The Mercury Waltz (20 page)

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.”