The Troupe

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  The wolf was very crestfallen at this. “Silenus … never came here? You never performed here together?”

  George shook his head.

  “Oh. Oh, dear,” said the wolf. “I … I must have gotten my information wrong, and chose the wrong place. So all of this … has been wrong from the beginning. How could I have been so stupid!” he howled suddenly, and kicked at one of the seats. Such was his strength that it cleanly broke free of the floor and went flying across the theater. “I’ve wasted so much time here! And now we’ll have to go and take a new theater, and start all over again!”

  George was alarmed to hear this. Not only did he want to keep the wolf in good spirits, but taking a theater apparently meant destroying the building and running off the staff and audience. That must have been how poor Irina died … Then George remembered Van Hoever’s grudge, and said, “But Silenus did play here once!”

  The wolf halted his tantrum and looked up. “What?”

  “He did play here, before I did! The manager hated him! So this is one of his theaters.”

  “The manager?” said the wolf.

  “Yes! When I worked here he hated Silenus because of his last performance. So this theater is one that both me and Silenus played at. It was just at different times. See?”

  “So … I wasn’t wrong to choose this place?”

  “No!” said George. He hoped he did not sound as desperate as he felt.

  “Oh, good!” said the wolf. He clapped his hands together. “That’s quite a relief ! I was very worried there for a moment. Then this is a close re-creation, yes?”

  “Y-yes, absolutely,” said George.

  “Excellent. Excellent!” He gazed around proudly at the theater and his mock performance, and nodded as though the charred roof and ruined stage were all intended parts of his creation. “I really wanted to feel it, you know, to sit in the audience and just watch. Just to get a sense. I’d love to actually see the performance. Ah, of course! I know. You can simply tell me where Silenus is playing next, right now, can’t you? Maybe there’s a chance I could actually catch his show.”

  George stared at the wolf. He was not sure what to think of this guileless ploy. The wolf could not possibly expect him to inform on his friends, could he?

  Again, George’s face showed his thinking. “Ah,” said the wolf. “You think me one of them.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You think I am among those who hunt and chase you, who hunger for the Light you bear.”

  “Well … aren’t you?”

  The wolf looked a little uncomfortable. “Well, y-yes. Yes, I suppose I am doing these researches in order to, well, track you down, and kill you all and so on. But the circumstances are not as you think.”

  “They aren’t?” said George. “Then what are they?”

  The wolf thought for a moment, and smiled and said, “I will show you.” There was the familiar sound of eggshells breaking again, and a black claw protruded from the index finger of the wolf in red, just as the fat one’s had done. Yet rather than cutting his throat, the wolf in red made a large slash down the front of his chest. The slash flapped open, the coat and shirt stuck together as though they were all part of the same membrane. Then the wolf took the sides of the gash in either hand and said, “Watch.”

  “Wait,” said George. “Wait, what are you doing?”

  But the wolf ignored him and pulled the slash apart. George, helpless, stared into it.

  Below the wolf ’s skin was a deep, terrible darkness, not the absence of light as much as the impossibility of it; light was still unthought of, undreamed of, in the deeps where that darkness existed. And yet … there was some small, glittering light in the dark. Some tiny, diamond-bright star that was crawling in little circles in the endless, churning blacks of the wolf ’s heart. And George thought he heard that little light singing, somehow …

  No, thought George. That’s impossible …

  The wolf closed the slash. The two sides knit together and became whole again. “You saw it, did you not?”

  George said, “You … you’ve got …”

  “Yes,” said the wolf. “I have the Light in me. Just the tiniest, tiniest bit. It took us so much time to even figure out what it was … We could feel it hurting us, burning us, pushing us back, but we could never understand it. It was by sheer chance that we discovered this tiny shard, lost in the deepest arctic ices, where the shadow lies so thickly. We had to understand what it was, what it did. And we engaged with it in the same way we engage with anything—we ate it.

  “Or, more specifically, I ate it,” said the wolf mildly. “It is very strange. I used to never say ‘I.’ I always thought in ‘we.’ We always thought in ‘we.’ But ever since I consumed that little bead of Light, things have … changed. As such, it was decided that I would be the one most suited to learning about your troupe, and what it is you do, and I was given this theater for my studies.”

  The wolf gave George a slightly demented smile. “It is all a very new sensation, having the Light in me. I’ve begun trying new things, from colors to hats to even … why, even to names. I’ve got so many questions for you, and I am eager to hear your answers. I’ve asked others, but they were mostly confused by my questions … But then, they did not know my circumstances. You do, so perhaps you can help me understand, and further my studies, yes?”

  George shrugged. “A-All right?”

  “Excellent!” cried the wolf. He ripped out two seats from the front row and set them up in the orchestra pit, facing one another. He grabbed a notepad and sat in one. Then he gestured to the other. George, feeling faintly absurd, sat.

  “Now,” said the wolf. “Now, now, now.” He flipped through several pages to find the right starting place. “My first question is—do you have a name?”

  “A name? Yes.”

  “Ah!” said the wolf. It wrote several extensive notes. “And what is that name?”

  “George.”

  “I see,” said the wolf. “And how long have you been George?”

  “How long? As in, how long have I been alive?”

  “Oh, were you here in some way before you were alive?” asked the wolf, interested.

  “I … don’t really know,” said George. “I don’t think so.”

  “So you don’t know if you were here? Or if you were here before your George-time? Is it possible for you to be here, but not know it?”

  “My what time? No, I mean, I was born, and then they just named me George.”

  “So you are not George,” said the wolf. “George is just a name. A word. A propulsion of air modified by the flexing of throat-parts.”

  “Well, I am George, but … yes. Yes, and … no.”

  “Is it possible that you became George at a later time, having been originally named that thing?” asked the wolf. “What if the naming had been different, would you still be George?”

  “I … yes?”

  “Really?” breathed the wolf in awe. “This is all so confusing.” Yet he seemed very pleased with George’s answers. “I don’t know how you all do it. It seems so marvelously complex to simply … be.”

  “I’m … not sure if I would be the best to answer these sorts of questions,” said George.

  “Why not?” asked the wolf. “Do you not exist? Trust me, I would be aware if you did not exist. My brothers and I, in a very, very fundamental way, have not existed since before anything could ever exist. Though that’s recently changed for me, of course.” The wolf looked up, thoughtful. “Do you understand what I mean?”

  George looked at him. He realized that the way the wolf was dressed and the way he was acting were akin to how children would dress up and pretend to be their parents, mimicking the ephemera of adult life without ever really understanding its meaning. “I think I’m starting to.”

  “It is a very troubling and confusing thing,” said the wolf. “But simply from our short discussion, I’ve learned something. Your existence seems to have been grad
ual. You weren’t, and then you slowly were. But mine was not gradual. I wasn’t, and then I had a bright little core of … of everything dropped inside me. And then I was. And it is shocking, and painful.”

  “Really?” asked George.

  “Yes,” said the wolf. “It burns me inside, this little flame, this jewel. It is my diametrical opposite, my absolute antithesis. I was lucky—if there’d been any more, it would have killed me. And yet I bear it.”

  “Why would you ever want to do that?” asked George.

  “Oh, for many reasons. For one, it lends all of my brothers who are close to me a resistance to it. Now, when your father spreads his Light, we are not burned or pained. And also I am more sensitive to that same Light. I can tell when it is near.”

  George’s eyes went wide. He strained to mask his thoughts, which were many. To begin with, in one swoop he’d just learned how the wolves were resisting the effects of the song and how they were predicting the troupe’s movements. But more troubling was that if the wolf could tell when the First Song was near, then it could possibly tell that George had a huge piece of it inside of him. “Y-you can?” George asked.

  “Yes,” said the wolf. He stared him up and down, eyes thin, and George felt very nervous. “For example, its residue and effects are very strong on you …”

  “They are?”

  “Yes. I presume this is because you have been in its presence for so long, and have been so close to so many performances?”

  Again, George tried to hide his feelings, but this time they were mostly relief. “Y-yes, that’s it. That’s definitely it.”

  “I see,” said the wolf. He wrote that down. “Anyway, those are the most obvious reasons for why I carry this bit of the Light in me. But … in another way, I enjoy it, somewhat. There is a pain to it, but it is a bittersweet pain.” An idea seemed to come to him. “Tell me—will I die?”

  “Will you what?”

  “Die. Do you think I will? I suppose I must … I exist now, and everything that exists must end, one day. I wonder how I will die, and what it will be like. It will be most interesting, don’t you think?”

  George was so astounded with this line of thought that he had no idea what to say.

  “Yes. Yes, I think it will,” said the wolf. “I look forward to it. On the whole, I think it a very strange and terrifying thing, to exist. I really don’t understand how you do it. Tell me—how do you deal with the fear?”

  “The fear?” asked George.

  “Yes. That fear that comes from the feeling that there is you, and then there is … everything else. That you are trapped inside of yourself, a tiny dot insignificant in the face of every everything that could ever be. How do you manage that?”

  George considered how to answer. “I … guess we just never think about it.”

  “Never think about it!” cried the wolf. “How can you not think about it when it confronts you at every moment? You are lost amid a wide, dark sea, with no shores in sight, and you all so rarely panic! Some days I can barely function, so how on Earth can you never think about it?”

  “Well, I … suppose we distract ourselves,” said George.

  “But with what?”

  “I don’t know. With all kinds of things.”

  The wolf furiously wrote all of this down. “Can you give me some examples?”

  “Examples?”

  “Yes. Are there no elements in your life you feel are great distractions?”

  George wondered if he’d just painted himself into a corner, but he supposed he had at least a few. His father, for instance, was a very great distraction to him. Yet George did not want to tell him anything about Silenus, as it could endanger the troupe. But then he thought of another who occupied his mind just as much.

  So to his surprise he began telling the wolf about Colette. He did not divulge anything important, but he began talking about “this girl” who was strong and beautiful, and he described the way she could make you feel stupid or smart with a glance, and talked about her questioning, sardonic eyebrows, and the way she laughed when she knew she shouldn’t, which George found enchanting.

  “So you love her?” asked the wolf.

  “I … suppose so,” said George. “I don’t really know her, not as much as I want to. I don’t think she really knows me.” And then he could not help but talk about how she was distracted herself, forever caught up in the abstract mechanics of show business, and how she had little time and no eyes for him. And he admitted that this hurt him greatly, but there was a little antipathy to his words as well: she was so wrapped up in running the troupe that she spent more time with his father than she ever did with him. They were the same, really: two adults who deemed him a child, and George envied both of them for the attention each one got from the other.

  “It sounds as if some distractions are even worse than what you are distracting yourself from,” said the wolf in red. “Are there none that are pleasant for you?”

  George was a little miffed to hear this, but said that yes, there were. There was Stanley, for one, though George vaguely described him as “a friend,” and he talked about how this friend was always giving him gifts, and cheering him up, and telling him stories; and once when George had fallen asleep in a hotel lobby Stanley had carried him up to his room and put him to bed, and when George was lying there Stanley had just stood looking down at him, not aware that George was now awake, and he sighed deeply before leaving. He cared so much, it felt.

  “I see,” said the wolf. “And this friend is in love with you?”

  “What?” said George, startled.

  “This friend of yours. He is in love with you?”

  “In love? No, he’s not!”

  “He isn’t?” said the wolf. He consulted his notes. “It certainly sounds like he is.”

  “He isn’t,” said George faintly. “He … he can’t be.”

  But now he was not so sure. He had never considered exactly why Stanley was so kind to him; he’d always thought Stanley was simply a very kind person. But now he wondered: could Stanley be in love with him in the same way that George was in love with Colette? Was such a thing possible? Stanley never did seem to show anyone but him such affection. He remembered the night on the rooftop outside Chicago, and the way Stanley had stared at him with his sad eyes, and the way he had felt George’s shoulder, his fingers trailing down his arm …

  The thought made George powerfully uncomfortable, but he did not know why. It felt like a betrayal, as if Stanley had been providing such kindness without ever letting George know the intentions behind it.

  The wolf tutted unhappily. “I don’t think I understand this,” he said. “It is starting to feel like the more I find out about all this, the less I understand. I’d hoped you would explain it all to me, and then …” He shook his head and tossed his notes down beside the chair. “I don’t know. I’d thought you would at least mention why your troupe has started traveling differently.”

  “You mean changing to vaudeville?”

  “No,” said the wolf. “It’s something else. Your troupe has stopped performing as often as they used to, in the old days. Previous troupes would spend weeks or months in one little part of the world, walling it off from us, but your troupe is constantly traveling at a breakneck pace.”

  “But that’s to cover more ground, isn’t it?” said George.

  “If so, it is not accomplishing much. You do not stay and perform until the places you visit are protected against my brothers. You play a handful of times, and then move right along. When this change first took place we could not understand it. We were hesitant to even begin eating at the edges of the world again, fearing some plot. But now that we know about the Light, and how you find and gather it … Are you always looking for the Light now? Rather than performing?”

  George was confounded by this. He had never known any other method of performing than the one they were using now. They stayed a week and moved on. But if the wolf was right, then this m
ethod was not really achieving anything at all. Why would Silenus be doing this if it directly contradicted their mission?

  Suddenly the shadows in the room began to tremble again. The wolf in red turned to look at the front right corner of the stage. The fat and skinny wolves emerged from the shadows there, their empty eyes fixed on George.

  “What are you doing?” said the wolf in red. “I’m not finished with my examination.”

  “Yes, you are,” said the fat one.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  The reedy-voiced wolf said, “Well, you said that if we caused you any problems, you’d report us.”

  “So?”

  “So we decided to be preemptive,” said the fat wolf. “And we went ahead and reported this captive ourselves.”

  If wolves could go pale, George thought the one in red certainly would have now. “You what?” he said.

  “Yes,” said the fat one. “We reported this discovery. And now there are Suspicions. It is, in fact, suspected that this boy is not ordinary. It is suspected that there is something different about him.”

  “Different? And what are we to do about that?” said the wolf in red.

  “You are not to do anything,” said the fat wolf slowly. “It wants to see for itself.”

  The wolf in red stood up and stared at them both. “W-what? Here?”

  “Yes,” said the reedy-voiced wolf. “It is coming. Right now.”

  “Put out that damn fire,” growled the fat wolf. He strode forward and leaped down into the orchestra pit and began to stamp out the flames. The wolf in red went to assist, though he was now trembling like a leaf.

  George backed away. He was not sure about what was happening, but he had an idea: something, some superior to the wolves, suspected he had the song in him, and it was coming to examine him itself. He could not be here when it came, he knew. But he could not run, as the wolves would certainly catch him. So what could he do?

  He looked up at the open ceiling. Was it possible that he could climb up and out? Would the wolves be good climbers? He then realized that the issue was moot: there was hardly enough of the balcony left for him to climb up.