She’s irresistible all right, delectable, oh mother mine. What chance will poor Leo have, scrabbling creature that he is, with all his antennas twirling, confronted with such as she?
None. None whatever.
It attracts sometimes, that which ought repel.
• • •
Awright now, Tildy, leave Dr. Owen alone. Don’t let her tease you, doctor. She gets the best of us all with that stuff. Tildy, you go out for our supper. I gave you the list, remember?
Yes, Papa.
And make sure the bread’s fresh this time—none o’ that moldy stuff.
Naturally, Papa.
And keep away from the cat’s-meat man today, eh, Tildy darling?
He winks, my grandfather, the bear, and presses a coin into her small, gloved hand.
Oh, Papa! says she, with a blush. Now it is you who are teasing!
Ah, Tildy! cries Felix Girard, gripping her arm, holding it tight in a sudden, fond, yet melancholy rapture, what won’t you do, my dear, to add another penny to your pretty little bank, toward that pretty little hat you are wanting? You see, your Papa knows you truly, my dear, no matter what these gentlemen might think! Only the best for our guests this time, petite!
Yes, Papa.
Now off with you.
Yes, Papa.
And obediently she hurries away, the flounce of her skirt sliding demurely down the stairwell behind her, like the lowered tail of an exotic bird.
She is a naughty girl, but good, says Felix Girard, gazing affectionately after. Where does she get it from, gentlemen? From her mother, of course! Don’t they all, eh? You have already met Dell’oro? Gone back down his rabbit hole, has he? We shall ferret him out quick enough. Dell’oro! Show yourself! Now then, gentlemen, this way. We will talk.
• • •
He leads them then down the hallway, past all those mute reproachful gazes, into the room he calls his workroom.
• • •
I like this best of all the rooms in my grandfather’s lair.
Here a dim and sultry daylight filters down through three stingy windows set high up in the wall; some enterprising person has propped these open, just barely, with broken shards of renegade terra-cotta—casualties, no doubt, and rejects, from Petrook’s shop—so that the sashes rest heavily upon the cracked foreheads of the gods. Slack, battered window shades hang limply up there, stirring, with an eerie, papyrus rustle, in the infrequent and unrelieving hot zephyrs of air. Just beneath—arranged along the wall, for maximal light, I suppose, in this vague and dusty place—stand Felix Girard’s worktables, with his many incomplete projects spread out upon them: the rusty, red skull of some small reptile, who knows which, its teeth bared in a perpetual impolite snarl, vertebrae laid out beneath, like broken links in a lady’s necklace; a bowl of water in which brightly colored snails are crawling; nearby, empty shells, recently denuded of their occupants and stuffed with white, antiseptic tufts of cotton wool; beetles and butterflies and dragonflies, recently treated with prussic acid, pinned in their setting boxes, the sparkling wings fastened down with little cardboard braces; and plants as well, nothing escapes him, laid out flat to dry on sheets of coarse brown paper. In a long, low cage on the floor, pea doves bow and coo; in another, jewel-bright lizards cling to the mesh, lazily expanding and deflating their red and yellow throats, like gentlemen about to utter unwise remarks of which they have suddenly thought better. Orchids growing on clumps of wood hang from pegs in the walls, some displaying dreamlike, colorful blossoms, others the roots alone, tangled and knotted, with spidery, delicate filaments reaching out for props to cling to, finding only each other or themselves, intertwining to form weird webs, miniature dangling forests. Lines have been strung from the walls and run in various directions just above the guests’ heads; from these hang innumerable cones of paper, bobbing gently, with an aura of muted festivity, like small, enigmatic Japanese lanterns. Inside are the skins of birds, hung up to dry, safe beyond the reach of pests. A pronounced and disturbing buzzing, like the buzzing of bees, fills this peculiar, junglelike space; these are my grandfather’s hummingbirds, battering themselves cheerfully against the window shades, hovering in the high, hot corners of the room. Felix Girard has placed a cup of sugar water on the edge of the table for them; every now and then, one darts down, drinks, sits for a moment on the edge of the cup before once again taking flight, with a flash, ruby red, emerald green.