The Bastards' Paradise Page 5

  The urge to make the book has been on him since they started in tramping, stronger as they passed from place to place, from the wheat fields and taverns to the Blackbird and the Poppy, what did Istvan call such once? “Jolly Tales of the Backstreet Whorehouse,” yes, the joy and the death alongside all those other tales of laughing butlers and helpful motherly whores and balconies seen only in the dark, and the puppets whose ribald honesty concealed so many things—Pan Loudermilk and his attendants and ancestors, some with names and some not, foot soldiers in a war not of their making or concern. And all the other, so many other sights! He has only to close his eyes to see them again—a fountain splashing silver in an empty city square; Istvan asleep like a cat in a hay cart, Marco tucked up beside; the barren winter garden, made of longing, heat, and ice; the sea seen in misery from the rim of a bucking boat, ship, whatsoever the fuck one was supposed to name it, the sailors so particular—and the moon on the rooftops, from every rooftop it looks different, yet still is always the same. He will see such here if these rains ever stop, there will be some sort of trapdoor, there is nearly always some sort of trapdoor…. From the window he studies the roofs opposite, that landscape of chipped tile and shingle and stoic pigeons, then looks down to the men who crisscross the flooding curbs and corners, those men cautious to skirt the gaze and thus the truncheons of the constables in their shields and muddy brown; it seems if a man is cautious, those gazes can safely be avoided, and a way made into the streets for a drink of something besides water or whiskey, and a smoke beyond these tame little cigarettes—as Rupert slips the copybook beneath the cot, takes from the leathern bag his own ancient truncheon and folded wallet, assumes Istvan’s left-behind bowler, and heads down the dingy stairs into the rain.

  That rain runs like tears down other windows as well, stately casements that face the Park, where the fairly far-sighted may glimpse the orderless scrum and scuffle of the mob beside what was once a fine fountain of Naiads, their graceful bodies pitted now by stones, Diana’s face effaced with black marks such as a barbarous child might scribble in a book; they are all barbarous children really, reflects the man at that window, a gray-eyed specimen in gray striped vest and Windsor tie, neither tall nor short, handsome nor unhandsome, unremarkable in nearly every way but for the acquisitive mind that ticks like a mechanism behind those eyes; reflected as well in the walls of books around him, a stout gilt battlement flanked by framed letters from the great, statesmen and churchmen and authors, collected throughout months and years from a world’s worth of antiquarians and dealers in correspondence: letters from Talleyrand and Disraeli and Sayle-Carruthers, a half-torn missive from Shelley, an unsigned notation believed to be from one of the lesser popes. It is a meticulous hobby for a meticulous man, Felix Krystof who reaches now for his pen—a priceless silver-nibbed Malchat, very few have survived, though it tends to spatter in this weather—to make a meticulous note concerning a meeting to be convened this very day, a meeting its sole guest will be surprised to find so private; but that is the way with a poet, Felix Krystof has learned, one must manage them as carefully as tropic flowers, to cull and graft such flowers into one’s own window box, especially a dung heap bud like this fellow St. Vitus, calling himself so quaintly for the patron saint of Bohemia, of theatre-folk and dancers. Before that he was Seraphim, but his true name is Blum, a fact duly noted in the file on the desk—a copied file, once the property of the Protectorate, but that body has long since lost interest in this flower that seems to have withered in the shade, behind locked doors; so much the better. What collector fails to prize the coup, the costly objet sold mistakenly as dross! And this young man will hold his value, that is sure; he is the pure quill, as the saying goes. The tales he tells now in his little showroom, beside the girl they call his wife, who is not his wife, nor the child his child, and the man who is his man—those tales hold the hot spark of art, a spark to be caught and protected “In all this rain,” says Felix Krystof, with a mannerly nod to the man now entering, ecclesiastic suit and head beneath his hat early balding, almost a monk’s tonsure. “Did you arrive by ark?”

  “It’s a flood for sure,” nods the chipper monsignor, Alfred Elfred, a pleasant and pleasantly ignorant bishop who wonders each time he enters this room why any man alive would need so many books—has he read them all, Herr Krystof? Even to scan through the titles would take a week! The monsignor’s own reading material is generally confined to the sermons of his august predecessor—he reuses them religiously, they are much admired—and the least-serious of the morning newspapers, the Daily Regulator left beside his breakfast plate by his butler; today’s edition had a lengthy piece about the growing cult of spiritualism, was it a hoax or a worry or a sin, this business of crowding into darkened rooms to call to the souls of the departed, and what ought a churchman to think about it all? If there had been more sugar for the tea he might have finished the article, but as it was —“Refresh yourself,” Herr Krystof offers, as his manservant brings in a tray with cups and pot and yes, a small stout sugar bowl filled to the rim with sturdy brown lumps since “You always know what a fellow likes,” says the monsignor happily, reaching for the gilted spoon.

  “I’ve had an idea,” says Felix Krystof, “that I believe you will like, as well,” in that quiet voice with its hint of gravel, as if a river ran in its depths with secret silt; taking his chair and leaving the deluge to drown itself, the shouters in the Park and their foolish scribbles that write nothing of merit, nothing that will last; always, it is eternity’s vote that matters. “And a writer in mind to do it full justice. He’s a very devout young man, from a good provincial family, his mother is a pillar in her local Sodality—”

  —that mother who, in fact, stands at her own parlor window beneath a sky dry and dun, turning over with moist eyes the latest letter from her estranged son, one per month now—they used to come weekly!—carried to her on the sly by Dolly the maid, concealed from Mr. Blum, who still will not relent —

  What poor Frédéric has done, so many other young men have done—that city is to blame, and who sent him there to be tempted? You! You said he must go, must “sow his oats” so far away from home!

  How many times will you remind me? looking up from his desk with an anger doubled by her persistence, trebled by the business reversals that he will hint at, but never discuss; which is quite proper, business is not a woman’s province, no matter what those “new women” say, who want to act like men, dress like men in their hideous costumes, no woman can look feminine in a suffrage bonnet! But if he is the master of business, she is, or should be, the authority in her own sphere, the home, the place where her son, soiled or not, belongs, and the grandchild she has never seen, whose name she does not even know. Frédéric never writes about that child, or the scheming girl who entrapped him, as he never wrote about the wedding, conjured by herself as some unhappy, barren, civic office affair, for what church would marry such a couple? His letters ask only after her health and his father’s, and offer information about local politics, which she skims, and about his work: no more tracts or newspapers, he is involved in giving edifying lectures of some sort, or public declamations—he is such a gifted writer one can barely understand what he says! But she understands the affection with which he signs the letters, the loneliness of a young man stranded and engulfed by some city-bred adventuress. Though Marie Mariette was an unsuitable creature (a blessing in disguise, the connection unmade with that family: What can one say of a young woman who marries a train-sweeper?), she was still sharp-eyed in her assessment, down to the dirty boots and apron that girl wore, as well as her foreigner’s accent to match her lax and filthy foreign morals.

  Thus she knows, does Mrs. Blum, as she slips the dutiful letter back into her sleeve, that the right thing, the only moral thing to do, is to bring her dear Frédéric home for good. No matter what her husband says, should he again see Frédéric, see their grandchild with his own eyes—here hers begin, again, to fill—why even if that child is
tainted, love can hardly fail to find the way! And since it shall not be here, in their own home—despite her fervent reveries of Frédéric on the doorstep, babe in arms, despised adventuress nowhere to be seen—then it must be in that hateful city, where they must venture once more, she and Mr. Blum, to let love carry the day.

  Wiping her eyes, she sinks onto the piano stool, a sadly quiet instrument; how long has it been since she heard her Frédéric sing? He used to thrill all the ladies at the services, he used to chant Latin in the choir…. Eyes closed, she offers up a prayer to the Mother whose own debated pregnancy and unmarried status Mrs. Blum has never considered, then leaves the piano for her desk; Mr. Blum still entrenched at his own pays no notice, he has other notices with which to deal, growing more dire every week: from his solicitor, from the bank, from the suppliers in Jamaica, from the makers of an ill-considered contraption meant to speed production, urging him to consider it “a worthy experiment”—with nearly a year’s worth of profits lost! And everywhere one turns there is war and rumors of war, which make shipping difficult if not at times impossible. What is he to do? If only he had his son at his side, honest Frédéric, clever Frédéric, to help him shoulder this miserable burden, if only Frédéric had not been so hasty to dip his damned wick in some damnable curbside slut, he would be at the warehouse where he belongs!—Mr. Blum never marking, as he marks another red check in his account book, that his wife has reached for her own stationery, and begun determinedly to write.

  Other stationery is in play as well, a long sheet of foolscap folded on the knee, Lucy Pimm with a pen and squinting in the dimness of the sickroom, the window half-draped; let him sleep, poor Pimm, as long as he may, while he sleeps he does not feel how ill he is. Awake, he tries to keep cheerful, he acts as if another hour or at most another day will see him back on his feet for good: I’ve never lay so long abed unless it was with you, sweetheart, making a feeble smiling grab for her bottom that she checks with a smile of her own—You rest now, saucepot! I’ve got a bit to do and more than a bit, everything at the Blackbird hers to manage since this illness came upon him, thank Heaven for sturdy Mick beside her! What a fine fellow he has grown to be, both on and off the boards: smart as paint, and filled with dash, that special player’s dash, energetic as the boy he was and with a man’s strong heart, a man himself now, she must stop calling him “Mickey”! though he never seems to mind it. May be he sees her as a sort of mother, as she holds him special as a son, her only child besides the line of little actors who come and go, not so many now as other pastimes take their fancy, choosing something more genteel, or less old-fashioned, than to sport about with puppets.

  Never once has Pimm reproached her for not giving him a child of their own, never once said a word, though there were nights—not many, Lucy has never been a brooder, but for year on year to see so many babies being prammed about the streets, to hear their coos and cries, to wonder, sadder every time, if it was the whoring that fixed her innards so she could not, could never quicken—still he held her tight on those few nights that she wept, That’s all the baby we’ll ever have, try as we might! pointing to the ancient puppet, the Singing Baby who shits and cries, silent in its yellowed christening gown but It’s the trying that matters, his robust joke to make her smile, and once she smiled Nothing could make me gladder than you do, Lucy, ever did or ever could. And whatever we mayn’t got, we’ve got each other, and that’s enough: to bring, again, her tears, sweet ones this time, each one her gift to him. And then to have him flip her skirts and say she was still as juicy as a lass, Kept your girlish figure, haven’t you, my Bella-Bell?—well, had any woman ever a finer man than her dear Pimm?

  What Pimm’s illness might be—come upon him slowly, then like a charging army, knocking him reeling and her heart with him—no doctor has been able to say: a malady of the liver, an acute form of chlorosis, it’s merely compressed digestion! with packets of pills to swallow or purges that turn him green, yet nothing helps restore his appetite, he is practically a shadow, Pimm who used to like so well his chops and gravies, his bean-and-rooster pie; she can barely get him to take a full glass of lager now. And all the while the fever eats him…. Things here could be better, she writes in the letter, her penmanship still a careful girl’s, but we go on as best we may. While Pimm’s abed, he has gone back to making the little theatres, to sell after the shows to the kiddies, “Pimm’s Palaces” with the jack-in-the-box inside, the eiderdown princess, the brave little prince and his matchstick sword. He’s not lost the touch, they look a treat! I shall have Mick box one and send it along to your youngster, that little one called Rupert, called for him who never had a child, either, the child of this girl, this Tilde called, now, somehow, for him too.

  What a startlement it had been, that first letter, the answer to her own bland note, her careful sidewise way to say that the Blackbird was a likely stop for those two and their puppets, and that she would keep the folk left behind in the know, if they should like: to bring at once the touching, stiff devotion of the reply, quaint spelling and handwriting so scrawly that she could barely make it out, calling Mick to help her parse out a phrase here and there and Who’s this? Mick’s quizzical finger at the signature, “Mlle Tilde Bok” and A friend of Rupert’s, she told him, a sort of daughter, looks like. She says he helped her greatly, there at that Mercury.

  And Mick nodded—Mr. Rupert was always a good jake. Hope he’ll come back this way again—but made no mention of Istvan. Mick never speaks of Istvan, though he used to trail him like a puppy, dogsbody eager to run his errands, always keen for his attention—See me, Mister Istvan!—and watching everything he did onstage and off; yet when she gave him that little tool half a knife and half a hook, Mister Istvan left it special for you! he took it without any thanks or smile. Yet he uses it still nearly daily, used it earlier in fact to plane a little splinter from Van’s knee, that puppet his other, much greater gift received—and how did Istvan know, to mark him so for little Mickey? who took to him like a long-lost twin as soon as he could lift him proper, off into corners with that stumpy black-haired body, working with him night and day until You’re that fond of wicked old Pan, aren’t you? Pimm’s joshing smile to bring Mickey’s firm headshake: He’s Van now, as firmly said. He’s mine.

  The last-made Pimm’s Palace will go to Tilde, then, along with this letter Lucy now brings to a close, her pen turning hasty as Pimm begins to mutter and stir: Think of us when you see that little showplace. Pimm and I had always hoped to visit, and may be play a bit onstage if you would have us. When he is well again, we’ll surely make the journey—I have traveled in wartime before, it’s not so difficult it can’t be done. And I will be that glad to meet you face to face, my dear, for I feel that I know you so well already. Until then, believe me ever your friend and faithful —

  —as Pimm’s face goes wheyish-gray with pain that, half awake, he tries to stifle; her own face twists to see it, she steps at once from chair to bedside where for hours she wipes his forehead, swabs the trickling vomit, pen and paper left where they fell until Mick, come with sinking heart and a half-bottle of port—“Take a little glass, I can sit awhile by him”—sees and folds and tucks the letter inside the little toy theatre, itself packed into a fruit crate, and sent hurriedly on its way—

  —neither knowing that within the week another, larger box will be readied for a longer, more final journey, Pimm inside and dreamless in his wedding suit, sunken cheeks patted with fresh rosewater, thinned hair brushed neat and flat with quince-seed jelly, king of this last and supremely sad chateau; and Mick with silent tears to use the sharp and ancient little blade, carving a farewell message on a piece of smooth black ash—HERE LIES TIMOTHY PIMM BELOVD OF MRS LUCY & FRIEND TO ALL PLAYERS—past Lucy slumped at the lip of the stage, surrounded by the tools and toys and joys of half a lifetime, waiting to drape a purple crêpe across the coffin, and follow it out beneath bunting silky-black as a blackbird’s wings.

  The next story told is the thrill
ing tale of the spy Miss Lucinda, related to a most exclusive audience in the workroom-parlor of the Blackbird Theatre: a finer establishment than when last the travelers saw its doors, with golden scrolls affixed above the flying namesake, and a freshly painted poster boasting “Puppets, Varieties, and Pleasures for All!” below. The streets around the place have grown more hectic and congested, busy with splashing cabs and trams and foot traffic, even in such bad weather and such unsettled times; here too, as everywhere, one sees soldiers. Between the oyster house and its false marble columns, and a bustling tavern called the Roman Coliseum, only the alley still retains its former lack of glamour, as pocked with rocks and grimy with weeds as it was before; and it is thus unsurprising that two mendicants in oilcloth might stealthily seek the same, to knock with their muddy cases on the theatre’s side door and ask Alms for poor beggars, ma’am? Istvan’s wink beneath his dripping hat, Rupert’s smile to watch her eyes go wide, Mrs. Pimm whom they have not seen since she gained that appellation, Lucy who laughs joyous as a girl and throws open the door and her arms.

  Now they lean forward, Lucy and Pinky rapt as children, to hear how the lovely puppet once bore between her silk-skinned breasts some bit of espionage meant to start a war, or end one, and how those who watched and tittered and applauded knew nothing beyond the play performed, a saucy farrago ending with “We are two,” Istvan’s glance for Rupert lounging on the grand settee, striped silk as green as new apples, and then off they went no wiser, as the courier I was to meet slipped right in through the pantry way. It was my thought to play it out so—