Mercury Waltz, The by Koja Kathe

Author:Koja, Kathe [Koja, Kathe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Roadswell Editions
Published: 2014-01-12T20:00:00+00:00

Herr Robb is certain that a rat is watching him, something fierce and small with shining eyes beneath a cone of old newsprint; or it may possibly be two rats, crouched there on the slimy alley bricks, but “As you’ll see, the renovations you ordered are complete,” he says to Benjamin de Metz, chilly as always no matter the heat, holding the side door for him to step into the building: theatre once and now theatre again, the Garden of Eden with its gold proscenium and royal blue curtains, its newly varnished stage that “Can accommodate all sorts o’ shows, milords,” says the chief builder to the two in their fine suits and bowlers, out of place amidst the capped and busy workmen. “You’ll find all to your liking, my fellows here have been toiling day and night to have it done.”

“They are being very well paid to do so,” says Herr Robb.

“Show me the catwalk,” says Benjamin de Metz.

Herr Robb trails behind, what is a catwalk?—appalled then to watch as his client clambers up metal stairs to a narrow perch far above, where he peers down with a strange smile, as if seeing something on the stage besides its complement of workers; he takes out his little notebook, he makes his cryptic notes. He is a cryptic man, Herr Robb has learned, and a voluptuary, unlike his austere father and yet in some ways very much the same: swift to punish, slow to reward, most at home in his own company, though young de Metz goes his father one better, and keeps even his colleagues at a hard arm’s length.

Certainly Herr de Vries is finding his visit trying, or so it is murmured in the salons, especially in this atmosphere of hysteria over the theatre competition, as if that outcome should somehow decide the fate of the city itself. Mayor Eszterhaus bemoans his citizens’ escalating complaints—Half of them write letters, the other half throw stones. And ordure. And all of them blame me! They even blame me for the heat!—while Tibor Banek complains angrily to Herr de Vries: See the Solon so pleased to trumpet that foul show—that is the doing of Hebert, I know, Konrad is a jelly-spine. Herr de Vries himself drinks more anisette than usual, and relieves himself less successfully with his fading lily-lad, tended by Jozsef—who cautions The boy is making himself ill, you’ll need another soon, my lord—while trying to stay abreast of business in this new landscape of moral mania, Eig acts as if one ought oneself to follow all the laws one makes! He himself had chastised Eig severely for yet another lapse—

You said you’d closed that theatre!

The Commission closed it, sir.

Yet even a clerk knows if a license is valid or invalid. Do you want to go back to the clerk’s bench, Martin?

—while mourning anew the loss of Javier Arrowsmith, who could have helped navigate with this cloven de Metz, who needs must be humored on the foolish competition as he

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