The Difference Engine (49 page)

“They’re working for Egremont,” Oliphant said.

Fraser’s face twisted with disgust. Disgust and something akin to amazement.

“There seems nothing more to be done here, Fraser. I take it you arranged for a cab?”

Mr. Mori Arinori, Oliphant’s favorite among his young Japanese “pupils,” took a fierce delight in all things British. Oliphant, who customarily breakfasted lightly if at all, would sometimes subject himself to massively “English” breakfasts to please Mori, who on this particular occasion wore the burliest of golfing-tweeds and a scarf in the tartan of the Royal Hibernian Order of Steam Engineers.

There was a certain enjoyably melancholy sense of paradox, Oliphant mused, in watching Mori spread a slice of toast with marmalade, while he himself indulged a nostalgia for his own days in Japan, where he had served as first-secretary under Rutherford Alcock. His stay in Edo had nurtured in him a passionate regard for the muted tones and subtle textures of a world of ritual and shadow. He longed now for the rattle of rain blown against oiled paper, for flowering weeds a-nod down tiny alleys, the glow of rush-lamps, for scents and darknesses, the shadows of the Low City . . .

“Oriphant-san, toast is very good, is most excellent! You are sad, Oriphant-san?”

“No, Mr. Mori, not at all.” He helped himself to bacon, though he wasn’t hungry in the least. He put aside a sudden intrusive memory of the morning’s hideous bath, the black clinging rubber. “I was recalling Edo. That city possessed great charm for me.”

Mori chewed bread and marmalade, regarding Oliphant steadily with his bright dark eyes, then dabbed expertly at his lips with a linen napkin. ” ‘Charm.’ Your word for the old ways. The old ways hinder my nation. Only this week have I posted to Satsuma an argument against the wearing of swords.” The bright eyes darted, for a fractional moment, toward the crooked fingers of Oliphant’s left hand. As if stung by the pressure of Mori’s awareness, the scar beneath Oliphant’s cuff began a slow ache.

“But, Mr. Mori,” Oliphant said, setting his silver fork aside to abandon the unwanted bacon, “the sword, in your country, is in many respects the focal symbol of the feudal ethic and the sentiments attaching to it — an object of reverence second only to one’s own lord.”

Mori smiled, pleased. “Odious custom of rude and savage age. This is good to be rid of, Oriphant-san. This is modern day!” This latter a favorite and frequent expression.

Oliphant returned the smile. Mori combined boldness and compassion with a certain problematical brashness that Oliphant found most appealing. More than once, to Bligh’s dismay, Mori had paid some cockney cabman, full fare plus tip, and then invited the fellow into Oliphant’s kitchen for a meal. “But you must learn to proceed apace, Mr. Mori. While you yourself may regard the wearing of swords as a primitive custom, to openly oppose this minor matter might well provoke resistance to other, more important reforms, the deeper changes you wish to implement in your society.”

Mori nodded gravely. “Your policy no doubt has merit, Oriphant-san. Far better, for example, if all Japanese were taught English. Our meager tongue is of no use in the great world beyond our islands. Soon power of steam and the Engine must pervade our land. English language, following such, must suppress any use of Japanese. Our intelligent race, eager in pursuit of knowledge, cannot depend on weak and uncertain medium of communication. We must grasp principal truths from precious treasury of Western science!”

Oliphant tilted his head to one side, considering Mori carefully. “Mr. Mori,” he said, “pardon me if I misunderstand you, but am I correct in assuming that you are proposing nothing less than the deliberate abolition of the Japanese language?”

“This is modern day, Oriphant-san, modern day! All reasons support our tongue’s disuse.”

Oliphant smiled. “We must arrange to discuss this at length, Mr. Mori, but now I must ask if you are engaged this evening. I propose an entertainment.”

“By all means, Oriphant-san. English social festivities are ever gratifying.” Mori beamed.

“We shall go then, to Whitechapel, to the Garrick Theatre, for what I understand is a most unusual pantomime.”

According to the spottily stippled program, the Clown was known as “Jackdaw Jaculation,” though this was perhaps the least peculiar aspect of that evening’s performance, by the Manhattan Women’s Red Pantomime Troupe, of ‘Mazulem the Night Owl’. Other characters included “Freedman Bureau Bill, a black boy,” “Levy Stickemall, a merchant, offering two segars for five cents,” “a Yankee Peddler,” “a Lady Shop-Lifter,” “a Roast Turkey,” and the eponymous “Mazulem.”

All of the players, to judge by the program, were female, though in several cases this would otherwise have been quite impossible to determine. The Clown, ornate with frills, in elaborately spangled satin, boasted an egg-bald shaven pate and the sinister white-face of the Pierrot, touched with color only in the outlined lips.

The performance had been preceded by a brief, ranting address from one “Helen America,” her heaving, apparently unconstrained bosom, through layers of diaphanous scarves, serving to hold the attention of the predominantly masculine audience. Her speech had consisted of slogans Oliphant found rather more cryptic than rousing. What exactly did it mean, for instance, when she declared that “We have nothing to wear but our chains . . .”?

Consulting the program, he was informed that Helen America was in fact the authoress of ‘Mazulem the Night Owl’, as well as ‘Harlequin Panattahah’ and ‘The Genii of the Algonquins’.

Musical accompaniment was provided by a moon-faced organist — her eyes, it seemed to Oliphant, glinting either with lunacy or laudanum.

The pantomime had opened in what Oliphant supposed was meant to be taken as a hotel dining-room, with the peripatetic Roast Turkey — apparently played by a dwarf — attacking the diners with a carving-knife. Oliphant had very quickly lost track of the narrative, if indeed there were one, which he doubted. Scenes were punctuated repeatedly by characters firing stuffed bricks at one another’s heads. There was kinotropic accompaniment, of a sort, though it consisted of crudely polemical cartoons that seemed to bear little relationship to the action.

Oliphant stole a glance at Mori, who sat beside him, his treasured topper upright on his lap, his face expressionless. The audience was howlingly rowdy, though less in response to the substance of the pantomime, whatever that might be, than to the whirling, curiously formless dances of the Communard women, their bare shins and ankles plainly visible beneath the ragged hems of their flowing garments.

Oliphant’s back began to ache.

The choreography accelerated into a sort of balletic assault, the air thick with brickbats, until, quite abruptly, ‘Mazulem the Night Owl’ was ended.

The crowd hooted, applauded, jeered. Oliphant noted a hulking, gaunt-jawed man with a stout rattan over his shoulder, lounging beside the entrance to the pit. The fellow was watching the crowd through narrowed eyes.

“Come then, Mr. Mori. I sense a journalistic opportunity.”

Mori stood, hat and evening-cane in hand. He followed Oliphant toward the pit.

“Laurence Oliphant, journalist.” He presented his card to the hulking man. “If you would be so kind, you might convey this to Miss America with my request for an interview.”

The man took the card, glanced at it, and let it fall to the floor. Oliphant saw the knobby fist tighten around the rattan. Mori emitted a brief hiss, as if of steam; Oliphant turned; Mori, his top-hat jammed firmly forward on his head, had assumed the pose of the samurai warrior, the handle of his evening-cane grasped in both his hands. Immaculate linen and gold links glinted at his supple wrists.

The untidily coiffed, extravagantly hennaed head of Helen America appeared. Her eyes were ringed with kohl.

Mori held his pose.

“Miss Helen America?” Oliphant produced a second card. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Laurence Oliphant, journalist . . . ”

Helen America performed a rapid manipulation before the stony face of her compatriot, as though she were conjuring something from the air. The man lowered his length of rattan, still glowering fiercely at Mori. The stick, Oliphant saw, was obviously weighted. “Cecil’s a deaf mute,” she said, pronouncing the name with a case-hardened American e.

“I’m very sorry. I offered my card —”

“He can’t read. You say you’re a newspaper-man?”

“An occasional journalist. And you, Miss America, are an authoress of the first-water. Allow me to introduce my good friend, Mr. Mori Arinori, an envoy of the Mikado of Japan.”

With a deadly glance at Cecil, Mori reversed his cane with admirable grace, removed his hat, and bowed in the European fashion. Helen America, wide-eyed, regarded him as one might a trained dog. She wore a neatly mended military cloak, threadbare but apparently clean, in the shade of grey the Confederates called butternut, though the original regimental buttons had been replaced with plain round horn.

“I haven’t ever seen a Chinaman dress like that,” she said.

“Mr. Mori is Japanese.”

“And you’re a newspaper-man.”

“After a fashion, yes.”

Helen America smiled, revealing a gold tooth. “And did you enjoy our show?”

“It was extraordinary, quite extraordinary.”

Her smile widened. “Then come to Manhattan, mister, for the People Risen have the old Olympic, east of Broadway, over Houston Street. We’re best appreciated in our own venue.” Thin bands of silver pierced her ears, amid a tangled cloud of hennaed curls.

“It would be my great pleasure. As it would be my pleasure to conduct an interview with the authoress of —”

“I didn’t write that,” she said, “Fox did.”

“Pardon me?”

“George Washington Lafayette Fox — the Marxian Grimaldi, the Tamla of socialist pantomime! It was the Troupe’s decision to put that I wrote it, though I continue to argue against it.”

“But your prefatory message . . .”

“Now I did write that, sir, and am proud of it. But poor Fox . . . ”

“I hadn’t heard,” Oliphant submitted, somewhat baffled.

“It was the terrible pressure of toil,” she said. “The great Fox, who’d single-handedly elevated socialist pantomime to its present level of revolutionary importance, was sweated mad by one-night stands, sir; driven to sheer exhaustion at having to contrive sharper tricks and quicker transformations. He slid into dementia then, his grimaces hideous to behold.” She had assumed her stage delivery; now she lapsed back into a more confidential tone. “He’d lapse into the crudest indecency, mister, so we kept his dresser in a monkey-suit, to run out and belabor him, if he got too obscene.”

“I’m very sorry —”

“Manhattan’s no place for the mad, sir, sad to say. He’s in the asylum in Somerville, Massachusetts, and if you’d care to publish that, be my guest.”

Oliphant found that he was staring at her, entirely at a loss for words. Mori Arinori had retired somewhat, and seemed to be watching the crowd as it made its way out of the Garrick. The deaf-mute Cecil had vanished, taking with him his shot-loaded length of rattan.

“I could eat a horse,” Helen America said cheerfully.

“Allow me, please, to provide you with a meal. Where do you wish to dine?”

“There’s a place around the corner.” As she stepped from the topmost of the steps that ascended the pit, Oliphant saw that she wore a pair of the rubber boots Americans called Chickamaugas, great clumsy things of military origin. With Mori at his side, he followed her out of the Garrick. She had not waited for him to offer his arm.

She led them down the street, and as she had said, around a corner. Gas-light flared, before a clacking kino-sign that checkered from
MOSES
&
SONS
AUTOCAFE
into
CLEAN
MODERN
RAPID
and back again. Helen America glanced back with an encouraging smile, her callipygian hips swaying beneath the Confederate cloak and the tattered muslin of her remarkable stage-garment.

The Autocafe was crowded and noisy, packed with Whitechapel locals. Its iron-mullioned windows were opaque with steam. Oliphant had seen nothing like it before.

Helen America demonstrated how business was conducted here, taking up a rectangular gutta-percha tray from a stack of the things, and pushing it along a ledge of shining zinc. Above the ledge were several dozen miniature windows, trimmed with brass. Oliphant and Mori followed her example. Behind each window, a different dish was displayed. Oliphant, noting the coin-slots, fumbled for his change-purse. Helen America chose a slice of shepherd’s pie, a helping of toad-in-the-hole, and fried chips, Oliphant providing the requisite coinage. An additional tuppence produced a copious quantity of very dubious-looking brown gravy, from a spigot. Mori chose a baked potato, a particular favorite of his, but declined the gravy-spigot. Oliphant, disoriented by the oddness of the place, opted for a pint of machine-made ale, from another spigot.

“Clystra’s liable to kill me for this,” Helen America remarked, as they arranged their trays on a ridiculously small cast-iron table. The table, like the four chairs around it, was bolted into the concrete floor. “Doesn’t hold with us talking to gentlemen of the press.” She shrugged, beneath her butternut cloak. She smiled happily and began to sort a small pile of cheap tin-ware, giving Mori a knife and dinner-fork. “Have you been to a town called Brighton, mister?”

“Yes, actually, I have.”

“What kind of place is that?”

Mori was examining, with keen interest, the rectangular dish of coarse grey cardboard beneath his potato.

“It’s very pleasant,” Oliphant said, “very picturesque. The Hydropathic Pavilion is quite famous —”

“Is it in England?” Helen America asked, around a mouthful of toad-in-the-hole.

“It is, yes.”

“Lot of working-folks?”

“Perhaps not, in the sense I take you to mean, though the various facilities and attractions employ a great many people.”

“Haven’t seen a real factory-crowd since we got here. Well — let’s eat!” And with that, Helen America bent to the task. Dinner-conversation, Oliphant gathered, was not highly valued in Red Manhattan.