The Troupe

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  George did not nod this time, but he did not need to.

  “Yes,” said Irina. “I think it does. And then this morning, you know, I hear news that Van Hoever is very angry. He’s angry because an act has skipped us on the circuit, and is playing Parma, west of here. And the minute I hear this news about Van Hoever today, I get a second piece of news, but this one is about our young, marvelous pianist. He’s leaving. Just suddenly decided to go. Isn’t that strange? How one piece of news follows the other?”

  George was silent. Irina nodded and took a long drag from her cigarette. “I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that the act that’s skipped us is Silenus,” she said. “And unless I’m mistaken, you’re going to go chasing him. Am I right?”

  George cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

  “Yes. In fact, now that I think about it, that act might be the only reason you signed on to be house pianist here. After all, you could’ve found somewhere better. But Silenus played here once, so perhaps he might do so again, and when he did you wished to be here to see it, no?”

  George nodded.

  Irina smiled, satisfied with her deductions. “The famous Silenus,” she said. “I’ve heard many rumors about him in my day. I’ve heard his troupe is full of gypsies, traveled here from abroad. I’ve heard he tours the circuit at his choosing. That he was touring vaudeville before it was vaudeville.”

  “Have you heard that every hotel saves a private room for him?” asked George. “That’s a popular one.”

  “No, I’d not heard that one. Why are you so interested in this man, I wonder?”

  George thought about it. Then he slowly reached into his front pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Though its corners were soft and blunt with age, it was very well cared for: it had been cleanly folded into quarters and tied up with string, like a precious message. George plucked at the bow and untied the string, and then, with the gravity of a priest unscrolling a holy document, he unfolded the paper.

  It was—or had once been—a theater bill. Judging by the few acts printed on it and the simple, sloppy printing job, it was from a very small-time theater, one even smaller than Otterman’s. But half of one page was taken up by a large, impressive illustration: though the ink had cracked and faded in parts, one could see that it depicted a short, stout man in a top hat standing in the middle of a stage, bathed in the clean illumination of the spotlight. His hands were outstretched to the audience in a pose of extreme theatricality, as if he was in the middle of telling them the most enthralling story in the world. Written across the bottom of the illustration, in a curling font that must have passed for fancy for that little theater, were three words: THE SILENUS TROUPE.

  George reverently touched the illustration, as if he wished to fall inside it and hear the tale the man was telling. “I got this in my hometown,” he said. “He visited there, once. But I didn’t get to see.” Then he looked at Irina with a strange shine in his eyes, and asked, “What do you remember from when he was here?”

  “What do I remember?”

  “Yes. You had to have rehearsed with him when he played here, didn’t you? You must have seen his show. So what do you remember?”

  “Don’t you know the act yourself ? Why ask me?”

  But George did not answer, but only watched her closely.

  She grunted. “Well. Let me think. It seems so long ago…” She took a contemplative puff from her cigarette. “There were four acts, I remember that. It was odd, no one travels with more than one act these days. That was what angered Van Hoever so much.”

  George leaned forward. “What else?”

  “I remember… I remember there was a man with puppets, at the start. But they weren’t very funny, these puppets. And then there was a dancer, and a… a strongwoman. Wait, no. She was another puppet, wasn’t she? I think she might have been. And then there was a fourth act, and it… it…” She trailed off, confused, and she was not at all used to being confused.

  “You don’t remember,” said George.

  “I do!” said Irina. “At least, I think I do… I can remember every act I’ve played for, I promise, but this one… Maybe I’m wrong. I could’ve sworn I played for this one. But did I?”

  “You did,” said George.

  “Oh? How are you so certain?”

  “I’ve found other people who’ve seen his show, Irina,” he said. “Dozens of them. And they always say the same thing. They remember a bit about the first three acts—the puppets, the dancing girl in white, and the strongwoman—but nothing about the fourth. And when they try and remember it, they always wonder if they ever saw the show at all. It’s so strange. Everyone’s heard of the show, and many have seen it, but no one can remember what they saw.”

  Irina rubbed the side of her head as if trying to massage the memory out of some crevice in her skull, but it would not come. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that when people go to see Silenus’s show… something happens. I’m not sure what. But they can never remember it. They can hardly describe what they’ve seen. It’s like it happened in a dream.”

  “That can’t be,” said Irina. “It seems unlikely that a performance could do that to a person.”

  “And yet you can’t remember it at all,” said George. “No one else here can remember, either. They just know Silenus was here, but what he did up on that stage is a mystery to them, even though they played alongside it.”

  “And you want to witness this for yourself ? Is that it?”

  George hesitated. “Well. There’s a bit more to it than that, of course. But yes. I want to see him.”

  “But why, child? What you’re telling me is very curious, that I admit, but you have a very good thing going on here. You’re making money. You are living by yourself, dressing yourself”— she cast a leery eye over his cream-colored suit —“with some success. It is a lot to risk.”

  “Why do you care? Why are you interested in me at all?”

  Irina sighed. “Well. Let me just say that once, I was your age. And I was just about as talented as you were, boy. And some decisions I made were… unwise. I paid many prices for those decisions. I am still paying them.” She trailed off, rubbing the side of her neck. George did not speak; Irina very rarely spoke about her past. Finally she coughed, and said, “I would hate to see the same happen to you. You have been lucky so far, George. To abandon what you have to go chasing Silenus will test what luck you have.”

  “I don’t need luck,” said George. “As you said, I can find better places to play. Everyone says so.”

  “You’ve been coddled here,” she said sternly. “You have lived with constant praise, and it’s made you foolish.”

  George sat up straight, affronted, and carefully refolded the theater bill and put it in his pocket. “Maybe. But I’d risk everything in the world to see him, Irina. You’ve no idea how far I’ve come just to get this chance.”

  “And what do you expect will happen when you see this Silenus?” she asked.

  George was quiet as he thought about his answer. But before he could speak, the office door was flung open and Van Hoever came stalking out.

  Van Hoever came to a halt when he saw George sitting there. A cold glint came into his eye, and he said, “You.”

  “Me,” said George mildly.

  Van Hoever pointed into his office. “Inside. Now.”

  George stood up, gathered all of his belongings, and walked into Van Hoever’s office with one last look back at Irina. She watched him go, and shook her head and said, “Still a boy. Remember that.” Then the door closed behind him and she was gone.

  Less than a half an hour later George walked out the theater doors and into the hostile February weather. Van Hoever’s tirade had been surprisingly short; the man had been desperate to keep George on until they could find a decent replacement, and he’d been willing to pay accordingly, but George would not budge. He’d only just gotten news about Silenus’s performance today, on Fri
day, and the man and his troupe would be leaving Parma tomorrow. This would be his only chance, and it’d be very close, as the train ride to Parma would take nearly all day.

  Once he’d been paid for his final week, he returned to his lodgings, packed (which took some time, as George was quite the clotheshorse), paid the remainder of his rent, and took a streetcar to the train station. There he waited for the train, trying not to shiver in the winter air and checking the time every minute. It had been a great while since he’d felt this vulnerable. For too long he’d kept to the cloistered world of the orchestra pit, crouched in the dark before the row of footlights. But now all that was gone, and if anything happened before he made it to Parma, the months at Otterman’s would have been in vain.

  It wasn’t until George was aboard the train and it began pulling away that he started to breathe easy. Then he began to grin in disbelief. It was really happening: after scrounging for news for over half a year, he was finally going to see the legendary Heironomo Silenus, leader of wondrous players, legendary impresario, and the most elusive and mysterious performer to ever tour the circuits. And also, perhaps most unbelievably, the man George Carole suspected to be his father.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Men in Gray

  Parma, like any other northern Ohio town, was well accustomed to winter weather, yet as the sun went down its residents began to feel unnerved. They hurried through the streets, eager to duck into any open door for shelter, and were reluctant to venture out, even if they had business or errands to run. Even the cabbies and buggy drivers were affected, refusing fares and passengers and returning to their stables instead, where they huddled and smoked and stamped their feet, and occasionally glanced out and shook their heads.

  It was difficult to say exactly what it was. Perhaps it was the wind, the people said: it seemed unusually cold and bitter, never letting up for a minute, and it did not bring in any storms, as one would expect from such weather. But it was not just the wind, they admitted. There was also something wrong with the sky, though they had trouble deciding the nature of it: as preposterous as it sounded, people were not sure if the curious arrangements of clouds made the sky feel too large, or perhaps too small. Others disagreed, saying that it was not the size at all, but the time: it was as if the sky had forgotten what hour it was and was now on the wrong schedule. The moon and the stars were far too bright for six o’clock, and the sky much too dark. If you were to look up, you’d surely think it was midnight.

  The question of the time came close to the real issue in Parma that evening, one that was so strange and perplexing that no one was willing to speak about it: there was something wrong with the light. It was a very subtle change, one the people could not easily fathom, but it was as if the shadows had doubled as night fell, often appearing in places that did not warrant shadows at all. When wayfarers glanced up at the curiously bright moon and stars, they’d wonder how, in such an abundance of light, the street ahead managed to look so dark and forbidding. (And some wanderers found themselves thinking that the number of streets in Parma had mysteriously increased in the past hours: there seemed to be far more darkly lit alleys and passageways now than in the afternoon, leading to places they could not recall seeing before.) The phenomenon was not just confined to the outdoors: families seated together in their dining rooms felt compelled to light twice as many candles and lamps as they normally did, though each flame was a miserable lick of light in an overwhelming sea of darkness. And though each room naturally had four walls, and so should have only four corners, some homeowners experienced the crawling suspicion that their residences were stuffed full of dark corners, sometimes with sixteen or seventeen to a room, as if the very nature of geometry had changed when the sun went down.

  No one in the town had ever felt anything like it. No one, that was, until George Carole’s train pulled into the station and he leaped off, humming with excitement, and came to a stop when he dashed out the station doors.

  George took one look at the dark streets and the star-strewn sky and identified the feeling immediately. As strange as it was, he’d experienced the exact same thing once before, in his hometown of Rinton: there’d been a series of evenings when the air seemed full of darkness, and everything felt thin, as if you could lick your finger and rub at the horizon and it would smear.

  This pervasive feeling had coincided with another event in town: the performances of the Silenus Troupe. And it had vanished when the troupe moved to the next stop on the circuit, and no one had been sure what it’d all been about. Most had tried to forget about it, but George treasured every memory of when Silenus’s show had come so near, so he still remembered the odd sensation as if it’d been only yesterday.

  On that occasion he’d been prevented from seeing the man he thought to be his father. Yet now that he’d gotten close once more, he was struck with wonder. Was it possible there was a connection between this strange feeling and the performances of the troupe? He felt sure that was the case… but who were these players, if their mere arrival could affect the moon and stars? Could it be possible that some of the stories—not all, surely, but some—about Silenus and his troupe were true?

  George shook himself. That was ridiculous. He was just anxious about meeting his father, he said to himself, and it was making him imagine things. And, really, why should he be anxious? He was George Carole, unspoken star of the Freightly theaters (even if he was just an accompanist). He wasn’t some country rube, or at least not anymore. In his time at Otterman’s he had played for lines of glamorous chorus girls, for armies of parading mice, and for a group of clowns who performed Lebanese ladder tricks. He’d played for magicians, for tumblers, for statue acts and female impersonators, the fatter the better. He’d played for dancing children dressed like lobsters, for dwarfs and freaks and ballerinas. He’d played for regurgitators, who would swallow items whole and produce them in the order the audience requested. He’d played for opera singers. He’d played for gun shows. He’d played anything and everything.

  Any father would be glad to have him as a son. Now that he thought about it, Silenus should be impressed, or even grateful. So George shrugged off his needling fear, clapped his hat to his head, and ran on into the streets, briefcase swinging by his side.

  He had figured that Silenus, no matter the nature of his show or performers, would travel and make arrangements like any other vaudevillian, which would mean he’d have booked the hotel closest to his theater. Hoping this was true, George had asked the conductor on his train exactly which hotel this was, and since it was a question a lot of conductors heard he had gotten the directions immediately.

  To his surprise, the hotel was a fairly fancy place, with red brick and white-bordered windows. It was a change of pace from most theater and circuit hotels, which were ramshackle flophouses: the owners knew performers could not afford to be far away from their stage, so since their clientele had no choice, it was not necessary to bother with such trivialities as comfort, appearance, or general functionality.

  George decided he would get a room, and then try to figure out the best way to approach Silenus. If the man happened to be staying there, as was likely, would George arrange a chance meeting in the lobby? Or maybe the theater? Would he try to impress him with his piano playing? Despite his self-assurances, he began to feel anxious again to the point that he was almost sick.

  Then, for the second time that night, he stopped where he stood.

  He stared at the hotel. All the excitement and agitation drained out of him.

  George cocked his head, listening, and cupped a hand behind his ear. As he listened, a deep dread bloomed inside him. “No,” he whispered to himself. “No, no, no. It can’t be. Not here.”

  He backpedaled down the street and listened again. He then took several slow steps forward, head cocked toward the hotel all the way. Then he finally stopped in the middle of the street and looked around, and shook his head.

  Somewhere about halfway through the block all
sound began to fade from the world. Every noise died until it was a hollow echo of its former self, and the colors past the halfway point seemed drab and muted, like the light was being sucked out of them. George watched the other people on the street. They did not seem to notice anything, yet when they neared the hotel they pulled their coats tight about them, as though they’d been touched with a deep chill.

  This, too, was a sensation familiar to George. But he dreaded it far more than the surreal darkness throughout Parma.

  It could only mean one thing: he was not the only one who had tracked Silenus here.

  George walked to the end of the block, and the queer silence increased with each step. He kept his eye on the hotel, making sure to mark the windows and the doors. It wasn’t until he was right in front of it that he saw a curtain on the second story twitch aside, and he caught a flash of a black-gloved hand and a gray sleeve, and a blank face surveying the street.

  George jumped back. He found cover behind some bushes in front of an office building, and there he squatted down to watch and think. “They’re here?” he said to himself. “How could they be here?”

  As George had searched for Silenus over the past half year, he had gradually become aware that he was not the only one doing so: there were other agents, ones of a far stranger sort, who were asking nearly the same questions he was.

  He had first realized this at the start of fall, when he had traveled across Freightly to a different theater to inquire about Silenus. As always, there’d been no news, and he’d left the theater disappointed. But it was as George had passed a little alley beside the theater that he’d realized something was wrong: he heard something. Or maybe, he thought, he didn’t hear something. After a while he realized he actually couldn’t hear anything at all.

  At first George thought he’d somehow gone deaf, but when he heard the carriages clattering through the streets he realized it was something else: on some level the world had fallen quiet to him. But this was a new type of quiet to George, who had very keen senses. If silence could have a frequency, with some silences soft and others harsh, then this one’s was overpowering and fierce, and he could hear it, like a needle in his ear. It rendered the sounds in the street hollow and lifeless, like they barely existed at all. And no one else on the street paused or looked up; it seemed as if only George could hear it.