The Master Butcher's Singing Club (46 page)

NO GUESTS
, no cake, no flowers. After she married Fidelis and Franz left to start his tests for the air corps, Delphine continued to divide her time between the butcher shop and her house, nursing Roy. She kept
part of her filing job, kept reading her books, tried to keep as much of her old routine as she could. Still, the past with its horrors, complexities, and incompletions intruded. Although she was married, the background to her new life seemed unfinished, like a jumbled stage set. She wished that she could file her past the way she filed the papers at the courthouse. Then Cyprian returned.

He was sitting on the front steps of Delphine’s house one early evening, wearing a hat. He squinted out at the road and nodded, cool and self-contained, as Delphine drove the car into the yard. Then he took off the hat, and Delphine saw that he was utterly bald. He looked even more attractive, exotic, like someone from a prehistoric world jolted into pants and shirt and shoes. The head made you think of him naked. Her heart jolted when she saw him. She took a deep, ragged breath to calm herself as she stopped the car and took in his presence through the windshield. So here he was. She smiled, an involuntary reflex, before she thought of Clarisse, then realized that she could find out what happened to Clarisse. The smile altered but stayed on her face. In spite of everything, she was glad to see Cyprian.

As she opened the driver’s door, jumped out, and nearly ran toward him, Delphine was surprised to experience a sudden uncomfortable pang. Was Fidelis watching? Irrationally, she glanced to all sides. She tried to shrug the discomfort off her shoulders like a cape, but her uneasiness persisted. Her greeting was tentative, and she stood before Cyprian in the bent sun of early dusk, shifting her weight, hoping he’d not come into the house with her. Again, this sense that she was doing something wrong although there was no wrong in it, but there was the intimidating certainty of Fidelis. The realization that she was now susceptible to a man’s jealousy irritated her. From under the porch and the stillness of the grass, mosquitoes started to whine. Cyprian tipped his head to the side and fanned away the bugs with his hat. They sat down on the porch steps.

“Light up a cigarette, will you, to keep off the bloodsuckers?” She accepted a cigarette from Cyprian and allowed it to burn down between her fingers.

“I’m not even going to talk to you,” she said in a low voice, finally, “until you tell me what happened to Clarisse.”

“I didn’t know about Hock,” Cyprian offered.

“I know what the hell happened to Hock. I asked you what happened to
her
.”

“All she said to me was this: ‘I’ll go where my work is necessary, and appreciated.’”

“That actually sounds like her,” said Delphine. “I’ll bet she went south, New Orleans . . . no, farther. The Yucatan or maybe even farther down, Brazil. I can see it.” She sighed and shook herself. She couldn’t see it. Missing Clarisse was still a daily habit, like drinking coffee or turning on the radio. She didn’t stop to ache or wonder or brood over Clarisse anymore. She just missed her and then was done with it and went on to the next thing. And that is the kindness of time, she thought.

She looked at Cyprian. “So you didn’t know about Hock. Until when?”

“Until she told me.”

“Which was
when
?”

“Right away, on the trip to Minneapolis.”

“Didn’t it occur to you, then, that somebody might connect the two of you? Think you were in on it?”

“Sure it did,” said Cyprian, “which is one reason why I parted ways with her.”

“Why did you come back here?”

Cyprian turned his hat around and around in his hands—it was a smooth clay brown fedora with a wide brown grosgrain band. Expensive looking. He pinched the brim, his fingers careful, choosing his words.

“I’m passing through,” he said finally. “But I just had to see if you love him.”

“Of course I do.”

“The hell you do!”

Suddenly they turned, their eyes locked in outrage, and they stared at each other. Their exasperation was so exactly matched that it struck them both, at the same time, as ludicrous. They turned away, each unwilling to let the other see any softening, or smile. Delphine fiddled
with the cigarette, sharpening its ash on the wood of the steps, waving it slowly around her to make a smoke barrier.

“So you came back not knowing if you’d get picked up for murder, just to see if I love Fidelis.”

Cyprian didn’t answer for a moment, then he nicked his head. “Like I said, I have other reasons.” He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. His eyes were sharply lovely.

“Come in then,” she said at last. “Roy’s in bed. He needs a good laugh.”

Cyprian jammed his hat on his head, then took it off, and followed her across the bare porch and into the house. Inside, he took off his hat and held it over his stomach as he walked into the kitchen, where Roy slept. Cyprian sat down by the bed and waited for Roy to wake. For a long time, Roy lay still, hands on the quilt, eyes shut. Eventually, he opened one eye just a crack, took in Cyprian’s presence, and shut his eyes again with an elaborate fluttering of lids. Delphine was surprised to find that she was cheered to see this deception, this hint of the old Roy, and she pulled her chair up, too.

“Hey, Dad,” she said softly, “you have a visitor.”

Roy lay mum, deciding whether to retreat from consciousness or seek out communion with the living. His brows knit and he worked his jaws in little chewing motions. Finally, he gave a decisive jerk and let his eyelids flap up to display great, staring, milky-blue rounds of iris.

“Cyprian! Cyprian the Bald!”

Cyprian grasped Roy’s bony, spectral, age-freckled hand. Once he’d decided to join the living, Roy became energized by possibilities.

“Oh for a beer,” he cried. “A little sip of schnapps. Could you see your way clear to wet my whistle?’

“Dad . . .”

“Yes, yes, assuredly, I know there is compelling evidence that it might kill me.” Roy made brushing motions in the air as if swiping off the warnings. “But a very tiny amount might actually be beneficial, serve as an inoculation, if you will.”

“We’re down to a teaspoon or two every few hours,” said Delphine. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have your teaspoon.”

“Now we’re talking!” crowed Roy. He patted Cyprian’s arm. “Would you care to join me? Give this man a teaspoon!” Roy swept his arm grandly toward the little cutlery drawer.

“He can have a glass, Dad.” She unclipped a set of keys from her belt, took a glass outside to the car. She unlocked the trunk and then used another key to unlock a toolbox padlocked into the trunk. From the box, she removed a pint bottle of brandy. She poured the glass half full, set the glass on the roof of the car, locked everything back up, and brought the glass of brandy back to Roy’s bedside. She poured a bit of the glass into a bottle cap and dipped in a teaspoon.

“Salut!” Roy opened his mouth and then closing it around the spoon.

Cyprian nicked his glass at the old man.

“What are you up to now?” Roy’s tone was convivial, but his eyes glittered, full of sudden tears. “Are you casting around for a job and looking for a wife? Did you come here as a dog returns to a place it’s once been fed?”

Cyprian took a large swallow of the brandy, and Roy went on speculating. “There’s always farmwork around here, of course, but that is both brutal and seasonal. I speak from much experience. Now there’s our thriving main street, all those shops lined up raking in cash. Clerking. Perhaps you could learn to barber. Oly Myhra’s getting old. His pole needs painting. Hah hah! His pole needs painting! My pole”—he nudged Cyprian—“hasn’t been painted for the last twenty-six years. What about yours?”

Cyprian looked at Delphine. She raised her eyebrows but kept her face impassive.

“The paint’s fresh on mine,” said Cyprian. “What do you hear from the rest of the club?”

“Mannheim is still aloft,” said Roy. “And Fidelis married the woman you skipped out on, that is”—he nodded at Delphine with affection—
“her Royal Obstinacy. Once again, she has nursed me back from the brink of the abyss. I had flung myself headlong into the drink, you know, and made of myself something of an embarrassment to her. Still, she loves her old dad. She tapered me off. How about that second teaspoon?”

“Live it up,” said Delphine. Roy closed his eyes and opened his mouth. She put the spoon in.

“I didn’t run out on her,” said Cyprian, giving Delphine a meaningful look. “I offered her an engagement ring. A real nice one. She turned me down.”

“Watch out,” said Delphine. “I know all about where that ring ended up.”

“Ah,” gasped Roy. He had taken the spoon from Delphine’s fingers and was sucking on it like a happy child. “The disappointments of love lie heavier each year. Time does not, as the philosopher’s wishful thinking goes, time does not heal all wounds. When I fell, I fell hard,” said Roy proudly. “I fell through the center of the world.”

“You’ve milked your love martyrdom far enough,” said Delphine. “I’m tired of it. She was my mother you know, I’m the one who really got the raw deal here. And ended up taking care of you, you booze hound, all of these years!”

“And hasn’t it been a grand old time!” cried Roy. He was always encouraged and cheered when Delphine joined him in his bantering. “I believe that the sacred love I have borne these many years is a love that has sucked me straight into the vortex, the omphalos of the universe, and there I have seen such things my friends. Such things! . . .” Roy let his voice trail off and his gaze unfocus, as though he were reliving a vision. “Mostly though”—he shook his head, jolting back—“I have seen a lot of hooch disappear.”

“Dad’s mistaken the navel of the universe,” said Delphine, “for the dimple at the bottom of the schnapps bottle.”

“Well, be that as it may, I am actually here,” said Cyprian, with an air of setting things right at last, “to play an engagement.”

“A what?” Roy’s mouth dropped in delight.

“That’s right,” said Cyprian. “I’m not really looking for a job. I’m part of the lyceum series. I travel with the Snake Man now.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a roll of pink cardboard tickets. “How many would you like?”

“The Snake Man?” said Delphine, a little wounded somehow, maybe even a bit jealous. “You could have written. Does he double as your human table?”

“It didn’t have the same effect,” said Cyprian, “with two men, though we did work out a few other balancing tricks. He owns his own python, brings it onstage in a leather case on wheels. He’s got an assortment of reptiles,” Cyprian paused, “and one arachnid.”

“What’s his name?” said Delphine.

“Mighty Tom.”

“A good name for a performer.”

“No, that’s the spider. My partner’s name is Vilhus Gast.”

So that, thought Delphine, was that.

“What’s he like?” she asked.

“Well, he’s a lot like me,” said Cyprian. “A performer, you know. He made it over here from Lithuania and he’s a Jew. I was a real curiosity to him at first. I took him home with me.” Cyprian laughed. “Boy was he surprised.”

“How come?”

“There’s no Jews on the reservation, I mean to speak of. I never knew one when I was growing up, any more than he’d know an Indian. Except he did know about us and said he believed we were one of the lost tribes of Israel doomed to wander, too, like his people. Always to be on the edge of things. Hounded and hunted, he said. ‘Well, okay,’ I said. ‘So let’s roam around together.’ So we got this act up and since then we’ve been playing it steady.”

DELPHINE AND MARKUS
arrived early at the school gymnasium the next night and took a seat in the first row of creaky wooden folding chairs. There would be talk. Cyprian would be recognized and his shaven head remarked with wonder, maybe derision. People, customers,
old schoolmates, would turn to crane at Delphine. If she sat in the back, she would have to endure their shielded or open curiosity. Sitting in the first row, she had her back to them. They could gawk and whisper to their heart’s content. Delphine would ignore them. She intended to enjoy the show.

The curtains parted. Cyprian and his partner stood barefooted, clad in tight black gymnasium suits, on great red rubber balls. Pedaling their feet, they do-si-doed around each other, speeding up until to much applause they hopped high in the air and exchanged places on the spinning balls. Vilhus Gast was very like in size and shape to Cyprian, though nondescript of feature, and he wore a very bad toupee that shifted as he moved.

Suddenly, Gast stood quite still, precisely balanced, hands raised like a ballerina’s, and Cyprian began to bounce, the ball caught between his feet. With a giant catlike effort, Cyprian sprang off the ball and into the air, upended, coming down exactly in position to lock hands with Vilhus Gast. The men swayed, each powerful muscle defined, and nearly toppled. Amazingly, they righted themselves and balanced.

Now, Gast began to dance the ball back and forth across the stage. To shouts and laughter, he pretended to have trouble holding Cyprian aloft. They balanced one-armed, one-legged, and then something wonderful and awful happened. The unattractive toupee that Vilhus Gast wore crept slowly off his head. To the delight of boys and the shrieks of ladies, the bad wig revealed itself to be a giant spider. Gingerly, horribly, the thing eased itself up Gast’s arm, felt its way to Cyprian’s elbow, and then, as Cyprian lowered himself, the spider embraced his bare skull and remained there. The men stood, pranced, held their arms out to receive mad clapping, hoots, and whistles. From a box on a small stand, then, Gast shook loose another, smaller, but equally hairy spider. The audience hushed. He coaxed it along his arm with a feather, then helped it up Cyprian’s throat. Delicately, the creature felt its way up the cliff of Cyprian’s chin and over his mouth. The spider curled into a square black mustache on Cyprian’s upper lip, in the warm breath from his nose.

Along with the spiders, Cyprian also donned a swallowtail suit coat
and polished black leather boots. His legs were still comically bare. He was Adolf Hitler, with intestinal gas. Every time an offstage tuba sounded, Cyprian’s muscular ass end popped between the tails of his formal jacket, danced, jigged, reacted with a life apart from the absurdly stern and hypnotic features of the Fuehrer, whose attempt to inspire the howling crowd was undone. Every time he called for the Nazi salute, the tuba squawked and his rear end explosively twitched. The spiders stayed attached to Cyprian’s head somehow. The audience discovered that they could make the Fuehrer fart by giving the salute themselves. They straight-armed, uproariously, until the tuba was one long groan and Hitler went zinging all around the stage like a flea on a hot griddle. The curtains shut to roars and howls. The first act was finished.