Eva Ibbotson

“You’ve given me too much money,” protested Harriet. “Even if I buy presents for absolutely everybody, I can’t spend it.”

“It is not for buying presents for absolutely everybody,” he said sternly. “It’s for you.”

She shook her head and reached for his hand, counting the knuckles carefully, checking them off one by one with her fingertips to make sure that everything was as it should be and that she would not forget—in the day and night she was to be away—the configuration of his little fingernail or the exact place where a vein to which she was particularly devoted changed its course.

“I got to one thousand and forty-three seeds last night,” she said. “In the bath. So it’s absolutely all right.”

“Of course it’s all right,” he said roughly. “All the passengers have to be on board by eight o’clock, so you’ll be back in time for a splendid supper. I’m putting a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice—no doubt you will merely get hiccups again, but we must persevere.”

But now they were back, his Indians. He had shooed them away twice before, explaining that Harriet was only going to Manaus and would be back tomorrow, but here again were old José, Andrelinho with his crippled boy, Manuelo with his wife, his baby… and that old witch, Manuelo’s mother-in-law, who now wore her boa of anaconda skins over Harriet’s brown foulard…

The missionaries had taught them to wave—prolonged goodbyes were one of their accomplishments, but there were too many of them today and Maliki and Rainu were sniveling. And now Lorenzo, who was an educated man and should have known better, came forward with a gift for Harriet which he placed in her hand—and which made Rom turn on him angrily with a few low words in his own dialect.

“Is there something wrong?” asked Harriet, troubled, looking up from the tiny, perfectly carved wooden canoe with paddles the size of splintered matchsticks and an intricate pattern of blue and scarlet painted across its bows. “Should I not take it?”

Rom shook his head. “It’s all right.” But as Harriet thanked Lorenzo, his sense of wretchedness increased. The gift was one traditionally given to ensure safety for those traveling far away across water—and Harriet wasn’t even going in the Amethyst, Lorenzo knew that perfectly well. What the devil had got into them all?

The car arrived. Furo got out and held open the door and Harriet turned to Rom. “Could you be so kind as to remember that I love you absolutely?” she said quietly, almost matter-of-factly. “Could you be so kind as to remember that?”

He bent down then to kiss not her mouth, but her fingers, holding them in a strangely formal gesture to his lips.

“Yes,” he said. “I could remember that. Were I to forget it, Harriet, it would go very ill with me.”

Long after the car was out of sight and he had returned to the house, his Indians still stood on the steps, waving and waving and waving…

The theater was dark and silent, the seats already shrouded. It would be a month before another company made its way to Manaus—a Cossack choir from Georgia.

Would they be the last? Harriet wondered, picking her way across the deserted stage. Was Rom right and would this marvelous and fantastical theater be given over to the mice? Would bats hang from the chandeliers and moths devour the silken hangings? But if it was so—if Mrs. Lehmann’s carriage horses had drunk their last champagne and the grandly dressed audience would no longer sweep across the great mosaic square—it had still been a splendid and worthwhile dream to build a theater here in this place… and one day, surely, it would open its doors again, music would stream from the pit and men, perhaps still unborn, would wait with bated breath for the gold glimmer of the footlights that meant curtain rise.

Down in the wardrobe she found a lone stage-hand who at first greeted her with respect, not recognizing in the elegantly dressed girl the little dancer in her shabby clothes—and then as she smiled, he asked her to sit on the last of the skips so that he could close it, as he had asked her to do three months ago in the Century Theater when the adventure began.

Then she went back to the stage-door where Furo was waiting and was driven to the Metropole where she went, first of all, to say goodbye to Simonova.

During the fortnight since Harriet had last seen her, Simonova’s thinness had become spectacular: now she lay like a death’s head on the single pillow. Dubrov for once was absent, supervising the loading of the scenery.

“So,” said the ballerina as Harriet approached and curtseyed. “You are happy. One can see that.”

“Yes, Madame. Extremely happy. But I wish that you—”

“Oh, never mind, never mind,” said Simonova irritably. “Let them clap Masha Repin. Myself, I will be thankful if I can even walk again.”

“But you will, you will! Professor Leblanc is the greatest specialist in the world.”