The Motion of Puppets

by Keith Donohue

  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.

  Midnight arrived in the catacombs, but the puppets were buried in confetti. Kay could hear them awaken into the half life, but for all her squirming and wriggling, she could not move. They were all stuck in space like the dead and buried. To shake the claustrophobia, she blew out a string of quick puffs and tried to calm down. From the left came a gentle sobbing, and she imagined poor Noë full of sorrow. On her right, Nix began to whistle the “Entry of the Gladiators,” which she recognized from her circus days, the old chromatic tune to send in the clowns.

  “Pipe down.” A voice overhead, Olya’s, cut through the noise. “For God’s sake, if we are to share the same grave, we can’t have that whistlink and that sobbink night and day.”

  “Olya,” Kay said, “is that you? What is happening to us? Why did they pack away the man in the bell jar?”

  “Do not despair, Kay Harper. We are just on a holiday. Taking a little trip.”

  “We are leaving the Back Room?”

  “Dahlink, the Back Room is not a place, it is a state of mind. We go where the wind blows. We might travel for a bit, we might find a new home.”

  Her sister Masha cleared her throat. “Is not the first time, kitten. Live for a century, learn for a century. I remember the time we were just in the middle of a performance of Macbeth, when they had to skedaddle.”

  “The three witches,” said Irina.

  “‘Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,’” Masha answered. “‘Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.’”

  “How did it go, sister?” Irina asked. “‘Fillet of a fenny snake.’ You remember the Worm, eh? How he hated the part. ‘In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt—’”

  “All right,” Olya said. “That will do for the Memory Lane. These poor gills are worried sick.”

  Irina could not resist. “‘By th
e pricking of my thumb, Something wicked this way comes.’”

  “Enough,” Olya shouted. From the box next door came soft titters. “Calm down, everyone. Now and then, it is time to go. The Quatre Mains knows best. Perhaps he has heard whispers in the dark, rumors in the audience that this puppet or that is too lifelike, too real, and they start poking around in his business.”

  Masha offered another theory. “Or perhaps the two puppeteers have simply grown tired of this place. The road is in their blood. Gypsies.”

  “Living out of a suitcase,” Irina said. “Better than living in one, eh?”

  Nix laughed. “You saw they packed away the Original, too. I am sure we will not come back to this place. Our happy home.”

  “But what about my people?” Kay asked. “How will they know where to find us?”

  “We are your people,” Olya said. “You are one of us, and you go where we go.”

  Kay stared at the partition above her head, wondering how long she was doomed to be in this cubicle. How long till she could be free, to see the outside world again, to hold her husband in her arms. She searched her memories for his image, his name, but found it had slipped her mind. She did not know how she would bear such a prison.

  Early in the morning before the moon had set, a knock came at the back door. As if in answer, the shop bells rang once from the front door. The giants had come for them. A wave of August filled the Back Room. Footsteps, the sound of an engine in the alley behind the toy shop, and then the box was being lifted in the air, let loose from gravity’s bounds. They were leaving, they were in motion. Kay wondered if he would stop looking now that she was truly gone. She whispered her good-byes.

  * * *

  In the end, Theo packed Kay’s things to take home with him to New York. Her suitcases sat next to his in the foyer. All that was left to do was box up his books and papers, the unfinished Muybridge. Fortunately, his publisher had granted him an extension, under the circumstances, and he promised it by December. The sublet on the apartment expired as well, and Theo’s few acquaintances had come to say au revoir. Thompson leafed through Animals in Motion while Foucault was engrossed in a newspaper account of the photographer’s trial and acquittal. Sipping a beer in an easy chair, Egon appeared more relaxed now that the cirque’s run was over and summer near its end.

  “Just so you know, Mr. Harper,” said Thompson. “Theo. We questioned Reance a number of times, questioned all the women who went out with him that night as well. I know you have your doubts, but believe me, if he was involved, we would know.”

  “The criminal mind always has a hiccup,” Foucault said. “A giveaway. Working a suspect is like playing poker. Do you play, Monsieur Harper? Any fool can win with your winners. The trick is to lay down your obvious losers but bluff when the time is right. Too often and they con on to your game. Too rarely and you’re depending on luck again. Most players make a psychological mistake. There’s a tell, a subconscious move or gesture that gives away whether they have the nuts, are limping in, or completely bullshitting. Play with a fella long enough and you discover the tell. If you pay attention. If you are good at that sort of thing. We must have had that guy in a half-dozen times. Not our man. No tell.”

  Theo wondered if they had been playing him all this time, too, trying to guess what his tell might be, what his gestures might be saying. He knew that they thought, at first, that he was responsible for his wife’s disappearance. Hell, they even had Kay’s mother believing he was guilty. But over time, Thompson at least had come to regard him above reproach, though perhaps for Foucault it was all a ploy, an elaborate double bluff.

  “Do I have a giveaway?” Theo asked.

  Rising from his easy chair, Egon lit up a cheroot and went to the window to blow smoke out to the street.

  Thompson closed the book with a bang. “Theo, you surprise me. Once and for all, you are free and clear. We’ll keep working on the case. We have all your contact information—”

  “I can be here in two hours, if I fly.”

  “Good.” Thompson patted him on the knee and motioned for his partner to get up. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this happened here in Québec. And that we have so little from where we first began. We’ll keep looking. Tiens bon.”

  They departed via the stairway in the hall. From his perch, Egon watched, and seeing them pass on the street below, he flicked the butt of his cigar through the open window. “Useless,” he muttered.

  “Not a clue,” Theo said. “Almost three months and not one damn lead. Not even a theory as to how she vanished.”

  Into the box, he piled the Muybridge texts and then laid a neat stack of manuscript pages atop the books. Awaiting trial, Muybridge wondered in his misery if he would ever take another photograph. After he was acquitted that was all he ever did. Freed from the burdens of his marriage and the trial that changed his life, Muybridge pursued his art with a fanatic’s obsession. Seeing his work all together made Theo uneasy, for so much remained to be done, but he could not imagine how he could ever find the will. School would start in a few weeks, and he had no idea how to prepare for the semester or simply face the students in the classroom. Not with Kay missing a world away.

  “I’m running out of money,” he confessed. “If I could stay in Québec, I would. And I feel like I’m abandoning her somehow, to be leaving like this.”

  The apartment looked so impersonal with all their things removed. He should leave a note behind, in case she returned to find him gone. Or if she was dead, so her ghost would not wander the rooms searching for him. Egon sat by without a word of comfort.

  “Where will you go?” Theo asked.

  “Maybe I’ll try to latch on with another show. There’s a group of puppeteers doing some interesting things in Calgary, and I’ve always wanted to spend some time in the wild West. Or I know a showman down in Burlington.”

  “Well, if you decide on Vermont, you’ll have to say hello to my mother-in-law. Though you might not want to mention our connection. She still thinks I am guilty as hell.”

  They did not want to say good-bye, but neither knew what to say instead.

  “When is your plane, mon ami? Tell me you have time for dinner or at least a drink.”

  He smiled and put the lid on his translation. “Tomorrow morning, first thing.”

  “One more for the road, then. If we can’t paint the old town red, at least we can pour some beer in our bellies.”

  The summer crowds had thinned in the faded end of August. They walked alone through the city streets, heading for the Brigands. “Did I tell you about the ghost I saw last time I ventured here? One of the girls in the Fantômes show came running down the street, nearly bumped right into me. Scared the life out of me.”

  “What would we do without the tourists, my friend, who come to see our ghosts and follies? And the lovely young things dressed up for a show?”

  A sidewalk table was free, so they decided to dine al fresco, to watch the people stroll by. Their orders were quickly taken, and when the pints came, they fell into respectful silence and anticipation, savoring the cold smooth taste of ale. He had loved it here when they first arrived, the look and feel of the Old City reminding him of some wayward part of Europe broken off and drifted west across the Atlantic. Kay had adored the whole experience, foreign yet familiar. She would have been sorry to leave.

  “There’s a shop up ahead that was her favorite. An old toy store filled with antiques, but it was never open. We couldn’t figure out what happened there, whether the owners just up and deserted it or if the banks had foreclosed. A shame, really, such lovely things in the window. She adored the dolls, and one puppet in particular, an old Inuit carving that stood under a bell jar.”

  “The Quatre Mains? I know it well,” Egon said. “Let’s go have a look after we eat. We’ll break in, and I will steal it for you.”

  After the fish and chips had filled them, after the drinks had whetted their daring, they staggered into the street, bound
for thievery. He would do it for her, he thought, why not? With each step, the puppet transformed into a talisman. If he could rescue it, why not his wife? But the window display was empty. The dolls were gone. The bear had ridden away with the little dog. The tin soldiers off to another tin war. Every last trace. All that remained were cobwebs in the corners and two dead bees on the bottom shelf.

  “Looks like the sheriff has beaten us to it. Or some five-year-old bandits,” Egon said.

  Theo bent his head and pressed it against the window. A fat wet tear dropped to the ground.

  “Come now, you mustn’t. We will get Inspector Thompson and his sidekick to investigate where all the toys went.”

  The front door was still locked when Theo tried the knob, and he waved for Egon to follow him around the corner. An alley ran in the shadows of an old and decaying section of the ramparts to the Vieux-Québec. It seemed to lead to a dead end, a place no one had visited for centuries. In the gathering gloom, they skulked behind a row of old stone houses, uncertain as to which was the back of the Quatre Mains. A heap of litter by the back door gave it away—papers and cardboard boxes, castaway wheels and springs and sprockets, a single wooden leg, a bisque head caved in at the right eye, and the tangled wires and handle of a marionette.