The Empress of India (13 page)

“I replied in a monograph of my own. I pointed out that the reason Corneille wrote so few plays was because he was a slow writer. He wrote tragedies—
El Cid,
you will recall, was one of his. It is slow work, writing tragedies. One must cry a lot. I pointed out several other errors of logic and gross misunderstandings in Hanoutaux’s monograph. He was crushed.”

“What did he do?” Margaret asked.

“What could he do? He challenged me to a duel, of course.”

“No!” Lady Priscilla’s hand went to her mouth. “Really?”

The dowager duchess sniffed. “Dueling,” she said firmly, “is against the law.”

“This is so,” Demartineu acknowledged. “Even in France, for these past thirty years it has been forbidden. Nonetheless, there is no other way for men to settle questions of honor. And, in France, every dispute concerns a question of honor. You say the Earth goes around the Sun; I say the Sun goes around the Earth—a duel will discover the truth. You say Napoleon was the savior of France; I say he was a scoundrel and his reign was a disaster. We will meet on the field of honor to decide which of us is right.”

“So, did you accept?” Margaret demanded.

“But yes, of course. Not to do so would have been unthinkable.”

“What happened?”

Demartineu leaned forward. “You must understand,” he said, “that in France today a duel is more of a, how you say, ritual than a blood sport. There are rules and formalities. What is going to happen is preordained, and understood by all.”

He held up one finger. “First, the challenge.”

Another finger. “Then the acceptance.”

Another finger. “Then the meeting of the seconds, and the choosing of the weapons, the time and the place.”

Yet another finger. “Then the seconds ask the duelists whether an apology is acceptable. ‘Cannot we avoid this senseless bloodshed?’ is the usual formula.”

All five fingers. “The refusal. ‘Honor must be satisfied!’ ”

Demartineu raised both hands for a second, and then dropped them back down onto the table, and continued his description fingerless. “Then the morning of the duel dawns. By tradition it should be cold and drizzly, but if that is not achieved, the affair will continue nonetheless. The duelists go separately to the field of honor with their seconds. A doctor arrives in a third carriage, which awaits somewhat to the side of the festivities. It is all very tense and dramatic.”

“Yes?” Lady Priscilla asked breathlessly. “And?”

“One last time one of the seconds asks each of them: ‘Will you not apologize? Will you not accept his apology?’ ‘No,’ each replies firmly. Honor must be satisfied.

“They stand facing each other. The referee drops a handkerchief between them. If the weapons are épées, the duel begins at that moment. If pistols, the formalities continue. They wheel about and walk off ten paces each. Then they wheel back and stand, rock still, facing each other. ‘You may begin,’ the referee calls.”

“And?” asked Lady Priscilla.

“Each fires into the air, over the head of the other. Honor is satisfied. Everyone breathes a great sigh of relief, and they all go home.”

“So,” Margaret asked, “that was your duel?”

“No,” Demartineu said. “That was every other duel in France for the past twenty years, with very few exceptions. But the gods of risibility were circling about me in this occasion.” He raised a finger again, but dropped his hand back to the table after a second. “My second, an old friend and one of France’s better known actors, communicated with Professor Hanoutaux and his second, the Viscount de Someplace-or-other. The viscount told my second, in strict confidence of course, that Professor Hanoutaux had determined to kill me. He was not going to fire over my head, but into it.
Alors,
what could I do? I did not wish to kill the professor, but I certainly did not wish for him to kill me.”

“What did you do?”

“A brilliant plan occurred to me. In my youth I was the backstage assistant to a magician called Laces the Magnificent. He did, as part of his repertoire, a trick of the name ‘The Bullet Catch.’ He had retired and was now living in a villa in Provence. I went to him for assistance.”

“You were going to catch the bullet?” Margaret asked.

“The essence of the trick,” Demartineu told her, “is that the gun goes off, with a cloud of smoke and even a recoil, but a bullet is not really fired.”

“Ah!” Margaret said.

“Laces had a pair of matched percussion-cap pistols especially made for performing this trick. Very beautiful weapons they are, too, with ivory handles and silver chasing on the barrels. And the trick mechanism is so carefully hidden that a committee of experts can come on-stage to load the guns, and to examine them carefully, and they will pronounce them genuine.”

“Ah!” Margaret said.

“I borrowed the pistols. On the appointed day we met on the Champs de Mars. The guns were loaded in front of my adversary. He suspected nothing. He picked one, and I took the other. We paced off the distance and turned. On the referee’s word, we both fired.”

“Honor was satisfied,” Lady Priscilla said.

“Acting on some caprice, I know not why,” Demartineu continued, “perhaps to somehow get even with Professor Hanoutaux perhaps due to some deeply submerged urge to perform, I grabbed at my chest, staggered, and fell to the ground.”

“You didn’t!” the dowager duchess exclaimed.

“For a few long moments I lay there, silent and still. I don’t know what I expected to hear,” Demartineu said. “Perhaps exclamations of shock, perhaps some words of remorse. What I heard instead from Professor Hanoutaux was a gloating laugh. This was too much! I rose to my feet. ‘You,’ ah, ‘dirty person,’ I yelled at him, approaching him and shaking my fist. This had an unexpected result.”

“I’m not surprised,” Margaret murmured.

“The professor, you understand, thought that I was dead. When he saw me rise and stalk toward him, it was a tremendous shock to his system, as I soon discovered. Clutching his heart, Hanoutaux gasped and fell over. His seconds attempted to force cognac down his throat to revive him, but it was no use. Within a few moments, he was dead.”

“Oh, my,” said the dowager duchess.

“My sentiments precisely,” Demartineu told her. “The gods, they were laughing at that one.”

“What happened?” Margaret asked.

Demartineu paused while the dinner plates were removed, the table was scraped, and finger bowls were put at each place. “Word of the duel spread quickly,” he said, “but it changed in the telling. By the time the story got back to me, I was a villain dyed in the black. I had, it seemed, performed some devious and underhanded trick designed to efficate—is that the word?”

“Effectuate?” Margaret suggested.

“Yes? But is not ‘efficacious’ a word?”

“It is,” Margaret agreed. “But efficate is not.”

“English!” Demartineu shrugged. “It is almost as bad as French.”

“The duel,” Lady Priscilla reminded him.

“Oh yes. Well, it was said that I had somehow, ah, caused the death of Professor Fernand Hanoutaux. This was not rational, and the French claim to be the most rational of peoples. On this point they lie.”

“Pardon me,” Lady Priscilla said, “but how was this not rational? I mean, it was mistaken, but might it not have been true? We have only your word that you did, ah, what you did, by accident.”

“Ah, you see,” Demartineu said, wiggling a finger in her direction. “Even you, and knowing only my side of the story, have your doubts. It is that I have not the honest face, yes? Well, you see, it is this: Recollect that we were having a duel. We were using trick pistols, to which only I knew the trick. If I had wished simply to kill him, would I not have simply shot him dead? I would have needed neither the hocus nor the pocus.”

“Oh,” Lady Priscilla said. “I guess. . . .”

“Such things do happen in duels occasionally, even in France. People do, by some chance, get killed. It is a regrettable accident. Sometimes, in the actuality, it is murder, but to the face, it is a regrettable accident. You see?”

“I see,” Margaret said.

“So, had I wanted a regrettable accident, I would have done what, as it happens, Professor Hanoutaux was planning to do to me. Only I would have done it first.”

The finger bowls were taken up and replaced with little dessert dishes, each supported by a little fork and a little spoon. A silver bell was rung for silence, immediately aided by a dozen or so spoons clinking against the sides of a dozen or so wine glasses. The room quieted, and the viceroy rose and spoke. It was traditional for the viceroy to speak during the dessert. It was expected, if not looked forward to. The viceroy himself did not look forward to it, but what must be done must be done, as he had said back in his office. Tonight the speech was unusually perfunctory. The viceroy introduced General St. Yves, and the other staff officers of the Lancers, who were suitably scattered about the room, spoke briefly of the British burden in administering and educating a subcontinent full of natives, some of whom welcomed the administering and many of whom seemed to resent it, and then sat down. Gradually the chatter in the room began again.

“Finish your story, Professor,” Margaret said, turning back to the table.

“I thought it was fairly well finished,” Demartineu protested.

“Oh, no, Professor,” Lady Priscilla told him. “Why, you were just getting to the good part.”

“Really?” Demartineu asked, looking at her innocently. “And what part is that?”

“The part where everyone in Paris thought you’d deliberately murdered that Professor What’s-his-name.”

“Hanoutaux,” Demartineu said. “It wasn’t everyone in Paris. It was, perhaps, ten or twenty people. But the story followed me back to Languedoc, and the
université
was not so happy with me as once they were. So I left and commenced to wander about the world, here and
there, which is something I had always wanted to do in any case. And so”—he shrugged a great gallic shrug—“here I am.”

“And where will you be going next, Professor?” Margaret asked.

“Ah! As to that, I am done with professing, I have decided. I am instead reverting to my old profession. With the aid of my new friend, Mamarum Sutrow here”—he smiled over at the little man from Kalat—“we are going to astound audiences all over Europe with performances of the astounding legerdemain and prestidigitation. In a word, a magic act.”

“You are going to become a magician?” Margaret asked.

“No, no, I am going to regain my old position of backstage person extraordinaire, but my friend Mr. Sutrow here . . .” He waved a hand grandiloquently at Sutrow. “He will emerge on the British stage—we are going to work first in England, as the audiences there are less critical—as the world-famous Indian fakir Mamarum the Great! Note you that he has the presence, he has the temperament, and, although short in stature, he has the bearing to be a great personage on the stage.”

Sutrow contrived to look embarrassed.

“But is he world-famous, then?” asked Lady Priscilla. “Are you, Mr. Sutrow? Should I have heard of you?”

“Alas, no,” Sutrow acknowledged.

“Why would anyone choose to become famous as a faker, Professor Demartineu?” demanded the dowager duchess.

“Not ‘faker,’ your ladyship, but ‘fakir,’ ” explained the professor, drawing out the final syllable to emphasize the difference in pronunciation. “A fakir is a beggar, a street performer, like the omnipresent snake charmers, or one of the religious mendicants who scarify themselves for the pleasure of their god and the amusement of the crowd. But through some sort of linguistic transformation, it has come in Europe to signify Indian magicians or other sorts of exotic Asian entertainers. These magicians perform the swords-through-basket trick, which would not fool
a small child, and talk about the Indian rope trick, which would be a true miracle if anyone could do it. Actual Indian magicians, able to perform many miracles and held in high repute by their countrymen, are known as jadoogars. My friend Mr. Sutrow here comes from a respected family of jadoogars. Is this not so, my friend?”

“I have that honor,” Mamarum Sutrow agreed. “I will be the first jadoogar in my family to bring his skills to the fabled West,” he said, with a serious expression in his dark eyes. “I shall have much to live up to. I will do my humble best.”

“You’ll have them standing on their seats begging for more,” Demartineu told him.

“Oh, I sincerely hope not,” said Sutrow anxiously. “The theater owners would surely object!”

What’s past, and what’s to come is strew’d with husks
And formless ruin of oblivion.
—William Shakespeare

I
t was past ten in the evening when Margaret and her father returned with the viceroy to the library. “Now, about this gold we’re to be guarding,” St. Yves said. “Why does it need to be guarded, and why us?”

Sir George settled into his easy chair and waved General St. Yves and his daughter to seats. “It is in the nature of gold to be guarded,” he said.

“True,” St. Yves admitted. “And there must be some more usual means for guarding it.”