The Mercury Waltz Read Online Free Page A

the purposeful scrum of businessmen and clerks and shopgirls: Frédéric-Seraphim Blum, dutiful son, absent fiancé, devotee of theatre and good writing and God; and another servant, if all unwitting, of that railway god whom the Greeks called Hermes, that rascal lord of thresholds and of journeys, of thievery and hard commerce, of ecstasy and lies.

See time as a deck of cards, the gods’ cards call them: each card a year, or a moment as momentous, each figure thereon an actor in the branching spread of the whole. See the men of the Mercury; as children they were lovers: a thin dark boy in a black cap and jacket dropping pebbles into the gutter, one, two, half a dozen, before dropping himself from the sheltering ledge and heading off into the rain; solitude seems to suit him, this orphan, even at the monks’ school he was alone. But sometimes, as now, when the rain makes a certain murmuring sound, or he hears a certain kind of wistful song— Come with me, my darling, my darling, come with me into the hills— what can those words mean to him who knows nothing but the road and wants nothing more, no, yet why should his heart hurt so and he long to gather and keep safe, to have and to hold, my darling, my darling —
    —until he is breathing fast, until the rain becomes a torrent and a viaduct looms, someone hunkered there already so he loosens the stick at his belt: then sees it is a boy even younger than he, plastered to the skin and pinched at the lips, how long has he been sitting there, and how long already on the dodge for him, the frail mother and ragged small sister, and he the gutter peacock prince who sings songs and makes jests for the gents who sometimes pay, the first words he offers now are a show: See this, making a scrap of old velvet into a mouth, a hungry mouth, it spits out six pennies and then gobbles them back up, spits again, gobbles, overcome each time by such greedy surprise that now Rupert is smiling, now the two boys are sitting side by side, now he gives his name, lstvan, just that and no more, what more does he need with that laugh, and those eyes, and a boast to make a play of anything, this scrap, that shadow, if Rupert will only watch awhile he will see—
    —and that is the start of it, the heart of it, the two of them bound from that viaduct as one, as the pennies are carried in Rupert’s pocket and the velvet scrap becomes a hat for a little figure of wood, stub body and arms unmoving, carved out by Rupert with a stolen knife, the skill passed to Istvan who learns so easily and so well, who takes great delight in the pert little man, who in turn teaches Rupert how a show can be a game, can be all sorts of games, can make friends and open doors and urge the coins from one hand to another, their hands, their shows—
    Try again, Mouse, take a breath. It’s easy if you try, yeah?
    Not for me. I can’t do as you do, change his voice or throw it, or so command the attention of a crowd, it seems all Istvan must do is choose a stump to stand on and people, children, men will stop in their tracks to watch. But he can pick up stories from the streets and sing, a tenor that one day will drop into a handsome baritone; and pass the hat and guard the coins, already he hits well enough to break a man’s bone, and has…. So thus they go, the King of Staves and the Jack of Puppets, those grimy streets the first of all their stages, and hearts trump in every game, every time, no matter what the playing stakes or the reckoning at the end.
    But not every boy, wild boy on his own, so sweetly finds his way. Let the cards fall again in a different year, and see another boy beside another gutter, holey boots and knotted spotted neckerchief, flipping rocks at a tavern window, playing a game with himself. Shortly two others, youngsters with bare feet and dripping noses, wander up to watch him, What you doing, Haden? and There’s a man in there, says Haden, says he’ll give me tenpenny if I can knock a