Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“Cyprian! Cyprian the Bald!”

Cyprian grasped Roy’s bony, spectral, age-freckled hand. Once he’d decided to join the living, Roy became energized by possibilities.

“Oh for a beer,” he cried. “A little sip of schnapps. Could you see your way clear to wet my whistle?’

“Dad…”

“Yes, yes, assuredly, I know there is compelling evidence that it might kill me.” Roy made brushing motions in the air as if swiping off the warnings. “But a very tiny amount might actually be beneficial, serve as an inoculation, if you will.”

“We’re down to a teaspoon or two every few hours,” said Delphine. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have your teaspoon.”

“Now we’re talking!” crowed Roy. He patted Cyprian’s arm. “Would you care to join me? Give this man a teaspoon!” Roy swept his arm grandly toward the little cutlery drawer.

“He can have a glass, Dad.” She unclipped a set of keys from her belt, took a glass outside to the car. She unlocked the trunk and then used another key to unlock a toolbox padlocked into the trunk. From the box, she removed a pint bottle of brandy. She poured the glass half full, set the glass on the roof of the car, locked everything back up, and brought the glass of brandy back to Roy’s bedside. She poured a bit of the glass into a bottle cap and dipped in a teaspoon.

“Salut!” Roy opened his mouth and then closing it around the spoon.

Cyprian nicked his glass at the old man.

“What are you up to now?” Roy’s tone was convivial, but his eyes glittered, full of sudden tears. “Are you casting around for a job and looking for a wife? Did you come here as a dog returns to a place it’s once been fed?”

Cyprian took a large swallow of the brandy, and Roy went on speculating. “There’s always farmwork around here, of course, but that is both brutal and seasonal. I speak from much experience. Now there’s our thriving main street, all those shops lined up raking in cash. Clerking. Perhaps you could learn to barber. Oly Myhra’s getting old. His pole needs painting. Hah hah! His pole needs painting! My pole”—he nudged Cyprian—“hasn’t been painted for the last twenty-six years. What about yours?”

Cyprian looked at Delphine. She raised her eyebrows but kept her face impassive.

“The paint’s fresh on mine,” said Cyprian. “What do you hear from the rest of the club?”

“Mannheim is still aloft,” said Roy. “And Fidelis married the woman you skipped out on, that is”—he nodded at Delphine with affection—“her Royal Obstinacy. Once again, she has nursed me back from the brink of the abyss. I had flung myself headlong into the drink, you know, and made of myself something of an embarrassment to her. Still, she loves her old dad. She tapered me off. How about that second teaspoon?”

“Live it up,” said Delphine. Roy closed his eyes and opened his mouth. She put the spoon in.

“I didn’t run out on her,” said Cyprian, giving Delphine a meaningful look. “I offered her an engagement ring. A real nice one. She turned me down.”

“Watch out,” said Delphine. “I know all about where that ring ended up.”

“Ah,” gasped Roy. He had taken the spoon from Delphine’s fingers and was sucking on it like a happy child. “The disappointments of love lie heavier each year. Time does not, as the philosopher’s wishful thinking goes, time does not heal all wounds. When I fell, I fell hard,” said Roy proudly. “I fell through the center of the world.”

“You’ve milked your love martyrdom far enough,” said Delphine. “I’m tired of it. She was my mother you know, I’m the one who really got the raw deal here. And ended up taking care of you, you booze hound, all of these years!”

“And hasn’t it been a grand old time!” cried Roy. He was always encouraged and cheered when Delphine joined him in his bantering. “I believe that the sacred love I have borne these many years is a love that has sucked me straight into the vortex, the omphalos of the universe, and there I have seen such things my friends. Such things!…” Roy let his voice trail off and his gaze unfocus, as though he were reliving a vision. “Mostly though”—he shook his head, jolting back—“I have seen a lot of hooch disappear.”

“Dad’s mistaken the navel of the universe,” said Delphine, “for the dimple at the bottom of the schnapps bottle.”

“Well, be that as it may, I am actually here,” said Cyprian, with an air of setting things right at last, “to play an engagement.”

“A what?” Roy’s mouth dropped in delight.

“That’s right,” said Cyprian. “I’m not really looking for a job. I’m part of the lyceum series. I travel with the Snake Man now.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a roll of pink cardboard tickets. “How many would you like?”

“The Snake Man?” said Delphine, a little wounded somehow, maybe even a bit jealous. “You could have written. Does he double as your human table?”

“It didn’t have the same effect,” said Cyprian, “with two men, though we did work out a few other balancing tricks. He owns his own python, brings it onstage in a leather case on wheels. He’s got an assortment of reptiles,” Cyprian paused, “and one arachnid.”

“What’s his name?” said Delphine.

“Mighty Tom.”

“A good name for a performer.”

“No, that’s the spider. My partner’s name is Vilhus Gast.”

So that, thought Delphine, was that.

“What’s he like?” she asked.

“Well, he’s a lot like me,” said Cyprian. “A performer, you know. He made it over here from Lithuania and he’s a Jew. I was a real curiosity to him at first. I took him home with me.” Cyprian laughed. “Boy was he surprised.”

“How come?”

“There’s no Jews on the reservation, I mean to speak of. I never knew one when I was growing up, any more than he’d know an Indian. Except he did know about us and said he believed we were one of the lost tribes of Israel doomed to wander, too, like his people. Always to be on the edge of things. Hounded and hunted, he said. ‘Well, okay,’ I said. ‘So let’s roam around together.’ So we got this act up and since then we’ve been playing it steady.”

DELPHINE AND MARKUS arrived early at the school gymnasium the next night and took a seat in the first row of creaky wooden folding chairs. There would be talk. Cyprian would be recognized and his shaven head remarked with wonder, maybe derision. People, customers, old schoolmates, would turn to crane at Delphine. If she sat in the back, she would have to endure their shielded or open curiosity. Sitting in the first row, she had her back to them. They could gawk and whisper to their heart’s content. Delphine would ignore them. She intended to enjoy the show.

The curtains parted. Cyprian and his partner stood barefooted, clad in tight black gymnasium suits, on great red rubber balls. Pedaling their feet, they do-si-doed around each other, speeding up until to much applause they hopped high in the air and exchanged places on the spinning balls. Vilhus Gast was very like in size and shape to Cyprian, though nondescript of feature, and he wore a very bad toupee that shifted as he moved.

Suddenly, Gast stood quite still, precisely balanced, hands raised like a ballerina’s, and Cyprian began to bounce, the ball caught between his feet. With a giant catlike effort, Cyprian sprang off the ball and into the air, upended, coming down exactly in position to lock hands with Vilhus Gast. The men swayed, each powerful muscle defined, and nearly toppled. Amazingly, they righted themselves and balanced.

Now, Gast began to dance the ball back and forth across the stage. To shouts and laughter, he pretended to have trouble holding Cyprian aloft. They balanced one-armed, one-legged, and then something wonderful and awful happened. The unattractive toupee that Vilhus Gast wore crept slowly off his head. To the delight of boys and the shrieks of ladies, the bad wig revealed itself to be a giant spider. Gingerly, horribly, the thing eased itself up Gast’s arm, felt its way to Cyprian’s elbow, and then, as Cyprian lowered himself, the spider embraced his bare skull and remained there. The men stood, pranced, held their arms out to receive mad clapping, hoots, and whistles. From a box on a small stand, then, Gast shook loose another, smaller, but equally hairy spider. The audience hushed. He coaxed it along his arm with a feather, then helped it up Cyprian’s throat. Delicately, the creature felt its way up the cliff of Cyprian’s chin and over his mouth. The spider curled into a square black mustache on Cyprian’s upper lip, in the warm breath from his nose.