[67] Where do we walk?
Paul needs to get out sometimes, not that I can ever put it to him that way. He must know it too, or he wouldn’t let me make us go out. Before Johnny’s Big Day, which is, before we moved into this apartment, when he was between series (I call them that, because he does most of his paintings in bunches, but really, they aren’t connected except by the techniques he’s developed for them at the time) – when he’s between series he can’t bear to be inside much. When he starts drawing too often at home, when he should be paying attention to me, I find ways to pry him out after dark. When we lived with grandfather, the Singing Swan was halfway to the opera workshop and Emilie’s both, so we both used to pass it almost every day long before we started living six storeys above it. So we started meeting there, and then meeting other people there, and then stopping there a couple of hours half the evenings. And when I went out towards the Inner World, I’d stop there myself, because Josette was my older sister by then, or would have been if I’d had a buxom-haired one with raven’s eyes and a throaty laugh.
One afternoon in March that first winter, just after the ball season, Mistress Charlotte was waiting there for me. A world like this, you understand – she showed up as herself, which in her world was a disguise. Her kind take their coffee at the Viceroy beside the Mighty Palace, or at the Marshal Peter on the Royal Oblong, or they stay in their palaces to make sure no one can see them at all. That’s how the really big guys express their authority, by hiding it so that we can only imagine what they’re doing in there. But there she was, at the power table on the dais near the back where she could see everyone come in, in a slim-hipped black dress and hair like a thatched roof and no make-up. People in Charlotte’s world, it’s supposed to be a scandal when they come out looking like that.
‘Ha.’ And she smiled with all her bright teeth and beckoned with eight fingers, come come come … And when I’d sat down cater-corner to her. ‘So, beanpole, you do remember me. Good. You like me without the disguise?’ She lifted a handful of hair with her fist so that I could see the grey streaks. ‘Mine today. Forgive me for not finding you before this. I was waiting to see if you and Paul would really latch. I had a premonition. It’s the first time for him, Emma.’
‘How did you know I come here?’
‘I’ve got people who learn these things for me. Mister Waiter, two of what Emma usually has. And that chestnut strudel, if you baked it this morning. Actually … I sat here yesterday morning for two hours, but you didn’t show, never mind. Freddie’s in Budapest this week.’ She raises a finger to silence me, and looks me up and down slowly. ‘Paul never threw you to me. That’s how he gets rid of most of them, you know. And then I turn them my way, or I don’t. But here it is, eight months for heaven’s sake, and he hasn’t sent you in silk and a sandalwood box, so here I am to see why not. You’re living on the Isle, then? Above a cabbage shop? Lord … How did you end up there?’
‘It’s my grandfather’s shop. He gave us a room for the winter.’
‘A cabbage shop,’ she sighs. ‘Oh, Paul. Did you ever imagine that? What is he trying to tell the world today? Remember, you, that no matter what he becomes, he was always born the way he was. Here …’ She lifts a leather sack out of the bag she’s carrying, raises it to shoulder height, and drops it in front of me on the table with a teafening kchnkk. ‘Stationary wealth rots the soul. Don’t you just love that sound? Seventy-three Asturian thalers, minted in Toledo in 1738 and never been circulated. Why not be a wealthy Jew, Emma?’
‘Of course I want them, but not that way. Give them to Paul, not me. We’re scraping by.’
‘Materialism’s still an evil and useless game, okay. So instead of taking those, he sells watercolours of naked women. I’ve got my hands on a few. Aren’t they wonderful, some of them? Be proud while you can, Emma. He always changes your face, but I’ve seen you naked once already, don’t forget. The things people won’t do for fun.’
‘For love,’ I tell her.
‘And what’s that like?’ She lifts the cup of coffee when it comes, high enough to read the maker’s mark on the bottom, and shudders. ‘He could have half my money if he wanted it. It’s uncle who cut him off, not me. These days, he’d be around six million four hundred twenty thousand kroner a year, the interest on his half. Imagine that. But he’ll never take it. Listen to me. We’re mad for each other, him and me always have been. Two against the world always. But then after the horse, he went his own way. He’s fighting against the machinery that forged him, that’s how I understand him. It’s what he chose, okay. And part of that means he won’t take anything from me, and when he visits, he never tells me first, and he always breaks in somehow. Kicks in a door or breaks a window, or climbs over a garden wall. One of those childhood stunts we still play on each other. Listen, beanpole, will you tell him we met? Will you promise me that?’
‘Where’s the promise in that? I don’t keep other people’s secrets from him.’
‘Only your own, in other words. Ha. He’s got some of his own up his sleeve. Of course, the only secrets that can ever hurt you will be the ones he kept since he met you. We see what we know, Emma, so, what does he let you know? It will never be as much as I know, sorry.’ She stares at me for a long moment and lets out a sigh that teases my hair back. ‘You’ve still got that virgin’s blush to you. Every moment with him still a first one. Too bad for me. Listen, visit me tomorrow. We have this little palace on Teresa Lane. It isn’t much but it’s nice quiet place for making noise. Well … never mind. Come for an early dinner, say around two. Tell him, heavensake do. He won’t come, but I want to know if he’ll be happy I’ve invited you.’