The Troupe
Page 3
Then a cheerful voice said, “I take it you’re a Silenus fan, too?”
George turned to look. Standing a far ways down the alley under one of the streetlamps was a man. Or was it? George thought. Somehow the man seemed too perfect: his collar was too starched and sharp, his bowler too black and clean, the knot in his tie too straight, and there wasn’t a speck of dirt anywhere on his shoes, which gleamed hungrily in the lamplight. George wondered if he was maybe just a picture of a man, like someone had made a painting of a gentleman in a gray suit and stood it up in the middle of the lane.
“I’m sorry?” George asked.
“You’re another Silenus fan,” the man called in that same cheery voice. “I heard you asking about him inside.”
“Oh. Well. Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
The man did nothing, as if thinking. Then he walked toward George with a bizarrely mechanical gait, arms stiff at his sides. As the man neared the queer silence grew, and George’s impression of a picture of a man increased as well: his face was blankly handsome, his eyes a gray a shade lighter than his suit, and all of his features were clean and smooth and symmetrical. But though he seemed perfect, the man also seemed strangely indistinct, like your eyes would pass over him unless you were looking for him. He looked, George thought, like a man out of an advertisement, like one for shoe polish.
“I doubt if you heard anything new in there,” the man said. His small smile did not leave his face. “I would know. I’ve been desperate for him to come back to town ever since I saw him last.”
“You saw Silenus?” George asked, excited. “What was his show like? Do you remember it?”
There was a pause, as if the man had not expected this question. “Well, it was a very long time ago,” he said. “I can’t really remember it now, I’m afraid. I suppose I wish to see him so that I can get a refresher.”
“Oh,” George said, disappointed even more.
“I’ll tell you what,” said the man in gray. “Why don’t we pool our resources? I’m eager to hear any news of my favorite performer, as I’m sure you are. If you find anything, would you please come and let me know about it? And when you do, I’ll tell you all I know.”
“I suppose I could.”
There was a pause, the man’s smooth gray eyes flicking up into the distance as he considered his reply, and then back. “Well, that’s excellent,” the man said. “Really, it’s very good of you. I’m in town for a long while, and I can be reached at the Liddell Hotel, on Maynor. I’m so eager to see Silenus again, why, I’d be willing to pay you for it. Would this be acceptable?”
George was not sure what to say. There was something unnatural about the man that he found disturbing. He only nodded.
“Good,” the man said. Then he stared at George, not moving or saying anything more.
“Is there… anything else I can do for you?” George asked.
“Have we met before?” the man asked.
“I don’t believe so.”
“Are you sure? You seem somewhat familiar.”
“I believe I’d remember someone like you,” George said.
“Do you,” said the man. “Well, please remember, the Liddell Hotel. Any news at all would be welcome.”
“All right,” George said.
“Good evening,” the man said, and he turned and walked back down the lane in that same stiff, jerky stride with his hands by his sides. The silence subsided, like a fog following him down the lane. And then, almost thoughtlessly, the man reached out with one hand as he passed the streetlamp and brushed his knuckles against its pole. The light winked out, and the man continued into the dark.
George watched him go before hurrying back across town to his lodgings. It took him several hours to realize the man had not given him his room number; in fact, when he thought about it, George realized he’d never even gotten the man’s name. Either way, he did not want to see the man again, and he certainly did not wish to give him any news concerning his father.
But it was after this that George had begun noticing strange members of Otterman’s audiences: men in gray suits, with clean black hats and blank gray eyes. He’d catch glimpses of them among the patrons, watching the show and never laughing or applauding. At first George had thought he was seeing the gentleman who’d made the odd request of him, but he’d never been sure. And each time he’d spotted them he had heard that awful silence slowly pervading the room along with them, as though wherever these men walked all noise faded.
George now heard that same awful silence there in the street before the hotel. The men in gray had to be inside. But he had never heard the silence they projected be so utterly overpowering, nor had he ever witnessed the very colors draining out of everything. There must have been a great deal of them inside, waiting, yet only he was able to notice anything.
He was not at all sure what was happening tonight. He only knew two things: Silenus was almost certainly staying here, and the men in gray had found the hotel first, and were now lying in wait. George could not bring himself to trust them; whatever interest they had in Silenus, he did not think they meant him well.
George spotted a clock in a nearby diner. If the Parma theater was like any other, the evening performance would be going on right now. Then Silenus and his company would close out the show, and come back to the hotel…
He knew he had to tell them. He carefully slipped out from behind the bushes and walked away.
CHAPTER 3
“A man of mechanism and wit, of ingenuity never before seen…”
When George finally got to the theater he saw the thick folding sign out front with the words WEEKLONG PERFORMANCE—SILENUS and 5 CENTS ENTRY blaring up and down its sides, and all thoughts of the men in gray faded from his mind. He wandered up as if in a dream, took a bill of acts from the ticket box, and read:
THE PANTHEON THEATER
Entrance on Gabe and Henley Streets
PROGRAMME FOR THIS EVENING,
And Matinees, Wednesday and Friday
For the accommodation of LADIES and FAMILIES, the entire Evening Performance will be given. No VULGARITY or OBJECTIONABLE SAYINGS are allowed within our theater. SMOKING and TOBACCO will only be allowed outside the premises.
____________________________________________________________________________
MILLIE SWANSON’S CORNISH PUPS
A delightful display of canine clowns
____________________________________________________________________________
The ingenious songstress
Miss Lenora Howell
Featuring such time-honored melodies as WHERE IS MY WANDERING BOY TONIGHT and THE BOWERY
____________________________________________________________________________
THE CARDWELL COMPANY
Presents
THE LITTLE LORD’S INHERITANCE
TOM MUMFREY ................................................................ THE EARL ELIZA
VON DUINEN ................................................................... MOTHER BURTON
And JOSEPH DEWEY ................................................ LITTLE ERIC BURTON
____________________________________________________________________________
BIBLEY AND GEORGIANA
A farcical sketch of romance
____________________________________________________________________________
INTERMISSION
THE FAMOUS SILENUS TROUPE
Mgr. Heironomo Silenus
FOR ONE WEEK ONLY
The first time in Parma—a MUST-SEE PERFORMANCE
1. PROFESSOR KINGSLEY TYBURN and his astounding PUPPETS
Through his mechanical WIZARDRY and SHOWMANSHIP, they will speak for us
2. HER HIGHNESS COLETTE DE VERDICERE
A beautiful songbird of Persian royalty
3. FRANCES BEATTY’S STRONGWOMAN FEATS
4. THE SILENUS CHORALE
Melodies sure to melt the heart
WEBB AND TORANEY
Humor and Pantomime
And there, on the opposite page, was an illustration of a man in a top hat standing in the middle of a stage, telling a story. With trembling fingers, George pulled out his theater bill from Rinton, unfolded it, and held the two bills side by side. Though the Pantheon’s bill was by far the superior, and the Rinton bill was old and faded, the two illustrations matched exactly.
His trembling increased. He had never been this close before. He’d dreamed of this moment so many times, yet he’d never really believed it could happen.
Then, to his surprise, the doors of the theater were pushed open, and a crowd of people came striding out. George went white, and almost fainted. “Oh, no!” he said. “I’ve missed it! How could I have missed it?” He nearly sat down in the street in shock, but stopped himself as three members of the crowd stood in the street to smoke:
“I shouldn’t have come so early,” one man said. “I mean, I only came for the Silenus bits. I’ve no interest in these Little Lord Fauntleroy plays at all. They’re just maudlin.”
“Oh, come now,” said a friend. “The kid was trying. He wasn’t that bad. One lady actually cried.”
“That was Maudie Gray,” said a woman with them. “She cries at everything, especially when little boys are involved. You should have seen her when they did East Lynne. She came to every show and bawled her eyes out.”
“I believe it,” said the first man. “But still, I should have come in after the halfway. I’m really only curious to see what all the talk is about.”
“Or what it isn’t about,” said the second. “Does anyone really know what Silenus is going to do?”
“Do you think it has to do with why they got started so late?” asked the woman.
“Is it late?” said the first man. “I suppose it does feel late.” He peered up into the sky as though there were something wrong with the moon, and shivered and lapsed into silence.
“It’s intermission,” George said softly. He rechecked the bill of acts. “It’s only intermission! I haven’t missed it!” Then he stuffed the bill in his pocket, picked up his suitcase, and dashed inside.
The coat-check girl wouldn’t take his suitcase, so after some negotiating with the usher George was allowed to take it in with him, provided he sat at the back. George found that the Pantheon was a much, much nicer theater than what he was used to: it had velvet curtains of a very rich red (which he found more tasteful than the ratty green ones used at Otterman’s), footlights of crenellated gold, and a pristine white spotlight that stayed fixed on the center of the stage. George felt an irrational pang of jealousy at this; even though he’d dissolved all his bonds with Otterman’s, he still felt bitter that the Panthon had a spotlight, while his old place of employment did not.
More people filed in to sit around him, and it felt like hours went by. George found he wasn’t alone: several people began checking their watches, and one nearby lady said, “I hope he gets started soon. I thought I was late getting here.”
“Did you?” said her friend.
“Yes. When I left the house I thought for sure that it was very late.”
“How odd. You know, I think I might’ve felt something similar. I’ve never had an evening pass as slow as this one. Though once the show begins, I expect things will go faster. It shouldn’t be long.”
George hoped so. His stomach had gone numb, and he felt like he couldn’t open his eyes wide enough. He knew it was unwise to pin all his hopes on one man, yet this was almost exactly what he had done: he hoped that Silenus could take him away from these small country theaters, and school him in the finer arts of the stage; he hoped his father would greet his newfound son with open arms, and rejoice in their meeting; and George’s last, most desperate hope was that Silenus would be such an astounding and wonderful man that finding him could somehow make up for the loss of George’s mother. She had died giving birth to him, and as the identity of his father had been unknown he’d been left to be raised by his grandmother. The fallout from the ensuing scandal had dealt their family name an irreparable blow, and as a bastard child George had been exiled to a lowly, unspoken caste in Rinton. Perhaps, he hoped, Silenus would make all those unhappy years worthwhile.
It would not be long now. He kept sitting up to peer down into the orchestra pit to see when they were going to start playing. That would be when the action would begin.
After a while the lights in the theater faded and the mutter of talk died down. Some signal came from offstage, and the pianist sat down and began arthritically tinkling out a breezy waltz. George thought the man’s playing stilted and pat, but he was far more excited about whatever was going to happen onstage than what was going on in the orchestra pit. “Here we go,” he whispered aloud.
The pianist played the first movement of whatever piece it was, and as he geared up to repeat it a man walked—no, erupted — from the side of the stage, charging for the center of the boards with a palpable confidence. He wore a red coat, checked pants, and a black top hat, and his white-gloved hands were bunched into fists. George got the impression that he would have walked through a brick wall, if one barred his way. When he came to the center of the stage he stopped short and wheeled to face the audience, swooping his hat off his head as he turned. He surveyed them for a bit, like a man inspecting a horse for sale, and people were not sure whether or not to applaud.
Time seemed to stand still for George as he stared at the man on the stage. Except for his pose, it was the theater bill’s illustration come to life. The man was short and mustachioed and had a slight potbelly, and he wore his thick, black hair combed back over his head. It shone in the light like oil. But what George was most astonished by was the man’s face. Though he wore the whiteface makeup commonly used in vaudeville, George could see that the man’s cheeks and mouth were heavily lined, and his cold blue eyes were very deep-set. It was not a lovely face; it was hard and austere, a face much used to scowls and glares. But the most astonishing thing was that it looked a little like the person George saw each time he glanced in the mirror.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” called the man in a fruity, tobaccotinged voice. “I come to you today bearing wonders from afar. If you were to inspect my shoes, you would find on their soles the soil of a thousand countries. My many coats have soaked up the salty air of all the seven seas. Were you to see my dustbin you would find a dozen hats, all drained of color by distant suns. These are the lengths I have gone to to procure our world’s greatest treasure, our most precious resource, our most secret and unpredictable wonder.” He paused, and smiled both cunningly and a little cruelly as the audience waited for his finish. “Entertainment,” he said, and bowed. “I am Heironomo Silenus.”
The audience smiled and clapped, but George was too thunderstruck to move, trying to drink in every moment. Silenus snapped back up and advanced on the edge of the stage. He leaned out over them, looking furious in the lights of the gas jets along the stage, and several people in the front row recoiled. “For what better gift did the Creator give us than that ability to release, and relax, and allow ourselves to be taken to lands unseen and undreamt of simply with the crude components of performance?” he said. “A dab of face paint, a tinkling of a chord, a well-crafted costume and a few choice words, and we are given a vision of things that are not, were not, nor will ever be. We are given visions of the Other. These I bring to you in the palm of my hand, eager to send them tumbling into your laps. We are constrained by one thing only: time, and yours I shall no longer waste.”
He whipped around and withdrew, gesturing toward the curtain, and said, “See now the genius I found overseas in the hallowed halls of ancient Europe! A man of mechanism and wit, of ingenuity never before seen, a professor in his own lands, but here, something even greater: a performer, waiting to serve at your whim. I give you the redoubtable Professor Kingsley Tyburn, and
his companions!” Silenus then replaced his hat with a flourish, sank into the darkness, and was gone. The curtain began to rise, and George nearly moaned in disappointment; it was the first time he’d ever glimpsed his father, and he did not want him to leave. But he quieted once he saw what was behind the curtain.
On the stage was the painted backdrop of the interior of an old farmhouse, but it seemed a strange and forbidding scene. The wood of the farmhouse was gray and old-looking, and the landscape outside the window was filled with twisting trees and a sickly moon. A long, high table was set up in front of the backdrop, and a man in a black tuxedo was seated at the middle. His skin was painted white, his lips bright red, and his copper-red hair was closely cropped. His legs were crossed, and he appeared to be reading a book, completely unaware of the audience, with one hand holding the book and the other hidden below the table. Placed along the table were three boxes, each of them shut. They looked a little like tiny coffins. The man licked a finger and turned the page of his book, but otherwise did nothing.
“Have we started yet?” said a small, tinny voice. “It sure sounded like we did…” It spoke with a distinctive New York twang, and seemed to come from one of the boxes.
The man, presumably the professor, cocked an eyebrow, and glanced at the box on the far right. The audience chuckled.
“Don’t think so,” said another, this one deeper and with a Cockney accent. “He’d have opened us up, wouldn’t he?” This one came from the box in the middle. George squinted to see if the professor’s lips were moving at all. He was far away, but they didn’t seem to even twitch.