by Daria Wilke
Because of the box, which I can only carry wrapped in my arms, I can’t see my feet, so I walk cautiously, with tiny little steps.
The air suddenly smells of the New Year and tangerines — and as if someone has pulled an enormous Christmas cracker up above and snow is falling out of it like white confetti. It’s falling in giant, fluffy flakes, so big they look like stage props. The snow falls in a small drift on the big box. I quickly pull my hand away and very quickly, so as not to drop my package, brush off the newly fallen snow. I can see the apple-red circles, the tulip-shaped symbol in the crown of a foreign post, and the theater’s address printed in Latin letters. And my name, which Sam has written.
I don’t even want to try to guess what’s there, inside, even though I’m terribly curious. I just walk along quietly for fear of frightening off my joy that Sam hasn’t forgotten me.
It feels as though he’s smiling at me from far away, that I can see the dimple in his cheek and him waving to me — greetings, greetings. I smile back at Sam, and my mouth spreads wide, from ear to ear, as if stitched in place.
The Jester is waiting for me in the room with the view of the square. He too is probably curious to see what has come from Sam. He’s sitting on the table, his back leaning against the wall, and the light of the streetlamps falls on the knees of his multicolored pants. The Jester looks like an ice angel, as if he’s about to snap his strings and fly off, or break from a careless movement because he’s so fragile. Only his smile — his rascally smile — says, “What angel? No one’s breaking me.”
Tomorrow I’ll take him to Sashok so that he can guard her in the night.
But for now — see, Jester? — I take the big scissors and slit open the orange box. I take out the inflated packing pillows and pull off the thick wrapping paper. Then I start to see the scraps and bells — cornflower blue and crimson scraps, and even that familiar scrap the color of gooseberries.
All new, brilliant, and elegant. A Jester’s cap.
I GO to see Sashok immediately after her operation — I’m almost the first. The Jester and I. We go together.
Lyolik taught me the best way to carry a marionette in a bag. You have to take all the strings in your hand and wind them tightly around the controller, like a hank, so they don’t get tangled and break by accident.
I wrap the Jester in a flannel blanket — only his nose sticks out — and I keep thinking he’s going to freeze before we get to Sashok.
I think about Sam all morning.
What he’ll say when he sees the Jester. How he’ll smile. How he’ll take up the controller and lead him across the floor, as if he were alive. How he’ll run his tapered, olive-skinned fingers over all the controller’s levers like piano keys.
I examine the bright scraps of the Jester’s cap and imagine Sam, far away, choosing them. Or ordering them. And when I picture him tilting his head and the wrinkles fanning out around his smile, I don’t feel so sad.
“Why the long face, Grigory?” my grandfather asks too cheerfully, and he claps me on the shoulder with his firm hand.
Every time my grandfather comes over, he asks me the same thing. “Why so sad?” or “Why so gloomy?” or “What are you smiling at, Grigory?”
As if he doesn’t know what else to say. I never know what to answer, so I just say, “Nothing, I’m fine.”
Then my grandfather immediately turns away, as if I’ve said some magic word and now he can go calmly about what he’s been doing and ignore me.
Only, that “Nothing, I’m fine” is a lie. And I don’t want to lie anymore.
“Why the long face, Grigory?” my grandfather says too cheerfully today. He’s already getting ready to turn around, anticipating the usual “Nothing, I’m fine,” but I suddenly say, “I miss Sam.”
My grandfather’s face turns to stone.
“Don’t make things up” is all he can say. And he frowns.
“I’m not making things up,” I answer defiantly. I’m not going to cave to him anymore. “I’m not making things up. I really do miss him.”
I see my grandfather getting angry — because he doesn’t know what to do.
“Don’t make things up,” he repeats, now angrily. “Don’t pretend you miss some queer.”
Rage surges and washes over me like a wave, blinding and deafening me.
“He’s not a queer! He’s a human being!” I shout. “The best person in the world!”
My grandfather turns red. “Human beings are human beings. And queers are queers. Perverts.”
“You’re the pervert!” I scream as loud as I can, not believing it’s me screaming. That I’ve dared stand up to my grandfather. And that now I’m my own person and I think nothing of his contempt.
That what is said is more powerful than what isn’t.
“And if that’s true, then I’m a queer. Go on, say it! Say it! Say ‘queer’ to me!”
“You’re lying!” My grandfather is totally red.
“I’m not lying!” I shout in reply and I feel myself turning red too.
“You’re lying, you swine!” my grandfather shrieks almost like a woman, and he hauls back and takes a swing at my face. He misses my cheek, but his hard hand brushes my brow and temple, and my skin bruises immediately, as if it’s been swiped by the sandpaper for polishing papier-mâché.
I don’t notice Mama coming into the room.
“You hit him,” she says to my grandfather in a calmly sinister voice. “Apologize this minute.”
My grandfather stares at her.
“You too? You know everything? You’re the one who spoiled him. He was a normal kid! Filth! Abomination! Perversion! This is your fault. You’re the one who threw your child at that theater queer!” My grandfather looms over Mama like a mountain ready to come crashing down on her.
He shouts, paying no attention to me standing in the room, as if he even likes it that I shrink, as if he is giving me a good thrashing.
“This is a disease. Do you understand?” he shouts. “He needs treatment! Treatment! This can be treated!”
My grandfather doesn’t look at me at all, and even I begin to wonder whether I’m here or not.
Suddenly I understand Sam perfectly, to the tips of my toes. I feel the loneliness he must have woken up with in the morning and fallen asleep with at night, a tremendous loneliness that never goes away, even if there are plenty of people all around you.
“It’s you who needs treating,” Mama says quietly, and she turns completely white. “You’re attacking your grandson. That’s it. We have nothing to talk about.”
“Fool! Fool! You’ve always been a fool!” My grandfather’s shouts get louder and louder, as if he’s afraid he can’t outshout Mama’s quiet voice.
“Don’t be expecting any grandchildren!” My grandfather spits out the words spitefully. Then he checks himself. “I should talk. I did, but I wish I’d never had a grandson.”
He turns around and walks out.
And slams the door so that the teacups tinkle delicately and plaintively in the cupboard.
And a silence falls: a strange, resounding silence. Mama looks past me.
“He’ll be back. Probably,” she says without confidence.
I walk over to her and just push my forehead into her shoulder. One day I’ll grow up. I’ll grow up and I won’t cry. Ever.
The crunching, frosty morning has turned the city into a New Year’s scene. The tree branches under the hospital window line the sky with black strokes, as if all this were a shadow theater, and the azure and yellow tomtits in the snow look like fluffy holiday tree ornaments.
In the long gray corridor I unwrap the flannel blanket, and the Jester splashes cornflower blue, gooseberry purple, and apple red. He laughs, and the hospital walls turn into multicolored screens, into a nice new backstage, into artificially lit fire gratings.
He has to see everything, so I sit him on my shoulder, and for a second it feels as though Sam is nearby.
I take his hand in mine,
his smooth, comfortable hand, as if it isn’t wooden at all, and it rests quietly in my hand.
It’s a strange thing. I’ve always thought that Sashok was much older and stronger than me. But today I feel older and stronger than her — stronger than everyone. Even my grandfather.
The Jester seems to lightly put his heel forward: Come on, go, forward.
And he — no, I — open the door and see the hospital ward with the bright green walls and the IV drip stretching like a fine marionette string to the bed and the familiar shorn head.
“Hi, Sashok!” I shout straight from the threshold, and she smiles broadly, so broadly she doesn’t seem sick at all. And then I suddenly see how pretty she is, even in the hospital, and that her lips aren’t bluish but alive and warm, and inside me, heat spreads from somewhere in my core.
“Hi! The Jester and I have come to see you.”
DARIA WILKE was born in Moscow in 1976, and drew on her childhood while writing this novel, as she grew up in a family of puppeteers. She now works at the University of Vienna in Austria.
MARIAN SCHWARTZ is an award-winning translator of classic and contemporary Russian literature. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowships and is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. She studied Russian at Harvard University, Middlebury Russian School, and Leningrad State University, and received a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Austin, Texas.
Text copyright © 2012 by Daria Wilke
English translation © 2015 by Marian Schwartz
All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920, by arrangement with Samokat Publishing House, Moscow, Russia. SCHOLASTIC, the LANTERN LOGO, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilke, Daria, author.
[Shutovskoi kolpak. English]
Playing a part / by Daria Wilke ; translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz. — [First American edition].
pages cm
Summary: Grishka has grown up in the closed world of a puppet theater in Russia, but now that world seems to be falling apart — his best friend needs an operation, financial difficulties are forcing people out, his homosexual friend Sam, the jester, is leaving for Holland and Grishka no longer knows what role he himself is playing.
ISBN 978-0-545-72607-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Marionettes — Juvenile fiction. 2. Puppeteers — Juvenile fiction. 3. Puppet theater — Russia (Federation) — Juvenile fiction. 4. Gays — Russia (Federation) — Juvenile fiction. 5. Identity (Psychology) — Juvenile fiction. 6. Russia (Federation) — Juvenile fiction. [1. Marionettes — Fiction. 2. Puppeteers — Fiction. 3. Puppet theater — Fiction. 4. Gays — Fiction. 5. Identity — Fiction. 6. Russia (Federation) — Fiction.] I. Schwartz, Marian, translator. II. Title.
PZ7.W648398Pl 2015
[Fic] — dc23
2014012002
Originally published in Russian as Shutovskoi kolpak
by Samokat Publishing House, May 2013
First American edition, April 2015
Cover art © 2015 by Michael Frost with images from Media Bakery
Cover design by Sharismar Rodriguez
e-ISBN 978-0-545-72608-5
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