A Conspiracy of Paper

ELEVEN

I RETURNED TO my rooms in Mrs. Garrison’s house, and after pouring myself a glass of port, I sat in the dim light of a cheap tallow candle and wondered if my uncle and I had simply misunderstood each other. I had asked him if my father had any great enemies, and my uncle had said no. Could it be that he had no wish to bring up an unpleasantness from the past? That he believed an enemy whose hatred had been born so many years ago could be no true foe today? Or was it that in the ten years since I had left Dukes Place my father had achieved some kind of peace with a man who had sworn to undo him?

I had thought to clarify the question—to ask my uncle if there had never been any such enemy, but I feared that if I forced the issue, he would answer with the name I had in mind, and I was far too curious of his silence to force him to speak. Had he withheld that information because he believed that I never knew of this enemy? That my father had never bothered to speak of him to me, the disobedient son? Or had my uncle hoped that my recollection of this enemy had slipped through the fissures of a memory made unreliable by intemperate living and misadventure?

Whatever the reason my uncle might have had to withhold this name, I could never hope to forget Perceval Bloathwait.

I never entirely knew the nature of my father’s conflict with Bloathwait, for it had happened when I was perhaps eight years old, but I knew enough to understand that either my father had cheated Bloathwait out of a sum of money, or Bloathwait believed he had. All I knew as a child, and all I knew that night, as I sat in my room, was that Bloathwait had come to my father on a matter of business—either to buy or to sell, I know not which. I understood this much when, one cold evening in midwinter, snow pushing up toward the windows on the ground floor of our house, Mr. Bloathwait had arrived in the middle of our dinner and demanded to speak with my father. We sat about the table, my brother Jose and myself, while my father, looking stern in his white wig and drab, slightly soiled clothes, told his servant to refuse the man. The servant disappeared with a bow, but only seconds later, it seemed to me, a fat, sturdy man in a black, flowing full-bottom wig and a scarlet coat, burst into the room, snow still dripping from his outer garments. He seemed a giant of a man, made huge by indignation—a massive bulk of animated contempt for my father.

“Lienzo,” he hissed like a cat. “You have ruined me!”

We were all silent. I waited for my father to rise up with outrage at this rudeness, but he only sat motionless, staring at his plate, avoiding eye contact with the man as though to look at him would be to invite some kind of violence. “You may speak to me in my place of business on the morrow, Mr. Bloathwait,” he said at last. His voice was subdued and tremulous. Perspiration, reflected in the orange light of the fireplace, glistened upon his face.

Bloathwait spread his legs a bit as though to steady himself against an assault. “I fail to understand why I should not destroy your domestic quiet when you have utterly ruined mine. You are a scoundrel and a thief, Lienzo. I demand restitution.”

“If you believe you have been wronged, you may take your concerns to court,” my father replied with uncharacteristic fortitude. A crack in his voice betrayed his fear, but he responded to the desperation of the moment with a kind of noble resignation. “Otherwise, you must consider yourself a victim of the changeable nature of the funds. We all suffer from time to time, at the whim of Lady Fortune: there is no avoiding it. I believe a man should always invest no more than he can afford to lose.”

“My enemy was not Fortune. It was you, sir.” He pointed at my father with a great walking stick. “It was you who encouraged me to invest my fortune in those funds.”

“Mr. Bloathwait, if you wish to discuss this matter, you may come see me upon the ’Change, but I wish to spare you the indignity of being escorted out by my servants.”

Bloathwait twisted his mouth as if to speak, but it suddenly grew slack—like a wine bladder gone empty. He lowered his walking stick and tapped it once upon our floor. He then stretched out his shockingly small mouth to show us a grin. I say us, for he flashed it at me and Jose as much as at my father. “I think, Mr. Lienzo, that I shall wait for you to seek me out.” He offered a short and formal bow, and then departed.

Had that been the end of the affair, I suppose I might have forgotten it. But it did not end there. Only a few days later, as I returned home from my school, I spotted Mr. Bloathwait upon the street. At first I did not recognize him, and walked on, noticing an enormous figure directly before me who stood shin-deep in snow, trailed by the flapping of a great black overcoat. He stared hard upon me, and his black eyes sunk into a face that appeared to me an enormous expanse of skin peppered with tiny eyes, a bud of a nose, and a mere slash of a mouth. The harsh gusts of wind had turned his skin red and sent his dark wig upon the air like a military banner. He wore somber clothes—for Bloathwait was a Dissenter—and those of his sect had learned from their ancestors, the Puritans, to use their attire to signify a disregard of vanity. On Bloathwait, however, these dark colors held more of menace than of abnegation.

I moved to step out to the street, to cross and thereby avoid him, but a hackney barreled down, and I had no opportunity. So I walked on, even then foolishly thinking bravado should serve me where luck might not. Perhaps if I only walked by him, ignored him, the incident would pass.

It was not to be so. Bloathwait reached out and grabbed my wrist. It was a firm grab, but not a strategic one. I understood that, as an adult, he was not in the custom of grabbing people by the wrist, and as a boy with an older brother, I knew well how to break such a sloppy hold. For the moment I held my ground, unsure if I should break free and run or listen to what this man, who was, after all, an adult, had to say. He frightened me, yes, but I recognized in his anger with my father some commonality with him—as though he had found a way to give voice to my own ideas and experiences. For this reason, I wished to know more of him, but because he made me recognize my father in a way I never had before, I wished to flee.

“Let go of me,” I said, trying to sound nothing so much as irritated.

“I’ll let go of you, sure,” he said. “But I want you to tell your father something for me.”

I said nothing, and he took that as acquiescence. “Tell your father I want my money returned, or sure as I stand here I shall let you and your brother know my outrage.”

I would not show him that I was frightened, though there was much in his look to frighten a boy my age. “I understand you,” I said, raising my chin. “Let go of me now.”

The wind blew fresh snow in his face, and I believed there to be something villainous about even the uncaring gesture that wiped it aside. “You’ve more courage than your father, boy,” he said with a grin that spread out his tiny mouth.

He released my wrist and stared at me. I, refusing to run, turned my back to him and walked slowly home, where I waited in silence until my father returned from ’Change Alley. It was not until late, well after dark, that I saw him, and I sent one of the servants to request an audience with him. He refused until I sent the servant back, telling him that it was of the greatest importance. I think my father must have recognized that I rarely requested time with him, and never before had asked again when first refused.

Once he admitted me to his closet, I told him with a steady voice of my encounter with Bloathwait. He listened, attempting to show no emotion upon his face, but what I saw there frightened me more than the vague threats of a fat and pompous man like Bloathwait. My father was frightened, but he was frightened because he knew not what to do, not because he feared for my safety.

I wanted to keep this encounter a secret, even from Jose, but at last, later that night, I told him, and to my horror he revealed that he had had a nearly identical encounter. From that moment on, Bloathwait became to us more horrific than any goblin or witch used to frighten a child. We saw him regularly, as we came out of school, upon the street, in the marketplace. Grinning at us, sometimes hungrily, as though we were no more than morsels he might devour, and sometimes with a kind of inclusive amusement, as though we were all victims of the same ironic twist of fate—that we were somehow comrades and partners in this ordeal.

I once believed that these encounters went on for months, maybe years, though when I was older, Jose insisted it had only been for a week or two. I suppose he must be right, for a grown man cannot spend too large a part of his life following children around in order to frighten their father, and I had no memories of Bloathwait in which he was not surrounded by snow or red-faced from the cold. Even now, when I have seen far more of Bloathwait to frighten me as an adult than I had as a child, when I think of him I see him in his great coat, a mass of black in the white of winter.