Reckoning of Boston Jim (4 page)

The bottle of sherry on the sideboard has a finger width left. Eugene holds it up. “Let's kill you off then, soldier, before we do anything rash.”

At the London Coffee, House Boston orders beefsteak with potatoes, a glass of whiskey, coffee and pie. The serving woman has a wattled neck and wears three great rings. In the autumn she wore only two. Her dress then was also green, but of a darker hue. She does not recognize him. Would not, he supposes, even if she scrutinized him. And he makes no sign that he recognizes her. What would be the purpose in that? He recognizes faces he has known for years and those merely glimpsed, faces seen in windows and doorways, infants' squalling faces, and the faces of the dead, staring at the clouds. The remembered crowd his head to bursting, and cause an ache at times as if they were hammering at his skull. That is why he rarely looks directly at people unless he need intimidate. That is why he prefers his own company, if prefers is the right word.

He chews slowly. The food does not taste as fine as it usually does, the thought of his owing having returned to plague him.

The serving woman takes his plate, asks if Mister is attending the entertainment at the Victoria Theatre. It is a splendid show. The famous Miss Annabel Anderson, the astonishing Professor Hinkeman.

“Nothing better than a piece of theatre,” the Dora woman had said, and then described her favourite shows—
The Cripple of Fenchurch Street
,
A Chaste Maid of Cheapside
. Her hands moved constantly as she spoke, now pressing to her chest in imitation of a tragic heroine, now running over the shape of a corpulent actor. “People were always saying it was a great shame I never chose the stage. Didn't Mr. Hume himself remark I was a regular dramatist? Oh, I know what you're thinking, that it's not a thing for a lady. But I wouldn't be in one of those penny gaffes where people throw spoilt cabbages if they're not liking what they get. No, I'd be at the Royal. I'm talking of the Royal in London, mind. I been there once. Oh, such a grand place! Such lime lights! I seen Lily Kurl there. I'd be one like her, see. Her sort get the respect of the gentry, they do. Ah, to have hundreds of folk tossing you flowers, all adoring you, all cheering. And tell me what you've seen now. Surely you've seen some entertainment? A magic lantern show? A cosmorama?

“Not in the habit of the theatre,” Boston said, caught off guard. What do you get for your shillings, your dollar? Nothing solid, no piece of knowledge that could be put to any use. But now it seems there might be some value. For he could attend an entertainment and later tell the Dora woman what he has seen. That will be her gift. It will cost him nothing but his entrance fee. When he has finished the telling she will smile and clap her hands and he will go on, unburdened of his debt, and all will be as it was before.

≈  ≈  ≈

The Victoria is nearly full. Red velvet curtains hang heavy on brass hooks. Plaster cherubs and mermaids adorn the lintels and balconies. A man on a ladder trims a coal lamp. The ladder totters and he wails, much to the merriment of the crowd below.

The entertainment is late. The crowd grows restless. The few women present crack open fans. The men lean back, inspect their pocket watches,
hallo
across the crowd. Boston takes a seat in the mid-region. All about him are the crosswinds of gossip. There is Mr. Mifflin Gibbs in the best balcony, he with that fancy grocery and provisioning store. How dare a coloured man place himself so high above them? There is the bone merchant Mr. Wang and there the cobbler Mr. Isaac. There Mr. Applegath, and there Mr. and Mrs. Laforge, putting on airs, the damned rebs.

A scuffle breaks out to shouts of encouragement just as the curtains jerk open, just as the revel master, a red-whiskered man in a top hat, calls out for attention. After an interminable preamble he bawls out the names Master Henderson and Little Miss Olive, demands applause that is heartily given. Miss Olive, ringlets bobbing, leads the sullen Master Henderson, a thick-limbed boy in too-small britches. In the pit the piano man begins a gentle tune. The children sing:

Oh blessings forever on Aileen Astor!

She is as good as she is lovely and twenty times more;

Her sparkling blue eyes and magical smile

' Tis the hardest of heart my love doth beguile

The whiskey-soaked man beside Boston sniffles and wipes his nose with his hand. “Ain't she just like my little Sophie. Oh, my girl.” He stands and shouts: “Hear! Hear!” Stumbles against Boston. Boston looks him full in the face, takes in the bulbous nose, the scrofulous skin, the marl-coloured eyes aswim with tears.

The man apologizes profusely, to the ceiling, the floor. Explains as he sidles away from Boston that he must stand closer, that his eyes are weak and always have been.

The revel master again holds up his hands for quiet. “Ladies and gentlemen. You have heard, you may have witnessed, certainly you have awaited with great expectation, the legendary Miss Annabel Anderson of San Francisco, back by popular demand to present her world-famous Spider Dance!”

A young woman strolls out. Her dress is of purples and greens. At her neck is a long white scarf. She gazes about half-smiling as the crowd cheers. Is she pretending to pick flowers? What sort of entertainment is this? She looks at her hands with mild concern, inspects them more closely. Her shriek is enough to shatter glass. The piano pounds frantically as Miss Anderson flails at her bodice and skirt, tears off her scarf, lashes it over her throat and back. Now she is lifting her skirts high and showing red stockings and now jigging in a circle, all to the hoots and calls of the audience. This goes on for a time, and then, for some sort of a finale, she tears her hair from its neat arrangement, her shrieks timed to the piano chords until the piano abruptly halts. She smoothes her hair back from her face, curtsies to the audience, to its thunderous applause. The floor shakes from the stomping. The curtain rushes closed.

Boston is mystified. He'd been expecting real spiders, but here the woman was only feigning. At least the People who lived by Fort Connelly did their best to make it seem real. Perhaps it would be better to tell the Dora woman of their entertainments. Of, say, the girl who was sent to the ghost world. A chisel was thrust through her temple. Blood flowed from out of the wound, from out of her mouth. Her eyes popped out of bloodied sockets. She was cast into a fire from which ghostly voices came and was not seen again for five days until another ceremony brought her back, healed and whole. Yes, Boston could tell her of this, and also of the wild men who tore flesh from each other to feast upon. And of the great masks that flew about the houses and transformed—now a bear, now an eagle, now the face of a man in torment. It was theatre and trickery, all of it, but was also a way of making deals with the spirit world. As such it had some purpose. Not like this idiocy.

“And now for our main billing of the evening, an Electromagician and Spiritualist of the highest order, on his final world tour before retirement, Ladies and Gentleman of Victoria please welcome the esteemed Professor Eliab Theophilus Hinkeman of New York City!”

The piano plays a dignified strain and the curtains part again. Professor Hinkeman has a shock of silver hair, a neat silver beard. He stands motionless on the stage, one hand grasping his lapel, the other a thick cane. Beside him is a young woman in an unadorned dress of palest grey. He introduces her as Miss Frielan, orphan niece, faithful assistant. Then says: “Ladies, gentlemen. Be warned. The faint of heart should take their leave now, for I am about to show you what lies beneath the skin of the world.”

The crowd mutters and shifts. The ladies glance at their escorts, lean closer.

“I require a volunteer for my first exhibit. From him I will pull the very form of his soul. It will not cause pain, nor injury. It will not affect him in any way. My talent is only to make clear what is before us all if we but only look.”

A young man clambers onto the stage at the encouragement of his friends. He has scrubby moustaches, a jaunty hat. His friends call out “Leewood, Leewood.” He shields his eyes with his hand, mouth agape, looking out into the audience as if he were a sojourner sighting a country of dangerous marvels.

The Professor frowns in concentration, reaches behind Leewood's neck and pulls a rabbit from out of his collar. The rabbit twists in the Professor's grip. The audience hoots and laughs. So it is a comedy of sorts. The Professor puts the rabbit into a bag held by Miss Frielan and studies the bulbous eyes, the reddish hair of the next volunteer. He claps his hands over the man's ears and yanks out two goldfish. Miss Frielan holds out a bowl of water. The Professor bows. The crowd shouts for more and the Professor obligingly pulls a snake from the pocket of a bespectacled, clerky fellow who scowls and shouts “ridiculous.” It is a simple trick, but it may make the Dora woman laugh if he tells her of it. Certainly the men about him are guffawing so hard that some are near to choking.

The Professor now makes a matchsafe vanish and then appear in the pocket of a man at the back of the crowd. He stands playing cards end to end until they reach the proscenium. He speaks constantly to draw attention from the deft movements of his hands, from what shouldn't be seen. Speaks of his soldiering youth, of his escape from the Sultan's prison with aid of a beautiful harem girl, of impossible landscapes of sand, of his apprenticeship in magic in the dens of Goa and Seville, of the loneliness of his life, until Lila, dear Lila, Miss Frielan, his orphan niece. “Stand centre stage, my dear.” She is pretty and demure in the light of the coal lamps and candles, someone's cherished daughter, someone's faithful sweetheart. The Professor passes his hands over her eyes and she takes on the aspect of one asleep. He assists her to stretch out on a table, then holds his arms over her. The crowd gasps. She is rising. She is suspended in midair, not limp, but as if she were made of stone. The men point furiously and reassure each other they are witnessing the same thing. The Professor lets her gently down. She rises to loud applause.

“Miss Frielan, ladies and gentlemen, has a sensitive soul. She is clean of sins. It is only for this reason she can float like an angel. But, and this my friends is a truth, she also attracts spirits by her gentleness and purity, the way a warm hearth attracts the living after a day of wind and rain. They pass through her, whispering messages for those who are still among the quick, for those, perhaps, who are here this night.”

“A post office, is she?” someone shouts. There is laughter of a nervous sort. Miss Frielan looks sorrowful. The Professor grimly searches the crowd.

“I must ask for total silence for this, our final marvel. I must ask that each and every one of you retain his breath until I shout ‘Release.' Only then will the spirits visit us.” Professor Hinkeman counts to five and all in the crowd gulp the air, all except for Boston. He sits while 'round him cheeks bulge and eyes grow round. Spirits are of no use to him; it is hard enough to navigate among the living.

Miss Frielan begins to tremble. Her limbs jerk. Her eyes roll upward.

“Release!” the Professor shouts. He feigns a stagger at the force of the exhalation. He raises his cane. “They are here!” The audience gasps in its next breath, and such a gasp it is. The air is of a sudden thinner, colder. There is a shift from jocularity to unease. It is as if a threshold has been crossed. Boston knows the feeling from the winter festivals of the People. He does not like it.

“Oh, Frank, you'll be striking riches,” Miss Frielan says, her voice querulous and high. Then in a voice deep and manly: “Thomas, my son, you have my blessing for your journey.” And so it goes. She speaks in French, Italian, German, in the accents of England and Ireland and America. She is the voice of lovers, mothers, sons, and friends, all who have concerns and advice, premonitions and warnings for Amos and John, for Jacques and Antonio and Wilfred.

Of all the tricks this is the most simple, and yet the one that draws the most excitement. For here is the suggestion that the future has a discernible path. Not too late? For what? The pronouncements are vague enough to apply to anyone with those names, which are all common enough.

“Ah, Jim, do not forget your obligations. You will regret it mightily if you do.” Miss Frielan says this in a flat, unsexed cadence. It is the voice of no one Boston has ever heard. Trickery, damned trickery.

After a time more of this, the Professor taps Miss Frielan on the shoulder. She starts and flutters her hands as if troubled by butterflies. Professor Hinkeman and Miss Frielan bow and curtsy. The crowd claps and cheers. The piano plays a rollicking tune.

≈  ≈  ≈

Boston walks into a night that is moonless and smells of rain. The theatre crowd jostles past him. In a nearby alley a lantern swings in the dark. Someone is tunelessly whistling.

“I once knew all the words from the
Dovecot Lovelies
,” the Dora woman said. “I'm not jesting. I could sing them at the drop of your hat. And I did, too, when we was invited on board the
Grappler
. Surely you've seen the Navy men all got up in their splendid uniforms. Such brass buttons! Such bearing! After I sang, the sailors played the fiddles and accordions and Mr. Hume sang ‘The Rat Catcher's Daughter' in his fine baritone. And later we watched a burlesque of
Babes in the Wood
. Oh, but I couldn't stop laughing. The sailors they looked so funny in their bonnets and skirts. And we had ginger beer and apple cakes and we danced until the sun was rising. How I love to dance. How I love music. And here it's so quiet; it's so dull.”

Boston halts as if he has come up against an invisible wall. He will only tell her of the theatre? Speech has no substance, no worth that can be calculated or traded. It must be a gift with form and weight and high value, for what she returned to him had high value indeed. Without an appropriate toll, as it were, he can no longer take the route past the bay, and this is the most convenient route by far. He'll have to scramble through uncut bush like some fugitive. And then it is still possible he will encounter the Dora woman here in Victoria some day, perhaps years from now. She said she comes to town whenever she can. Certainly she is the sort who would wave from across the street. How can he say, when questioned, that he was too skint to spend good money on a gift? He might as well slap her face, howl insults.