“Wonderful! We have beaten those crooks!” In her glee, Mamusia seized Darcourt by the hands and danced a few steps, in which he followed, as well as he could.
“But what about all those magnificent instruments that went up in flames?” he said, puffing.
“All gone. It is the will of God. The people who owned them must have insured them. But simple Gypsies know nothing of such things.” Mamusia laughed again. “Now we feast. Sit on the floor, great lady. That is what our real friends do.”
On the floor they sat, and immediately set about the turkey and the olives and the rye bread, using such implements as Yerko provided, some of them not very thoroughly washed.
With plenty of champagne, Darcourt thought, it is not half bad. Gunilla, he saw, dug in with a good will, showing nothing of the refined manners he associated with her. Even so, he thought, the young Liszt might have feasted with Gypsies. She was especially attentive to the champagne, rivalling Yerko, and taking it straight from the neck of the bottle.
“You are a real fine lady!” said Yerko. “You do not hold away from our humble meal! That is high politeness. Only common people make a fuss about how they eat.”
“Not when I brought it myself,” said Gunilla, gnawing a drumstick.
“Yes, yes: I only meant that you are a guest in our house. No rudeness was intended.”
“You will not get the best of her,” said Mamusia. “I know who she is,” she said to Darcourt. “She is the lady in the cards—you know, the one on the left of the spread? She is La Force. Very great strength, but used without any roughness. You are in this opera thing my son-in-law is so worried about?”
“So you know about that?” said Gunilla.
“What don’t I know? You have heard about the spread? Father Simon here made me lay out the cards right at the beginning of that adventure, and there you were, though I didn’t know you then. Do you know who any of the others in the spread are now, Father? All you could think of then was that my daughter Maria must be Empress. She, an Empress! I laugh!”
Mamusia laughed, and quite a lot of turkey and champagne flew about.
“Perhaps she is not the Empress, but she may be the Female Pope. She must be one of the women in the cards.”
“I think she is the third in the oracle cards; that was Judgement, you remember? She is La Justice, who tries and weighs everything. But don’t ask me how. That will be seen when the time comes.”
“I see you have been thinking about the forecast,” said Darcourt. “Have you identified any of the other figures?”
“They are not people, you know,” said Mamusia. “They are—smoro. Yerko, what is smoro in English?”
“Things,” said Yerko, through a full mouth. “I don’t know. Big things.”
“Might we say Platonic ideas?” said Darcourt.
“If you like. You are the wise man, Priest Simon.”
“Is he the Hermit? I said so then but now I wonder,” said Mamusia. “There is too much of the devil in our good Father for him to be the Hermit.”
`”You have left me behind,” said Dr. Gunilla. “Is this a prediction about our opera? What did it say? Was it a good outlook for us?”
“Good enough,” said Mamusia. “Not bad: not good. Hard to say. I was not at my best that night.”
The Doctor frowned. “Are we heading toward a mediocrity?” she said. “Failure I can endure; success I like but not too much. Mediocrity turns my stomach.”
“I know you are not a person who lives in the middle of the road,” said Mamusia. “I do not need the cards to tell me that. Your clothes, your manners, the way you drink—all of it. Let me guess. You are funny about sex, too, eh?”
“Funny, maybe. Hilarious, not. I am myself.” She turned to Darcourt. “That Raven woman has been calling me again. I had to be strong with her. ‘You know Baudelaire?’ I said. She said: ‘You insult me. I am a professor of comparative literature. Of course I know Baudelaire.’ ‘Well then, chew on this,’ I said: ‘Baudelaire says that the unique and supreme pleasure of love lies in the certainty of doing evil; both men and women know from birth that in evil every pleasure can be found. Didn’t you know that from birth? Or did you have a bad birth? A seven-months child, perhaps?’ She put down her phone with a loud bang.”
“Do you do evil in love?” said Mamusia.
“Good and evil are not my thing. I leave that to the professionals, like Simon here. I do what I do. I do not ask the world to judge it, or make it legal or give it a special place in the world or any of that. Listen, Madame; when I was quite a young girl I met the great Jean Cocteau and he said to me: ‘Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it, because it is yourself.’ And that is what I have done. I am Gunilla Dahl-Soot, and that is all I can manage. It is enough.”
“Only very great people can say that,” said Yerko. “It is what I always say myself.”
“Don’t appeal to me as a moralist,” said Darcourt. “I gave up moralizing years ago. It never worked twice in the same way.” The champagne was getting to him, and also the cigar smoke. Good cigars are not accessible to shop-lifters, even those of Mamusia’s talent. The cigars Yerko circulated were more than merely odious: they caught at the throat, like a bonfire of noxious weeds. Darcourt got rid of his as soon as he decently could, but the others were puffing happily.
“Madame,” he said, for his biography was much on his mind. “You had some intuitions when you laid out the cards. ‘You have awakened the Little Man,’ you said, ‘and you must be ready for what follows.’ I think I know now who the Little Man is.”
“And you are going to tell us?” said Mamusia.
“Not now. If I am right, the whole world will know in plenty of time.”
“Good! Good, Father Simon. You bring me a mystery and that is a wonderful thing. People come to me for mysteries, but I need a few for myself. I am glad you remember the Little Man.”
“Mysteries,” said the Doctor, who had grown owlish and philosophical. “They are the blood of life. It is all one huge mystery. The champagne is all gone, I see. Where is the cognac? Simon, we brought cognac, didn’t we? No, no, we don’t need new glasses, Yerko. These tumblers will do very well.” The Doctor poured hearty slops of cognac into all the glasses. “Here’s to the mystery of life, eh? You’ll drink with me?”
“To mystery,” said Mamusia. “Everybody wants everything explained, and that is nonsense. The people that come to me with their mysteries! Mostly about love. You remember that stupid song—
They think the mystery must be love, and they think love is snuggling up to something warm, and that’s the end of everything. Bullshit! I say it again. Bullshit! Mystery is everywhere, and if it is explained, where’s your mystery then? Better not to know the answer.”
“The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it,” said Darcourt. “That’s what mystery is.”
“Mystery is the sugar in the cup,” said the Doctor. She picked up the container of white crystals the delicatessen had included in the picnic basket and poured a large dollop into her cognac.