The Motion of Puppets (11 page)

She shrugged her shoulders.

“And you, Kay Harper, you were in on the gag?”

“I was just trying to help.”

“Heh-heh. Help with her little practical joke?”

“No. Help her go home.”

With one voice, the Sisters in the jury box gasped. The Good Fairy snapped a twig. Nix gave his horn a desultory toot. The Dog, who had been resting under the witness chair, began to whine. Kay searched the room for a sympathetic friend, but they had all turned their faces from her. The Devil was behind her, leaning against the back of her chair, his long fingernails clacking against the balsa wood.

“You cannot go home,” he said. “You cannot ever leave the Back Room. The Quatre Mains might come for you, but even then, he may bring you back, just as he has done with each one of us at one time or another.”

“But she wrote a note.” Kay looked at Noë, who was sobbing quietly, her face buried in her hands. “She said that someone could come and save her. Rescue us.”

“A thin hope,” the Devil said, “to base your dreams upon. Yes, if someone knows you are here. And, yes, if they come for you after midnight when we can move about. And, yes, if they know it is you—who you used to be—and not how you are now: a mere puppet. And, yes, if in escaping, they trust you will follow and not look back.”

“Oh, dahlink,” Olya cried out. “If they get past the puppet in the Front Room. If they love you, if they know where to find you. If, if, if. Too many ifs.”

“Better,” the Devil said, “to put away such dreams.”

“I am sorry that I ever had them.” She thought of her husband and wondered if he had forgotten her by now. The Back Room was as quiet as she had ever heard.

At last the Queen cleared her throat and broke the silence. “Since you have confessed and apologized for what you have done, and I know that in your hearts you promise never to try to run away again, this court finds that you have been punished enough.”

And with that, the trial was over, the verdict rendered, yet they all sat still and in place, like dolls in the window, until the time came to put away their playthings.

*   *   *

The beauty was in the conception of the problem, and the elegance was in the solution. It all started with a horse. Muybridge had been commissioned to photograph the horse in motion, ostensibly to determine just how it moved, whether or not all four feet left the ground at once. Hard as it is for the modern mind to conceive, in centuries past, no one really knew. The eye was not quick enough. Artists guessed. Scientists speculated. Until Muybridge figured out a scheme to use a series of wired cameras tripped by the animal as it galloped. The mare's name was Sallie Gardner, and the twenty-four pictures were made on June 15, 1878. Theo sat at the kitchen table surrounded by his abandoned work, the translation of the life of Muybridge. He studied the famous images, in which he could clearly see that as the horse moved forward all four feet left the ground at the apex of its stride. The legs folded together under its belly, the horse appeared to be flying in midair. Flipping on his smartphone, Theo watched a short video that ran the photos in sequence. At regular speed, it lasts for three seconds, but the anonymous poster had looped and slowed the images, capturing the motion of the filly's fluid stride. He could not stop watching Sallie Gardner and her jockey, hitting replay again and again. Eventually the light behind the tiny image began to bother his eyes, and he wiped clear the screen and set down the phone.

The pages had fallen out of order, the translation broken from where he had left off his work. In fact, the whole apartment was a shambles, the bed a wreck of sheets and blankets, Kay's pillow hugged to death, the sink awash with dishes, dirty towels and stacks of laundry in the bathroom. He had let the place go. Kay would be horrified by the clutter when she walked through the front door, though he had given up listening for her key in the lock. All the usual reminders of their daily routines were falling away. He had stopped believing she was just in the other room.

Kay used to jump slightly when he entered or at the knock on the door or the ring of the phone, just a reflex, no more than her muscles flexing, but he had always noticed how easily she startled in such moments. Yet for all her expressive energy, she was most compelling in the stillness of their time together. She had a way of curling herself into the smallest possible space when alone, reading a book or watching TV, and it often surprised him to find her wedged into the corner of a sofa or hiding behind the wings of an armchair. He would watch her surreptitiously and study the emptiness in her expression or the concentration behind her eyes. More than the sound of her voice, the music of her laughter, her body next to his in bed or walking hand in hand on a warm summer night, more than action, he missed the stillness of her and felt that slipping away. He could be alone with her, but it was difficult learning to be alone without her.

In the midst of all his desperate searching for her, he had to fight the thought that Kay might never be found. He had to push away the fear that she was gone forever, that he would never see her again. On the surface, he allowed the possibility, and in long conversations with Egon or the police, they had broached the subject now and again, and he thought how kind they were, trying to prepare him for the eventuality, or should we say possibility, probability, likelihood, chance. But underneath all their palaver, he refused to accept any other reality than that she would return, alive, whole, the same as she had been. She would have been shocked to see how he had let himself go.

He stabbed at the disorder, piling his books and papers into neat stacks. Washing the dishes, gathering the sheets, linens, and piles of clothes for a drop-off at the laundry. He cleaned out the fridge, discarded every open carton, and he made a hash from what remained edible. For the first time in weeks, he sat down to a normal homemade meal alone in the apartment.

Between bites, he took out his phone and leaned it against his glass and searched for more Muybridge. In his fascination with animals in motion, Muybridge had made scores of other studies—a running bison, a charging lion, an ostrich, an elephant, a parrot in flight. And then he photographed people, how they moved in the simplest of tasks. All very clinical, the bodies in question either barely draped or without any clothes. Theo was entranced by the sequence of a nude woman descending a short staircase over and over, and he suddenly remembered what happened the night Kay disappeared. The light in the toy shop. He had been eating at Brigands bistro on rue Saint-Paul, just down the street from her favorite store, when the lights went on in the abandoned building.

In all of his interviews with the police, when Thompson and Foucault had asked him to re-create the events of that night, he had neglected to mention the incident, perhaps because in comparison to Kay's disappearance, it seemed inconsequential in his confused mind, but now he remembered clearly his surprise that evening. He had told them all the rest, leaving the apartment and walking to the restaurant, what he ate, how long he stayed, at what time he arrived back home, and the long wait to hear from her, the message in the middle of the night. Perhaps the lights in the toy shop meant nothing at all. The juggler in the bowler hat had reminded him of the puppets, and a string of synapses fired in his tired brain, but despite the late hour, he needed to go check that shop, if only to fill in the puzzle.

“Wait just a minute,” she had said, tugging on his crooked arm. “Stop, let me see.” Kay acted like a child when they passed the Quatre Mains. She could not resist staring at the dolls and puppets on display, sometimes putting her hands on the glass to peer inside and stare at the wonders. And nearly every time, Theo indulged her whim, for in those moments, the little girl emerged, the one he had never known, the essential child inside, like the core of a matryoshka, the Russian nesting doll. Some bright spirit responsible for the grown woman he loved.

The chilly night air foretold the end of summer and the autumn soon to come. He stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and ambled along the sidewalk, vaguely excited about remembering the missing detail. A few stragglers lingered at the outdoor café tables, and a fiddler's reel from an Irish pub spilled out onto the cobblestoned street. At the corner nearest Quatre Mains, a ghost appeared, and at first, he mistook her for the drowned woman and shook with a spasm of fear, but it was a scullery maid in white cap and apron, her face ashen and nicked by makeup scars, with an iron necklace and a length of chain ringed around her neck. She nearly ran him over, and then looked as though she recognized him for a brief moment. “
Pardonnez
,” she said, smiling. Both hands were clenched to hold a hurricane lantern which glowed with the flicker of faux whale oil that gave a deathly pallor to her makeup. He laughed, realizing she was one of the actors from
les Visites Fantômes de Québec
, the nightly summer ghost tour through the Old City streets. Looking back once, the phantom sped away to join her hidden comrades.

The puppet shop stood just as always, dark and quiet. The dolls had not moved. The bear with the red fez had not bicycled away. The aboriginal doll underneath the bell jar, the one Kay so adored, stood like a guardian to another world, his black eyes staring into the distance. Theo tried the door, but it was locked as always. Perhaps his memory was just playing tricks, and no light had ever flashed in the abandoned store. He pressed his nose against the window as she had always done, but he could see nothing but darkness behind the puppets.

 

9

The giants returned. Kay had no idea how long she had been in the dormant state but was startled to be aware of them in the middle of the day. Judging by the slant of light coming through the edges of the covered windows, it was perhaps four in the afternoon. Something had happened to the order of things, and though she could not move, Kay was attuned to the changing nature of the world. Beyond the curtain, the giants were moving about. She could tell by their heavy footfalls and agitated voices reaching her ears. The bells on the front door ringing like mad with people going in and out of the shop. They spent hours in the Front Room, and not just the Quatre Mains and the Deux Mains as expected, but others as well, new and different voices, swearing in French and English, the smell of cigarettes, bottles banging on the counters, the tromp of boots and the packing of boxes. Kay hoped for night to come, then midnight, so that the puppets might be awake and someone could peek around the edge, but they must have started early in the day to have been working for so many hours. Frustrated that she could not see what was happening, she let out a deep and loud sigh. Behind her came a whisper: “Shush!”

“Who is that?” Kay asked.

“It's the Good Fairy. You shouldn't be talking.”

“What's going on out there?”

From the four corners of the Back Room came warnings to be quiet. She resisted the urge to speak again and instead listened carefully, trying to calm her fears by falling into the hum of conversation and the random bangs and bumps. In a while, the noises slowed down. Men at the front door were saying
adieu.

“No,” the Deux Mains said. “We can do the back room ourselves. Nothing but odds and ends.
Merci.
”

The lintel bells chimed one last time. A key went into the lock, and then silence once more. Kay waited a long time before daring to speak.

“Does anybody know what is happening?”

The Queen issued an edict. “You are not to speak until you are spoken to. Everyone keep still. A move is afoot.”

Kay did not like to be chided by the Queen, but she respected her wishes. In the privacy of her own contemplation, she conjured a number of scenarios. The men were cleaning out the front of the shop to make room for the puppets languishing in the back. She pictured herself and her comrades taking the place of those old toys in the display window next to her favorite. Or, possibly, the men were with the police who had been looking all this time and finally found her and would be returning in the night and bring her back to her husband, who had not forgotten her after all. The thought quickened inside like a pulse that made her feel nearly human again.

Without warning, the beads rattled and the curtains parted. Backlit, the giants stood in the opening, two shadows great as mountains. The puppets stirred with excitement, barely contained exhalations rising softly from where each one lay.

“Good evening, my beauties,” the Deux Mains said. “We are off on our next adventure.”

Mad with curiosity, Kay turned her head to face them, breaking a cardinal rule. She gasped when she saw the Quatre Mains hand over the primitive wooden puppet to the Deux Mains, who laid it carefully in a bespoke leather case which she sealed and locked with a clasp. Together, they put the bell jar in a separate container lined with cedar shavings. From there they began loading tools into milk crates, gathering the spare parts, and throwing them into bins. One or the other crossed her line of vision frequently, but they were little more than a blur in their haste. The puppets held their tongues and stiffened, and the giants only spoke out of necessity.

“Shall we take them all?” the Quatre Mains asked.

She wondered what was meant by his question, whether some would go and some would stay, whether it was a temporary measure as when the Judges and the Old Hag had departed or more permanent, for it surely seemed as though they were packing to leave for good.

“Who would leave a soul behind?” the Deux Mains replied. “They are the spirit of our shows. Take each and every one.”

A wave of relief doused the fuse of panic. A giant approached, two legs and a forest-green cabled sweater, and with his fingers rolled Kay over on her back. Wrapping his grip around her, he lifted her high into the air, her limbs gone limp, and raised her to his face. His eyes were like two china plates, blue and gray with black saucers in the middle, and his nose was pocked with old scars like a hill on the moon. Deep wrinkles lined his face, fissures in the parchment of his skin, and wiry hairs looked like strands of twine sprouting from his eyebrows and the caterpillar of his mustache. He brought his other hand to her head and with the nail of his index finger inspected the jagged cut of her mouth, his touch gentle and curious. When he cracked a smile, his teeth looked like old stones weathered by scores of winters. He smoothed her hair with his free palm, his gesture reminding her of her husband's affection. “A little mischief,” he said. He laid her in a partitioned wooden box, her space no wider than a coffin and lined with newspaper shreds. She watched as he brought the others. To her left, he laid Noë, after a quick brush of her straw hair, and to her right, he placed Nix. The Deux Mains had three dolls in hand when she arrived, and Kay had only the briefest glimpse of her. She was a dark-haired woman, with olive skin and green eyes, younger than the Quatre Mains, perhaps by a dozen years. Setting down the Three Sisters, she then covered Kay and her companions with a flat divider, darkening the space. Olya, Masha, and Irina were stored atop them, and then a lid was fixed to the box that now contained six. Strips of packing tape sealed them in. Judging by the muffled sounds, a second box was prepared, which Kay could only assume held the Queen and Mr. Firkin, the Good Fairy and the Devil, and the Worm and the Dog. And then the giants went away again.