Love of Seven Dolls

by Paul Gallico

  Except, now, the shoe was on the other foot and it was Mouche who paused in the spill of yellow light before the puppet booth and called to the small figure flattened on the counter there, “Hello, Baby . . .”

  Mr. Reynardo, the composed, the cynical, and the self-assured, was taken aback. His whole frame shuddered as he reared up and peered through the gloom, for he was handicapped by having to look directly into the light. His jaws moved silently several times and finally he managed to produce a croak.

  “Mouche! Where have you been? Have you been around here long?”

  Mouche paused before the booth and set her valise down. She contemplated the agitated and non-plussed fox jittering back and forth. Finally she said, “Never mind where I have been. I know where you are going. There is nothing to be found in the heart of flames but the ashes of regret. I’m ashamed of you all.”

  The fox stopped flapping and contemplated her long and hard. “We didn’t know you were here.” Then he added, “We voted . . .”

  “Was it a fair vote?” Mouche asked.

  The fox swallowed. “Well, maybe Monsieur Nicholas, Carrot Top and I rigged it a little. But it was only because of you—going away and leaving us, I mean.”

  “And Gigi here?” Mouche bent over and picked up the empty doll.

  The fox looked uneasy. He flattened his head to the counter and thereby seemed to have moved his eyes guiltily. He said, “We pushed her out of the nest. We excommunicated her.”

  “We?”

  “I did. She didn’t love you . . .”

  “It was wrong, Rey.”

  He hung his head. “I know it. Don’t leave us, Mouche.”

  “Rey—you’re blackmailing me again like you always have—with love . . .”

  There might have been the well-dressed, attentive, cultured audience of the night before out front instead of the blank, staring empty seats; there might have been the rabble from the slums washed up from the edge of the street fair, gathered about the booth; there might have been the peasant children and the village people gathered about them on the village square—it made no difference. When the puppets were there and she talking with them, she lost herself, she lost reality, she lost the world—there remained only these, her friends and companions and their need.

  The hoarse voice of the fox dropped to a rattling whisper again. “This time it isn’t blackmail, Mouche. If you must go, take me with you.”

  “And leave the others? Rey, you can’t desert them now.”

  The wary figure of the fox stirred. He moved imperceptibly closer to where Mouche was standing. “Oh yes, I can. I don’t care about anything or anybody. Let me come, Mouche. I’m housebroken. And you know me—gentle with children.”

  The old habits were so hard to break. Momentarily Mouche forgot about herself and that she had parted with all this, that this was the beginning of the morning that was to see her wedded to Balotte and a new and normal life. She went over to the booth, and bending over in her sweetly tender and concerned manner admonished, “But don’t you see, Rey, that’s being disloyal.”

  Mr. Reynardo appeared to ponder this for a moment. Then he moved closer and barely nuzzled the tip of his snout onto the back of Mouche’s hand. He sighed deeply and said: “I know. But what’s the diff? Everybody knows I’m a heel. They expect it of me. And to tell you the truth, it’s a relief to be one again. I’ve tried to be a good fellow but it doesn’t work—not unless you’re around to keep me from backsliding . . .”

  She could not help herself. She placed a caressing hand upon the bristly red head: “My poor Rey . . .”

  Instantly the fox whipped his head into the hollow between neck and shoulder and was whispering, “Mouche—take care of me . . .”

  The touch of him was as always an exquisitely tender agony. Her heart swelled with love for this unhappy creature. With startling suddenness Alifanfaron bobbed up.

  “Oh gee, excuse me. Am I interrupting something? Goodness, it’s Mouche. Are you back again, Mouche? If you’re back again I don’t want to die any more . . .”

  The fox grated: “Damn. Why did you have to come up just then. I nearly had her.” He vanished.

  Mouche said: “But, Ali dear, I cannot stay, I’m going to be married, and I don’t want you to die . . . What shall I do?” They had all the deadly logical illogicality of children.

  “Take me along, Mouche. You don’t know what it is to be a giant and stupid and lose a friend . . .”

  Mouche had heard herself say, “I’m going to be married . . .” but it was like something someone else said about another person. Where was that real world now, the world of sanity and things as they ought to be to which she had been fleeing to save herself from complete destruction? Now she could remember only how she had always felt about Alifanfaron’s troubles.

  “Oh, Ali,” she cried, “you’re not really stupid. It’s just that you were born too big in a world filled with people who are too small.”

  “Ah hooom! Harrrumph! Exactly, my dear. A very trenchant remark. Most sage indeed.” It was Dr. Duclos the penguin in formal attire as usual, his pince-nez attached to a black ribbon perched on the end of his beak. He peered at her for a moment and then said: “So glad to see you’re back. We’ve all missed you frightfully.” He went away.

  Carrot Top appeared whistling a snatch of “Va t’en, va t’en,” and then with a simulated surprise, discovered the girl standing at her accustomed place slightly to the right of the centre of the booth. He said: “Oh hello, Mouche. You still here?”

  “I was just leaving. Carrot Top, come here . . .”

  He edged tentatively a little closer, but was wary. Mouche; said: “I overheard everything. I couldn’t help it. Aren’t you ashamed?”

  Carrot Top said: “Oh,” and was lost in thought for a moment. Then the small boy with the red hair, bulbous nose, pointed ears and wistful, longing face, said reflectively: “It was going to be quite queer without you. Oh yes, quite queer. At first I thought I might be able to go places again. You were always holding me down, you know . . .”

  “Oh, Carrot Top—dear little Carrots,” Mouche said. “I never wanted to.”

  Carrot Top mused, “I wonder. You were always pointing out my duty to Gigi, for instance. And there was never anything behind that pretty face. At first, after you left, I thought I might be able to . . .”

  “Yes, yes, I know—fly.” Mouche concluded for him, as the sudden tears filled her eyes and for a moment she was unable to see the booth or Carrot Top. “Fly then, little Carrots. No one will keep you back now. Reach for the stars and they will tumble into your lap.”

  The puppet emitted a mortal wail, “But I don’t want to fly, really. I don’t want the stars. I only want to be with you for ever, Mouche. Take me with you.” He slithered across the counter and rested his head on Mouche’s breast and beneath the pressure of the little figure she could feel the wild beating of her heart.

  “Carrots—dear Carrots . . . I have always loved you.”

  The doll turned his head and looked her full in the face. “Do you? But you don’t really love us, Mouche, not really, otherwise you couldn’t go away.”

  A moan of pain almost animal in its intensity was torn from Mouche. She cried. “Oh, I do, I do. I love you all. I have loved you so much and with all my heart. It is only him I hate so terribly that there is room for nothing else, not even love any more.”

  Standing there in the darkness, lost as it were in the centre of the vast universe of the empty stage, she could bring herself to speak the truth to a doll that she had never spoken to a human.

  “I loved him. I loved him from the first moment I saw him. I loved him and would have denied him nothing. He took me and gave me only bitterness and evil in return for all I had for him, all the tenderness and love, all the gifts I had saved for him. My love turned to hate. And the more I hated him, the more I loved you all. Carrots . . . How long can such deep love and fearful hatred live side by side in one human being before the
host goes mad? Carrots, Carrots . . . let me go . . .”

  Yet she put up her hands and pressed the head of Carrot Top close to her neck and suddenly Mr. Reynardo was there too, and the touch of the two little objects there made her wish to weep endlessly and hopelessly. She closed her eyes wondering if her mind would crack.

  She was startled by the shrill voice of Carrot Top, “But who are we, Mouche?”

  The remark was echoed by Mr. Reynardo, but when she opened her eyes the pair were gone and instead, Monsieur Nicholas was regarding her from behind the panes of his square spectacles.

  The little figure had the effect of calming her momentarily, for the old habits were still strong. Here was her reliable friend and philosopher and counsellor who appeared inevitably in the booth when matters threatened to get out of hand, mender of broken toys and broken hearts.

  Yet he too asked the question that brought her again close to panic. “Who are we all, my dear, Carrot Top and Mr. Reynardo, Alifanfaron and Gigi, Dr. Duclos and Madame Muscat, and even myself?”

  Mouche began to tremble and held to the side of the booth lest she faint. Worlds were beginning to fall; defences behind which she had thought to live in safety and blindness were crumbling.

  Who were they indeed? And what had been the magic that had kept them separate, the seven who were so different, yet united in love and kindness, and the one who was so monstrous?

  Monsieur Nicholas spoke again. “Think, Mouche. Whose hand was it you just took to you so lovingly when it was Carrot Top or Mr. Reynardo or Alifanfaron, and held it close to your breast and bestowed the mercy of tears upon it?”

  Mouche suppressed a cry of terror. “The hand that struck me across the mouth . . .” she gasped and her own fingers went to her lips as though in memory of that pain . . .

  “Yet you loved it, Mouche. And those hands loved and caressed you——”

  Mouche felt her senses beginning to swim but now it was she who asked the question. “But who are you then, Monsieur Nicholas? Who are you all?”

  Monsieur Nicholas seemed to grow in stature, to fill the booth with his voice and presence as he replied: “A man is many things, Mouche. He may wish like Carrot Top to be a poet and soar to the stars and yet be earthbound and overgrown, ugly and stupid like Alifanfaron. In him will be the seeds of jealousy, greed and the insatiable appetite for admiration and pleasure of chicken-brained arrogant Gigi. Part of him will be a pompous bore like Dr. Duclos and another the counterpart of Madame Muscat, gossip, busybody, tattletale and sage. And where there is a philosopher there can also be the sly, double-dealing sanctimonious hypocrite, thief and self-forgiving scoundrel like Mr. Reynardo.”

  And Monsieur Nicholas continued: “The nature of man is a never-ending mystery, Mouche. There we are, Mouche, seven of us you have grown to love. And each of us has given you what there was of his or her heart. I think I even heard the wicked Reynardo offer to lay down his life for you—or his skin. He was trying to convey to you a message from Him who animates us all . . .”

  “No, no . . . No more!” Mouche pleaded. “Stop. I cannot bear it . . .”

  “Evil cannot live without good . . .” Monsieur Nicholas said in a voice that was suddenly unlike his own. “All of us would rather die than go on without you . . .”

  “Who is it? Who is speaking?” Mouche cried. And then on a powerful impulse, hardly knowing what she was doing, she reached across the booth to the curtain through which she could be seen but could not see and with one motion stripped away the veil that for so long had separated her from the wretched, unhappy man hiding there.

  He sat there immovable as a statue, gaunt, hollow-eyed, bitter, hard, uncompromising, yet dying of love for her.

  The man in black with the red hair in whose dead face only the eyes still lived was revealed with his right hand held high, his fingers inside the glove that was Monsieur Nicholas. In his left was crumpled in a convulsive grip the limp puppet of Monsieur Reynardo. It was as though he were the balancing scale between good and evil, and evil and good. Hatred and love, despair and hope played across his features, illuminating them at times like lightning playing behind storm clouds with an unearthly beauty, Satan before the fall.

  And to Mouche who passed in that moment over the last threshold from child to womanhood, there came as a vision of blinding clarity and understanding of a man who had tried to be and live a life of evil, who to mock God and man had perpetrated a monstrous joke by creating his puppets like man, in His image and filling them with love and kindness.

  And in the awful struggle within him that confronted her she read his punishment. He who loved only wickedness and corruption had been corrupted by the good in his own creations. The seven dolls of his real nature had become his master and he their victim. He could live only through them and behind the curtain of his booth.

  And in one last blinding flash, Mouche knew the catalyst that could save him. It was herself. But he could not ask for her love. He would not and could not ask. In that flash she thought for an instant upon the story of Beauty and the Beast which had always touched her oddly as a child and knew that here was the living Beast, who must die of the struggle if she did not take pity on him.

  Yet it was not pity but love that made Mouche reach her arms towards him across the counter of the puppet booth where they had duelled daily for the past year and cry: “Michel—Michel! Come to me!”

  No time seemed to have passed, yet he was out of the booth and they were clinging desperately to one another. Trembling, holding him, Mouche whispered: “Michel . . . Michel. I love you. I do love you, no matter who or what you are. I cannot help myself. It is you I love, you that I have always loved.”

  It was she who held him secure, his red head, as stiff and bristly as that of Mr. Reynardo, sheltered in the hollow of her neck and shoulder where so often his hand, unrecognised, had leaned. And the desperation of his clinging was the greater as he murmured her name again and again: “Mouche . . . Mouche . . . Mouche . . .” and hid his face from hers.

  “Michel . . . I love you. I will never leave you.”

  Then it was finally that Mouche felt the trickling of something warm over the hand that held the ugly, beautiful, evil, but now transfigured head, to her and knew that they were the tears of a man who never in his life had yielded to them before and who, emerging from the long nightmare, would be made forever whole by love.

  And thus they remained on that darkened empty stage for a long while as Michel Peyrot, alias Capitaine Coq, surrendered his person and his soul to what had been so fiercely hateful and unbearable to him, the cloister of an innocent and loving woman and the receiving and cherishing of love.

  Nor did they stir even when an old negro with a white patch over one eye shuffled across the echoing stage and looking down over the counter of the booth into the darkness of the mysterious quarters below chuckled.

  “Oh ho; Little Boss! You, Carrot Top! Mr. Reynardo! Dr. Duclos, Ali, Madame Muscat! Where are you all? You better come up here and learn the news. Miss Mouche is not going to leave us. She is going to stay with us for ever.”

  Table of Contents

  LOVE OF SEVEN DOOLS

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE