What he did not know is that he had been invited for a very specific purpose. The princesses had been left alone for two years, and though it was sinful to doubt their parents’ ultimate ability to rescue them, they were certain it was not a sin to rescue themselves, just in case. Each one of them had declared to her sisters that afternoon that she intended, by the end of the evening, to have ensnared Private Hugo Black in matrimony.

37

The decision was that Hannah and Mildred would ride with Kono to the house. Charlie would supervise loading into a truck the broken sacks of clothing, the Victrola and recordings, the newspapers, the fairy lights, the rusty candy-drop machine, the Chinese fishing basket, the old men’s clothing she had brought that he might want.

Chaplin picked up a picnic basket filled with rough hand towels embossed with the name H.M.S. BELLEVUE that were wrapped around drinking glasses, and stood upright, smacking his head full-force on the underside of the truck’s rear gate. Stars! A taste like the ocean in his throat. He cried out and put both hands to his head, dropping the basket of glass, hearing shattering sounds, and he was at once trying to massage the knot on his head and wipe away the blinding tears. He shuffled in his enormous shoes out of the radius of the glittering blue-green shards.

He rubbed his head, checking for blood. He was hunched over, hands against his thighs, elbows locked. There were heaps of clothing on the ground, some of them striking him as inexplicable. Uniforms? An engine roared beside him, his touring car was pulling away, and his mother was in the backseat, passing, her face as blank as a screen, and then she was gone.

His mother’s chemises and skirts and underthings were spilling from the corrugated suitcases and hemp satchels. But one pile was separate, well organized, and smartly folded on a tarpaulin, blazing with metal buckles and tasseled epaulets and rich Highland wool tunics. His wardrobe mistress, Rhiannon, was fussing with an ornate trio of buttons on one sleeve. “Why does my mother,” he said slowly, “have a hussar’s uniform?”

He knew there was no reasonable answer. Rhiannon shook her head heavily. “Not your mother’s, Mr. Charlie.”

“Whose is it?”

“Those Russians a couple of months ago? They came back.”

“They wanted extra work?”

“They asked if we would buy their clothing. I told them there weren’t Russians in the new film, but they told me they had been to Metro and Famous Players and Fox and Warners, but no one would buy them. Don’t ask about Universal.”

“What about Universal?”

“They didn’t have carfare, so they sent their translator to Universal City, and she had to ride back on the streetcar with all their uniforms. She begged me to take their clothing. I gave her forty-six dollars fifty cents.”