vents, to keep from freezing of a night.” His gaze is cold, aimed down at the wood. “And then the little baby came, smaller than Marco, yeah? ‘Volim Te,’ our mother used to sing that to make her sleep, ‘I Love You,’ but she couldn’t sing, she had a voice like a fucking crow’s! So she taught it to me…. I’m weary of the past, let the dead bury their dead,” tossing down the stick and knife to take up instead Mr. Pollux, pulling the silk from the silent face, making him march as “It’s brigands for you, vagabond! until we finally spin our fortune’s wheel. Unless Monsieur auteur will give us another tale to tell them,” as again the speech is doubled, the things they say to one another, the things they mean and “It’s not for them I do it,” Rupert says, coming to stand behind him, “it never was. It was always—”

“‘We are two,’” in soft singsong, Mr. Pollux making a graceful bow, “‘we need none other’—”

“Excepting,” with a little frown, “your Juliet boy,” but “Be easy, I won’t have him much longer,” and to please him Istvan then takes up the banker’s letter, skimming it with a careless eye as “You see?” Rupert frowning now in a different way. “No kind of ‘civic betterment’ can ever be better for us. The fucking ground beneath our feet,” one fist knocking on the worktable; his spectacles flash as he shakes his head. “Sold and bought, without even a by-your-leave—”

“And we’ll worry why? We own the building, let them keep the dirt…. I hope Puss does come calling, she and her sturdy Pimm, and that Mickey-Mick—I still owe him a toss at the Golden Calf—and may be he’ll bring along his ‘Van,’” in shrug as a shadow marks his face, another kind of curtain, Mr. Pollux turning now in aimless circles, old jaunty twist of hair still black in his buttonhole—

—until Rupert reaches to catch and stay those restless hands, raise them to his lips as “You made them, messire,” he says, “all of them. Lucy and Mickey, too,” kissing the hard palms and clever fingers, Istvan’s gaze held as well until “Volim te,” in Istvan’s softest murmur, hair a curtain to veil them both, enclose them mouth to mouth as Mr. Pollux lies stilled on the table before them, painted face resting on the banker’s letter, the bank’s crest above his forehead like a little golden crown.

The sun has sunk behind Rottermond Square, the shoemaker’s shop and broadsheet house are shut tight, but the café is still open, and the bar blares its invitation of drink and dice and vice. The line for the Mercury has already sprung up, a sidewalk garden grown various and strange: here a clutch of Virgo girls in their flattop bonnets and ankle skirts made for swift walking; there the young men who run messages at Herr Robb’s bank, and their young women in parti-colored radium silks; some excited devotees of the notorious, among them the well-dressed fellowship who frequent the Cemetery; the street priest, scowling with his shako and tracts; two lace-veiled society ladies and their stolid guards, the veils to keep the ladies secret and the guards to keep them safe; and more than a few alert and serious citizens who see in these shows a clearing mirror of the unsettled times, from the timidly adventurous readers of the Clarion to the legionnaires of the arts who read nothing but the Daily Solon, including a loud if tiny contingent of the Literary Leopards, hailing him when they see “Frédéric!” in his very best suit and a brand-new derby hat—and elbowing one to the other when a gentleman with a pointedly pointed beard and gorgeous gold walking stick joins the queue: the great Edgar Rue, though it will not do to seem anything but politely welcoming, if not entirely blasé.

Frédéric spares less than half a glance for Edgar Rue, though at any other time he would be eager for a conversation or to broker an interview. But now his attention is elsewhere, gaze cast again and again down the sidewalk, into the shadows, though perhaps Mr. St.-Mary will not come tonight after all. He seems to lead a bold and dashing sort of life—drinking beer at odd hours, no fixed place of employ, vague about his profession, though surely his hands are not a laborer’s, no, nor a scrivener’s (Frédéric knows that look, crabbed and always inky)—but strong and supple, graceful as a conjuror’s, to match those conjuror’s eyes…. He did say, more than once, that he would come—

—and here he is, Haden swiftly approaching in a cloud of brandy and a suit of such eye-popping plaid that it seems to make its own light in the dark: his gaze at once finding Frédéric’s, another light in the dark, his own grin of careless greeting somehow become just a nervous, truncated little nod at Frédéric’s immediate, unguarded, choirboy’s smile: well, he is a chorister, he said so in that tavern, hands clasped around his half-drunk bock. Singing in a church, why not, he looks an angel from the altar, with that skin, and those brown eyes like something out of a poem; he reads poems, he said that, too—as Haden, chewing his lip, comes to stand beside Frédéric, vastly annoying a Leopard waiting behind—“Hey, fellow, the line starts back there!”—who retreats prudently to silence at a cut look from those feral eyes.

Now the Mercury doors open, though not everyone in line can be accommodated, this evening’s lucky ticket holders passed through by a watchful Tilde in her evening uniform of faded blue wool dress and old-fashioned ribbon snood that tames, somewhat, the wild intransigence of her hair. She nods at Frédéric, gives Haden a dismissive sniff—“Alley door’s better for you”—that he ignores past a hasty glare as she passes the two of them ticketless into the darkness, where they take the last seats in the next-to-last row, on the aisle, together.

Backstage, Istvan oscillates between playful and moody; he too has drunk a deal of brandy, Rupert notes, though without knowing why; perhaps Istvan himself does not know why, or why as he adjusts his black domino he sighs for “My plague mask, though the plaguey beak’s too long, yeah? I’d knock the ninepins over before our knight could take a swing…. Christ, Mouse, did you overstoke the coal? It’s hot as fucking jungles in here.”

“The house is full.”

“I liked it better nearly empty,” with a sudden frown. “Like the Fin du Monde, though you never saw me play there…. Or at that smuggler fellow’s mansion, what was his name? His wife was an idiot, I recall that, with her peacocks screaming and shitting in the garden, her jour de fête, you never saw that either…. It was for the General, that show,” with a cold little one-shoulder shrug, as if he sheds a memory in the telling. “That old fuck—I do believe he salutes me, now, from whatever broiling spit he rides. May be beside his old friend Vidor, cheating Satan at patience? And—” another name rising, then suppressed, was it de Metz? the unholy trinity of Hector, Jürgen, and Isidore, with friend Arrowsmith the Saul-turned-Paul, and ugly stalwart Madame his Damascene road; was she? Or was he, is he, Saul to the end? or Socrates, with time the hemlock, and whatever other poisons poison him into his bed? And the Happy Prince now grown a king, king of it all perhaps; one wonders how that tale was finally told. At least there have been no more letters…. Mouse is looking at him, that measuring, reticent look he loves as much as he loves to tweak it, he cannot resist as “That Twelfth Night jig,” he says. “You should have seen your face.”

“Oh, I’ve been your audience more than once,” Rupert unperturbed, checking the soldiers’ little ruffs, straightening the tuglines, adjusting his own costume of dun black, the better to blend into the shadows. “And I’d hear all those stories, all the places you made your shows—may be you can tell me, some nights, instead of going out to dice us bankrupt,” but he is almost smiling, a smile marked by Tilde’s own as, clockwork-faithful, she pokes her head around the curtain, saying “All are seated, sir, I’m to close the doors,” an odd task perhaps for a slip of a girl but then again no one has yet tried to shove past her when she does, or, if the thought crosses into being, crosses again into oblivion at her energetic slam, and the hard weapons of her bony elbows; she wears the little knife from Die Welt, still, in her thieves’ pocket, another kind of surety.

Now she withdraws as Rupert nods, as Istvan tosses back his hair, adjusts the mask for the last, first, eternal time and “Ready, my mecs?” to the silent knight and trickster, overheard by a white shadow waiting dumb and patient in the darkness, Luc in stolen linen unnoticed by his god, who turns for the stage as Rupert steps into position, as the buzz and babble of the audience fades, as the lights go down into the sound of rain, the sweet and ghostly whistle of “The Flowers’ Roundelay”—

—while a noise sounds from the alley door, a thumping or knocking, not part of the show: answered hurriedly by Luc, who finds there a thuggish courier depositing a little crate, For the Mercury marked across its side, and “What’s this?” quiet so as not to be overheard inside, met then by a snort half a sneer—“Maricon”—in an accent Luc has never heard before, the man shambling off as Luc hoists the box inside, watched as he does so by the old knife man, trundling homeward down the alley with his handcart and bell and irritable dog, who for once does not make a sound.

Inside, the evening’s show rolls on, darkness and battle, romance and provocation, Istvan tonight particularly fey and provoking: is it the summoned memory of those old shows, those cold nights, their strain and scorn and the long loneliness of the road what makes him, now, so insistent on parading its remedy, making sure that all present understand if not share—how can they share? watchers only, never doers, players, makers, but let them see what love is, let them know that in the hills, oh, it is so fair—

—as Frédéric, bright-eyed, watches both the puppets and his companion, Haden beside him watching this show for the first time, Haden who sees the gambler Stefan Hilaire most clearly, now, upon the stage, to watch him play is to see him think. And what a play it is! both young men fully, entirely conscious of the passion building onstage, of their own coat sleeves brushing, touching, the heady potion of brandy and clean sweat and “It’s bally hot in here,” Haden whispers, too low for Frédéric to hear, so he must lean closer, very close, Haden’s breath upon his skin, the smell of that skin in Haden’s mouth like a draft of new wine—

—as onstage Rupert rattles the assailants and hangs the moon, keeping one eye always on the crowd, moved, perhaps, by his own memories, other battles, other streets and other crowds, marking when the Leopards laugh and the sober citizens flinch, when the boys from the bank stamp their feet in approval, when the blood spills and the puppets kiss—

—and the beveiled ladies rising up then in protest, calling “Shame! Shame!” in loud and righteous tandem, themselves a second show of disorder and surprise, their escorts stern beside them to forestall any others’ response—

—but Istvan is equal to them, too, as is Rupert, they need not even share a glance as “Honi soit,” calls the trickster mockingly, “qui mal y pense!” as the puppets kiss again. “Have you never tasted honey, Mesdames? Oh, a shame indeed!” to bring the laughter against them, the Virgos’ cruel confetti of applause as the ladies retreat in confusion down the aisle and out the door, to a carriage awaiting them at the curb, the burly man with the cherub’s face who helps the ladies inside, their hired escorts released back to the streets—

—as the puppets take their leave and then return, Frédéric on his feet for the ovation, joined by Haden laughing in pleasure at the fuss and “Fucking good show!” he calls with real approval, the puppets bowing again and again, their song of the Greeks swallowed up by the noise—

—echoed by a lonely, radiant figure at the back of the house, whose sudden startled gaze is caught by Haden’s, Luc who makes to flee before one pointing finger pins him like an arrow to the wall as “A moment,” Haden urgent to Frédéric, “wait for me, don’t leave,” taking Luc by the sleeve, past the milling, gesturing, stirred and agitated crowd, hauling him into an empty corner where “You’ve been fucking scarce,” says Haden, under cover of the clamor. “I said watch, didn’t I, not move in! And others are wanting you, that old de Vries cunt has asked for you three times—”

“I am sorry,” Luc murmurs, trembling in his grasp. “I’ve been watching, Haden, truly,” so truly false that Haden bites his lip in displeasure and distraction, for there is that older fellow now talking to Blum, to Frédéric, hand on his arm, what kind of play is that? so “Do as I say,” sharp, “or I’ll yank you from here and make you a forester for good, you hear me? And you’ll never see your fine M’sieur again, even onstage. Now go get me something I can use,” palm rough against the narrow back, turning back himself to where Frédéric stands waiting with “Mr. Edgar Rue,” with a bow. “May I present my friend, Mr. St.-Mary,” Haden hand out to the actor but with eyes for Frédéric, whose face is flushed, whose eyes meet his—

—as Rupert now joins Tilde at the door, hasty from his mummers’ black to shirt front and coat, spots of stage blood still on his spectacles, to see, unpleased and unsurprised, several constables arrive, the crowd diverting around them like a forking river to rocks, two sidewalk disputants dropping their voices as they pass—

“—just telling a story, aren’t they, just making up a show—”

“It’s sticking the beehive, is what it is—”

—as the constables approach Rupert on the steps, Tilde at his side like the knife man’s dog, her bark too kept in check as “We’d some reports of a disturbance, sir,” the older of the pair eyeing Rupert as the younger eyes the Virgo girls marching away, their laughter clear and fierce upon the air; it is said that the Virgo girls practice free loving, something the younger constable enthusiastically if privately supports. “Some ladies were maltreated, is that what it was? We an’t like to shut you down, sir, have you a license to show?”

—while Edgar Rue, wielding his walking stick, parts the crowd like a lordly Moses at the shore, looking past his shoulder for the Blum fellow, that pleasant little attaché of Seraphim’s whom he, Edgar Rue, would dearly like to meet: the one real critic in this city who appreciates true artistry, Seraphim’s review of his one-man “Faustus” was particularly astute! But Frédéric is off beside the shuttered shoemaker’s with Haden, still talking tête-à-tête of the show and the crowd and the many possible meanings of it all; of similar theatrics and poetry, both have read a fair amount of Ovid, it seems, and seem somehow loath to part—

—as inside, Istvan stands feline and pleased by the commotion, smiling beneath his domino as he attends to the puppet pair, as he tweaks the snagged scrim back into place and replaces a ninepin actor strayed into the seats; his smile changing as he sees the unhappy figure waiting for him in the dark, hands clasped like Hansel alone in the wood and “How now,” Istvan asks, half fond and half annoyed as Luc’s cold lips urgently find his own, a scent like crushed flowers, arms around his neck and “How now,” again and in a different tone, handing Luc the discarded blue silk scarf, leading him by that scarf like a dog on a length of twine into the deeper quiet backstage. “You and that St.-Mary, you made your own showing there, didn’t you? I thought he’d nip your pretty head off…. You know him, bébé. Tell me how.”

“Oh, M’sieur—”

“No tears. Tell me,” the old, old tale of fear and protection, beauty and the knife, the sad short truth told again and again through the hour that follows: spent not at the Cocked Hat but a place even more threadbare, an unnamed four-room hard by the quiet, busy, all-night commerce of the Cemetery, called the Goatherd’s for the goat-bearded fellow who runs it, its beds like sacks of flour, they might be sacks of flour, but it might be Elysium from Luc’s cries of sweet ravishment in the grit and dimness, damp hair around his face so beautiful that Istvan must bite his lip a little: why should such a perfect creature be born, through no fault of his own, into such a lowly spot when he is so clearly meant for better things, for a frame to suit if not match his beauty? The world is surely made in the image of its cruel god.

But when the wine is drunk—no brandy, just cheap vin ordinaire, and just a fullish pint to share, Istvan has no mind to stay the night here—and Luc entwined around him says, “Oh, M’sieur—oh, Stefan,” coloring wildly at his own temerity, enflamed by terror and love’s boldness, “Stefan, I want so much more than this from you!” it is Istvan who shakes his head, though the words tumble on and on: Luc will leave—at once, tonight, this very moment!—the protection of Haden St.-Mary, he will live at the theatre, he will do anything, everything, be a happy slave forever but “Why be a slave at all?” Istvan asks. “Why not be your own man?”

Yet knowing almost as the words are said their full irrelevance, to those eyes, that face so “I know,” slipping from Luc’s clasp, slipping on his shirt, “how it is for you,” for how can he not know, having seen it so many times in so many places, cities and slums and roadside hovels, the same tale told to the same conclusion, and absent the mecs and Rupert who can say how his own fate might have turned, what brutish games he might have played? So to show that he knows, that he is not entirely heartless, he tells a story or two or three, his own story of the streets: of disasters barely dodged, attacks evaded or endured, of the elegant men who paid throughout the years for his various sorts of artistries, all those men in high places since “I did a deal of tramping, and I know what it is to wake in a bed and not know where the fuck one lies; I know it very well. But still, I cannot keep you, bébé, now or ever. Oh, now, I will see you, surely,” as the stricken tears begin to fall. “But the theatre is for the stage, and the stage is for myself and Mr. Bok, no one else.”

“But you keep Tilde! And she—”

“Tilde,” says Istvan, “keeps herself. And whatever else she keeps in that ragamuffin little heart is not for me or you to speculate upon, yeah?” gently brushing back the damp hair, noting the angle of the moon against the dusty window and “Now, I am due back,” reaching for his hat. “But you may stay and sleep if you like, I’ve paid the room till morning.”

“But what am I to do?” in half a moan, Luc nude and wretched, taking the reddish dregs of the wine. “What must I say when he asks me, M’sieur, I know that he will ask me—”

And Istvan, hand on the door, turns back from a greater distance to say with a pleasant shrug, “Why, whatever seems to suit, bébé,” and then is gone, past the goatherd dozing in a chair, past the Park and its green darkness, its furtive smiling revelers, brisk through the streets and back to the Mercury—

—where Rupert paces smoking and disturbed, while Tilde sits lieutenant, snood abandoned beside the cashbox on the table, and on her lap a toy, a changeling angel of the same provenance, is it, as the first? with an empty face, the wings mottled and dirty-white, the paper halo somewhat the worse for travel in its dented crate. The Mercury’s license to present lies on the backstage table, shown by Rupert to the constables surely licensed, themselves, by something other than a mere citizen’s complaint, something dark at perch above this roof, this theatre that is his theatre, their burrow and home—

—as Istvan enters jaunty as an actor to applause, letting the door slam to, tossing down his hat, and “Why so solemn?” with a little wink to them both: très sérieux, those doubled, troubled stares, Mab might as well be Mouse’s get. “It was a rouser of an evening, don’t you think? I’ve just left my dolly, now let’s see yours, Mab.”

And still the evening continues, for some into the dawn: see in lamplight Martin Eig, teacup scummed before him, making notes of Costello’s report, the ladies’ demonstration at that tawdry little playhouse, one stage among the many where, if he is careful—and he is always careful—he shall have his own morality play, with Banek and Cowtan and, yes, de Vries and those backstreet actors, too, all with their parts in the play to change these rooms for a proper setting of honor and position: Commissioner Eig, it sounds right; better than right, it sounds inevitable. He almost smiles as he writes, and checks and clicks his watch, and wonders why no word has come, yet, from St.-Mary—

—who is much in the mind of Frédéric also, sitting energized and sleepless beside his tidy bed, making his own detailed notes on the performance, noting down as well Edgar Rue’s strong comments: quite decent of him, decent and noble-hearted, to support his fellow artists in such a way. And such a pleasure it was to introduce him to Mr. St.-Mary! The whole night, in fact, was pure pleasure, the show itself, of course, the passionate engagement of ideas, even the ladies’ strange disturbance played its part; and then the walk, talking, all the way to Crescent Bridge and back, he and Mr. St.-Mary, he and Haden talking of poetry, stopping off for a drink, even the muddy beer seemed robustly ambrosial. Walking and talking, it is extraordinary, they could have gone on together all night…. His legs ache, his heart is bright and warm as a candle flame, burning, casting light upon the page—

—as Haden himself turns up the street, finally, to his own digs, trailed by a straggling honor guard of ether-scented boys: himself half dizzy with lager and alarm, with the pulse of the flesh, the heat of Frédéric, the fellow has no idea, does he, what he is, what he wants, no, and it makes no difference, how can it, a fellow so upright nothing to do with Haden at all—as he takes in with a glance the pale figure on the steps, Luc head down and worrying at the ugly blue scarf, shredding the loose silk ends, stumbling as he follows Haden and the others upstairs, to hunch on the bed around a shared cigarette and tell, in betrayal and broken defiance, all he knows of his M’sieur: a man of the streets, yes, just like them, all of them in this room! But risen so much higher, become a player in the great cities, and the great houses, too, a good friend of great men, men like “That old de Vries cunt,” mumbles Luc, drooping from wine, from swallowed pills, from depthless heartbreak. “He knows them all, he says.”

And Haden’s arm around his shoulders, Haden’s smile not a little tickled: “Well bravo, uncle,” aloud and to himself, for that friend of Tyche and former bumboy and jeering, stalking, laughing trickster on the stage, he and that Bok his bravo, what a pair they must have been when they were young! And still they know, don’t they, how to put on a fucking good show.

Now the odor of warming garbage rises from the street, the sparrows on the roof begin to scuffle and chirp. The boys curl together on the floor like tired young animals, Luc sagging down to join them as “Bravo,” Haden’s murmur again, alone on the bed with eyes half-closed, absently tugging at the Christopher medal, wondering to whom he should bear this story first, or if he should carry it alone awhile; wondering who sent those two croaking crows to the Mercury; wondering if Frédéric is sleeping, and where his bed might be, and what he sings about when he sings in his churchly choir…. May be he will go himself, sometime, to have a listen, and frighten all the bally angels out the doors.

Of Theatre and Truth

Contributed by Seraphim

Your angelic correspondent was prepared to review the newest production opening at the Cleopatra Theatre, Shakespeare’s immortal King Lear, with the lovely Miss Cynthia Orson as Cordelia, and Mr. Albertus Smith as the tragic King. But the continuing situation at the Mercury Theatre is a topic more urgent, one that strikes to the very core of theatre itself.

Readers of this column—indeed, of all our city’s newspapers—are surely aware of the puppet plays presented at the Mercury, and, aided perhaps by attendance, have formed their own judgments of those plays. That One Night in the Forest should rouse strong opinions is surely a measure of its worth: the show is meant to entertain, in the sense that both the mind and heart are stirred and satisfied by its tale, as well as the eyes dazzled by its fine production, and the ears pleased by its dialogue and song. Still, its most truthful import lies much deeper than an evening’s divertissement.

Yet now that truth is being brandished as a sort of club over the heads of those men, Mr. Hilaire and Mr. Bok, who stand so modestly behind their wooden avatars, and the recent disturbance by two matrons of a performance has resulted in vigorous civic discourse both high and low. (Reporters at this newspaper have been seeking those matrons, to conduct an interview, so far to no avail.) Our city’s most revered and respected actor, Mr. Edgar Rue, was also present that evening, and in an exclusive interview (conducted via proxy for your correspondent) he stated that:

“The very Bard himself was no stranger to those who sought to question his morals by questioning his plays. Certainly all lewdness for its own sake ought to be driven from the boards, but the plays at the Mercury I have so far attended have been in no way prurient, nay, they have displayed, as Romeo and Juliet displays, the ways in which Man comes to grief through his own unregulated passions.” One might further add that King Lear has more than once been condemned as an insult to the tender bonds of filial devotion. Honi soit qui mal y pense!

As the Morals and Standards Act continues to be debated by the Prefecture Assembly, your correspondent urges you to join him in affirming the true value of this puppet play: Cry the truth! Cry the Mercury Theatre! (Please note that the Literary Leopards will be hosting a forum on the topic at the Lady’s Garden in the Park this Sunday afternoon at four o’clock PM, weather permitting. We shall hope for a lively and civil discussion.)

The red jade chessboard is quiet with dust; no letters wait upon the chased silver tray. Long fingers of light touch the draperies, the breeze outside flutters the leaves, but inside the room, bedroom, sickroom, the air is stale and cool. A griffin-headed cane lies aslant against the heavy armchair in which Javier Arrowsmith now sits, propped by pillows, the doctors’ draughts beside him undrunk; instead he sips Assam tea, and struggles, not against the pain—he has learned to carry that as lightly as once he wore a weapon—but the weariness, the dreadful, dead-calm weariness that no potion or tonic can efface. At times he wonders if it might be a kind of spiritual ennui, revenge of the dormant conscience against the busy brain; at other times he wishes only to be done with the struggle entirely, and proceed to whatever might await him on the other side of the veil.

But still there is work to do, work as slow and intricate as the games of chess he once enjoyed, teaching Isobel how to play: such an eager pupil, so swift to grasp the discipline of the game as well as the necessary moves, as she grasped the rules of games greater still, letters their principal markers, continuance their principal aim. He has tried, more than once through the years, to teach Benjamin, who has shown neither aptitude nor patience, Benjamin who is late, again, for this meeting already twice postponed. The sickroom frightens and disgusts Benjamin, the smell of illness, the broken body, he has made that more than plain, as well as his annoyance at the necessity of excluding not only his latest amour—what is this fellow’s name? All the fellows, all the names—but his unwholesomely worshipful attaché. Mr. Arrowsmith’s complaints concerning that man have been met by glacial silence beyond the bare statement that Emory is loyal. True enough, and true too that loyalty is a virtue, but does it remain so when it is practiced like a secret vice?

Mr. Arrowsmith lifts his cup with a half-numb hand; the tea has gone cold; he sighs, he rings the little bell for the maid. It is loyalty after all that keeps him here, in this room, in this flesh, loyalty to his lifetime’s work, and to Isobel and her muttered dying plea, repeating it like a rosary: Benny, oh Javier protect him, Javier keep him safe! Still as lead in her bed in the room adjacent, her heart hammering through the nightgown lace, he could see it, watch her sucking for air like a drowning man. She never once asked for Benjamin; perhaps she thought to spare him, perhaps knew that he would not come, Benjamin in his rooms drunk on whiskey and anguish, crying Belle, Belle like the child he will never cease to be. And Christobel stroking his hair and murmuring to him, her own tears driven back, grief’s advancing army, until Mr. Arrowsmith came limping to take her hands and tell her that she might, must, go in to see Isobel, that he would sit with her husband, that it was time at last to say good-bye.

And Benjamin like stone to kiss his sister in her coffin, twining a white rosebud stem into her black-gloved hands, then escaping into drunkenness as into a far foreign land. He did not attend the Requiem Mass nor the burial held at Chatiens, and ever since has done his best to keep his distance not only from the country house but from Arrowsmith himself, Isobel the last rein on his behavior, Isobel the last reliquary of his love, except for one other…. He still wears that ring, the signet ring, though the family ornament, old, silver, dating from the days of the Terror, should have been his now, taken from the hand of Hector Georges, the stiffened thumb, before the body was given to the grave. Mr. Arrowsmith remembers that day, the rictus and dried wounds, the flat grimace of death on the pale features, Hector contemplative as a statue, a quite unaccustomed pose. Benjamin had refused that duty as well, eh bien, he was busy with Isobel, burying their father, who, it must be noted, would be not only dismayed but actively averse to his new namesake, the child Isidore named so by his father, called Isau by his mother, a doubly unfortunate choice; was it spite or merely custom, is there any way to know? And what difference? The boy has now outlived his troubled infancy, milky skin and spindly limbs, the only true provenance his eyes, that singular de Metz blue; when Mr. Arrowsmith sees the child, which is seldom, he sees Isobel in that gaze, but Benjamin, does he see his father? Eh bien again, it is a miracle an heir exists at all, a kind of virgin birth.

Now “Fresh tea,” he says, “if you would,” to the silent red-haired maid stepping in a step ahead of Benjamin himself: regal in black, still the touch of the dandy in the pointed collar, the somber, gorgeous vest worked in silver fleurs-de-lis, Benjamin who unsmilingly orders the maid to “Open these windows” while he drags the drapes aside, staring out at the long stretch of lawn like a prisoner entombed. “It’s like a plague house in here.”

“Boredom is my chiefest ill,” says Mr. Arrowsmith mildly. “But it is surely not contagious.” The breeze stirs the drifting lengths of lawn, like thin clouds come momentarily to earth. “Will you take tea?”

“I can’t stay,” taking the armchair opposite, legs crossed, “for long. Mevsky is expecting some sort of fête at dinner, Christobel’s hired in a choir. You’re invited, of course,” without appreciable irony, rising again as if in lieu of leaving to finger the items on the bedside desk: the horn-handled magnifying glass, the pens and drying inks, the writing case of teakwood and mother-of-pearl, a bust of Pompey carved from black marble, this last saluted with a faint and scornful nod, and “What will you, then?” as if to both Pompey and Mr. Arrowsmith. “You asked me here, here I am.”

“I have asked you more than once—”

“If we are to begin that way, I’ll make an end now. You can write, can’t you?” nudging the pens so they nearly tip, his knuckles sore and scarred, and “You can read,” says Mr. Arrowsmith, still mildly, “but the letters I send go ever unanswered. Who reads them? Your man Emory?”

“I’ll not—” sharp as the maid reenters with the tea: frightened like a bird in a thunderstorm, she sets down the pot, curtsies, escapes as soon as she pours, a hot black stream and “I am doing my best,” says Benjamin, “whatever you may believe,” as he hands Mr. Arrowsmith a half-full cup. “And I asked for none of this, you will recall.”

“I do recall. And you have given a hard task your full strength—your sister would be proud.” Silence; this is a hazardous tack. “But the direction you travel—I have heard from Morris Robb, more than once, he says you are quite keen to buy property, a great deal of property not at all certain to appreciate. He does not know your reasons; he asks me. What am I to say?”

“Say that he ought to do the task he’s set, and keep his questions to himself. You,” measuring, “are still a signatory on those accounts, aren’t you. You needn’t be; I’ll have it attended to—”

“And who will be your signatory, then, who is your man? Not your servant—”

“Am I a fool?” flinging himself into the chair again; for a moment Mr. Arrowsmith sees Isidore there, the cold anger trebled by the energy of youth, cut with some continuing poison of grievance; he is the unhappiest youth Mr. Arrowsmith has ever known. “I need no ‘man,’ no master—” and stops as if struck; he looks away, toward the open window. Neither speak for a long moment until, finally, quietly, icily, “You have had your way, here, for a long time. Do you expect, as my father did, to live forever?”

“No. And if I did, this,” tilting the cane, “would soon persuade me otherwise. But I promised Isobel that I would serve you as long as I lived. And you promised her some things as well, chiefest that—”

“What was said between Belle and me was between Belle and me!”

“I was her friend as well as her husband—”

“And I was her brother, and she loved me absolutely, and she trusted me, as you do not.” Benjamin leans to reach for the cane, puts his hand to the griffin’s head, squeezing, squeezing. “She trusted you. As I do not…. A true devotee of the arts, aren’t you, and a dog in the manger, too.” He tips the cane forward to fall against Mr. Arrowsmith’s useless legs; the scent of hawthorne drifts in from the windows, the scent of burning, the gardeners burning twigs and dead leaves. “Did you think I never knew about those letters? Did you wonder that you had no answers? They saw only the first, the rest went into the fire.”

“I did wonder. Now I am certain. You spread a fine net, then.”

“Did you think to go where I was barred?” with a smile, a brief, unpleasant smile, again an echo of his father’s. “I’ll buy the whole city if it suits me, and you can read about it later in the newspapers. I may buy one of those, too.”

Rising, he leaves the room to step into the empty chamber adjoining, Isobel’s bedchamber, its drapes and furniture tended but untouched. All her artifacts have long been boxed or parceled: to Christobel the silver garden shears, the de Metz jewelry and endless pairs of gloves, the wedding-day miniature of Benjamin and herself; Mr. Arrowsmith keeps Isobel’s wedding ring, sapphire and diamonds, in a jeweler’s case beside his bed. Benjamin is not long in the room, and whatever he does there is quiet; when he exits, his eyes are wet, but their gaze is very hard. Bending to look eye to eye with Mr. Arrowsmith and “It’s for Belle’s sake alone,” he says, “that I keep my word—I’ve waited long enough. The day you die, the moment, I’m away.”

“Will you bury me?” with a lifetime’s politesse, a stoic’s calm; Mr. Arrowsmith thinks of the letters he wrote to Dusan, not many, private letters from one man to another, markers and continuance; he thinks of les mecs, of Isidore and his legions, of Isobel’s crippled hand clasping his with a force stronger than the death come to claim her: Benny, oh Javier protect him, Javier keep him safe! “Beside my wife?”

“On her left. And gladly.—I’ll tell Christobel you’re indisposed,” as without a bow Benjamin takes his leave, as the breeze continues to offer its scents through the opened windows, as the skylarks rise to settle, rise to settle, the gardeners rake fresh fuel onto the fires.

CHRISTOBEL DE METZ’S JOURNAL

21 May, 18—

Dearest sister, it has been a lovely spring here, as if in kindly counterpoint to our loss and sorrows. Yesterday, before the evening claimed me, Adela and I went with Isau into the gardens, and Damien brought him a tufted bird’s nest, small as my palm, to touch and see; how we smiled! Adela is as devoted to Isau as if he were her own. Sadly, B. does not like her, nor does he like Isau to spend any time in the gardens: He’s not a farmer’s son, why raise him as one? Though to my mind it is useful as well as pleasant that Isau learn to be happy here, as Chatiens will always be his home, no matter where else he may live or travel.

We are to travel again—without Isau, B. was quite firm on that point;
Emory will accompany us, of course, and perhaps James Aubin, too. There was some unkind gossip over his attendance at the funeral Mass, sitting with us in the family pew, but I was glad to have him there, to distract B., and keep him from too much gloom. I was unsure to the last moment if B. would attend the services at all, for he and Javier had been much at odds; we saw him so little that Isau, I am grieved to say, may not remember him in the years to come. I will always remember: he was dear to me as your husband, first and foremost, and he used to tell me stories of you as a girl—I loved those stories! And no one could have been more accommodating, or a better friend to our family. Javier was a great man.

I and the doctor were at the bedside when life finally left him—it was just before dawn, for we heard, quite distinctly, the skylarks calling—and it was of you that he spoke at the last, your name again and again, as if preparing for reunion. He held my hand; I believe he believed that I was you. B. told me that it was your wish to have him laid to your left, and B.’s own resting place kept for your right: But you mustn’t cry so, Christobel, he was glad to go, as crippled as he was, though it was as much at the thought of someday losing B. as for poor Javier that I wept…. He left me then; he cannot bear weeping. But that evening, B. had brought to my rooms a great extravagance of roses, the Lady’s Blush from our own greenhouses that he knows I favor, and with them a special token: a fob from Javier’s watch, a quaint black iron key. What kindness! Others think B. an indifferent husband, but I, and you, know otherwise.

Since Javier’s passing, B. has been even more taken up with his duties, and this trip we are to make will be no respite: Herr de Vries is hosting us at his pied-à-terre, for B. has extensive affairs to conduct there, and real estate he means to purchase, or has purchased; I heard him telling Emory something of it. There is a special ball we must attend, a grand opera—Take along all your jewels, B. told me—though Herr de Vries was rather vague with details, instead full of city gossip, making mock of one of his deputies whom he says we shall meet, a Mr. Martin Eig: “My Savonarola,” he called the man, who sounds a fairly unpleasant person. Frau de Vries is a foolish woman, but we shall be busy together nonetheless, at various teas and musicales. I have made sure to have the city’s newspapers sent here, so I may be “in the know” when we arrive; there are several fine lecture halls, one of them sponsored by the Virgo Society, who sound quite an interesting group! And there is a well-regarded botanical garden, too—I wish that you might be with me to share it. But you are with your husband, now.

It must have been a wonderful reunion: just as you were in life, alert and serene, sharing those looks and smiles that mean so much between spouses. In my mind’s eye I imagine further, I see the two of you like those carven angels at the townhouse doors, forever in flight now above the garden, forever together to watch over B. and Isau and me.

Rupert has rarely been to this part of the city before, and never to this building, the Morals Commission so busy but so quiet, his footsteps fairly ring across the parquet floors. The thug before the door, that fellow though a stranger is no stranger, Omar at the Poppy would have known him at first glance, and pounded him at second: for just a moment they size up one another, man to man, Rupert unimpressed by the doughy bulk that speaks of sidewalk living, Costello bristling at the older man’s aplomb. The secretary, in his flurry of newspapers, glances furtively at the notorious Mr. Bok as he enters the office of Martin Eig, who rises to acknowledge him, though not to shake his hand, calling for tea—

“If you drink such, that is?”

“I do. I like tea.”

“Somehow,” with a kind of smile, “I had not expected that you would. Perhaps because of your bent.“

“And that is?” Rupert says, with a mental sigh; he is growing very weary of these kind of feints and passes, like the second, fugitive puppet, and the bumptious constables, and the clerk at the Office of Literature and Entertainments refusing his payment of the license renewal, shaking his balding head—It can’t be done, sir, it’s marked that way in your file. The Mercury Theatre, it can’t be done—and now this fellow, this morals fellow whom the clerk insisted he must next see. He is even growing weary of their guardian angel Seraphim, the literary swordplay and protests in the Park, half those “debaters” ended up brawling, then cooling their heels in the bin, and all of it blamed on the Mercury, a further sour fame unsought; could not the boy have found another cause to trumpet in his fucking paper? But then, he is sincere for something other than his own wallet or belly or prick, and that is something. And Istvan liked the interview he made of them, and what he makes of their shows; Istvan likes him, that boy…. Istvan this morning like a boy himself, lying half dressed in the rosewood, slicing up a pear, lazy to watch as Rupert angled the mirror this way and that above the shaving-bowl, aiming for light enough for his right eye without fully blinding the left, concentrating so fully that he almost dropped the razor when Istvan’s hand covered his: You should have told me, Mouse, with a headshake and a smile so tender that Rupert felt himself flush, like a boy caught out in a lie, Istvan seeing now the reason for the graying beard he so mislikes. So Let me wield the razor and the soap brush, quick and practiced hands to shave him clean, to towel him dry, to tilt and kiss the moistness of his mouth and murmur From now on, I’m your barber—though no shaver in a shop ever did what he did next, nor with such pleasured leisure, dressing him afterward in brushed serge and perfect linen—Good on Mab, she’s blued this to a sheen—and tying the dark cravat with another kiss: Now all’s respectable and fine, yeah? to go pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Shall I go with you? drolly, to bring Rupert’s smile, yes, bring bare Istvan and the puppets, too, what a show for some pop-eyed bureaucrat that would be!

But no Caesar sits across this desk—and such a desk, like a child playing at forts-and-fortress, onstage it would have brought a laugh—with silver teapot and folded hands, this tidy specimen Mr. Eig who says, “Why, a man of entertainments,” as if that is itself some sort of indictment. “I would have thought you might rather a glass of liquor than a plain cup of tea.”

“I would rather learn why I can’t renew my theatre’s license. The clerk at the office said—”

“That it was impossible? Yes,” with a nod. “Or yes and no.” He pauses as someone knocks at the outer door and is sent away; a telegraph machine patters and clicks; the smell of camphor sifts into the room. “It is true that your theatre is a concern for the Commission. Those entertainments, the king and the fox, the men in the forest—where do you find your stories’ inspirations, Mr. Bok?” Rupert says nothing. “And the notice your shows have garnered—it seems that every wall one passes has one of those placards, what is it? ‘Cry the Mercury!’ Not to mention the uproar they have caused, religiously, politically—”

“I don’t play at politics, sir. Or religion.”

“I doubt you play at all.” Mr. Eig lifts his teacup; he looks at Rupert; Rupert looks at him. “You must be aware that a law is pending that, if it’s passed, will much change the way you do business, if it even permits that business to continue. And you have been in business for many years, haven’t you? You and your assistant, who goes by many names—Stefan Hilaire, Etienne Dieudonne—though you yourself use only the one. It makes you,” almost apologetically, “easier to track.”

“He is not my assistant.”

“What shall I call him, then? Your man?” There is a neat pile of documents to his left; he lifts and shifts them to his right, as if in preparation for some other, more meaningful action. “You have played in many places, both of you, for a long time. But these are different times now, and—”

“Mr. Eig,” says Rupert, in a voice neither loud nor impolite but of such pure authority as to halt Martin Eig mid-word, “you and I both work for a living, and there’s much work to be done today. So tell me if you can what delays my license, and then I’ll tell you if Mr. Hilaire and I can give you what you need.” His hands lie loose and almost easy, palms-up on his knees, for all those nights in Madame’s drawing room have this dividend at least, now he can recognize the stink of empire, if he cannot find its reason, here, other than the constant of the hand outstretched, always outstretched, for whatever it finds and does not own. It is an old smell, that reeks of war and winter—Your house, to do with as you decide—but in those days he had his knife to count on. Now times are different, yes, the world is growing smaller, as small as this room and this beadle Eig regarding him in a silence so protracted that the secretary’s breathing is clearly heard, a bronchial noise, as if in excitement or alarm. Finally Mr. Eig leans forward from his citadel chair and in a tone of full neutrality says, “Close the door, please, Mr. Bok—”

—and what then is said between them the secretary cannot hear, though he tries, and Costello, too, leaning so close to the wood that he needs must scramble to shift his bulk when abruptly the door opens and Rupert exits, out and down the hall, down the stairs, into the sunlight and its flat black shadows—

—where at once he sees and seizes a startled and blinking Haden St.-Mary, to tow him past the statue of red Minerva, around a brick corner, Haden’s back pinned flat to the wall and “You work for him?” Rupert nodding back to the Morals Commission building; the reserved and formal theatre owner is gone, his voice is all of the streets now, a wolf’s voice, a wolf’s stare. “Spy for him, that Eig?”

“I work for myself. Stop, you’re crushing my arm—”

“Who else do you work for?”

“I work for myself! Fuck!” yanking free his forearm, staring at Rupert with authentic moral injury. “What in hell, what did Eig tell you?” but “Come with me,” Rupert hard to herd him off, past a sudden martial clot of Haden’s boys, all flick knives and lowered brows, Haden waving them away as together he and Rupert turn down a busy alley walkway between the Drapers’ Guild and the mercantile exchange, passing as they go men so entirely of that daylight world—barristers carrying documents, cloth merchants with samples, busy clerks in eyeshades—that they might themselves be invisible, Rupert swift and dark, Haden in unaccustomed mufti, a sober suit to suit his stare when he sits at last at the backstage table, hands jammed in his pockets like a schoolboy before the masters, and “How now, kit,” says Istvan pleasantly, a strip of old leather and his favorite awl in hand; the point is very sturdy, very sharp. “Tell us your tale, won’t you,” as Rupert stands behind him, arms folded, a street enforcer’s stance. “And try not to lie overmuch.”

“Beg your humble fucking pardon, uncle, I’m not a liar.” In passing with a cloth and tin washbucket, Tilde laughs, a nearly silent sound. “And I don’t tell tales.”

“Yes, you do, and yes, you are. But sometimes a liar tells the truth.”

“And wouldn’t you know it!”

“Indeed I would. Now tell us about your school of night,” and amazingly, perhaps, or prudently, Haden does: a few terse sentences of his ongoing dealings with Eig, his intelligencer network of knowledge and boys, Istvan asking then of “That blond bébé,” scoring the leather as if idly with the awl. “You sent him here, I know.”

“You mean Luc, Lucien Topps? He was here already, is how I heard it. And I asked him to keep his ears open for me, why not? But I haven’t seen him lately.”

“Well nor I.” They exchange a look in odd and sudden union, from which Rupert is somehow excluded, then “Whatever Eig told you,” says Haden, “that you’ve still not told me, could be what he thinks is true. But the truth is I’m no friend to him, or his fucking Morals house, either,” with a sudden real loathing that takes him by surprise, or at least stops him long enough to take a drink from his brandy flask, a long one, as if he would sluice away some foul and lingering taste. “I work for myself, I always have. And I hear,” looking from Istvan to Rupert, a measuring look, casting the line, “that you do, too. I hear names like de Vries, and,” the letter in the man’s pocket, that toffy letter, what was it? “de Metz—” surprised again by the great and sudden tension at the table, as if he had drawn a weapon, Rupert’s hand to Istvan’s shoulder, and “That’s deep water, kit,” Istvan says, without any smile at all. “I wonder, can you swim. Or may be you ought to take yourself to shore, now—”

“—and keep out of our fucking business,” says Rupert. “Our theatre, too.”

Strangely, Haden smiles then, a true smile of some strange wistfulness, for that one moment it changes his face, makes it a boy’s as “You’d do better to keep me in,” he says. “This play, your play, is in the streets now, an’t it? And I can help you. These streets are mine.”

Rupert’s hand flexes, kneading Istvan’s flesh, the scars unseen; Istvan considers Haden through his lashes; Haden looks back and forth between them both. The room is fully still, the stage untrod, until “One word,” says Rupert, “one word more of us to Eig, and we’ll know it. And I’ll know where to find you. Now go,” crossing in long steps to the door as if he will personally broom Haden out, Tilde in fact is there already with broom and bucket, as “Where do you go?” Istvan says, his tone more even, the trickster’s not the knight’s. “Out in your vaunted streets?”

With much dignity, “I’m going to the fucking church,” passing Rupert with a nod left unreturned, Tilde following him out onto the steps as if he might somehow dodge back inside, flinging her bucket’s freight just past him on the sidewalk, feinting at the knife man’s dog when the barking starts and “Jesu,” Rupert says; without the beard he looks younger, the worried young man in the brothel lobby, shabby coat and polished boots and too much weight on his shoulders. “First the license, now this.”

And Istvan, too, with a young man’s smile, as if picking up stray ordnance on the road, as “That young man,” musingly, “and his toy soldiers—there’s a show in the making, yeah? Exits and entrances…. Now tell me what Caesar said,” the story shared at the table with a meal of pears and tea and pale cheese, Tilde’s good bread, a china cup of brandy, a cigar and “How much does that Eig know of us, truly?” Istvan asks. “He seems too small to have names like Arrowsmith or Georges, or for them to have him. But the kit said de Metz,” and Rupert’s shrug in the smoke, how to say? beyond what the man said for himself, the meager facts of the Mercury and his desire, so plain, to exploit them for his own use: “Talking of that new law, that Morals Act,” and “All our acts are moral,” says a voice, Mr. Pollux commenting from somewhere in the dark, Istvan’s smile as shadowed as “He’ll take the block from our license,” Rupert says, “if we shut down this show; he said as much.” Istvan watches him pour two fingers of whiskey, bright as honey in the cup, and drink it down. “I told him we’d consider it.”

“You’d shift? For them? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“We’ll shift, but not for them. We’ll shut this show, to gain some space to play another—”

“Oh, well then good riddance to those ninepins! We’ll spin the wheel instead, and—”

“Jesu!” palm flat to the table so the teacups jump, “enough of the fucking roulette wheel! I’ve backed your play all our lives, messire, you can give me this, can you not? This stage, for once to do with as I please?” in sudden shout to make a sudden silence, Rupert drawing too hard on the cigar, coughing, Istvan up from the table to set down the paring knife and pick up a set of strings, set them down, too, reach for the nearest newspaper, the Solon, paging through in that silence to see the adverts for coming amusements, the lectures of the Leopards and others, the lieder recitals, the Chinese acrobat circus, and the “Opera,” he says. “That’s what this is, Mouse, and that’s what we need,” some hodgepodge of glamour and false Egyptian grace, Cleopatra’s Rapsodia to be staged not at the Cleo but at the city’s grand Civic Opera, all velvet swags and cherub-wild reredos, a boutonniere for every man and wrist-bouquet for every lady, and champagne served in the boxes between the tragic acts. “We’ll buy ourselves new tailcoats, and go see something silly and fine,” with a very small smile, Rupert’s scowl easing into a sigh and “I’m one,” he says softly, rubbing at his forehead in the old unhappy way. “And I’m weary.”

“‘We are two.’ Don’t think for once, come out with me, let your little Cerberus guard the gates—”

—while quietly Tilde, as quietly come inside, lays aside her broom and pail and dusting-clout and takes herself to her cell above the stairs, to reach from her sleeve the little velvet pouch, spreading the cards on the woolen coverlet as brown and soft and lumpish as new earth, as much to cheer herself—lately she has been feeling oddly unwell—as to look and learn what might be happening beneath this roof: a quick and expert spread, this one is called the Wheel. See first the shy Jack of Doves, that would be Luc, all starry-eyed for M. Stefan though a faun-boy should know better, she told him so herself on the stairs: Wake up, you, but he just blinked his big eyes at her, he wants to live in dreams, like opium dreams, like “Annabell”; but that is not this world. This world is the ache in her belly and the Ace of Crowns, and the gorgeous Lord of Flowers, with the Priest between who will tell all he knows—and oh, the Hangs-a-man with his noose and woven basket, who always speaks of endings, final endings; her fingers linger on that card, she sucks hard at her lower lip. Yet here once more is great good fortune, the queen who is not a queen, the Mater, so what can that mean? as she studies the fecund mother at the fork between forest and town, one cloaked arm to cradle her sleeping infant, the other with a wand upraised to pierce the horned and swollen harvest moon.

To lay the cardfall of the past on the present is a sort of shadowplay, or a gateway like the shifting panes between the worlds that, the sages say, all who live must pass through many times before a last finis. A boy with a velvet scrap becomes the master of the mecs; a boy with a stick becomes a man who stands guard; a girl who sits at a window, waiting, becomes a woman with a grasp on time unequaled, making every moment pay for all the moments gone.

That window, dressed now in swags of heavy ivory lace, looks out from a three-story building fresh-bricked and orderly, fully part of, if not publicly embraced by, a town ascended to near-gentility: with several quite passable hotels, an ever-growing mercantile district, and soon, the mayor promises, a racehorse course. The woman at that window wears a widow’s black that never varies, though it is daily enlivened by queenly silver pins in her russet hair, and a small universe of jewels—scrolled gold and onyx, an imperfect diamond, a gaudy ruby brooch that may not be ruby at all, more likely polished garnet, that she wears in memory of her daughter’s father. Passed from the world before that baby had ceased to nurse, felled in a drunken doorway altercation that, as bravo emeritus, he ought not even have attempted, an aging potentate fat about the middle and shaved about the head: Omar, whose years of brawling were far behind him, but whose appetite for drink and fisticuffs stayed true until the last.

As did he, there at the Rose and Poppy, Omar most often found in the Theatre Guillame, shandy in hand and watching like a friendly father as the parlor-girls and boys tripped up and down the stairs with their evening’s escorts, beside old gnomish Walter Porter (himself found face-up and stiffened by that same door one very early morning, features twisted and pockets empty; the diagnosis was a heart spell and a neatly plundered corpse). Many of those stairway escorts might well have recalled the establishment’s previous incarnation, its saucy stage shows and array of theatrical whores—the last of whom, Vladimir, lost to a cloud of black hashish and some flash fellow who said he was an Arab, he may well have been an Arab, there and gone with Laddie like the genie from the lamp—and dark Bok the co-proprietor and his slippery actor in trio with severe Mrs. Mattison, supposed widow of the first owner of all though Her babe must’ve come from the angels, murmurs one of the escorts, to bring another’s shrug: If she was a real lady, she wouldn’t be here. And neither would we. It is Mr. Mattison’s picture that, draped ever in mourner’s ivy, adorns the quiet parlor, or a picture of a man very like to Mr. Mattison, the man to whom the woman—the self-named widow, Agatha, Decca—pointed when her daughter first lisped for “Papa.”

If not especially comely, she is an energetic child, a born jackdaw reaching always for the vivid—the brightest hair ribbons, the reddest apples, the painted statue of Athena with the golden breastplate and owl—and enjoying best to plunder her mother’s jewelry casket, drawn by the shiny pins of opal and pinked topaz, an old, immensely fragile, silver-paper chain, and the most favored trinket of all, a blue eye strange and beautiful, that both frightens and fascinates the child. Holding it on her palm, opening and closing her small fingers to make the eye blink, there and gone, there and gone and Mamma, she begs, tell again about the clown.

A jongleur, says her mother, is different from a clown, as she takes from the child the priceless lover’s eye, sent to her hand again in a calfskin pouch by a woman fully now a stranger, “Mrs. Pimm” prim as her pins-and-paper writing, her many unanswered questions—for whom does she ask them? Herself, or some others?—and her own news that might have come straight from a penny novel, the tale of the upstart whore who marries her one true love, the two then together on the stage she always wanted, her every wish granted; a sentimental penny novel, yes. Say it properly, now, Pru: “jongleur.”

“Jongleur,” repeats the child as her mother tells again the truncated tale of a tricky man who lived to play tricks on others, who gave her the blue eye and then disappeared to travel the roads beside his great friend and guard Like the strongman at the sideshow, Mamma? He lifts up the whole world with one hand, his name is Atlas.

Yes. Just like that.

Did they go everywhere in the world?

They saw many places, and will no doubt see more before they end, hand-in-hand with each other and their box of puppets, though if any mercy is left on Earth this town will never again be one of them. Yet a part of her still longs, with a dry unsparing ache, for Rupert’s steady gaze, her brother’s tilted smile; he is an uncle now, imagine that. Only to Omar did she once confess that, yes, it would be a sort of easement to see them both, To know if they are well, Rupert especially—

And to watch those mecs again, eh? That ugly little feller, just like a living soak—recall ’em, Miss Decca, that one time with Pearl, and her all screaming? What a show that was! on a savoring chuckle,
Omar who never lost his deference for her, who called her “Miss Decca” even when they lay together, those few strange occasions, one of which resulted in this fat-cheeked missy with the coarse auburn curls, whom Decca daily tends with an aloof, ferocious, all-seeing care, brushing those curls until she cries, making her recite her lessons, her numbers and her prayers, making sure she wants for nothing: little Pru to whom one day all of this will belong, the Rose and Poppy and its roster of employees, the whores and the cook and the stableman and the doorman and sour Velma Byrd, all of whom Pru already is schooled not to befriend, to remember that They work for us—and the rooming houses, too, those houses bought as income to augment the Pleasant Entertainments for Fine Gentlemen: Decca’s whole and tiny empire, beholden to no one but herself.

Yet one day arrived without warning that extraordinary benefice, a cheque draft sent with a letter from a man whose face she barely recalls, though the voice, calm with heat, is one she has never forgotten: Verbena is such a singular scent. It suits you, Mademoiselle, in the cold coalless room, his warm hand to the back of her head; yes, she remembers. And he, it seems, remembered, too, that room and that moment, the endless days of the war and Our mutual friends, the letter’s bland mention of Mr. Bok and Dusan, please do keep for them this performance matériel—a teakwood box with a silver lock—and when you should see them, tender it with my regards. His own for her were contained in the cheque, in salute and support of Your continuing enterprises, in which, Madame, I wish you the greatest success; that cheque used not only to buttress those enterprises, to buy the second rooming house, but—after long reflection in her own quiet room, the little dressing table with its ancient hairbrush and silver combs, her own face in its time-clouded mirror a sister’s and a child’s—to pay back once and then with interest the monies received from the long-gone General, left for the three of them, kept by herself alone; she who alone had sent the General’s man away—There’s more where this came from, he told me to say—saying nothing, waiting out his exit past a hidden Velma Byrd, to whom she noted only Say a word, and it’s your last here. So the bankers sent the money, the box she stowed away untouched, in a manner of apology; and how unexpected, and extraordinary, that in doing these things she felt the more prosperous and powerful, not less.

And how gratifying, too, to prove that with money enough even a woman alone—an orphan girl; a madam; a grass widow unwanted by all—can direct banks and bankers to do her bidding, to disburse in secrecy and receive in same, to gather and hold for Prudence whose final patrimony, no, matrimony, will be those bank accounts, the real estate and shiny jewelry: Miss Prudence Mattison, and none to dare call her differently, both the window and the view shall be her own. Someday, Pru shall sit at this desk, her desk, in the dainty duchess chair, its mended petit-point roses retaining the odor of a thousand dead cheroots, and direct the parlor-girls and boys, the endless line of whores whose dried tears and sweat and toilette water float forever in the rooms upstairs, while downstairs hired singers warble at the piano, the newest tunes and old sentimental favorites, like “Paddy’s Lament” and “Lady Angela Takes the Air.”

In the meantime Pru’s mother consults that window past the stolid swags, watching the bustle of traffic below; she sees the grocer’s cart, she sees a constable half-dozing on his corner, she sees the bank’s vice president approaching in the brougham he fancies no one knows is his: every Tuesday noon, he comes and goes, though never too busy to stop and have a cup of tea with his valued depositor and client Mrs. Mattison, himself her client and her actor, one of her many actors, and the brothel and rooming houses her stage: in these later years she has reacquired some appreciation for the theatre, its uses and beguilements; she is her brother’s sister, after all.

Perspiration dots Frédéric’s forehead, his fine new shirt is also damp, though he barely notices, too busy grooming—or call it, yes, prinking—before the scratched and spotty mirror in his little room, making ready for a night at the opera. And such an opera! The tragic Cleopatra’s Rapsodia staged at the Civic, to be sung by the great Swedish baritone Tomas, and the Cleopatra herself Miss Annelore Bart; truly, it will be an evening to remember.

He checks again for the tickets, one secured by the Solon for Seraphim, though Frédéric plans on attending as a private member of the audience; perhaps that is not entirely ethical, but Seraphim will be there, and the review will indeed be written. The second ticket he purchased himself—terribly dear; it cost nearly two weeks’ rent on this room—for Haden, of course, who, though he is amazingly well-traveled—the stories he tells! He has been nearly everywhere—has never yet seen an opera, his shrug almost shy to admit it, but Why, that’s capital! Frédéric’s answer in elation. You’ll give me the full pleasure of a premiere.

And Haden looked away, then—was he abashed?—and bit his lip until it reddened, the pale scar there no disfigurement at all, to Frédéric’s way of thinking, but rather a kind of mouche, a piquant enhancement of the beautiful whole…. And then in the little glass his face burns so appallingly that he squeezes shut his eyes, for these thoughts are—they are impossible, and if he thinks them often when he and Haden are apart, and always when they are together, well then he must just try to think of something else, and not let those thoughts and feelings mar the friendship they have made—not at all like those furtive fellows in the Cemetery, nothing like! but instead so sweetly intimate and rare, like something out of his old dear book of the gods.

These past weeks have found them much together, talking of nothing and everything—the crowds at the theatres, the value of travel, the lasting benefits of reading poetry—and how flattering to find that Haden has read all of Seraphim’s columns, has never missed a one! though of course he does not know, cannot know, who the real writer is. And Haden’s own profession has been finally confessed, his tutorial efforts with the wild street boys, trying to educate and help them: Show them something better of life, you know. Up from the gutter and all that.

Why, that’s fine of you! And I can see you have a great effect, since nearly everywhere they go there is always a skulky boy or two trailing behind. At first those boys made Frédéric somewhat nervous, with their stares and shoves and curses, “twister” this-or-that, but now he sees them as evidence of Haden’s great good heart: he is a diamond in the rough, l’ange gauche as the French would say, a rough angel. And how angelic, too, to spend a whole afternoon in a stuffy pew at St. Mary of Dolors, the tedious choir rehearsal that Haden, hands clasped and flanked by statuary, attended without complaint, saying only at the tea shop afterward that You’ve got a voice could rouse a dead man, with a smile that roused Frédéric so thoroughly that he knocked the plate of hot baked mice into his lap.

And last night it was a show at Cockrill’s Palace, Haden’s invitation though he rolled his eyes at the cancan farrago, the frowsy girls, as Frédéric deplored the Gawdy-puppet: The ones at the Mercury are worlds beyond, aren’t they? Such a pity that they closed the Forest show! and Why’d they do that? Haden’s frown, but Frédéric did not know, discussing it together as they walked to Crescent Bridge, to sit beneath the ancient blind-eyed statue of Albanus with his spear and shield—

It’s said that he founded the city on an upturned rowing-shell.

When it hails, the oarsmen say he’s pissing gravel.

—handing back and forth Haden’s brandy flask until both were dizzy and the moon rose high, those oarsmen rowing in, their narrow wakes of rippled silver, to stow up their boats for the night. Then It’s very late—I suppose we ought go back together through the streets, Haden whistling some new street song, I don’t have the words, only the tune, a saucy tune all the way to Frédéric’s rooming house, Frédéric at the door and Haden just a step below, close enough to touch, to shake hands and say goodnight once and then once again, and again, until the street cleaners’ wagons rumbled by with their noise and effluvial spill…. “Haden,” Frédéric murmurs now to the mirror, thinking of his smile, the lean strength of his arms, the way he walks, that conqueror’s swagger, as if nothing can harm him. “Omnia vincit amor—”

—and then, as if he has somehow been overheard—by whom? the sparrows at the open window? the coughing neighbor next door?—he loudly switches to Ovid, Remedia Amoris, the cure for love, as he reaches resolutely for the Pinaud’s and his cordovan tie.

All over the city windows are open to the humid scarlet sunset, stately casements and small apartment panes, doors thrown wide in the tenements to catch a breath of the breeze; the stray cats have left the bridge for the shaded buttresses below, where they watch with half-closed eyes the bobbing flotsam, floating newspapers, and quarrelsome ducks, and the whores who sit, their skirts ruched up, to dabble their feet in the water. At the Park the Lady’s Garden is crowded, the fountains of Diana and the leaping fish are crowded, the lemonade booths are sold out, the paths congested with strollers and thieves too enervated to steal since it is “Hot as midsummer,” pants Herr Konrad, the publisher of the Daily Solon, as in his stuffy office he fans himself with yesterday’s edition, though yesterday’s visit from the Morals Commission was an occasion for sweat as well.

See that Herr Eig, cool and powder-dry, with his request that was not a request, but not an order, either, which somehow made it worse: Your theatre columnist, that “Seraphim,” wondering aloud for the name, the true name for Why does he write under a false one? And why do you allow it? And Herr Konrad wavering, about to open his mouth, but the editor, Herr Hebert, fixing his gaze as keen as a rat terrier’s on Herr Eig to say instead that It’s a matter of moral integrity, sir, aiming to keep free of all corruption. You of all people will surely understand, the matter left there for the moment but “Perhaps we should have told about the boy,” says Herr Konrad now, as he tosses down the paper to scrabble in a desk drawer, hunting his enamel case of digestive mints. “The Morals Commission, you know what goes on there—”

“Konrad,” says Herr Hebert, who privately despises both the Morals Commission and the sickly odor of digestive mints, “it’s not for me to tell you your business. But Seraphim is a secret people like to talk about, a secret that belongs to us alone,” thinking of the garish sheets plastered on the lampposts and the shouters in the Park, the Virgo girls and their ilk who call Seraphim a hero, the café wits who swear he is a descendent of Voltaire’s. “Do you want to sell newspapers, Konrad?”

“Well,” Herr Konrad sighs, “he can’t get into much trouble at the Opera,” that august and important performance, all the best families will be there, old money and new industrial barons, Herr de Vries himself and his wife are to hold court in the Lords’ Box, and have some sort of private supper after, the kind of event a mere newspaper publisher will never be invited to attend—unless he is Tibor Banek, that turtle-jawed lackey, Tibor Banek who just last week wrote an editorial on the mayor so fawning it was physically painful to read, Tibor Banek who would have turned over his columnist, or his mother, in less than half a blink, so “You’re right,” he says to Herr Hebert, snapping shut the enamel tin. “Seraphim is our secret to keep.”

“For as long as we may,” as Herr Hebert tugs at his sticky tie and reaches for his meerschaum pipe. No one will ever guess the boy, as meek as he is, but Blum ought at least be buttonholed, forewarned is forearmed, especially when it concerns the Commission; though why they should care overmuch about either Seraphim or a puppet playhouse is a matter of serious speculation, one that he does not care to share with Herr Konrad. If strict morals are the issue, there are whole streets that would benefit more profitably from the attention, like the gamblers’ row of dice houses, each more crooked than the last, or the old clandestine hovels where the country girls are taught filthy new tricks. Or, if they mean to make a scapegoat of a theatre with their Morals Act—itself so broadly written that it is a stone thrown into a pond with no bottom, and no way to tell where the splash might fly—they might start with Cockrill’s tarts, who flash their globes dependably at least once a night. Blum himself may have a theory or two on the issue, but the boy has been thin upon the ground at the office, ever since that ballyhoo in the Park; and didn’t that sell the papers…. For now Herr Eig is gone, and the Mercury Theatre is dark, so time enough to talk to Blum when he turns in his Opera review. For now, Herr Hebert sucks at his pipe and thinks longingly of a glass of ale drunk at the Wounded Lion down the block, where they cool the barrels in river water, and the serving girls wear blouses cut almost as low as Cockrill’s tarts’.

At that Palace that is not a palace, Cockrill himself is currently busy with his Gawdy, the rolling black eyes refusing, last night, to roll at all, one pointing left and one skewed straight down; not that anyone noticed, they were much too busy looking at Miss Mariam’s bouncing melons, all juicy pink-and-white. But still, a fellow ought to do his best when he puts on a show and “You’ve not been pullin’ your weight,” he says with a certain melancholy to Gawdy, who gives no flicker of reply, lying backside-up with his leather-skinned head twisted hard to one side, as “Lookit,” says Miss Mariam to Miss Polly, showing a folded picture in one of the penny-papers. “Just like a queen, an’t she?” Frau de Vries in her feathered cartwheel hat, real ostrich feathers come all the way from Africa, her white satin skirts bustled so high and cut so close you can almost see the shape of her legs, and “A real glass of fashion,” agrees Miss Polly, who shows her own beautiful legs at every possible opportunity. “And we could look just as smart, or almost, if Alban would open up his pocketbook once in a way!”

“Girls, girls. Does this look like the Opera House?” to bring Miss Polly’s sigh, and Miss Mariam’s snort, leaning over to crank vigorously at the window, to let in the hum of the streets if not its breeze, the chatter and sundown traffic and someone passing whistling that naughty new “Cupid” song, Cupid, Cupid, notch your bow/Shoot it where it ought to go—

—Haden in fact in passing and whistling to himself, a love song, a fuck song, on his way from just such business, one of his boys left sore from the attention; it is a new precautionary ritual he takes before spending much time with Frédéric. Begun that day at the church—and did the holy water boil to have him there beneath the roof? —listening to the choir but seeing only Frédéric, coat shed for the heat, singing the Latin phrases again and again, Qui tollis peccata mundi, as Haden watched from the heart of a mute and nervous longing held like a lozenge on the tongue, the secret space of a solitude he longs to share, and sharing cure, there is no name for this feeling but it is very strong. And heading off afterward down the church steps, Frédéric ebullient and flurried to drop his satchel-bag, a tumble of Scout pen and notebook and a letter From home, letting Haden when he asked see the envelope: a lady’s stationery, a lady’s hand to ask a mother’s questions, is he eating well, is he working too hard, will he not come home for a visit soon to see his dear parents and Marie: Who’s Marie? to bring a different sort of flush, not a happy one, and A family friend, Frédéric said, which Haden could see, anyone could see was a lie trying to tell some truth, the truth itself just a few sentences down—She asks me daily for news of you, she lives for your letters—as without comment Haden handed back the letter, and Frédéric shoved it deep into the bag.

And then the walking and the talking, as they do, now, never has he spent so many daylight hours on his feet, his business has begun to suffer: for it needs time to listen and prowl, throw dice and deal cards and police his boys, who without him only grow lax, take license for laziness, and waste their days as they used to, winking at rentiers and trading punches over who has the green knickers and who greases the rope for whom. And now is not the time to be off-duty, the city all a-prickle with rumors, some of which center on this Opera night, so many toffs come to town with their suppers and balls, masquerades and ladies’ teas—a shame that he has no girls to send to such things; may be he ought to get a girl or two, someone like that iron virgin at the Mercury, she looks game enough for any tussle, though she seems to take particular pleasure in slamming the door in his face: Is it deaf he is, or only stupid? Sir said be off, so be off.

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!”

“Your halo’s crooked, parson,” pleasant from Istvan, but Rupert without warning stops and bends to the man, mouth close to his ear, and “Lot’s wife,” says Istvan admiringly as they walk on, for the priest has apparently been turned to salt, or stone, or something equally white and silent and immobile. “Whatever did you say to him, Mouse?”

“I said,” Rupert without a smile, “that I’d buy him a drink or break his neck, his choice, but either way he must stop that noise. —Come on then, we’ll be late if we don’t hurry,” taking Istvan firmly by the elbow, his other hand raised high to hail a cab.

In the false dusk of dimmed electric light, the overture rises: violins and dark tympani, to warn that the tale to come will be a tragic one. Conversation quiets in the seats and boxes, all the way up to the Lords’ Box of Cupid’s-eye view and red velvet, dressed in sprays of balsam fern and white freesia, occupied by de Vries and de Metz as well as several lesser courtiers, like Tibor Banek, all taken by the honor and determined to make the most of the company; Benjamin de Metz is in particular demand, like royalty come from afar. Frau de Vries sips iced champagne, already her second glass, and wafts a fan of feathers so massive and unwieldy they repeatedly obstruct her neighbor’s view; Christobel de Metz folds away the playbill, the only one in the box to have consulted it at all.

Tomas the baritone enters, singing of war and conquest, trailed by a litter of choristers: he is some amalgam of Antony, Caesar, and possibly Alexander or Tamburlaine; what he sings is historical nonsense, but his silver breastplate gleams and his voice rolls out like thunder, to much impressive effect, especially amongst the ladies of the audience. In the back, the very farthest of the cheap seats, where not a few playbills are deployed furiously as fans, Haden sweats in his brocade as Frédéric whispers something of the story, tells him to mark how the music will change at Cleopatra’s arrival, and when Dolabello creeps in stage left; Frédéric’s warm lips brush against Haden’s ear, once is an accident, twice is deliberate; is it? Haden grips the playbill in his fist.

Istvan and Rupert sit far down front, between a tired banker and his sparkling wife, and a matron who wears on her lilac bosom a gold brooch in the shape of an ankh. Entering, there was some rustling recognition of these men of the Mercury, murmurs and raised eyebrows and even a dash of applause, Istvan acknowledging all with a gentleman’s bow, Rupert with a guarded nod; now Rupert watches the show, Istvan the crowd; both are engaged. When Miss Annelore Bart enters, to audible gasps—descending, singing, from the ceiling, on a cloud-draped contraption much like a trapeze artist’s swing—they share a little look, a little smile, Spinning Jennie come back to life with unmarked skin and a glass-cutting soprano; the mirrors sewn cunningly to her skirts glitter and flash, like something Puggy might have dreamed to life. And the orchestra would have pleased Jonathan Shopsine, its cello-rich moans and cries, its banshee violins…. Rupert, listening, recalls a tune played in a drawing room, four hands on the keyboard, white keys and black; Istvan muses on the music for the roulette show, such violins perhaps? or the rowdy squeezebox squawk? to befit a pair of gods in rude disguise.

Cleopatra, upon reaching the stage, falls almost at once into the grip of passion, represented by the grip of her co-star, who had eaten a hasty meal of garlic cod less than an hour before curtain; their clinch requires more acting prowess than normal from the exquisite Miss Bart, who grits her teeth and forces herself to think of her divine dresser’s assistant, whose fingers are like little mice, capering up and down in her skirts, ah, the pleasure of it awaits at intermission! as she surrenders herself to the embrace of bold Antony or Caesar, who thinks bitterly of his business manager while his mouth cries out his love. Backstage, a props runner faints from the heat, dropping his armful of balsa spears with a thud barely masked by a soaring high C; a tin of kerosene spills and nearly catches flame; the stage manager calls upon the Devil to witness his manifest misfortunes; on the stairway servants pass and scuttle, as more iced champagne is delivered to the Lords’ Box.

“Upon the Nile we dream,” exalts the soprano.

“Upon the Nile we die,” mourns the baritone, as evil Dolabello enters like an asp through the stiffened paper reeds, their motion glimpsed before his own; it is a wonderful effect, appreciated by Christobel, attending to the show as those around her drink or sigh or murmur one to the other, Herr Banek to Herr de Vries; only Benjamin is still and silent, a new silence—cloven, impatient—that troubles his wife, whose glance touches him again and again, her rubies glowing sullen as blood in the shadows of the box.

As Dolabello reveals the extent of his dreadful duplicity, the wailing Cleopatra is dragged off to the underworld by several helmeted actors, one of whom treads too hard on her costume and partly rips the mirrored hem. Caesar attempts to follow but is trapped by the waving reeds, themselves revealed to be infested by agents of Dolabello, the actors rising up with long stalks pinned fore and aft, that they must detach before they can begin to do battle. Most are deft and successful but two are not, for several frantic song-filled moments, as confused laughter sparks from the audience; finally the grand and terrible tympani crash again, covering the noise and ending the first act. As the house lights rise, Istvan reflects cheerfully upon the superiority of puppets as actors, as Rupert tilts his head, taking in the architecture of the building with a professional’s eye, the flies and the lights, the painted balconies, the half-curtained Lords’ Box—

—where, champagne in hand, Benjamin stares down at the empty stage: and sees that tilt, that turned head, that profile and that face: and turns at once as if in summons from a god, abandoning his seat and the box and Frau de Vries in mid-sentence, as if all have ceased in that moment to exist. Christobel leans to the railing, to see what has so entirely claimed her husband, and sees instead Istvan alone, whom she recognizes at once, that cold player’s grace unchanged—then turns a brusque, distracted look on the man now introduced to her by Herr de Vries, his upright lieutenant Herr Eig: whose gaze at Christobel de Metz is so palpably dumbfounded it is as if he, too, has seen an immortal, some goddess of the truth in tea-colored silk, whose handshake is as firm as any man’s.

Heading up the aisle for the refreshments in the lobby, Istvan’s lips twitch to glimpse what first seems to be an actor strayed from a circus tent, for what mere groundling—and these are the groundling seats—could ever appear so hectically arrayed? But it is Haden in his blinding tailcoat, with Frédéric beside, Istvan stopping to chat with both and take in the heat between them, stir the pot a bit with a naughty aside, another quote from the ancients—“Accedat, sine: laxior redibit,” Let him draw nigh: the laxer he shall go—to make Frédéric blush as he translates for Haden, whose face is such a crossroads—of embarrassment, ardor, umbrage at Istvan—that it is practically a show in itself; as behind the trio, a red-coated servant of the Opera approaches, bearing a folded note.

Outside on the portico, Rupert stands with a cigar, taking the air amongst, it seems, more than half the audience, ladies with fans and dewdrop bottles and the occasional dainty cigarette, men with their hats beneath their arms, the lobby orchestra a-saw again at something meant to be exotic. Past the portico’s white marble, a small army of dark figures waits and shifts and reconfigures, cabdrivers and whores and bored snatchpockets and boys bent on disruption, several of them Haden’s boys set there to wait in case they might be needed. Some are merely citizens loitering as the evening cools, enjoying the drifting strains from the orchestra; some of them love the opera, its music and its beauty, and wish that they could afford to attend. Others think that such lavish entertainments are a folly for the rich and a thumbed nose at the poor, who can barely pay for loaf or lager, let alone the coin it takes to take up space in such a hothouse; and others still who see those yearnings and divisions as helpful fissures and tools for a sundering, a rendering, a hard reapportioning to come, if all the new men are true to their new ideals. Let the old world roll itself clean of lords’ boxes and spilt champagne, and let the liberty and largesse accrue instead to the honest sons of honest toil—or the ones styled so, as the Globe takes care to do, whether they are honest or not, toilers or not; it is the naming that matters, and if most of those who shake their fists long secretly to sit in those boxes and drink that champagne and throw the empty bottles at their brethren on the sidewalk, is that not the nature of Man, to seek to better himself? And there are so many men now, so adrift and anxious to be directed, as this new world schools itself daily how to spin, and for whom.

Smoke drifts in puffs and clouds; a young woman laughs, rather too loudly; the lobby orchestra begins the prelude for the second act. Benjamin passes again through the crowd, jaw set, looking, looking, searching for Rupert who has already gone inside, gathering Istvan, who tosses back the last of his kir, the note from Christobel de Metz folded into his breast pocket, Please join us for a cordial after the performance: shall they go, shall he show it to Mouse or shall he not? And how very enormously strange it all is, that the Snow Youth has come to the Opera after all.

Mr. and Mrs. Cowtan also retake their seats, Mrs. Cowtan avid for the gowns she sees around her, the creamy silks and jewels, as Cowtan eyes Blum, that scribbler who fronts for the so-called “Seraphim,” who did not even bother to attend the opening of the Cleopatra’s Lear; and whose identity, Cowtan is sure, is really that of editor Hebert, pretending to stand for civic discourse while using controversy to sell more copies of his fishwrap. Some men, it is plain, have no moral compass at all.

And Frédéric, flushed from the heat and the wine drunk in the lobby, two glasses gulped much too quickly, quotes to Haden—as a cosmopolitan man should do, boldly and with humor—more from M. Hilaire and the ancients, that even bawdier bit of the paltry gods and the ne’er-do-wells, Haden’s gaze somewhat glazed for his forte is not forbearance, and there is only so far he can go without going too far, without putting his hands to either side of that face and his scarred mouth to Frédéric’s own, and let whatever hot disaster befall—

—as the lights go down again, as Benjamin with singing nerves reenters the box past Martin Eig unseen and dismissed, Martin Eig whose life’s horizons have just been forcibly altered by the conversation of Christobel de Metz, Martin Eig propelled fully out of the building into the bawl and mutter of the streets, pushing past the whores and loiterers, as Cleopatra appears onstage in purple velvet, romanced by Dolabello with all the cruel allures of the afterlife.

And as the story wends through catastrophe to denouement, as Dolabello is stabbed and then resurrected as a capering demon, as Antony who is not Antony sacrifices himself to that demon to save his lady-love, floating now on a barge pulled by a dozen perspiring supernumeraries, Rupert pats his forehead with his handkerchief and murmurs to Istvan, who nods very slightly, as Cleopatra’s path to expiration or triumph begins its third interminable hour. The moment she dies and the applause begins, Rupert stands over Istvan, who smiles—“Love to Mab; don’t wait up”—thinking to sample that cordial solo, and see what it is that brings the Happy Prince and his princess to town. But first, a fortifying taste of brandy as he assumes the mask, stepping lightly past the clamor of departure into a far side aisle—

—where to Istvan’s surprise Haden stands as if waiting for him, his face perfectly unmasked, all woe and passion and “Milord Peacock,” says Istvan with some hilarity, “where’s your good angel?” But seeing that Haden is incapable of speech, he links arms with him instead and “Come with me,” for why not find out, now, just what this kit knows of Benjamin de Metz, whose name he is so pleased to feint with, and “Try to smile, yeah?” as together they cross the main aisle, together mount the stairs to the Lords’ Box, stopped by a frowning usher, who, appeased then by the note, lets them pass as if to the very Throne of Paradise itself; that passage watched from below by Cowtan and his lady with shared incredulity, for why should that dirty-minded puppet-dandler go so freely where Cowtan, in his loyalty a friend, almost, is not invited at all?

Herr de Vries and his lady have already departed to usher in the supper guests, Herr Banek not to be part of that supper, either; even loyalty has limits. But as sole hostess in the box, Christobel offers the smile she imagines Isobel would have, Isobel who so prized these men, this curious M. Dieudonne and his cher ami—but no, for here enters another beside him, a man much younger in a wild gaycoat, who for one disorienting moment Christobel sees as a double of M. Dieudonne’s: not that they look alike, for they do not, yet somehow—is it the eyes?—are manifestly the same.

As Haden, confused to total silence, bows over her hand, Istvan looks to Benjamin de Metz, Pluto’s son more formidably handsome than ever, his eyes blank as if in fever as he looks past Istvan’s outstretched hand; while Christobel, her voice calm and steady, offers to the two men her greetings, and tiny silver glasses of the tart local wine: “Please refresh yourselves, gentlemen,” as she watches her husband’s face.

In the exiting crush of the lobby, Edgar Rue, having found Miss Bart amenable to an invitation for a late aperitif, smiles in Olympian enjoyment at a bevy of young operatic nymphs, when a sudden body passes him swift as a thief’s; he in fact even checks his billfold in the wake of that passing, but sees after a startled moment that it is the writer Blum, though in obvious distress, is he ill? Loudly he calls after: “Herr Blum! Herr Blum, are you quite well?”

—but Frédéric does not answer, Frédéric so beside himself with shame that he wishes the stained pavement would crack in two and the earth swallow him whole, exactly what he deserves for what he has done, the mad lunge of it, the—hunger, oh, it is incredible! He could blame the heat or the drink but it is himself who has done the deed, who has entirely sullied and ruined what was beautiful beyond belief, beautiful as Haden’s eyes, as his face turned to Frédéric’s to speak, the two of them stepped out from the crowd into a dim side aisle, when without any warning he—say it, he leaned forward and kissed his friend, kissed those soft and smiling lips he has longed for so long to taste, then jerked back to see Haden staring at him in utter shock, Haden who surely will never speak to or look at him again, no, all is over, over—

—as Frédéric’s flight continues into the black humidity of the streets, while the lobby orchestra plays on, their bows’ horsehair snapped and trailing, shirts stuck to their bodies with sweat, the music rising over the crowd and the constables and several men with placards protesting the decadent opera, placards no one can actually read in the darkness, the men themselves uncaring whether an opera takes place or not, but caring very much for the money passed to them by Costello, himself heading home now, snuff-stained and tired, for the night has been a long one, and a hot one—

—presided over by the heatless moon, who like a faraway sentry watches them all, bravos and broken hearts and many lusts fomenting, the emptying square to the crowding boulevards to the quieter streets of open windows, the windows of the Mercury, where Rupert sits, tepid tea and shirtsleeves, beside Tilde at the table with her divining cards. Surprised by his entrance, she moved to hide them, but his interest bade her pause: “Those cards, they are what is called Tarot?” and “Taroc, Sir. I can show you,” laying out a spread just for him, as she has longed to do from the first. Hares and crowns, doves and flowers, a year’s panoply distilled into flight and battle: see the lords and knaves embracing, the queens presiding, those knaves and queens so like the puppets in their obliquity, their ferocity, their capacity for showing the truth; that fact seen by Tilde in her very first sight of Mr. Pollux and Mr. Castor, up on the stage like figures sprung from a living deck, refracted now back to Rupert watching her small, soap-chapped, supremely competent little hands separating, like strings untangled, what is from what might be and “You will want to watch this one,” she says, tapping the knave of crowns, his sly-eyed glare from the painted paper as he hides a diadem beneath his coat, a crown to which he holds no right. “He is a bad one, Sir.”

And Rupert looking from those eyes to hers so very blue and unblinking—Istvan calls it her Jeanne d’Arc stare, there at the stake and She’d burn for you, you know, poor poppet. In fact she does now—himself kindly and half-serious to ask, “But how shall I know the fellow?” as she, all serious, holds his gaze and “Oh, Sir,” she says. “Already he knows you.“

And, still holding that gaze, she sees in startlement another thing, however has she missed it, that his left eye differs from his right, that he turns his head, slightly, carefully, to keep her two eyes in sight with his one; why, he must have a blind side, Sir, a sight to touch and terrify her equally, that he can only ever see half of what awaits him. Well, she must keep double watch then, on him, and that flighty M. Stefan, on this place and its puppets—

—those characters now like cards undealt, the silk-draped two who need none other but that other two, their moving human avatars; and beyond them that sadder, separate pair, the angel and the devil freighted with so much force and thwarted joy, unboxed, careless to lie together in the darkness, what springs to life when angels breed? And both the cards and the puppets the sideways gift, perhaps, of that other, greater, more elusive Mercury, the god of the third ear, the lord of three letters, of filth and laughter and deception, of word and wood and flesh the triple fulcrum that tips the stars.

“Cleopatra’s Rapsodia”

Contributed by Seraphim

Opera is the art form closest to the heart of man, and yet the simplest, for all its glorious machinations. That painful simplicity was fully displayed at the Civic Opera’s staging of Cleopatra’s Rapsodia, a classic tale of true love and despair. As Queen of the Nile, Miss Annelore Bart was in fine voice, and ably partnered by the great Tomas as Antony, and as Dolabello, Mr. Samuel Gunst made a worthy opponent. The stagecraft, if flawed at times, was adequate to its task. And the deepest import of the lovers’ story, as beauty is destroyed by open lust and exile to Hell itself becomes the only course, was amply, tragically in evidence in the course of the evening’s performance.

Your angelic correspondent must conflate that tale with our city’s political drama, as the Morals and Standards Act, approved by those who feared to oppose it, takes full hold. Many venues have already suffered: the Palais des idées salons are listless and poorly attended; the Literary Leopards are no longer allowed into the Park; the Gentle Friends of the Ballet have canceled all performances of Salome’s Sister in favor of The Tale of Ruth. Even at the acrobats’ circus, the female tumblers’ Oriental costumes were deemed too diaphanous for public viewing and were replaced by muslin shifts, to the sad detriment of their tumbling. And at the Mercury Theatre, those wooden heroes of the boards are still unfairly suppressed into silence: exactly how and by whom, our readers are urged to consult the Globe to learn.

Further, your correspondent now finds himself pursued by that very same Morals Commission, which aims to drive him, too, into silence, though Herr Konrad, the Daily Solon’s publisher, and Herr Hebert, its editor, have both refused to bend to this outrageous pressure. Today it is a theatre critic. Tomorrow it may be a constable, or a legislator, or perhaps Mayor Eszterhaus himself. Where else can such fearful censorship finally lead?

As citizens it is surely our duty to obey our leaders. But if those who lead should prove unworthy of our trust…? Let the darkness of the Mercury continue as our beacon, let the bare stage become our home! Cry freedom, dear fellow citizens, cry the Mercury! And your correspondent will continue to offer his dispatches for as long as freedom shall permit.

This dice house smells of spilled malt and burned hair, a drunkard’s head too close to the flame of a broken lamp, a tankard left on the table where Istvan sits with bad wine and a pair of dice so warped that they barely move when tossed, but lie sullen as old stumps, as tedious as the gamblers surrounding him tonight, with Mouse at home steeped in work and growling, more crossed-out than written in—

You’re nearly done—why not treat yourself, and take a quarter-hour off? I won’t tell.

And let the last speeches write themselves, is that it? Go on, go lose some coin—

—in the midnight streets as warm as the desert and nearly as deserted, the evening’s first venue all gin and nudging elbows, a half-dozen so-called friends of the Mercury who could not seem to decide if there was more glory in trouncing the famous M. Hilaire at dice or in buying him drinks; the next, a solemn spot of drawn draperies and horsehair chairs, nearly too solemn to admit a man of his unpleasant notoriety, though they took what money they could from him before he took his leave, and took pleasure in his attendance, too, as if they mean somehow to own him by proxy, to rub at his luster, boasting if they best him to their comrades in the offices or shops; do they think they so possess him, these players, either way?

And now, in this box in a row of boxes, each smaller and more noxious than the last, squats a motley crowd of tumblers, some too timid to fully stake—why play at all, then, if loss is such a bugbear?—and others too drunk or irascible to take their falls with equanimity. One big fellow has been glaring at Istvan for the better part of an hour, played out of the game but still its self-appointed marshal, watching with suspicion as if this fancy man, this theatre fellow—for here, too, they all know him, as if he wears a laurel wreath or Bottom’s ears—might be cheating them beneath their very eyes, for “A magic-man’s first cousin to a broadsman,” the big fellow speaking as if to the air, saying it once and then again until finally Istvan must swivel in his seat to ask if “You call me cheating?” his voice as neutral as the knife in his pocket, his eyebrows faintly raised but “Roll on,” growls the old man at his left, an unbuttoned vest, gray teeth as stumpy as the dice. “I need to lose and go home.”

Istvan rolls; Istvan wins: Istvan loses; the old man takes the dice. A slim figure passes the open doorway, all blond pallor and trailing scarf: is it the bébé? but no, just another not half so lovely, lovely Luc missed more by Istvan than he had thought the boy could be, his kisses and his chatter, even his tears; and where does he keep himself these nights? Never at the Mercury, closed or open, nor at the Heads or Tails or any of the usual card-havens, or the Cocked Hat or Cemetery, or loitering amongst the boys who belong to the kit; he is simply nowhere, like a sunbeam whose clouded light fails to fall—

“Whoreson dice!” the old man snarls, slamming them down to the table as “He’s not got your luck, Your Honor,” nods the man next to Istvan, a wall-eyed smiler, and “If it’s luck,” says the big fellow, staring at Istvan who sighs, who puts his hands to the table prepatory to violence, but “Fuck yourself standing,” calls a voice from the doorway, “you grimy ape,” and “What you say? To me?” the big fellow’s face almost a-grin at Haden glum in scarlet and gray, some hideous posy jammed into his lapel, he looks like a sad scaramouche but when he breaks an empty bottle on the big fellow’s neck it shatters straight enough, the dicers scattering in blood and glass as Istvan clubs the fellow with his forearm, boxes his ears, and “There’s your luck,” with a last stiff cuff across the face, up and out then as nimble as Haden’s boys waiting in the doorway, who hoot and dash between and around Haden and Istvan and the roaring fellow now staggering broken-nosed into the street, a cat’s cradle of taunts and tripping feet, and “That Hercules,” Haden frowning, leading Istvan down one sideway and up the narrow next, past black puddles and a dented bin, ”you shouldn’t even have played him. An’t you know his game is battering, not dice?”

“No, I did not…. Well-played by you, at any rate. A drink to even us?” nodding to a tavern across the way, a mildly dingy den below a painted white flower, the Drooping Lily, where no women are admitted, where men sit matched or solo at the tables, where both Istvan and Haden are known, though not together, a wash of snigger and speculation as they take seats by the door, and “Not that bilge,” Haden scornful to the serving boy approaching with two lagers. “Brandy, quick it.—But we’ve played together before, an’t we?” with a gloomy smile, the brackish brandy drunk as soon as it is set to the table. “‘Regno, regnavi, regnabo,’ remember?”

“You did not,” says Istvan, unpleased by the memory, that flashy houndstooth dealer, all those lucky red cards, “and if you did, why, fuck yourself standing. I don’t need you to make my play—”

“You do,” belching in the second round of brandies, so much liquor today and no food at all, nowadays Haden does not care to eat, everything tastes like silt and straw; and at night when he tries to sleep he dreams again and again of that kiss, that bolt from the blue, Frédéric’s mouth so sweet upon his own—and then Frédéric’s eyes wide with despair, or disgust, or whatever it was that drove him off and away, as if the opera building were ablaze around him. Two weeks, now, without a word or a whisper, two whole weeks of Haden pacing the bridge, and passing the rooming house, and ghosting at the Solon’s offices and the theatres, wondering if the silent Mercury shelters Frédéric somehow, for surely he can be found no place else…. Himself barred from there by Bok, Bok and his little blue-eyed bitch, but this foxy Hilaire—“Let me in your play, uncle, don’t say no. I’m better your friend than your enemy, believe it.”

“Oh, and I the same,” coldly, tossing back the inferior liquor. “I have been playing a long time, I was watching men cut to ribbons when you were still mumbling at your nurse’s tit.“

“I’ve cut a few myself,” his inner gaze to memory’s gutter, amethyst and blood, “since that tit—the first tit and the last for me, I think you are the same. In fact, I know it.”

“You do?” The third round arrives; they eye each other, Istvan through his lashes, Haden sucking at his scar, both feeling the spark between them, a sharp heat that is not lust, or chooses not to be: rather one mirror opposed to the other, in malice, humor, a testing of the will until “Well,” says Istvan, now wearing half a smile, “I suppose one picks up plenty as close to the ground as you are, groundling, whatever ground it is that you hail from—”

—to bring from Haden a wandering tale with signposts of real truth—the stench of the burning city, the self-made orphan on the war-torn road, the corporal’s hand heavy on his shoulder—as does Istvan’s own retold, an origin in echo except “I hadn’t,” says Haden, “all your advantages,” does he mean Rupert, the puppets and the shows? so “No,” agrees Istvan, “you did not. But nor did I, at first…. At first I sang,” with another smile, a different humor, “so that my mother and my sister could eat. Men like a little singing boy, have you ever marked that, kit?”

“I have,” says Haden; he is not smiling. “I have marked that. It’s why I keep watch on my own boys.”

“Like the bébé? Where is he, these long days?”

“Disappeared,” with a darker shrug. “I keep watch on my boys, uncle, and I fucking well don’t like to lose them, or have them poached out from under me.—Brandy, quick it.”

“There’s no more,” says the server, tugging his damp taprag. “You two gents drank us out.”

“Out? You fucking twister. Here,” offering his flask, “Calvados,” Istvan drinking, Haden drinking, until that drink is done as well, Istvan then producing his own flask of fine Armagnac as “He taught me to play, yeah?” thinking of Rupert, of the rooftops and the roads, all the roads that lead to the room where Rupert sits struggling, alone with his paper world. “Who taught you? Your military man?”

“He taught me fuck-all but the cards,” says Haden; he is so drunk that he can think, in this moment, without any rancor of the corporal, with an owlish dispassion, almost affection. “They showed me to do—what I do. But he knew that I could do it. It’s why he picked me, picked me up on the road—”

“Though you didn’t know your right hand from your left in that lords’ box, now, did you?” in the operatic dimness, that young missus in her silk so like the lost Madame as to make one blink; and the kit dazed but rallying, though plainly never knowing de Metz from a hole in the ground, yet what a fine shot in the dark to have said so before! Instinct; no one can teach that…. And Benjamin, yes, still young but Puck no longer, fully fled into a kind of wasteland, mute to stare at Istvan with open antipathy, until at last I barely knew you, Monsieur, you look so much older now and Time will accomplish that, Istvan’s own cold smile, his courtesy as cold to add You’ve missed M. Bok, to those dark dilated eyes: Pluto’s son, yes, but Pluto having no real issue call him Phaëton instead, the reins of power fully in his hands, what heaven does he think to cross, here? And how soon must it be, when he himself comes calling on Mouse? One might have guessed him to come already, from whatever local eyrie he bides; his visit is in all the papers, which may be why Mouse is so unsettled. “Did the fine lady frighten you, with all her pretty jewels?”

“Nice jewels,” Haden nods, “a nice lady. She looks just like a horse. And she knew you plainly,” and that greekish lordship did, too, though no one said much of anything, just drank the figgy wine from the sweating silver cups and nodded at how hot the night was, and how fine the singers had been, and how hot it was, truly, until You’ve missed M. Bok to bring that heat to that lord’s eyes: was it a gambler’s throw, or did he know, Hilaire, that that would send them packing from the box, with the horsy lady watching them go, watching everything, no flies on her—

—as “Here you are,” a man in green linen tottering up to their table, scrub brush beard and the smell of soda cologne, as a pair of drinkers wobble past and out the door, one singing the “Cupid” song, the other pausing to blurt some piss just past the threshold. “The great Hilaire,” he says coquettishly to Istvan, dropping down a Solon folded open, “immortalized in the ed—the eda—the editorial. I’ll help you cry the Mercury, my dear, if—ugh!” as Haden tips him backward with a stiffened palm to the brisket, just like felling a half-chopped tree, and “Many seem to know me,” Istvan says, bemused, watching the whiskered man climb clumsily back to his feet, but “No one fucking knows you, or me either, uncle. No one knows anyone,” Haden staring at the Solon, half-mournful, half-enraged, so “Your friend,” says Istvan helpfully, pushing the paper toward him. “He knows, or means to. See how he stirs the pot.”

“What?”

“Your angelic friend.—You’ve never thanked me, by the by, for the introduction.”

“What in hell’s name do you mean?”

And Istvan seeing, then, that the kit does not see, does not know the real provenance of the journalistic Seraphim: oh, a double-door farce, he had called it plain the first time! So to cheer the young felon, that farce is made plain, as Haden’s face goes pale, then red—

“But how the fuck do you know this? That he is the writer?”

“How can one not? Read the words, you see him, pile ou face—”

—as Haden’s face changes again, leavened by the lie, the small glorious lie, felix culpa of this dear and moral Frédéric, who, less moral, is all the more dear for “All this time,” says Haden, “he’s been funning me! All this time I’d thought it was someone else, that Seraphim fellow using him like I use my boys—”

“And I my mecs; he’s mec to himself, a singular economy of effort, yeah?” but Haden is in no shape to parse this nicety, is staring at the paper as if Frédéric-Seraphim himself might spring forth from its pages, as Istvan winks and “No doubt there’s not been time to talk it out between you, what with all the lovering and suchlike?” to bring the tale of another commedia farce—as the tavern continues to empty around them in pipe smoke and arm-in-arm departures, as the server slumps yawning at the bar—Haden head in hands to tell in murmurs of those moments on the bridge, on the rooming house stoop, the fantastic moment at the opera where “He kissed me, he—and then he ran. And has been running ever since.”

“Fleeing Eden, like a good seraph should. Go and get him, then, tell him what you know—”

“But I do not know,” with enormous drunken furious precision, one finger raised as if for balance. “Where. He is.”

“If I were you,” Istvan says, “I’d try the church.”

The yellow eyes widen like the dawn about to break and “Yes!” says Haden, “yes, the church!” Levering himself upright in fumes of liquor and clouds of joy, his face a feral boy’s, that strange combination of scoundrel knave and loyal jack and “I’m gone, then, uncle,” with a backward glance of honest gratitude, half-gallop, half-stumble into the dark, and “Our Lord loves a drunkard,” Istvan calling after with amusement, capping his flask, yawning to his feet as the other last customer approaches, an odd man with clean-shaven cheeks and a semblance of a smile and “You say,” says that man, “that the Lord loves a drunkard?”

“Why, he must. He changed the water at that wedding, didn’t he.”

The tavern is very quiet; something drips, regular, melodious; the server dozes. The man takes his stance between Istvan’s table and the door and “You’re Herr Hilaire,” he says. “Herr Stefan Hilaire, aren’t you.”

“I am. But I’m truly not in the mood,” though if this fellow is casting about, he is about it in some fashion Istvan does not recognize, stiff-backed and strangely eager and “I have read,” the man leaning closer, to tap at the newspaper on the table, “of the Mercury Theatre, your shows with Herr Bok, Herr Rupert Bok. You have played together for some time, is that true?”

“That is true.”

“Some say that the shows you play are—immoral shows, and that you two are immoral men. Is that true?”

“Tell me,” says Istvan; he smiles; his hand slides into his pocket, where the knife resides. “Would you say that you yourself are a moral man?”

The man stares at him; Emory stares at him. “I am.”

“Then stay the fuck away,” with a beautiful bow, unmoving elsewise, waiting for this man to make whatever move he means to—as the server stirs, and passes wind, and coughs himself upright to call blearily, “We’re closed, gents, closed now,” to bring Emory’s stiff bow in return, no false smile now, and “I meant to see you for myself,” says Emory. “And now I have seen. Good luck to you, and to Herr Bok,” leaving Istvan there to watch him step into the street, a shadow meeting other shadows without substance as “We’re closed,” the server calls again. “It’s time for gents to go.”

And Istvan in wakened watchfulness steps out himself, making his way through the streets of this city that could be, is, every city he has ever walked, man and boy, no street his home, back to the alley door beyond which Tilde sleeps head on the table, waking with a start at the sound of the key to jam one hand into her pocket, skirt sleeve but “Softly,” Istvan’s murmur, “it’s I. Where’s our lord and master?”

Rubbing her cloudy eyes, “Writing on the play of the Youth,” as if it were the Sermon on the Mount.

But upstairs Istvan finds that Rupert has put to rest his pen for now and rests, himself, cramped and sleeping at his desk, teacup and cigar ash and the Solon folded open, its editorial a brew poorly mingled of defense and anxiety—As the noble Solon himself wrote, “Speech is the mirror of action.” So let our own Seraphim be unsilenced, as he speaks only for the good of the citizens, and thus the good of those citizens’ government. As always does the Daily Solon itself!—and atop the newspaper a little red journal Istvan has never seen before, a journal full of poems that he scans, now, with a sphinx’s gaze in the lamplight, like a script of those days in the dark of the garden, as if calling the past back into being, Maître, Maître and “Maître,” a whisper at Rupert’s ear just enough to rouse him, to cross the room and strip and climb together into the little bed by the windows, drapes half-drawn to shield the gaze of the street while admitting its breath still warm as a breathless lover’s, yet never heat enough to save the Snow Youth, on whose precipice the tale’s ending still depends.

CHRISTOBEL DE METZ’S JOURNAL

2 August 18—

The summer heat in this city is pervasive, even at dawn—at which today I was awake and stirring, since I am always early to rise, because of Isau. (How very much I miss him! Adela writes faithfully of how he fares: that he has overcome what we feared at first was the croup, that every night he waves to the moon and says “Good-night, Mamma!” for Adela has told him that the moon can see me.) And what sight greeted me this dawn, but Herr de Vries—in his dressing-gown, no less—with his hands upon a pretty young man, hardly more than a boy, quite visibly unsteady on his feet. Herr de Vries was manifestly displeased to see me, and at once sent the boy away, half stumbling up the pink marble staircase, though he smiled as I asked Is the poor creature unwell? Is he your servant? answering Why, yes, Madame, in a manner of speaking…. Dear Madame, you must be a true lark at heart, like myself, while he steered me into the morning room for hastily brought tea, apparently meaning to distract me with questions—Did I not enjoy last evening’s Spanish dancing, and Frau de Vries’ daytime excursion, She said she’d showed you every jeweler in the city. Shall it be, today, the milliners’? though I quickly disabused him of that itinerary: I mean to see the specimens at the Lady’s Garden. And there is an interesting lecture this afternoon at the Virgo Society—

Herr de Vries simply laughed in my face. What, those unfortunate virgins, those bluestockings? You’d be better off riding the carousel in the Park if you seek some petty amusement. Why not save your energy for the theatre supper—no doubt my wife has told you all about it, though Frau de Vries has told me only of the gown she plans to wear, some shocking new French décolleté. Instead I read of this night’s occasion in the Globe, this fête to mark the advent of a citywide contest “rewarding true theatrical artistry, with the grand prize to be bestowed by his honor Benjamin de Metz, itself commencing with a formal supper hosted by our own esteemed commissioner, Herr de Vries.”

When I asked B. of it after breakfast, he was distracted and sharp—Stop plaguing me with questions!—then took up his papers, and bit his knuckles till they bled. (Isau seems already to have inherited this painful habit, though Adela rubs his thumb with bitter orange rind to make him stop. So far, it has not sufficed.) Privately I asked Emory if he thought his master was feeling ill, and he admitted that B. is not sleeping at all well here; for myself I can see that he drinks far too much, and eats far too little. He is indeed burdened with meetings and visits, the man from the bank has been here many times, Herr Robb with whom he goes to see his properties—one is a theatre called the Garden of Eden; such a quaint name; I thought of you.

And then there is the matter of M. Bok and M. Dieudonne, who here is called differently, Hilaire—it was quite a startlement, to see them at the Opera. Why B. and M. Bok parted, I do not know, nor did you, though we knew together that that wound was sacred, like the signet ring that he never removes; now, here, I see how deeply it continues to ache, more deeply than even I feared. When M. Hilaire came to the box without M. Bok, accompanied by that young actor, it upset B. greatly; he nearly ordered them out, and was abrupt and rude at the petite supper that followed; Herr de Vries was quite annoyed, though he strove to mask it. And his wife—

They laugh at me, I know, and pity me, Frau de Vries and her ilk, that night I heard her call me a “blind betty”; I know what that means. Even Adele Guerlain has more than once offered her clumsy sympathies: Men, it’s just their way—my Achille is always off romping at that ridiculous theatre, and your Benjamin…. Oh, the men do just as they like! Sighing and patting my hand, as if we were sisters in misfortune. Misfortune! From earliest girlhood I saw how tedious and circumscribed was a woman’s life, and how little that life had to do with the woman I meant to become: sing and make conversation, attend the teas and musicales, array oneself for the balls—all that industry and glory only to entice and marry a man of position, then spend the rest of your days as a manner of brood mare, growing crabbed and miserable from babies and boredom, as if the flitting butterfly and drab chrysalis should be transposed. Frau de Vries, who is only slightly older than I, already has four children, and spends as much time as she can in the country to avoid her husband’s conjugal attentions—it is open gossip in the city, two of her bosom-friends were pleased to tell me so the very night that I arrived!

So how could they understand, these tittering ladies, that from the moment my father announced my betrothal to B., I was happy, very happy: because I knew you, my sister who was not yet my sister, I had met you, spoken with you, watched the way you conducted your household, saw the books that you read—Voltaire, recall? And Consuelo, I cherish still the copy that you gave me—and so I had no doubts, it was the life I knew I wanted. If B.’s attentions would always be elsewhere, if his heart could not fully be mine—tell me, what marriage in our society is ever contracted for love? And when I look at the painting hung in my salon, or the wedding miniature that you had made for us (the other, of B. alone, is still sadly missing); or at his face, his gaze when he plays the piano, I see that B. is and always will be beautiful, and to live beside such beauty is to live always in a kind of paradise. The way those women look at him, the women everywhere angling to touch his hand, to make him glance their way, to make him smile—Frau de Vries and her friends, they understand that, at least, very well.

Although nothing appears to be correctly understood by that deputy of Herr de Vries, Herr Eig. He had sent a note—Mme de Metz expressed an interest in botany, and it would be my great privilege and honor to conduct her to the Lady’s Garden if she is agreeable—and it is an agreeable Park to be sure, with winding lanes and small bowers of quite adequate statuary; the botanistic labeling is nicely exact, and you would relish their bromeliads! I suppose to be thoroughly correct I ought have shown the note to Herr de Vries, for the excursion was surely his doing, and thus it was my duty to B. to acquiesce.

Though I found at once that the servant is nothing like his master: Herr Eig arrived too early, had no conversation at all on the drive, and barely seemed to see the plants and flowers, though he stared like an imbecile when I pointed out the cunning little nombril de Venus—

It is—that is called the navel? Of Venus?

Yes. Isn’t it lovely? And it’s quite edible; it makes a very pleasant taste on the tongue.

Leaving the Lady’s Garden and its sentinel beeches, there is a sort of gipsy camp with a fortune-teller’s wheel, and passing there was a fascinating-looking girl, with eyes as blue as a Madonna’s and a carriage like a Russian queen’s. I would have liked to stop and speak to her, perhaps ask where she was from—for this city is host to many nationalities; my chambermaid is from Macedonia—but Herr Eig was aghast that I would think to engage with a “girl of the paths”; it is plain he thought she was some sort of foreign prostitute, whose very speech might pollute me. Then several boys hustled by, street boys, with such gay rambunctious chatter that I paused a moment to watch—

They are quite the gang of sparrows, aren’t they, like the tough little birds one sees in Paris!

Yes, this city has more than its share of vermin. Though I’ve petitioned Herr de Vries for greater resources for the Morals Commission—I am the chief deputy there, Madame, as perhaps you know, and hold considerable authority, of which he was anxious to give me every last bureaucratic detail, and even offer a tour of the offices; could anything be more tedious? And when I tried to venture beyond the Park, to what is called the cemetery—for as you taught me, one can see some fine examples of wild plant life in such places—Herr Eig was at my elbow to make sure I did no such thing. The whole experience was like being herded about by a nanny, or a shepherd’s dog! And he has a curious way of avoiding one’s gaze, a strange habit in one who is so professionally moral. You would have dispatched him with a mot, but I could only suffer him until it was time for the lecture, another event he misunderstood—

The Virgo Society? Madame, the females of that society are—They are not—

—but he could not tell me what they were or were not, could only stand by as I put myself into the cabriolet with a sigh of relief—a sigh he heard, for here came his head turtling back in the window, to note that he would see me this evening, at the competition supper—again without a shred of politesse, as if he were a policeman come to “round me up,” as the saying goes.

Thankfully, the Virgo Society meeting was as interesting as I had hoped: a bustling building in one of the merchants’ districts, filled with young women with easy manners and friendly smiles, several of whom, seeing that I was a stranger, made sure I had a desirable seat up front. The lecturer was most informative, a Mrs. Simone Treadwell discussing women’s rights and the redoubtable British “match girls,” of whom I had not heard before. It was like taking a tonic draught, to hear her speak.

And I needed a tonic, for on my return I found Frau de Vries in her glory, in her scandalous gown—and truly it is scandalous, even for our modern times, no “girl of the paths” could appear more louche than she. In answering mischief I have arrayed myself like a nun, with a high lace collar and only my wedding jewels and miniature of Isau as ornament. B. when he saw me blinked but did not scold, asking only if Emory had done a proper job of barbering: His hand shook so, I feel as if my face is raw.

He did a thorough job, as always. And you look very handsome, as always.

B. looked to me then, and to the pile of Adela’s letters on my writing desk, this journal left marked with its black ribbon, the ivory roses in the vase. I hear you went to the gardens today, he said, and put his hand to my shoulder; it felt dreadfully warm, as if he had a fever, the way Isau sometimes grows feverish in the heat. You miss her greatly, don’t you? So do I. Sometimes I think I shall grieve her until I die.

I should rather grieve her than never have known her love.

You sound just like Belle, he said; it was such praise I could have wept. Instead I kissed his cheek, and we went down together to receive the guests for supper, among them Herr Banek, whose newspaper calls the Mercury Theatre, M. Bok’s theatre, “an offense to public morals,” and is pleased to have closed it against the protests of many citizens, the critic Seraphim among them, and the Virgo Society, too; thanks in part, one reads, to the work of the vigilant Herr Eig. So, since their theatre is not to be allowed to take part in this competition, I shall privately inquire if M. Bok and M. Hilaire might consider a performance here at the townhouse, as a cheering surprise for B., and a fillip to those who pontificate as if they were clergy, yet act, and dress, as trulls—to “reward true theatrical artistry,” of course, just as you yourself might have done.

Dawn or moonrise, the traffic on Crescent Bridge these days seems never-ending, each one who passes taking the brief relief of the river as fully as he or she may: the bridge patrolmen and puffing bicyclists, the frowning scholars in their long white shirts, the teaboys and trudging button-makers, the mamans and governesses and their screeching, romping children, three of whom have drowned this month in the murky heart of the river, caught and strangled in the undertow of weeds, their bodies at last nudged bankward by irritable swans. Candle wax crusts the stone to mark the places where they fell, and the oarsmen frown one to another, for such deaths are signals that old Albanus is unhappy; well he might be, in this spell of fevered heat, where all eyes rise again and again past the breathing larch and lindens, to the blackening clouds that gather but never finally break.

Within the curling streets the city’s temper itself is uncertain, half-sullen, half-hysterical, distractible and irate. From grimy tenements to the halls of the Prefecture itself, where remarkably similar shouting matches have erupted; to the mercantile row with its fault-finding customers and delayed deliveries and shopgirls pinching one another purple behind the counters’ polished wood; to the cab stands and tram tracks and train terminus, as empty motion reenacts itself in one continuous round; even in the green depths of the Park, where the drunken beggars and scowling gypsies are beaten and driven off by frustrated constables—This an’t your lawn! Up you gets! Up you gets!—only to return, like clouds of flies, within the hour; and where a dozen presumably upright citizens have been arrested and fined for public lewdness, on the paths, in the fountains, and, in one regrettable instance, behind a half-shuttered lemonade booth with its proprietor still inside. Fainting fits plague the churches and Scripture meetings; the taverns are half-cesspool, half-quarrel, and already several street whores, boys and girls, have been abused and left for dead. It might be the moral clampdown of the new acts enacted, it might be only the weather, but the pervasive thrum of civic unrest is all and ominously the same.

In the theatre district, the Cleopatra’s browning gladioli have become wilting white ferns beside the signboards touting A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though even this airy fare has been poorly attended, as no one seems to want to sit for several hours in a hot room in the dark. Mrs. Cowtan tucks her graying blonde curls beneath a headscarf and dabs herself with rice powder that clots on the skin, as her husband pages again and again through his battered Complete Plays of the Bard, trying to ascertain which of them—surely not Hamlet; perhaps Romeo and Juliet? Though that whining Cynthia is too thick-bosomed to be a tragic jeune fille—shall be the one to win for the Cleopatra the grand prize. For, friend of the great though he is—and he is! Did not Herr Banek himself summon him to consult over the contest’s regulations? Did he not meet, if fleetingly, Herr de Vries himself?—he must still go up against Fairgrieve and Cockrill, with their lowered standards and thus broader theatrical palettes, as The competition judging, said Herr Banek, must be seen by the public to be fair. And its laurel is surely worth the winning: not only the silver trophy cup, inscribed with a suitable quotation (unchosen as yet; he himself had suggested “All the world’s a stage”), but the naming as First Municipal Theatre, with all the attendant glory such a title would bestow; and the greater, unspoken promise that that title carries with it an iron-clad approval of the license to present for as long as the winning theatre shall operate; that, in these unsettled times, is a prize beyond any price.

Gilbert Fairgrieve thinks so, too, and is fairly grieved by what he feels is his colleague’s unfair advantage, Cowtan on his knees to that newspaper man, anyone with eyes can see it, even Alban Cockrill, who has no hope nor breath of winning, but who feels the sting of injustice all the same: “Fair’s fair, and this an’t fair, is it, Gil?” as they sit together in the Wounded Lion, hoping for newspaper gossip, but earning only sideways stares and amused, one-shoulder shrugs. Fairgrieve is pleased that that strange Mercury is not to be in the running, its doors still closed though the Forest tale had been so very popular: “It just goes to show,” says Fairgrieve, “if you cross the powers that be, they’ll shutter you down. May be those two fellows will take the hint and move on—I wouldn’t miss them or their puppets,” to which Cockrill makes a stoical nod—“I told ’em so myself”—though inwardly mourning the continued silence of the Mercury’s small players. He continues to labor secretly to model his own Gawdy’s performances after Misters Pollux and Castor, has even learned from a book of Roman tales (Miss Mariam can read, though one would not think so to look at her) who they were: twins of different fathers sharing everything but immortality, so when Castor died, Pollux petitioned the great god Zeus to put them together again in the stars. It is a fine tale, the kind of high-toned thing that everyone respects, though how to make it with just the one actor, and to involve the girls, even fully clothed—Miss Mariam, fully clothed? To the devil with these new laws!—is a problem to scratch the pate raw.

Those laws are also much in the mind of another theatrical man, the pursued and beset Seraphim, Frédéric hunkered in this sour café called, what is it called? and staring at the spotted tablecloth and his second glass of liquor, ordered instead of tea, who drinks tea in this heat? So I would like a drink, he had said to the serving girl. I would like a brandy.

What kind, sah? but he had had no idea what to order; Haden would have known. Oh Haden, oh—so Something strong, very strong and so it is, a fierce black brandy, haut gôut a fitting lubrication past this morning’s set-to at the Solon, Herr Hebert calling him on the carpet for his “Cleopatra” review: One more show of spirit like that and Konrad will throw you to the wolves! That minister Eig has him dribbling in his drawers, didn’t you read his editorial?

So what the Solon says and what the Solon does are now two different things?

We put it to print, didn’t we? But there is such a thing as prudence, even amongst the angels, Seraphim; now is not the time. At least twice a week that drunkard asks me for his old job back, and I’m sorely tempted—

Sir, you are not. You know that I serve the cause of truth—

Oh, “truth,” Herr Blum, please!

—and that many citizens like to read of it when I do. I have heard you tell Herr Konrad so yourself, you said, “Do you want him to leave us for the Muses’ Journal?”

That upstart Muses’ Journal is barely fit to wipe your—shoes. No one is leaving anywhere, I only said the other because it is so damned filthy hot…. But Konrad is a weathervane, and I can shield you just so far. If the paper itself should be threatened—Why not review something calm this week, for a change? “Calm,” yes, when afterward he found in his postbox two letters, a very long one from his mother—Mr. Mariette has openly questioned your intentions. The shame for our family! I have been weeping ever since!—bearing a stiff postscript from his father, instructing him in a dozen words to quit his post as a pamphleteer and come home; and one from Miss Mariette herself, a very kind letter under the circumstances: My mother’s sister Maria, for whom I am called, has asked me to come for a fortnight’s visit. Her home lies not far from the city, might I pay a visit to you as well? It has been a year since we sang together in the garden.

“‘Coo, coo, coo,’” coos Frédéric into his emptied brandy glass, “‘the pigeon tends her nest,’” the serving girl eyeing him with flat disfavor, another drinker about to go barmy in the heat—as the noon Angelus rings, the great dolorous bells jerking him upright from his chair like an unskilled puppeteer’s charge: he will go and pray, yes, with brandy on his breath he will confess that he does not care if the bells ring or the Solon fires him or the Globe funds fifty false contests—for with the Mercury closed, does it matter which theatre is deemed the “first,” the best?—or if Marie Mariette arrives dressed in her wedding gown as the city reveals itself to be the lost tenth circle of hell; no, he will nail to the doors of St. Mary’s the real news of the day, the truth that all he can think of, mourn for, wish for, day or night, is Haden—

—for whom he does pray, authentically, eyes shut tight in the red shimmer of the votives, the sad fragrance of massed and dying pink roses, asking Heaven that Haden be well, and whole, and not wholly hate him, and that they will see each other again somehow, though it is a sin, why must it be a sin?

And when he opens his eyes what does he see, as if in sign from Heaven itself, but one of Haden’s urchin boys before the side altar, hand out in some sort of tête-à-tête with the caped archbishop, who starts like a burglar when Frédéric abruptly stands in the pew and “Poor lad,” says the archbishop with a rusty smile, his own hand whisked behind his back. “Is it alms you need, child, or—”

“What are you doing here?” Frédéric asks the boy, who rudely cocks his shaggy head—“Eh, be corked!”—but “You ought to be with Haden,” Frédéric says, almost shouts: his voice rings out, a singer’s strong tone, echoing to the very depths of the silent church. The boy and the archbishop stare in tandem as he stumbles to the aisle, hurrying head down like a thief himself out the doors to the wide marble stairway, its descending list of the fortunate dead, as a swift stranger catches at his sleeve—

—and looking up to see wide yellow eyes, Haden’s eyes, Haden’s face too joyful even to smile: Haden who has haunted this church more devoutly than a fucking parson, ignoring his work, ignoring the escalating summonses from Eig, becoming nearly a joke in the streets, his own streets, his own boys nudging each other in worry and wonder as they debate—Can it really be? Haden St.-Mary, turned footman to some bally newspaper rajah? In and out for days beneath the statues’ gaze, the rehearsing choristers’ curiosity, the curate’s kindly approach—You are distressed, young man. If I may aid you?—looking once and once again to the brooding marble corpus on the cross, that jealous god of salt merchants and commissioners, You know where he is, I know You do—

—and found at last, now, his hand firm on Frédéric’s arm, speaking without hearing his own words—“Here you are”—in pure relief, feeling the tension of the flesh beneath the sleeve, its sweet warmth in the scent of, could it be brandy? and Frédéric’s heart pounding at that touch, it takes everything he has not to fling his arms around Haden, to instead tug his own arm away and “Why, it’s not a secret, is it, a man going to church?” looking past Haden, refusing to meet his gaze. “It’s, it’s fine to meet you again, sir.”

Sir? as in the humid breeze Haden feels a plunging cold, hands dropped empty to his sides as Frédéric speaks, his tone brittle and false, of how busy the days are, why he has been so busy with so many things! and desperate to keep talking, to keep Haden there, to demonstrate that he need not again be shocked or disgusted by Frédéric because “My fiancée is coming to the city, you know—”

“Fiancée?”

“Yes, indeed, Miss Marie Mariette, surely I’ve mentioned her, shall I introduce you?” as the wind rises between them, hot and sick with a thousand odors, the city stinks as if it is afire to Haden biting his lip, hard and harder as Frédéric keeps talking of this wife-to-be, they will be married soon, probably, certainly, but “At the Opera,” Haden says, thinks he says, a muttered guttering sound to bring Frédéric’s laugh, he laughs! and “Oh, yes, well, I was certainly the worse for wear that night, too much wine! I can hardly remember poor Cleopatra—” his gaze one naked plea, Forgive me, oh forgive me—

—but Haden is staring at the black church doors beyond, Haden can see nothing, Haden says “I see,” and nods, his lips turned down, a pain in his chest as if he cannot properly breathe. “I understand…. I didn’t give much of a fuck for that Opera,” harsh in the smell of burning. “I won’t be going back.”

“You won’t?”

“Why should I?—Congratulations on your wedding,” with a bow worthy of a courtier, a face like stone but on his mouth a rose-red smear, he has bitten his lip so fiercely that it bleeds. Frédéric fumbles for his handkerchief, to reach and stanch the wound, but already Haden is halfway down the steps, pale hair tugged to a pennant by the wind, down and down and back to his digs like an animal to its den, tearing off his shirt with its blood-spotted collar, the medal dangling at his chest—Regarde St Christophe et va-t-en rassuré, Look at St. Christopher and go on reassured—of what? That love is only cruel and futile? That he knew, knew it to be so and yet fell like a fool all the same? Brandy, he cannot bear the smell of brandy; instead he sits half-naked to drink wine as thin and pale as an old man’s piss, and when the knock comes to the door—Costello raising his brows and grinning, see St.-Mary gone all nancyboy over some silly scribbler!—he is more than primed, Haden, to launch himself at the first foul wink into a fight so brutal and pointless that both men end on their knees and groaning in a tumble of debris, cracked windows and broken chair, though Costello’s broken arm and ripped ear will take longer to heal than Haden’s cracked rib and battered face, a face he presents to Eig waiting in the stairwell below, staring like a beast through the striping blood as “Mr. St.-Mary,” says Martin Eig, while Costello limps past moaning, “it is time, past time, to tend your holdings. And I am here to help you do that.”

Meanwhile Frédéric has flung himself in the opposite direction, up the streets to Crescent Bridge and its brown lethe current, inviting him to plunge like Icarus—but no, suicide is a sin, everything is a sin, though it is not a sin, is it, to lie to a woman who thinks she cares for you when what she cares for is a handful of letters and an empty suit, a song sung on a bench in a garden he wishes never, never to see again—as he hunches on the bridge to scratch on flimsy an eight-word reply—Please come. Wire your arrival. Yours, Frédéric Blum—that he carries at once to the telegraph office, as if it were urgent news of the end of the world.

On the humid paths of the Park, another world has tipped on its axis: Tilde and her loss of appetite, her thickening waistline, her last visit to these mudlark precincts has told her, finally, why. Consulting the gipsy women for help with the cards—so frighteningly fey these last few weeks, as if speaking in a tongue she barely knows—though they did not help her, those women in their headwraps and lapis beads, they could not, already her skills are beyond theirs. But what knowledge they gave instead stunned her like a blow—

You’re quickened, girlie, didn’t you know? Better go and tell your fellow.

I never—I don’t have a fellow.

Some fellow had you!

—so now there is to be a baby? From that filthy creeper in the alley? But she is not—she is a virgin…. Barely hearing as the women proposed several practical solutions, one to do with certain herbs, the other with the Foundling Sisters, the English nuns who will take any infant left in their turn, instead she left them to sit on an iron bench and stare at the passersby, at nothing, afraid to take the cards from the sack, why had the cards not warned her? A little baby. Like rosebud Tanti, crying at the table; like her mother. But how can there be a little baby living in a theatre? How is she to live, now, what is she to do?

It is Rupert who walks beside her on the Park paths, insisting that she take a noon respite from the washing, he had seen her swaying like a reed there over the bluing-pot; as he takes respite from the writing desk, though no writing has been done today, only staring at the paper and paging through the red journal, as if he is caught, like the knight, and cannot fully get free. Strolling and smoking as she sucks the slippery Italian ice he bought her, cold as the “Snow Youth,” and she charmed as a child much younger by the novelty of the treat; she has never had an ice before. Asking now, through lips gone pleasantly numb, “The wooden hill’s all built, so when will we play out the show, Sir?”

“You needn’t do that, you know, call me ‘sir.’ I’ve said before, ‘Rupert’ will do—”

“Sir Rupert,” but that is worse so, half smiling, he shakes his head, leads her to a grassy spot beneath some beech trees, where there are no beggars or pigeons and the sun is mostly veiled. The heat is clearly telling on the girl: despite her industry she is delicate, he has heard her casting up in the mornings, though she is filling out, at least, not so bony as her days at Die Welt—where he rarely goes, though the proprietor always hails him in the street, How do you these days, Herr Bok? and what shall he say to that? That he does poorly when the tea drinkers peer over their newspapers to watch as he takes a table; that he dislikes to see the Mercury as the subject of those papers’ editorials, the readers’ letters yea or nay that know nothing and say less; that he meant only to make the plays of his days, his and Istvan’s, under the roof of some place he might end by calling home, after all these years, all those days and nights on the cold, wet, hot, weary, endlessly spooling road. Istvan shrugs at their notoriety, at the license threatened then regained, Istvan who in all their days together seems never to have looked past the evening’s show, the dawn’s embrace, never to have missed the simple joy of safety kept and carried, like the white knife inside the breast of Castor, quietly in the heart. They are not as other men: that he does not question or mourn, Istvan will always be enough. But can there not be, can there never be, the calm other men find in family, for the two of them alone?

See this girl who sits beside him, like a daughter so loyal and fierce: Mouse’s cat, Istvan calls her, the stray taken in from the streets. It is always hard for a girl alone, needing some man or his semblance to fence her off from the world: like Decca become “Mrs. Mattison,” Madame Isobel, too, and Lucy; at least those last had safely wed. See Tilde looking at the lads there on the grass, pushing and gamboling like wild young goats despite the heat, and “I have a costume like that,” she says, pointing to one of the boys, a tall black-haired romper in a red-laced vest. “But I think I could not fit it, now.”

“The boys would like you better in a dress,” says Rupert with a smile; Tilde does not smile, turns so her gaze is sideways to his good eye and “Would you like me better,” she asks, “that way?”

“In a vest?”

“As a boy.”

Looking into that strong unpretty face, those eyes so perfectly, unfathomably blue, the child gone for now into the woman and “I like you,” says Rupert quietly, “just as you are, Tilde. You remind me much of a lady I once knew, a very great lady.”

Her hand has crept across the grass; he takes it now, a father’s clasp, a friend’s. “What’s her name?”

“Isobel.”

“Is she here, in the city? Was she—” but she stops herself, Was she your lady? but she knows Sir has not had a lady, nor has M. Stefan, the only ladies in their lives the other players from long ago: the one called Lucybell, who writes to them, and some other girls at a place called the Poppy; and a lady puppet, M. Stefan told her once, sitting smiling and idle at the table—She was called Lucinda, then Lizsette—as he made a washing cloth to curtsey and flounce about. A pretty thing! Such a pity we had to leave her behind, but it’s too hard for a lass upon the roads.

I know, she had said, more to herself than to M. Stefan, who nonetheless looked upon her then with an expression she could not name, M. Stefan who so often comes up in the cards as a Jack of this or that, several times as the Lord of Hares, which is not surprising, he is so restless and ready to be gone. Sir is what holds him here, as he is what makes Sir merry, both of them in play with one another through their puppet-men—like the Pégase in the park, His name is Jean, like mine—those puppets who, like her cards, say what they know but not all that they know. But what will they say, Sir and M. Stefan, when they find out—for they will find out, one day they must—about the little baby?

Yet that day is not this day, so she squares her shoulders as Sir looks away, into a past she cannot see, as “When will be the Snow Youth, Sir?” as Rupert coughs, drops the cigar-end, helps her rise, shrugging his answer of this show that has cost him his rest, these past weeks, writing into the dawn each final ending only to scratch it out in the morning and try anew, as that face rises again and again behind his eyes, that brimming gaze: Why will you not go with me, Maître? Why will you not love me? A whole life unlived, like a poem unwritten…. The fatherless boy in the tree, the beautiful youth become a man no doubt as beautiful, somewhere in this city with his wife—what was her name? Madame had been very fond of her—as the newspapers trumpet the foolish competition Benjamin is somehow involved with; thankfully the Mercury has no part in all of that. Perhaps they ought not make this show at all, take that bitter bit between the teeth again; again and again he sets down the pen, he resolves to tell Istvan so. Yet the mountain is made, the Snow Youth is ready. Benjamin is here.

Now he and Tilde cross from green leaves to hard shadow and harder sun, taking the omnibus back to Rottermond Square and their own doorstep, where Istvan stands with the old knife man, scuffed handcart and growling dog, and “Here, sah,” says the knife man to Istvan, white knife in hand, a thread plucked from his sleeve to prove its sharpness: the blade parts it, curling, in two. “It is a very nice knife, sah, very nice, very old. Older even than I, and that is saying something!” with a wink at Tilde, grotesque and meant to be grotesque. “But I’m not too old yet, am I, Missy, for some fun?”

“Piss off, Vater,” says Tilde, brushing past him and inside, Rupert following more slowly with the post, another letter from Herr Robb, and a creamy envelope, CdM above a rose embossed and below in crisp black ink M. Bok & M. Hilaire as “Many thanks,” Istvan says, handing the knife man some coins, the dog hackling angrily at something only the dog can see. “A man does need a sharp knife.”

“Oh yes, sah,” the old man smiling so his brown teeth show, much like his dog’s though not as pointed. “A man needs his knife, what with the reverends and the constables crawling all over everywhere. This city was a better place when I was young.”

“I try my best,” says Istvan, in a different tone, with a different smile, handing him another coin, “to keep apace from those sorts of men, those holy ones and regulators. You’ll tip me, won’t you, if you should see them coming our way?”

The knife man nods, alert, serene—“I’ll see them”—and then resumes his bell and grinder-box, trundling off with his dog toward the passing crowds of the square, in clang and call for all comers to have their edges shaped to rights.

Meanwhile Istvan pockets the knife and steps inside to the backstage barely cooler, shirt open at the collar, wiping his forehead with a handy scrap of costume lace; he has slept poorly, his eyes are glittering and tired. The Snow Youth’s icy mountain is not yet a relief, nor, anymore, his gaming, past his forays into the Park and its gipsy-wheel: by now he has seen every den and room and cardhouse in this city, like riding a carousel, always the same faces, the same wagers, and whether they bow or boo him, what difference? The only tables he has not yet staked are the princely ones, here too genteel to admit outliers like himself, but those roundelays are nearly always crooked, rigged so the winners win; Christ knows he and Mouse have seen more than a lifetime’s worth of that.

And see Mouse still a-struggle with the last go-round, the sharp peak of that private jail, the release as rigged by that youth, yes, now fixed so beautifully on his cross of snow, moving arms and carven lips, the glassy, wounded gaze as noted by Puss in her last letter: Benjamin de Metz and his lady saluted by the Pimms upon the flowery promenade, equals once upon the stage but His lordship looked through us like we were window glass, Pimm was rare put out. Yet the past still unforgotten, for see him here, an imported judge, onstage again; whose idea was this competition, whose money pays for it, who gains?

And how and why should any of those questions still be theirs, in this last lifetime, this Mercury world of warped wood and scrubbed teapot, rosewood landscape and devoted small Infanta—as if lasting contentment can ever be obtained in such a setting, no matter how private or fine, as if one could build a house for puppets and call it home! A puppet is an actor made to move; box one, and it becomes only a doll…. Like these two, here on the worktable, who started life so inauspiciously, the spattered angel and grieving imp sequestered, now, amongst the scatter and detritus, their eyes carefully repainted, joints planed and strings restrung—You don’t mean to play them? Rupert’s question to Istvan’s veiled shrug, Only making the fugitives welcome—as in solitary communion he finds their uses and shapes their edges, yes, to rights, confiding in a letter back to Puss that I’ve two new mecs, darling, you ought to come and see these rude attendants to the gods of the roulette wheel, these orphans and gifts of chance, for they shall join in that morality play, ancient and modern, the Mercury’s first and last—

—since “All’s play, now, is it not, gentlemen?” Istvan speaking sotto voce to the wooden ears as he takes up his hat and an envelope and makes his way into the street, past the empty spot where the shouting priest once hunkered, the Heads or Tails and its doorway where there is only emptiness, where no one waits smiling to take his hand. The envelope is delivered with a wink for stern Voltaire and a nod to the clerk at the Solon, a little advert for this Sunday’s edition, announcing that the Mercury Theatre is to present a new tale, The Snow Youth brought thus finally to its ending for Mouse, who must, it seems, be brought to end it: for the time has come to cease revising, to set down the pen and let the play play out on its own.

That notice itself will be much noted and debated, first by those at the Solon itself—printing it with a black and florid, half-page border—and then the haut monde and bourgeoisie and the regulars at Die Welt, the tea drinkers and wine tipplers, the cab drivers and shopgirls and scholars and all: Does this mean that the interdict on the Mercury has been lifted, just in time for the competition? Or are they still beneath a cloud, those men, and mean to perform in sheer defiance? And who or what is a “Snow Youth”? Whatever the answers, Messrs. Pollux and Castor will tread the boards again, and that, no matter what else it may arouse—the yellow stare of Haden St.-Mary and the silent prayers of Frédéric Blum, the smiles of Tilde and Christobel de Metz, the compact nod of Martin Eig and the pursed lips of Herr de Vries—is good news in a city that needs good news, as it needs a storm to dispel the hot miasmas and send the rain like lovers’ tears, wash the wax from its Bridge and the grit from its gutters, and turn the fortune wheel of the year from thick summer to the darker precincts of autumn, the season of endings and departures, of fog and frost and luminosity as false and lovely as any footlights on any stage. The city needs a new show, and it shall have one, the spinning silver waltz of the feast of fools.

Herr Robb is certain that a rat is watching him, something fierce and small with shining eyes beneath a cone of old newsprint; or it may possibly be two rats, crouched there on the slimy alley bricks, but “As you’ll see, the renovations you ordered are complete,” he says to Benjamin de Metz, chilly as always no matter the heat, holding the side door for him to step into the building: theatre once and now theatre again, the Garden of Eden with its gold proscenium and royal blue curtains, its newly varnished stage that “Can accommodate all sorts o’ shows, milords,” says the chief builder to the two in their fine suits and bowlers, out of place amidst the capped and busy workmen. “You’ll find all to your liking, my fellows here have been toiling day and night to have it done.”

“They are being very well paid to do so,” says Herr Robb.

“Show me the catwalk,” says Benjamin de Metz.

Herr Robb trails behind, what is a catwalk?—appalled then to watch as his client clambers up metal stairs to a narrow perch far above, where he peers down with a strange smile, as if seeing something on the stage besides its complement of workers; he takes out his little notebook, he makes his cryptic notes. He is a cryptic man, Herr Robb has learned, and a voluptuary, unlike his austere father and yet in some ways very much the same: swift to punish, slow to reward, most at home in his own company, though young de Metz goes his father one better, and keeps even his colleagues at a hard arm’s length.

Certainly Herr de Vries is finding his visit trying, or so it is murmured in the salons, especially in this atmosphere of hysteria over the theatre competition, as if that outcome should somehow decide the fate of the city itself. Mayor Eszterhaus bemoans his citizens’ escalating complaints—Half of them write letters, the other half throw stones. And ordure. And all of them blame me! They even blame me for the heat!—while Tibor Banek complains angrily to Herr de Vries: See the Solon so pleased to trumpet that foul show—that is the doing of Hebert, I know, Konrad is a jelly-spine. Herr de Vries himself drinks more anisette than usual, and relieves himself less successfully with his fading lily-lad, tended by Jozsef—who cautions The boy is making himself ill, you’ll need another soon, my lord—while trying to stay abreast of business in this new landscape of moral mania, Eig acts as if one ought oneself to follow all the laws one makes! He himself had chastised Eig severely for yet another lapse—

You said you’d closed that theatre!

The Commission closed it, sir.

Yet even a clerk knows if a license is valid or invalid. Do you want to go back to the clerk’s bench, Martin?

—while mourning anew the loss of Javier Arrowsmith, who could have helped navigate with this cloven de Metz, who needs must be humored on the foolish competition as he promises to finance other, much greater and more urgent ventures, joint ventures with Herr de Vries, whose own coffers are insufficient to his ambitions; four children and a jewel-devouring wife, it is devilishly expensive to be a family man! Then there is de Metz’s history with those puppet-players, a relic of boyhood, few here in the city even know of it; but all who matter know of the buildings and blocks he has bought, does the man mean to take up residence, then? And taken together, what can it all signify?

The theatre district itself considers the refurbishing of the Garden of Eden, with its flower-frescoed walls and unknown owner, as yet another doomsday omen; the reopening of the Mercury is just one more splash of poison in the cup. Edgar Rue, approached on the sly by Simon Cowtan—Who but the Bard could deserve your talents in this contest?—has written a stern polemic against intrigue and envy, published by both the Solon and the Globe; Mrs. Cowtan, after a screaming harpies’ altercation that could be heard for several blocks, has sent Cynthia packing, but only so far as Gilbert Fairgrieve’s Athenaeum, where She Wouldst Not teeters on, its audience of parlor girls decimated by the climate of high morals and festering air. Alban Cockrill has lost Miss Polly as Cynthia’s replacement, replacing her with a white-haired girl who speaks passable French and can balance a china plate on a surprising part of her anatomy. Drawn by news of the prize, several traveling companies have found their way into the city; already one has found its way back out, preferring the known hazards of the road after finding its script-box and costumes mysteriously shredded and burned.

In the offices of the Morals Commission, in the smell of ink and steeping tea, Martin Eig sits over notes of today’s sessions in the rooms of inquiry—an importer of German lamp parts who is neither German nor a manufacturer of lamps; a Belgian speculator with apparent ties to Herr de Vries, though so far he has admitted nothing; and a young man of the Literary Leopards, less beast of the jungle than quivering puppy, whimpering that truly, truly, he does not know Seraphim, no one does but the writer Blum!—while considering, between pages, the possible effect of sending flowers to Madame de Metz. Not sentimental roses, nothing to be socially misunderstood (though truthfully it would be no misunderstanding), but some excellent specimen of plant life, to show that he too appreciates what excels. As he does, oh, he does…. At that overdone banquet, see her modest gown in glorious opposition to Frau de Vries’ strumpet’s display, sitting lovely in white lace like a virgin at the altar—and a kind of virgin still, for, though there is apparently a child, her marriage can be no true marriage, only another instance of the corruption of the lords’ class, this woman sold like cattle to a man who is no true man at all. Observe M. de Metz in his linen and jewels, his hair gleaming like a woman’s in the candlelight, and visibly displeased by the closure of the Mercury Theatre, in natural affinity for his unnatural friends there: I hear that was your doing, Herr Eig? with such iron hauteur that another man, a lesser man, more accustomed to licking the soles of his betters, would surely have retreated at its force.

But her presence strengthened his resolve, to all the more do what he means to do, to curb de Vries and, yes, de Metz, and demonstrate to her a better way to live, beyond a lifetime’s sham and shame. So he leaned forward at that table and replied without a smile, I do my duty at the Commission, sir, as surely we all must do every day, yourself not excluded.

And de Metz then turning that withering gaze to de Vries—Is it his “duty” to lecture me?—de Vries who rumbled something soothing, then hounded him to the hallway for a scolding, as if he were a child or a cringing menial—

How dare you flout him to his face? And at my table!

I did not flout him. I only—

You “only” must keep still until you’re needed! He may be young, but his family is very old, older even than mine! See that you remember it, Martin.

I remember everything, sir.

And Madame de Metz noting his departure, then, he watched her watching: those eyes as wise as Athena’s, as Minerva’s there outside in the muggy sunlight: Potens sui, yes. She has spurred him, more, she has stirred him; not only a shining model of real womanhood, but if, when, all obstacles are overcome, she may indeed be the one. The one. All those years on his knees, all that strangling of the base and carnal, and she appears, now, without any effort, or rather as the result of all his efforts, the crowning gift of a lifetime of striving. That day, alone together in the Lady’s Garden, he could barely speak but to tell her of himself, all of himself, a powerful and singular urge there amongst the vines and blooms she favors, that hidden little, wet little navel of Venus—

—as sudden brightness falls from the air, a bright key newly made to a lock as new, the alley door of the Garden of Eden and “Why,” Eig startled as the key drops to his desk, “Mr. St.-Mary—That was very swiftly done.”

“I told the locksmith you’d have more work for him.” Haden sits without being invited; his rib aches but is knitting, the bruising at his eyes has faded from black to yellow-green. With a sour internal smile, he notes that Eig before his entrance was mooning like an idiot, has he finally found a tart to his taste? Good luck to the fool, then. Haden himself has put all that in his back pocket, he is back with a vengeance, as several of his cheating boys have already found, and their genteel, laggardly paying patrons: see that barrister’s face as Haden stepped into the midnight townhouse, fist to the chest of the frightened butler, to gather up with a stare his startled boy and turn that stare on the barrister, who protested, bare and feeble—

Sir, this is—Sir, you cannot simply walk into a man’s home this way!

Call a constable. I’ll wait, arms folded before the satin-draped bed, before taking all the money owed and a sizable bonus beside, kicking his boy down the stairs and back to the gutter, where tears were shed and punishment delivered, an emphatic example that his other boys are pleased again to follow, very pleased and relieved to see the old Haden at work: no more trips to the church or to the newspaper, no more endless hours at the Bridge, no, he is tending his holdings now, as Eig himself suggested, Eig who fancies himself to be Haden’s master once more; let him think whatever he pleases. Let all of them, Frédéric, the fiancée, all of them, think whatever the fuck they please.

Now “It’s you I have work for, Mr. St.-Mary. As you well know.” Eig sets down his pen, sets aside the half-written report. “Close the door, please.”

“Bernd,” Haden calls, unmoving, “shut the door.” A chair scrapes; the door quietly closes. “Unless the offer’s been changed, the answer’s the same.”

“Everything is changing. That Snow Youth show opens tonight at the Mercury—I need you to be there.”

“I’m busy. Have the Commission send Costello. Or Bernd, get him out from his desk for once in a way.”

“It’s not for the Commission that I’d have you go,” with an air that aims for calm omniscience, though the gaze is narrowed and dark, the eel a-swim beneath the waters. “I’ve spoken, myself, to Eszterhaus, assuring him that all is in order, that the theatre may legally operate—”

“Your doing?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you wanted it closed.”

Eig picks up his pen again; he is almost, but not quite, smiling. “‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose….’ Did you know that the mayor’s father was an infantry soldier?”

“So was mine. What difference does that make?”

“All the difference in the world,” pointing the pen like a sword at Haden, “because the world belongs, now, finally, not to those born into a certain parentage, but to men with the will to lead it: men like Eszterhaus, and myself. And you.” Eig leans across the desk, slowly, like a creature emerging from its carapace. “Do you think that I invite every operative of mine to be my special deputy? It’s an honor as well as an opportunity, it demonstrates trust. And you needn’t stay here in the office all the time, if that’s what troubles you. One doesn’t chain a wolf.”

“A wolf?” Haden’s smile is without humor. “Wolves run in packs. Or are you thinking of my boys?”

“I’m thinking to put you in charge of a commission, your own commission, with men beneath you, men ready, here, in this building, to serve you in your efforts, with your own young fellows still at work in the streets. What would you say to that?”

See the man’s eyes gleam! as if what he offers is worth the having: an office somewhat smaller than this one, no doubt, with its own smaller desk and teapot, and a chain no one can see, but a chain all the same. What Eig wants is not a wolf but a jackal, and Haden’s smile is of neither but of something else, as “Those men at the Mercury,” he says, tilting his head so his gaze is through his lashes. “Does the Commission know that they know that lordship de Metz? They were invited up to his box at the Opera—”

“As were you, I hear.”

“I was, and I went. On my own stick. Which is where I’ll stay,” as he rises from the chair and bows, a cold bow very like, if he had known it, one Istvan had once made before the General, a bow Mr. Pollux is in fact making at that very moment in the hot backstage afternoon, watched as he does by several interested colleagues, a quorum convened but “Frédéric Blum,” says Eig; Haden freezes in the bow, as if on the lip of a sudden cliff. “You attended that Opera as his guest. He’s a known colleague of the writer Seraphim, has he ever introduced you to that man?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Because it’s time for the fellow to stop hiding behind a false name and come into the light of truth. And since his editors won’t cooperate, we’ll have Herr Blum into the rooms of inquiry. If you should see him tonight at the theatre—But then, you’re not attending, are you.”

“No,” Haden says again, “I’m not,” with no bow at all this time, hand to the door to pass Costello with his arm still in a sling, Costello who does not look at or engage him, as he descends into the street all filled with clamor, men in flat workers’ caps shouting for something, or against it; the signs bob about so he can barely read them, and what does it matter what they say anyway, what sign ever changed anything? Like “Seraphim” in his newspaper columns, writing ballocks about the truth, or “Cry the Mercury!” and who was it closed the fucking place, then opened it back up again? Eig. Eig with his key and his twister Eszterhaus, whose wife has finally paid off her sapphire-debt, do either Eszterhaus or Eig know about that? And who is Eig finally fucking, or dreaming of fucking, there at his desk with blood on his hands? Does he know that his wants, too, his ambitions and backdoor dealings, can be currency? Or does he think that an office and giant’s desk make him immune to the streets? The rooms of inquiry—

—as in Haden’s heart the pain flares and gutters, as if to look into that heart would be to see some tiny creature fleeing for its life: past the shouters, past the newspaper district and the dark hulk of St. Mary of Dolors, crossing Rottermond Square where some lean duffer moves through shade and shadow, hat pulled low, a hitch in his gait as if from weary age but “Uncle,” says Haden, “you’ll need to do better than that,” to bring Istvan’s wink from below the battered brim: “Sharp eyes. I’ll buy you a drink,” steering him into the daytime-dull Heads or Tails, where of the four living bodies inside, all known to Istvan, none show him any recognition, one red-bearded worthy in fact aims an aimless kick his way as “Brandy,” Istvan taking two though Haden sets his aside, to instead take out his knife and score its point on the tabletop, a thin groove, over and over again.

Istvan sips the drink, glad to be free of the heat backstage, the tempest brewing; it has been a very long afternoon, and Mouse’s mood, more silent than silence, has only made it longer –

Stop pacing, you make me weary. Whatever’s amiss?

What the fuck should be amiss? The show’s tonight, isn’t it? But if I’d had the time I needed, and not had my hand forced—

And when did you think to finish? In time to call it The Old Snow-Man? You ought to thank me, really—

—so it looks fair to be a very long night, this singular premiere; he sips again. Considering Haden before him: “A bit apache, all those bruises, but it rather suits. And you’ve been a busy man, one hears, cleaning house and such, brooming the streets with your young mecs.” Haden shrugs, says nothing. “Have you by chance found the bébé?”

With a frown, “No.”

“No?” with his own frown. “Well. And how is the angel?”

“He’s getting married.”

“Married?” seeing now why the battered kit is so in hell, so relentless to drive his little cattle before him, harrowed so harrowing. “To whom, if I may ask?”

“To whomever the fuck he pleases, I don’t care. Her name’s Marie.—No, I don’t want that,” pushing back at the brandy Istvan pushes toward him, pushes again so he drinks it, suddenly, drains it as if he is dying of thirst, and “Once,” Istvan says, as if telling a pleasant tale, “two fellows set upon me in the sunset, in a little shithole town; they meant to take my head. See?” pulling aside his tieless collar, his shirt to show the scars, those twisted, pinkish ropes. “A friend of mine, a whore, sewed it shut for me, while I tried not to bleed to death; she was much better a whore than a seamstress.” Haden looks at the scars, looks into Istvan’s face—half smiling, inscrutable—and then away, down at the knife on the table before him. “It was a kind of tithe I paid, for Mouse—for M. Bok, that is. To have him, yeah?” as that strange yellow gaze turns up again to his. “You’ll bleed, too, kit, before you’re done.”

“What’s there to do?” so low Istvan must lean forward to hear him. “He has his course, I have mine.”

“Come to the show tonight.”

Lower still, “I’m done with the theatre, uncle.”

“You once said I needed you to make my play—may be I do,” with his stare beneath the brim so lawless and so bright that Haden feels its spark like raw quicksilver; his teeth find and clamp his scar; and they sit so for a very long moment, or perhaps it is not very long at all, how long does it take for one fierce fox to sniff and know another, for two jacks of the same deck to make a perfect pair?

So when Istvan finally croaks “Help an old feller home?” Haden puts out a hand as if in rôle resumed, as if they have done such a dozen, a hundred times before, in a hundred lifetimes half remembered as a fable or a dream. As they pass the redbeard near the door, that man cries out as a sharp heel strikes him—“What in bleeding hell!”—but “You kicked my uncle,” says Haden, as Istvan aims his own boot, the same spot and as hard, the man shoving upright from his chair—but confronted by the two of them, one smiling, one not, he sinks back down, rubbing at his swelling shin as they exit together, age and youth and ageless cunning, past the silent alleys and the clattering broadsheet printer, to mount the steps of the Mercury and disappear inside as one.

The crowd’s assembly began just after sunset, a lurid wash of ochre in the blue velvet sky. Now, as the lights recede, the house is full, restive, active, alive as if it is itself a kind of beast, the eager half-whelp of the Opera, as some of that audience are present as well: Edgar Rue and Simon Cowtan, though not together, and the most adventurous of the bourgeoisie, the ankh-wearing matron now sporting both a veil and a delicious sense of transgression as she seats herself between a raucous host of Virgos and a pair of bearded dandies, themselves eyeing a knot of noisy young men without their girls this night, for this show, though its title is tame, may well devolve into a brawl or something worse.

In the heart of the stifling rows sits another Opera attendee, Frédéric Blum with collar up and hat pulled down his brow. Expressly forbidden by Herr Hebert to review or even attend this performance, gone like a thief from the Solon’s office to step into the gloom of the church, the curate halting him in its aisle—

Herr Blum, I hear that you’ve left our choir? Your voice will surely be missed.

I’m to be married.

Why, that’s fine news, though it palpably was not, Frédéric staring past him to the flickering altar, to ask abruptly, as if of the Christ in His marble silence, What is sin?

Sin is the sad gift of the father of lies.

In Hamlet, Polonius says, “This above all: to thine own self be true.”

In Faustus, Faustus says, “O I’ll leap up to my God: Who pulls me down?” Have you ever seen that play, Herr Blum? It was the doctor who fled from God, not God from the doctor. Sometimes such a story tells a very great truth—

—as Tilde in raveling ribbon snood, wool dress altered to ride above her swelling belly, yet still so tight that she can hardly get her breath, keeps her doorside place with Haden beside her, Haden there past Rupert’s narrowed stare: The spy? Why? to Istvan who nodded soothingly—Tonight we need more muscle than just Mab—handing Haden a too-large coat of dusty black, Rupert’s coat, to replace his own ferocious yellow plaid. Haden’s boys are stationed outside, beyond and between the constables, Eyes open till I need you; Haden himself now watching as the audience settles, as the curtains part at last on a noise like wind, a rustling and a whispering, Istvan’s whispering to begin Rupert’s tale, on the mountain of white wood and silver-gilt. It is strange to see such space in a place so small, for the eye marks the “mountain’s” true height, but to the mind it is truly a mountain, as the stage is a window into another full world—

—while the street door opens one last time, to admit, alone and ticketless, a very handsome man in dark gray stripes, whose stare quells even Tilde to silence, who steps past Haden without seeing—though Haden marks him at once as the man de Metz—to take his stance behind the seats at the very back of the house, just as the Snow Youth is revealed: slim wooden arms and black wool-and-horsehair wig shaped and lightly curled, gray-flecked eyes that in the light look so alive that the watchers catch their breath as one. A pair of women third row center sigh with audible longing, there is a rising scatter of applause—

—that leaps to instant rapture at the entrance of Mr. Castor and Mr. Pollux, the audience thundering for their heroes, their champions, themselves. Shouts of “Cry the Mercury!” and stamping feet can be heard all the way into the street by those who are paid to stand listening; the puppets do not move, as if they are human actors graciously acknowledging the accolades. Finally the applause subsides as the watchers, whetted, wait to see what their chosen ones will do next: scale the mountain and heap down scorn on society? Play some exciting, unforeseen trick? Whatever it is, they are ready to approve, and—especially the young men—emulate it as soon as possible, ideally before an appreciative audience of their own.

Now “The air here is very thin,” says Mr. Castor, not the knight this time but only the traveler, to Mr. Pollux, nodding, similarly arrayed. They begin the steep climb together, but Mr. Pollux lags behind, dawdling and seemingly distracted, intent upon his own vistas, so that it is on his own that Mr. Castor comes upon the Snow Youth forlorn and exquisite, still as a statue, incomplete and made to be so: Mr. Castor is visibly startled when the Snow Youth looks his way.

“Who are you?” asks Mr. Castor; the Snow Youth does not answer. “Are you not very cold?” and the Youth blinks, and slowly smiles, causing more sighs—he is perhaps the most beautiful thing Istvan has ever created—as the sound of the wind rises through the little bare-branched, pressed-paper trees, while snow, a glitter made of many snips of silver foil, Tilde’s daylong, patient scissor-work, begins to swirl and fall. Rupert, deeply hooded in white, tries his best to see, hopes his spectacles do not shine, hopes to reach without incident the end of this show that has been so like a dream in its making, effortless, mysterious, frustrating; not all dreams ought be told aloud, and now is the worst time, may be, to try to tell it. And yet—

“It is a very lonely place, here,” continues Mr. Castor. “And there are fierce kobolds in these mountains, or so they say.” The Youth smiles still, as down below, Mr. Pollux gazes up with increasing alarm, throws a stone, throws a handful of snow, works to catch the attention of his friend, to no avail; Mr. Castor is unmoving, as if bewitched; finally Mr. Pollux retreats, or seems to. “Are you not afraid, young man, to stay up here all alone?”

In answer, the Youth moves what he can—his hand, his eyes—inviting Mr. Castor to sit beside him in the silent sparkle, as a soft whistle sounds from elsewhere, Istvan’s sweetest whistle, a tune very simple and sad: like an orphan’s cradle song or the snow’s own voice, the cold that one seems to feel by watching, though in reality it is so hot sweat beads and linen sticks like a second skin. Haden props the street door in vain to let in what air there might be, trying to keep one eye on that lord de Metz—

—on Benjamin, slipped out from the de Vries’ townhouse as neatly as he used to, off to the Calf on those nights Belle would bewail, to drink and to whore, Christobel tonight like Belle to pester—Would he not care to attend the Mercury show, the premiere that is in all the papers? Would he not like her to accompany him?—come alone as if summoned on this night of all nights to do at last what a youth in love could not: Benjamin who has grasped the real import of this performance, as he grasps with both hands the black aisle railing, the signet ring digging into his skin, heart in joyful, almost disbelieving surge as the puppet Youth whose body is half-human, half of the mountain, is finally, tenderly embraced by Mr. Castor. His eyes fill with tears until they glitter like the snow, the beautiful cold that preserves what it kills, as “Let us,” says Mr. Castor to the Youth, “lie down together,” though they cannot move, “and try our best to keep each other warm.”

The theatre is so quiet one can hear breathing, and restless shifting in the seats; the snow shrouds the puppets’ bodies; the conflation of the worlds is so acute that Istvan, masked and in white, marks that tension as if it were pain, the audience all primed for violence and glamour but caught instead in this suffocating cold, in heartbreak like a mountain crevasse; something will happen. His whistle dwindles, softens, dies, the cue for Tilde to drop a cloth and show the silver plate moon, leaving Haden alone by the door, Haden who glimpses in that light’s reflection a certain form, a body holding itself a certain way—Frédéric? Yes, oh yes—shoulders tight, face pointed at the stage—

—that lies so unnaturally still, the puppets smothered in snow; the silence lengthens. Someone barks a cough, several others hiss back hard for quiet. Mr. Pollux reappears with a key about his neck, a large black key, and starts a sidewise climb—

—as “Melt ’um!” someone calls, a young fellow on the aisle raucous to bring his fellows’ laughter, the hisses drown it out but “Melt ’um,” calling louder, “that’ll do it, that’ll—Ah!” in pained surprise, as Haden’s hand lands on that young fellow’s neck, clamping hard as he snarls softly, “Shut your mouth.”

“Who’ll make me? Ah!” in greater pain, “let go!” dragged from his seat to be flung into the street’s darkness to gnash his teeth as he may, kicked in those teeth as he tries to reenter, Haden back to the aisle and the young fellow’s friends risen in umbrage—but Frédéric is there already, white-faced and resolute, coat across his arm as if it might conceal some weapon, so the muttering young fellows push past them both, and depart—

—and on their heels a row of Virgos, one calling back “We came to see politics, not fairytales!” as Istvan behind his mask smiles slight and sour: did they but know, those strident girls, what hard politics this show retells, what life-or-death decisions made on a night where these Misters in another guise played cock-a-hoop to keep all eyes upon them—! They ought, those girls, to have been taking notes…. Now an incantation is meant to be enacted, to, yes, melt the snow and set the captive free, but that may loose more laughter, the audience is distracted and could tip either way. So Istvan in showman’s instinct thinks to distract them further, trusting Mouse to take up his cue as the Youth’s eyes open, gleaming with glycerin, Istvan takes a breath—

—but Rupert, with the same plan, takes a route more direct, the mountain itself shifting in hard creak and sudden tremor, the Youth’s one moveable arm seeming to thrust Mr. Castor free past a quake of painted wood and false snow that buries the Youth himself, torso crooked, eyes still open—

—as someone—Cowtan—lets loose a boo lusty as Stentor, Edgar Rue to his feet shouting back “Why, for shame! For shame, let them play!” that like a cue of another kind leaps in turn from row to row, boos and imprecations both the breath of a breathing animus, men roused for no real reason but the heat of anger and the anger of heat, shoving stiff-armed at one another as the women scramble and screech, someone’s Morocco cane rising to strike, someone else hurling a snuff tin at the stage, another pair yanking until the drapes give way in a heavy tumbling heap. Istvan snatches the puppets up to safety while Rupert, still hooded, vaults from behind the mountain to seize the loudest combatant, Cowtan whose bawls—“Unhand me! Unhand me, you—puppeteer!”—peak as he is hauled struggling down the aisle and sent by a punch out the door. Another man in bowler and high dudgeon grabs at Rupert’s white-draped arm—to defend Cowtan? To get in a blow himself?—and is met with a stare as dire as the elbow to his throat that drops him gagging to the curb, in the street clogged with constables and carriages stalled sideways by the brawl, sparking now to men who a moment before had been passing one another peacefully enough on the sidewalk. Avid newspaper bounders charge past frightened citizens and showgoers eager to escape; windows break; drunks howl from the stoop of the Heads or Tails; a carriage horse spooks and bolts, nearly crushing in its flight the knife man and his hysterical dog. Haden’s boys make the most of the melee while keeping an eye out for their master, Haden himself still inside and busy to harry out the tusslers and bag the fainting, veiled matron, snatching her jade necklace almost as an afterthought, as Frédéric shakes a banker’s runner for smashing a brass sconce—“Rude! Rude, sir!”—while Tilde, gasping, obstructs a pair of constables on the threshold by doubling up as if she is in extremis, shrieking like a Fury “Ow, it hurts, it hurts!”

And Benjamin, eyes gleaming, emerges like the last actor to his cue, to reach for Rupert panting beneath his hood, draw off that hood and snowy cloak as if he, they, had no reason for any haste or hurry, need do nothing at all but stand face-to-face as “Maître,” says Benjamin, as calm and pale as the Snow Youth. “Come with me,” to the door and the man stationed there, Emory who conducts them swiftly to a waiting cab, standing guard beside that private dark wherein Benjamin leans forward to Rupert, now as still as a man in a waking dream, and “You called me,” says Benjamin, “and I’ve come.”

When the pair of constables enter the Mercury at last, they find Istvan in immaculate coat and tie, every inch the business owner ready to make complaint, many complaints, Tilde sniveling at his side as “There, there,” Istvan taking from her a bloody handkerchief, prop handkerchief, prop blood, but the constables cannot know that, as they do not know her tears are counterfeit, who would have thought that Mab was such an actress? and “My young niece,” says Istvan, with ferocious dignity, “was overrun by that rabble, did you mark that, officers? Not to mention the damage to our building,” waving as fiercely at the ruined seats and smashed sconce, detritus and dead Snow Youth on his tumbledown peak. “Who’s going to pay for all this?—There, there, dear, tell the constables who hurt you,” patting Tilde on the neck, her side-cut gaze to ask plainly Where is Sir? and his as plain to answer I don’t know.

And past this little drama another play plays out, Haden and Frédéric alone together backstage, a step or two, a world apart as “Here,” Haden handing to Frédéric his flask, “take a drink, you’re white as snow,” his gaze turned away as if he cannot bear to look Frédéric in the eye, Frédéric whose lips and face feel oddly, inexplicably large; he will not note until later the fairly spectacular swelling, now he only feels the pain, great pain and then great surprise as “Seraphim,” says Haden, taking back his flask uncapped, “they’re after you; Eig is after you. No, don’t bother,” as if Frédéric, speechless, will speak to deny, “just hear what I tell you. He’s not sure who you are, yet, but he knows he wants to put you in one of those rooms. So don’t go back to the newspaper, and don’t go home—”

“Where must I go, then?”

“Don’t go anywhere. Stay here,” gesturing backhand at the riot’s aftermath. “You’re a man of the theatre, an’t you?” He shrugs off Rupert’s coat much the worse for the fray—torn lapels, someone else’s blood—and reaches for his own martial plaid, trying to comb back his hair all a-tangle; to Frédéric he looks a god of misrule, bruised and ungovernable, predator, protector, Frédéric who past his aching heart murmurs “You know all about me, then,” and “I thought I did,” Haden answers, full of mortal longing that he tries to drown, flask to his lips, tasting there like the rime of fresh desire the salt and warmth of Frédéric’s swollen mouth: he would like to kill whoever it was struck that face, will go for Eig himself if he puts out one hand to harm, so “Stay put,” harsh as he turns away, to the door where the constables are finally leaving, one stopping to examine him, as if Haden is somehow known to him or should be: “Who’re you?” and “That’s Mr. Jacks,” says Istvan, “of the Daily Intelligencer. He came to review the show.”

“Terrible thing, all this,” says Haden, taking up the cue. “People simply can’t control themselves.”

“Terrible,” echoes Istvan, reaching to shake his hand. “I do thank you for all your assistance, Mr. Jacks, and await our future mutual endeavors,” with an extra squeeze irrepressible, leading them out to the steps and the square, eyeing the dispersing crowd for some glimpse of Rupert, where the fuck can Mouse have got to? while Haden, as if it soothes him, deftly regroups his little army, in their vests and flash finery, whooping at the action just past—

“Did you see me, Haden? That Mr. Pinch, he thought he had me!”

“Did you see me, Haden? I squared a commodore right in the ballocks, he won’t be fucking Missus tonight!”

—as at Istvan’s elbow something pale appears, a ghost’s face, a ghost’s voice to breathe “M’sieur?” for it is Luc, wrapped in a tailcoat of white Italian wool much too heavy for the heat, as heavy with buttons and bright braid, Luc so insubstantial he might well be a spirit, something once beautiful now barely present in the world. “M’sieur, remember me? I came to see your new show.”

And Istvan turning, shocked, to reach for him, take him into his arms, it is like gathering a pile of sticks—“Bébé, what’s happened?”—but “He says,” says Luc, “I’m not to leave the room…. I’m just like you, now, M’sieur,” with waxwork eyes and a heartbreak smile; one of his teeth is missing, a small incisor, it makes him look even younger, another kind of Snow Youth caught in what he cannot escape. “A friend to great men, just like you.”

Now Haden looms behind, the other boys behind him: “Luc! Luc, where the fuck have you been?” Luc flinching back from his voice, then leaning forward in Istvan’s arms, not kissing but there to be kissed; Istvan recalling the Goatherd’s goatish bed, I want so much more than this from you! as their lips meet with a taste like decay. Then Luc is gone from his arms, stumbling off as Haden trails him, the boys chasing after—

—while Frédéric stands at the doorway, watching it all as if it is a sort of play, for that is right, isn’t it, for Seraphim the critic, the one who only watches from a distance?—himself watched by Tilde who has tugged off the snood, taken up her stoic’s broom and pan and “You,” she says through the dimness, “come help me…. You smacked that fool who broke our lamps. Good work.”

“He was a lout,” says Frédéric through lips becoming difficult to move. He looks around at all the breakage and damage, then at the backstage chairs and table untouched and unscathed, teacups still primly in place: and he laughs aloud in pain and sheer bewilderment, as a kind of offering to the gods of the boards, the unreal world alive enough to cause real blood and suffering. Reaching, wincing—his knuckles are skinned quite raw, how did that happen?—he drags and tugs at the velvet curtain, so very much heavier than it looks, he neatly stacks the broken boards, he works in silence beside silent Tilde: and seeing then what no one else seems to, the rounding curve of her body in the too-tight dress, she is to have a child, surely, this girl!

But he does not speak of it to her, or to Istvan when he reappears, to ask Tilde with a glance a question she answers with a shake of the head; he only continues to work, putting to rights what can be put to rights, the three of them in another kind of stagecraft until the night bends toward dawn and Istvan goes alone and brooding up the stairs, Tilde to follow after pointing out to Frédéric that two chairs pushed together will make a bed of sorts, a bed he pads with his folded coat and a length of stained batting he finds stuffed behind some scenery slats. When Rupert returns, in earliest morning, Frédéric does not waken at the noise of the door or of his footsteps, does not see the great trouble in his eyes, but sleeps on, deeply, fully, the way a tired traveler sleeps when, after long journeys, he finds himself safely at home. When he wakes at last it is to the united gaze of the puppets on their hooks, Pollux and Castor uncovered with their equerries beside them, the four regarding him as calmly as if he has always been there.

“The Snow Youth”

Contributed by Seraphim

As the new theatre columnist of The Muses’ Journal, it is a privilege to make my first review that of the Mercury Theatre’s single performance of The Snow Youth, surely the most highly anticipated opening of the season. It was a tale of real delicacy and sorrowful wisdom, as Misters Castor and Pollux met an enchanted Youth of the mountains, a play unfortunately—or was it intentionally?—disrupted in its playing by a battle between brutish oafs and valiant defenders of the arts, many of whom were called before the magistrates to answer charges of public disorder; several were also sent to hospital with various injuries. The Globe claims to have printed the names of all those present, though I myself, certainly present, did not find my own name on that list, so do approach what you read in the Globe, readers, with due skepticism.

When the performance had perforce ended, I spent the remainder of that night in entreaty of the Muses themselves, who claimed to be more than gratified by the spectacle: “We make of men’s lives our stories,” they said to me, “and watch as men do the same with ours. Think of Aeschylus! Think of Sophocles! And these smaller heroes, these puppets, are very pleasing to us, as they are completely of the theatre, completely unreal, and so the most authentic actors of all.”

“But if you favor them so, why are all against them?” I asked. “The Mercury has been damaged from within and attacked from without—and denounced by the Morals Commission itself!”

And the Muses laughed! Their laughter is like a shower of poured gold and a blast of thunder, quite beautiful and terrible; it went on and on. I do not mind admitting, readers, that I was frightened to hear them laugh this way! Finally they said, “We have not heard of any such commission, our business is concerned only with truth. But do not fear for Mr. Castor and Mr. Pollux, for they are already in the stars.”

And then as the sun rose, the Muses departed. Some might have called our congress merely a dream, but readers, as I perambulated home past the train station, whom did I see but fleet Mercury! surely a sign that the Mercury Theatre will continue its puppet plays that, one day, this city will find fame in presenting, as the truly modern moment takes hold, and those currently in power pass away like a show that closes for lack of an audience. If the Mercury does not win the theatrical competition—those “in the know” suggest that the Cleopatra will bear away that palm—we shall be content to remember whose favor lasts longer, for the Muses always script the final act.

CHRISTOBEL DE METZ’S JOURNAL

9 September 18—

Dearest sister, B. has just left me. He came to this bedchamber with its simpering paintings and overcrowded dressing table, to stand before me in simple black and amber, his eyes, his smile glowing like a flame; he might himself have been a portrait, one made by a master’s hand.

You must be happy for me, he said, very happy, tonight.

I’ll be very happy if the evening should please you, I said, for I knew already that the competition’s prize shall be announced this night. All week Frau de Vries has been in her element, inflating the guest list to Lucullan length, preparing her menu of peacock stuffed and served with spread tails, her fountains of wine—literal fountains! The woman is beyond absurd. And all the while pestering me, like an impatient child, to learn who is the winner; she does not believe me when I say I do not know, that B. has said nothing of the performances we watched. In truth, they were all mediocre—the Athenaeum’s was in rhyme, endless couplets set to a wan Schubertian tinkling, with actors posturing in romantic tableaux; the Cleopatra’s was a version of Hamlet remarkable only for the fact that its Ophelia and its Gertrude were the same actress, a doughy campaigner in yellow wig and then white, apparently Mrs. Cowtan herself: There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me, indeed. The theatre called the Palace was my own favorite, for its show, though a silly classical hodgepodge, had plenty of energy, with its zestful young actresses, and the use of a puppet reminding of the Mercury and its players—whom I have not seen perform, here, as their show closed so quickly, and they declined with a curious wit my invitation: We shall hope instead to see Mme de Metz at another beggars’ ball. I recall the other such, that singular night, those puppets jousting over Letty van Symans’ pearl necklace, the one called Puck pulling at the ribbons of my gown…. Our betrothal night.

It was at the Palace that Herr Eig approached me, like a Puritan in his collar, his “conversation” a new form of interrogation: Had I been to the Park again? Did I not notice the fine stand of orange blossoms in the lobby? (Of course I had, loathing the smell as I do.) How was my infant faring?—after asking to see the miniature I wore, and staring at Isau’s face as if he would memorize him; Herr Eig is truly a constable at heart. And an obtuse heart it is, for he apparently did not understand either the performance we had just watched, or the larger purposes of theatre itself: It is less instructive, even, than novel-reading. For what tale can ever better life, Madame? Or offer its surprises?

I’m surprised you bother to attend, if you feel so.

It is my duty to attend, but my great pleasure to see you again. I would wish it might be your pleasure as well, while he stared at me like one of the masks on the wall, Mirth and Drama, when he has neither to offer, what can the man have meant?

And it was at the Palace that I heard Herr de Vries and Herr Banek. During the intermission, as all else hurried to the balcony to catch the air—it is still so unnaturally hot, though all week there has been rain, fretful rain that only worsens the heat it should dispel—I thought to stay within, and spare myself the continuing company of Herr Eig. But as I passed the alcove stairway, I heard Herr Banek speak of B.—

—neither what one expects nor can condone. His mother was half-Jewess, wasn’t she? Might that be useful?

Useful to whom? And by whom do you think to replace him? He is difficult, yes, but his name is of tremendous value—

His father’s name; these are new days, now. What Eig suggests—

What of the name de Vries? Have you been reading your own editorials, Tibor? And Eig is my servant, he ought not have “suggestions”—Why, dear Madame! First a lark, now a padding little cat, with an instant change to his expression that would have done any player proud, a sharkish stare become a lordly smile he might have given to his own wife: as if I am as empty-headed, as if one might speak of anything before me, speak infamously of my husband and his welfare, and that I would neither listen nor understand! I fairly trembled, I was so angry, but like a player myself I made a smile, I made believe that I had heard nothing of import at all. When at last we returned to the townhouse, I followed B. into his bedchamber—Emory was surprised to see me—and told him immediately everything that I had heard.

Yet B. was neither angry nor surprised, in fact he seemed somewhat amused: They remember to sneer at my poor dead mother, yet forget that I’m my father’s son. The old man knew Guy de Vries, knew him very well, and he patted his journal and smiled, a smile that recalled his father’s, your father; I was always somewhat frightened of M. Isidore, though he was never unkind to me. You did well to tell me, but it’s late now. Stop fretting, and go to bed.

But abed or not, I could not sleep, I lay awake until just before sunrise, thinking of the cool green paths of the Park, and the Lady’s Garden, until it seemed an Eden meant for me to go and walk there, to find at least an hour’s peace. As it was still dark I thought to take a maidservant, but when the girl and I trod the stairs, what did we see but that young servant of Herr de Vries, being carried out by the majordomo: he looked quite entirely drunk, his head hung down like a bright flower on a broken stem.

Such a pity! I whispered to the maid. Such a young man, to be so overcome by vice! But the maid only stared at me, and said nothing. Servants, one finds, can be extremely hard of heart.

That sight drained away all pleasure in the excursion. Halfway to the Park I bid the driver turn back again to the townhouse, as dawn rose dull on the constables and quarreling vagrants in stained aprons, the roiling, dirty whirl of pigeons, the heaped rubbish at the corners of the convoluted streets, where one can take a hasty turn and be lost for hours among buildings seemingly built not by plan but sheer accretion, as if no one cared that a bank stands between a book vendor’s and a bicyclette repair, or a lancing dentist’s atop a dingy milk-and-tea shop. All that my eyes met in that hectic light made me long to leave this place and return to the peace and order of Chatiens.

But I did not expect to have my wish so speedily granted, nor to have heard—how could I?—what B. has said this hour. There before the dressing table, I modeled jewels to suit his eye, the London emeralds, saying how I hoped the evening should please him but This evening, he said, I mean at last to please myself.

And he smiled, such a smile as could have melted a heart of stone: it made me smile in return as I guessed aloud the source of his pleasure—that he had made up his mind that the competition prize should go to the Mercury—but Not the Mercury, B. said, its owner. And the Garden of Eden is to be his prize…. You shall be the one to tell them, at the banquet, you’ll attend and preside in my stead. And then you’ll go home, to your child—Emory will see to things. You may leave whenever you wish, as soon as you wish. Tomorrow.

Why, leave—how wonderful! But you—

I shall stay.

Stay? In the hallway, servants passed to and fro; I heard Frau de Vries call out, pettishly, I heard a door slam. You mean to stay here, in this city?

Here, in the Garden. B. took my hand, and held it to his cheek; his palm was warm, the emeralds hung heavy at my wrist. You shall be cared for, never fear—you are my wife, the child is my heir, nothing will ever alter that. And I shall see you both, from time to time. Perhaps you’ll come to one of our shows. As he spoke, B. watched my eyes, to see if I understood him; and I recalled again the night of our betrothal, your announcement to those avid beggars as B. stood between us, gripping our hands and staring straight ahead, rigid as if he were in pain; was this moment that one’s anodyne, for him? Are there words for such moments?

It’s been so long, Christobel, and I have worked so hard. If you can, be happy for me, now.

I can. My voice was weak, I spoke again. I am. With all my heart, I am.

Dear Belle, he said.

Then he instructed me what I must do and say at the banquet, and left as the vendeuse arrived to make some last adjustments to my gown—a black bodice and narrow skirt, with a stiff black fantail and ruff, very modern—and I chose amongst the gloves, your gloves, my gloves of black Alençon lace, so dainty against the emeralds’ hard sparkle. Deck her in emeralds, make her your queen…. I am his queen still, his wife and helpmeet, and Isau, Isidore, is his son and heir, so let them stare however they may, tonight, and gossip themselves breathless in the days to follow. You feared no scandal, nor does B.; nor shall I. I, too, am de Metz. And if Frau de Vries says “blind betty” to me again, I shall ask her there before them all how her husband’s servant fares, that pretty boy who drinks too much, whom he visits at dawn in his dressing-gown.

It begins at last with sullen percussion, hours before the competition banquet: hard drops on tin roofs and Italianate shingles, on the striped awnings of the flower booths in the Park, where cut roses languish like beauties who have seen better days; the rain melts the filth at the curbs, dampens the spirits of the snatchpockets, brings a smile to the face of the owner of Die Welt, whose coffers have suffered a buffeting from that stupid riot at the theatre: why a café’s windows must be smashed to celebrate, or protest, is nothing he can understand, but his regulars, at last and dampened, have come back. The rain takes from the brow of stone Albanus a laurel crown of pigeon shit; makes a soothing counterpoint to the choir’s rehearsals at St. Mary’s, and an affirmative murmur to a droning speech at the Prefecture; laves the Athenaeum and the Cleopatra and the Palace; and slants against the windows of the trains at the station like penciled lines in an artist’s sketchbook, creating puddles to splash and sully the disembarking passengers, among them Miss Marie Mariette, perspiring in Irish poplin and a new flattop bonnet, and her stern chaperone aunt.

“Was your fiancé not to meet us?” asks the aunt as sternly; she has never been into the city before—too many people, too much noise!—but “I wired,” says Marie Mariette. “Perhaps he’s waiting at the hotel.” All these months, the two sets of parents writing furiously back and forth, Frédéric silent, and she in limbo: when she received his wire, now folded safely in her reticule, she nearly wept for sheer relief. She thinks she knows why he has not come home, she thinks—despite what her mamma fears, or what her papa says—that what Frédéric needs most is reassurance, her reassurance that marriage, their marriage, need not mean he must live his father’s life. Does he wish to stay in this city, and write those tracts? Then she will help him do so, for that is a wife’s duty; and she is a determined girl, Marie Mariette, a girl without beauty needs determination, and she believes in her heart that love will always find a way. Now she leads her aunt past the statue of Mercury to the cabstand, where the god perhaps grants his naughty favor to the sharp-eyed driver who first spots, then shepherds, then triply overcharges the innocent ladies, before stowing their traps in his leaky brougham and wheeling them away.

The roof is leaking again at the Mercury, where Istvan and Tilde are busy together backstage, he with his planing knife and a long spooling ribbon of gut, she with a mop until “Leave that, Mab,” Istvan says, “stick a bucket under it, let it drip…. Do you know how to use a knife at all?”

“I know how to cut.”

“Then cut this,” with her knife from Die Welt, her capable hands to help section the gut, then play out in equal sections a length of hard wire; again he marks how easily such work comes to her, leading him to speak as easily of Lucy Pimm, Puss his apprentice and friend as, long, long ago, another girl once stole for him bright scraps and string and muslin from a rag bag, and was almost tossed into a lock-hospital for her pains: “She was caught, you see. One ought never get caught.”

“Who was she, that girl?”

Istvan looks down, loose hair half masking his face. “My sister. Half-sister.”

“I have,” says Tilde, “a half-sister, too—her name is Tanti. Do you know where yours is?”

“I do. She doesn’t move about, much…. Tell me about those animals you saw in the park in Paris, were they puppets?” to bring from her that tale, Jean and his zoo mécanique, the singing wooden monkey and the beautiful Pégase and “The judgment of Paris,” Tilde says, frowning in her concentration, “Jean told me that story, too. And he gave me clothes to wear, to be a boy when I needed to,” lips tight then as she blushes, faint and pink, what memory rises behind those oracle’s eyes? as one hand drops as if unwitting to her belly, then reaches again for the knife. Istvan sees both blush and gesture, conflates one with the other, and says with a shrugging smile, “You’d make a jolly boy in the right pair of trousers and hat, like one of the runners for my shady friend St.-Mary.”

“Like your poor friend Luc,” Tilde says.

“Like Luc,” Istvan says, no longer smiling. Luc will come no more to the Mercury, with kisses and silly bonbons and pots of scent; or run the streets for Haden, or sell his lavish beauty in the service of some foolish, boyish meld of guilt and pain: Luc was found with his blue silk scarf, in the old silk jacket too large for him, washed up quite dead and fish-nibbled beneath the Bridge. There was no money in the pockets of that jacket, so the constables marked it off as a robbery, one urchin on another; when they found him his eyes were open, a detail known and shared by Vater the knife man, who knew the boy to be a friend of the men of the Mercury, and felt that they, or at least Istvan, ought to know of his end. Istvan has not seen Haden since he heard this news, news whose hearing sent him out into the lurid sunset to buy a bottle of very fine Armagnac, half of which he drank in libation, murmuring like a prayer some lines from an old song, street song for a street boy, Je rêve d’un garçon tout simple, Qui me parle d’amour, while thinking of that smile, that beauty, that confiding hand slipped into his own, the taste of death when they kissed for the last time in the street; a life like a puppet’s, something carved to pass an idle afternoon, little friend, little toy not meant to last. The other half he poured into the river, dark cascade into darker waters, then smashed the bottle, glass raining down upon some swimming boys—perhaps they, too, were Haden’s boys, naked as smelt and splashing—as well as a docking oarsman who climbed to the bank to resent it with his fists, climbing back down again once he saw the look in Istvan’s eyes: Why die for a shower, when as an oarsman he has been drenched before by even worse.

Luc’s ending is not a tale that Istvan has shared with Rupert; in fact they have barely spoken past the Snow Youth, a fact noted by Tilde with alarm, a fact she brings up now in her typically forthright fashion: “Sir’s gone again, isn’t he. He’s angry at you, what did you do?” to bring in reply Istvan’s shadowed nod: “Sharp eyes. And none of your affair, though it’s nothing I did,” but rather apparently what he had not done: the real Snow Youth in the audience to consider his own refracted history, to reach afterwards at last in some fashion for Mouse, to say whatever he had said that put Rupert at the dressing-table the morning after the long and absent night, dry-eyed and accusing:

Once again to play your tricks, messire, without a thought for me! There at the Opera—

You’d gone home already, hadn’t you, you’d had enough of poor sweaty Cleopatra. So I took the kit instead, he was handy…. Christ, Mouse, what difference? We had a drink, we bowed to one another, that was all.

You never change, you never will. You could have said that you had seen him—

And you went off with him last night—all night—without alerting me. Shall we repair to the alley and throw mud at each other, make all even? If you hankered so much to frolic again with the quality, the young Madame herself invited us to—

What I “hanker for,” hard with anger, up from the chair so quickly that it fell, is an hour’s fucking peace before I die—gone back out then as he has gone in and out for days past Istvan’s feigned indifference, gone once more this lowering afternoon, and in a mood as self-contained and dire; where the fuck does he go, now that the Mercury is dark again, the mountain dismantled, the Snow Youth boxed in a fruit-crate coffin and shoved into a corner, Misters Pollux and Castor hung silent as strangers at one another’s sides?

The angel Frédéric has said, in his diffident way, that, on his own brief forays into the streets (in a disguise of his own making, flat cap and gipsy scarf that oddly suit), he has glimpsed Mouse in a café next to the Garden of Eden: It’s not quite opened, the sign says “soon.” But no one seems to know who owns it—not Frédéric himself, nor Vater when queried, nor Cockrill all distracted with the competition’s apex: I’d tell you surely if I knew, anything for a brother puppeteer! Now if you could show me, just a tick’s worth, of how you make your fellows move so nicely? If the kit knows, he has not shared his knowledge, Haden who, now that the seraph is in situ, has made himself completely scarce though It was Haden’s thought, Frédéric’s painful blush in answer when questioned on his own presence, even more diffident at the table with notebook and black eye, and truly, sir, I am enormously grateful for the refuge, truly I shall make myself useful to you all! Mouse seems barely to mark him beyond a sideways glance, but Mab has found him quite useful, has put him to daily work at which, if he does not quite excel, still is diligent to learn—his tea-making has improved a great deal, now that he knows what a strainer is for, and he can paint a flat without painting the wall behind it—while he scribbles his polemics for the cheeky Muses’ Journal, and hides, in some torturous way, from the Morals Commission, a fact confessed in trembling, but met by Istvan with a shrug: We’re no friends to the Commission, or any other moral fuck. You’re safe here as long as we are. Behind our gamine—nodding approvingly to Tilde—who bites.

Now “Mab,” says Istvan, himself biting at the end of a thread, a threading line of gold that, when wound on wire, will make a perfect halo, “when our young Diogenes gets back, will you sit him down and teach him to sew? I need this raiment sharpish—the cloth-of-gold, see? No, not that, the other—yes. And our other angel,” nodding to the devil sequestered on the workbench, less sad now than purely thoughtful, appended by grace, “needs his wig trimmed up. I think the mice have been at it.”

“Who made him?” Tilde asks, hoisting the devil to her lap, yellow eyes and yellow horsetail hair, his small horns planed to silver points. “Not you.”

“Sharp eyes,” says Istvan again, half-smiling; truly this chit is made for this work. “I do believe he made himself, and found his own way here. Just like his partner. And you…. I’ll be back myself directly. And when your Sir arrives, tell him to stay here, and wait for me.”

“What if he doesn’t want to?”

“Tell him till he does,” with a wink less humor than insistence, taking up his own disguise of businessman’s bowler and coat, hair tucked up, pearl earring tucked to pocket, noting as he steps out into the rain the boys loitering across the way in the shelter of the broadsheet printer’s, Haden’s boys to whom he beckons: “You two—Where’s your master, do you know?”

“Ask Master Dangle,” says one of the boys, cupping his balls to bring the other’s snigger, sucking in a strangling breath as Istvan leans close to grab him there, a punishing grip and “The next time I ask you, you’ll sing like a girl. Where is he?” as the other hurries to answer “Sir, we dunno, sir! He said for us to watch out on your own place. But he might could be at that new Garden of Even, sir—”

“All roads lead there, apparently. All right,” releasing the first boy to drop writhing at the curb, stepping over his body in a hurry for the omnibus, to board the back platform out of the rain’s gray spatter. As he rides he reads with interest, over the shoulder of a frowning Virgo girl, the Herald of Truth’s examination of French culture, with a special emphasis on the ladies of Les Folies Bergère.

At that moment Rupert sits across the avenue from that very Garden, in a nearly empty café called the Bellevue, though its view is not particularly belle: a fat constable pushing a thin miscreant past two brown storefronts drab as stepsisters, the other theatre buildings like hostile natives, all occluded further by cigar smoke puffed over a cup of inferior chocolat. His own eye is turned inward again, back to the night of the Snow Youth, to the darkness of the cab where he sat strangely unsurprised, as if he had somehow conjured the living Benjamin by the making and playing of the Youth—

It’s been a long time. We missed each other at the Opera, didn’t we—though I saw M. Dieudonne. He looks much older, now.

Him, he hasn’t changed a minute, though Benjamin clearly had: more handsome even than before, the boy’s slender beauty grown into the man’s allure, the shoulders broader, the cheekbones sharper, the mouth—would it be?—as yielding and as soft. But in the changeable eyes see a hard weariness, a new grain of spite, a master’s habit of unchecked command as Here, leaning forward to slip into Rupert’s pocket a little folded note, his own old note poste restante thanking Isobel for her kindness, Isobel now gone beyond the reach of any missive. Belle kept it, all that time. She was quite fond of you, you know.

She was a very great lady. And her passing was a very great loss, but Benjamin was not listening, Benjamin was looking at him in that new way, examining him, what did he see? A man himself grown weary, yes, and much older, a man who has tried his best to make illusion his home and We were meant to meet again this way, weren’t we? That Snow Youth, I rather think I know him, with a sudden smile immensely sweet, his own smile slower in answer but Yes, he had said at last. You do.

You called me, and I’ve come….. And I’ve called no man master since we parted on that mountain, his hand raised as if in oath, and on that hand with its scarred knuckles a ring, the signet ring that Rupert recognized with a pang, his own hand with its Greek intaglio noted then by Benjamin with a smile even sweeter, as if in confirmation of a hope the show had seeded: or may be that was fancy; it was very dark in the cab, it was all very much like a dream, that darkness, Benjamin’s murmur of gifts sent his way, what gifts? I trust they pleased you! Outside was all the street’s commotion, men cursing, a horse’s scream, as the servant, Emory, held the doors against intrusion, Emory who had given Rupert such a servile grin, a strange combination of unction and hazard, as if a serpent should curl and fawn upon one’s shoe. But I have a greater gift to give. Shall I show it to you now?

And driving off together to the quiet street of the theatre, the whole building made over and made new: not at all to his taste, all that frescoing and gilt, but still it is very fine, this Garden of Eden. Look at it now, standing sturdy as a fortress in the rain…. Rupert draws on his cigar, then reaches to relight it; the matchbox is empty. He curses softly, calls the serving girl for more—

“Certainly. And did you wish another chocolat, sir?”

“Have you whiskey?”

With Emory discreet at the door like a virgin’s duenna, they had walked together through that theatre, across its stage—the curtain alone must have cost a fortune, an acre of sea-blue velvet—and down through its dressing rooms and properties space, almost too much space, one could put on that Cleopatra-opera and have room left over for Pollux, Castor, and the stage of the Poppy, too. The roof does not leak; there is electricity throughout, even a telephone, all is completely modern. In the backstage light, Benjamin showed the careful notes in his journal—from whom the building had been purchased, its price, the carpenters and plasterers and ironworkers used in the renovations—a thick, pearl-gray journal with an odd and sour smell, as if it had lain underground somewhere, or been shut up in some dank room: In time you’ll read it, read everything I’ve done, said Benjamin proudly; that same remembered pride, the boy in the tree who could not be found, the boy who took to the road and hid there while the whole world, his world, searched for him, returning at last by his own will to set his master free. I meant for all to be ready in time for the competition—which is my doing, too, of course. Amongst all the other competitions, here and elsewhere.

You’ve done well for yourself, Benjamin. Very well.

How the praise made him glow! I’ve worked exceedingly hard. I have a wife—Christobel, you know—and a child. A son, brushing aside Rupert’s congratulations, I understand my duties. But then that spite again, that coal-black wink of bitterness: And truly I’ve become a fine actor, my whole life is my rôle. I am not what I might have been, Maître, had you stayed.

And what to say to that past another, greater pang, yet what else had there been to do but leave him safe to his wealth and his sister, like waking him at dawn from a cherished dream…. It was then that he left that Garden, too, though clearly Benjamin meant for him to linger; they did not shake hands in parting, as if even that touch might be too much. Instead Benjamin watched from the doorway, his servant beside, as Rupert turned for the dark and the heat, to walk the rest of the night away, and leave Istvan for once with whatever clamor there was at the Mercury, let Istvan for once sweep up the breakage and deal with the brawlers and speak to the constables or authorities or whomever might have popped up, like a rogue puppet onstage, to wreak more mischief there. He himself walked the city as he has not walked it before, not in all the time he has lived here: roaming as he used to as a boy, from the theatre district, past the municipal fortress and clerks’ booths and warren of offices, past the shuttered shops and quiet churches and noisy Cemetery and through the Park, pausing, once, at Crescent Bridge to smoke, as below him tired whores urged on their customers, and one tomcat fought another to a yowled crescendo of defeat.

And walking back at last, exhausted, to find the writer Seraphim curled like a vagabond in the piled mess backstage, Tilde awake as a little owl, relieved to see him enter; and Istvan sleeping on the cot beneath the window, the first hot rays of morning’s light like a flush across his chest, his cheeks, his lips with their faint upturned lines, as if he is mirthful even in his dreams. Well might he be, with another forever to carry the weight…. This whiskey is not to his liking, it has an oily aftertaste; he rubs his forehead, he orders another, drinks it down then steps into the rain falling harder, now, swift down the block as if in actor’s exit as Istvan in bowler hat—it is, in fact, Rupert’s bowler hat—steps off the omnibus to locate and approach the Garden of Eden, and knock briskly at its silent doors.

Frédéric is abroad as well, in his concealing gipsy weeds, satchel hung at his side like a beggar’s; for a mad moment he even considers begging, to see if the disguise is that complete—! Instead he heads to the office of the Muses’ Journal, in actuality the backroom of a nondescript four-seat tavern, the sharp young editor like a jolly pirate chief with his cigarette and braces and hearty crew of bounders, flash-paper photographers and reporters who, when there is little to report, make something up that “Turns out anyhow to be true,” boasts the editor to this Seraphim, who does indeed write like an angel, and if his clothing is a little odd, what of it? He can dress up as the Queen Mother for all it signifies. “What have you got for us this time, Mr. Angel? Is it about the theatre prize?”

“I suppose you could say so. It’s a kind of philippic,” says Frédéric, though that word is unknown to the jolly editor, a fact that matters to him as little as Frédéric’s eccentric dress: to have snagged him from the Solon is a coup, whatever the fellow writes they will print with a border of ten-point stars, and everyone who matters in the city will read it—including the Morals Commission and old Tortoise Banek, all of whom, the editor fervently hopes, will raise a mighty old stink when they do.

Once philippic and payment have changed hands, Frédéric hurries away, passing without glance or detour the street of his old rooming house. He has told the landlord he is “traveling,” past one furtive visit the day after the Snow Youth, to pay off his rent and collect all he could carry in this satchel and a carpetbag: Ovid and his other books, several clean shirts, the bundle of letters from home; it seemed a stranger’s room already, so tidy and empty after the disorder and fierce excitements of the Mercury. How odd that he should live now in a theatre, and yet in another, truer way not odd at all. Let them search that old room if they will, as they will, those constables or agents, they will find nothing of him there, not even his half-used Pinaud’s.

He steers clear as well of the publishers’ row: though Voltaire might approve him, Herrs Hebert and Konrad most surely do not. Herr Konrad is also traveling, a long, perhaps permanent visit to Vienna and his ailing mother, leaving Herr Hebert as de facto publisher, Herr Hebert who, it is rumored, is as angry at the loss of his columnist as the fleeing Konrad was relieved to see him go. Frédéric has promised himself that one day he will make it right with them, those men who, no matter how the matter was concluded, made it possible for “Seraphim” to write anything at all—

—as then, at his postbox, a different and more unhappy promise is recalled: a wire is waiting for him, his fiancée is waiting for him, arrived already at the old Baltic Hotel: I am here with Aunt Maria, please come and advise. Yours, Marie. Miss Mariette, she came so swiftly…. He pockets the wire, he turns toward the Baltic—then pauses at a milk-and-tea shop, wading through the doorway crowd of boys, some of them Haden’s, all of them hooting and begging, none of them bothering to notice this man who might be one of them grown into a kind of ragged manhood some of them will not live long enough to attain. How sad they are, these boys, who do not know that they are sad; yet comic, too, and resilient, like the lilies of the field who neither sow nor spin. He buys a baker’s dozen sugared currant buns, eating one—gone in three bites, when has he eaten last?—then turning to a boy whose face he knows, the boy he saw, once, at St. Mary’s, angling money from the archbishop (St. Mary’s, another place he now avoids; still God is everywhere), and “Here,” Frédéric says, passing him the rough paper sack. “Share them out, will you? One for each.”

“Well that’s fucking bona,” says the boy, pleased, taking the largest bun for himself, ankling and kicking the other boys in a friendly fashion; one of them shouts after “Suck, sah, for half-price, how’s about?” an offer to which Frédéric does not reply, but smiles a little under his cloaking red gipsy scarf.

When he reaches the hotel, he removes the scarf quickly and tucks it away before passing the doormen, one of whom notes that this fellow has a stain on his shirtfront, a smear of currant jelly that in the lobby lights could pass for blood. The stain goes unnoticed by the bored clerk at the marble front desk, who nods at Frédéric’s request, Frédéric who wishes fervently for a brandy, several brandies, before he tells Marie what he must now tell her—that he is a man under a cloud, a very black cloud, that for her own sake they can never be married—as the desk clerk reaches for the speaking tube.

Meanwhile the Garden of Eden stands silent: Benjamin is not there, nor Emory, nor the flower-shop man whom Emory had refused to pay—These roses are not fresh. Look, the leaves are already browning!—that man pausing as he left to spit on the steps of the alleyside door, that door considered now by Istvan with a street boy’s acumen, rejected in favor of better egress via the fire-ladder and the roof; but there, too, he is defeated, there are no skylights or trap doors at all. Frowning, he clambers down, trousers wet, wondering ought he wait till it is darker, though it is surely dark enough in all this rain—

—and spinning, white knife in hand as a hand lands on his shoulder, Haden palm up and warding: “Don’t stick me, uncle, for fuck’s sake! Here,” holding out a key, “this way’s easier…. You’re bally quick, an’t you, for an older fellow.”

“I learned it young. After you,” as they step into the clean dimness of the theatre, too clean, too new, owning no spirits of its own: the former ones scrubbed away, antic or tragic, this place is like a stage for a stage. Their footsteps echo, Istvan leading through the quiet, Haden bareheaded and unsmiling, pausing to look around, to sniff at “All these flowers,” bouquets of roses upon roses, set out on stiff silver stands. “Smells like a mourning parlor.”

“The man who owns this building,” says Istvan, “is a great partisan of roses; it runs in his family.” He snaps off a fat white bloom, fixes it to his lapel. “You’re quite sure of that name, now?”

“I saw the letter on Eig’s desk, I saw the name, and the bank’s name. That de Metz, you two can’t seem to stir a step without him,” meant as a kind of humor to Istvan, who shrugs without a smile: “Milord Millstone, yes, I’d thought we were shut of him some time ago. Take the lesson, kit, take care whom you pick for a patron—”

“I an’t any. Only clients.”

“—and keep love from the equation, always. It brings out the worst in certain types.”

“I know.” Haden looks away then, into the shadowed, empty seats of the house. “Luc Topps—you heard?” and at Istvan’s icy nod, “I’m quite fucking sure of that name, too,” as the sad tale is briefly told: Luc followed up to the de Vries townhouse, Luc stumbling in without a word beneath Jozsef’s liveried arm, a small army of housemen summoned by that Jozsef, who did not even bother to raise his voice: Will it need constables, too? The young man is here of his own will, no one holds him. Or are you, with a nasty smile to Haden, his father? From the hallway another man watched, a man Istvan would have recognized, Emory with avid eyes to see Haden and his army turned away, their only consolation some flung rocks and a spray of piss against the iron gates; and was it Luc they saw at the last, there by the casement window, midnight blue drapes and white wool like a ghost? “The bastard wouldn’t even pay to bury him…. He was the sweetest of my lot.”

“The bébé was lovely.”

In shared silence they cross the stage, Haden pocketing the key, passing together through the ratty alley and the hissing rain, down avenues of black umbrellas and skirts spattered to the shin, faces wet as if with the city’s tears, all the way to the Drooping Lily for several cups of apple brandy and a conversation more potent, that ends with Istvan noting “That banquet is tonight, you know,” pushing to one side his emptied cup, its sediment bitter and brown; his hair is loose again, the earring winks. “The competition banquet. Do you go?”

“No. Do you?”

“It’s been some time since I performed for the quality,” with a smile mostly teeth, “and his wife did ask, Madame Millstone, that is. It would be rude not to honor such an invitation, yeah?”

“What’s your play, uncle?” as they rise together, Haden tossing coins onto the table, Istvan’s arm companionable to his shoulder: “The ancients say the fox’s den has seven exits, but we won’t need so many, I shouldn’t think. Have you ever operated a puppet?” to bring in answer Haden’s laugh, a distinctly feral sound, from the chest not the throat, like some beast coughing over its prey. In leaving they are watched by an audience of admiring servant boys, all of whom have been had by both or either, and the more jaded men at the tables, none of whom can say the same, though one, green linen and soda cologne, gives a heartfelt sigh as he quotes—“‘Would not a pair of these have bred, sir?’”—to prompt his neighbor’s raised eyebrow: ”What, St.-Mary and the showman? Fra diavolo! Let’s light a little candle that they can’t.”

Outside the triangulated corner sends Haden splashing one way, down the avenue toward Minerva and the office of Martin Eig, and Istvan on to several errands, in narrow little shops where the owners know him by names older than Hilaire or Dieudonne, shops that sell items not displayed upon the counters, oddments for jesters and the friends of jesters and thieves, securing what he needs before heading back to the Mercury—

—where Tilde has ceased to wait for Frédéric unarrived, without him she has tidied the devil’s locks and made the angel’s halo, that angel with refurbished wings and a fine new mechanism at his back; both of whom now seem to gaze upon her with confidantes’ sympathy, as if they can guess what will happen next, what she can wait no longer to do. Herself all spiffed and tidied, in starched hat and brown work dress—not the blue wool, she cannot fit anymore into the blue wool—and with the cameo retrieved from her sleeve and tied carefully about her throat, the queen’s white stare, the sky-blue tulle more faded than before; it scratches her skin. All is as carefully arranged at the backstage table, hot pot and china cup and shiny spoon, the mineral water and matches, the table set for Sir as he returns, smelling of whiskey, a great darkness in his eyes that has little to do with how little he sleeps, though she knows he is not sleeping, she can hear him up and pacing while she herself lies awake into the dawn.

Now “Sir will take chocolate,” she says, as he wipes the rain from his spectacles. “Šálek cokolády.”

Rupert smiles his thanks, sits and sips; he smiles again. “No one makes it as well as you do, Tilde. Are you glad that you came to us, from that café?” the question posed so seriously that she almost laughs: Glad? To be here, mistress of this place with him, with them? Since the days when Tanti was an infant, she has not had a family nor a home; now she does, if only she may keep them, so “Yes,” she says, minutely repositioning the spoon. “That skinflint worked us hard and paid us half of nothing, and the mice were big as my fist. But Die Welt was better than when I first came—” her story all prepared to tell, seamstress and sweeper-girl, the dance academy and Paris, the tale of a girl who takes care of herself—

—but all at once she cannot speak for thinking of the creeper, faceless and furtive to make what grows inside her, what she finally tells to Rupert without a word: reaching for his hand, still warm from the chocolate cup, she puts it to her sloping belly, holds it there as his startled gaze questions, then sharpens, then “A child?” Rupert asks; his voice is hard. “Whose child?” Seeing her, how has he not seen it before? that little body like a seedpod, she must be more than halfway gone. All that casting up in the mornings, and the fainting—“Tilde, answer me. Who did this to you?”

“Sir.” Tears brim in her eyes, as blue as glass. “Sir, I am not a whore.”

“Oh Jesu,” rising from the chair so swiftly he spills the chocolate, reaching to grasp her arm—and she flinches, a flinch Rupert marks with a wince of his own as “Sir,” she gasps, “I swear to you—I never, never—”

“Stop that. Tell me who—”

—but now all she can do is cry, hands to her face against the sudden soundless torrent: perhaps it is all her tears at once, a young lifetime’s tears for the father left forever at the table, the mother whom she will never see again, for Tanti and Jean and the constable’s clout in the Park and the dry, wheaty taste of the stolen buns; perhaps even for herself, folle-farine with her skirts flipped up over her head by the one who made her what she never thought to be, a girl just like Annabell, a girl looking to a man to shelter a child not his own so “Just let me have it here,” Tilde sobs, “and I’ll go. I’ll take it and go, you’ll never have to—”

“Listen!” so sharply that she stops, hiccupping and distressed and “You’ll go nowhere,” Rupert says; he tugs off the skewed Infanta’s hat, he gathers her under his arm. “You’ll stay right here, you’ll have what you need, we’ll get a girl in to help you—” have it here, oh Jesu, yes, some woman will need to deal with that. “Whatever you need, it will be fine, do you hear? For you and your child, it will all be fine. Don’t cry.”

He strokes her hair, she stands eyes-closed beneath his arm, the wool of his coat warm against her cheek, the smells of tobacco and rain. Finally she pulls away to wipe her blotched face with the apron, while he swabs at the spilled chocolate; silence rests between them until “The man,” Tilde’s voice thick and small, “the one who… He came at me from behind, in an alley down by the fishmongers’ stalls. I never saw his face.”

“I’ll hope,” says Rupert, “to see his face one day.—All right, now?” as she nods, resuming with dignity her hat, reaching to retrieve from him the towel—“Sir will take another cup”—on the widening curve of a smile, a smile of relief so vast and deep it is almost unmooring: she feels light enough to float, to fly, like a bird homing back to its roost. Perhaps her child feels it, too, for it moves inside her then, a little rolling twitch, for the very first time.

Now the door swings opens, a wet and throaty wind to carry with it Istvan, tossing down the soaked bowler, saluting them both: “Noah sends his kind regards, and asks if you would care for a deck chair.” Rupert, frowning, turns from the table for the stairs, Istvan determined to follow until “Wait,” Tilde says, putting herself in his path, a warding hand to his arm. “Better to leave be, just now—”

“Little girl,” cold, “never tell me how to speak to him,” stepping rapid after Rupert, into their bedchamber a half-pace behind—though saying nothing once there, only turning up the gaslight, pulling off his tie, rifling through the wardrobe for the evening’s work ahead. From the corner of his eye he sees Rupert readying the razor and mirror, Rupert again so bristled and poorly shaven since he has not allowed Istvan to do it for him these last few weeks, will not allow it now as “I only noticed,” Istvan says coolly, “that you look a proper tramp,” Rupert taking back the soap brush with perhaps more violence than is necessary. “I said I’d be your barber, didn’t I?”

“Did you also ‘notice’ that Tilde’s to have a child?” Rupert takes off his spectacles, stares at the little mirror in the wavering light, Istvan’s face a watching blur behind. “May be your backdoor spy can find the father. And that newspaper lad seems to live here, now—is that your doing? Like your Juliet boy?”

“No worries for the ‘Juliet boy’—he’s gone, he’s dead. And you’ve fucking lathered the floor, you might want to—”

“Dead? How?”

“What difference?” brisk and brutal, head cocked to one side. “Where do you go, that’s the question I want answered, what the fuck passes with you since—”

“Benjamin de Metz,” says Rupert, and in those words, that name, is everything that follows: the Snow Youth and the Garden of Eden, electric lights and stout doors and “We could do worse,” Rupert says, not looking at Istvan, staring into the mirror as if it is a window to another, more perfect world. “It’s made for us, he said, it would be a gift—”

“A gift?” aghast. “Like a noose is a gift to the neck. And already we’ve this place, why would you even consider—”

“There’s safety there, beneath that roof, that’s why! Tilde, and your young fellows—no one would ever touch them there, no constables or Commission or—”

“And who’ll touch you, Mouse? Is that it, has the Happy Prince finally grown man enough to—”

“Stop.”

“You go there, you bide there, and he sings you some siren song of patronage, yeah? The fucking quality! Have you mellowed, or can you miss it all, coddling ‘Belle’ and all the pretty flowers and—”

“Oh, mock, messire, you’ve done your share of hobnobbing, you’re the one who hauled me into it! And you took her deathbed money quick enough!”

Silence then, a dreadful precipice silence, the silver mantel clock ticks inexorable as Time: then “I always took their money,” Istvan’s face very pale, a pallor even Rupert has never seen before. “I took what they had and what I wanted, I took until there was nothing left or until I grew weary in the taking. Because they could give me nothing. Not like you.”

And as Rupert fumbles for a towel, Istvan rips coat and hat and florid gold cravat from the wardrobe, turns on his heel at the door to kiss his fist in awful, acid gesture, past Rupert’s cry—“Come back here! Come back, or don’t at all!”—to storm both flights, disregarding Tilde, who stands taut, hands pressed to lips, as he snatches up Mr. Castor and a long cape, slams the door behind like doomsday thunder, and is gone; then all is still.

Upstairs, in the echo of that thunder, Rupert with shaking hands picks up, again, the shaving brush, takes a ragged breath to calm himself; yet when steel touches skin there is stinging, there is blood, a red line on his jaw as if from a footpad’s sticker. Still shaking, he drops the razor to the jumble of the dressing-table, between the soapy bowl and the miniature of desert-red morocco, to stare at the room around him as if he has never seen it before: purplish ferns and stately drapery, narrow windowside cot, rosewood bed and satin coverlet, Istvan’s jacket flung atop it with the white rose boutonnière.

Cards are neutral, every gambler knows this, or learns it later as sadder knowledge; cards speak only for themselves. Even cards like Tilde’s, the leaping hares and solemn priests and trumps like Hangs-a-man, all use exclusively their own language, not careless but uncaring of decipherment: tolle lege, and let him understand who will.

If one were to lay as a spread this night of competition, first frame it with the rain still falling past the unseen sunset, pooling in the gutters, running down the greenish copper roofs; let it flood the Cemetery like spilled lager, bedraggle near to drowning the Lady’s Garden, set the gypsies cursing past their wheel in the Park, all fires doused. See it swamp the shoes of the trudging scholars and daily maids, splatter the archbishop as he alights from a cab, splash the gowns of those arrived at the de Vries townhouse itself like a jewel beneath the sea, lit and glowing with flickering doorside torchieres, decked with birds-of-paradise and peacock feathers, as the servants fill the towering glass fountains—champagne, and black Turkish wine—and ready the quail croquettes and stewed hearts of palm. Deal up like pip cards the rigid, hope-filled, overdressed Cowtans, and stolid Gilbert Fairgrieve, and Alban Cockrill sweating in a hired tailcoat with prop top hat; place with them at the lesser of the tables Edgar Rue, to hold court with the ladies at his either sides, a charming if inconsequential deuce; and Tibor Banek, a would-be Jack quite angry at this placement, his punishment for speaking out of turn.

Next to him sits Martin Eig in black with an unaccustomed splash of color, a new cravat as green as grass; call him a Jack of Maces, if there were such a suit, or an incipient Lord of Crowns, for ever since the Snow Youth riot he has been exulting: Who now can fail to see the rottenness of the old guard, their irrelevancy, their inability to control even an upstart little theatre? The wheel is turning for good this time, soon everyone will know it. Let his heated gaze roam that gorgeous room and its varied and heedless guests—though not all are heedless; Tibor Banek is not, nor the mayor, nor Morris Robb of the bank—but return, again and again, to the self-contained Queen of Flowers, Christobel in her black and green emeralds in such happy match to his own attire. Yet let her gathered gaze less ignore than fully fail to mark his: he is not a signifying card, she does not count him in her hand at all.

Leave an empty place, then, next to that Queen, the spot where her King should be but is not; call Benjamin de Metz the Lord of Flowers, as he stands alone in the lobby of the Garden of Eden, his eyes half closed to breathe in the scent of roses, white roses everywhere, like a greenhouse or a garden path. He is ravished by memories: of a harlequin mask, a midnight café, and a cab ride, the taste of whiskey tasted from the lips of the man he loves; his blood surges, he turns the ring around and around on his finger, he counts the minutes as they pass. Outside, in the rain, waits his own Knave or Jack, Emory, who adores his master the way the sheath adores the knife; with his arms crossed, hands tucked into sleeves, he waits upon the advent of a visitor, call that man the King of Staves, that theatre man of no birth or fortune or lasting account, who is nonetheless his master’s unaccountable lord of hearts. Emory has learned all there is to know about that King and his own Jack, the heartless, stateless, laughing puppeteer; and that one’s Jack, too, the slippery St.-Mary whose drugging lily-boy Herr de Vries has used and discarded; and if Emory does not yet conflate Frédéric Blum with this company, or the servant Tilde who is not a servant, he will before too many hours have passed.

Now Herr and Frau de Vries are dealt their places, hand on arm as a queen entering with a king, a Lord and Queen of Crowns certainly, though both tonight are tarnished: he furious at the unexplained, untoward absence of Benjamin de Metz, that puppy scampering off this night of all nights, to pleasure himself in some unknown way; and she pouting at her secondary position to Christobel de Metz, who has tried, this night of all nights, to dress à la mode, à la Parisienne, so unsuitable to that mare’s face and those emeralds, emeralds fit for an empress that would suit Frau de Vries so entirely! When these two are finally seated, the other guests applaud; now the puffing philharmonia raises their collective bow for a medley composed especially for the occasion, “A Meditation on Arden,” as Twelfth Night was the maestro’s inspiration for this evening honoring the theatre.

The next cards to last are dealt out in darkness, two foxy Jacks to slip bowing through the servants’ way, a third small figure unseen between them like the ace in the hole: Haden in bowler and blood-red stripes, Istvan smiling above his bright cravat, Mr. Castor a knobby hunchback beneath the cloak: they are the evening’s jolly entertainment, Frau de Metz herself has invited them, look! at the rose-stamped stationery, at the mercilessly pleasant smile, at the yellow gaze that blinks so decorously as it marks, marks, marks every door, every window, every hidey-hole, every spot where two men in a pinch might make a bolt. If Haden’s face is known to several of the servants, if one even thinks to say so— “An’t that the feller who deals?”—he is corrected at once: “They’re the players, slackwit. Now help me move this trolley.” The two men disappear past the kitchens to a little serving-pantry, an entryway that opens directly to the banquet hall, Haden leading, Istvan whisking out Mr. Castor as they go; now the spread is almost complete, for these bring the necessary tension to the table, as expert gamblers always do, and seed chaos, as Taroc always requires; for without chance, what chance is there of any real truth or its telling?

If Tilde, who has watched in silence and great alarm while Rupert—blood-spotted, half-shaven, wholly wretched—receives from a drenched driver a note and follows it to the cab that waits for him outside, if she reaches as he leaves for her cards—and she does, scrabbling for the velvet sack as soon as the door swings shut—she does so as the true savant, all unknowing, perfectly wise, both the Mater and the Woman Alone. And as she does, the last card of the spread falls into place: the Jack of Dreams, Frédéric with his scarf and stained shirt, stepping dazed out of the rain and into the Mercury, where Tilde greets him with a dry nod and the teapot.

He pours for them both, takes a seat at the table, tugging off the sodden gipsy rag and “She was very upset,” he says, to Tilde, to himself, to the air. There is a deep scratch down his cheek, not one of the old bruised marks but a new one; Tilde regards it with an eyebrow raised and “Her aunt,” Frédéric says. “Miss Mariette’s aunt, she slapped me. She was wearing a pronged ring, I believe.”

“Who’s Miss Mariette?”

“She is—she was my fiancée.” There is a brandy bottle, nearly empty, on Istvan’s worktable; Tilde points to it and Frédéric drinks, one burning, gulping swallow, two. “She said that I was a gay deceiver and that my family would pay with shame and sorrow—her aunt did, I mean. Her aunt is quite a bit stronger than she looks.—It’s raining dreadfully,” as a gravid peal of thunder echoes like the cue for Ragnarok, the turning wheel to put to end the world that was so a new world may begin. “Where is everyone?”

“Here,” says Tilde, pointing down at the cards. She drinks more tea. Frédéric finishes the brandy. The thunder peals again.

At another table, in the hectic light of many candelabra, decked and twined with vines and fans of nodding peacock feathers, the courses are served—oysters, hare, trout in sauce Americaine, roasted peacock—as black wine and Champagne froth and flow in the fountains, and the hungry and unfed musicians play a series of sumptuous tunes. At the place of honor, Christobel de Metz gazes past her dinner partner—a beefy cousin of some German margrave, come to the city especially for this night, hastily inserted in her husband’s empty chair—and thinks of Isobel serene in the garden, and little Isidore in his nightshirt waving at the windows; perhaps there is a moon over Chatiens tonight, calm and white above these endless clouds. She herself feels as lunar and removed from the circumstance around her, as if all were a sort of play, as she sets aside her half-drunk glass—dark emeralds, bright wedding stone—to do as her husband has bid her, anticipating with a satisfaction as distant the consternation this announcement will cause—

—but now a servant is at her elbow, proffering a folded note—“From your entertainment fellows, Madame”—a note she reads with silent astonishment, reads again and then “Have them do as they suggest,” she says to the servant, who bows and retreats. The exchange is observed by both Herr de Vries and Martin Eig, who themselves have not exchanged, tonight, more than half a dozen words.

In the serving-pantry, beside a tower of untouched dishes (no one cared for the spongy hearts of palm), that servant past other peeping servants delivers Madame’s message to the two elegant performers. Haden, biting his lip, mentally rehearses what Istvan has instructed—the bow, the laugh, the songs: “Qu’a-t-il fait?” and the other, those bits at least he knows—as he costumes himself in the player’s cloak that smells faintly of turpentine and old smoke; while Istvan on a three-legged stool murmurs over Mr. Castor in a way both eerie and tender, as if he is a living man, faithful lifelong friend, repository of terrible sorrows and even more terrible love, this puppet once called Puck, oh, with his keyhole heart indeed, who understands the keyhole but the key, and friend, too, to Pan Loudermilk, who helped win back Mouse, and Marco who first presided at his loss. Cur fox, cumbox…. Is Rupert with that other Puck now, that pouting, greedy Cupid so very militantly handsome, so rich in all the years of lifetime still ahead, and himself still chasing safety, when he holds it, has always held it, right there in his own hand! How very far one must come to go nowhere at all, the drawing rooms of the great, yes, with Mrs. Cupid at the table, the protégée Madame with all the cool composure of her late sister, and a little streak, it seems, of Isobel’s rebellion. But it takes wit to be a real farceur, something la grande Madame understood instinctively, something this young woman may one day learn—

—may be even this day, this night, for it is time, now, for himself and his wooden accomplice and the “Kit,” with a sidewise nod, “avaunt,” noting as he nods Haden’s hesitation, Haden another one with so much life ahead, what a life it bids to be! so “What’s amiss, Mr. Jacks?” with almost a smile. “You know how to play a crowd.”

“Well, yes, but—this,” plucking at the cumbrous cloak, “an’t my usual venue.”

“Then it’s time, isn’t it, to widen your stage—”

“—and tuck in your nuts,” from another voice, Mr. Castor’s voice as the trio steps into the brilliant candlelight, the aroma of warm flesh and cooked quail, the soft roar of voices rising then fading at their approach, quickstep in ringing rhythm across the terrazzo floor and “Qu’a-t-il fait?” Haden whistles, reckless music like a marching tune, a soldier’s ditty, “what did he do, what did he do?” before de Vries and his lady, and the lady de Metz with her great green rocks, and Eig who looks completely flummoxed to see him parading there beside Stefan Hilaire, grand jester and master of revels, who takes the room’s center as if it already belongs to him and “A very good evening, cher mesdames et messieurs! We are here,” raising Mr. Castor with a flourish, “to salute your famous thespian competition, we are here to give to you, to all of you, The Tale of the Puppet’s Heart.”

It is Emory who opens the door, but does not himself enter; Rupert steps alone into the theatre’s lobby. The scent of roses is overwhelming, confusing, as if he has come again into the drawing room beneath the great portrait, watched by many knowing eyes, but the only one watching now is Benjamin: “Maître,” with a beautiful smile, never has he been more beautiful, as the boy he was or the man he will be, all throughout his long, long life. “Here you are at last.”

Approaching past a festive little bow, freshly barbered, in a finely fitted jacket of black and amber—Rupert conscious, then, of his own roughly scraped face, the dull wet wool of his coat—and “I’ve just been practicing,” says Benjamin, nodding toward the exquisite white Weber. “That new Parisian song, do you know it? ‘Dans tes bras,’” humming, “not what they’re playing at the banquet, certainly. God, how I’ve hated those things! But Christobel will do well there, she always does well. And she quite approves of this venture…. Shall we have our own ceremony, then?” the flow of words itself like music, as they walk side by side down the slope of the aisle, Rupert looking up, up to the flies, to the catwalk, Benjamin marking the direction of his gaze and “It’s the best view in the house,” he says, leading the way until they stand shoulder to shoulder, lights and stage and flowers all below and “Voila!” with a last flourish; he is almost laughing in his pleasure. “Welcome to the Garden, the kingdom of Art.”

A kingdom indeed, so fine and so large; Rupert tries to think of what this stage might hold, tries to see there Mr. Pollux and Mr. Castor, Istvan and himself—Istvan, the way he looked, the way he left, oh Jesu, where is he now?—yet can picture nothing, only the breadth of the emptiness. Still “I’ve owed you thanks,” he says formally, “for the shows at the Mercury. Your poems,” taking from his pocket the little red journal, “they showed me how to put a life into words, a man’s own life. There was one we did, called Vulpecula’s Hide—”

—but Benjamin is not listening, he is staring at the journal, he takes it from Rupert at once and “I’d quite forgotten this,” he says. “The poetry…. All my poetry, now, is here,” touching his breast pocket, where the grey journal bides, what a contrast between that book and this one! White keys beside black, your hands beside mine. See what I did with the life you left me. Slowly he turns the scrawled pages, half those pages still pristine: “The Opera Mauve, remember? And the Veau d’Or! How drunk they all were, there, those spotty boys…. But we never went abroad, did we. We never went to Greece—”

“To what end?” Rupert’s voice is very low. Thunder sounds distantly, as if from offstage; the rain has finally ceased. Emory has stepped inside; Emory’s wet shoes make faint puddles on the floor; Emory is listening. “I could have given you no life.”

“I meant to give you the world. Now I can.” Benjamin closes the red journal, leans close and closer to Rupert, to breathe deeply in: a strange and passionate, voluptuously intimate action, more intimate than a kiss could ever be as “Our bed at the townhouse—I sleep in it still. Sometimes I think I can scent you there,” in animal comfort, the deep scent of old love for “All I had,” his murmur, “all I have ever had, was you.”

“Oh, mesdames et messieurs,” says the puppet with a shrug, a kind of dark burlesque, as if he, the knight, must now be the trickster as well: but is he Mr. Castor still, is he Puck again, is he someone new? Istvan is smiling; it is not a good smile, it is not a bad smile, it is present in the banquet room, et in Arcadia ego. “Our little song—did you like that song?—it asks, What did he do?” as Haden, tense, whistles the song more slowly, there in the quiet of the center of the floor. Those at the tables watch with great interest: all have heard of the Mercury, but very few of this audience have ever been there, so this impromptu—is it?—is a spicy fillip to what has been a very staid affair. The theatre contingent glares in white-lipped outrage: to seize the evening in this way, when the Mercury cannot win, everyone knows the Mercury cannot win! It is unheard-of, unendurable! though Alban Cockrill strains forward, elbows on the table, to miss not a motion or jot. Frau de Vries is round-eyed as a codfish, her mouth hung slightly open, Herr de Vries beside her with folded hands, a ropy muscle fluttering in his jaw. Only Christobel de Metz seems calm, a woman at an absorbing play, while Martin Eig’s gaze flicks back and forth, back and forth, between her and the two performers, a gaze Haden marks with a sudden inward start, then a narrow-eyed certainty, hilarity: Can it possibly be?—but look, see Eig gawping! The policeman and the highborn lady, what a joke. Trust Eig to pick someone so fucking plain—

“And what a question it is! What do any of us do, dear, very dear, very passionately dear mesdames et messieurs,” Istvan’s gorgeous bow less a bow than a swoon, “when love takes us by the throat,” bending lower and lower still, “or puts hands on us elsewise,” face-to-face, his living lips nearly brushing the wooden mouth, “and bids us take what we cannot hold?” as the puppet pulls away, jerks away, leaving his handler one-handed and bereft; it ought to be comic, someone even laughs, but it is a half-hysterical giggle, in no way the sound of humor.

Istvan kneels in tableau with the spurning puppet, head bent; Haden stands above them alone. See all those eyes watching! watching him, whose business is so often, was so often, to be unseen, or be seen to be other than what he really is, a jack in the hand become a deuce or a king; Keep a good watch on that pale knave, now! Where’s he hiding at, eh? And he so good at the game, that inborn language of falsity, a fluency even more than for the gambling, though in some ways it is very like…. Then let them watch! as he feels it for the first time onstage, that surge he knows from the tables, when the current of luck shifts abruptly, fully, from one player to the next: and knows it for the first time as the same game, the same play, with a player’s smile he knows already to suppress, keeping his gaze grave as a fragment flashes across his mind, some fleeting poetry, is it from Ovid? Quod in te est, prome, bring forth what is in you…. Frédéric would know.

It is so still that one can clearly hear the wine splashing in the fountains, a man’s tiny, nervous, hastily covered cough. Into that stillness Haden inserts his whistle, like a lockpick with a jimmy, the bright filthy tune turning cold and colder the slower he goes, until it is like a dirge, as he steps over, looms over, Istvan and Mr. Castor, swallowing up the lovers in the black folds of the cloak.

They stand so, face-to-face, as if in the last act of a play, what might such a play be called? as “This place,” says Rupert carefully, like an actor unsure of his lines. “You made it for us, you say, you mean to give it to—”

“For us, yes,” those eyes so bright, brown and gray and glittering hazel, clear water rushing over depths untouched; what does he see, when he looks at Rupert now? “And it took more work, Maître, than you ever can imagine. But now all the hard work is over, and we’ll do just as we please together, you to play and I to play—”

“Benjamin—”

“—though M. Dieudonne, Hilaire, whatever silly name he names himself, he wasn’t very kind to me on his stage, remember? So there’ll be no place for him here.”

A silence falls in the empty Garden, Emory below unseen and listening with all his might as “Benjamin,” Rupert says again into that silence, “listen to me,” for how did he not, could he not know this, not understand that this would be the price? Istvan knew. Blindness, his own sheer obdurate blindness, and now he must be harsh. “You and I, we had our moment, none sweeter. But it never could have been more.”

“Our ‘moment’ is now. When you left me, you left a boy. Now I’m a man—”

“And him I’ve loved, man and boy, for all my life—”

“You needn’t make a speech of it,” sharply, though Benjamin still smiles. “I suppose I can understand a certain loyalty. If you must, then, he may stay on at the Mercury Theatre, and play with his puppets. That’s proximity enough, isn’t it?”

Very quietly, “It’s not for you to say who stays or goes, at the Mercury.”

“Isn’t it?” again. “I own it, I can do as I think best. But oh, Maître, let’s not talk of all that now, now when we’re to be so happy! Let’s have a toast, and—What is it?” as Rupert’s face stills and darkens, as he pulls away from Benjamin’s grasping hand: the hand with the ring, the boy with his hand to the punch glass, the boy a man, a gentleman and “‘An unnamed gentleman,’” says Rupert, his back pressed to the catwalk railing, the feeling somehow of falling. “‘A friend of your theatre’—that’s all been you?”

“Of course I’m your friend, whyever else would I buy the place? It’s worth nothing on its own. Now,” reaching again and more firmly, “come here to me—”

—but “No,” Rupert pulling farther away, “let go,” as Benjamin, face changing, eyes widening, grasps even harder: at his shoulders, neck, chin, dragging him mouth to mouth, an unmastered hunger but “I said let go!” Rupert holding him off, grappling while the tears begin, tears unshed for years, tears that taste of salt and darkness and “What else dare you ask of me?” Benjamin’s cry, “I’ve waited and waited, I’ve worked, I’ve done everything! Everything!” in agony, in a fury, battering with fists and boots as Rupert tries to dodge without returning the blows, keep them both safely upright so high above the stage, though a moment’s black urge urges elsewise, oh the God-damned quality—

—as Emory sprints in panic up the aisle—“My lord! My lord!”—to take the catwalk steps two at a time, pushed aside by Rupert hurling himself down those steps and away, Benjamin up above shuddering to see him go: hands locked to the railing, the lonely, maddened, awful son of his father—“You owe me a life! Maître, Rupert! Rupert!”—as Emory finally reaches him, throws his arms around him, holds him fast so that he cannot fall—

—while Rupert bursts outside, sprinting as if pursued though no one pursues him, through the dogleg streets of pavement and slippery cobble, to swerve and finally stop beside a grimy little tavern, the Yellow Road, men inside laughing and quarreling in the smell of raw gin; he leans coughing against its wall, hands clamped to his knees, feeling as if he has run for weeks, for years. A street cleaner in peaked cap and carelessly fastened uniform steps out, looks at Rupert, looks again and “Man,” in drunken amity, “you’re bleeding like a turkeycock. Here,” offering a handkerchief or what was once a handkerchief, now a ball of fabric stained to a color indescribable but “Many thanks,” says Rupert, wiping at his face as the man ambles off, sweat and rain and tears and blood, his breath slowing, until he jams the rag into his pocket and turns again for the street and for the Mercury, seeking Istvan on every corner as he goes.

The cloak ripples like water, Haden holds it steady as stone as “Such a handsome fellow,” Istvan croons from inside; again the effect could have been comic, but instead inspires something like a voyeur’s interest, something like a child’s dread. “But do you own no master? Out upon the lonely roads, who feeds you?” as a small hand emerges, the puppet’s hand tugging to keep the cloak in place—“Love feeds me”—while Haden begins to whistle a different tune, Cupid’s tune of the notched bow and the passionate archer, the song recognized by several in the audience, including Herr de Vries, that song a great favorite of Lucien Topps’—

—until, abruptly, with no sense of timing at all, “That’s enough,” from Martin Eig on his feet, Martin Eig who also recognizes the tune, who refuses to allow the sniggering filth to last a moment longer. How has it been allowed at all? this insult to the competition and all here present, especially Christobel de Metz, and she already insulted enough by the absence of her husband; and apparently startled by whatever communiqué she had earlier received, who sent it, what did it say? He will find that out, too. Let de Vries sit there and do nothing, let them all watch and learn who is truly in charge, let her see what kind of man he is—as he advances like Colossus, the new man par excellence, across the gold-flecked floor to where the players stand; it is the greatest moment of his life. “That’s quite enough.”

“Why,” says a pleasant voice, Istvan’s voice, “it’s Mr. Pinch. Be corked, Mr. Pinch,” and this time there is a laugh, Haden’s insinuating laugh to lead the audience, not many of them know this term, but they see that Eig does: and Eig’s lips pinch, yes, at their laughter, the snickers of children titillated by a naughty word. He takes a moment to stare the snickerers into silence, before ordering the players to “Cease this display at once,” unwholesome Hilaire and his kaleidoscope of names, of identities and lies—and Haden St.-Mary! St.-Mary to whom he has offered real patronage, of whom he had thought to make something useful and fine; and this is how he is repaid? “Both of you will come with me.”

“Be careful, Mr. Pinch,” says Mr. Castor. Haden is still whistling, louder now and bawdy, he even winks from under the bowler at one of the ladies sitting nearest, a plush-breasted blonde whose blanching husband he rather thinks he knows. Mr. Castor raises his voice above the music—“Be careful!”—as Istvan emerges, both he and Mr. Castor masked now in white plague masks, pity he has no other for the kit, but the cloak will have to do…. For Istvan there is a glee that is something like a child’s, and something like a man’s with a heartsick mind, and something like something not a man at all, or if a man a kind of man that no one here has ever seen before, or will again. “You put your hands to a felon, and you come away with a god! For are not we all philosophical toys? and subject as subjects to the God-damned pantheon?—Take your hands off me,” for Martin Eig has clamped him by the forearm, as if he personally will drag Istvan away. “I said, take your hands off, messire—”

—as two things happen in almost perfect simultaneity, Haden bolting from Istvan’s side as if escaping for the door, and Christobel de Metz rising to her feet to call out, imperious as a queen, “Mr. Eig, stop! I know these men,” though whatever else she has to say is swallowed in the harsh music of crashing crystal, the fragile fountains still pumping champagne now pumping it across the floor, mingling with the Turkish wine black as spilled blood, Haden’s boot heels having done for both with several sidewise kicks. Eig swivels to Christobel, stretching out his other hand—to impel, or to quell? “Madame, no—” while Istvan pulls free, he and Mr. Castor chasing Haden not out the hallway doors but back through the pantry, up a flight of pink marble stairs, Istvan whipping off the plague mask, Haden tossing him the hat—“This way”—into a bedchamber with midnight blue drapes half-drawn at a casement window, through which they drop like ripe fruit from a tree, down into the wet garden of gravel paths and topiary, where Jozsef and several liveried men are milling, patrolling, the rest of the patrollers drawn inside by the sudden noise so “Go on, uncle,” Haden says, eyes gleaming. “I’m right behind you,” as he pauses to deal Jozsef a tremendous wallop in the belly, a punch so hard the older man instantly vomits, the stench of quail assaults the air—

—as the three of them, watched over perhaps by a god or gods gone unusually philosophical, make a thorough and doubled escape as neat as any street-sung ballad: Istvan and puppet straight through the scrolled iron gates left unlocked for the guests’ arrival, Haden—after another glorious wallop, to which Jozsef contributes two teeth—back through the house, past the roiled ballroom, into the kitchen to dodge a startled cook and a crate of leeks then dart out a Dutch door that leads to an alley and the avenue—

—where he skids to a stop, scuffs some greenery from his boots, tosses the cloak to Istvan, and disappears with a wave into the mazy streets. Istvan stuffs his hair under the hat, rolls the puppet into the cloak, and flags a startled cab driver with “My child’s got la grippe, can you hurry?” away from the townhouse and its neighbors, past shuttered buildings and empty cafés, toward the city’s foundling hospital that sits two short blocks from Rottermond Square—

—yet why stop there? Why not go on, if Mouse so prefers his princely bolthole? It would be a gift, yes, may be to both of them, to bring the endless push-and-pull to final curtain. Come back, or don’t at all…. Suspended in the cab’s darkness, his own darkness, another scene he has played oh, so many times: alone on the compass, the heart’s needle a-spin, one can go anywhere, everywhere, with a puppet and a mask—

—as the cab jolts to the curb, Istvan disembarking with a handful of coin, the driver calling out in confusion, “L’enfant, sir, hey! It’s over that way!” but “It’s a miracle,” Istvan calls back, “a full recovery,” as he turns on his heel like an actor on cue, the plague mask poking up like a pointing finger, pointing to love’s defeat and defiance, homing back with Mr. Castor to Rupert and the Mercury.

The trio sits at the table, Tilde diligent over the angel’s cloth-of-gold—now is not the time to teach Frédéric how to sew—and Rupert with a bottle of whiskey from which he drinks as thirstily as if it were water. Frédéric writes in his notebook, the Scout pencil nearly leadless, doggedly scratching away until “Here,” Rupert says, handing him a gilt-silver Eagle, “use this. Keep it, if you like.”

“Why—why, this is very fine! Are you sure, sir? This is very—”

“I’m sure.”

They sit in silence beyond the sounds of the occasional cab rattle or shouted curse from the square, the metronomic dripping of the roof though “It’s stopped raining,” Tilde says, a truthful statement that no one answers. Frédéric observes that Rupert Bok looks just like a brigand, with his stained shirt and torn cheek and shadowed beard, only the bright silver spectacles somewhat incongruous, though the private, sunken stare behind them is not, a stare no doubt related to M. Hilaire’s absence and M. Bok’s precipitous arrival, its question—Is he here?—that Tilde answered with a shake of her head. Then Frédéric notes again his own stained shirt, his own cut cheek, and sighs—

—as a quick, determined scrabbling is heard at the door, locked alley door, Rupert‘s head jerking like a wolf’s to a scent and “What’s that?” Tilde’s frown, all three turning as the key turns in the lock and Istvan enters, disheveled, wet, in Haden’s crooked bowler, Mr. Castor wrapped like contraband in the long bedraggled cloak.

Frédéric jumps to his feet, as if this entrance calls for some action on his part, though Tilde is wiser, Tilde does nothing as Rupert in three rapid steps is there at Istvan’s side, Istvan whom he takes at once into his arms, takes him as a brigand, yes, takes a precious prize, takes him to kiss him ferociously, entirely, uncaring of the watching two, Tilde who gathers costume and pins and exits for her room, Frédéric who stares, stares as the kiss continues, Istvan’s arms about Rupert’s neck, Rupert’s hands in his hair—

—until Frédéric makes some sound, he must have, for they pause, their gazes turn to consider him: Istvan’s eyes half-lidded, Rupert already busy at jacket and tie and “Oh! Beg pardon!” Frédéric’s gasp, rushing out past them into the endless night as “Messire,” says Rupert, his voice a husky mutter, Frédéric instantly forgotten, all the world forgotten, “I’ve done with it, all of it. All but you,” to bring Istvan’s whispered assent, as like the boys they were they take their pleasure right where they stand, take it one from the other to give it back in sighs and little groanings, arching spine and clever fingers and even, is it? laughter, laughter the teasing gift of Eros, excruciating, healing, both in one—

—and afterward gathering their shed clothing, the golden cravat left like a spent flower on the floor, as Istvan hangs Mr. Castor on his proper hook and Rupert takes up the whiskey bottle, to climb the stairs to the narrow cot and entwine as well the tales of the banquet hall and the catwalk, Istvan’s head on Rupert’s chest, Scheherazade to one another until the stories are combined: “You were right,” Rupert says, “about that Garden—it’s a fine-enough place, but never for us. And twice to be our fucking landlord!…I ought not have spoken so,” gently stroking Istvan’s shoulder. “And I’m sorry for your boy.”

“Luc. Yes.”

Then later: “Do whatever you will, messire, make your play wherever you wish. I’m with you, I’ve said all I had to say.”

“Shall we say one thing more?” as Istvan smiles, and yawns, wrapping himself in the coverlet to sleep, while Rupert sits, shirt thrown over his shoulders, smoking by the open window, as the dark leavens and the light changes, the first news vendors gather, the rooftop sparrows begin to flutter and call.

And if this night has any ending, this is where it truly lies: in birds and darkness, splashing water, boys puffing gipsy smokes and romping in the rain-swollen river, Haden’s boys, as Haden—thoughtful, naked, drinking but not drunk—sets down the brandy bottle to slip in and swim beside them. It is in the manner of a baptism, though he does not think it so, does not think at all, lets his mind lie still: yet feeling as he had so long ago on the smoky road with the corporal, that he has left for good, now, that he has gone—gone where? while Crescent Bridge still stands, and his boys surround him? He strokes backward, lets some floating garbage pass, his hair pale against the tea-brown water like a lily of the tide, until the light begins to take hold, first light of the new day so “I’m for off,” he says to the boys, climbing out onto the bank to reach for his piled clothes—

—to be startled by the figure waiting there beneath the bridge: a man, a young man whose voice he knows when that man calls out—“Haden”—Frédéric’s voice, Frédéric’s gaze watching him come drenched and beautiful from the water, this friend of his heart, all his heart in his eyes, Frédéric whom Haden watches, now, abashed somehow in his nakedness and unsure in every way what is happening, what he ought to say or do. So it is Frédéric who steps forward, who as if in a dream, like a mortal bold to a god come to earth, puts his hand, his warm, dry, trembling hand to Haden’s river-cool cheek, then to his lips, two fingers brushing the scar, and then “Haden,” Frédéric says again, and puts his mouth there, trembling so that he can barely stand.

And ever after Haden will remember every facet of this moment, the fecund smell of the river, the sound of the splashing boys, the feel of Frédéric’s lips upon his, seeking, taking: though he will barely recall how he dressed, for he did dress, and they did move somehow away from the bridge and through the streets and up to his own rooms, to lie together at long last in delirium and tenderness, discovery and panting joy, on the swampy bed beneath cracked windows, in the wreckage that Haden has not noticed until now: slewed table and haphazard broken chair, Ovid flung on the floor by the bed and “I have that edition, too,” says Frédéric; his voice sounds differently to himself. “Though my Latin isn’t really very good…. I’m not good, you know, I’m unworthy of you, I’m a coward and a liar,” breathlessly, passionately, as if all truths can now be told. “Can you ever forgive me? It was dreadful to say those things to you, to do as I did, but I thought—I never, never thought—”

“Well, I lied about my boys, didn’t I. I’m not to raise them at all, I’m to use them.”

“And I lied to everyone about everything, God and my parents and Herr Hebert and Marie Mariette. And the rooming-house man! Except about my name—it is my name truly, you know, Frédéric-Seraphim.”

“Mine,” shyly, for he has never told anyone before, “is Hadrian.”

“Hadrian,” says Frédéric, tasting, savoring the name. “Hadrian! Why, it’s noble, it’s entirely heroic. It suits you.”

“You suit me,” says Haden, as Frédéric turns his head and they kiss again, and again, Haden’s arms tight around him, Frédéric’s scent on his skin, their bare bodies in the narrow bed their heaven of union achieved: for if there is heaven at all, any heaven worth the having, it is here, it is now: like a winning hand in a game of lansquenet, like the spread of Taroc that tells of fated love, like the spreading light and the birds that call—insistent, raucous, eternal—as if from the very heart of Eden, when all love was newly-fashioned, and no evil, yet, to fear.

As if a curtain has been parted, a long drama ended or begun, that evening’s last, gurgling, Biblical rain has cleansed the city of its festering humors, so a cooler, more stringent view can prevail, the autumn freed at last to make its play. The shopgirls at the counters have stopped yanking out each other’s hair; the cab horses have stopped biting; the teaboys dodge and march across Crescent Bridge, tips having improved somewhat with the weather’s change. The choir of St. Mary of Dolors gives a stirring performance of “The Lights of Paradise Do Shine for All,” with applause led by the archbishop himself, as in the Cemetery, dances are arranged and staged to lesser if more sprightly tunes, though behind double-locked and guarded doors, for the constables’ patrols are growing ever more frequent and intrusive. In the Park, the lemonade stands close and the chestnut stands reopen, the Lady’s Garden glows brilliant with chrysanthemums of every hue, and the whores sit at the scrolled benches beside the mammas, eating figs and watching as their future customers lob pennies at the fountain of Diana, aiming, with success that varies, for her jutting marble breasts. The gypsies find, to their benefit, that pessimism is no bar to superstition, and that those who contemplate new enterprises—to start a boot-blacking stand; to begin the study of law; to leave this city for another city, the aging wife for the mistress, the mistress for a younger maid, before it is too late—often make their first stop the Wheel of Fortune, to spin and watch the colors clack and the little man run his course, an outcome of sum sine regno meaning only that they must pay their coins and diligently spin again.

At the train station, travelers arrive and depart with greater regularity and purpose, whether their destinations be the continent or the provinces: young soldiers in particular, whole crowds of them, are very much on the move. One pair of ladies, one old and one young, leaves the city without so much as a backward glance, though if Miss Marie Mariette notes as she goes the nearly naked Mercury, it is with a freshly disillusioned eye: this is what comes of studying the Greekish gods, this weak and lying license, this complete moral collapse! For did she not see with her own eyes the real reason why Frédéric, her former fiancé, the former love of her life, had spoken so mysteriously of a “dark cloud,” did she not go against her aunt’s sound advice—that aunt now sleeping, mouth half-open, bonnet propped against the window—to approach on her own the strange and threatening precincts of the Mercury Theatre, of which Frédéric had, he said, in some way written (and what a confusing, half-told tale that was! Has he not been writing Christian tracts at all, then? Is anything he said the truth?), and so seen there, oh, what she had seen there! That blue-eyed, roundheeled, round-bellied little—peasant, that girl who claimed in some sort of accent halfway to uncivilized that no, there was no such person as Herr Blum, and if there was, here was not where he would be, and if he was, to be seen any visitor would first have to be known so Who are you? the awful girl had demanded, unashamed to stand there in the doorway with her bulging—with her— It was too awful. Finally, almost weeping, she had stammered out Tell Frédéric, then, that I have called. Tell him that Miss Mariette—

I don’t know a “Fradaric.” Piss off, why don’t you, as an ugly little dog bristled and barked from the dingy alley, where a man as bristling with knives sat and leered at her, calling out Missy, hey Missy! as she fled back to the waiting cabriolet. It was all too sordid, it was all A blessing in disguise, said her aunt as she packed for both of them in their suite at the Baltic, that young man was completely unsound; a fact her father was at that very moment energetically pointing out to a shattered Mr. Blum, having already received the aunt’s long, expensive, thoroughly damning wire. The engagement is of course dissolved, dowry damage will be paid, and Mrs. Mariette will energetically petition the Ladies’ Sodality to forever revoke the membership of Mrs. Blum, on grounds of moral turpitude.

On the train, Marie Mariette puts her handkerchief to her eyes for one last tear, then puts Frédéric Blum forever from her mind. She cannot know it, but she will in less than an hour meet the man who will become her husband, at the station where her aunt disembarks, a three-track station presided over by no leering, fleet-footed fabricator but a stand of tight white petunias and a bronze sundial, and the red-bearded junior stationmaster who will much appreciate a well-brought-up, financially situated, lace-making young lady who can sing like a bluebird, who in her turn will appreciate a man whose beliefs are chiefly in supper at seven and ensuring that the trains run on time. Thus do the gods find ways to reward true love.

Meanwhile the city’s newspapers have reported, with varying degrees of innuendo, malice, and accuracy, the outcome of the theatre competition, one at which no one is surprised, though many are disappointed, several bitterly, Gilbert Fairgrieve most bitterly of all: Simon Cowtan’s Cleopatra has taken the title of First Municipal Theatre. The silver trophy cup (inscribed, perhaps forebodingly, with several lines from Macbeth) now sits upon a marble stand in that theatre’s lobby—not authentic marble, yet, but plans are in place for its replacement—as its owner basks in that owning, while recalling that his namesake was a canny careerist, and so would have congratulated him most on the license to present without hindrance, though that gift is to be kept Fully sub rosa, of course, said Tibor Banek warningly. With things the way they stand.

Herr de Vries had been the one to actually award the prize, a rather deflated honor in the banquet’s backwash of tumult and confusion, the servants trooping in with buckets to slop up the spilled wine, Mrs. Cowtan trying not to weep from nervous prostration, Frau de Vries losing her temper with Frau de Metz in a most unladylike display, barely worthy of a parlor-girl; in the salons she is now called, snickeringly, “Frau de Virgo.” Herr de Metz, absent from the dais, apparently returned much later, very drunk, some say, or battered by a boulevard tough, say others, nursed in solitude by his wife, whose startling outburst during the bandit players’ equally startling appearance has the city talking, too; for they were bandits indeed, several items of jewelry went missing in their wake, or several maids were ravished, it is hard to be sure what perfidy was actually accomplished but assuredly it was very bad. The Globe is calling for a full investigation, a task suited in every way to the Morals Commission and Martin Eig, whose great desk is now complemented if not matched by a somewhat greater office, larger windows facing the avenue, his own telephone and even “A place especially for you,” says Martin Eig with a dry smile to Costello. “You’ll report to Bernd, in the old office; I’ve had them put in a chair.”

Costello nods with a certain nervous diffidence; not that Mr. Eig was ever friendly before—not a hard gentleman, no, but never a friendly one. But there is something else present now, something Costello feels as one feels the draft from a reaching hand that grasps instead the unlucky man at one’s side, so “Whatever you say is best, sir, I’m sure. What about that St.-Mary, sir? Is he to have a chair, too?”

“I’ve told you before, don’t worry about Mr. St.-Mary,” again not unkindly but in such a way that Costello leaves the office as quickly as he may, to sit in his new chair beside the paper-heaped desk of Bernd, in a new coat of distinctly Puritan cut, and take out his snuff tin with a gloomy air: “He’s different now, an’t he? It’s not to be about what it was all about before.” He and Bernd share a look, but—because of the natures of their separate offices, of this office around them and their own natures as well—whatever further foreboding Costello owns, or Bernd suppresses, must remain forever unshared.

Alone in his fine office, Martin Eig drinks tea stunningly hot, poured for himself by himself from the beautiful silver pot; he is alone in this office by choice. Bernd he can speak to with the speaking tube, he has the telephone, has runners to bring him papers and take papers away, has Costello when Costello is needed—though now there are constables and the lieutenants of constables to wield, with far more force than one operative can provide, if less personal loyalty; what need for the personal, when one has the State? And beyond the runners in the hallways, and between the Prefecture and this office, he has others in the streets, men and sometimes boys to summon when needed, pay and dismiss when done; what he does not have, will never have again, is Haden St.-Mary.

St.-Mary—how could he have misjudged that man so entirely? Ambition, yes, and animal cunning, and even the refusal to fully take the bit: all of these are qualities to prize, qualities St.-Mary has, and could have been helped to develop; and might thus have been made into something uniquely worthy, a weapon no one else could ever deploy. But to shun such superior protection and instead ally himself with those players, with Hilaire in particular—flouting and flaunting and grinning under his hat, dancing about with a puppet—a man he would have raised with his own hands, had so offered to raise, more than once!—that is what stings.

In a sense—as he pours, sips, nods to himself; as runners and telegraph boys and lesser administrators pass one another in the hallways, on the stairways, the rooms of inquiry have never been so busy—in one sense it is all quite understandable: some men, despite their talents, will always find the gutter more congenial, and like calls to like, for Hilaire is also a true son of the gutter, paid by all and owned by none. And then there is the additional lure of the sodomitical, no doubt one of the reasons why St.-Mary has left his garret to take up residence at that theatre. He had not seen, at first, that such is the case with the writer Seraphim Blum—the man was betrothed, apparently, and his bourgeois family seems sound enough. But now one can see where his true sympathies lie, allied with St.-Mary, there at the Mercury with his gang of boys; the whole place is a kind of brothel, which is fitting, considering its owners’ origins, that would-be Hellfire Club they created for men like de Vries. Even their serving girl is a demonstrable whore.

Nevertheless—pouring more tea, drinking more tea, reaching for paper and pen—he had summoned St.-Mary to his office one final time, in the nature of a last assessment, and St.-Mary obeyed; he has not gone completely senseless, after all. But the manner of his coming, the even more flamboyant suit, the private, nearly constant little smile—

You seem quite happy, Mr. St.-Mary. I trust it’s for a wholesome reason?

“Trust’? Don’t you usually know such things?

I know some things. I know, for example, that you’ve recently changed your lodgings—

You, too, with a measuring look around the new office, a theatrical peek out the windows. Congratulations, sir. You’ve got a fine view of Minerva’s arse.

—and that the ranks of your young fellows have been affected by a venereal outbreak—

Half the whores in town have the green knickers, boys and girls, I imagine you know that, too. Not from your own stick, of course, likely Costello told you. How is Costello?

He’s well. He asks after you often. I also know that your boy Lucien Topps was found dead, after a petty brawl over opium pills, which took the smile from St.-Mary’s face; it seemed he might have spoken on that topic, surely he wanted to, but in the end said nothing. Does he know, St.-Mary, how that young man really died? De Vries is certain that no one knows, no one but his servant who dealt with the aftermath; de Vries believes that everything he does is well-concealed, a belief that is so absolute as to be almost comic. De Vries is even certain that no one knows the dead whore was staying in his townhouse, though that is manifestly untrue: even St.-Mary knew that, and came with his little army to correct it, though was unable to reverse his servant’s loss; it is the mark of an ineffectual leader that—Never mind. He need not think more of St.-Mary, himself bold enough, there in the chair with his hat on, ankle on knee, smelling of liquor, refusing tea, to ask When you sent me to the Mercury, you already knew all you wanted to know, an’t you? You said “These fellows, what they intend, the Commission doesn’t know.” But you knew.

What they intended was, I think, very little, despite their foolishness of kings and insurrections. They are only gutter players, after all.

It might depend on who’s playing the fool.

Yes, it might. And for your own foolishness at that banquet, I could have you up on charges, serious charges, of trespass, and wanton destruction of property; I might do so still, at any time. But the soundness of your past work argues for clemency—though I’ll have no such work for you, of course, again or ever. So I’ll bid you good-bye now, Mr. St.-Mary, until we should meet again.

However shall we meet, sir? Will you come to see a show? with a consummate, a pleasurable sneer, those yellow eyes just like a goat’s; in the old paintings, Satan always wears goat horns, curling and corroded and black. So he had leaned forward on his desk, fortress, pulpit, prow of the ship of state, surrounded by the ever-growing piles of letters and reports, a day’s work, a lifetime’s, and We shall meet, he had said, when you end up in one of the rooms downstairs, which I’m morally certain that you shall, the company you keep insures it. And when you do, Mr. St.-Mary, I shall not know you as I did here in my office; I shall not know you at all. But you will know me.

He felt a smile growing, but held it back; he kept his gaze professionally grave. Yet when St.-Mary rose from the chair he was smiling, a peculiarly hateful sort of smile and It’d be a sad fucking pity to meet that way, sir, after all our work together—I’ll hope truly that we don’t. But if we do, like you say, I’ll still know you…. Give my regards to Costello, and tell him those fish market girls an’t any cleaner than the whores at the Bridge. Cheerio, and then he tipped his hat the way a showman would, and was gone from the office, whistling loudly—the newest tune from the streets, “A Lad Makes His Way,” another filthy ditty—he could be heard all the way down the stairs. One of the subcommissioners, Herr Gurund, even asked about it later: Who was that fellow in the garish suit? The whistler? One of yours, was he, Eig?

No, he had answered evenly. Not one of mine.

Now he puts St.-Mary entirely from his mind, as if locking him behind a stout door, and considers the sheet before him, the fresh stationery, the Morals Commission medallion below the Prefecture crest: Minerva, the lady of warfare and wisdom, of strategy and the civilizing drive. It is not a long message, for what he has to say is brief, reserving a more meaningful conversation for a meeting face-to-face, This afternoon at your hotel, in hopes of furthering our mutual interests. Respectfully as ever, signing his name in a line as straight as a ruler, as a road from the place one begins to where one ends; always, it is the ending that signifies. His own road from his own people, a mother whose one dream in life, to bear children, many children, had been both satisfied and frustrated in himself alone, and a father whose sole ambition had been to work indoors—Get a roof over you, Mart, it’s no good being out in the streets—had been as true and straight, as he made a way that could not include them, that can never include them for now they are dead and he is here upon a path that they could not imagine: that any son of theirs could sit in an office so clean and large, with so much power grasped in his hands; and this power only the start of it, with every step he takes, another, higher one beckons, like the dead saints on the steps of the cathedral. What is the hymn? “Thrones and dominions, they lie before Thee.” Thrones and dominions…. And they taught him to be good, his parents, to seek the good and to serve it. Every day he honors them for that.

What greater good he could have done, with a fitting helpmeet at his side—that road he cannot walk, will never walk; that was made manifestly clear at the banquet. The look on her face, the look in her eyes: that he had once thought such eyes beautiful, and innocent and clean—that he had thought her clean! When she is the most complicit of them all! Staring at him there in the alcove, with her pagan jewels and her black gloves, What comforts my husband comforts me…. A taste for the foul, certainly, she and her “navel of Venus,” and had she not tried to speak to that young prostitute in the Park? Tried to make her way into the Cemetery? Went sniffing after those Virgo women? Foul, foul; and another great misjudgment, one far more disastrous, almost utterly disastrous—If he had spoken as he meant to, if she had allowed him to speak as he meant to—!

Now, no matter the ruins of his feelings, no matter that the sad red worm of lust and longing still wriggles and breathes in the depths of his heart, the empty rooms of his body, Martin Eig has determined that he must walk the road before him as a solitary, as he sits in this office solitary, as he locks away as if behind another door never to be opened the scathing, heartless, uncomprehending stare of Christobel de Metz—whom he would have rescued, and preserved, and, yes, loved, if she had not preferred another succor, preferred fostering her husband’s evil, preferred what was to what will be; so be it, then. Soon he will take de Vries’ advice in this if nothing else, he will marry, and improve his digestion, he will find a woman, a daughter of the people as he is a son of the people, who will give him children, the children his mother longed for, and make a home for him as he remakes the world; this he will do as soon as he sheds his title for the one that should and will shortly belong to him, for that, too, is de Vries’: he may even invite the man and his stupid wife to the wedding, it would be the correct and courteous thing to do…. Commissioner Eig. Commissioner and Frau Eig.

For now he waves the letter gently, making sure his signature is dry; he seals the envelope and makes a neat little mark so that, if the seal should be broken, even invisibly, both he and its recipient will know. When the runner answers his call, the tea is finished and he is nearly smiling again, and genial to point out that that young man’s cheek is soiled with some sort of grease or smut: “I’m that sorry, Herr Commissioner,” the young man says, turning red, scrubbing hard with his cheap handkerchief. “I was just out in the streets, and it gets grubby, an’t it—that is, I mean to say, doesn’t it.”

“Yes, it does,” says Martin Eig, forbearing to correct the young man on his use of title. “Now be sure to put this directly into the hands of Herr de Metz. Not his secretary, not his wife, only himself. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Herr Commissioner.”

“And bring me a reply if there is one,” knowing there will not be, enjoying the runner’s nearly reverential nod—“Yes, Herr Commissioner”—as the young man takes the letter and hurries off—silently, no whistling for this one—down the hallway to the door, to the street and his destination: the heavy black-and-gilt doors of the Hotel Baron St. Williams, as enclosed and exclusive as a private townhouse. The runner must show his Prefecture badge to gain admittance to the gated, leafy courtyard, and has a bit of a wrangle with the maître d’hôtel even so: “The Commissioner says I’m to put it into milord’s hands only,” the runner says, and says, until finally he does, milord behind the door of the suite in absolute indifference to his presence, taking the letter as if from the air itself and then turning away, as the runner is peremptorily nodded off by an unsmiling serving man.

As he goes he glimpses, past the closing door, a sliver of the beautiful room beyond: the deeply swagged windows, a silver stand of white roses, a tall dark-haired woman attending milord as he opens the letter and reads; what would it be like, the runner wonders, to spend your days in such a room! Most like it would be paradise…. If he passes in the street outside a young fellow in a checkered scarf, with trousers too tight and gait too loose, he does not notice beyond an automatic snort of disgust, nor does he watch that fellow gain admittance to the courtyard without showing any sort of badge at all. If he waited not much longer he would have seen the whore leaving, hands in pockets, but by then he is back reporting in the office of Martin Eig.

CHRISTOBEL DE METZ’S JOURNAL

Feast of St. Michael, 29 September, 18—

Tonight, at Chatiens, there will be burning: old roses, and browned daisies, and the unbearing branches from the orchard, all the death and clutter of the long summer raked into a pile by Damien and his helpers, all of it set alight. If I were there, I would remember how you smiled to watch these fires—See what the ashes tell you, my dear. It’s always quite instructive!—and I would let Isidore stir those ashes with a stick, and point to him the pictures he had made…. Adela writes that Isidore is growing more and more quarrelsome, and cries and fights his morning tonic, he says he shall only have it from his Mamma. And he is having nightmares, again, that wake him screaming. My poor boy!

Today I have sent to Chatiens for James Aubin. Emory has communicated to me that there is some sort of medical problem rife among the young men of the city, and that B. ought not consort with them; and B. will do much better, infinitely better, with James Aubin’s steadiness, and kindness, and helplessness at hand—it will soothe him, I believe; I hope. He greatly needs such kindness now.

That wretched banquet evening! I had thought to see B. happy, finally, and myself safely on the way home to Isidore; I had set my mind and my heart to it. Instead there was the mad diversion of the puppet-play, the commotion and uproar—and the crowning absurdity, Herr Eig approaching me after his unwarranted performance, his jaw clamped white: the stage lost a fine comedian when that man took up the law. How he enlarges his jurisdiction to include me is a wonder I need no longer contemplate, thankfully, for I made as short a work of him as I could—

Madame, I would not have stopped for anyone on earth but you! But why did you, how could you think to intervene—

Herr Eig, I fail to see how anything that happened here tonight is any of your affair, beyond your duties as a guest, as I tried to make plain that not only had I acquaintance with M. Hilaire and his actor friend, but that they were sent, in some way, by B.—for I could see no other meaning to the note they offered: “Let M. de Metz be pleased by our beggars’ opera,” the performance seemingly to complement his prize-plans for M. Bok. Now I know that this was not the case, nothing like. But after I spoke so, Herr Eig—really, it was quite amazing, I believe it would have surprised even you—Herr Eig actually put his hands on me, he grasped me much as he had grasped M. Hilaire, as he sputtered of Your husband—oh, Madame, you need not tell me! Your husband’s proclivities—all the while staring at me the way an urchin might stare through a patisserie window. That stare was offensive, the feel of his hand, damp with sweat, was offensive, he was offensive. And meanwhile everyone watched as if it were a pantomime show! Dear Madame, it pains me even to speak of him, when I would so much rather—

Then don’t, Herr Eig. Don’t speak: of him, or to me, ever again. And though I will not ask for your explanation, be fully aware that, whatever you may assume of “proclivities,” what comforts my husband comforts me.

Which proved to be the key in the lock: his hands dropped from me, he stepped back, he went, blessedly, elsewhere, as the servants came in and Herr de Vries rose to gather the theatre man and his weeping Ophelian wife.
And, of course, once he had made that announcement, to dutiful and scattered applause, I could say nothing at all of what B. had instructed me, which at any rate was disrupted, or at the very least delayed.

The evening’s only gift was to free us from the de Vries “hospitality”; this hotel is a pleasant one, if small, and the staff is discreet. B. and Herr de Vries are still conferring over affairs, but only at the bank, stiffly and briefly, as their alliance is entirely in ruins. Everyone in the townhouse could hear them shouting at one another that night; it seemed that they might even come to some sort of violence. The threats they hurled, the insults—

Does nothing shame you? To charge a woman to do your work of folly—! And a man of the streets to hold your leash, it is nothing short of demeaning, you demean us all. Your father—

My father laughed at you! Even Letty van Symans laughed at you, you drooping, grizzled old whore!

Emory and that man Jozsef were themselves at odds, bristling like guard dogs, but neither would let me enter, though I tried. Frau de Vries was so stupidly frightened that she left straightaway for the country, just as she was, tipsy in her gown and jewels, though what else can one expect of such a woman? The way she behaved at the table was a scandal in itself, shouting like a termagant at me: “My house, my banquet, who are you to ruin my banquet?” Another one like Herr Eig, a failed comedienne.

From Herr de Vries, B. came to me. He was utterly intoxicated, more so than I have ever seen him, even the night you left us; he knelt at my skirts with mud on his coat, mud on his shoes, he knelt there drenched in whiskey and he wept. I could barely keep myself from tears when I heard, at last, the source of his grief: to have planned this gift, this most precious jewel, for M. Bok, and then to be utterly rejected—! While I was defending M. Hilaire and his puppet actor, M. Bok was breaking B.’s heart.

Finally, when he could speak, B. said, That theatre—I’ll burn it to the ground. Shall I? What shall I do, Belle, tell me and I’ll do it.

We should leave, I said, and stroked his face; it was so hot, his eyes so red; I could feel his heart pounding. We should go home.

To Chatiens? That’s not my home. I thought I would finally be free of it, all of it—and he wept again, but differently, silently; it was as if I watched him bleed. Finally he rose up, using a chair for support, as if he were climbing a high hill, and My father, he said, was a monster. One of those monsters that weary the world. But he did try to teach me what the world is. He dug from his pocket the gray journal, and then another, smaller, red book, and set them atop the dressing table, beside the emeralds; I have put those emeralds away, I shall never wear them again. Even Lucifer went to school, you know. In Eden.

And then B. laughed; it was a dreadful sound. I had love. Now I’ll have flesh. Flesh and more flesh! and he laughed again, and beat his hands, his open palms, against the wall; the sound brought Emory hurrying in from the hallway. Together we put him to bed, and then Emory sat on the foolish little maid’s stool and told me all that had happened at the theatre: My lord was very much distressed. He said that he would throw himself down like Lucifer from Heaven, and then he had me fetch him whiskey, a great quantity of whiskey, as you see, Madame.

And M. Bok, was he distressed as well?

I couldn’t say, Madame.

Sit with him, I said, and tell me at once if he wakes. And then I took up the red journal, B.’s old journal, I sat there at the dressing table and read every poem. Had you ever read those poems? Some of them were marked with little crosses, as if they might have held a special meaning…. It was terrible, and terribly beautiful, like gazing into B.’s very soul; how can it be possible, for love and pain to exist in such proximity? The human heart must be an engine fueled by tears.

As I read, I could all but feel you behind me, as if your hand were on my shoulder; do you know, dearest sister, that once I saw your hand?—like a strange little crab’s claw, some creature from the sea, pale and naked and lost without its glove. That bandbox of gloves—I had them altered, all but one pair, my favorite pair, the silver roses worked with diamonds. If I fold my fingers just so, I can wear them, too…. I had thought, almost, to wear them today, but of course they are much too formal for daywear, for a private visit to a theatre. Not the Garden of Eden—and what a name, how cruelly apt for what began in love and ended in banishment!—but to the Mercury Theatre, to speak, myself, to M. Bok. And if M. Hilaire is there, I shall inquire fully what he meant by daring to use my husband’s name as his shield and passkey, when clearly he is no friend to B., nor ever was.

“The Mercury Roulette”

Contributed by Seraphim

Writing for the Muses’ Journal is somewhat like spinning a gambler’s wheel, such as one finds in the Park, or at certain gaming establishments—the ones not already closed by the Morals Commission, that is. We have become so completely moral here that one wonders if the gods of chance have, in dudgeon, quite deserted our poor city, which would in turn perhaps explain the many, nearly daily municipal crises: the Prefecture’s self-anointing as a kind of imperial body; the constabulary’s growing violence; and the flurry of consumption taxes, the latest levied on milk and cheeses, that had the dairymen fairly rioting in the streets. Madame Tyche, whom the Romans called Fortuna—how may we again implore her favors? For every city, every town, every man, needs the blessing of luck and good fortune to navigate a way through the dangers and vicissitudes of life.

Fortunately, we still have the Mercury Theatre.

Though it has been quiet, since the—call it fanfare—of The Snow Youth affair, it has in no way been idle. And between those walls has come to life a new show to salute and invoke the deity of chance, the ange ou démon to whom a man offers real oblation when the chips, as the saying goes, are down. Fortune’s wheel spins once a day for all of us, from dawn until dark, but the slower revolutions that make up the life of a man, or of Man, that turn and crown and topple kings and governments: who spins that starry wheel, whose unseen hand, like a skillful puppeteer’s, puts into motion the motion that tells the story of us all?

And if theatre is truth, who better to ask such questions than a puppet? I am very privileged to have met backstage with those two actors Mr. Pollux and Mr. Castor, but to all my importunings they would answer only “See the show, and you will know.” Does one argue with such favorites of the Lady of Chance? for it is her sign that you must follow, readers, when this production shall be mounted.

Thus I invite you to keep your eyes open, you citizens for whom the current moral climate is a stifling one, who have watched things change and never for the better, who have perhaps seen the insides of rooms they never dreamed existed. Watch for the signs, dear friends and fellow citizens, follow the signs when they appear!

And cry the Mercury!

The breeze shifts, the river smell rises, piscine and faintly sour; it shifts again. The afternoon light draws lines across Rottermond Square, as if in division for a battle: this side the silent drunks of the Heads or Tails, that side the urgencies of the broadsheet printer and the shoemaker, one of whom is busier than ever these days, as if unsettling news compels the purchase of new shoes; perhaps it does. The news vendors no longer call the Muses’ Journal, as it has suspended publication; those in the know know that its jolly editor paid a visit not so jolly to the rooms of inquiry, where he was ordered to change either his profession or his views, an order he stoutly resisted; since then, no one has seen him, in the barrooms, on the streets, or on the page.

Vater the knife man has also disappeared; he has, or said that he has, a sister in a village somewhere to the east, not far from the Black Sea, where everyone, even the parson, carries a knife: Good trade for me, sah! as Istvan offered him a farewell drink, there between the buildings clinking bottle to bottle, as a colder wind, autumn’s exhalation, whispered to itself behind their backs. And a good time to move on—my dog is old, the streets are too much for him, bringing an irritable growl from the dozing form beside the grinder-box. The streets are too much for us all, now, excepting the reverends and the constables. You watch yourself, sah. Bad times are coming.

Bad times are here. But I won’t linger longer than I need to, I never do…. The Black Sea, you said? I may well have some family there myself.

If you come through, you and your friend, I’ll have my sister heat up the pot. And you can play us a puppet show.

The boy who jigs with the bells has gone as well, though if to a sister’s or some other, lesser lodging, no one cares enough to inquire. A new musician has taken his spot, a pocked Irishman with a pennywhistle; every tune he plays sounds melancholy as it floats through the Mercury’s windows, that third-floor roost where Rupert busies himself at the businessman’s desk with various expenses and disbursements, the disposition of correspondence from absent friends, old letters from the dead, before shining his spectacles and taking up a battered leather folder, to ride the omnibus uptown to a noon appointment requested, with some urgency, by Herr Robb.

Below, backstage, Istvan in vest and soft-heeled slippers brings today’s rehearsal to a temporary close, hooking the angel and the devil puppets to their perches beside their older brothers, shrugging to Frédéric that “You might call one ‘Alexis’ and one ‘Corydon,’ the evening and the morning star,” the one’s watchful yellow eyes, the other’s silver-foiled sword, “though I’ll defer the final naming rights to you, my young Marquis, and your knowledge of the classics,” with a little, avuncular smile. He has been smiling much, Istvan, these last days, his humor as bright as the tip of a knife, the white knife always loose now in his pocket, the pearl like a winking eye in the hair hung long and unbound as a boy’s. It is with a boy’s humor that he teases them: Frédéric the seraph become, for his own private amusement, the Marquis, lately of Carabas; Tilde once Mab and now Milady, more ferocious than ever as her belly grows, and more silent, saying little if looking much: she gazes often out the doorway, as if expecting a visitor or an onslaught, then in the evenings at Rupert, tie off and head bent over the newspapers; at times, those times, she looks very sad.

And most mercilessly does Istvan tease Haden, mocking comrade and confidant, lieutenant kit to whom he gives not only a private and compact, deeply serious tutelage—

There’s much you can do, even though the space is small, and much you can make, if you stay. What we did—

I heard it from Cockrill, he said you two were quite the flashy toppers. At the Poppy, an’t it, with dancing girls and such—

Cockrill knows less than nothing. Watch, and I’ll show you.

—but also keys to both the doors, main and alley, and the run of the rooms on the second floor: Share them out nicely with her ladyship, and you and your angel may bunk together however you like. And you do like, with a rowdy wink, like a pair of minks, yeah? We hear you drumming morning, noon, and night, which brings to Haden’s cheeks a blush, a rare and flaring blush: and why not? It is love’s heat between him and his Frédéric, Frédéric who, freed now by passion, has become an even more resolute man of the boards, Frédéric who measures and hammers, builds and builds, who declaims aloud and scribbles with his silver pen, consulting both Istvan and Rupert—a more forthcoming Rupert, now, observing what is to come forth; he has even reconciled to Haden, That slippery jack, I suppose we must have him—before heading out in disguise of an evening, Haden his bodyguard, to watch what passes on the city’s other stages. Both of them go attended by an honor guard of boys, many of whom will have roles in the show to come: itself an honor, and a mighty lark, and as such by the boys much desired and disputed-for.

Haden’s own tasks with which he tasks those boys tilt more heavily, these days, from the pimp’s to the intelligencer’s: another influence of Istvan’s, and a legacy from Lucien; when the boys now meet the men from the great houses, they do so in pairs, one to spread and one to watch, and neither drunk nor pilled till safely afterward. Even so, they do so less and less these autumn days, when the impulse to lust has flattened, the dark comes earlier, and the rain, when it falls, is less deluge than thin mist; these days, it seems that everyone is guarded, everyone is hunkered down and on the watch.

Now Istvan smiles again upon them, this trio at the backstage table—teapot and pen and twists of tin, Haden and Frédéric together, Tilde across—and “Try it,” he invites, giving his own lazy spin to the gaudy Wheel built hollow to make it light, and decked in flashing foil and chips of fool’s gold to make it glitter all the way to the back rows, with the small blacked figure of Everyman to run as it runs and make it real. “My colleague in the Park blessed it with spit and crossed fingers, he assures me that there’s no finer specimen unless made by the travelers themselves. They asked after you,” he adds to Tilde, “that is, their women did—I told them you were well, but might welcome a visit now and again. You’ll need a woman’s hand eventually, yeah?” at which Tilde nods minutely in return; Istvan notes that she does not herself touch the wheel, nor has she had her cards out for some days…. See them spin the clacking, shining circle, the boys watched by the girl: Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos, the spinner, yes, the measurer and the cutter, Istvan reaching past them for the last issue of the Muses’ Journal and “One might think you were a priest of Apollo,” he says to Frédéric, tapping at his column, “or some pagan deity, you know your way so neatly into and out of myth. But didn’t you use to sing in the fine saint’s cathedral? It’s the promptings of this wicked fellow,” nodding to Haden, “that drove you from it, I’ll be bound.”

“Sir, not at all!” says Frédéric hotly, blushing then when he sees that Istvan is only teasing; he has a way to go on the road of discernment, the young Marquis; the puppets will help him. “That is, I stopped attending when I started hiding,” with a sigh that brings Haden back to his side, Haden to loop an arm around his neck, where the Christopher medal now dangles sweetly on its silver chain. “I am hiding, you know, still. I’m a coward, of course—perhaps the Morals Commission doesn’t care a whit for me any longer! But I can never go back to the Cathedral, because—” with a different kind of pause, looking to Haden with such great and troubled love that Istvan sighs inwardly: another road the Marquis must learn to navigate, and such a tempest over nothing! for “Some say,” lifting Mr. Pollux as if idly from his hook, “that Rome’s spectacle is unsurpassed: the mighty music, the flowers and candles and incense, we ourselves might take a leaf from that gaudy book, yeah? But the Man they say it celebrates—why, myself I’ve never met him, but to think that that man—who had his own fellows a-follow, I understand—would frown upon a kindly friendship? What say you?” to Mr. Pollux, who makes a very rude gesture indeed; even Tilde laughs. “To me the trouble’s in the reverends who, not content to serve their Lord, instead aim to be Him, or wear His halo at any rate.” Turning directly to Frédéric: “Can a savior deny any man?”

As directly, with much gravity, looking only to Istvan as he replies: “Are you then a believer, sir, yourself?”

“I believe,” as the alley door opens, “in goodness,” smiling as if in confirmation as Rupert enters, folder folded beneath his arm, cigar smoldering in hand. He nods to them all but does not stop or even pause, Istvan pausing to resilk Mr. Pollux and give the Wheel one last revolution before following up the stairs, to open wider the window in their chamber, cool sad sun on the ferns’ purple fronds as “Robb,” says Rupert, tossing down the folder on the desk, “had a hatful of explanations, and all of them, as far as I can see, the same. Call it ‘civic betterment’ or ‘expropriation,’ whichever, the fact is de Metz can do as he likes with our building, and what he likes is to turn us out into the street.” Rupert’s tone is flat, almost dispassionate, though Istvan notes the set of his lips, and sighs internally again; Mouse takes everything so hard, when this will be easy, a lark, even the kit’s boys know that that is so! Well then, they shall be boys again themselves, though never soon enough. “What does he want with the place, I kept asking, and Robb kept turning me back to the other: ‘That theatre is larger, and finer, and you can rent it gratis, for the cost of your signature.’ As if that means there is no price!”

“What he doesn’t know, and we do,” soothingly, as the street-corner pennywhistle begins to pipe again, rising on the smell of twice-burned kaffee from the café, “is that once one leaves the Garden, there’s just no going back. One wonders, does he wonder why milord wants so very much to expropriate us? Though such a thought costs money to think…. Did you take out all the money, then? When must we go?”

“Almost all; I left his ‘gifts.’ Not a fucking word,” though Istvan does not look at all inclined to protest. “What I want to know is why,” around the cigar clenched, now, in his teeth, “why take what’s ours? Only to sow salt, and knock it down? He can buy any building in this city, and already he’s got more houses than a man can live in in a lifetime: that fine townhouse we saw, and the great country house of his father—”

“Where they rear for the gun. When must we go?”

—as downstairs their voices go unheard as the Wheel spins to stillness, its pointer pointing ominously to DISGRACIO, disgrace, displacement, only Tilde considering that end as she drinks the gritty lees of the tea—Frédéric again; he still forgets the strainer—and sets it in her mind aside the many outcomes that spin might have taken; she has considered as many as she may, some of them possible, some only dreams. In one dream there is this theatre, and Sir to preside over it, and her, and the little baby, and M. Stefan to make his plays, day in and day out, in company if not in peace—there will not be peace, no matter how the Wheel spins or who spins it, that she is sure of—but in that dream they live out their lives together. Another spin sees Frédéric and the cat-eyed Haden living here alone; another is the building sitting empty; another sees them all on the road, what a circus that would be! In another still she moves on with the little baby, back to Paris, and in that dream finds Tanti again, what would Tanti be like, now? Très jolie. Singing and playing in the park, saying her letters, has anyone taught her her letters? Does she remember her sister, Tilde? Does she even know she has a sister in the world?

One hand, as if of its own volition, brushes against the freight of her body, the small sleeper who wakes, now, to flutter and roll. Sometimes, at night or when she is alone, she touches the yeasty rise of her belly with something like wonderment, and a great deal of fear; not because the birthing will be difficult, or that she will be alone when it happens—neither will be so, the cards have already promised—but because the clouds above are already so dark, and the noosed Hangs-a-man has not yet made his appearance. In what form will he come upon them? Will it be, somehow, the lurker in the alley, will he find her and the baby, will he somehow know? Sir had said that he would like to meet that man, and how such a meeting might end had made her smile to imagine it, a private, wolfish little smile; but Sir will not be here much longer, this she does know, has known for some weeks as a hard weight on her heart. It is one of the reasons why she has not laid out a spread nor even spun the Wheel—for M. Stefan is right, it is a true Wheel—though now at the table, as if without her own consent, slowly she reaches into her skirtsleeve—

—as “Will you post this?” Frédéric asks Haden, taking from his blued notebook a letter: another letter to his parents, he writes them weekly, he never receives a reply. It was Haden who read aloud the single missive sent from Blum the elder, fetched from Frédéric’s old postbox, while Frédéric sat stricken on their bed—no more a pair of chairs, now Haden’s garret-bed with coverlet and sheets, a book stand and wardrobe, too, the little room become a little home—and “The terrible shame of what you have done” – Fuck him standing, I won’t read this.

Please. Go on.

“The terrible shame of what you have done, and thus become, has entirely ruined our family. Of dishonored Miss Mariette and her parents, I shall not speak. Of your mother, know that she does not cease from weeping. Of my own woes and troubles on your behalf I will say nothing”—though he goes on and on for bally fucking pages, an’t he…. No, I won’t, stern as Frédéric rose as if to entreat him, but reached instead around him to rummage in the old carpetbag, and take out, what? two small flat leaves, two French letters that he tossed upon the coverlet, Haden’s eyebrows raised to the hairline and He sent them with me, Frédéric said, when I came here, looking as if he could not choose whether to laugh or cry. Oh, he doesn’t know! How can he ever know, or understand—

Well, I know, crisply balling up the letter, as if he did the same to Blum père, that I wouldn’t use this to wipe my runny arsehole. Now you tell me, playfully, just who you meant to post those letters to? flipping away the dusty little objects, bearing down on Frédéric to pin him to the bed, smiling, then laughing, then not laughing, only sighing, only the muffled, seeking sounds of love until Here, Haden’s murmur, here’s damnation to all fathers, as he hung about Frédéric’s neck the Christopher medal, still warm from their bodies’ heat. Let them keep the shame, let them blame themselves if they need someone to fucking chastise, as Frédéric examined the ornament—the scratched, scored, stalwart bearer of the babe, the reassurance of the motto beside—then kissed it reverently, an object of veneration as You wear it, now, Haden said; if the corporal had seen him then, as stalwart, so tender and masterful, that man would have gone down on his knees. Wear it, it will make you safe.

Now Haden tucks to his breast pocket this new letter to the Blums, he says nothing, he picks up his hat to go—no more mere bowler, a fine silked beaver hat with a yellow band, to match his new canary-yellow coat—but “Wait,” says Tilde peremptory; she points to the cards on the tabletop. “You’re here,” and then to Frédéric, “you, too. Sit down,” to the spread that spreads as if without any effort from her fingers, as if the cards have been pent and must tell all they know: to Haden become the Lord of Hares, and Frédéric present in the presence of the Scribe, the one who watches and writes what he sees, their spread is interwoven, as it should be. And yet “Oh!” in dry surprise, for see, she herself is fully woven there as well, as the Queen of Flowers crossed by the Deuce, the card of increase, that would be the little baby—

—as Frédéric observes, with a scribe’s full attention, the cast of those cards against the table’s wood, the vivid, peculiar, almost barbaric pictures, so much in them of warfare and of blood! However does a girl as young as Miss Tilde put her hands to such things, wherever could she have gotten them, and the skill that puts them to such singular use? She comes from elsewhere, her accent tells him so while revealing no origin; she has no family but these theatre-men, and the child inside her; of the child’s father she has never spoken, and of course he would never ask. But still he is curious—there is a great deal that he does not know about Miss Tilde, and would like to know; he is always very polite to her; he is, secretly, slightly afraid of her, but in an entirely salutary way—there is that in her that is akin to Haden, his own adored Hadrian a man of the streets as Miss Tilde is a girl the same, both at home in situations that would fully confuse or thoroughly overcome him. Well, he will be a humble student to them both, a good student, he knows how to learn—

—as “There’s you,” Haden says with a sudden grin, elbow to Tilde’s side: the only other female on the table, the Justice with her scales and sword and blinded sockets, blinding herself with that sword so that she may not be swayed by the evidence of her eyes, but “That’s not me, hayrick,” says Tilde scornfully, laying down the next card in the spread, “that’s—Oh,” in a different voice, a sudden, flat, doomsday voice, as the card shows like Icarus a falling man with a burning torch, the torch inverted, the wax swallowing its own flame: the card Descent: and “What? What does it mean?” asks Frédéric, dismayed by her dismay, as Haden’s head turns toward a sudden sound, the brisk knock on the squareside door—

—itself unheeded by the two upstairs, as the pennywhistler’s flute has risen to a sweeter tune, a very old one, “Lady Angela Takes the Air” and “Hear that,” says Istvan, “it takes one back…. Come,” holding out his arms. “Come and dance with me, Mouse.”

“You know I can’t dance.”

“Dance with me,” with a smile like mystery, an April smile on this October afternoon. “Waltz with me, no one will see,” so to please him Rupert rises, folder set aside, worries suspended as his half-frown dissolves into a smile half-shy—the boy Tacio would have known that smile, and his young friend in the viaduct—as he takes Istvan into his arms, and, with great concentration, haltingly follows the steps, Istvan humming the tune along with the pennywhistle, so old, so sweet, as timeless as their own time spent together, a lifetime of journeys and partings, of endless love forever well-met: eyes almost closed, the pearl earring swaying—

—as footsteps cease and the door opens, not with violence, inexorable, for half a moment they do not even stop or see until “Herr Stefan Hilaire,” says one constable, as the other, grimacing at the unnatural tableau, halts beside him, truncheon at his belt. “Herr Hilaire, you’re to come with us, now.”

“How so?” says Istvan, “the song’s not over,” as Rupert in reflex steps in front of him, to take the brunt of whatever blow is coming: “By whose authority?” with a hard and narrowing stare, seeing that truncheon clearly with his one good eye. “By whose authority do you enter our place of business, come right the fuck into our rooms?” with such ferocity that the two constables fall back, one of them backing nearly to the hallway, as the other with the weapon makes to rally, to grasp at Istvan: “He’s to be questioned, that’s all. Now you, you’ll stand aside, Herr Bok, we’re not here for you—”

—as Rupert in one motion takes the truncheon from that constable and flings it to the floor, dealing in that motion’s return a blow to the throat so blunt that the constable has time only to blink before he buckles, the second stepping forward to be treated the same, it is as if they have offered themselves obediently to Rupert’s fists and “Why, fuck this standing,” says Istvan, more amazed still than alarmed. “Whatever can they want with—”

“Go,” Rupert over his shoulder, kicking the fallen first constable, injuring, not harming as he wants, “go now,” turning for the other, heel stamping on the palm that held the truncheon, that constable will never use that hand again. “I’ll follow as I may—Go!” as Istvan turns at last for the door—

—to be met by Haden, yellow eyes ablaze: “Uncle, look out, they’re swarming the fucking place,” hurrying him not down to the windowless second floor but up, up to the little rooftop trapdoor, both shoving, wriggling through as Tilde below barks curses like an alley cur, beside white-faced Frédéric—at the table they had thought, for one wild moment, the constables come somehow for him—to throw whatever he can think of into their path, waving arms, shouts, objections, obfuscation: “We shall involve our solicitor! Give me your names, I shall take down all your names! We shall have you all before the Prefecture, this is trespass!” and “It’s trespass they want him for,” growls one of the constables, “trespass and disorder, ” a young man who, if Frédéric or he had time to mark it, had once sat side by side on a hot night in this very theatre, watching and applauding as two puppets, two men, fought their way to final freedom, then kissed in the fair hills far away.

Upstairs Rupert, like that knight upon the road, continues to batter whomever gains the stairs, fighting for time, fighting in sweat and a certain red enjoyment, the physical release of combat and defense, until his breath comes hard and the blow comes from his bad side, not a truncheon this time but only a uniformed elbow, not even fully aimed but lucky in its mark: it stuns him sidewise, he hits the wall, the beautifully papered wall of this hall, this house, this home created with so much care, where he thought to live safely with his love until Time, the last assailant, took one from the other: and if he has time for another thought before the constables surround him and his gaze goes dark, that thought is for Istvan, of hope for escape—

—that already is a lost hope as they drop from the fire ladder into the alley’s shadows, Haden trying to bluff them onward, his hat tugged low on Istvan’s head, their arms securely hooked—“Let us pass! Mr. Jacks from the Intelligencer, for fuck’s sake let us pass!”—but Istvan is separated from him by yet another clot of constables—did they send, Istvan in distant wonder, half the fucking force?—to be thrust into a constables’ van, windowless and dim, shoved to his hands and knees as the door slams and the locks catch, as Rupert is dragged half-conscious out the front doors of the Mercury, watched by a staring crowd who do nothing as Tilde, scrambling, shrieking, tries to pry him from the constables’ grasp, herself pushed harshly down to rise and stumble after, hand at her side, until Haden catches at her arm to haul her back and “At what do you stare!” shouts Frédéric from the steps, incensed by that crowd of silent sidewalk watchers, as if what they behold is only a play, and not the real pain and blood of fellow citizens. “What do you see?” But no one rises to his challenge, no one says a word, nothing happens but nothing as the constables take Istvan and Rupert away, as Haden and Frédéric step one to each side to help Tilde back into the empty theatre, where she hunches at the table, the cards scattered like leaves in Fortune’s wind, while Haden pours three teacups full of brandy, and Frédéric, with cold hands, turns the useless locks on all the doors—

—as a cab pauses in the square, a woman inside in a tobacco-brown suit and pale blue gloves, gloves of antique lace fastened at the wrists by little drops of peridot, gloves such as are commonly worn by well-born brides; Mrs. Lucy Pimm owns a very similar pair. Christobel peers at the dispersing crowd, then bids the driver call a constable to her window—“What has happened here, officer?”—to be told what may be the dénouement of that strange evening’s entertainment of two men and a puppet, wasted champagne and shattered sharps of crystal, her husband’s tears staining the modern black pleats of her skirt.

The cab rolls away, its destination altered; the constable departs after his troupe; the crowd disperses. The pennywhistle changes its tune to the song of the day, “A Lad Makes His Way,” in hopes of luring back listeners; though as he puffs, that player notes that the meager coinage in his upturned hat has been snatched in the melee, which may be a sign to him to leave this city, to make his own way and try his luck in some other, kinder spot. The notes rise; the river stinks; the gods are silent. The rooftop hatchway lies still opened; by midnight, it has begun to rain.

The hallway leading to the rooms of inquiry is kept deliberately quiet: an isolating tactic meant to confirm to those kept inside that no one can hear what happens; no one, no matter how they call, will come. Martin Eig himself radiates a certain quiet as he moves down the stairs, nodding to those he passes, who nod respectfully back to him. As he descends he considers the varied rooms into which his work leads him: such as that suite at the Hotel Baron St. Williams, green damask and mahogany and strewn disorder, books and piled trunks and the smell of whiskey, the leaden stare of Herr de Metz, who was assuredly more than half drunk when he arrived. Sideways in the chair like some potentate, some careless emperor of commerce, with his servant behind in dun livery, pouring tea like a lady’s maid—and the lady herself, Frau de Metz, Christobel in a pale green suit, excusing herself with a nod so exquisitely neutral as to mean less than nothing, passing into her own suite to quietly close the doors, as Herr de Metz turned that half-mast stare to him: We’ve met, you say, at some dreary civic function. At de Vries’, was it?

Yes, accepting tea, exceptionally good tea, from the servant whom he thought then would leave but You may freely speak before Emory, said Herr de Metz. Go on, speak. Why did you send me that note? Why are you here?

I am here, he had said—and for a moment felt what he never would have recognized as an actor’s reflex, an inner gathering, the flung ball of the soul about to be launched—because of Herr de Vries, at least indirectly. I believe that you and he have less in common than do you and I, Herr de Metz.

The idea obviously amused the man—How so?—gazing with what would have had to elevate to become contempt, a gaze to change then and constrict into an active, blacker interest as Martin Eig continued to speak, as patient toil and iron fortitude melded to become a kind of force, a missile aimed at a multiplicity of targets for Old men are the past; young men—new men—are the future. And it is no longer only the name that makes the man—something, I believe, that Herr de Vries does not understand.

De Vries was a great friend of my father’s.

I know. I know a great deal about your family. But now a man may make his own name by what he himself chooses to do, as the servant poured more tea, more whiskey, Emory whose eyes missed nothing: the sweat on Martin Eig’s upper lip, the fleeting rage on his master’s face when a name was introduced, That actor Hilaire, or perhaps you know him better as Dieudonne—

I know him.

—who is to be used as another sort of missile, he and Bok at that man, and that man at de Vries; Eszterhaus and Banek have been convinced that it will work: Like a game of ninepins, Eszterhaus had said, frightened and elated. You’ll have all our fortunes in your roll, Eig! But it takes great skill and, yes, great energy, to play such games; when Martin Eig left those rooms the linen of his shirt was damp, though de Metz’s hand was icy, a very brief handshake as I shall contact you again, sir, as events proceed, nodding to that stare, that face that most would call handsome, chiseled chin and noble brow and dark-ringed, muddy, dissipated eyes; what enormous vice those eyes have surely seen! There has been a parade of street boys up and down these hotel stairs already, he knows; she doubtless knows as well. And of course, sir, my office door is open to you at any time.

It was in his office that he met with the captain of the constables, that man in a froth at the release of Rupert Bok, sent away once his head had cleared with only a stiff fine for brawling though One of my fellows was like to die with a split kidney, and two more are more than half-crippled! The man is a menace, he’s the one ought to be jailed—

You were not directed to arrest him, or bring him to be questioned: only the man Hilaire, and quietly. Which you did not do.

Sir, I brought men aplenty to do the job. It was that Bok who kicked up all the hullabaloo, it was—

Have I your report?

It’s been submitted, sir.

Be assured that I’ll read it, as he did, to the captain’s later woe; and several more reports read already this morning, annotated and digested before he set off down the stairs with paper and pen, down and down to this hall that smells of old sweat and fear, into a room in a row of rooms where sits the man Stefan Hilaire, still wearing his filthied shirt, stained with blood from a few well-placed blows, and from his torn and swollen ear. Martin Eig considers this man—there in the chair with his hands clasped at his knee, looking up with pleasant interest, as if they were about to trade bons mots at a garden party—and “Herr Hilaire,” he says briskly, turning to seat himself, though Hilaire is in the chair he should be using, the one behind the table; never mind. “You know why you are here, in the rooms of inquiry.”

“Of iniquity, did you say?” Istvan’s glance takes in the room as if anew, though he has been cooling his heels there since they took him from the cell at dawn: gray walls, gray floor, the locks upon the door, the chilly draft that blows beneath; the jail rooms are even colder, his shoulder aches abominably. He has slept very little in the past several days, thinking of Rupert: Is he harmed or worse, has he had to run? And what else has passed, what other arrests or disasters, since that afternoon at the Mercury? “For purposes of civic betterment, would be my guess.”

“‘Trespass and gross disorder,’” quoting from a document he sets to the table. “At the competition banquet; I am sure you recall that evening. But before we truly begin,” linking his fingers like a proctor before an examination, “tell me, how did you come to meet Haden St.-Mary?”

“You know him? Why, I had no idea we had fond friends in common, Herr— Forgive me, I’ve forgotten your name,” with that garden-party smile, an insolence that reminds entirely of St.-Mary, this man his master now so “We’ll begin, then, with your name,” says Martin Eig, poising pencil to paper. “You use many, but what is your true one? Where were you born?”

“In a stable, on St. John’s Eve. Or perhaps it was a brothel? I was very young at the time.”

“A brothel? The brothel you owned with—”

“I never owned it.”

“The brothel you worked in—”

“I was a servant of Thespis there, only. Have you ever been in a brothel?”

“I have not. You—”

“Do brothels not entice you? That’s where we differ. Though the whores of the Poppy could have taught you much—not you yourself, of course, but your establishment, of how to treat a man when you want something from him. For one thing, I’d like a larger pisspot. And my earring—a Turkish pearl, I won it from a fellow in Sur-la-Lune, and I’d fucking like it back, if you please.”

“You’ll answer my questions. What is your true name?”

“I have no idea. It was not considered essential knowledge. —Pardon me for saying so,” Istvan’s smile kindly, now, “but truly, as one bachelor to another, you ought not affix such an expression to your face. The ladies never fancy the self-righteous, and in the drawing rooms of the great—”

“You come to the point, now. Yourself and your man, Herr Bok—were you not both employed by Isobel de Metz, as players in her salon?”

“Why don’t you ask the current Mme de Metz?” says Istvan, head to one side; and the kit’s shared guess is right on the mark, for the man’s face curdles, it might cost a blow, but what a sight to see! Though Martin Eig does not strike him, does nothing but stare, in a heavy silence that continues—Istvan, a player, can hold a pause for a very long time, holds his ground until finally Eig must give in and speak first: “It was her husband who invited you to that banquet, was it not?”

“It was not.”

“Then who invited you to perform?”

“No one. We invited ourselves. A fine puppet show is welcome everywhere…. Have I solved your riddle, Monsieur? May I go? I’m truly famished for a glass of good brandy.” Istvan even stands, as if the interview, interrogation, is concluded, turns as if for the door, but “You,” says Martin Eig—lips pinched white at the corners, one can see how he would be dangerous; every man has a brink, and he rides his now—“you do not seem to understand your situation. You have been for many years the tool of titled men, they have used you as a spy, and as a courier, and they have used—Herr Benjamin de Metz has used your man, Rupert Bok, as his whore, and now desires to have him back. In whatever ways you may have served them in their decadence, you have now become entirely superfluous, to Herr de Metz and to society at large, a society to which you add nothing, but only draw from, like a tick on the back of a horse! And you might stay in this room forever, until you were too old to dance around like a fool with a puppet, until you were dead. Does that make clear to you your situation, Hilaire, Dieudonne, whatever your name is? Do you understand?”

Istvan says nothing, but past that hooded gaze, his heart expands: “Now desires,” so Rupert is alive; is Rupert here? in another room like this one? In the silence, a fly has somehow entered, or perhaps has been there all along; its dry lethargic buzz sounds very loud. Istvan watches, Eig does not, until the fly lights on the table and—immediately, angrily—Eig destroys it with the flat of his hand and “Why,” says Istvan, “right there is death, Monsieur. It’s everywhere, how should we fear it?”

Eig makes as if to answer, but must swallow first, as if his throat is too dry. Finally “One’s death, like one’s life, must mean something. Death without reason is the fate of the animal.”

“We all are animals.”

“Speak for yourself. I own a soul.”

And Istvan laughs, not mockingly, but with brief and honest humor; he nods to the smear of the fly and “Perhaps he owned one, too. Perhaps he’s gone to heaven, Monsieur Fly, having died a martyr? But Heaven’s more dangerous than Hell, always.”

With spite as honest: “A man like yourself would surely think so.”

“Oh, no doubt I am a bad man. But the devil’s got so small,” scornfully, looking again around the room, the municipal grayness, the well-worn table, the locks installed by a locksmith who did not think to serve the darkness, wanting only money to feed his family, or buy himself a stake at the tables, a man Istvan himself perhaps had gambled with, side by side in some crumbling, lager-splashed den. He remembers the towering fury of Hector Georges, the lipless hunger of Jürgen Vidor; he recalls the calm, empire-building smile of Javier Arrowsmith, Never fear to use my name if ever it may aid you! so “Those men you speak of,” says Istvan, arms folded, leaning back on his heels as if to survey Martin Eig from a tremendous distance, a distance growing greater every moment he speaks, “I have carried their messages, yes, I have worked in their shadows, taken their money, but never have I worked for them, never been their creature. But you, Monsieur, are the servant of something even less of honor, something that hides behind a desk, something that those men, when they stop to consider—for such men are much abroad in the world, ‘decadent’ or not, never doubt it! Even young Master de Metz, diminished as he may be, he is one of them still—those men, when they think of a man like you, do not think of a man at all. You are less to them than a fucking buttonhook, believe it. I’ve sat at their tables and fucked their daughters and I know,” with a smile, now, only for himself, and for Rupert elsewhere, somewhere in the world. “And what I now suggest you do, Monsieur, is take yourself to one of those men, and tell him that I have in my possession a full cache of documents from Javier Arrowsmith—would you like to note down that name? I can wait—a cache, as I say, of instructive documents, his personal documents, in which many of those men play surprising roles. M. Arrowsmith sent them to me in the thought that I might devise of them, someday, a puppet play; that thought amused him. Go and tell them so, Monsieur, and see how quickly this door will open. Or save us all the trouble and open it yourself, if you possess that authority.”

They stare at each other, the fox, the eel: one is of air, the other of what crawls in the wet and the dark, until “My name,” says Martin Eig, “is in none of those documents,” but it is plain that the name of Arrowsmith means something to him, perhaps because he does not know it at all. He rises, then, he leaves the room, he locks the door; the fly continues to be dead. When his footsteps can no longer be heard, Istvan sits, slumps, in the chair, hand to his face in a moment of overwhelming weariness, as he wishes with an overwhelming need, a child’s need, to be free of all this, himself and Rupert alone on the road, but “‘Only the devil hears wishes,’” he says aloud, as if in the way of a prayer, and composes himself with the paper that Eig has left behind.

Meanwhile Martin Eig ascends to his office in a state of clenched stillness, pen still in hand, to make a brief telephone call and receive a much longer one, to sit at his cathedral desk and write to himself the next in an ongoing series of notes that he will consult throughout the years as a kind of Scripture, his own scripture of names and those names’ linkings, a genealogy of influence and favor, bloodshed, politics, and force. If that notated list and the gray journal of Benjamin de Metz were placed side by side—unlike the small red journal, never again to be opened, never again to be seen—there would emerge sections of great congruence, they would form a combined and comprehensive map of the future, and a memoir worth the reading by the student of history or the devotee of pain. Eventually, jarringly, as if it were that history’s herald, the telephone sounds again.

By the time the door downstairs is unlocked, several hours later, Istvan has constructed of the empty sheets a fine paper chain of manikin figures, all of whom can bow individually or as a group: he presents it as a gift to the nervous broom-bearing boy who opens that door, nodding to that boy as he leaves with the man who has come to claim him: side by side down the hall and up the stairs, past offices and half-closed doors, through the parquet lobby and out to weak sun where a cab sits waiting at the curb. Inside, neither speak; Istvan drinks from a flask, his own flask, the black brandy a soothing benison as “Are you much harmed?” Rupert asks, turning Istvan’s jaw to mark the marks, his own jaw set. “Did that fucking Eig—”

On a sigh, “They took my earring, yeah? I liked that earring. Never mind, we’re almost done. —What of you?”

“They made me pay my way out,” rubbing a moment at his forehead, as though the beating still echoes. “I tried to pay yours, too, but they’d not say where they’d stuck you. Like a fucking game of shells and pebbles! Your lad’s the one who found it out,” detailing then the details of the last several days, Haden’s activities and his own, some useful, some not, until this noon when “She came to see me, that Christobel de Metz, and talked in circles. Now she wants to see you.”

“Is that why I smell lavender? I thought you’d changed your scent, without consulting me.” Capping the emptied flask: “The young Madame—It’s patience we’re playing, then, or is it chess? Either way I’ll be the rook.”

“Chess?” Rupert’s shrug is bleak; he lights a cigar, brief flare in the cab’s closeness, the smell of sulfur and heat. “I’d rather break necks. St.-Mary was urging some fine tricks to get you free—none we could use, but it shows he’s got a head on his shoulders, at least.”

“Oh, the kit’s more subtle than even he can guess. I’ll hope they’re practicing, our issue, as I tasked them?” as the cab rolls into Rottermond Square, as they disembark, Istvan pausing for a moment to take from Rupert the cigar, draw hard, then hand it back, passing through its smoke like a favored son beneath the alley lintel of the Mercury, ragged and jaunty and smiling for the ones waiting inside: Frédéric diligent with the notebook, Haden tracing the table’s wood with his knife, Tilde stitching up a mask, tenth of a doubled dozen, little pointed black dominoes such as an army of imps might wear. Then Haden is leaping to shake his hand, Frédéric frowning for his bloodied shirt, Tilde to stand on tiptoe and salute his stubbled cheek: “‘One ought never get caught,’” quoting to bring the laughter of relief, of rebuoyed spirits, the little troupe gathered back into itself like the fingers of a clever hand.

The woman waiting in the dimness of the house, in her veiled hat and blue diamond earbobs, and gloves of, yes, lavender kid, listens as if to a faraway play the sounds of that reunion, patient for M. Hilaire’s attention, needing no rehearsal for what she has come to say. She even smiles at Istvan emergent to meet her, Haden at his side, as “Well-met, cher Madame,” Istvan says. “You’ll excuse my déshabillé, I know. And already you know M. St.-Mary,” as he takes his seat beside her like an old and intimate friend, Haden to the row behind, marking the line of her lips, the angle of her chin—Eig’s beloved! Does the lady herself know that, and whatever might she say if she did?—as Istvan listens with care to her entreaty, her hand in gesture to the theatre’s walls, its homey shadows and painted deeps, gaslight and mended curtain as “This place,” she says, “means something to you, and to M. Bok, perhaps a great deal; I understand that, now. But can you not understand how much the other means to my husband? It is the gift of a lifetime, prepared for M. Bok, who has meant so much to him—”

“Yes, I know. Cupid’s sister was quite fond of M. Bok as well.” Before Christobel can parse that startling “Cupid,” as if hearing one’s own name in the mouth of a stranger, Istvan goes on: “We are all quite fond of M. Bok; excepting, perhaps, yourself? though that would be most understandable.” With a sudden and formal coldness: “I’ll not be parted from him again.”

Steadily: “Who could part you, Monsieur?”

“Cher Madame, don’t you know?”

Christobel gazes down at her gloved hands, as if in contemplation. When her stare rises again it is hard, in sudden marked resemblance to Isobel de Metz, her voice as sharp as a duelist’s point: “The formal banquet you disrupted—you did not scruple to use my husband’s name there, as your entrée,” that stare including Haden, now, indicting him as well; Haden does not look away. “And on your own stage, too, to your own ends you have used him; the Blackbird Theatre, and other—venues; I remember. Do you, Monsieur, remember M. Bok’s own incarceration, whose hand reached to save him then? Yes, I know those details, they were told me by dear Javier. So does it not behoove you to be generous, as my husband has been generous, time and time again? These are not decisions of the mind so much as movements of the heart, and there as well, Monsieur, I do believe you can afford more generosity.”

In the house there is silence, as there would be such a silence onstage, a testing moment between antagonists; even in farce, such a moment would have weight. If Rupert is listening high above, quiet to climb like a stealthy boy the rust-flecked sway of the catwalk, none of them seem to mark it; if Tilde is thrusting her needle through the fabric of a mask as if stabbing a rapier through an assailant’s heart, no one but Frédéric sees, Frédéric who continues to write furiously in his notebook as Haden’s gaze flicks back and forth between Istvan and the lady, with Istvan’s own trick of study through the lashes, a master class as “It is more than coincidence,” says Istvan, “that you should reference our great, lost mutual friend, who knew how to make allies and keep them, and keep what he loved from destruction,” sharing with her then the existence of the mythological cache, offering a strategy and a temporary alliance, offering, even, his demonstrable regrets, for “One must own that your husband owns a stout heart—it is not nothing, to feel so deeply for so long. And I of all the world must commend the excellence of his taste.”

If Istvan hopes for an answering smile from Mme de Metz he does not get it; instead, from behind the veil, “He could not have M. Bok, so he worked to become him; a stout heart, as you say, Monsieur…. I know Javier very much enjoyed your performances, he told me so often. I should like to see what he sent you.”

“I can show you nothing, Madame. You must take me at my word, or not at all.”

Silence: the gaze beneath the veil: then, rising on a waft of lavender, gloves gripping a pavé reticule, “I shall consider all that you have said, and send my husband’s servant with my answer; his name is Emory, he will have my card so that you may know him. —Why do I feel, when I speak to you, Monsieur, that less than half of what you say is true?” with an arctic smile that Istvan matches with no smile at all, a bow so beautiful it verges on cruel burlesque as “Which half, though, Madame? And you have a child, do you not, a little boy—that tale can be his patrimony. If you like, we’ll scribe his name onto the safebox key. Bonjour,” as Christobel, lips tight, takes her leave, Haden escorting her to the squareside door, bowing her out to her cab then back down the aisle where “Christ, uncle,” he says on an exhalation. “You twisted her garters there at the end, do you want to go back to Eig’s hotel? Spiff bluff, though, about the documents. —It is a bluff, an’t it?” to bring Istvan’s authentic smile, he hooks an arm a moment around Haden’s neck and “Save one, ruin one, it’s all the same to them, yeah? Cupid’s woe is that he never learned to take no for an answer. And you’ll note Madame never mentions our imminent eviction.”

“May be she doesn’t know? She does make a bona pander, if what she wants is—”

“Oh, her wants, his wants, what can they signify to us? Come on, let’s have a look from the perch,” turning for the catwalk and the embrace of the god, to take up again the hard repertory business of love, as Rupert above salutes them, as Frédéric reaches the end of his page with an emphatic exclamation, as Tilde sets aside the finished mask to take up the next one on the pile.

Soon they will sit together around the backstage table, for an early supper of stewed pears, new bread and fresh butter, pea soup—Frédéric tasting with a little pang, pea soup a favorite of his mother’s, the pang soothed by the feel of Haden’s hand upon his thigh—as Istvan regales them with tales of the road, of awful scrapes and near-escapes and the laughter of puppets, of the way it feels to lie on one’s back at night and watch the stars from some strange rooftop, some stranger’s room, oneself always a stranger though “Not to the ones in the boxes,” nodding to the masked four hung in their row, “and not to oneself,” looking to Rupert, who meets his gaze over the head of Tilde, diligent to spoon her soup, knowing without knowing, yet better than even they, what this last show will cost, and must demand. If her eyes prickle with tears, and they do, she blames it on the soup steam, on the salt of the fatty pork a-swim in the tureen, and rises resolute as the rest for the evening’s work, applauding louder than any when Rupert demonstrates a jigging backflip—“Not too old yet, hey? But it wants a deal more practice—” and “Practice, yes,” says Istvan, taking up Mr. Pollux. “Have at it then,” until it is very late, until muscles ache and all the tea is drunk and Frédéric falls asleep still holding the devil puppet, until each makes his way and Tilde hers into the evening’s beds, to be audience and player both on the dark stages of various dreams.

In other beds, other dreams are dreamt, other, more copious tears assuaged —James Aubin has finally arrived, with a dozen trunks and a fine new Scottish blazer and hands outstretched for comfort—and other plans and worries laid, at least for the moment, to rest; Martin Eig sleeps; Guy de Vries sleeps. Christobel de Metz does not sleep; nor does Herr Hebert, paging worried through a stack of newspapers from abroad; while the theatre district’s rest or lack spans from Mrs. Cowtan’s toothache, dosed unsuccessfully with juniper oil, to Cockrill’s open-mouthed, cherubic snores. Haden’s boys, in Haden’s old rooms, sleep like sparrows in a rookery, fluttering and grumbling, awaiting the next day’s flight and mischief; they too have had their practice, and will have much more. Meanwhile the moon gleams like milk through the wreathing clouds, lighting the Bridge deserted by all but the sapient cats, lighting the surface of the river barely creased by ripples on this windless night; it shines through the trees of the Park, where the leaves already gild and brown for winter, through casements as gilded and garrets as chill; through the rooftop hatch refastened, its hinges newly planed and oiled to move at a fingertip’s touch—

—though it cannot cast its light so low as to reach the table where Tilde sits again and still wakeful, slowly turning card upon card as a nun might turn through her psalter: for comfort, for company. When Istvan appears like a spirit beside her, she does not startle; she nods to the freshened teapot, but he shakes his head, hand rising by habit to finger at his earring, feeling instead with a little scowl the sore and suppurating lobe and “I had the nightmare,” he says, over the glass she pours for him of vin ordinaire. “Mouse—that is, Rupert was falling…. Not like that,” to the look she gives, “or may be that’s its seed. But falling, falling down and down to where I could not reach him.”

“It is like that,” she says. “Can’t Haden be the climber? Sir has the vertigo—I’ve seen him wobble!—and only the one eye to see with. If he—”

“He’ll do as he’ll do, and there’s an end, yeah?” though Istvan shudders slightly, eyes dark; he glances at the colorful cards. “Shall we see what these fine folk have to say about it all?” startled then himself as “No,” Tilde emphatic, both hands pressed flat upon the little squares, as if she will protect him, them, the cards themselves from such an action. “I’ll tell them for you in the daytime. Don’t you know the moon is full?”

“It’s still the moon in the daytime,” though meekly, and not without a certain humor. “But I bow to your greater expertise.” He sips his wine and considers her, haloed by lamplight, girlish white nightgown and long hair loose—her hair is very long now, Milady Mab, nearly to her waist and wild as ever; and she herself such a wild little thing, yet imbued with a new gravitas—like Mouse, it entirely becomes her, pure and singular and stern. It reminds him of a painting he saw once, in some toffy mansion or other, of the Virgin Mother herself barely more than a girl, kneeling on black rocks in the light of a holy ghost; that suits this one, too, and her child without a father. The Virgin of the Mecs…. With a distant, warm nostalgia—for Puss, even for Ag, awful Ag—he leans forward then, he kisses her cheek—this does startle her—and “I salute you, dear,” he says. “And your little stranger, whose advent I shall be very sad to miss. What will you call the child?”

“If it’s a girl,” she says, “Isabella.”

“Lovely. If a boy?”

“Rupert.”

He waits until she smiles to smile himself, then “A brave name; I entirely approve. And those two can stand godfather, yeah?” thumb up to the room above where Frédéric and Haden lie, dark and fair on the garret bed like young gods after a busy day; it is another kind of portrait, one that Caravaggio might have made. “But who’ll be for you, then, miss? You’d be a rare gift to any fellow, I’d marry you myself if I had the stones.”

Meeting his gaze head-on, those fierce blue eyes—how has he never fully marked that blueness? Someday she will be truly beautiful—but “Love’s not for me,” she says, though a blush washes over her cheeks, a last rose blooming before the hard cold to come. “And no man will feed and keep a child that’s not his own, that I know.”

“Some men might be moved to do so.”

“Did you have a father?”

“Touché,” and “We’ll stay just as we are, here,” says Tilde firmly. “We have what we need and all we need,” as Istvan drains the wine, hand rising again to where the pearl should be, Tilde noting his wince and “That needs sewing,” she says, with a measuring eye. So the sharp needle is again deployed, Istvan in the chair with his hair pulled back, whistling through his teeth, through the heat of the pain an old, old cradle song, one Tilde to her surprise finds that she knows as well: not “Volim Te” but of the same vintage, the same village perhaps, a song of a child lost in the darkness, who finally and past great danger wends the long way safely home.

When the wound is mended and neatly stanched with brandied cambric—her stitching is superb; there will barely be a scar—Istvan rises, his yawn tremendous, and “It’s nearly dawn,” turning from the pooled light of the table to the dark of the stairs. “You ought try to sleep,” yet surprised one final time on this long night by Tilde’s hand suddenly reaching for his own, Tilde’s urgent diffidence to note that “A man came, today, while Sir was off fetching you. He makes pictures, he says.”

“Pictures?” standing blank as she then explains: an enterprising photographer who visited the square, Ridley’s Finest, cartes-de-visite hand-colored, not too expensive and “You would like one?” Istvan asks, examining the specimen she shows him, fully at a loss. “Of yourself?”

“No, no—of Sir. Or,” with a dour generosity, “it can be of Sir and you,” which is how, and why, the only formal photograph of Rupert Bok and Istvan Marek—such is the name he offers the photographer—comes to be made, the two posed hatless in cutaway coats before mildly moth-chewed drapes, in a fumed and makeshift studio on Crossways Street, wedged between a tobacconist’s and a busy barbershop. The photographer, Mr. Ridley, will be rapturous to include the puppets—he will be rapturous in general over the puppets, all the available props and sets: These little actors of yours are simply golden, gentlemen, I’d be in your debt forever if you’d let me make their pictures! And of yourselves as well!—but It’s enough foolishness to do it once, Rupert’s frown, though in the portrait he nearly smiles at Istvan leaning on his shoulder, bright on the cusp of laughter, two fingers raised as if in flirtatious farewell. No names are printed below, unusual for a carte-de-visite, but on the back is the address of the Mercury Theatre, as if those men might always be present there in some capacity, whenever one might wish to come and call.

If the city itself were to have its portrait made, its photograph taken in this autumn of wet sepia and silver, chiaroscuro moment itself a crossways street, what might it offer to the eye, the sad eye, the considering eye, the dry eye of history? What can be known, just by looking? In the merchants’ districts, commerce is still brisk, stocks are traded and commodities offered, and newspapers are closely studied—among them several new and popular publications, the Civic Guardian and the Vigilist, alongside the Gentleman’s View and the Globe, and the still-extant, now entirely muted Daily Solon—as what constitutes morality is parsed and reparsed, until adjustments, however onerous and painful, may yet again be made. The Prefecture’s Commissions on Morals, on Security, meet daily, though not every meeting is available to, or known by, every commissioner. Many more clerks have been hired to process the reports, the multiplying inquiries; all the constables have had a raise in pay.

In the shops, prices are much higher, and there are mounting and curious shortages—the apothecaries cannot keep a stock of paregoric syrup; there are no decent ladies’ hairpins to be had—and the dairymen have rioted again, to no one’s benefit, including their own. The Park seems almost the same, the brick paths are busy and the Carousel still turns, though the beggars and drunkards are beaten now with more open savagery, and the gypsies have decamped, all of them, all at once, like swallows fleeing a storm, their muddied tracks and deserted Fortune’s Wheel left as their only spoor; they are followed by many of the titled class, those with country houses deciding not to spend the coming winter in town after all. The Virgo girls have gone, perhaps accompanied by the bravos in black armbands; the Literary Leopards are extinct. The Cemetery has been padlocked, as well as the Cocked Hat, Le Chapel Vert, and nearly all the nonesuch hotels, none such to be left to operate in peace, while the whores of the Bridge have taken the hint and gone indoors, to the humbler cafés, where they hunch in their newly modest skirts beside the satcheled scholars and the cab drivers whose penny papers have crossed into the fully hysteric: Jews are a favored topic, as are unspecified “foreigners,” and murderers who come in the night and leave no trace; these three are often conflated, with opinions offered on the best way to deal with them all.

In the streets the mood is varied, the veneer is polite, the fears and whispers and accusations saved for the quiet behind closed doors. Mourning jewelry is newly popular, as are carquet boxes, worn between the corset and the heart, with a jewel tucked inside, or a fold of currency, as if cached in preparation for flight. There are half a dozen new ballads, plinking and parched and sentimental, some lamenting love lost, others in praise of virtue and fidelity: one in particular, “Turtledove, Turtledove,” sells out its sheet music as fast as it may be printed. The Athenaeum has mounted a patriotic revue, starring Edgar Rue, with much draped bunting and presentation of flags; the mayor has seen that show several times, though the Cleopatra’s opulent new production of Hamlet is a thudding failure, as is the cinema house, newly opened and already closed. But the gambling clubs, though clandestine, remain crowded, as do the churches, from fine temples down to little parish huts.

And if a god is invoked beyond the Christian God of battles—who is daily implored by the archbishop in the great cathedral for protection and defense: from whom, by whom? as the curate sighs and places fresh candles below the flowers, red and white roses piled like pagan offerings, the sacrificial colors of blood and bone—how could it ever be the pale and grimy Mercury, already in flight past his detritus of chestnut shells and trampled headlines and travelers so eager to be elsewhere that they sometimes board the wrong trains, or leave their valises behind to be ravaged by scavenger boys; who would claim such a fellow for a patron, who would choose to be his friend? in the crunch of cinders and the screech of iron, the steam that snorts and billows like the dragon’s breath, the air of endings and dark beginnings, as the sun sets in a yellowed smear behind the shoulder of Minerva, a far more efficient deity for the times that lie ahead: Minerva who sprang full-grown and fully armored from the forehead of her father, Minerva whose brother is the militant and thirsty Mars. It is not the time for artifice, it is not the time for art; it is time and more than time for other, sterner disciplines, and for businesslike, raptorlike, disciplined men. The birds in flight know it; the groaning beggars know it; the thieving boys know it; the silvered city closes her eyes.

“I saw something quite amusing this morning,” says James Aubin in his blue linen jacket, raising his teacup, trying for lightness; Christobel de Metz makes a smile of encouragement; Benjamin de Metz does not look up from his journal. On his finger is a new ring, James Aubin has noted, displacing the signet ring he himself has much admired, but I threw it in the river, said Benjamin when he asked, and whether that is true or not, James Aubin did not dare to ask again. This new ring, heavy silver, is not one he admires, though Christobel has told him it has a very long history, some sort of arcane family history: it is ugly and sits poorly on Benjamin’s hand, below his knuckles chewed and scored to scabs; it looks dreadful, he looks dreadful, though his passion, these days, is acute. But he cannot sleep, and so James Aubin cannot sleep, and so he consults Christobel when Benjamin leaves them, abruptly, at the pleasant little alcove table, sprigged white mums and spotless tablecloth, rice porridge and raisin compote and eggs poached to perfection: “He is not happy here,” says James Aubin softly. “Why can’t we go? We could travel straight on to Paris, and arrive in time to see—”

“We shall go,” says Christobel. She stirs honey into her tea, a heavy drop of gold, a silver spoon. “We will go, as soon as his business here is concluded.”

“Is it to do with that theatre, still? Emory says—”

“Emory,” says Christobel coolly, “ought speak less and do more,” though he has done much these past days, Emory her one consultant—

I saw that man, Madame, that Herr Hilaire, beforehand. I thought it wise to do so.

And what did you make of him?

Immoral, Madame. An immoral man, surely.

—and then her emissary to the Mercury, shuttered now in advance of its closing: one must knock and knock, nearly batter for admittance until Their girl met me at the door, Emory reported, Tilde who did not suffer Emory’s condescension, who raised an eyebrow to his eyebrows raised at her and They’re none of them here, she had said with a hauteur that might have done credit to an infanta, barring the doorway with her great belly, only dimness and quiet behind and beyond; there is something unwholesome about an empty theatre, like gazing into an unfilled grave. Whatever you have, you can give it to me.

I was told to give the message to—

They’re none of them here, inexorable, hand out so he must needs put the card and envelope into her palm, Christobel’s card and envelope with Christobel’s answer, Christobel’s capitulation, Christobel’s wish that whatever Javier Arrowsmith had left to M. Hilaire shall be remanded to her discretion if not disposal, for As you suggest, she had written—her fine Spencerian hand, her rose-stamped stationery smelling of lavender—it may well be useful someday, for my son to know such details about his world. Though I will ask of your kindness that he never come to know you, nor M. Bok; I will ask that you keep between my house and your own the greatest distance possible; I will ask that you become a stranger to us all as soon as you depart this city and I receive what now is mine. And I pray that I shall never again see your face in this world, nor especially M. Bok’s, who has brought such unhappiness to my dear husband, whose only desire was to be his patron and his friend.

What of the answer? Emory had asked the haughty girl-servant, once she had tucked the envelope into her apron; a badly stained apron, though what else should one expect? Players are dirty creatures. I was told there would be an answer—

—and there was, a nondescript metal key that now sits in Christobel’s jewelry pouch, most fittingly beside the black key from Javier’s fob, Javier whose strange and secret caprice might have created much suffering for Benjamin, for them all: How could he have done so? Did Isobel know? Surely Isobel could not have known! though she, too, was as great a partisan of those wretched actors, Cupid’s sister was quite fond of M. Bok, yes, so much so that people sniggered for it, even her bosom-friend Fernande used to mock her for a lovesick girl. And she herself had defended Isobel! It is like looking into the face of a sister and seeing that face is a mask: What else might lie behind it, what other slyness, what other dangerous, unguessable truths? And how is one to know?

It is this, more even than her husband’s grief, that grieves Christobel so that she cannot sleep, lying alone in the great hotel bed, sumptuous lace and lawn and the spicy, cloying smell of roses, roses she now rejects in favor of ferns, many ferns, green and clean and flowerless, as in the suite adjoining her husband spends and thrusts his lust like a weapon against the body of James Aubin, who shudders to receive it, who lies afterward in silence as Benjamin drinks whiskey and speaks, disjointedly, of what he will now do, of how he will work his will on the world for I’ve had my fill of the theatre, be sure of that. And I am nothing like the old man, he says, to himself, to James Aubin, to the ghost of Isidore de Metz, to the dead spirit of a great dead love, or what a child stranded in sorrow might call love, in broken echo of what was and what might have been, lover and savior and father: a ring in the foul river, floating bright and gold and gone. I’ll better him, I’ll make a fine tale of that journal, you’ll see. “Go and be their master, make the bastards bow”—they all are bastards, every one of them.

Now “Verdi’s at the Opera, in Paris,” says James Aubin, “or is it Muscopini? Oh, and what I saw this morning was straight out of opéra bouffe: a whole gaggle of urchins—my, they were cunning, just like little monkeys!—all wearing black masks and clambering up and down the street outside, with some sort of placards that—”

“Be quiet,” says Benjamin, stepping back to the table, letter in hand, a letter just delivered. “You chatter like a monkey yourself, I’ll have you put on a chain. Belle, see that the trunks are packed,” as she notes the letter’s crest, the Prefecture’s crest, and the satisfaction in his eyes, a hard satisfaction without any pleasure or joy. “I’ve one more meeting to accomplish, then we’ll be on our way.”

“To Paris?” asks James Aubin hopefully.

“To Chatiens,” says Christobel.

That same bleak, satisfied look, if Christobel could see it or Benjamin care, now fills the gaze of Martin Eig, who sent that letter, who this very moment conducts his own much-planned and long-awaited meeting with Guy de Vries: teapot atop his large and glorious desk, Mayor Eszterhaus in the chair beside—a supplicant’s chair; a conspirator’s gravity—there to announce that “As of the first of November, when the full Prefecture meets in session, you shall be asked to step down, Guy; your title will become emeritus, and Martin Eig, here, will be the new Commissioner. —Wait, wait,” to forestall de Vries’ speech if not the red blaze of shock that climbs steadily up his neck and chin and cheeks, as if he were a building set afire. “Before you speak, see this,” the stamped official order from Prefect Konstantin, the elderly ally Konstantin who has taken the measure of the current situation, and shall himself be replaced without a struggle by his young nephew, whose official investiture will also take place on the first of November: an auspicious day, the Feast of All Saints. “And know that you shall receive a generous—an extremely generous—pension, and that the Commission will forever be grateful to you for all your years of dedication.”

“This is madness,” as de Vries stares at the paper in his hand, at the mayor, who looks away, at Martin Eig, who retains his immense and bureaucratic calm; he wears a fine new suit, raptor’s black, with a dark green tie. “I’ll do nothing of the kind. Who sanctioned this?”

“You see the signatures,” the requisite nine, all the men on the Prefecture Council; there were many meetings to produce those signatures, all in private, and some private wailings and gnashings of teeth, but those who signed can fully see how the wind blows: new men and old money, that is to be the way, de Metz money backing this new play, and where de Metz leads, others have and will continue to follow. Several of the men who signed did so noting that it was high time de Metz put down his bottle and showed his hand, high time he left behind his boyhood foolishness of romantic actors and playhouses, to be the man his father was, a leader for this new age—though as a last hurrah, perhaps, he is donating a theatre to the city’s usage, the magnificently refurbished theatre called the Garden of Eden, a generosity approved by the Globe, side by side with an editorial equally approving the appointment of Martin Eig; both will be published this afternoon. There was some thought that de Metz might take up residence in the city himself, but that appears not to be the case; such is small and bitter comfort to Guy de Vries, who reads the order again and again, now, as if frantic repetition might create a different outcome. The names here, the men—men he has worked with, dined with, found sport with, it is villainous, monstrous—

“Richter? And Edgar Vaubins! And who the devil is Monsignor A. Elfred? Where is Iffy’s signature, the Archbishop is a full voting member of—”

“He has been recalled to Rome, Monsignor Elfred will replace him. Monsignor Elfred is a fine young man, a fine young bishop from—”

“After all I have done for the Church!”

“You might have followed its precepts,” says Martin Eig, “or those of the Morals Act. As it is, your behavior has been a stain on the Commission itself. That boy in your house—”

“There is—there was no ‘boy.’ And there will be great unrest over this,” the mottled red of de Vries’ face draining to a sludgy pink, as if his body tastes the truth before his mind may fully admit it. “The common people favor me, the common people have always—”

“The common people?” says Martin Eig. There is no special malice in his tone, not even a whisper of amusement but “You,” says de Vries, hunching forward, head sunk between his shoulders like a wounded beast’s, the drooping lip sucked in; he looks suddenly old. “All this time, there at my bosom like an asp, all this time you and that foul de Metz—New men! I’d see you pilloried.”

“We don’t use the pillory any longer,” and “Try not to think of it as a demotion,” says the mayor; he is sweating a little, more than a little, he looks again and again to Martin Eig as if for courage, Martin Eig who has been this moment’s architect, who had assured him, day after day, that it would be done; and now it is done. “You are not a young man, Guy, this day had to come eventually. And now you may retire honorably to the country, with your dear wife, and your children—there are five of them now, to rejoice you, yes?” as Martin Eig beckons in Bernd the secretary, to pass him a handful of signed letters and receive several letters and notes in return, a cruelly prosaic act and meant to be so, during this tragic moment, de Vries’ last moment; it comes to Martin Eig, if distantly, that cruelty can be a kind of sport. An interesting notion, one he shall consider and perhaps pursue—

“Disloyal upstart! ‘Sharper than a serpent’s sting’!”

“‘Well done, O good and faithful servant.’”

—as he will pursue a political career of careful, brutal, escalating triumphs, through endless civic battles unto international war, partnering again and again with those whom in his heart he despises; at heart, the eel is boneless. He will at times be in the company of Benjamin de Metz, who has his own working theories of cruelty; and in the presence of Madame de Metz, Christobel who will openly dislike him, Christobel whose face he will seek always and without conscious choice when he enters a ballroom, a drawing room, those rooms that will have become his municipality. Soon, now, he will leave his own small room of printed curtains and sour bed and air of solitude enforced, and buy a townhouse befitting his new station, three stories of brick and stone, a walled pocket garden with a fig tree and climbing roses, and a full complement of silver to match the stately teapot. Shortly after, he will also marry (Herr and Frau de Vries will not in fact attend the wedding, although they will be invited) and will himself sire children, not so many as five, but enough to seed a small Eigian dynasty. He will never even pretend to love the correct and quiet, nunnish wife he chooses, a munitions broker’s youngest daughter, that broker much elated by the honor; nor will she expect to be loved. She will bear the children and keep the home, sit embroidering through the long evenings she spends alone; she will ask no questions, offer no opinions that her husband has not first provided to her. She will never possess an elevated sensibility, being less helpmeet than superior domestic servant, though marriage will, in fact, very much improve Martin Eig’s digestion, if not his own sensibilities or his collapsed and fistlike heart, this man who will pass his life in a state of grotesque inner famishment, yet with no scent to him at all of hunger; or perhaps it is that what he hungers for has no scent, as the devil is said to have no smell.

There is a distinct and unpleasant odor, now, in the lobby of the Garden of Eden, the scent of rotted roses carried away as the stage is swept of their wrinkled, fallen petals, the silver stands put into storage by his own players and several boys recruited and paid for by Simon Cowtan, his sanction and title an invisible wand of authority. He has announced to Mrs. Cowtan that this new palace must surely be, by civic right, the rightful home of the city’s First Theatre; his company ought not even have to pay rent, as the work they do is of such obvious benefit to the city—

“Benefit? No one came to Hamlet. I told you we ought not do Hamlet, no one wants to watch a tragedy when—”

“It’s not the public’s task to decide what it wants to see. It is my task—more, it is my duty—to shepherd the public’s taste. Why else do you think I was specially awarded—”

“You were awarded nothing. Our theatre, named for me, I might add, was awarded—”

“It has been years,” severely, “many years, since you were Cleopatra, Madame.” Having seen the Garden of Eden, the Cleopatra itself has come to seem to Simon Cowtan less Shakespeare’s Globe than Cockrill’s Palace; he has been having similar thoughts about Mrs. Cowtan, especially when he auditions the demure young actresses, or notes the rice powder caking in the corners of Mrs. Cowtan’s downturned mouth, sore with juniper and toothache, she is always in some sort of pain. In the dark winter and the darker months to come, he will take steps to change his situation permanently on both fronts, and will succeed on both fronts, though the changes engendered will neither please nor advance him. Before a full year has passed, he will have played on the cold stage of the rooms of inquiry, to disquieting notice by the Morals Commission, who will find his pretensions presumptuous—Tibor Banek, in particular, will be much affronted: As if the fellow was ever a friend!—and his defense on a morals charge (the licentious production of The Queen of Sheba, the adulterous young actress) much less than persuasive, or even adequate to keep him from a month’s imprisonment, lasting shame, and the permanent closure of his theatre, that will much later reopen as a Freemasons’ lodge, and later still, a popular brewery. The Garden of Eden will come under the shrewd if foreshortened management of Gilbert Fairgrieve, who will produce there many nights of fully innocuous drama, until it, too, goes dark; as does Mrs. Cowtan, become wardrobe mistress under the hard thumb of Cynthia, herself at last in the rôle of Mrs. Fairgrieve. Mrs. Cowtan will wonder bitterly why she of all people must end her days in this vaudeville of sorrow; Cynthia Fairgrieve, in her wig of real Chinese hair and eyelashes fashioned of the same, will enjoy explaining why, day after toilsome day.

It is the stage of the locked Mercury that is busiest today, Istvan in his element, buoyed by the chaos of boys around him, tossed heads and lacquered lips and knobby fists and “This is bally too tight,” complains one worthy, his curly hair tangled in the strings of the black mask. “Why an’t I wear it just like so?” like a second pair of eyeless eyes slanted up above his own, looking to Haden, who looks to Istvan, who tugs it securely back into place—“Because we don’t want them to see your face, poppet”—reinforcing the lesson with a salutary box to the ear. “Do you know what sprites are, lads? No? Then think of yourselves as an army of shadows, will that suit? And no one ever sees a shadow’s face. Now you,” selecting one of the boys, a ragged near-beauty with very fair hair, “show us how you can slip from one shadow to the next—”

—from upstage to downstage past the set dressing still in progress, Frédéric harried and flurried and fully absorbed, fully in his element as well—he has learned at last how the puppets operate, has learned things he never dreamed were there for the knowing—but how many details to remember, how much still to do even though the time is rushing past, this show on the cusp of its opening for “They were out in the streets already, you know,” he reminds Tilde sotto voce. “Up around the Park, and some went all the way downtown—”

“It’s time,” she says. “The constable put up the sign,” the notice of final eviction nailed to the Mercury’s doors, that constable’s hammer like a knocking hand, a ticking clock, counting down the hours and the minutes although “Sir,” she says, half to Frédéric, half to no one, “says not to worry,” himself her own greatest worry since It’s dim up there, and narrow but I’ve been climbing since I was younger than you are now, as she watched him step down nimbly from the dark of the catwalk stairs. Only the two of them awake so very early, in the dawn like a red eye opening, so few mornings left to sit together at the table though You’ll have that visiting-card you asked for, Rupert frowning at her, teasing so she finally smiles. But I’ve something else to give you, too, as he took from his pocket a pretty jeweler’s pouch, pink velvet and within it, in nesting pink silk, a locket such as a fine lady might have, a very fine lady: For your little one, as he fastened the clasp around her neck. You can put a picture inside if you like, or a little snip of hair.

And she said nothing, for what could she say to thank him? for this, yes, queenly gift, this locket of pure gold, real gold with scrolls and swirled etching on front and back, the worth of which would have made her father shout, her mother dance—though neither could ever have guessed its worth to her, symbol of the gift far greater given every day, this roof, its safety, his kindness from the start; she would give this locket and twenty lockets to stay just as they are, just now, at this quiet table. Instead she gave back a gaze from the very depths of her eyes, like treasure from the depths of the sea, and Sir, she said, just that; and they sat together in silence, their own silence, tea and chocolate bittersweet, until the others began to stir and rise and make their yawning way down the stairs.

Since that moment she has not taken off the chain, has put away forever the cold white cameo. Now she touches the locket again, a talisman through her blouse, while Rupert, coat on and leather folder in hand, pauses to speak to Frédéric, some last subterfuge of detail: “—when that lot,” nodding to the commotion of boys, “is all settled, then it’s to you and your fellow, remember,” nodding to Haden, the knave of diamonds surely in his new and sparkling vest, all sewn up with mirrors by Tilde, little broken flashing bits of glass, Haden who looks, again, to Istvan—

—who himself notes the way Milady regards her lord, that dark and dolorous forehead, nudging Rupert as he passes—“Your daughter’s got the wind up—” as Haden stares from one to the other in surprise, the stare seen by Rupert, who looks reprovingly to Istvan, then says quietly to Haden with a headshake, “He’ll have his joke always. She’s not my get.”

Haden looks between them again, gauging the resemblance. “Have you ever, with a woman?”

“No,” says Rupert drily. “Never.”

“Nor I, nor missed it either. I’m no one’s father,” and “Give thanks for that,” calls Tilde, which instead of needling Haden makes him laugh, makes him reach to his checked trousers in cradling clasp and “No woman born,” he says, he declaims, “can coax this prick to stand, and what of it? We all know who we are,” as the boys laugh with him, as Frédéric blushes, as Istvan—fey, fierce, smiling—calls out that “The tongue is sacred, too, to our trickster master,” leaning low to reach Frédéric’s warm lips with his own, a soft, surprising, lingering kiss, before turning for his own mask, his plague mask, to don that beaked and secret face and show the boys—the sons of Mercury, toy soldiers in this sortie against the armies of the proper and the dead, the guardians of moral purpose, the strangling moralists of heaven’s hell—a most memorable demonstration, with the help of Mr. Pollux, of the surprising uses to which such a mask may be put, whistling all the while through his teeth that naughty tune of how a lad makes his way, A lad with wits and nasty bits/A lad who knows what he knows!

It is to Haden only that Istvan shows his truest face, and only when Haden comes to him, late that afternoon, up the stairs and into the bedchamber quiet and still, Rupert having gone again, to pay one last visit to the workingman’s bank, a building that a great financial officer, like Morris Robb, say, might not even recognize as an institution of worth. Reclining on the rosewood satin, letter in hand, Istvan salutes with his flask Haden in the doorway, the mirrored vest shed, carrying the angel puppet: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter…. Don’t just stand there, kit, come in,” to set down on the carven bed the puppet—Istvan assuming it at once, like a familiar, like family—and prowl the room in the way of, yes, a curious cat, blinking those yellow eyes at the accoutrements of purple, the draperies and ferns and old silver mirror, the ancient crocodile-toed boots beside a little trunk half-packed and a wardrobe mostly emptied, a pile of books bound with a schoolboy’s leather strap—some plays, some poetry, a Sadler’s History of the World—and the businessman’s desk clean and nearly bare, now, of its papers and its pens, a fat black cuff link lying solo to one side, as if discarded. With half a smile, testingly, he takes from a coat tree an opera cape, sable brown, golden frogs and golden fringe, wraps it around himself with a costumer’s flourish and “Gilding the lily,” says Istvan. “But go on, have it if you like. We’re to travel very sparse.”

Haden shrugs off the cloak, hangs it back on the tree, glancing to and then out the window, into the day’s last light, the scurriers and horses and buses below, the wheeling pigeons flashing soot-gray and soiled white. Over his shoulder: “Will it work, uncle?”

“Do you doubt me?” making the angel puppet to bow, courtly, sweetly, mockingly. “‘If you’re going to drown, do it in deep water’—it’s a saying one has. It means—”

“I know what it means.” Haden seats himself at the foot of the bed, one foot up on the coverlet. “I’ve been in deep water before.”

“Not so deep this time, as long as your lads do as they’re directed, and all falls as it should.” Istvan drinks, then passes the flask as he tilts his head in observation that “You’ve quite bloomed, you know, since your coup de coeur—” wiggling the puppet; both of them smile. “And he writes like an angel, you’ll do great things together…. We could have used the Marquis at the Poppy, really, it was catch-as-catch-can there with the shows. Though our bawdy girls and pretty boy, they cut some didoes,” telling tales as if rambling, both knowing that he is not, knowing that he seeks to give what he has, share what he knows though the time is short, the brandy runs out, the sun streaks and flares in the square below, on the roof above, and “In myth,” says Istvan, “Castor was in a tree when he was killed—he fell out, didn’t he, right on his mortal noggin. It was Pollux who flew up to Zeus and begged to share out his immortality, for what good is it to live forever if one must live forever alone?”

“No fucking good at all.” When Haden looks to Istvan then his gaze is as open as it can ever be, the way a son might look to a father, an apprentice to his master, one avatar to another past those thickets of myth. “Too bad there’s no Zeus really. And it’s a long way down, an’t it.”

“Then you fly, yeah?” as Istvan nudges with his knee, past his most oblique, indomitable smile: to Haden he seems, in the dimness of the room, a kind of demigod himself, some half-mortal striver awarded finally with a crown, or a clown sporting so; either way it signifies. “Or did you think to be a fledgling forever?”

“It’s not just me alone.”

“Is that the worry? Why,” leaning close to take Haden’s hands, and put into his grasp the angel puppet, strings and cloth-of-gold, the wise little repainted gaze, “you’ll find that the more you operate, the easier it gets,” leaning closer still, the puppet between them, until they breathe each other’s breath, brandy and heat, a singular pair staring straight into each other’s eyes: as if they might kiss; they do not kiss. “And there’s pleasure in the tale-telling, too—truth or lie, it’s all the same. It’s a play, yeah?”

A silence, the sounds of the boys, of the street, then: “You want this. You planned it all, an’t you.”

“I’d not call it so starkly, but if you must, yes. Not all from the start, and not the fucking beatings, but,” looking around the room as if he has found himself in some stranger’s lodgings, some stranger place, “it’s the way of things—I can be nowhere for very long, and with no one but him; you may find it so someday, with your own cherub. Then a note came from a friend, and the angel and the devil landed on our doorstep…. You, now,” Istvan leaning back as if the spell is breaking, as if he himself brings it to an end, “if you can operate that motley bunch,” thumb aimed to the stairs, “all the rest will be easy. We’ll point to this and give them that, we’ll show them past and future, all gorgeous like Milady’s dreadful cards…. Her job’s the hardest, and will stay so. Be decent to her, if you possibly can.”

“I can’t promise,” Haden’s one-shoulder shrug, rising from the bed with the puppet in hand, careful with the golden-wire halo until “Oh,” turning back from the door, “I almost forgot.” Hand into his trouser pocket for something small and wrapped in paper, newspaper, and “Why,” says Istvan, both pleased and touched, as the pearl earring reveals itself from the newsprint, pale at the heart of a crumpled grayish bloom. “However did you winkle this, messire?”

Haden shrugs again, concealing his own pleasure: “By play. As you say,” past the eyeless stare of red Minerva, in a dingy tavern called the Bruderman, where the bravos like to go, Costello there among them and What do you want? with the same glower, the same stink of snuff, a new defeated slump to his shoulders that Haden did not mention, a new willingness to drink with a former enemy now that greater enemies were afoot, uniformed constables and snobbish lieutenants to Put me mainly out of business, Costello’s gruff admission after the second lager is drained. You got out sooner, and smarter, thanks to your nancy friends.

I’m your nancy friend, you ass, as he then deployed one of the oldest ploys of street play, the half-told tale that sounds like all the truth: a sad yet greatly valuable tale of a bracelet made of heart-shaped sapphires, of the faithless wife of a highly placed man though No names, yet, Haden’s wink in the murk. If I told half of half I know, I’d be dead-o. But a crumb now and then makes a meal for a friend, feeding one such crumb to send Costello back to his master’s door, a pearl wrested with force and no little enjoyment from some thieving constable’s back pocket, a new weapon, may be, to use: for Eig means to cast a long shadow, and it will be Haden’s job—funny to think so, himself with a job! A whole slew of them now, apparently—to keep that shadow’s chill as far as he may from these doors, to spend out the hard currency he holds, all those lies, all that intelligence, as they depend on him to do so, his Frédéric, and that half-gypsy bitch, his gathered boys, while they make their play between these walls; why not? Christopher travels, Christopher fords the stream, Christopher bears the weight of the world until he need bear it alone no longer; another kind of half-told tale, but the medal looks fine around Frédéric’s neck, that part is sure…. Now “A drink before the war,” says Haden, reaching for his own flask, a street boy’s robust Calvados, a salute bestowed, a toast of equals offered and accepted—

—and then he exits, angel in hand, as Istvan lies back against the coverlet, earring happily resumed, to read with half-closed eyes a new letter from Lucy, valiant Puss who would have added such dash to this show—what a pity that she can neither play nor watch it, in that fine palais of yours!—though her own theatre continues to offer superior opportunities to many young actors, and to stray travelers, even in this very modern age.

There are no pictures on the placards that Haden’s boys parade through the streets, only the show’s title—THE
MERCURY
ROULETTE—and FOLLOW
ME on the reverse, daubed in black paint to match the masks they sport, and the jingling bells some of them wear about their wrists and ankles: “Such evil-looking little creatures,” murmurs an anxious lady to her friend in a beaver hat, that friend wondering aloud where such minions might lead, half turning in the avenue to watch them before he is tugged away by the lady’s warding hand. Others, braver or more foolhardy, choose to follow, through the sunset’s luxurious gloom: a pair of curious whores, a few furtive students with satchels, a few men in burghers’ coats and calm defiance, a few more and then more, as the streams of those behind the boys coalesce into one column, one line through Rottermond Square, marked by several distrustful constables—that theatre again!—past the shoemaker’s and the printer’s, the quiet fiacre cab in the alley, the Heads or Tails, where the avid patrons, with prudence or prescience, take themselves inside the bar to watch, while the owner of Die Welt swears violently beneath his breath and hurries to lock the shutters and the door.

And all present watch as a large black brougham rolls to a stop across from the Mercury. Inside, the men—one a gentleman, with his hard stare and exquisite top hat, black overcoat of Russian fox, the other a humbler deputy, in less distinctive weeds of wool and brown—note another conveyance immediately in their wake, a constables’ van with half a dozen more officers and a locksmith, all of whom exit to stand by the theatre’s doors, waiting for the men in the cab to give the word. Inside, Martin Eig turns to Benjamin de Metz and “You,” he says, “do the city a service, sir, by closing down this place. Nothing worthy could ever be found here.”

“No,” says Benjamin de Metz; is he smiling? “It was not.”

“And recall that Bok may still be charged for the constables’ battery and assault—the assault on Cowtan, too; his suit is pending—if you should decide that—”

“No. Not yet.”

“As you say. —What is that?” as the dirty, scampering, simpering boys, masked and sinuous as shadows, pass by the brougham, followed by the audience, itself a shadow, stretched long and cold across the square. “More clownishness! We ought have come at dawn, as I’d suggested, and forestall all this—”

“No, I’d expected some showing. Those placards in the streets—I mean to see,” and Benjamin de Metz swiftly disembarks to mount the steps, Eig tight-lipped a step behind to pause and direct the staring constables—“Wait on my orders”— then follow de Metz into the dark.

Tilde, arrayed for the last time in white wrapper and Infanta’s hat, stands waiting at the door: she takes no coin, she wipes at her eyes, she barely seems to watch as “This way,” she mutters to all who enter past the nailed eviction notice, into what seems to be a heaped and dusty chaos, half the seats piled with old props, swathings of cloth and pointed broomsticks, all the detritus of flight and defeat; the stage itself is sadly nude except for a Wheel of Fortune, decked in foil and false gold, the black figure of Everyman set waiting at DÉPART, departure. The boys, their black bells jingling, dart and push rudely between each other and the patrons, clambering onstage, backstage, half up the catwalk stairs, calling to one another in little shrieks and whispers, like the half-heard midnight voices of bats or efreets. Martin Eig stations himself near the door, as if it might degrade him to go nearer; Benjamin de Metz takes a seat right up front, seeming in better humor with every moment that passes; he takes from his coat an onyx flask, the scent of fine whiskey blooms. If he but knew, which in no way he can, he sits within an arm’s-length of the half-body of the Snow Youth, rolled in stained canvas like a pupa or a shroud, boxed like a dupe or victim past the second row of seats, that fill now with patrons who glance at the lordly, waiting figure as if he might be part of the show.

At a certain point—perhaps there is a signal—the doors are quietly locked, though patrons still queue to be admitted. Those men and several women mingle with the constables and locksmith left outside, several of them sharing theories as to what the strange parade’s performance might portend—

“It’s to be a last hurrah, with girls, that is, sporting girls, one of those little devils good as said so. Bare as Godiva they’ll be, and who knows what’s to happen!”

“What will happen,” glancing warily to the listening constables, “is they’ll all end up in jail, or someplace worse—that’s why it’s being closed, you see? There’s no place for such things anymore, there’s no—”

“No, you saw His Lordship Whoever-it-was, it’s to be a private party. They buy those street boys for suchlike, I’ve read all about it in the Globe—”

—as inside, gaslight shines—first dim and then much too brightly, there may be some trouble with the gas—while as if by magic, the Wheel begins, on its own, to spin: from departure to aspiration to the bright cusp of SUCESSO, pausing there as if again by magic while two small figures make their way onstage, accompanied by two men in dark clothing and dark half-masks, like peasantry or rude attendants: a devil and an angel, side by side. Benjamin de Metz starts, then smiles; he toasts the figures extravagantly with his flask, as if this performance is made solely for him, which in a manner it is. Offstage whistling is heard, a soft and jaunty accompaniment, the tune of “A Lad Makes His Way,” as the absence of piano, or at least violins, is privately mourned by the evening’s orchestrator.

“Whence do you come?” asks the angel of the devil. The angelic voice is somewhat muffled, the actor is more than somewhat nervous but “The angels brought me,” says the devil, who is not nervous, “from the bastards’ paradise, and left me on the doorstep in a bulrush basket.” He plucks at his horns, dislodging a few stray twigs; there is uncertain tittering; Benjamin de Metz laughs aloud. “But we’ve always been here, haven’t we, you and I, to make our play. We don’t even need a theatre!” waving one hand in dismissal as the Wheel turns again, its clicking audible over the whistled aria, turning from success to disgrace, the little man stoic as it spins. “We come from nothing and we go to nothing, it is the human condition. —Oh, you’ll pardon me,” laughs the devil to the audience. “But mesdames et messieurs, it is only the truth.”

Inside the dark mask, perspiring, aglow, Frédéric the devil thinks that he has never been—so strange!—so happy. His Haden is beside him, the stage is before them, the world—of hazard, of passion, of eternal bliss—is theirs, as long as the tale unfolds. He thinks of the engravings in his old book of the gods; he thinks of his next line; he cuts his gaze to watch Haden bite a moment at his lips, Haden his angel—

—as “Gentlemen,” says a third voice, the trickster voice of Mr. Pollux, “have we met?” sauntering up to the two, who turn and wait for his arrival, their inferior motion skills thus less on display; Mr. Pollux in comparison moves like a cat, graceful and dangerous, very much amused. “Was it on the road, mayhap, in some glen or den or other? Or was it at the place they call the Poppy? ‘Enter whoso hither entry seek/Reckless of bawdy-house’s blackened reek!’—and my, didn’t we have some jolly times there! What with the war,” reaching out to give the Wheel a spin unnecessarily hard, Everyman a-gallop through life after life after life, “and the playing, and the fucking, there was never a dull moment beneath that roof. Though I must confess,” with a glance offstage, “I should never have gone there myself, if not for love…. ‘We are two,’” sings Mr. Pollux, the old, old tune, “‘we need none other,’” as Benjamin de Metz, unsmiling now, shifts in his seat, while the gaslight flares again, making shadows of shadows, showing the boys a-perch, restless to tug and ankle one another, their eyes bright, Tilde mute below in white, Martin Eig set like a statue by the door. If in the air there is a faint dry smell—of cigar smoke? Of paper, smoldering?—no one fully notes it, the gaze of the audience turning, rising as one as Mr. Castor appears, not onstage at all but high up on the catwalk itself, his handler barely a shadow as “I know that song,” calls Mr. Castor, Rupert, Mouse from whom he chooses to hide nearly nothing—

It will make the end and then some.

It’s your wheel to spin, messire. Do as you like.

This place—

I told you, I’ve done with it. Do as you like.

—Mouse who knows and has always known who he is, what he is, what he will always be: and in that knowledge his home and safety, his gaiety, his freed ferocity as “In the hills,“ says Mr. Pollux the immortal, “it is so fair, Herr Knight,” stepping nimbly past the angel and the devil who turn to watch him, who recede in careful steps—Frédéric who turns Haden’s angel’s stumble to a jest, to bring a surer laugh from the audience, Haden who wonders how such a small creature of wood and wire can be so bally fucking balky, so heavy in his hands—as Tilde leaves her post, a white ghost trailed by jingling boys in black, a manner of honor guard as she treads the aisle and mounts the stage, her plodding, small, ungainly body, the Mater and the Woman Alone to spin the Wheel again and again, faster and faster, success and disgrace and departure, love and death and the passion that unites them, her face beneath the domino wet with sparkling sweat as the Wheel wheels and glitters, as the gaslight grows even brighter, much too bright now, the boys clapping and jeering, cheering her on, tossing walnut shells and cigarette ends at the audience, looking to the angel to tell them what to do—

—as Haden reemerges, top hat and mirrored vest to be for the spinning Wheel a kind of human double, its flash his flash, his voice its voice as “Come one, come all!” he calls, taking his place beside Tilde, cuffing a few of the wilder boys aside. “Come and see what the future holds! It’s every fellow for himself now, and free spins for the ladies!”

Now Benjamin stares up, up, up to the catwalk, his handsome, rigid face without expression—does he think, then, of other heights, of slippery rooftops and barred windows, of Rupert’s hands upon him in the dark before the dawn? and thus is first to see the graceless sway, the shudder of metal on metal, sees without fully marking what it is as “The grassy sward,” calls down Mr. Castor, “where a man might lie with his love all night,” turning for descent as if eager to meet that love again, too eager, too careless of his footing as “Come on!” shouts Haden, and the music starts anew, Mr. Pollux in wild whistle shrill as panpipes, a lad who knows what he knows! in lineage all the way back to Pan, Pan Loudermilk and all the others created by the gods or the devils for their own amusement, like a gape-mouthed little body once used to bring a general to grief, like the goat-footed gamboler nimble but yet not nimble enough, as the catwalk sways again—are there too many boys still upon it?—as Haden swings his arm in circles, a signal to bring the last of them leaping and clattering down, grabbing hands and jingling bells, one trips and half-tumbles, is snatched up by his fellows from sure disaster while “Oh!” a lady’s shriek as the gaslight, limelight, flares like the fires of hell and “Madame,” calls the dark-masked devil. “Ladies, ladies and gentlemen! Please, keep to your seats—”

—as Mr. Pollux takes center stage in the growing chaos of imps, his hands linked as modest as a schoolboy’s, to chant the Mercury’s signature song of farewell, its words modified to suit the night’s occasion: “The purpose of the theatre/Is manifold and gay/To make a way where one is not, or not to make a way –”

—as Rupert on the catwalk waves, Mr. Castor waves, hurrying down too fast, much too vertiginously fast, Tilde sucks in a frightened breath as one of the boys yells “‘Ware up there!” and “Fire!” from a man in the back row, “there’s fire here!” in one of the piles of props, men and women scrambling from their seats as Frédéric rushes over to stamp at the flames, but as the devil does he quell or only fan them? The gaslight flares again, then gutters nearly gone, as on the catwalk stairs now frankly shuddering—from the boys’ departure, from their own rust and frailty—Rupert suddenly reverses, nearly at a run, pounding to the top again, what does he think to do there? Employ the heavy drapes as a firecloth? Make some way to escape? as a curling twist of metal, part of the catwalk railing, gives way, falling stageward with a clang—

“While we here at the Mercury another purpose own/To give you what we mean to give, and send you fucking home! Goodnight, mesdames et messieurs! And watch your step!”

—as the fire leaps higher beneath Frédéric’s boot, the harsh spreading stink of smoke, and the audience no longer an audience, but a mob of fearful men and women, push and batter at the locked doors, Martin Eig pushing with them, shouting to the constables outside, “Open this door! Fire! Open the door!”

—as another piece of metal falls, the Wheel abandoned to its empty spin as Haden, his vest reflecting the flames, harries the last of the boys through the shrieking crowd to the finally opened egress—“Hurry, go on, go on!”—himself hurrying into the alley as the catwalk groans and rains more rust, while Tilde stands rooted to the center of the stage, mask ripped free, staring up and “Sir!” her cry to freeze all still inside—Istvan, Benjamin, a panting constable and the pair of whores—as Mr. Castor is launched into the air, strings streaming behind, to strike the seats with an ugly, hollow, splintering crash—“Sir!”

—as Rupert—hoping to snatch back Mr. Castor? trying to drop the curtains on the flames?—grabs past the counterweights for a looping, noosing line but instead stumbles, staggers like a boy overbalanced, and tips backward over the railing, falling through the darkness like a wingless angel, a kobold in the garden, a man trying to do what one lone man never can—save them all, keep them safe—to hurtle headfirst into the seats heaped high with jagged broomsticks, and land with a sound that is swallowed by Tilde’s animal scream.

Benjamin turns white, turns on his heel, bolts. Tilde drops to her knees, then onto her side, still screaming, as if she is giving birth to death. Istvan, Mr. Pollux still in hand—as if the puppet is part of his own body, as if he cannot spare the moment it would take to put him down—leaps to throw himself onto Rupert’s crooked form—“Mouse! Mouse, fuck it, sit up, sit up!”—as if this is something possible, half turning, the blood black on his hands, to snarl at the staring constable, “Go for help!”

The terrified whores drag Tilde upright through the billows of smoke to the door, past Frédéric frantic now with buckets and a useless cloth—“Help, dear God, oh help!”—and into the scrum of constables and crying women and Heads or Tails drunkards, Martin Eig struggling to bring order to the scene with the aid of several lieutenants, as Benjamin de Metz hurls himself into the brougham, sagging sideways and half fainting, retching whiskey and bile onto its floor as it clatters away.

By the time the fire wagon arrives, Haden is there to meet it, with the worst of the blaze already past: puddled water and stench of scorching, Tilde propped dazed on the curb, one hand tight around the locket at her throat, Frédéric weeping openly beside her, head in his hands. It is Haden who speaks to the fire sergeant, hosecart and sooty brass buttons, Haden who tells of the uneven gaslight, who confirms with a leaden nod that two men were left inside, the two owners, but “One fell,” says Haden; he chews at his mouth, his voice is flayed from the smoke. “He was up on the catwalk, and he fell. The other—”

“There’s no one there now,” says one of the firemen. “We looked, sir, we looked onstage and in the seats—there’s a deal of blood, surely! But—”

“Look again,” snaps the sergeant, but in the end they find that the building is empty of the dead and the living, no one is there, not even the jags and scraps of Mr. Castor, presumably scattered or consumed in the blaze. The whores urge Tilde to come to their lodgings—“You can have the whole bed, poor dearie, all to yourself”—but mutely she resists, hunching on the steps as Frédéric and Haden swab the mess aside so at least the doors may close against the weather’s further depredations, the doors that the locksmith, forgotten all this time, points out to Martin Eig: “You still want them fastened down, sir? I can change the locks in a trice,” but “No,” says Martin Eig; his mouth tastes of burning, he spits on the curb. “Not now.”

“Will I still get paid, sir? I’ve been here all evening.”

“No,” says Martin Eig again, climbing into the constables’ wagon as the locksmith turns away, as the crowd slowly departs, no more to see but the futile efforts to make well what never can be restored: Frédéric wiping at his eyes, Haden stony-faced beside him, as Tilde continues to sit and stare at nothing, at the emptying street, at one of the placards discarded in the trample and flight: FOLLOW
ME to nowhere in the endless darkness, as inside the smoke drifts and the glittering golden Wheel lies still past its final, dreadful, mortal gamble, with no more revolutions of the Mercury roulette.

CHRISTOBEL DE METZ’S JOURNAL

7 March, 18—

This morning as always I woke before the dawn, before even the skylarks: it is such a precious hour, at Chatiens, to lean at the casement and watch the stars fade into light, and plan out the day to come. On Friday the guests arrive for Isidore’s name-day celebration—we shall have twenty-four staying, but the programme I have planned is quite a light one: no bonfires, nor the banquet masquerade, only suppers and some afternoon hunting. B. will be present this year, which will be a joy. And James Aubin, too; he is such a great help, I am so pleased to have him permanently at Chatiens.

Mr. Tallard has just departed, after going over the quarterly accounts, and consulting with myself and Emory. He was glad to note the townhouse figures, but quite surprised to see that I had discharged Damien and nearly all of the garden staff, and surprised as well by my plans to have the greenhouses made over into entertainment pavilions. In his courteous way, he praised me for the change while investigating its reasons: As always, Madame, your energy is exemplary—and you’ve engaged Artemis Bowles as the architect? A masterly choice! But do you mean to spend that energy wholly outside the gardens? You always seemed to have such pleasure there.

Yes, I told him, I did, but the growth of Chatiens itself is what concerns me now. And my husband does not wish our son to learn to romp with the gardeners’ boys.

And boys will be boys, Madame, certainly. —You are very generous to Mr. Damien, I see.

He has been a loyal servant to us, Mr. Tallard. I recognize and reward loyalty. And Damien has been quite diligent in the matter of the mausoleum garden; he himself has planned its supervision and care, for that, of course, we cannot move or change, that place where Isobel lies, where Javier lies—All the lies! though I have not shared with B. my suspicions of his sister; why should I, when that would only hurt him, as I have been hurt, and more. Let him love her still, and believe that she cared only for his welfare; let him frown when I spoke of changing the gardens, then be persuaded that the change would serve as a tribute to Isobel—

Her memory will always be present there, but the garden walks are so private. If we place the pavilions in a row such that—see, here in the drawings, I’ve just had them back from Mr. Bowles—

I don’t care, I don’t need to see them. Only make sure that no hordes cross her path—keep some places private, Belle.

My dear, I shall, and I will; and I do. Such as the doubled keys I keep, locked away with what was in that bankers’ box. It was as if M. Dieudonne thumbed his nose at me twice, first with the hidey-hole he chose, that was not a proper bank at all, and drove Herr Robb so frantic in the finding; and then with the contents of the box itself, no cache, no “patrimony”—If you like, we’ll scribe his name onto the safebox key; oh, what comedy!
for instead, inside there were only letters. One was my own, to him; one was from Isobel’s attorney, accompanying some manner of bequest (another of her concealments, for there is no corresponding mention of that money in any of our accounts, or any that I may access; Herr Robb is still investigating). And one was from, yes, Javier to M. Dieudonne, all courtesy, all mystery—he salutes the man as “Hanzel,” he references shared, unnamed, unfortunate events, he evinces a last desire to “see les mecs again,” and there the letter stops. I bit my lip to read it, and hear again in my mind that kindly, well-remembered voice: Was he kindly, Javier, whose hand I held as he passed from this life, to whose stories and counsel I gave such great inner weight? Did he care for us, or did he laugh up his sleeve at us, as wickedly as M. Dieudonne? And did he truly send M. Dieudonne some terrible cache, this letter its instigation, and I am duped of it, though I fulfilled my part of the bargain? Or was that bargain a dupe, itself? To deal with a man like M. Dieudonne is to be lost in a desert of mirrors…. The last letter in the box is much older and unsigned, referencing M. Pepper of London, an old friend of B.’s father, but it makes little sense; perhaps it is in cipher. There was also a brief note from M. Bok, to Isobel, that I burned at once.

I fully meant to tell B. of what I had done, of how I had bartered a sad relic, that sad building for our son’s lifetime peace and safety, as well as our own; and on my own, for I feared his misguided affection—his love, though so despised—would be our undoing still. Had he not gone to the Mercury that last evening, even after all that had passed? If he had been angry, I would have borne his anger, I would have begged his clemency, I would have accepted whatever punishment he might have decreed. But as things stood—The changing of the deed itself was a simple task for Herr Robb, though at first he chafed at the secrecy I sought: I really ought confirm this transaction with your husband, Madame. You will excuse me for saying so—

You will excuse me, Herr Robb, but my husband has placed this confidential matter entirely into my hands. Will you dispute his trust in me?

Madame, he said finally, I will not. I understand that the first Madame, Monsieur’s sister, was occasionally his agent in such—family matters, and I shall stand on that precedent, if Monsieur should later become vexed. When I told him, then, of the bankers’ box, he begged my pardon to the skies….“The first Madame!” Yes, see her there, in the portrait returned to Chatiens, that portrait that I pass a dozen times a day, “Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time,” her gaze too calm for Venus, is she Folly? If I were to paint myself there, it would not be as Psyche, foolish Psyche who ruined by trespass what she already kept and held. Perhaps I should be Minerva, strong and resolute as a true helpmeet should be, for it was as B.’s truest helpmeet that I accomplished all that I did.

What has happened to that building, with M. Bok now deceased, I neither know nor care. M. Dieudonne is a dreadful man, perhaps even an evil one, and whatever sorrow has found him is only his just deserts; but my heart broke anew for B. at the passing of M. Bok. On that evening, B. never returned to the hotel; it was Emory who wired me of the night’s events, though by then I had heard the servants’ gossip of a fire in the theatre, the performance disrupted, and M. Bok the victim of a dreadful accident. The newspapers were sparing on details, though the word “gruesome” was used. Emory says it was a terrible end, but still I cannot be truly sorry, and if that is a hard and uncharitable feeling, then so be it. M. Bok, living, was a living canker in my husband’s soul—see those poems in that small journal, all that passionate love, poured out for nothing! I had petitioned M. Dieudonne to keep a distance forever between ourselves and the two of them; perhaps this accident was, in some strange way, providential.

James Aubin says B. talks not at all of that night or of M. Bok, and Emory says the same. To me he has spoken only once, and without saying the name. It was after Paris, he was here, at the piano in the drawing room, playing as I sat with my correspondence. Do you like this tune? he said to me; he had had whiskey, but was not yet drunk. It’s called “Eva’s Lie,” as in Adam and Eve. In the Garden of Eden. He pressed his hands to the keys, the white keys, he made a series of very ugly sounds. To see what I have seen—Christ! When I close my eyes I see it still!—and still keep on with this endlessness, this—life—And there is not even a grave for me to mark. There is nothing.

I went to him then, I stood behind him and Play, I said to him. Please, my dear, play.

The look he gave then I cannot describe. Why should I?

Please. Only play, and after several long moments he did, his hands falling into Chopin, one of the great nocturnes, and as he played I began to weep; I cannot fully say why. Perhaps because he looked so grievous, and so ravaged with that grief; perhaps I wept in his stead, for he has shed no tears, not one, not once, since M. Bok’s passing…. I had resigned myself to having none of him, had given him over with a full heart for his own heart’s sake. And now he is here, he and Isidore, and James Aubin, too, and any others there may one day come to be; but there will be no more M. Boks, no more false loves and players’ masquerades. We have our rôles now, and we shall keep to those, we shall keep all that we have. We are de Metz.

Beyond the letters, there was one last item in the bankers’ box: the morocco wedding miniature of B., that exquisite companion to our own portrait. After Isobel’s death it could not be located; we suspected the servants, of course, and several were summarily discharged. And then to find it so, having been in their possession all along—Isobel’s doing, or was it Javier’s? I suppose I should be grateful that it was not sold for grubby gain! I keep it safe now on my desk, with my miniature of Isidore.

Beside the keys and letters, I have packed away the gloves—your gloves, my sister-who-was, after whose life I thought to pattern my own—as I now put aside this journal; I have no time to give to such things any longer. All my time, all my life is to tend my own garden, where my son will grow to manhood, my husband will find ease; our guests will gather to enjoy the pavilions, where lights and music will shine and sound. And in the dark of that mausoleum garden, on silent paths no one shall tread, the years and the flowers—roses, all those roses—will drift, and creep, and cover you, will bury you, Mrs. Arrowsmith, and your lying husband both.

“Fini,” says Frédéric, setting down the mechanical pencil, the gilt-silver Eagle on the smudged drifts of foolscap; he rubs his wrist, he pushes back from the backstage table. “I can’t revise another word, I’ll only make it worse. And I’ve still not done with the Visionary column, though Herr Philpot says he’s not sure how long he can keep publishing. He told me the Solon’s been sold for true this time, and Herr Hebert’s bound for London. He thinks that we ought to go, too.”

“Here,” as Tilde in apron, hair pinned and wound to a menacing height, locket bright, sets down the steaming pot, the stale raisin buns. “They were out of baked mice. —London,” with a queenly kind of scorn; she shifts the baby onto her shoulder, plump cheeks and solemn eyes, like an icon’s eyes, brown and round and unblinking. “There’s no nice carousel in London, is there, Baba? I’ll show you the carousel in the spring,” that is still some weeks in coming: all is cold and unpromising, grit and mud on the paths of the Park, the whores in their woolens dark as dead leaves driven by the wind into corners. All winter there has been a coal shortage, now there is a cabbage shortage, and kaffee as dear as gold; there are no shortages of rain, or harsh rhetoric, or tea, Tilde pouring for them both, then reaching into her pocket for her knife, the sharp little paring knife, to slice up the heels of rye bread she soaks in watered goat’s milk for the baby to gum. “And the swans on the Bridge—we’ll drop breadcrumbs for them, and make wishes, won’t we, Baba…. The post is here,” nodding to the piled letters, several of them bills for the building’s owner, the rest but one addressed to Seraphim, Seraphim who has begun to hint in his Visionary columns that the smile of the god will one day shine again, that this theatre so steeped in tragedy may stir in its ashes to rise once more. In this plan he is ardently abetted by Alban Cockrill—an occasional visitor past Tilde’s distaste, with his knowledge of puppetry that is helpful if incomplete, at least he knows how to use most of the tools—and by Edgar Rue, who compares the grief between these walls to truest and most tragic opera—

You almost went the way of Drury Lane, eh? And such a loss to the theatrical community! Stefan Hilaire was a star in the firmament, and his fellow—I never knew him well myself, Herr Bolk, was it, but he seemed a good soul, and a good businessman, too. But what else can one do but go on? “On with the motley,” “Vesti la guibba,” eh?—Have you heard that yet, Blum, that Pagliacci? It’s superb! I sang a bit in my youth, you know, I’d not be averse to doing so again, on the right stage.

There are other letters, too, poste restante from other places, a place not far by road or train track, a note badly written and worse spelled by Dolly the maid, who assures that all beneath that roof are well, that the letters sent are eagerly read, that She burns a candel for you sir evry night, which makes Frédéric smile if sadly; on Sunday last he lit several candles, there in the unpromising dimness of the Cathedral, after an hour spent in the back pews, listening incognito as the choir limped its way, with much throat-clearing and coughing—no shortage of influenza, either—through the “Dies Irae.” A tall white taper for his parents, for the home that once was, and then another for the one who is his home, his beloved, Hadrian—and one for Miss Tilde, too, and her little one; everyone needs prayers, and the light of Heaven’s goodwill. Heading back through the streets filled with slush and splashed pedestrians, fogged buses, a full complement of brown-suited constables—it seems there is a pair on every corner—Frédéric as he walked wondered if he should recognize their faces, those officers from the night of the fire; though that night wears, even in memory, a scrim of smoke and screams that is hard to penetrate. Perhaps someday he will write of it, someday far in the future, when no one can be hurt or hounded by the truth.

He blows on his tea, now, he considers the wounds on the walls from the burning, the scars painted out at the lintels, the several seats soaked so black with so much sticky glycerin that the stains may never be removed. Cockrill is of the opinion that cornstarch, well applied, will make a difference, an opinion that Miss Tilde discounts, Miss Tilde who herself still bears some scars from that night, spent lying on her pallet like another kind of corpse. The truth when produced in the light of dawn brought her upright, but with a different shock, white-faced and hands on her belly; he himself had been terrified that she might go fully into labor, one reads of such things happening, and then what would they have done? Ladies are very delicate, even fierce ones like Miss Tilde.

Of his own plummet of shock and sadness, then the soaring, vertiginous relief when the whole tale was told—by Haden, of course, who else? though You? Miss Tilde scathing and in tears. Sir could have told me, why did he not tell me! both seeming to accept as a matter of course that he, Frédéric, was not to have been told, though he had thought he was told—it is a tale for the stage, certainly, with so many feints and reversals!—but It had to be so, Haden hard to Tilde. No one could know.

You knew.

An’t someone to open the fucking trapdoor, and pay off the cab? Don’t be dim. Anyway, with honest honor, you’re the one who sent milord off with your screeching, they said they could hear you all the way in the Heads or Tails. And you, proudly to Frédéric, that was some jolly sleight-of-hand you worked, with the fire.

I knew about that part, at least. Though I feared we’d end by burning the place to cinders, still stinking then of cinders as it did, his own hands smarting from the burns…. A tale for the stage, yes, the tragedy that was not a tragedy but a triumph, the secret still contained for, now, who is to investigate or care that a disgraced puppeteer fled with or without the body of his lover, from a shuttered theatre half-burned and left in its ruins to that lover’s bastard daughter: “Tilde Bok” it said on the papers, and no one more astonished than Miss Tilde, when it was explained by the fellow from the bank, that supercilious Herr Robb in his beeswax-and-lemon-oil office, decorous drapes and bust of Polonius, who looked askance at her, Frédéric could tell, at her mended dress and work-worn hands, Frédéric in the chair beside to summon the air of his father when most displeased to say We’ll have our own solicitor examine these, thank you, taking the deed and letter into his satchel-bag, Herr Blum the co-signatory on Herr Robb’s stiff advice: Unless of course the young lady should marry? with a nod meant to be significant, a nod that kept Haden hilarious the whole way home: Herr and Frau Blum, why not? And baby Blum, why you can call it ‘Bud’! And me, I’ll give the bride away, I’ll gladly give the—

Piss off, you, I’ll throw you out of my house, at which they all laughed: and then Miss Tilde put her hands to her face, as if she might weep right there on the omnibus, while the other passengers pretended not to watch, as Haden grinned and cleaned his nails, and Frédéric patted her shoulder, though she seemed not even to notice, she seemed to be a thousand miles away.

Now she tucks a gummy morsel into the baby’s mouth, she pours more tea and “Tell your larky friend,” she says to Frédéric, “to have that roof-mender come again. There’s still leakage, even where he patched, especially where he patched—”

“What’s your cark?” as Haden enters, rain-cold and jaunty, from his daily dealer’s stint at the Heads or Tails; he throws down to the table a damp newspaper, two newspapers, their headlines competing as to which may be more dire. “Look, I brought some sweeties,” producing from his pockets a sugar-tit for the baby, and a third of a flask of Armagnac, wildly expensive, nearly impossible to obtain. “And a new book for us to—Shut the fucking door,” calling back to the litter of boys who trail him, shaking rain from their caps, these boys whose roles are doubled now and trebled, still playing on the streets, and groomed for the stage-to-be. Most of them were present on that black-masked night, and can never look at the flashing Wheel, still standing in the corner, without a shiver of morbid excitement, having spread the tale throughout the city in nearly the hour it happened, every servant in every block could recite it by the next day’s end. And if it has grown in the retelling to Guignol proportions—the body’s thwack! and the flying blood, the young whore who loved the dead man fainting away at the feet of the foreign lordship in disguise, and the wily actor who loved no one but himself, stealing away in the smoke and commotion with his puppets stuck under his arms—who is to say they are embellishing? I was there, those boys can say, and truthfully. I saw it all.

“Here,” says Frédéric, as Haden shoos the boys stageward, tugging one another’s collars, stomping boots to raise the echoes. “This came for you,” the last letter in the pile, a feminine hand from another city, a short but meaningful missive that seems to speak primarily of that city, how fine it is, how many travelers take advantage of its pleasures—We’re always looking down the road for more—and to wish himself and his friends a season as pleasant, from the courteous and ever-faithful Mrs. Lucy Pimm. As Frédéric sets down his cup to go through his newly written pages with the troupe, his troupe, Haden’s busy boys busy with this subtler game—“Come and read it for us, Pipper—no? Then you, Alek, you try: ‘If on the midnight rooftop one should see—’ Boys, boys, pay attention, now!” Haden pours himself a jot of brandy, seeming to examine that letter while instead a scene replays on the stage of his mind, a midnight rooftop, yes, where a man hooded in black thrust himself up and out, as a body—wood and wool and many bags of glycerin—lay spectacularly dead below, as smoke poured and screams rose from the square and that man, Rupert, clambered down the fire stairs to the alley, to Haden’s rough whisper—Bon voyage—as with his knife he guarded the door, both doors, while Rupert bundled himself and the packed trunk onto the floor of the waiting cab, as Istvan emerged into the theatre’s alley, mask in hand, Mr. Pollux and the unhurt Mr. Castor in a case beneath his arm. A pause for half a moment, no need to say what had already been said—

The deed’s done, there’s money a-plenty to see you through the winter and more, you two and the chatelaine. Mouse has made sure of it all.

And you’ll be where, uncle?

Who knows? We’ve been pent—I’ve been pent—and there’s plenty out there left to see for two fellows on foot, once we get far enough to start walking. Why, we’ve a whole sorority to visit, should we choose to—Vater’s sister, and Puss at the Blackbird, and may be even the Rose and Poppy; pay a visit one day, our names will buy you a drink and more, if you’re inclined. Though your own angel’s enough for any man, yeah? My, he is sweet, with a wink, he tastes like a flower to a honeybee…. Who knows, we may even pop back to see your shows, if they are worth the seeing, which Haden chooses to believe might be the truth: the world is round, after all, and may someday spin them, like a Wheel, back together to this same spot upon the map.

If not, then that moment in the alleyway must serve as a memorable farewell, the darkness in departure, the stench of burning, and Istvan’s smiling murmur—Merde, then, kit—as Haden halted him, put hands on him, grasping through his trousers in ferocious and intimate salute, as Istvan in answer gently brushed his knuckles to Haden’s lips—and then the doors closed, both doors, the cab driver wheeling cautiously away through the crowd that took little notice in the greater disturbance, Haden alone to watch them turn the corner, then turn himself back to the play, the fray, the shouts and the firehouse wagon, a new and nameless pain alive in his heart—

—that he can feel, still, as if it has somehow been inserted, half a seed and half a shard; but soothed when he looks to Frédéric, his good angel, whose sanctity is of a changeable order, as what he writes these days grows from comment to foment. In fact it is quite provocative, this new play called Pan’s Salvation, it has made even Haden raise his brows—

That’s a lot of guttery, an’t it? You’ve got them lopping off a head in every other scene. And I used to worry I’d soil you!

It’s not real blood, with a devilish shrug. Glycerin and paint, and a little something raw for the stink! And I’m never so innocent as you may think, sir.

Soberly: All blood’s real to someone.

As soberly: So is salvation. We have an angel and a devil, and both are both.

—and both of them and the boys in frieze to Tilde, who finishes her tea, and keeps her own pains secret, and her own joys. Chief among them is her baby boy, whose birth was as quick and easy as a lamb’s, her little lamb slipping safe into the world, dark-haired Ru for whom the cards have already told a fine tale: the Jack of Crowns crossed with the book and keys that stand for wise learning, so he will be some sort of well-known scholar, and make his way into the wider world through these theatre doors—for that is there, too, the jongleur card they called it always: Look, Blue Eyes, the jongleur is winking at you! with his cap and bells, his lute, his quill and spill of crushed flowers; in the deck he stands opposite the Hangs-a-man, who spoke of an ending, yes, but in the end brought no lasting death. Like the puppets, the cards tell truly, but one must have eyes to see…. The same as if one had looked into a kindling box to view the remnants of a bloodied, faceless body, with a legless creation beside him, the last show’s unnamed actor and the Snow Youth, finally united, sent together in chunks and pieces to feed the kitchen fire.

Now the baby makes a tiny wail, half in sleep, half in hunger, little fingers worming pinkly at his mouth. With a soothing murmur, Tilde bears him up the stairs to her own room, where it is marginally warmer, to sit in the fine desk chair, beside the pretty, solemn photograph of Ru in his French lace christening gown—gift of his two godfathers, its hasty provenance left deliberately vague—the making of the picture itself traded by Mr. Ridley the photographer for the chance to photograph the puppets. In the locket at her throat lies a curl of her baby’s hair, snipped the day that he was born, and a little scrap of paper with some stiff handwriting, In the hills it is so fair, Herr Knight: Ru and Sir Rupert, and she the link that holds them heart to heart.

As she nurses, she hums a song that her father had once sung to her, or could it have been her mother?—a very old song from a very old saying, I have one question that I wouldn’t trade/For a thousand answers. Humming and half-dozing in the businessman’s chair, in the quiet room of purple draperies and ticking silver clock, the mahogany wardrobe—inside of which lies an opulent opera cape atop the neatly folded boy’s garments, vest and trousers that fit her finely once more, would make of her a larky lad with hair braided tight beneath, perhaps, a tea-boy’s cap; Sir might not fully approve, but M. Stefan, she is certain, would be amused—and the great silken bed fit for a queen, with Ru’s carven cradle close by; he likes to watch the window’s dancing shadows, and hear the noises rising from the street. Such a large room, with room for Tanti, too, if she can in any way be ferreted out and found: Frédéric has already pledged that he will help her, Frédéric can write letters…. Sir and M. Stefan, those two will not be found, no matter who may do the looking; she has not asked the cards, yet, if they will ever come back.

From that window, if she cared to look or notice, Tilde could see Die Welt, closed down now and boarded, its windows broken out one time too many, no more kaffee or pastries left to sell. The broadsheet printer has closed as well, though the shoemaker’s shop still stands, as does the Heads or Tails, its doorway a constant beacon, even if the whiskey is watered and the dice are fixed, for the backroom faro and lansquenet games, though technically illegal, are the most popular in town.

Later, the bar gives its noise, if mutedly, to the emptied square as the moon makes her entrance from behind cold clouds, gone from ingénue to crone in the space of a month, as Haden pushes at the door of the second-floor bedroom, Frédéric on the bed in shirtsleeves, quoting as he enters: “‘—then came wand’ring by/A shadow, like an angel, with bright hair.’ I read them a bit of Shakespeare tonight, they seemed to like it. That Alek is so quick, he asks about everything, the newspapers, the puppets’ names, ‘Why are they called so?’” not Alexis and Corydon after all but Israfel and Faustus, new avatars for this city on the brink, a loveliness to be invaded, an ancient beauty gutted and spoiled and “He asked if there was to be a war,” Frédéric sighs, as Haden slips off his tie, “and if he would have to go and fight in it. I told him to learn his lines, and not to worry…. Is there to be war, do you think? Herr Philpot is quite dire about it, and there’s all that saber rattling every day in the papers. ‘The rise of the new men—’”

“Fuck them. We’re new men, too. —Look, I found this in the stalls today,” kicking off his boots to lie sidewise across the bed, brandy in one hand, book in the other, and read aloud to Frédéric as he does most nights—from plays, or history, or poetry, Come live with me and be my Love—until yawns or kisses overtake them; until, this night, this book of a conqueror’s rise is set aside as Frédéric begins softly to hum, then sing, singing Haden to sleep with a song as old as any conquest, a song of a road to heights unguessed and depths as deep as Hell itself, all traversed and finally overcome by two saints, or heroes, or warriors; or they might be all three, in Frédéric’s crooning tenor, his hand stroking the tangles from Haden’s hair, Haden’s cat’s eyes, goat’s eyes, lover’s eyes closing in his own disjointed dream of roads and battles, laced with the smell of rain and lamp oil, and beneath it the sweet strong voice like Orpheus to sing him safely home.

“‘If we shadows have offended,’” Istvan quoting, closing the door with his boot heel and plucking off the gaudy little mask, fashioned of a newspaper advert, “why, whatever can you expect? All you tossed our way was a jolly quid…. Right, my hero?” nodding to Mr. Pollux as he sets down the puppet, as Rupert puts aside the wheezy little squeezebox and tries to light with a half-soggy match his soggier cheroot. All it has done, this day, this week, this season, is rain, their hats are sodden and their boots shin-high with country mud; winter was a harsh companion, and spring has come in little brighter: ice on the rooftops in the morning, breath in pale clouds till nearly noon as they tramp down lanes without signposts or names, past tired orchards and fields fallow or abandoned, daubed huts that might have stood in Caesar’s day; avoiding the cities, a determinedly low profile for such famous entertainers—though the last few hours have found them indoors at least in this roadside tavern, tin tankards and three-legged stools, amid roisterers of such decidedly agrarian tastes that “The Chevalier would suit them better,” says Istvan, “prick and horsehead, both. Though they do seem to enjoy my dancing—”

“And mine,” sotto voce from Mr. Pollux as “At least it’s dry,” says Rupert, frowning and still struggling with the match. One of his fingers has recently been broken, in a dispute over thespian excellence; the swelling is a nuisance, though he can still make a fist when he needs to. “And that black lager’s tasty—what’s it called again?” in this language he does not speak but somewhat understands; Istvan is more fluent, and a better mimic, and whether or not each understood the others, still as always he got them watching, these drovers and old soldiers and young malcontents, he made them squirm and smile and “It’s called ox piss,” says Istvan sweetly, “but never mind. Here,” giving Rupert the light from the sooty little hearth, the little room they will sleep in this night, having bought bed and board with their puppets’ travails: vaudeville and elegant death, tears as red as blood or drops of brandy, all the men present can understand this kind of play: for it is the same play, everywhere in every age. It is death and flight, it is one comrade helping another along; and if these two comrades seem to enjoy a somewhat more intimate congress—the puppets, perhaps even the men—those watching are inclined to shrug aside the issue, as in war, men do as they do and find joy where they can. And those puppets—Mr. Pollux who wears a formidable new cravat of yellow plaid, Mr. Castor whose carefully carven center keeps a little white knife, as faithful as its giver, as beloved by its receiver, swaddled in a scrap of leather so that, even in the midst of motion, that secret heart makes no sound at all—the puppets are as they ever are, undeceived and undeceiving; all their truth is in play.

Now Istvan reaches into the puppet case, past a small crazed silver mirror—on his hand, left hand, shines a rose gold ring, the Greek warrior turned inwards so as not to spur theft in this rude place—to take out a chamois bag of ivory dice: “For after the second act, yeah? May be I’ll win us some whiskey, someone here must have a taste. Or a bed without fleas, or—”

“Or a beating. Be careful, messire,” with a headshake; always the gambler! even there at the last in the quiet backstage, the stakes so high, how they had argued out that final spin of the wheel—

You’ll be Lazarus, yeah? But only we shall know it. You know it’s the only way, elsewise they’ll never stop, he’ll never stop—

And what if he thinks to see for himself? What if he sees that what’s fallen is only—

He’ll see what we show him, Cupid, if he has the wit to come and watch at all, which I do wager that he will. And if he gets too close, why, he’ll see stars, with a smile like a fox at the throat of a king, a milder smile now as “I’m always careful; you’re the one with the broken hand. How is it mending?” turning that hand palm-up to examine the new swelling and the old, old scars, those different souvenirs of the road, of the years, all the years and “Tolerable,” says Rupert. “It’s this cough troubles me more, like the winter’s settled up into my chest.”

Istvan lifts the scratched spectacles to trace the scar beneath Rupert’s useless eye, and “Once,” he murmurs, “I dreamed that you died. I dreamed that you fell and fell forever, down into some awful dark—”

“It’s just a dream. Anyroad I did die, didn’t I? And I’m still here,” leaning close to give a boy’s kiss, quick and almost shy. “And you’re happy, now,” with the smile only Istvan can ever call from him. “Aren’t you.”

“Mouse, immensely.”

They stand so for a moment, in the smell of wood smoke and dry must from the straw sack bedding, past the clink of rattling bottles, men’s voices raised in familiar argument, till a brisk and summoning rap sounds at the door and “Be easy,” Istvan calls, as they step away from one another, “we’ll be out to charm you momentarily…. What shall we show them now, do you reckon? The slapstick, or the heartstrings?”

“Whichever you please,” as Rupert tucks the stick into his belt, the squeezebox beneath his arm, and Istvan resumes Mr. Pollux, who plucks up the newspaper mask. The doorway rap sounds again and more insistently so “Let’s go, messire,” says Rupert, with one last puff on the cheroot and “‘Whither thou goest,’” Istvan over his shoulder with a teasing smile, as they step past the fire and the room’s narrow window, the road half visible beyond it, together into the tavern crowd that welcomes them back with hoots and applause, back to the play that while it lasts is everything: love and motion, rest and reward, the puppets and their handlers certain only that that road is theirs, neither asked nor offered, only given and accepted by the knight and the trickster, the wolf and the fox, the men and the toys—

—and the boys in the viaduct, damp head nestled to a damper shoulder, two boys in scraps and mottled motley who, as the chilly rain at last begins to lessen, step out together to the gluey mud of the road, on their way to a town the name of which neither knows nor needs to, the first of a great geography. Just then, through the clouds like burnished silver the sun appears, a coin for the spending, a trinket for the having: the younger boy laughs to see the sparkle, the older boy looks to him and smiles. Cards fall; the fleeting god winks a blessing. The show begins.

Contents

Act One

Act Two