The Puppet Maker's Bones

by Alisa Tangredi

  Meanwhile, McGovern and Peters were in other public areas that radiated out from the street where Pavel Trusnik’s house was situated. Each came in contact with a handful of people, either on a streetcar or in the library, or in other places where the public might gather. Each man left behind a book or a toy that would attract the attention of someone who might pick up the object to inspect it or to hand it to someone else.

  Each of these people would fall ill with the flu later that day and in turn would pass it along to someone else. Some of those people would travel to other parts of the city or get on a train and travel even further, and the flu would spread. Some would recover; some would die. The three boys that Pavel had manhandled that day would be among the number that did not survive.

  ***

  “But to kill all of those people?” Pavel asked.

  “You killed three innocent boys today. Are you attempting to judge? The Rules exist so that people do not die indiscriminately and that horrible accidents are prevented as much as possible. You have treated the Rules with alarming negligence and placed us all in this position.

  “What is my punishment?” Pavel asked, his eyes wet.

  “You are given a choice. It is up to you which one you decide upon. The first and most obvious choice is death. You are put to a sudden and painless death, thus ending any possibility of your actions affecting others or our safety ever again. Your other option, which some of us are against, is for you to be placed under house arrest for the remainder of your natural life. You are to remain here and have no interaction with another person. You may contact members of Trope & Co. for the maintenance of your home and affairs by telephone and post. You are to arrange delivery of all your other needs. If maintenance must be done on your home, you are to arrange workmen by telephone and by post. You must remain inside. You may go into your garden at night, never during daylight hours, and you are to remain behind the fence. You are not to venture into the city under any circumstances. You are to be shunned by our kind and you will have no contact with us, other than the maintenance we have already mentioned. You will suffer a particular kind of solitary confinement, but with the comforts of home. That is your second choice.”

  Pavel regarded his hands as he searched for answers that would not come. He recalled a similar moment many years ago when he had looked for answers in the nail beds of his fingers. Answers did not come then either.

  Peters spoke up. “Keep in mind that whatever arrangement you choose may last for a very long time, and solitary confinement is a serious sentence. Many go mad. It is, of course, an alternative to death.”

  Pavel and McGovern regarded one another. McGovern spoke up.

  “Pavel, you and I know that you have not handled this level of solitary existence well in the past. You did go mad for a time, and there were people around you. This time, there will be no one. No drugs created from your garden as a means of mental escape. We cannot stop you from ordering liquor in your grocery delivery, but that will be all. Nothing more. No visits from us. You and I will not be having tea.”

  Pavel understood. What he could not explain to them was that he felt his actions warranted a more severe punishment. Putting him to a sudden and painless death was no punishment. Too merciful. The consequences had to be worse than that.

  “And if I do not succeed in following the rules of the second arrangement? If I break the rules of solitary confinement and have contact with another person?”

  McGovern searched Pavel’s face. “The punishment for breaking the rules of sentencing is very harsh because it is meant to make a point, to serve as an example to others who might follow in your path.” McGovern answered Pavel’s questioning gaze. “We burn you alive.”

  Pavel flinched. Death by fire. The way they had done away with so many of his kind during the years surrounding his birth was somehow fitting. Pavel pulled the paperwork to him, read it briefly and then signed his name to it. McGovern and he exchanged a look a moment before McGovern averted his gaze. The men got up from the table, gathered the signed agreement and filed out of Pavel’s house, leaving him alone. His sentence had begun.

  Pasadena, 1950

  Pavel had been drinking, which was not his custom, but he had been drinking more often in the past decades. He had been a widower for over sixty years, the number of years most happy marriages last—those granted the gift of a lifetime together, that is, before one is lost to the other by the cruelty of a natural death that always leaves one alone, mourning the loss of the other. Pavel spent many an evening alone in his workshop, drinking, carving wood, talking to the many puppets he’d shipped in crates from Prague when he had emigrated to America.

  This particular evening Pavel was a bit more drunk than usual. He was weeping. He wiped his hand across his face and moved in an unsteady line to a large cabinet built into the wall. He took a skeleton key from around his neck, unlocked the cabinet, reached in and with great care, removed one life-sized marionette controlled with rods and wires. This puppet wore a long gown of silver blue silk and lace. The carved face looked up at him, unblinking.

  Pavel stroked the face of the marionette he held in his arms. He draped one puppet arm over his shoulder and took the other hand in his own and in a slow and languid waltz rhythm, began to dance around the room. The puppet dangled, limp in his arms.

  “Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, and that the lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour?” Pavel continued reciting Romeo’s last words to Juliet, in a close embrace. “For fear of that, I still will stay with thee, and never from this palace of dim night depart again: here, here will I remain with worms that are thy chamber-maids.” Pavel hugged the marionette and sobbed.

  “O, here will I set up my everlasting rest, and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!” His eyes sought a reaction from the marionette, and when that reaction never came, he continued a waltz-like dance around the room. “Arms, take your last embrace!” Pavel lifted both the limp arms up and over his shoulders into a macabre hug. “And, lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!” Pavel brought the puppet to him for a one-sided embrace as he kissed the carved face of the unmoving marionette. “Come bitter conduct, come unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark. Here’s to my love!” Pavel swung her around, and with one hand, picked up the bottle from which he had been drinking and tipped it to his lips.

  The sound of clapping startled him.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Here’s one, a friend, and one that knows you well,” said a voice, reciting the character Balthasar.

  Pavel shook his head to clear his vision which was altered by the amount he’d been drinking. A tall black man was approaching him in the darkness from across the room. Could it be his old friend? It was not possible.

  “Cheidu?”

  “You said your door was always open to me and I took you at your word.” The man moved closer to him in the dark and studied him. “Hello, my dear old friend.”

  Pavel was confused. Robert Lamb was here? He could not be here. It was forbidden.

  “Cheidu? Is it you? How can you be here? You are not supposed to be here.” Pavel’s words slurred a bit.

  The tall, well-dressed black man walked in a tentative manner around the workshop which resembled a miniature version of the one where Pavel had spent his days in Prague, with the same ordered arrangement of shelves, pegs, hangers, tools. How many years had it been since Cheidu had stood for the first time in that other doorway?”

  “They have these things called automobiles that have made the most astounding advances over time. They are quite… flashy, I think is the right word,” said Robert. “But that is not what you meant by your question, is it?”

  Pavel stumbled a little and righted himself against the worktable, clutching the
puppet to his body.

  “I want you to know that I tried to come. I was on my way here. Would you believe I was arrested and sent to prison for stealing my own car? The court threw the proverbial book at me. They made a decision that the proof I offered, that the car was indeed mine, was forged. Falsified. They concluded a man like me couldn’t possibly afford a car like that. They did not like the way I speak.” Cheidu slipped into a perfect impersonation of the dialect of a white southern man. “You sure don’t talk like your kind—where did you learn that?” He went back to using his own voice. “It turns out they did not appreciate that my level of education and breeding exceeded their own. They decided that I must be a criminal or at the very least a skilled con man and a stolen car was more than likely the least of my numerous imaginary offenses they could prove. So. My dear friend. I have been in prison. For thirty years.”

  Pavel, confused, said nothing.

  “I tried to see you,” Robert continued. “I tried to get the gentlemen at Trope & Co. involved in my release. Would you believe they said that they could not help? They said it was best if I disappeared for a while—that people like me were more difficult for them to keep at a low profile. I am an actor! What actor keeps a low profile?! They assured me that when I came out they would give me new papers with a new name.” Robert searched his silent friend’s face.

  “What do you think of the name Cedric Lamb, descendant of the great stage actor, Robert Lamb? I can do movies now!” He bowed low for his friend. There was still no response from Pavel.

  “There was something further. The gentlemen at Trope & Co. forbade me to see you. Something about you being under ‘house arrest’ and shunned? Are they serious? They let me, a ‘negro,’ sit in an American prison for thirty years and tell me I cannot see my oldest friend?”

  Lamb, making slow and careful steps, moved closer to Pavel.

  “Though it seems I have found you at a bad time. May I say though that I had no idea you knew the role of Romeo quite so well. Quite moving. And who is playing the fair maid Juliet in tonight’s pageant?”

  Pavel pulled the puppet tighter against him and stumbled back to the cabinet from where he’d removed it.

  “Pavel. I have heard rumors that my old friend has not been doing very well. That your emotions may be hurting you. That something may be happening to your mind.”

  Pavel stumbled and tried to focus his vision on his friend. “They told me some who make my choice often go mad. Should I have chosen fire?”

  Lamb looked stricken.

  “I wanted to get here sooner, my friend. I did try. A man of my complexion has difficulty traveling in America. Still. I had such high hopes that by now things might be different, but alas, I am as always, ever hopeful, yet quite deluded. Imagine that. It has taken me too long to get to you. Decades long. With egregious living conditions along the way. Remind me never to travel through any part of the south in this country.”

  Pavel struggled to open the cabinet. Cheidu approached him.

  “Let me help my old friend with that.” Cheidu reached out and opened the cabinet door. He glanced inside and took an immediate second look and gasped. He turned and looked down at the puppet in Pavel’s arms.

  “Pavel. What have you done?”

  “She’s gone, Cheidu. She’s gone. My Juliet is gone.”

  Pavel sank down to the floor, cradling the puppet in his arms. The dress hiked up to reveal skeletal feet and legs beneath. Robert Lamb pulled the dress up higher to reveal more of the skeleton. He admired the artistry in the carved wooden replica of such a familiar face. Žophie’s face. Pavel sat there, limp and crying, his hands at his sides. Robert Lamb removed the wig and found the place where the wood mask met with another material. He lifted the mask off a pristine white skull. He laid the wig and mask upon the floor, next to the skeleton dressed in silver blue silk and lace.

  “I’m going to ask you again, Pavel, what have you done?”

  “I couldn’t put her in the ground. I couldn’t leave her. I wanted her with me. I need her with me.”

  “And Prochazka?”

  Pavel faced his friend, tears streaming down his face. “And Máma.”

  Cheidu, devastated, questioned his friend. “What has happened to you?”

  Pavel ran his hands through his hair, then clutched them together at his chest, then put them out before him in a pleading gesture. “Prochazka always said that the goal when building a puppet was to make the joints function in the same way of a real human skeleton. So, think about it, Cheidu. It is logical. If you use the actual bones, all the bones, you can make a very realistic moving marionette.”

  “Oh, my God. Pavel.”

  “Funny. You using the word, ‘God,’ my old friend. Very funny, indeed.”

  “Help me understand this.”

  “I was lonely!” Pavel cried with surprising volume and noticed the skeleton sprawled on the floor. “No! We can’t leave her like that. We have to put her back.”

  Cheidu began to weep.

  “Pavel, that was Žophie. Your Žophie. She deserves a proper burial.”

  “My Juliet.”

  “I understand. Your Juliet. You were star-crossed. You and your Juliet were never meant to be. You think I, of all people, don’t know that? Who understands such things more than me, Pavel? Who? I know. I have loved as deeply as you have loved. But I never acted on that love. None of us can. Neither of us was destined to have what our own natures cruelly desired for us. I know and you knew, my dear friend. You knew such a union could and would end in tragedy. But you hoped, didn’t you my friend? That is what we do. We hope. And sometimes we hope for the worst of all possible things. I know that is what happened to you, Pavel. I know. I understand.”

  “I never hope!” shouted Pavel.

  “We are not ghouls. This is wrong. I need to contact the others. We can help you.”

  “No. No, I can’t let you do that. They will take her away again.”

  “My dearest friend, Pavel, let me help you. I can’t watch you go mad in front of me. Please. Let me help you.” Cheidu moved to stand. He was almost upright when Pavel, still on the floor, in an impulsive act of desperation, pulled Cheidu’s legs out from under him. The tall man came down, throwing out his arms to break his fall, but he fell backwards. His hands could not catch hold of anything that might help him. His head struck the sharp corner of the worktable. The sound of skull and brain matter smashing against the solid wood had an instant sobering effect upon Pavel.

  “Cheidu?” Pavel moved to his friend, on the floor, who was not moving. Cheidu’s eyes were open, startled.

  “Cheidu?”

  Present Day

  Pavel sat in the dark workshop and through the window reflection watched Kevin come in through the kitchen door. He slowed his breathing, though adrenalin was beginning the familiar rush that preceded every stage performance he remembered.

  Pavel checked his control board and microphone. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. He put down the control board and climbed a ladder which led to a narrow window near the ceiling, where he could see across the street to Kevin’s house. He watched McGovern and two other men stride up the walkway toward the front door of Kevin’s house. He released a sigh of resignation.

  It was time. He had to come down off the ladder. McGovern’s presence with the others meant there were more characters to introduce to the play. He moved down the ladder with the nimble confidence and speed of someone who had spent years of his life going up and down ladders.

  “Curtain,” he said. He picked up his portable control board and fiddled with a couple of levels. Pavel sat back in the dark and waited.

  ***

  Kevin padded through the kitchen like a cat hunting a small sparrow. He attempted opening a drawer and felt a slight electrical shock when he put his hand upon the knob, which did not open. He shook his hand to get rid of the residual tingling effect from the slight shock. He then tried a cabinet, but the child locks held so that the d
rawers and cabinets did not budge. There would be no souvenirs. “Weird,” Kevin said aloud. He noticed the smell of vinegar and furniture polish, but noticed another smell. The smell reminded him of a wood shop: melted soldering wire and the odd, metallic smoky odor of an active soldering iron. And epoxy resin. Perhaps Mr. Trusnik liked to tinker. His thoughts were interrupted by a voice.

  “Hello, Kevin.” The voice came from directly behind him. Kevin whipped around, but there was no one there. The empty and dark kitchen was illuminated by the moonlight that came through the windows. Kevin turned back around, and the sound of barking started again, this time behind him and a little to the left. What appeared to be a puppet of a small poodle went clicking by on the floor, dancing. The lights came up a little bit, enough to make the room brighter on the area where the poodle was doing its odd dance.

  “What the fuck?” Kevin asked. The lights went out, and he could no longer see the poodle. Kevin patted his pocket to assure himself that the scalpel was there, but put down the duffle bag. There was something weird in this house, and he might need use of both of his hands. He crept from the kitchen and into the darkness of the hallway as an abrupt spotlight came on, illuminating a skeleton dancing directly in front of Kevin’s face, its bones rattling. The spotlight was extinguished, and the skeleton was gone.

  “Hello, Kevin.” The voice came from his right, as if someone was talking into his ear. He threw out his arm, but nothing was there.

  Kevin smiled. He was in the house of a game player. “Oh, Mr. Trus-nik,” called Kevin, in a sing-song voice. “Looks like I came to the house of someone who digs Halloween.”

  “How many people have you killed, Kevin?” The voices filled his left ear and something brushed against him, something sharp.

  “Ow, fuck,” said Kevin. He reached with his free hand to inspect his arm, discovering a small cut there. Blood came away on his fingers. The lights came up again on the rattling skeleton in front of him which waved a knife and shook as if laughing, though the sound of the laughter came from somewhere behind him.