Читать книгу The Magician's Study - Tobias Seamon - Страница 9

Letters TO Doughboy

Now, I know you’ve all been standing for quite some time—yes, madam, your grimace gives away a slight air of discomfort—so why don’t you all come this way and seat yourselves on the pillows and divans in the corner of the study Rouncival fancied “the Khan’s tent.” The carpets and wall hangings are all from Persia or beyond, with the one shading the window once a possession of a nineteenth-century Emir of Bokhara, the same cruel Emir who cast two Englishmen into a vermin-filled pit for years on end before finally having them beheaded in the center square. The Englishmen, it should be noted, were most definitely spies for the East India Company. Please feel free to pour yourselves iced tea from the service on the table there, itself a family heirloom of the Tsarist hero General Cherniaev, known in his time as “The Lion of Tashkent” for the conquest of that ancient bastion of the Silk Road. Here in the study, you are always, always surrounded by wonders.

Is everyone all set? There are fresh lemon slices on that tray, yes madam, right there. Of course, take as many slices as you like. Ah, I see you are a great fan of lemon in your tea. You will, no doubt, be safe from scurvy into the foreseeable future. I am joking of course.

I will take this moment to loosen my tie. Already the heat of the day is affecting me, though the Khan’s tent is certainly cool enough. Now, is everyone settled? Then I will continue. So, Robert tramped the wilds of the Northeast, learning all he could during his time with the Traveling Extravaganza. From the clowns he mastered tumbling, make-up, and crocodile tears, while the sleight-of-hand artists showed him how to conceal a card, or an automobile if need be, up his sleeve. The Extravaganza’s sole artificer, a French-Canadian rummy styled “Babel the Brilliant,” explained to Robert what he could of hidden contraptions and the mundane-unto-magical effects of smoke and mirrors, while Welt taught by example the purity of showmanship and a hearty slap on the back. Alongside these and many other things, Rouncival was also introduced to “The Plush Tent of the Tigress,” a less-than-legal aspect of the show that Welt allowed at the dark, outer edges of the Extravaganza. It was in the tent of the Tigress, where Ruby Lily, Queen Serpentina, and Amazonia Snowdon plied their midnight trade, that Robert became a man.

You may ask: how do we know of Rouncival’s strange compatriots ? The answer is: from the many letters he sent to his younger brother William, who was away in the war. While Robert periodically wrote to his parents to assure them of his well-being, the notes were perfunctory at best; if he included any money to his financially strapped family, the letters made no mention of it. But to his brother, whom Robert referred to as “Doughboy” part in jest and part in bitterness for his own deformity, he told everything. William Rouncival himself had been equally unsatisfied with life in Kingston. Correctly foreseeing that America would have to abandon its isolationism and join the war, William enlisted in 1916. When America did indeed enter the conflict, William had already risen to the rank of lance corporal and was sent to Europe as part of the A.E.F. It was there, fighting in the trenches of France, that he received most of Robert’s correspondences.

I have here, in what you see is a bloodstained packet, the letters, from which I will read a few short excerpts. William’s end of the correspondence can only be guessed at, as Robert would set the letters adrift in the Gulf of Mexico shortly after the war. That he saved only his own words is typical of Rouncival’s continuous self-reinvention. What the remaining notes do reveal is that both William and Robert were, despite their various hardships, still very much young men. Teenagers, if you will, both thrown into the heaving cauldron of the world at a very early age.

Surprisingly or not, the main subject of the correspondence was in fact their escapades with women. The grimmest, most horrific details of life on the road or at the front are related only in the shortest, most obtuse terms, while an intrigue with a willing mademoiselle behind the lines or a dalliance in the tent of the tigress received wide-eyed detail. Of course, we know William’s side only from Robert’s commentary, but still, certain themes are obvious. The following letter is distinct from the others for the amount of time spent describing a confrontation in a forlorn hamlet in upper New York. To wit:

Dear Doughboy,

Hah! That is what I must say most of the time. Every day, something new, like a blemish on the face, which puzzles me with its familiar, yet slightly different aspect.

We are in Fort Edward right now, and I must tell you, when you come home, should you find yourself in Fort Edward you will pray to return to the front or the back or wherever you are at this moment. The rats can be no bigger, the skies lower, or the people surlier. Being allowed to return fire only seems fair, as the residents are shooting glances right and left. While hanging posters at the tavern, twice I was called out by in-bred drunkards regarding my limp. Only the fortuitous entrance of Jerzy (in search as always of the dog’s hair) saved me from a thrashing. How often can one believe that a Polish strongman will come to one’s rescue? Not often, I think, and soon I shall begin to carry a cane (not that I need one) or a pistol to shut the louts up. As it was, Jerzy and I stayed on at the tavern for a while and took most of the patrons’ coin with the Three Blind Men card game. (Have you been practicing? I tell you, master that and you will win all the cigarettes you could smoke in a lifetime!) In the meantime, if things get as rough as they did last week or whenever you last wrote, and don’t tell me Black Jack has now forbidden pencils at the front, I’ll send Jerzy your way. For a Pole, he’s good in a pinch.

As you can tell, young Robert was already a bit of a cutthroat, a young man more than familiar with the rough ways of tavern folk. And advising William to cheat his mates of their rations? Sharp practice indeed. Here is another, more usual, type of note, written, we think (Robert never bothered to date his letters) in the late spring of 1918.

Doughboy,

Oh, Doughboy Doughboy Doughboy! Have I one for you! You may be proud of pulling off that affaire (as you put it so daintily) the other day, and I do congratulate you on certain aspects: a redhead in the coop and a chicken for the company’s cook pot afterwards is good work indeed! Birds in both hands, and the bar would stand you for the night on the story (if true) alone. But I must tell you, this morning I had quite the affaire myself. First, there was a near-catastrophe last evening. A farmer became enraged at Babel’s chicanery, as apparently the watch had been of some value to the poor serf, and a riot near started. Welt, who should have seen it coming, had us off before the girls were even packed. So this morning I took the time to check if Amazonia was all right after our unseemly departure. I know, I know, I shouldn’t go to see her so often, it puts me at times in a blue way, but this time, oh Doughboy, this time it was different. Perhaps it was because we have camped near a quiet little stream, the weather is surprisingly mild, and she had just come back from washing, but the usual hurried, ruttish way was absent. We laughed at the farmer of the night before, and as she sought something to wear, her trunks were in such disarray that the only thing she could find were her old gypsy scarves. She came from behind her curtain (a line of rain-gray rope tied from one end of the tent to the other with an old horse blanket slung across it) and seeing my expression, she gave the queerest smile and began to dance. It wasn’t so much a dance as a waving, as though she became a rainbow breeze, and I gawked, stunned for a moment. Yes, I admit, “stunned” is the word and I am not ashamed to say so: it is only fair that a man of the world would gawk, slavering, at a mostly naked woman in a cloak of many colors. This did not last for long, however, and we were soon at it, doing things, doing such things, Doughboy. I think perhaps she was infected with the stream or the mild sunlight, but it was something, and not something the rubes get for their two dollars in the Tigress either. Breasts that once seemed ponderous felt spry, if that is a good word for an aging fortune-teller’s tits. The rest of her was spry as well, and ever since I have been as one clonked on the head, floating. I hoped writing would clear my mind but it seems to have done the exact opposite. I will go with her down to that stream at midnight tonight if I have to carry her myself. Ah, such an image: me limping (no, striding!), the great Amazonia over my shoulder under the moonlight, into the waters, all things a breeze. Hah!

In sadder news, poor Dozy seems to be on her last legs. Where Welt will find another camel is beyond me. Scranton by tomorrow night. Slay the Hun and join me, but stay away from the Amazon, she’s mine! Love, Robert the Great

Obviously feeling good after his morning gymnastics, this is the first time Robert ever refers to himself as “the Great.” Sadly for us, this is the final letter of the correspondence. William Rouncival was killed by a shell in the vicinity of Chateau Thierry during the last major German offensive of the war. The letters were sent to Robert’s parents, who then gave them to Robert when he and the Extravaganza next passed through Kingston in September of 1918. He stayed up the entire night, reading his own words to a lost brother. The following morning he went to Welt and asked for his wages for the season. True to his benign nature, Welt paid the boy knowing full well Rouncival would use the funds to abandon the Extravaganza. As for Barnabas Welt, he soon felt his age and returned to his own people in the South, living the rest of his life at a family-owned tuberculosis sanatorium in the mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Dying himself of T.B. within three years, Welt asked to be buried in full clown regalia, and his family obliged. Still somehow on her last legs, Dozy the camel was present at the funeral as the Traveling Extravaganza’s sole representative.