• • •
Such a pandemonium.
It’s hard to imagine it almost, sailors running, and pigs, these squealing, and my mother, she squealing also as Felix Girard attempts to shield her with his shaggy bear’s body, McIntyre groping like a blind man with his monocle transformed into a waterfall, and what of my father, lying there like that, at the bottom of it all.
Someone ought to help him.
• • •
Why have I done it, put him in such a position, he’s out cold, helpless, but now Harry Owen has him by the armpits, and this other one, Linus Starling, takes him by the feet, this is unfortunate, that it had to be Linus Starling, why have I done this, my poor father, and together, with much effort, they carry him back into the saloon, lay him out on the table like the Christmas goose, he’s at the center of it all now, and they’re all there, crowded around, as many as can fit, seeking shelter from the deluge, soaked like rats the lot of them, trying to wring themselves out.
Look at him, says Linus Starling, he’s steaming.
It’s true. Steam is rising from my father’s sopping clothes.
He’s unconscious of this, mercifully.
It’s damned hot in here, says Harry Owen. Better unbutton him.
Unpack him’s more like it, Starling says.
It’s too bad Linus Starling has to be involved in this. My father never liked him. Yet all the same it’s true, as they unbutton the proud shirtfront they find that Leo has a second skin, he’s lined himself underneath with all sorts of stuff, letters, drawings, pages torn from magazines, bits of textile—
Hey, ho! says Linus Starling, what’s this?
He holds up what appears to be a crumpled swatch of material, a bit of stuff that might (were it larger) be used to make a curtain, or upholster a chair.
It looks like one of Petrook’s bits, says Harry Owen, remembering. No doubt something Dell’oro picked up off a pile in Bury Place. He’s a compulsive gatherer of the worst sort, you know.
I remember, too, my father in that hot dark room in Bury Place, shoving something into his pocket. It’s come back to haunt him now.
Hey, ho! says Starling, it looks just like Madamoiselle Girard!
Don’t be a fool, Starling—
Harry Owen takes the bit of textile away from him, carefully spreads it out on a corner of the table where my father is not, sighs over it a little, what, after all, can he say? It is a woven exotic miniature my father has stolen, the image of a fair servant girl kneeling before a beautifully brocaded elephant, presenting to it a jewel, an emerald, perhaps, the image very small, yet it cannot be denied that Linus Starling is right, it bears a startling resemblance to my mother, who, standing just to the left of the table wringing out her hair, sees it, and gives a tiny gasp, that is all, just a gasp, and then turns away, pretending not to have seen. They all pretend—some things, after all, are better unseen—yet this cannot be avoided.
Hey, ho ho! Here’s another—and another—
Continuing the unpacking, this Linus Starling has rolled my father over and found, pressed against his back, drawings of Clotilde. He’s so exacting, my father. Here she is: Clotilde at the taffrail, Clotilde in the saloon, Clotilde bending over to button her boot—
Poor unconscious father, peeled like an onion to the vulnerable, milky-white core, all the secrets of his heart and body ignominiously exposed. They’ll make a feast of him now for certain.
Poor silly fellow. He cannot help it. Who can defend against my beautiful Clotilde? Gentlemen, even I cannot. Certainly not a silly fellow like this. Owen, Starling, when the rain stops, take him below and put him to bed. And take all that stuff with you, eh? Put it away somewhere safe.