My father was impressive. Despite his lack of education, his mind was the most classically inclined of all the actors. He had an almost Jesuitical sense of argument, and when he came to the conclusion of his formal statement, my mother squeezed me hard in her lap.
On that stage on that long ago Sunday morning, Bill Millefleur shone, a star already, and the members of our collective, sitting under that dark and distant canopy, were happy for him, jealous, relieved to hear that such substantial funds would be brought into the Feu Follet.
Just the same: when he concluded that the immense size of the salary meant that he was obliged, on moral grounds, to take the part — they smiled, some more cynically than others. When he said that he was frightened of the role, and, indeed, might still refuse it, his obvious excitement made him appear disingenuous and his colleagues’ laughter had a harder, less patient edge. Those who stood to speak afterwards were harsher than they might otherwise have been. They could not imagine he might really say no.
*
Solveig Mappin (271–336), the young wife of Henry Mappin, Red Prime Minister of Efica (240–307).
14
To reach your great capital, Bill would have to fly for three hours above the long island chain of Efica and then for five hours more across the landlocked web of lakes and inland seas, the great green and gold hinterland of Voorstand dotted with the mushroom shapes of Sirkus Domes — and what he said was true: he was frightened, not only that he would lose my maman, but also that he would somehow lose himself at the other end of this great maze.
We Eficans, generally speaking, were frightened of Saarlim. It may make you smile to think how much: how we rubbed and burnished our idea of its cruelty and ruthlessness.
My father was a colonist, an islander, an Efican. He was, by definition, not a Voorstander. When he spoke his lines in Saarlim, he would need to abandon his soft, self-doubting Efican patois — Shapoh, mo-ami, mo-chou, cambruce — learn to speak with a clip to his consonants, give up his Feu Follet habits of irony and self-mockery. To you he would be an exotic performer introducing live animals into the Sirkus.* But to himself (and to us) our circus boy would be acting out, with his own body, the surrender of our frail culture to your more powerful one. He would be singing your songs, telling your stories, and this went strongly against the grain, undercut the whole notion of who he thought he was. So even though the collective had told him, go, he could not let it be so easy.
Back in the tower, he said the same things he had said before.
My maman also: ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘It is your life.’
It was perhaps the twentieth time she had said it, but this time something different happened. Bill began to comb his thick black hair with both hands, rapidly. ‘What does that mean, Felicity?’ He used only a slice of his great booming actor’s voice, a whisper, thin and nasty as a piece of wire: ‘What exactly does that mean?’
It was now three in the afternoon. My maman lay down with me on her unmade bed, fully dressed. She pulled the blanket up over us, and looked up at my father with her green eyes.
‘What?’ he said.
She pulled her hair back from her forehead and held it at the nape of her neck. She was the mother of a scary child with special needs, the owner of a theatre whose existing debts would easily consume Bill’s 30 per cent.
‘What?’ he insisted.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ she said.
‘What you thought.’
She turned her head aside, exhausted.
‘You thought …’ Bill insisted.
‘You have to go,’ she said. She felt sick in her stomach, but she was an actor, too — she smiled. ‘Take the part.’
‘Take it?’
‘You have to go, mo-chou,’ she said, sitting up. It was not so hard as you would think — this moment. ‘You’ll see the best theatre in the world, every night. You’ll do voice with Fischer and movement with Hals or Miriam Parker. You’ll be a great actor. You’ll never be a great actor here.’
‘Flick, you know this isn’t acting. It’s a fucking Sirkus.’
‘The Sirkus won’t last for ever,’ she said. ‘You won’t be seduced by Sirkus. The Sirkus is mechanical and manipulative. I wouldn’t love a man who could be seduced by Sirkus.’
If her eyes now slid away from his, it was because she was not telling the truth and she was ashamed. She could not stop thinking about the money he would earn. She coveted it almost as much as she feared losing him.
She was a woman who owned only three dresses, two pairs of shoes, who was always scratching around for extra in order to pay her mortgage, or her actors, or build the sets, or repair the ancient lead plumbing. If you had asked the actors, still gathered in the theatre downstairs, they would have said my maman was rich. And it was true that she owned the crumbling bricks and powdery mortar of the Feu Follet and she had capital invested which returned her a small income, but not enough, not nearly enough, and the future of the theatre was always in doubt. The thought of all that Sirkus money drove her crazy with guilt and longing.
‘You want me to go,’ Bill said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘How could you say that? I don’t want you to go, sweets. I want you to stay.’
‘It is a lot of jon-kay …’
‘Never do anything for money,’ my maman said. ‘Never, ever.’
‘That isn’t what you said before.’
‘It’s what I’m saying now,’ she said. ‘It’s your life, but if you want to know what I think — you’re an Efican actor. You belong here, with us. We have important work to do. We have a whole damn country to invent.’
The light was behind Bill when she said this. She did not see him start to cry, and it was a moment before she caught the sheen of the tears on his beautiful high cheeks. She left the bed and put her long pale arms around his neck.
‘Don’t cry, Billy-fleur.’
‘Just let me go,’ he said. ‘Please, just let me go.’
‘Darling, darling,’ she said softly, standing on tip-toes. ‘Do whatever it is you want.’ She kissed him with her mouth soft and open, kissed his big rough salty face.
‘You’re right.’ He withdrew from her to carefully blow his nose. ‘If I stay, I’ll always regret it.’
She took his handkerchief from him and threw it on the bed. She stretched up to kiss his lower lip. ‘If you stay, you stay. Baby,’ she said, smiling, but retreated to the bed, to the other baby. ‘Your son has thrown up on the blanket,’ she said, but neither of them did anything to remedy it. They sat, and waited, as if something would happen.
And, indeed, something did eventually happen.
As the yellow street lights flicked on and the rain began again, my father appeared to choose. My maman saw him do it. She watched him as she might have watched an image form on a sheet of photographic paper. She saw how he tried to hide his decision from her. He ran his hand through his hair and then across his face. He got himself engaged in a bit of business with a handkerchief which occupied his whole attention from the window, where he had been standing at that moment, to the bed, beside which he now knelt.
He placed his big hands flat on the white linen cover and looked at my ugly wrinkled face. His eyes were glistening, and there was a small smile on his archer’s-bow lips which my maman was familiar with from more intimate circumstances and which now made her believe that he had decided to stay.