Show Business is Murder

The Dying Artist by SHELLEY FREYDONT

EVERYONE LOVED WATCHING George MacCready die. His dying was unparalleled. No one could clutch at his throat quite like George MacCready. No one’s knees buckled with the gusto of George MacCready’s. Nor could they sprawl ontheir backs, legs quivering ever so slightly, as they gasped their final breath. Only for him would the ermine trim of a velvet tunic kiss the floor as he fell, then twine about his outstretched legs like fingers of a foggy night.

No one could die quite like George MacCready. And no one enjoyed watching him die more than I.

For you see, George MacCready learned how to die from life. Not his life, for that would have been pointless-to die in order to perfect the business of dying. George MacCready learned by watching others die.

The first time I saw him watching death was after a performance of Macbeth. I left my seat in the stalls and hurried outside to wait for the great expirer at the stage door. MacCready had just exited the theatre when a cry rose up from the street behind us. MacCready lifted his head, listening. Then he strode down the alley, brushing away his admirers as if they were mere coal dust. I joined the others who followed in his wake.

When next I spotted him, he was standing among a crowd that had gathered to watch two constables pull a boy from beneath a hansom’s wheels. His body was mangled and crushed. A strange gurgling sound arose from within him. His head rolled and spurted blood with equal abandon. But his legs. Ah. His legs hopped around much in the same manner of that other great expirer, Edwin Forrest.

It seems only fitting that EF would pattern his death scenes after the snuffing out of a lower class soul. EF was all blast and bombast in his dying. His whole body would spasm and his arms shoot heavenward. Then he would fall and roll along the floor, his legs kicking out with as much grace as that poor urchin who lay in the street. EF didn’t understand finesse in dying.

I watched MacCready study that poor boy-draw closer and peer over him until the constable eased him aside. And all the while, I watched him watching. I could tell the moment when he dismissed the boy’s demise as beneath his study.

After a time, he sauntered away and I sauntered after him. Watched him walk along the cobbled street, opening and closing his fist just as the boy had done.

He stopped outside the Three Bells Oyster Bar and lifted his hand to the gaslight. Slowly, he contracted his fingers and spread them out again. He shook his head once, dropped his hand and went inside to dine.

I followed him. Studying the man who studied the dying. I leaned against the wall nursing a mug of flat beer while MacCready sat at a table for one, and a plate of oysters was placed before him. I watched him lift the corner of the napkin, shake it, and fold it into his shirt collar. Then his hand made a graceful arc toward the plate. In one deft movement, his fingers closed around a shell, while MacCready stared into the oyster’s face.

Slowly he brought it to his lips, all the while his fingers throttling the shell. My own throat closed against the beer I had been drinking, and I had to spit out the mouthful onto the floor.

Later that night in my rooms above the Majestic Theatre, I practiced bringing my hand to the light, clenched and unclenched my fingers as MacCready had done. When finally I put out the lamp and went to bed, I was filled with a sense of purpose that I had never known before.

Every night, I watched him from the stalls; Lear, Hamlet, Richard III, Othello. It didn’t matter, though I liked his Hamlet best. Afterwards, I would wait with the crowd at the stage door until the great man appeared. Sometimes he would catch my eye, and a thrill would shoot through me. I felt his kindred spirit. And I was sure he must have felt mine.

I took a job with the theater company as a bit actor just to be near him. To witness the discovery of some new detail-the tiniest nuance that could be incorporated into his death scenes. I, too, learned to die-as a Roman soldier, a Capulet, a Nubian slave. Even when I wasn’t dying, I stood on stage watching MacCready take his final breath. Night after night, I watched him as a lover might watch his beloved. I stayed in the wings after my exits, went early for my entrances, practicing his gestures as he performed them on stage.

During the breaks at rehearsals, I engaged him in conversation on his method of acting, staying away from the manner of his deaths, lest he become wary of my interest.

On our days off, we would find ourselves at separate tables at the oyster bar. It wasn’t so unusual. The oyster bar was a few doors away from the theatre entrance. I didn’t care much for oysters. I was always waiting for a grain of sand to crunch between my teeth, sending a shiver down my spine. But I ate oysters, platefuls of them, just to be near my mentor.

Sometimes, we would meet by chance in the street. Then he might invite me for a pint and I would take my place at the bar next to him, soaking up his presence. We would part with a hearty handshake and go our separate ways.

Only my way was his way, though he never knew it. I would follow, unseen, behind him, down the streets of the town, marking his unending quest for the perfect death scene that would enhance his own.

We witnessed (separately, for he never knew I was there) several deaths during that time, but none out of the ordinary, everyday kind of expiration. A rather amusing tumble down a flight of steps by an old washerwoman, unmentionables flying out in all directions as she bounced and squealed to the bottom. Nothing that could be used. A straightforward heart failure at the entrance of the Mercantile Bank. It was over before it began. Disappointing, since the fellow looked to have some promise about him.

Once we stumbled onto a woman that was hemorrhaging on the stoop of a tenement building. MacCready stopped to watch. I wanted to run to him. Tell him not to waste his time on so paltry a dying. He should witness the death of great men of wealth and intelligence and make them his own. But before I could budge from my hiding place in a doorway across the street, MacCready had moved on.

Every night I followed MacCready through the streets, stopping when he stopped, taking up his pace again. And while MacCready searched for death, I was perfecting my own dying. Not that it was noticed. I was only one of many bodies, roiling about the stage beneath the clang of metal swords and the clop of horses’ hooves made by the beating of a spoon against a wooden barrel just off stage left.

I don’t remember when I first began to formulate my plan to aid MacCready in his search for the perfect death. Winter was coming on, and the nights were damp, with the wind cutting like a knife around the corners of buildings. I didn’t mind being uncomfortable, but I could see that MacCready did. His wanderings became shorter. The stops into pubs more frequent. The stay longer. I waited outside, stamping my feet and hugging my hands beneath my armpits to keep warm. Impossible for me to join him in the pub, and I was afraid that if I went into another, I would miss his exit.

And then one night, a Saturday I think it was (we had just finished Twelfth Night, a dreary play as it had no commendable death scene in it). MacCready wandered in the direction of a derelict section of town. Prostitutes huddled in doorways and opened their cloaks just long enough for a man to catch a glimpse of their wares, then wrapped up tight again. Drunks lay on pillows of hoarfrost, neither alive nor dead. Windows were shuttered tight, only an occasional wink of light escaping through the chinks. I couldn’t understand why MacCready had chosen this section of town to look for death.

I found myself wishing he would go home. There was no one here that was worthy of the great MacCready’s talent.

A carriage pulled to a stop ahead of MacCready. He slowed his pace. I slowed mine and watched. The carriage door opened and a man in evening dress virtually fell from the top step.

And suddenly I knew what MacCready was about. Clever MacCready. A gentleman might die comfortably, undramatically at home, eased into death by a scented handkerchief dabbed at his brow, his fluxes and vomitings carried discreetly away. But here in the streets, where no one knew him, he must enter death with the kicking and squirming of lesser men.

The man tossed coins toward the driver then wove toward a door in one of the nondescript brownstones that lined the street. After a moment, the door opened and light and noise spilled into the night air. The man entered and the door closed behind him leaving the street once again dark and silent.

I have to admit that I was a little irritated at my idol. I thought I knew what he was hoping for, but it would be a long cold winter before we might stumble across a robbery or murder if a man insisted on alighting from his carriage at the very door of his assignation.

The carriage pulled away and, like a great curtain, revealed a quartet of men coming our way. They were a gay bunch, drunk and singing and lumbering toward me like a giant multi-headed beast. MacCready was intent on the closed door of the brownstone and didn’t see when they knocked me into the gutter.

It was soon after that night that I began to carry a metal pipe beneath my coat as I followed MacCready through the murky streets.

Several weeks passed and winter was full upon us. Snow fell by the bucketfuls on the stage and in the streets, turning to frozen sheets at the least hint of thaw. The audiences were sparse and there was talk of closing the theater until the weather broke. Everyone was at sixes and sevens trying to prepare for unemployment. MacCready alone seemed to be unconcerned about the possible closing. He needn’t be. One week of his salary could pay the rest of us for a month.

I was already stretched as far as I could be stretched and could ill afford to lose even a week of work. I loathed the thought of giving up my cozy rooms, humble though they were. Not that I spent much time in them being in the theater all day and wandering the streets with MacCready at night. But what I feared most was the loss of MacCready if the theater were to close.

One evening as I lay dying during the second act of an undistinguished melodrama, I felt eyes upon me. Somehow I knew they were MacCready’s. I fought the urge to exalt in that supernumerary death, but I forced my attention inward and died with great subtlety. I was very pleased with how it went. As soon as the curtain rang down and the slain cleared the stage at a run, I made sure that I would pass by MacCready who was, indeed, standing in the wings.

The briefest tip of his chin as I passed sent me into raptures. I had been good, really good, and MacCready had acknowledged my performance. And in the glow of that euphoric mood, I determined to do something to show my gratitude.

The snow was drifting down as we left the theater that night. The sky was clear above the roofs of town; the stars twinkling like diamonds on a black velvet drop. Once again MacCready went to the lowest neighborhood. I stayed farther behind than usual, for I had a twofold purpose.

He led me to a dismal street, the lamps of the streetlights broken into jagged icicles, the gas turned off to prevent an explosion. But the moon was high, casting a magical light over the whole. The night wore on and I was suppressing a yawn when I saw my purpose weaving down the street toward the square. A fine, tall man, with top hat, walking stick, and an opera cloak that swirled about his ankles. A young nob out slumming, alone. It was perfect.

The man stopped and looked about him, then peered up and down the street as if looking for someone. I felt my stomach clench. God, that he should be meeting his friends on this corner. I wanted to shake my fist at the heavens, Lear-style. My blood raced with impatience; the metal pipe weighted down my chest. At last, he took up his perambulation again, and he drew slowly nearer.

MacCready was nearly a block ahead of me now. If this drunken sot didn’t hurry, it would be too late. I pressed into the shadows, my back feeling the impressions of a wrought iron gate that led into the square. I could hear the fellow muttering to himself.

My gloved hand closed around the pipe and drew it ever so gently from my coat. Poised, calm, fully into the part I was about to play, I lifted the pipe over my head. His shadow passed in front of me, and the pipe crashed into his head. His top hat flew to the ground. He staggered and tried to turn, the blood spraying in all directions. I repeated the blow to his back, knocking out his wind, making it impossible for him to cry for help.

There was no time to observe my handiwork, but I was almost certain that he had received a mortal blow, and there was no time to give another. I backed through the gate into darkness and cried out, “Murder, murder by the square.” I only paused long enough to see that I had aroused the attention of several passersby who further sounded the alarm. I raced through the square and exited on the far side, then made my way back to where a crowd had already formed around the fallen man.

And yes, there was MacCready. I could see him well. I could not see the dying man, but I watched MacCready’s hand clutch the air as he followed the man’s progress toward darkness, and my hand followed his. His shoulder twitched, and I knew he was internalizing every detail, and so did I.

A constable came and pushed everyone aside. I was very nearly caught out because I had lingered until the last moment so as not to miss one tiny part of MacCready’s mesmerizing performance. He turned suddenly and I fairly threw myself into the entrance of an ale house to avoid his gaze.

I was sweating beneath my overcoat, and I was covered with blood. I dared not stay where I could be seen, though I craved an audience. I skulked away into the night, assaulted in turns by fear and exaltation.

That was the first of three studies in dying that I arranged for MacCready. And while he was watching death, I was watching him. Breathed as he breathed, lolled my head as he lolled his, sighed just as he sighed.

Over the weeks, his death scenes became more powerful and so did mine.

I had never been adept at learning parts. A line here and there I could manage, but more than a few together left me stammering and sweating with confusion. Ah, but my dying was exquisite. Even the little ballet girls surrounded me with their fluttery eyes and hands and layers and layers of tulle, tittering over the beauty of my recurring death.

And so what are words? Hardly anyone can remember a speech heard the night before. But long after the words are forgotten, the memory of the twisting, writhing, agony of death remains.

I have studied diligently, learned everything I could. Endured cold, hunger, and impatience to perfect my craft. I think I’ve got it right now, the precise amount of quiver at the lower extremities, the languid droop of the hand as it slips from the breast or sword. The little ballet girls agree that my dying is quite as good as MacCready’s.

And so I have invited MacCready for a dinner of oysters in my rooms. And he has accepted. I am so very honoured. I’ve bought a special Madeira wine for the occasion and have popped the cork this very minute. I pour it out and hand a glass to MacCready. He holds it to the light, smiles his appreciation, and takes a sip.

I offer him my best armchair and he sits down. We discuss the theater, and I pour more wine. I’m careful not to drink too much. A host must keep his wits about him.

There’s a knock at the door and I go to open it. It’s the boy from the oyster bar with a platter piled high with oysters. He places it on the center of the table I have pulled away from the wall.

Now here’s the tricky part. The piece of stage management upon which everything hangs. I finger the little packet of powder in my waistcoat pocket. It will take a mere second, if MacCready will only turn his back.

I ask if he would mind fetching the wine bottle from the side table behind me. I only need the briefest moment. But my hand turns stiff and MacCready is back with the bottle before I can extract the packet from my pocket.

My hands are sweating just as they do when I have a speech to deliver. I have lost my chance, there may not be another. And yet, here is MacCready asking where he might relieve himself. I point to the screen which conceals the commode.

He nods his thanks and carries his wine glass with him. I cannot believe my good fortune. My fingers are suddenly nimble as if released from a spell. A mere tap of the paper onto the largest oyster, and I place it directly in front of the place where I intend MacCready to sit. I refold the paper and push it back into my waistcoat just as MacCready returns.

I offer him a chair. He sits. I go to the other side of the table and pull out my own chair, and MacCready realizes he has left his wine glass on the window sill next to the convenience. Would I be so kind as to retrieve it for him.

Of course, I say. Anything for my dear MacCready.

When I return, he has already tucked into the oysters, the shells are piling up on the tablecloth. I sit down and reach for one of my own, my eyes on MacCready. I watch his side of the plate of oysters disappear as I eat. I don’t want to miss a moment of the great man’s death scene.

And then it begins. His hand goes to his throat, his eyes bulge. I feel my own eyes bulge in response. He begins to shake and I shake with him. His eyes are on me now, and mine on his. His body convulses, racked with spasms. I feel his pain. I clutch at my stomach. MacCready is a blur across the table, writhing. We move together, my rhythm, his rhythm. Locked together in a synthesis of the inevitable. It is glorious, this searing, horrible joining. We cry out and our voices commingle over the table.

He pushes to his feet. His chair crashes to the floor. I try to stand, but the pain is too intense. I grope for the table, but my fingers are frozen claws that will not move. He leans forward, peering into my face. He is swaying over me. But no, it is I who am swaying, not MacCready. I whose entrails are on fire.

I see my hand rise in the air, the fingers grasping. MacCready’s fingers grasp the air across the table, mimicking mine.

My hand clutches my throat. MacCready clutches his. My throat is an oyster shell, being ground and crushed and seared with flame. I can not think. I fall back in my chair, watch my legs jerk and twitch beneath me. Fire engulfs me. I hear the rattle of someone choking. I try to scream but my throat closes on the sound. My arms flail outward, then fall limp at my sides. I search for MacCready, my eyes darting about as if controlled by another. At last they latch onto his solid figure and I understand.

Across the table, MacCready is watching…