The Mercury Waltz by Kathe Koja Page B

and the secrets and sins of others, neither stake will ever play out—and for relief his pick of the boys, not always the loveliest, but the ones with a hint of sweetness, the ones whose hearts can still be seen. To play for more, to need more, is to open the door on…what? a darkness and a chaos, the mad glint of a pin, kisses in the smell of burning, love a kind of utter drunkenness no dawn can ever cure….
    Yet sometimes, at dawn or at sunset, when he lies on his back in the rumpled bed, when he has drunk the black brandy and still sleep will not come, what comes instead are lines from the poems— “Come live with me and be my Love, and we will all the pleasures prove” —chanting to himself and chewing the scar on his lips, watching the sun cross the sky and die; until at last his eyelids flutter and close, and he enters a deeper darkness where there is no longing or leaving, where he bears and is borne like some saint in the water, Charon, Leander, no hero necessary, to some unseen shore where another waits to meet him, to kiss and rule and savage with, to take into his arms, and make his own.
    In another bed, in other dawns, other cherished poems are inwardly recited, the humid, gleaming poems of Ovid, Jove send me more such after-noones as this— before morning prayers to the Holy Mother, though to Frédéric it seems strange if not actually sacrilegious to pray to a virgin for chastity; or perhaps it is not strange at all. Perhaps, as his father says, he thinks too much, has spent too much time Worrying over those books, with a worry of his own for this son who is so different than he himself was as a boy; and not a boy any longer, though his mother seems to want to keep him so, keep him trotting to the church choir with the ladies when he should be learning the importer’s trade. He has excelled at all his lessons, and now it is time to put that learning to use.
    For his mother’s part, the prayers sung in Latin—Frédéric’s voice having lost its reedy purity, now become just a pleasant tenor—and the long teas taken afterward are the highlights of her days, the foundation on which she thinks to build a life for her son. In the vestibule after service, she has watched the girls give him their smiles, those minxes, fluttering and squeezing hands, though he is merely friendly to them all. Only one watches with proper ladylike devotion, and sits at tea almost without a word to say, this Marie Mariette with her mother, the head of the Ladies’ Sodality, and her father, the head of the waterworks and already a business friend to Mr. Blum. It is natural for the families to dine together, the young people seated side by side at the table, where Mrs. Mariette may justly boast of her daughter’s needlework skills, A dozen cradle-caps this week alone, for the poor orphans! and Mrs. Blum may ask Frédéric to Sing for us, dear, will you not? as they sit in the parlor over cakes and cherry confit, while Mr. Blum and Mr. Mariette smoke small cigars in the garden and eye each other as potential relatives. It is the womenfolk’s will, that is plain, and Young Frédéric seems quite a steady fellow, says Mr. Mariette, while Mr. Blum offers praise for Miss Marie’s kindness, My wife tells me she can’t do enough for those orphans, since he cannot praise her beauty; no one can.
    But she too has a neat singing voice, she demonstrates it in the garden once the men have gone inside, the two young people sent out to wait as their futures are arranged: It’s a pretty song, says Marie, “The Pigeon and the Hawk,” do you know it? and they sing together, “Coo, coo, coo/The pigeon tends her nest,” Frédéric beating time with a twig on the arm of the old-fashioned bench. When they finish, Marie looks up into his eyes, then away, her hands grasp unseen at her skirts and I like pigeons, she murmurs. They are homing birds.
    They are city birds, says Frédéric. In Amsterdam, I have read, they quite cover the square with