Under the Poppy (7 page)

“Oh, I love the Bosporus.”

When the meal is finished at last, Jürgen Vidor invites them to take the air, offers cigars but “An early night for me, I’m afraid,” says Istvan. “My puppets took a bit of a beating yesterday—they need refreshment, like any actors. And a sponging.”

He makes a comic face, and Jürgen Vidor smiles: “I very much look forward to seeing them again. Seeing you, that is, upon the boards.… Please,” proffering from an ebony card case a snowy calling card, beautifully engraved. “Henceforth consider me a patron of your work, messire.”

“Too kind,” says Istvan, rising with an actor’s grace, a grave and courteous bow. He tucks the card carefully into his pocket. “I am deeply aware of the honor you do me, and can hardly hope to extend the same to you, but,” taking from his waistcoat, what? a bead? no, a button, no, a wooden eyeball, dry and staring and terribly blue and “I shall keep an eye upon you, sir,” he says, and bows again, “in the hopes that I will see you again.”

“A—singular memento. Many thanks.”

Rupert rises, now; Jürgen Vidor’s gaze flicks from him to Istvan and back again, a serpent’s tongue. His smile widens, overripe. “You retire early as well, Rupert?”

“I wish that were so.” Rupert’s voice is flat and too precise. He seems to be staring at a grease spot on the wallpaper. “Duty calls.”

“Ah, the happy demands of industry. And Miss Decca. Tender her my best regards, yes?” and they all shake hands, the two out the door and down the staircase and “When the devil falls in love,” says Istvan. “It’s the whip, am I right?”

“Don’t speak to me. Don’t say another word. You and your fucking toys.”

Together in silence they cross the lobby, step into the chilly muck of the streets. The main avenue lies dark beneath guttering street-lamps, torches tossed and flickered by the wind that blows straight from the forest and the hills, spooking the waiting carriage-horses, rattling the thin tin signs. The doors of the livery are stoutly bolted, as is the cooperage, and the greengrocer’s, the wine parlors and the bakery; the seamstress’ shop sits abandoned, its curtained window cracked to the sill.

The avenue vendors have disappeared until daylight, taking their cups and sandwich boards, their trinkets and trays; the streets have emptied into the taverns, piss-puddled and hectic with smoke and noise, a hurdy-gurdy grinding out an ancient drinking song. Soldiers loiter everywhere: by the hotel and the mercantile, the silent bank, abusing the beggars who flee their approach, clustering outside the Europa and the Palais, trying to see inside: dirty hands and young faces, weapons bright and new. At the Alley’s mouth a small band of immigrants, round hats and grubby work boots, take muttered counsel, perhaps pooling their resources to hire one of the flock of tired whores; they smell of beer and field-tobacco. At the door of the Gaiety Theatre two men in top hats argue loudly, while a third, older, stoop-shouldered, stands waiting with folded arms.

Just beyond the doctor’s storefront, shared with the midwife who lives above, two shadows, boys loitering in the windbreak corner, jump out like jacks-in-the-box upon Rupert and Istvan in their silent passage. One sticks a knife to Rupert’s neck, a hunter’s short-bladed gutting knife, the other stands tense before Istvan, palm out.

They say nothing, nothing need be said. Istvan’s hand dips into his pocket, slides out empty as “Wait,” he murmurs, “I have something for you—” then with scornful force cuffs the first boy, the taller, so hard that the boy falls sideways like a sapling to an axe, as Rupert clamps the knife-wielder’s arm, spins then knees him, once, twice, kicks him to the ground and into his fallen accomplice, kicks that other in the ribs, kicks him again for good measure; then he and Istvan walk on. One of the boys burbles and vomits, the other lies still.

Istvan glances over his shoulder—no stealthy third—as Rupert tugs his coat back into place, makes to pocket the hunting knife but “Give it to me,” says Istvan, “mine’s gone missing…. Did he cut you, that little prick?” tilting Rupert’s chin to check for hurt but “No,” says Rupert, smiling, a very faint smile.

“It’s wet.”

“May be a scratch. Fuck it.”

“Let me—” Istvan reaches with his handkerchief, Rupert halts him, hand on his wrist; and they stand so, in the wind and the dark, Rupert holding Istvan’s wrist, staring at one another.

At the Poppy, each turns his own way through the bustling lobby, this evening’s show has drawn last evening’s crowd as well. Jonathan’s piano chants a cheery alehouse rhythm, Laddie and the girls will soon be on the floor, so Omar is busy, Guillame is busy, but both converge on Rupert as he slips off his coat, Omar’s frown instant at the sight of the blood—“What’s this then, what happened?”—but Rupert shakes his head, lights the first of a nightlong chain of cheroots.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “Nothing happened.”

Meanwhile Istvan reaches the stairs, Decca and Velma descending and “Go on,” Decca orders Velma as soon as she sees him, “wait for me in the kitchen,” waiting until Velma has gone to ask, “So?” tense and low. “What happened?”

“Nothing. The meat was bad, the wine was passable. He has a strumpet’s taste in ornament. What did you expect?”

She glances toward the lobby, then motions him determinedly upward, the quiet heart of the staircase and “I have money,” she says, low. “Enough to send you back to Brussels. Or even Paris, if you—”

“Little girl, I don’t want your money.”

“Oh what do you want?” Her voice is hard, her eyes, yes, are filled with tears. “Don’t play your games here! That man—you don’t understand, he will kill you. He and Rupert—”

“No,” says Istvan, kindly but firmly, he could be correcting a wayward child. “The old masher, yes. Yes indeed. But Rupert—”

“There is more there than you imagine.” She is whispering, now, her fingers tight on his arm. “How do you think we live, here? He loathes it, but he does it. For all of us.”

Istvan says nothing. She holds him, he watches her, chin lifted, gazing down through his lashes, until voices rise, men’s voices, the tricks beginning to gather so she turns, dark silk rustling like dead leaves, and Istvan climbs to the landing though not to the Cell after all: instead he heads to the Blue Room, Lucy alone in a corset and a frown, cleaning her nails with a pair of embroidery scissors and “Miss Dollymop,” he says, in an old man’s high-pitched wheedle, “Miss Judy, have you time to give an old gent succor? How about just a suck?”

Lucy laughs, then frowns again and “I’d do it for free,” leaning back to show herself, smooth legs, pink sex, “but I’m on duty. The show is ’most over, the tricks’ll be up here directly—”

“Ah,” his murmur, “don’t fret about that. Put your dress on, darling. We’re going to have some fun.”

Omar

So I say to the gent, this trick from Madagascar, or Borneo, or wherever the fuck he hails from with his swarthy skin and his two-inch prick, I say, “Sir, messire, your honor, things may well be different elsewhere, but this is how we do it at the Poppy.” And then I throw him out on his ass. As soon as he could stand he was back inside, laughing. He even bought me a whiskey.

You have to know how to treat them, the gents, in a way that keeps the peace
and
keeps them coming back. You have to understand that what they seek here, all of them, no matter what shape it takes—if it’s Jennie hanging from a strap or Laddie bent over a chaise, drink or smoke or dope or whatever-may-have-you—it’s relief they’re after, right? They have an itch, or a pain, or a broken heart, or a stiff prick, so you get ’em scratched, or soothed, or fucked or sucked or petted on—Pearl is best at that—and you take their money, and you thank ’em. And they always come back. Some gents still come who were here the very first night; I remember them. I was here, too.

I had come down from Victoria, where my sisters were, and my wife—I was married, yes, and happy, until she died, my Annie, the cholera got her and the little baby, too, and afterward I didn’t care to be married again so much. And my sisters, well, one of them was wed to a soapy churchman, he was always on and on about the torments of the flesh. We get a few like that here at the Poppy, pure tit-mad but always scowling in the morning. The girls don’t like them. And they’re cheap, that type, they don’t want to pay for their sins.

Anyroad I left Victoria, and since I didn’t care to rob I fought my way up the river instead, bare-knuckling it for a few dollars a bout, for anyone who’d pay to watch. I learned to shave my pate, then, so’s there would be nothing to grab on to; it kept me cleaner, too. And I learned I could take a deal of pain and come back shiny. Bad thing was, it made me a bit of a brawler—and I was a youngish chap, already I thought I could whip anything in shoe leather, right?

So when I came here I fought all the townies, and beat ’em, and was casting about for something else to beat on when I met Rupert. Now, to look at him, lean as he is, and dark as a diddakoi, you wouldn’t think he could box it up man-to-man. But Jesu, he destroyed me. Not that he could hit so hard—although he can—but that he never quit, just kept on and on until I was on the ground and crawling and Stop, I said, I’m all in. You win. And then he gave me one more, just to think about. And then he hired me.

Men need refreshment,
he said to me, as we sat drinking in the Four Cups; nasty place, the ale reeks like bilge water. But he was talking about the Poppy.
If all they want is to dip their wicks, fine, they can go to Suzette’s, or to that mongrel Angus. Or the Alley, and stop in at the sawbones on their way home for the clap they just caught. But we can offer them something more.

He’s a deep, deep thinker, you know, Rupert, and Miss Decca, too; she was in it as much as he was, and in a way the building’s hers, right, since it was her old man who had it first. So she could do as she liked with it, and didn’t we work to tart it up! They were both tickled to find that I could sew—as I can, a fine, neat seam, my sisters taught me. So Miss Decca and I made the costumes, and the curtains. And Rupert used the hammer and the broom.

It was my idea to have the dope, mostly because I enjoy a taste myself now and again. It’s better than drink, leaves your belly alone, and you can mark up the price however high you like, because those who want it’ll pay no matter what. Same as some of the gents’ desires, you know: they can get plain-fucked any place, even their own wedded wives will do that. But to fuck the girl you carry in your mind, you know, the one who wouldn’t have you, or the one you’ll never have, the one you shouldn’t have—or the boy, there are those who like it that way, too—to have just what you want, as you want it, served up private and discreet: well, who wouldn’t pay for that? However much, it’s always worth the cost.

And for the gents without daydreams, well, we give ’em the show to think on, the girls dressed up so pretty and fine, Jen with her needle-tracks covered, and Vera, and Pearl with her moony smile. And wily Puggy always thinking of new things for them to do, pretending to be princesses, or rubbing themselves with feathers, or the Roman Candle—the gents always go for that one—while our Jonathan plays so high-class you’d swear you were in a concert hall with the queen. He’s a good lad, Jonathan, does his best and never complains, not that he can, you know, but still. I’d like to catch the gent who cut him, I truly would.

That first night we didn’t have Jonathan yet, nor Puggy, nor any of these girls—only two girls did we have, Lorraine and, what was it, Nora or Dora—Dora, yes. We didn’t even have the sign yet, only the name, Under the Poppy
chalked mysterious-like on the wall outside. It was me on the door, Miss Decca the hostess, and Rupert the host and barkeep and coin-changer and everything else, telling the girls what to do, how to stand, how to flutter their fans: You’re the Queen of Sheba, he told Lorraine, sitting there with her tits out so you didn’t notice her face so much. And Dora, you’re her slave girl, you’re there to satisfy her however she likes. Understand? They didn’t really, but they were glad to be in out of the wet, and they would have done anything for Rupert; the ladies have always fancied him, not that he fancies them back.—Well, shouldn’t’ve said that, perhaps, but who cares anyroad? especially in a place like this? It’s his own affair who he fucks or doesn’t. Poor Miss Decca, she’s in love with him, you know, straight-up, and that’s not telling tales because anyone who spends a tick with her can see it. There’s some talk about them being sibs, but people only say that ’cause they live here together and aren’t wed or bedding, and people have to say something.

That other’s her true brother, the showman, the puppet man from overseas, or wherever he says he comes from: they have that same foxface look, and the same air of, what you call it, secrecy. Like they both know something you don’t. But he wears his easier than hers, like for him it’s a sweety tucked into his pocket, and hers is a bone stuck in her throat…. Wish we’d had him in the old days, with his dolls, what does he call them? The mecs, right? They put on quite a show, quite a show, I was flummoxed as a trick myself, watching. I can’t get past how he makes one talk while he’s diddling with the other, I bet he could do three at once if he’d a mind to. That bony one, the Bishop he calls him, that’s a spooky toy, don’t think we’ll have much use for it here. The one thing the gents don’t like is to be scared.

That very first night, I think we were the scared ones, were any gents going to come to us? Was the Poppy a good idea or not? But after the two queens of Sheba got done petting each other, and giggling around with their roostertail fans, the five men who were there stood in line for them. And the next night it was ten, and then thirty, and we were in business proper. We’ve never had to worry about the lucre until recently, all this commotion with the soldiers. They say there’s going to be a war, or something like. I imagine that’s why Rupert spends so much time with that Jürgen Vidor, keeping us out of harm’s way.

We’ve had a shiny time of it here, most of the time. Vera and Velma showing up just as Lorraine was falling ill, and Jen getting tossed out of her circus act…. Puggy was a stroke of luck: if he hadn’t wanted a bit of smoke he might have wound up at that penny-gaff Gaiety instead! He says he was just passing through, and maybe that’s so, but he settled down quick enough. I like Puggy. He has ten bad ideas for every good one, but his best ideas are better than anyone’s. He found us Jonathan, for one.