Under the Poppy (22 page)

Georges takes one cup, waits for Hanzel to lift the other. They gaze at one another, the raptor and the fox. The General smiles. Odd lines spring up around his mouth.

What a pity that we did not meet sooner, young sir.
Salut
.

Paris proves to be a most successful city for
les mecs
, but success, alas, can sour one on an enterprise: to make the same play again and again, even if it is enjoyed, celebrated, perhaps especially if it is enjoyed and celebrated, breeds subterranean discontent; and as an anodyne it grows so tedious that in the end the only roads away are pain or harder work. Fortunately, the theatre is not confined merely to the space on a stage. One can entertain, as the magistrate does, in a townhouse, in comfort and apparent privacy; one can play for an audience of passing strangers, of those passing as strangers, of others whose motives will never be known, but who can enjoy the intimacy of a story well-told. Hanzel himself seems to savor the byplay of deceit; it is his own notion to carry the General’s secret correspondence tucked up inside the puppets, once even as a billet-doux squeezed between the silken breasts of the flaxen doll, lilac-scented and displayed for all to see, if only they had known. That they patently did not, the well-fed, fashionable, purblind audience, is a source of secret hilarity to the master of the mecs, who seems to savor the risk as much as the triumph, the
coup de théâtre
of confessional, mask, truth and lie all in one; which may have given the General pause, had he known, especially in the case of this particular protégé, endowed with both malice and talent. But only pause: at more than twice the young man’s age he has seen such glee before, shining like marsh gas, a short-lived fire. To take pleasure in the game is a good thing; to toil for that pleasure is absurd.

Fortunately, what pleases the puppeteer most, it seems, are his puppets themselves. Not only their maintenance and construction, though he is forever tweaking, mending and amending, but their company, their silence, their allegiance; especially the dwarf he calls Pan Loudermilk, who seems to serve as a kind of familiar, almost as if he were alive. The General asks Hanzel that question, once, at the end of another clandestine chat, the magistrate’s balcony chilly in the new spring night:
Tell me something, Hanzel. Are they real to you, your mecs?

Hanzel glances over from his stance at the railing, the breeze ruffling the Belgian lace at his cuffs; he does not reply. Yet still the General presses:
Not to be foolish, nor trespass on your artistry. But the way you converse with them, with the Pan in particular—is it your thought that some—sense—clings to them, these constructions, some life other than that you initiate yourself? Excusing his own interest, They seem so real, one cannot help but wonder.

Hanzel smiles, cold and courteous. Puppet he may be himself—for he has no illusions of his own weight in this equation, is wise enough to know his place and keep safely to it—still there are boundaries, places in him that no one now may go so
I make them talk,
he says,
and walk. And fuck. They are extensions of my will. You also have such things, sir, you call them soldiers.

The General nods; he asks no more. Later that evening the Magistrate van Symans inquires of the General if the puppet-master seems peevish, surely he is not inclined to banter as he is used to but
To play this way,
says the General
sotto voce, takes something from a man, if he does it as well as our Hanzel—pardon, Marcel. He’s not a clockwork conjuror, eh?

It’s my thought that he is restless,
says the magistrate, sounding peevish himself.
Who knows if he may bolt? And Monica planning her fête around him, peacocks and Salome dancers, the silly woman will beggar me yet…. You will attend, will you not?

If I am able,
says the General, with affable regret, but in the end it is the magistrate who is unable to attend the gala, himself invited to a more private affair involving certain members of the military and select civil authorities, who take a dark view of some of the magistrate’s latest activities with visitors from abroad. The General is not present at this interrogation; instead he sits beside Monica van Symans at her garden party, encouraging her to enjoy the entertainment provided by Hanzel, who is in top form, gay and animated, resplendent in a new peacock-blue waistcoat that he later gives, for a smile, to a dark young coachman, who goggles at him in the hay-scented stables as if he were the angel Gabriel himself:
Are you sure, sir? Lord, this is a cracking jacket. Are you sure?

I’m sure of nothing,
says Hanzel pleasantly, pleasantly weary afterward, packing up his mecs to the sounds of commotion in the drawing rooms below: the message has come from the magistrate, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth but by then Hanzel is on his way, riding not with the General—that would be telling—but anonymous in a hired hack, eyes closed, letting the sway of the coach serve as
lethe
, suspended, like Pan in his coffin, between one night’s performance and the next.

It is indirectly the General’s doing that the letter finally reaches him: inside a pale calfskin coin-pouch, cheap paper covered with tiny writing, Decca’s writing, though he does not know that at first, feels a moment’s strange jagged hope but
I had it from a drummer down in the alehouse, says the General’s courier, an older man with a sere, seamed face, dust all over; he seems somewhat offended by Hanzel’s indolence and open shirt, there at midday in the inn’s upper room. He said it come from a lady, for you. Hanzel says nothing, reading. You get many messages from ladies, I’m guessing. Still reading, Hanzel gives him the coins from the pouch, inviting his leave only to summon him later: Does the General send a reply to Archenberg? and then, at the courier’s nod, Here, handing back the pouch, the blue lover’s eye wrapped securely inside. For the mistress of the Poppy, one town over; it’s a brothel.

I didn’t guess it was a church.

You’re a funny fuck, yeah?
with a smile of his own, so hateful that that the courier complains to the General—
I don’t take marching orders from your jongleur, now, do I?—
but
What has he given you to carry?
inspecting the lover’s eye, the brief note it accompanies—
“Sell this if you need to, keep it if you don’t. My eye is on you either way”
along with a warning, the scent of trouble on the wind, a troubled question at the end—and
Do as he bids,
the General says, rewrapping note and jewelry.
Who is the lady? A madam, he says? If she replies, bring it first to me.

The madam in question had been very painfully surprised by the news of her brother, a surprise curdling almost at once to deep distress. The drummer’s advent was coincidental, passing through town with some coin to spend on a bottle and a night with a woman, traveler enough to have stories to tell, yokel enough to wish to share them with Omar, another man of the world there on the door who rolled his eyes at Decca, closing out the evening’s till:
That foreign-type drummer! I didn’t think he’d stop jawing long enough to go take his poke at Vera. On and on about his travels, how he’s seen it all, seen a man trained a bay gelding to talk in Spanish, another who makes dolls poke each other—

Dolls?

Dolls, puppets, something like—a young gent abroad, he saw him do some plays a bit ago. Terrible skillful he says, makes ’em seem quite alive—

—
as Decca’s heart began to race, her glance at once to Rupert behind the bar, a few more guarded questions confirm that yes, the drummer tells of Istvan, apparently now the master of a troupe of toys, calling himself some other name but Istvan all the same. The thought of him wakes aching echoes,
What news of my brother?
no news or the same news, all the same it seems to Rupert, he has shut that door and locked it: but if he were to hear once more the name he never speaks, or to see him, see Istvan in the flesh again—

So: the gathered pouchful of coins—money from the till, her hands shake as she takes it: an odd sensation, as if she pilfers from herself—included with the letter asking how is he, where is he, offering a severely edited version of her own history, admitting to Mattison and the Poppy, saying nothing of Rupert at all. As she writes, there in the dawn quiet of her bedchamber, faint pink light glowing, growing at the window, she remembers other windows, other dawns, the ribbons he brought her, the feel of his hand around hers, leading her safely through darkened streets, and
Just for now,
he would say, kissing her forehead before boosting her back to the sill.
I’ll be back before you know it, yeah?
Back again to leave again, does he remember those lost days? Does he ever wonder whatever became of her, his little sister Ag?

In the morning, very early, she rises to roust up the foreign drummer, ruffled and blinking and
Will you return,
she asks softly,
to Brussels?
as she entrusts the packet to him, with coin for his trouble, more coin
to purchase his silence
because the errant puppet-master, she says, is
Our ne’er-do-well sib, sir, and Mister Bok would be so displeased—with me—
She puts up a hand in partially feigned distress.
A man such as yourself, so well-traveled, surely you understand a sad family division?

The drummer nods, unsurprised by life: Oh yes, he has seen such squabbles before, in fact he himself has a missing sister, married a fool of a tailor who drank faster than he could sew, though the drummer did his best to dissuade her, and their own saintly mother despaired…. And on and on as Decca stands tense as a felon, house noises rising until she pretends to hear Rupert approaching, perhaps it really is Rupert so
I must go,
squeezing his hand around the pouch she watches him pocket, the coins in another pocket, how she hates to trust in this man or anyone, especially in a matter such as this.

But she is finally rewarded, not by the drummer after all but instead a sour-looking character, booted in mud and stiff with military bearing, either that or a rod up his back passage as
You are the madam of this place?
his chilly greeting, her equally chilly response as he is not at all whom she expects—

—until she sees emerging that same calfskin pouch: and her hands in instant reach to snatch it from him, longing to open it at once, but he stands staring at her as if awaiting some response, does he expect to be compensated? until finally
You are very like
, he says.

I beg your pardon?

You and the jongleur. You are very like.

She examines him more closely, then: he is a clue.
You are acquainted with the man who sends this? You are his friend?

Friend,
says the man,
no. Though I do have his acquaintance.
But he will say no more.

Open at last, the lover’s eye startles her: its opulence as well as its meaning, his eye is upon her, yes, as she pins the strange and precious thing inside her bodice, to lie like a secret at her heart. But the rest of the message is past her comprehending: Istvan
warning of an “action” brewing, an army’s advance: what can he possibly be doing, what patron can he serve who would put him in such proximity, entitle him to use that army’s couriers, make him privy to any of its plans? but
“I may be your way soon,”
he writes, though without explaining why. Then, at the paper’s wrinkled edge, scrawled as if in haste or pain, the addendum, “
Have you seen him?”
and this she fully understands.

The courier makes it plain he does not mean to tarry, and the less time he spends, the less Rupert need know—but if Istvan is to come this way, soon he will know everything, both of them will know how she has lied. Never mind that the lies were her only safety, no help for that now, no help for her but to pen instead a kind of truth: Yes, she has seen Rupert, in fact through sheer happenstance he is here; he speaks not at all of his travels so she does not ask, but he has settled in wonderfully, all is well. The pen trembles as she closes with
Your devoted,
then cannot recall if she signed the first missive “Decca” or “Agatha,” burns her finger on the candle, the fat blob of wax still warm as flesh as she passes the letter to the courier, there at the bar with a swallow of gin, not even a nod as he drinks and leaves. She does not watch him go, as she did not watch Mattison die, only held him in her arms until the thing was done. Nor does she watch the road, for Istvan’s advent—how? At the head of an army? Fleeing an army? In some other capacity entirely? Does it matter?

All that night she sits wakeful, poring over the Poppy’s accounts, the book held across her tented knees. At dawn she drinks tea strong as Velma can steep it, sipped scalding hot between her teeth, then goes resolutely about her daily tasks. If there is a certain added shrewishness to her demeanor, a heightened tendency to slap and snap, it goes unremarked, though Rupert wonders somewhat at this sudden ill-weather gust.

To the General, immersed in logistics, steeped in his own brew, it seems he has barely passed on the madam’s reply for final delivery before Hanzel is at his door, a different Hanzel than any he has seen before, pale with some emotion he does not even trouble to suppress as I’m off, curt though he gives a bow, seeming to think that will settle the matter, obviously impatient when recalled by the General’s calm questions: By whom has he been summoned? Is there trouble? What news that he wishes to share? but No news, Hanzel says. It is merely time I was about my own affairs.