by Carol Birch
Munich. Long-term.
“Get her back anytime you want,” she said. “No trouble at all. Just think. Know what they’re paying? And we can get more if we push.”
“Did you open my letter?” he asked.
“It was addressed to both of us.”
“We need her here,” he said. “She’s our pièce de résistance.”
“No, she isn’t. Peter the First is.”
“Peter the First!” he said disgustedly. “He can’t hold a candle to her.”
“Look, Theo,” she said, pushing him gently down into a chair, “I’m going to make you a nice hot tonic, and you’re going to drink it all down and then you’ll feel better. I wouldn’t send her anywhere else but they always look after her well in Munich.”
“I still don’t see,” he said grumpily. “It’s not as if we’re desperate for the money.”
“Theo,” she said, “you’ve got to let the past go. It’s not good for you.”
“Well, Marie,” he said with a losing sense, “if we send them to Munich, I think you’ll notice a sudden decline in trade.”
“Want a bet?” She bustled about him, making him comfortable. “I don’t know when you’ll start to listen to me. Times have changed. People just aren’t as interested in that sort of thing anymore. They find it distasteful. I don’t like people standing there in our museum whispering nasty things behind their hands about you.”
“Oh, people are stupid,” he said. “I don’t care what people say.”
“Well, I do, Theo. We’ve got Oscar now.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
Oh, she’s right, she’s right, he thought now, loitering in the lobby of his wax museum, too tired to be bitter, too unsettled to be at ease. Trade was still brisk six months after the mummies left for Munich. Peter the First was the pièce de résistance. There he stood, dominating the foyer in all his glory. Retire! thought Theo. I’ll bring her back. Who’s going to stop me? If I could get my health back, know what I’d do? I’d be back on that road. It’s the only life. I’m not old, look at Otto, look at Van Hare, look at Barnum. Just get my health back.
Two women came up to him. “Are you the proprietor?”
“I am.” He bowed graciously.
“Have you got Cleopatra?”
“Room number three, ladies,” he said, twinkling at them but turning it off as soon as they’d gone. He walked to the door and stood blinking out at the cold bright St. Petersburg sunshine. The girl in the ticket booth was worrying her nails.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said tetchily.
“Oh. Sorry, sir,” she said, turning bright red and looking as if she were going to cry.
“It’s all right,” he snapped. “Just don’t do it, that’s all. Puts people off. Don’t forget you’re in the public eye.”
“Yes,” she whispered, dropping her eyes.
He stepped out and strolled down Nevsky Prospect. She’s still mine, he thought, I can bring her back whenever I like. On the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Sadovaya Street he saw Liliya Grigorievka Levkova hurrying along on the other side of the street with her hands in a muff and her head down. Surely not. Can’t be her, she’d be—what?—surely getting on for fifty now. Is it her? What’s she doing in Petersburg? God, my eyes. Hardly looks a day older. Before he’d had a chance to think, he found himself attempting to jog in a sprightly manner across the road and intercept her. It made his legs ache. “Liliya Grigorievka,” he said brightly, “what a surprise!” She glanced up once, startled, saw him, appeared about to speak but immediately blanked her eyes and hurried past, drawing herself imperceptibly away from him as she did so, as if he were something slimy. And then he wasn’t even sure that it was her. He went down to the river and walked along as far as Tuchkov Bridge. It was her. Danced with her once. Oh, Mr. Lent. Wrinkling her nose. Well, that was nice, wasn’t it? Running away like that. Snob. Who does she think she is? Full of snobs, this country. He stood shivering, looking down into the Neva’s melting ice. The river was choppy, a sharp breeze gusting from the Gulf of Finland. What was wrong with her? Listening to the things people said, that’s what. Monster. Vile. Easy to talk. He felt a quivering, a funny feeling in the nerve ends.
Sometimes, in the middle of an ordinary day, a dark flame of terror licked ’round his gut. The water was black but full of light. The sky was dirty. His head was about to burst.
He turned and walked back, needing a drink. The sounds in his head, the eternal inner babble swishing around like the flux of waves, mingled with the sounds in the street. He kept an eye out for Liliya Grigorievka Levkova but she was nowhere to be seen. If he saw her, he’d go up to her and say—he didn’t know what. It didn’t matter as long as it was honest. That was the trouble, no one was honest. From now on, he thought, what if I never said another word that was not the honest truth? They’d think he was mad, but he’d be sane for the first time. He smiled as he walked. When he reached the museum, he passed the same two women coming out.
“I saw a much better Cleopatra than that,” one of them said. “It moved. You saw the snake bite her.”
“Yes, madame,” he said, “some displays are more vulgar than this one.”
He went upstairs and started getting undressed, caught sight of himself in the mirror: a small insignificant man with a double chin. He’d always been pleased with his looks, but not anymore. He got into bed. Marie was out with the boy somewhere. She had friends he didn’t even know. He didn’t sleep but closed his eyes and pretended. After about half an hour, he realized he had no idea what time of the day it was. It could have been the middle of the afternoon, the dead of night or a fine spring morning. At that moment Marie came swanning into the room with Oscar in her arms. “Oh, no,” she said, “you’re not ill again, are you?”
Theo bolted upright and screamed, “Get out!”
She flinched. The baby started crying.
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that!” she said, shushing the baby.
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that.” He threw his head back down on the pillow so hard it bounced.
She’d had her hair done. All frizzed out. “What’s the matter with you?” she said, jogging the child up and down. “Aren’t you well?”
“I’m just very, very tired.”
“Go back to that doctor,” she said and walked out.
The doctor couldn’t be sure but gave him mercury and potassium iodide to be on the safe side. He got a twitch in his left eye, which started driving him mad. Oscar started imitating it. By the time he was eighteen months old, the child showed signs of being a brilliant mimic. He was a sturdy, smiley boy, not given to tantrums. Most of the time he ran about the place chuckling and chatting amiably to himself, and Theo, often in his chair by the fire, vaguely unwell, sulking but not sure why, felt a kinship with him he’d never known with Theo Junior on his perch. The way Marie bossed them about as if they were equal in status forged a bond between them, and sometimes when she walked out of the room they would smile conspiratorially at one another. Sometimes the boy would sit on the floor by his chair and lean against his legs. Once, he fell asleep there. Theo wondered why the feel of the boy against his legs caused a feeling of sadness to rise up inside him. Something to do with the picture that kept coming into his mind, Theo Junior’s stiff unnatural stance on his pole, a stance impossible for any real baby.
“I’m bringing them back,” he said, unsure whether Marie was in the room with him or not.
“Yes,” she said, proving her existence, “soon.”
Soon.
A rash came and went on Theo’s back and sides. For six months it raged and itched, and Oscar mimicked his scratching.
“Stop it, you two,” Marie would say. “You’re driving me mad.”
Sometimes he stayed in bed or mooched about at home in a foul mood for days on end, unable to see the point in doing anything else. Marie told him to make an effort. “Look at you,” she said, “in your dress
ing gown. Do you know what time it is?”
“No.”
“Do you want some soup?”
“I don’t know. Yes.”
She pulled a small table up to his knee, set down a bowl of soup and a spoon. “Do you good,” she said. “Eat it.”
“Any bread?”
“Here, precious one.” Marie ripped off a hunk from the loaf and gave it to Oscar. “Give Daddy this bread.”
Oscar trotted over and solemnly handed it over. Theo took it listlessly and dipped it in his soup.
“Say ‘thank you!’ ” she ordered.
“Thank you,” Theo said.
“Silly Daddy forgot to say thank you!”
“For God’s sake,” she said a little later, “at least go out for a walk or something. Clear your head.”
“Can’t,” he said, “my legs hurt.”
“That’s because you don’t use them enough.”
“Can’t.”
And this went on like fog, till one day he awoke at noon and felt different.
The sun slanted in across the rug. Pigeons purred on the windowsill. It was high summer. He lay for a while trying to place the feeling, then realized it was vigor and excitement, a peculiar elation that felt like childhood, though it was no childhood he could ever remember having. He sat up. His head was clear. He knew from the quietness that the flat was empty. He couldn’t remember when he’d gone to sleep but he was wearing all his clothes, so he got up and walked straight out and down to the street. He put his hand in his pocket and found notes and coins. Plenty. He couldn’t remember putting it there. A drink, he thought, heading for the river.
The sunlight on the water hurt his eyes. It was incredibly beautiful, a million small ice-white fishes winking frantically in and out of existence. He tried fixing his eyes on one spot without blinking, but it was no use. Everything moved.
He crossed a couple of canals, rambled this way and that, slid into a tavern, ordered a beer and closed his eyes. His heart was beating hard and fast as if he’d just done something very brave and dangerous. The room was full of babble and laughter, and he began to feel afraid because his mind was full to bursting, not with thoughts or ideas so much as impressions and currents of sound. One hand was in his pocket, in amongst the notes and coins.
Someone jogged his elbow. A long-haired whiskery vagabond of a character, someone he’d drunk with. “You know what you look like, old man,” this fellow said, “like you’ve reached that seen-better-days point in life. I know it well.”
“There are no better days,” Theo said, “they’re all one.”
“All one, are they?”
“And all mine.”
“All yours?”
“Mine.”
He downed his beer and ordered another.
“All one and all mine.”
“But look,” said the man, “what about me? I have my moments too.”
“The same. All the same.”
“Ah, well,” the man said, “if you say so.”
“I do.”
He wasn’t sure. This was curiously dreamlike. The tavern glowed. The people, the eternal frightened kindergarten of mankind, trembled outside in the dark. His mind was quick and fluid.
“I am an articulate man,” he said.
“What?”
He laughed.
“You are what?”
Theo went on laughing.
“If I were an articulated man,” he said.
“A what?”
“Artic-articulate man.”
“Oh.”
“An articulated man!” he shouted, clapping his hands loudly and suddenly bellowing with laughter. As one, the people on the other side of the room stopped what they were doing and looked at him. What’s the matter with them all? What are they looking at? “If I were an articulated man,” he said, still laughing, “I would tell you what my bones know.”
He stood up, and felt as if he was on a stage. He was young again, the old Theo, with the charm and the quickness. Then he realized tears were dripping from the end of his chin and his nose was beginning to run. “Only what’s known in the bones is true,” he almost shouted at the room in general.
“Sit down, old man,” said his vagabond friend. “No need to get so upset. It’s only life.”
Theo sat down, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The tears confused him. He had no idea where they’d come from, he wasn’t even feeling upset.
“Give us a song,” someone said.
“I will,” said Theo.
“Go on then,” his friend said.
He tried to sing “Lorena,” but it came out wrong.
“What a miserable dirge,” some old woman said. There was a piano over by the door, and she waddled over to it and sat down and started playing some jolly, bawdy old rubbish that everyone joined in with. The tavern keeper, expressionless, wiped a glass behind the bar. Theo felt like dancing, so he got up and set about the fandango, the one Julia used to do. There was a cheer and someone shouted, “Bravo!” Then he went to the piano and sat next to the old woman and started hammering away alongside her, drowning her out and making a horrible racket.
They began to boo and he turned, laughing. The old lady gave him a push.
“To hell with you all,” he said.
Out in the bright sunshine, he forgot where he was. There was money in his pockets, he was drunk, his energy had returned and it was good to be alive.
Slowly, he meandered home, breaking into snatches of song every now and then, stopping here and there to buy things, sweets and pies, whatever he saw, for himself, Marie, Oscar. Some stupid friend of Marie’s was there when he got home, an awful woman called Marfa Nicolevnya who looked like an old witch and never stopped moaning, yak, yak, yak all the time. Marie gave him a strange look. This awful Marfa Nicolevnya didn’t even pause to say hello when he came in, not that he wanted to say hello to her, stupid woman, stupid, stupid woman. She just raised her eyebrows as if he were a fly buzzing into the room, then on and on about nothing, while Marie walked about straightening things in the room, nodding patiently, saying, yes, yes, I see, and oh, really, and oh, dear, a charade of patience and sympathy he knew she didn’t really feel. Stupid woman kept saying she was going. “Ooh, I must be on my way in a minute,” she says, then fills up her coffee cup and yak, yak, yak, on she goes. Theo wanted to kill her. Scream. Leap from his chair and hurl her out of the window or down the stairs.
He stood up. “Go away,” he said.
Marfa Nicolevnya looked at him as if he were mad.
“Stupid droning woman,” he said. “Go. Just go.”
“Theo!”
Marie stood holding the poker, about to prod the fire, a look of mortal embarrassment on her face.
“Stupid woman,” he said, hovering in a vaguely threatening way toward Marfa Nicolevnya. “Why aren’t you going away?”
“Theo! Stop it!” Marie advanced on him, still holding the poker as if she were about to bash his brains out with it.
“I’m sorry, Marie,” he said, “I just can’t stand to listen to that voice or look at her hideous face a second longer.”
Marfa Nicolevnya was gathering up her things, a look of stunned misery on her already miserable face. Marie threw the poker into the hearth and ran over to her. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Marfa Nicolevnya, I’m so sorry, please don’t feel you have to go, he’s been drinking.”
“Oh, good, good, good,” Theo said, rubbing his hands together. “She’s leaving, the old witch is leaving.”
Marie turned on him. “Are you mad?” she yelled. “How dare you!”
“I dare!” He laughed.
“No, no, it’s not you, Marie,” said the wronged woman quietly, at the door. “I don’t blame you.” She stared at him mournfully, and he grinned back at her.
“I told you the truth,” he said, savoring the moment. It was full of gall, grim delight and bitter shame at the sight of the stupid woman’s pale, desolate face.
As her footsteps die
d away down the stairs, Marie advanced upon him. “How dare you!” She was trembling with rage. “How dare you speak to my friend like that!”
“She’s an idiot,” he said. “And you’re an idiot for having her as a friend.”
His head was hurting. He tried to hug her.
“Get off me!” She pushed him away. “What’s got into you? If you wake Oscar, I’ll kill you. You can’t speak to people like that! Poor woman, nobody likes her. And you say a thing like that! You’ve got cruelty in you. Cruelty.”
He swaggered. “How can the truth be cruel?”
“Don’t be stupid! The truth is cruel. Any fool knows that.”
“I’ll show you truth,” he said, and began hauling all the things he’d bought that afternoon out of the sack and spreading them about the room, a fancy parasol, spoons, a Mongolian cushion and a wooden Noah’s Ark with half the animals missing.
“What’s all this?” she said.
“The stuff of life.” He laughed, covering the table and the bureau with more and more things they didn’t need, china ornaments broken from their journey, cakes crumbling in his hands, drawing trails of fluff with them as he dragged them from his pockets.
Her face grew sharp. “How much have you spent?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“For God’s sake, Theo!”
“Look,” he said, swinging his arms, “I got you all this.”
“I don’t want it.”
“You have no gratitude,” he said. “Whatever I do, it’s never right for you, is it?”
“Calm down, Theo. Stop it.”
“You don’t care. You don’t care. She cared about me. She loved me, she did. You don’t.”
“Shut up, Theo. You’re making yourself ridiculous.”
“She never thought I was ridiculous.”
“Are you sure?” she said, and walked away into the other room where the boy was sleeping. She closed the door.
He walked into the bedroom, got into bed and closed the curtains. His bones ached. He began to grin, then laugh into the pillow.
