The Troupe

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  As a form of protest, one night George decided he would not play to his usual standards. In fact, he decided he might fumble once or twice, or perhaps lose his place. He did not have the gall to interfere with Kingsley’s act—those puppets unsettled him far too much—and any errors in Franny’s could possibly lead to harm. So instead he varied the tempo during Colette’s dance, allowing her concertina playing to get a little ahead and a little behind, which made her struggle to land all of her steps. He did not enjoy doing it, for nothing gave him greater pleasure than seeing Colette dance, but it needed to be done. Both she and Silenus had to learn that he was much more crucial than they thought. And he could always apologize later.

  “Very off night I’m having,” George remarked to Silenus after the show.

  “Yes, I noticed,” said Silenus mildly. “You know, I don’t think you’ve ever missed a note since we first employed you.”

  “Really?” said George. “Never? Well, I’m sorry that tonight was my first.”

  “I think you’re about to be sorrier.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I’ll let Colette explain,” he said, and nodded over George’s shoulder.

  “What?” said George. He turned around and saw Colette walking toward him. “Oh. Hello, Colette.”

  She stopped in front of him. Then her mouth wove into a magnificent snarl and her shoulders darted forward, and there was a flash of smooth brown knuckles. The backstage started spinning around him, and the next thing he knew he was staring up at the ceiling.

  And the next night, George, now sporting a superb black eye, hit every note he had to play.

  Yet this only increased his resentment. He had tasted real applause only once, when he’d first auditioned for Otterman’s. The entire staff had clapped for him then, confounded by his playing. It had been such a wonderful feeling, like holding the world in the palm of his hand. He wanted nothing more than to experience that again, and use it to prove to his father what he could do. Then perhaps Silenus would allow him into his life just as he did Colette and Stanley.

  So during his free day on Sunday George found another, much shabbier vaudeville hall (one that appeared to be a meat market during working hours), and arrived during its audition time dressed in his new tuxedo with the sheet music for the Mendelssohn No. 1. He did not, of course, intend to leave the troupe; he simply wanted to prove to himself that he could, if he wanted to. And it wouldn’t hurt at all if he heard the thunderous applause of the audience again, even if it was in such a disreputable place as this.

  The audition audience was even worse than most theaters’. The stage was littered with rotten fruit that’d been hurled at all the actors. George, smiling, shook his head at the poor fools until they called out the fake name he had given them.

  He climbed the stage and seated himself before the piano, reveling in the cold, pristine beauty of the spotlight. Then he coughed into one hand, adjusted his tie, and began to play.

  He thought he did a pretty splendid job, considering the quality of the piano. Many of the keys were out of tune, and some of them were missing their ivory. And eventually he noticed there was something wrong with the acoustics: there was a persistent moan that kept building throughout his playing.

  But when he hit one of the pianissimo passages he heard that it was not a moan at all. It was something he’d never heard before: the audience was booing. His playing wound to a stop as he realized that they were booing him.

  “What’s this?” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re terrible!” shouted a man in the front row.

  “I’m terrible?” said George. He reddened. “You’re terrible!”

  The man in the front row made some reply, but before George could make sense of it something struck him on the side of the head. He blinked and touched his face and found there was a rancid, red juice on his cheekbone, and the sickly stench of something sweet and fermented began to permeate the stage. Then he saw there was something beside his foot, glistening and mottled with wrinkled skin, and he peered down and saw it was an ancient, graying tomato, lightly furred with some fungus that was happily devouring its putrid insides.

  George’s mind whirled, incapable of making any connections between the fruit on the stage and the thing that had struck him; he absently wondered if it had always been there, and he’d only just stepped on it. “What was that?” he said, but as he lifted his head he saw a row of people in the back stand up and make a quick, violent gesture all at once, as if they were waving at him, and then at least a dozen more tomatoes rose up in a fetid wave, arcing through the spotlit air to converge on where he sat.

  George was not sure what one did after such experiences. It was the first time he’d ever encountered such overwhelming rejection. But he knew what his father often did when he experienced an obstacle, so George followed suit and went straight across the street to a bar. He ordered a drink and sat down, intending to stay until he’d drunk the anger and humiliation clear out of his head.

  He was feeling pretty soused and lousy when he heard a voice over his shoulder: “So this is how you spend your free days?”

  He wheeled around. There standing behind him was Harry, scratching his head.

  “What are you doing here?” George slurred.

  His father sat down beside him. “Jesus. How many have you had?”

  “I don’t know. A lot.”

  “He’s had three beers,” said the bartender.

  “Oh,” said Silenus. “What’s this you’re covered in?” Then he sniffed, and almost choked. “And Jesus, what’s that smell?”

  George sighed and tried to explain what had happened that afternoon. As he did he found his plan now sounded marvelously stupid, and he felt ashamed of what he’d done.

  “So,” said Silenus. “You were going to run away?”

  “No!” said George. “I wasn’t. Honest. I just wanted to… see.” “See what?”

  “I don’t know. If I was as good as I thought I was. It felt like I was. I thought I could do it. But I couldn’t.”

  “Don’t listen to those assholes,” said Silenus. “They were going to boo you no matter what, I bet. And besides, you trot out Mendelssohn in, what, a vaudeville hall that’s mostly a butcher’s? They’ve got meat prices hanging in their window, for Christ’s sakes! That is not your intended audience, son.”

  It was the first time Silenus had ever called him “son.” George shut his eyes. “You were right.”

  “Right? Right about what?”

  “I’m not ready for the stage.”

  “I never said you weren’t ready,” said Silenus. “I said we didn’t have room.”

  “I don’t want to anymore, anyway.”

  Silenus sighed. “Listen, one day you’ll be up there. One day Stan and I will teach you everything we know about the stage. Little tips and tricks that can win over an audience. But until then, you’ve got to keep in mind that you are very young, George, and you are probably too talented for your own damn good. If this were a just world you’d be getting all the glory and praise you deserve. But right now you got to think about the bigger picture. You need to keep your head down and do as I say. I’m looking out for you, kid. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You ready to go back to the hotel? You look like it.”

  George nodded, and his father helped him off the stool and held him up with one arm as they lurched back to the hotel.

  “What’s today?” asked George.

  “Today? I don’t know. March second, I think.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said George. “It’s my birthday.”

  “It is?” said Silenus. “Shit, why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I guess I had too much on my mind.”

  “Well, hell,” said his father. He grunted as he tugged George up the front steps. “Happy birthday, kid.”

  For a little while after things felt much easier betwe
en George and his father. He was still not particularly happy with his place in the troupe, but for now he was content to simply do as his father asked. And Silenus bought him a music box for his birthday, and Stanley a pair of white satin gloves: “For when your day comes,” read the note. It was nice to know that at least someone was thinking of him.

  But then, two weeks after George’s debacle at the audition, he had a distressing encounter. They had just checked into a new hotel, and George was down in the lobby restaurant getting a midnight snack when a man stopped at his table and stared at him.

  “Can I help you?” asked George.

  “You were the kid in the tuxedo,” said the man. He was extremely tall and broad, and clad in an ill-fitting suit. “Weren’t you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Yeah, that was you,” said the man. He grinned. “It was just a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it? At Herfeitz’s Theater in Lansing. That had to have been you.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that establishment,” said George.

  “No, no,” he said. “You was there. It was the place that had the butcher’s counter in the back.”

  George stiffened when he heard this. “You what?” he said. “You were in that audience?”

  “Yeah, I was there. I was in town on business, thought I’d catch a show. I have to admit, you were something else. You were great.”

  “I was… I was great?” said George. “Then why on Earth did you throw tomatoes at me?”

  “Oh, I didn’t,” he said. “Not me, I didn’t throw a thing.” He stopped smiling. “And the other guys… well. They didn’t want to. They thought you were pretty great too, really.”

  “Then why did they?”

  “Well, we was told to.”

  “Told to?” said George. “I knew it! The theater owner made you, didn’t he? I bet they did that to all the acts, the bastards!”

  “No, not the owner,” said the man. “And not all the acts. We were told to boo just at you.”

  “Me? And it wasn’t the owner? Then who?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know,” he said. “He just gave everyone a quarter and said to boo the kid in the tuxedo.”

  “What did this man look like?”

  The man shrugged. “Well… he was kind of a short fella. Had a big top hat and a big black mustache. And he had funny eyes. Really, really blue eyes. He was sort of an odd bird, really.”

  George’s belly grew cold and his mouth went dry. “W-what?” he said faintly.

  “I wasn’t sure why he’d pay us to throw food at you, but, well… a quarter’s a quarter. I’m sorry about how they treated you. I hope you keep playing.” He saluted. “So long.”

  George sat at his table, still as a stone. There was only one person that man could’ve been describing, and George knew immediately that he’d been snookered yet again. His father must have somehow known exactly what he was going to do, and taken steps to ensure that George’s ambition was safely quashed. And then after, when Harry had found him in the bar and talked to him about being ready… He had sounded so sincere, so genuine. And yet he’d engineered everything.

  George had never felt so manipulated in all of his life. He stood up from the table and dashed for the stairs, intending to rush up and burst into his father’s office and confront him. Yet on the first landing was Stanley, and he saw that something was wrong.

  He stepped to the side to block George’s path, and wrote: WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

  “I’m going to see Harry!” George said. “I’m going to kick his damn door down and tell him I know what he did, that’s where I’m going!”

  Stanley gently pushed him back. CALM DOWN.

  “I won’t calm down!” said George. “I don’t need to calm down! It is perfectly just for me to be angry about this!”

  ABOUT WHAT?

  George stood there for a moment, quivering. He wanted to hold his anger back, but it was difficult to do so before Stanley, who had always been so kind to him and always seemed to understand everything. So it all came pouring out: he told Stanley about how he’d wished to become more important to the troupe, and yet had been refused every time, and about how he’d gone to the audition to try to test himself, and yet he’d been humiliated and pelted with rotten vegetables… and how just now, there in the lobby of the hotel, he’d learned his father had been behind it all.

  Stanley seemed to briefly share George’s anger. But then it was gone, and he only looked regretful. He wrote: YOU ARE RIGHT. THAT WAS NOT THE BEST THING TO DO.

  “Not the best!” cried George. “Not the best! Having your son pelted with rotting tomatoes? I shouldn’t think so!”

  Stanley wrote: I WILL TALK TO HARRY.

  “No, you won’t! It’s me who’s suffered! I deserve to be the one! What he did was unbelievably selfish!”

  LIKE SABOTAGING COLETTE’S PERFORMANCE?

  George paused as he read this. “What? N-no. That’s… that’s completely different.”

  Stanley cocked an eyebrow.

  “Messing up a bit during Colette’s act and… and being hit with rotten fruit are not the same thing.”

  SHOULD WE ASK COLETTE?

  George, remembering how furious she’d looked when she hit him, shook his head. “No. I don’t think that’d be wise.”

  Stanley wrote: PROBABLY MADE HIM THINK YOU NEEDED TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON.

  “And what lesson was that?”

  Stanley shrugged, and wrote: HUMILITY?

  “What?” said George. “What would I need to learn about that?”

  Stanley rolled his eyes, but smiled at him and wrote: ONE DAY YOU WILL HAVE TO LEARN THAT YOU ARE NOT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD GEORGE.

  “I know I’m not! I just… I just wish things weren’t always so awful.”

  This surprised him. THINK THINGS ARE AWFUL?

  “Well… not awful. But I never thought traveling with my father would be anything like this.”

  Stanley looked at him sadly. Then an idea seemed to come to him. COME WITH ME, he wrote. SHOW YOU SOMETHING. AND GET YOUR COAT. WILL BE COLD.

  George put on his coat and followed him up the dark, musty stairs. They circled around and around, passing through cavernous attics and empty storage closets and halls of rooms. Finally they came to a thick heavy door, and when Stanley pulled it open a blast of icy air barreled out at them, and they both bent over and pushed ahead. When they were finally clear of the door George managed to open his eyes and look around.

  They were on the roof of the hotel, surrounded by a forest of chimneys and vents and leaning columns of steam. Fat flakes the size of his thumb twirled down around them in winding currents. Stanley gestured again and led George toward the edge of the roof, and pointed at something.

  George was not sure what it was as he approached. It looked like there was a huge light or lantern hanging off the side of the roof, shining incredibly bright, but when he got near he saw it was not on the side of the roof at all, but in the distance. The light was very, very far away, in fact, almost on the horizon. It was just so large it’d confused him.

  George squinted at it. It was ghostly and strange-looking in the night, and he thought he could discern forms in the light, huge structures and blocks nearly eclipsed by iridescence. “What is it?” he asked.

  Stanley wrote: CHICAGO.

  “Chicago? That’s a city?” said George.

  Stanley nodded. LOOKS GOOD AT NIGHT. WE ARE JUST ON THE OUTSKIRTS.

  “I had no idea we were so close! I’ve lost track of things so much that I didn’t realize… How far away is it?”

  Stanley wrote: FAIRLY FAR. IT IS A VERY BIG CITY.

  “Have you been there?” asked George.

  He nodded.

  “What was it like?”

  VERY PRETTY PLACE. THEY KNOW IT IS A STOCKYARD CITY SO THEY TRY AND COMPENSATE. WINTERS ARE HARD. NEVER BEEN SO COLD. EXCEPT MAYBE TONIGHT. He erased, wrote: SITS ON THE EDGE OF THE KEITH CIRCUIT. BEYOND THAT IT IS THE ORPHEUM.
ALL THE WAY TO THE PACIFIC. He thought, then erased his message again. COME HERE OUT OF THE WIND. EARS ARE PINK.

  Stanley led him behind a chimney. It was much warmer there, and they held their gloved hands to its brick surface and stamped their feet while they gazed at the city on the horizon. When Stanley’s fingers grew numb it became difficult to write his messages, so he was forced to hold his hands much closer to the chimney than he normally would have.

  “Does it bother you much?” said George. “Not being able to speak?”

  Stanley shook his head, smiling. “Why not?”

  MOST PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS FILLING TIME UP, he wrote. ALWAYS MOVING, SPEAKING, WAITING. A MOMENT IS A THING TO TOLER ATE FOR THEM, NOT TO ENJOY. He erased what he’d written, and wrote: SILENCE MAKES ME APPRECIATE IT. THINK OTHERWISE. THERE IS PEACE IN LETTING GO. ERASING THINGS FOR SILENCE. PLEASURE IN JUST SITTING.

  “It’s good that you’re with him. My father, I mean,” said George. “I think he needs someone like you to help him stay grounded. More than he does me.”

  Stanley looked at him sadly again. He had large, soft brown eyes with very delicate, almost feminine lashes. He wrote: DO NOT BE A NGRY WITH HIM. HE HAS KNOWN ONLY THIS STRUGGLE FOR SO LONG. DOES NOT KNOW A NYTHING ELSE A NYMORE.

  “You’d think he would try to know,” said George. “All he thinks of is business, and the troupe, and the song. I’m not important to him at all. He’s only called me ‘son’ once.”

  CHANGING IS HARD. ESPECIALLY FOR SOMEONE AS OLD AS HIM.

  “He’s not that old. He’s only in his forties, isn’t he?”

  Stanley did not meet his eyes. He wrote: MAYBE. Then he turned away to warm his hands, wrote something, and turned back around. He held up the blackboard, and his eyes were sadder than ever. The board read: YOUR FATHER LOVES YOU, GEORGE. PLEASE KNOW THAT. FOR ME.

  “It’s hard to think so,” said George. “Especially when everything is so difficult.”

  DIFFICULT? LOOK AROUND. IS THIS UNPLEASANT?

  George looked at the snowflakes pouring down from the starscattered sky. Chicago blazed in the distance, and he felt as though they were on the prow of a ship in a deep dark sea, sailing home.