The Mercury Waltz (19 page)

“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.