Short Fiction Fritz Leiber (free e books to read .txt) 📖

comedy to charm the fancy or some great unheard-of tragedy to tear the heart⁠—though that were somewhat much to hope for at this season and place, even if Southwark be close by.”

The lacing was done. I stood back from her, and really she looked so much like Elizabeth painted by Gheeraerts or on the Great Seal of Ireland or something⁠—though the ash-colored plush dress trimmed in silver and the little silver-edge ruff and the black-silver tinsel-cloth cloak lined with white plush hanging behind her looked most like a winter riding costume⁠—and her face was such a pale frozen mask of Elizabeth’s inward tortures, that I told myself, Oh, I got to talk to Siddy again, he’s made some big mistake, the lardy old lackwit. Miss Nefer just can’t be figuring on playing in Macbeth tonight.

As a matter of fact I was nerving myself to ask her all about it direct, though it was going to take some real nerve and maybe be risking broken bones or at least a flayed cheek to break the ice of that characterization, when who should come by calling the Fifteen Minutes but Martin. He looked so downright goofy that it took my mind off Nefer-in-character for all of eight seconds.

His levied bottom half still looked like The Lower Depths. Martin is Village Stanislavsky rather than Ye Olde English Stage Traditions. But above that⁠ ⁠… well, all it really amounted to was that he was stripped to the waist and had shaved off the small high tuft of chest hair and was wearing a black wig that hung down in front of his shoulders in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But just the same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan and habitual poker expression, made him look so like an American Indian that I thought, Hey Zeus!⁠—he’s all set to play Hiawatha, or if he’d just cover up that straight-line chest, a frowny Pocahontas. And I quick ran through what plays with Indian parts we do and could only come up with The Fountain.

I mutely goggled my question at him, wiggling my hands like guppy fins, but he brushed me off with a solemn mysterious smile and backed through the curtain. I thought, nobody can explain this but Siddy, and I followed Martin.

II

History does not move in one current,
like the wind across bare seas,
but in a thousand streams and eddies,
like the wind over a broken landscape.

Cary

The boys’ half of the dressing room (two-thirds really) was bustling. There was the smell of spirit gum and Max Factor and just plain men. Several guys were getting dressed or un-, and Bruce was cussing Bloody-something because he’d just burnt his fingers unwinding from the neck of a hot electric bulb some crepe hair he’d wound there to dry after wetting and stretching it to turn it from crinkly to straight for his Banquo beard. Bruce is always getting to the theater late and trying shortcuts.

But I had eyes only for Sid. So help me, as soon as I saw him they bugged again. Greta, I told myself, you’re going to have to send Martin out to the drugstore for some anti-bug powder. “For the roaches, boy?” “No, for the eyes.”

Sid was made up and had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig on⁠—and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest⁠—and which really does look great on Macbeth in the first act when he comes in straight from battle⁠—but instead of that he was wearing, so help me, red tights cross-gartered with strips of gold-blue tinsel-cloth, a green doublet gold-trimmed and to top it a ruff, and he was trying to fit onto his front a bright silvered cuirass that would have looked just dandy maybe on one of the Pope’s Swiss Guards.

I thought, Siddy, Willy S. ought to reach out of his portrait there and bop you one on the koko for contemplating such a crazy-quilt desecration of just about his greatest and certainly his most atmospheric play.

Just then he noticed me and hissed accusingly, “There thou art, slothy minx! Spring to and help stuff me into this monstrous chest-kettle.”

“Siddy, what is all this?” I demanded as my hands automatically obeyed. “Are you going to play Macbeth for laughs, except maybe leaving the Porter a serious character? You think you’re Red Skelton?”

“What monstrous brabble is this, you mad bitch?” he retorted, grunting as I bear-hugged his waist, shouldering the cuirass to squeeze it home.

“The clown costumes on all you men,” I told him, for now I’d noticed that the others were in rainbow hues, Bruce a real eye-buster in yellow tights and violet doublet as he furiously bushed out and clipped crosswise sections of beard and slapped them on his chin gleaming brown with spirit gum. “I haven’t seen any eight-inch polka-dots yet but I’m sure I will.”

Suddenly a big grin split Siddy’s face and he laughed out loud at me, though the laugh changed to a gasp as I strapped in the cuirass three notches too tight. When we’d got that adjusted he said, “I’ faith thou slayest me, pretty witling. Did I not tell you this production is an experiment, a novelty? We shall but show Macbeth as it might have been costumed at the court of King James. In the clothes of the day, but gaudier, as was then the stage fashion. Hold, dove, I’ve somewhat for thee.” He fumbled his grouch bag from under his doublet and dipped finger and thumb in it, and put in my palm a silver model of the Empire State Building, charm bracelet size, and one of the new Kennedy dimes.

As I squeezed those two and gloated my eyes on them, feeling securer and