Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

One day in the eighth month, as I passed that way, a girl with golden hair was consulting the astrologer. Near the top of the arch, a ragged hole fringed by ferns let in shafts of sunlight, which chanced to gleam on the girl’s hair as she stood below; or perhaps it was that she had stationed herself in that position deliberately. I saw how the sunbeams lent her an aura of additional gold about her head and how a posy of flowers had been bound in with the ribbon which confined her tresses. Only then did I recognise her as La Singla, enchanting star of our company.

She thanked the astrologer with pretty and well-rehearsed gestures and, as she turned away, I crept up and caught her about the waist, kissing her velvet cheeks.

“Oh, Prian, I pray—Do not kiss me in the public view! My husband is jealous enough already!”

“But your husband trusts me!”

“My husband does not trust me, and that’s the whole trouble! You know him for what he is—an old fox who smells mischief even when there’s none about. He says I’m too pretty, but I don’t believe that.”

Ah ha, thought I to myself, there’s a little mystery here! La Singla was married to Lemperer, manager of our company, and I well knew that both he and she consulted an astrologer who lived almost opposite their house, which we called our theatre. Why was she speaking with the plump astrologer? Did her first words not give me a clue: “My husband does not trust me?” Crafty and watchful though Lemperer was, he must recently have had fresh reason not to trust his pretty wife. So—perhaps she had a lover. I wondered which of the actors it might be.

“Well, now, my pretty Singla, it is common knowledge that your beauty is unrivalled, particularly at night by limelight, so it is natural that Lemperer should want reassurance. If you’ll come down a side way with me, and give me a kiss, then I’ll testify to him of your entire faithfulness and set his mind at rest”

“Nonsense!”

“That way, we shall all do each other a kindness!”

She looked up at me with her somewhat blank stare, so that I could notice—as had I not done scores of times before—that her eyebrows were a little too heavy and a crop of fine golden hair lay along her upper lip. Far from deterring my ambitions, these details merely spurred me on.

“You are coming with us to the ombres chinoises at noon? You will say a good word to him then, on my behalf?”

I nodded and led her down an alley which led to a side canal. There stood a house where horses were kept for towing barges. Taking her arm, I pulled her just inside the stable door and there exacted payment, plus a slight extra levy in the form of a hand down the front of her bodice, which I thought she could well afford, her exchequer being in such good condition; besides, the transaction was not our first. We were old customers, each of the other. Yet she drew away and made me walk on, although I knew the smell of hay and leather would never deter her from such dealings. So there very likely was another lover!

Over the bridge we went, she with her dainty feet twinkling, keeping her thoughts to herself, I with an eye on the world, thinking how well it looked and how reasonably everyone was occupied, whether walking or working or merely spitting down off the parapet of the bridge, as two blackamoors were doing, to the amusement of a nearby baby. A travelling man playing a little phonograph for kopettos leaned against a tree and doffed his hat ironically to La Singla.

“You have admirers everywhere, I see,” I remarked.

“He always comes to watch my performances. He is penniless, yet once he declared his love for me!”

“As every man must who cannot control his tongue.”

“That rogue could not control his fortune. He hasn’t a bean left and is reduced to playing phonografo in the street, yet his illustrious parents lie in a marble tomb topped by an azure dome on the banks of the Savoiardi Lagoon!”

“If I had to choose between the two occupations, his preference would be mine. His illustrious parents have a mouldy job by comparison!”

“Dear Prian, you forget that I know by heart the comedies from which you resurrect your old jokes.”

“Am I likely to believe that, when I’ve heard you dry up so often on stage?”

The Lemperer house stood in a fashionable street containing many prosperous houses, as well as several decayed ones. There were always people hanging about in its outer court, waiting to see Lemperer, hoping to secure his favours—not to mention beggars and poor entertainers who competed for favours from those who hoped for Lemperer’s. In his fashion, he was a man with influence.

Yet his household was like a disordered warehouse. Hardly a room or hall that was not filled with some property he had acquired or some costume he was thinking of acquiring. So kind was his heart that many rooms were occupied by impoverished relations or actors; yet so irritable was his spleen, that these dependents were always changing, arriving with laughter or leaving with tears and threats, so that there was a perpetual coming and going, and one long hoo-ha in the house.

At the centre of it all was Lemperer, wizened, fussy, deft, light-footed, articulate, angular, amusing, never entirely dressed, prancing round in his satin slippers and waistcoat, his peruke on the tilt, words, words, words pouring from his narrow lips. A figure of fun a good deal funnier than many of the figures of fun he played. A dangerous figure of fun.

He was making a spectacle of himself as La Singla and I entered, prancing round a tall man in an ankle-length cloak and his follower, a lizard-man who held on a leash two fine panthers from the Orient.

“Go away, I tell you—apply at the menagerie in the square, where they are eager to take anything with fur on its body, however mangy! Just get those cats out of here, fast! They’ll stink the house out and eat all my actors, too, by the way they’re licking their chops.”

In fact, the beasts were yawning, from boredom or illness. The man in the long cloak answered in a melancholy voice, “Sire, I have supplied theatres from Rome to Tolkhorm in the North, and sometimes with beasts less fine, less docile, less fragrant, than these two elegant pussies, and I can assure you that animals do adorn whatsoever entertainment you put on. I guarantee you that from the bottom of my convictions.”

“You may guarantee me from the bottom of your boots, you mountebank, and it will make no difference to me. My entertainments entertain without the necessity for animals widdling against the scenery, let me tell you!” As he pranced about, one of the panthers moved forward by perhaps the length of a whisker, and immediately Lemperer went sprawling backwards and landed in an armchair, exactly as in the scene in The Year-Long Feast.

“The monster’s going to eat me! Help, help! Oh, the brute went for me, you set him on me! Help! Get out, you swindler, before I have you thrown out! Do you think we all want a dose of rabies? Where’s my wife?”

But La Singla was already running to him, throwing out her arms and shrieking. She shrieked considerably more than the average human being, and somewhat musically. The man in the long cloak turned, beckoned impatiently to his assistant, and stalked out. The panthers trotted off with relief.

Several of the players were standing about, laughing in an idle way. I clapped my friend Portinari on the shoulder and made to move, saying, “I must go upstairs and prepare myself for Albrizzi”—that being the name of the character I was currently getting up.

“No, no, spare yourself, my friend—it’s all been changed. Albrizzi is postponed! We are to do The Visionaries next! Word has just come summoning us to play The Visionaries next week at Vamonal.”