The Troupe

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Is this true?” said the manager.

  Colette still did not answer. Her chest was heaving and her eyelids were fluttering. George thought she might start weeping.

  “Go on,” said Silenus. “Tell them.”

  But Colette did not tell them. She shook off Silenus’s hand, turned around, and walked out without a word.

  The rest of the meal was soured by what had happened, and Silenus harangued the manager into giving them a discount. When that was done he dismissed them, sending Franny and Stanley to two separate hotels on the other side of town to avoid any watchful eyes, and sending George back to his secret bedroom in the theater. As to where he himself stayed, Silenus did not say. Presumably with his door he could stay anywhere.

  George returned to find the theater was shutting down. He slipped in and wandered unseen up the backstage stairs. When he came before his bedroom door he stopped. There was a scent in the air, like honeysuckle and lavender. He recognized it as the perfume Colette wore so frequently.

  George’s sense of smell was just as good as his hearing, and he followed the scent up the rambling stairs of the backstage and eventually came to the door to the roof. He walked out and found the weather was much better than when he’d last been on a theater roof, outside Chicago. This rooftop, however, was a tumbling, decrepit mess, featuring uneven growths of plumbing and sprouts of twisted chimneys, many of which did not seem to serve any function. The theater must have been worked on and reworked on, without anyone’s ever cleaning up the work from before.

  He saw a figure standing on one of the more ancient chimneys at the edge of the roof, straddling the gap with each foot on one side. She was in the middle of performing a marvelous and alarming feat of acrobatics: she would shove off with one leg, and while balancing on the other she’d perform a full rotating pirouette on the edge of the chimney. Then she’d smoothly spin around and replace her foot, reassuming the original position.

  “Go away, George,” said the figure.

  George walked forward, stepping around the dodgier parts of the roof. “Why?”

  “Because,” said Colette, “you are interrupting my concentration.” George did not say anything. She was filthy from chimney ash and breathing hard from the exertion. She had evidently fallen once already, judging from the small scrapes on her hands and their slow, glittering leak of blood. He watched as she did another turn, and another.

  “I don’t seem to be,” said George. “But please, come down from there. It’s not safe.”

  “I know it’s not safe,” said Colette. “That’s why I’m doing it.”

  George winced as she performed the turn again. The chimney looked very unsteady.

  “I hate the fucking sticks,” she said to him. “I hate these fucking little people and these fucking little towns and these fucking little theaters.” She did yet another turn. “But do you know what I hate most?”

  “No,” said George.

  “I hate knowing that they’re probably the same way in the big time,” said Colette. “They’d treat me the same way, wouldn’t they?”

  She did three more turns, each one quicker and harder than the last. She wore a grim look as if this was some kind of grave selfpunishment to be meted out in solitude. Yet even in these circumstances George still found her powerfully alluring, this ash-streaked girl performing for him on this squalid rooftop.

  On the fourth turn the brick she was standing on separated from its mortar and began to rock. She gasped as she tried to steady herself. George did not hesitate. He sprang forward and grabbed one of her arms and heaved her off. She fell on him and they both tumbled to the ground.

  “What did you do that for?” she asked as she tried to get off him.

  George gasped for breath. When he finally got it back, he said, “You were going to fall.”

  “I wasn’t going to fall!” said Colette. “I could handle a brick moving a little! That’s part of the practice!”

  She stood up and strode away to the side of the building. To his horror, she climbed up and stood on the very edge, looking out at the street below. “The threat of falling is part of it.”

  “Please get down,” said George. “Please.”

  “I won’t get down,” said Colette. Then she thought, and said, “But I will sit down.” And, very smoothly, she bent her legs and plopped down to sit on the edge of the roof, her feet dangling off the side. “These little towns,” she said. “They’re killing me, piece by piece.”

  George walked over to her, moving much more slowly as he came to the edge. Then he sat next to her, facing inward. “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. Small theaters, small applause. I understand how dull it is.”

  “That’s not the problem.”

  “Oh? Then what?”

  She was quiet for a long, long time. She reached up and pulled out the inscribed, ornate amulet that hung around her neck. “Do you know what this is? What the writing on it means?”

  “No.”

  She laughed. It had a very bitter sound to it.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Neither do I,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I bought this little trinket in some pawnshop in upstate New York, George. It’s not some royal heirloom. It’s a piece of gypsy junk that just looks pretty.” She turned it over in her hand. “But I didn’t need to tell you that,” she said quietly. “You know I’m not really a princess, right?”

  George did not immediately answer her. After a while he nodded. “Well. Yes. I thought it’d be rude to say something about it, though.”

  “Do you know what I really am?”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘what’?”

  “I mean what I really am, George. Why I have to make up that princess stuff.”

  He was still not sure what she was suggesting. To think of Colette, whom he thought the most beautiful and most frustrating person in the world, in terms of ‘what’ was not something that came naturally to him.

  “I’m not from Persia,” she said. “I’m from New Orleans. My daddy was white. But not … not my momma.” She turned to look at him, eyes burning. “Do you see?”

  He thought about it. Then he nodded. “Yes. I do.” “And what do you think of that?”

  He shrugged. Then, in a move that evidently surprised her, he patted her hand. “I don’t think anything.”

  “You don’t? Why?”

  He thought about it for a bit and shrugged again. “I’ve had … a trying last couple of days, Colette. I saw things I never want to see again. Right now I’m just happy to have a pleasant moment with you.”

  Colette was quiet.

  “This is why you came up with the princess story, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” she said. “That was Harry. He found me in New Orleans, performing on the street. Said he had an eye for talent, and I had it. Said I could get out, if I wanted.” He noticed she was unconsciously rubbing her upper arm as she spoke. There below her shoulder was a small patch of glossy whitish skin, a winking scar that, to his eye, was about the exact shape of the end of a cigarette. “But I couldn’t just jump into performing. I’d only be able to get on TOBA. You know what that is?”

  “Yes,” said George. TOBA referred to the Theater Owners’ Booking Association, which worked the East Coast and served as the circuit for black acts. In vaudeville it was commonly referred to as “Tough on Black Asses” due to its grueling pace and poor pay.

  “I was light-skinned enough that he came up with this idea,” said Colette. “I pass as a foreigner tolerably well. I don’t look like most black folks, and who the hell out here knows what a Persian looks like? Plus I speak French pretty good. So instead he dolled me up as royalty.” She cracked a smile. “Smart-ass. Every time, I can’t believe we get away with it. Some negro girl making white people bow to her and buy her drinks. Just because of a dress and a bad accent and a piece of gaudy jewelry.”
/>   “It’s a performance,” said George. “He must have taught you well.”

  “Yeah. He did. It may be my best performance,” she said. “Better than anything I do onstage.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Maybe not. But I can’t keep it up forever. Harry knows this schtick won’t hold up in New York. I can only pass for royalty out in the sticks. But it’s more than that. I don’t want to keep this up anymore. I’m sick and tired of pretending. I hate this goddamn princess I’m supposed to be. But without her, where would I be?” She sighed. “Do you remember when I told you about the Palace? How I got to see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t get to go in there when I was in New York, but I went to another theater. One about as good, it seemed. And there was a comedian playing there. Everyone had crammed in to go see him. He was the act to see, you know? And as it turns out, he was colored. And not just colored, but not even in blackface,” she said, referring to how colored entertainers were expected to perform in the same makeup that white performers wore in minstrel routines. “That was something I’d never seen before. And he did this bit, just about the funniest bit I ever saw. It was a dumb act, a pantomime bit where he pretended like he was in a poker game, gambling against some others. He did this great thing where he’d lift his head up and think about his cards—which weren’t there, of course—and he’d flutter his eyes real fast and mumble to himself a little. And everyone just howled with laughter.”

  “Bert Williams,” said George, who recognized the bit from reports he’d heard. Williams was a titan in vaudeville, especially after his success in the Ziegfeld Follies. He was one of the very few blacks to have achieved such fame, whether people liked it or not.

  “Bert Williams,” said Colette. “Yeah. I don’t know how, but he did it. Playing in the best theaters, for the best audiences. And I figured, if he can do it, why can’t I? All it takes is talent. Talent, and practice.” She was quiet. “How much further can I get, do you think? I won’t ever manage the troupe. If Harry gives it to anyone, he’ll give it to Stanley.”

  “Stanley? Why Stanley?”

  “Because they’re related, of course.”

  George’s mouth fell open. “Related? They don’t look anything alike! How do you know they’re related?”

  “Well, I don’t really know for sure. It’s just how they talk to each other, I suppose. But if my hunch is right, I’m never getting the troupe,” she said. “I’ll always just be Princess Colette, stuck out here in the sticks, doing little turns for little theaters. I’ll never be big-time. Just some silly colored girl, nursing silly dreams, a sideshow to the real thing.”

  “That’s not what you are,” said George.

  “And you would know that?”

  “I think I do,” said George. His heart was beating very fast. He could feel his pulse in his wrists and ears. “Do … do you know what it was like, seeing you for the first time?”

  “No. I guess I’ve never heard your opinion, as an audience member.”

  He swallowed. His mouth felt hot and thick. Was he supposed to do this now? It seemed there’d be no better time.

  He said, “I know vaudeville isn’t supposed to be art. It’s supposed to be entertainment, which is different. But I think art … I think it’s making something from nothing, basically. It’s taking something as simple as a movement, or a few notes, or steps, or words, and putting them all together so that they’re bigger than what they ever could have been separate. They’re transformed. And just witnessing that transformation changes you. It reaches into your insides and moves things around. It’s magic, of a sort.

  “I never really knew that until I saw your act. But when you walked out on that stage, I knew I was seeing something … different. Something maybe more amazing than what the professor and Silenus had done. You were making something up there, out of just a few notes and steps. It was like a little glimpse of perfection, made out of the simplest elements possible, and seeing it changed something in me. I’d never encountered anything like that. And when it was done, I … I knew I had to see you, to meet you.”

  Her eyes had grown wide. “W-what? Why? What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I knew that … that whoever that girl up on that stage was, in order to make that she had to have something inside her that made her more beautiful than anything else in the world. And I don’t think I was wrong.”

  He looked at her. Her mouth was hanging open slightly, and her eyes were searching his face. He steeled himself. He had never given one of these before, and had received one only once, but still he shut his eyes and leaned in …

  “Wait,” said Colette. “Whoa, wait. Stop.”

  George opened his eyes. Her hands were up, like she was ready to hold him back if he continued. “Stop?”

  “Yes, George. Stop.” There was an awkward pause. She scooted away a little and looked out at the street. She took a breath like she was going to say something, but did not.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly.

  “Mmm-hmm,” she said, as if she could not trust herself to open her mouth.

  “I’m sorry. I really am sorry.”

  “Just … stop talking, George.”

  “All right.”

  She stared out at the city, thinking. She did a lot of head-shaking, he noticed. Then she spun around to sit facing in at the roof, alongside him. She did not look at him. “That was … a lot to take in.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, George. Just don’t. It was a very beautiful and … and flattering thing to hear, but … Listen, just … I don’t know. Just forget about it.”

  George did not say anything. He stared into his lap.

  “Oh, Christ,” she said. “Listen, you’re … a very nice boy, and you’re clever, but … I’m sorry. I really don’t think of you like …”

  “I see,” said George.

  “Jesus, George,” she said. “What did you have to go and say that for?”

  “Because that was what I felt.”

  “No. You don’t want someone like me. I’m all beat-up and broken.”

  “Not to me, you aren’t.”

  “You don’t know me,” she said, now angry. “You don’t, George. You said it yourself, you’re looking for that girl on the stage.”

  “But that was you,” George said.

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Colette. “Not really.” She stood up. “Just forget about it, George. It’s better for you that way.”

  “I love you,” he said suddenly. Even as the words left his lips, he knew they had a hollow and desperate ring to them, and he regretted it.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. He bunched up his fists and held them to the sides of his head, hiding his face from her. He wished he could strike the sides of his skull and rid himself of the memory of these last few minutes.

  “Go to bed, George,” Colette said. “It’s late and cold and you still look sick. Just … just go to bed.”

  George did not answer. He just sat there bent with his fists pressing into his temples.

  She sighed. “If I leave you here, will you jump off the side of this fucking building, or something stupid?”

  “No,” George said softly.

  “Promise?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry, George,” she said. “I really am. I never meant to make you unhappy. I really didn’t.” Then she turned around and walked away.

  When her footsteps faded he peeked through his hands at her. Before the door she stopped as if she wished to look back at him, but she did not and opened it and slipped through, and he was alone.

  * * *

  George stayed on the roof for a long time. In between bouts of selfloathing he would relive moments when he should have said this instead of that, or done that instead of this. For one moment it’d all been going so well … Perhaps the slightest alteration in the night’s proceedings woul
d have changed all this, and he’d now be sitting here with her hand in his, happy at last.

  Maybe he’d missed his opportunity long before now. He thought of other close moments when he should have perhaps been more aggressive, and pressed his case. Yet it was in one of those memories that he stumbled on an evening that made him feel the most ashamed yet.

  It had been nearly a month ago, when they’d arrived in town to find they had a free evening. Almost on a whim George had suggested going to a show and seeing the competition, and no one but Colette had been game. As they sat next to one another in the back of the theater they’d traded quiet barbs about the sloppiness of the acts, or the poor quality of the orchestra, or how such and such line was the exact copy of one they’d heard weeks ago. They’d been happily smug critics, sharing secrets the rest of the audience couldn’t understand.

  Yet then the third act had come on, and things had changed. George, for his part, had kept up his critique, but Colette’s line of observation had quickly dried up. It wasn’t until the act was almost over that he’d glanced over and seen her sitting still in her seat, eyes thin and mouth even thinner. With the laughter of the crowd echoing around their ears, he couldn’t understand her sudden change in mood.

  He supposed now that he should have noticed what had been different about that act: unlike the others, it was a minstrel routine. George had seen and even played for many of them in his time. He’d encountered his first at Otterman’s, and, since he’d never seen a black person in Rinton, he’d not been sure what these gleaming, ebony-dark people with odd red mouths were meant to be at all. Tofty the violinist had told him the act was meant to be aping negroes, but in later performances George found this explanation still did not satisfy. Many coon acts did not make any reference to negroes at all, and in the few colored shows he saw (certainly not at Otterman’s, but at other theaters) the colored performers had been wearing the same kind of makeup. What did the makeup signify? What was its intent? He’d never been sure.

  He should have realized then that the makeup had a very grave meaning to Colette. Knowing what she’d just told him on the roof, he realized now that to her it had a meaning of such awful importance he doubted if he’d ever fully understand it. How must she have felt, seeing that distorted, puerile version of what people thought her to be dancing and singing and clowning on the stage? She, this elegant thing he worshipped so nakedly? God, he thought … had he laughed at that show, there in front of her? He did not think he had, but he felt horribly ashamed to even imagine it. Every laugh the act garnered surely wounded her, and to hear a friend laugh as well would have been pain beyond pain.