Little Kingdoms

by Steven Millhauser

  FIVE

  In the arcade building, cool and shadowy after the hot sunlight of the avenue, Franklin passed a flower shop, a cigar store, a shoemaker’s shop where a sad-eyed man in a leather apron sat staring at an upside-down red high-heeled shoe, a newsstand, and a barbershop where a man lay with a towel over his face. Franklin wondered whether it was the same man the barber had murdered almost three years ago. Next came an archway that contained a dim-lit staircase with a rattly handrail. At the top of the dark stairs he entered the Vivograph studio, where he was told that Max had gone down for his morning shave. In the barbershop, empty except for the man with the towel over his face and a barber shaking out an apron, Franklin was surprised that he hadn’t recognized Max, though even now there was something a little unfamiliar about the look of his legs and the shiny black leather shoes. He sat down in the barber chair next to Max and leaned back against the adjustable neck-rest as a second barber rose heavily from a chair in the corner. To the soothing sound of the blade slapping against the strop—the swing of the blade and the steady slap-slap reminded him of the pendulum in the glass-cased clock—Franklin closed his eyes and settled into the soft leather seat. “I’m done,” he said to Max. “Twelve thousand three hundred twenty-four drawings—over twelve minutes. I want Vivograph to shoot it. I wonder whether I can screen it early next week? Do you do this every day?” The barber began lathering his cheeks; the warm thick soap, the soft bristles of the brush, the smell of scented oils, the barber’s firm plump stomach pressing against his elbow, all this soothed him deeply. He was very tired. “Max,” he said quietly, “are you asleep?” He opened his eyes and glanced at Max as the first barber leaned over and slowly removed the towel. He saw flushed red cheeks, bristly gray eyebrows, and a pencil-line gray mustache. “So there you are,” called a familiar voice, and Max strode into the barbershop. “They told me I’d find you here. I had to pick up a few things.” He sat down in the empty chair on the other side of Franklin. “So what brings you to my neck of the woods? Give him the spray job, Benny. Make a new man of him. Irwin, I’d like you to meet Franklin Payne: friend of mine. Irwin Marcus.” Still leaning back in the barber chair, the man with brick-red cheeks and a gray mustache solemnly extended a hand.

  In a booth in an arcade coffee shop Max agreed to photograph the drawings, which sat in twelve cartons in the trunk of Franklin’s Packard; he had driven into the city and parked around the corner from the arcade building. Two young men from Vivograph, with identical vests and four white shirt-sleeves rolled up above the elbows, helped Max and Franklin carry up the boxes and set them on the floor of Max’s small office. Franklin eyed the growing pile ruefully. Individual drawings flashed in his mind, but he could not put them together. They were lifeless—boxes of corpses. He had wasted a year and a half of his life. “Don’t worry,” Max said, “I’ll guard them with my life,” and as Franklin stepped past the flower shop into hot sunshine, he was so startled by the loud car horns, the explosion of jackhammers, the flash of sun on black and red and green cars, the reflections of striding people in plate-glass windows, the sharp smell of gasoline and baked cookies, that his visit to Max seemed to have taken place under the ground, in a dark burrow, long ago, in some other life.

  A week later he recalled that other life as he sat in his office at the World Citizen, his drawing board slanting from the edge of the desk to his stomach. He was sketching another cartoon for one of Kroll’s editorials, in which he showed a German housewife buying a single egg with a wheelbarrow full of money sacks. The idea was hopelessly trite. A trapped fly buzzed between the half-open Venetian blinds and the window. Franklin wondered how long it took to photograph 12,324 drawings, and for some reason he remembered the sad-eyed shoemaker staring at the red high-heeled shoe. He wondered whether flies ever died of boredom. Perhaps he should turn the housewife into a witch trying to purchase a toad for her pot. There was a knock on the door, and Franklin looked up. He was about to say “Come in” when the door opened and Max entered.

  “You look as if you haven’t moved for two years,” Max said.

  “I haven’t,” said Franklin.

  Max sat down on the edge of the desk and drummed his fingers on a pad of paper.

  “You could have saved three hundred to five hundred hours if you’d used cels. Our inkers could have saved you another two-three hundred hours, our in-betweeners ditto. At a conservative estimate I’d say you threw away four to six months of your working life making unnecessary wiggles. The alignment’s shaky—there’s a flicker—strictly amateur stuff. A kid of seventeen without a scrap of talent can align perfectly using the peg system. Now listen to me. Here’s what I propose. Last month we decided to ditch National Pictures and distribute through Cinemart, where we can cut a much better deal. This one needs to be handled a little differently because of the length, and Cinemart is the best in the business when it comes to special angles. They can get it out there like nobody’s business and once it’s in the theaters we think it will draw. We’ll work with them on publicity and we’ll supply the art for the lobby poster. You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll have Milt draw up a contract. Don’t forget the housewarming on Saturday. By the way, congratulations. It’s a masterpiece. The boys are gaga over it.”

  “The reason I don’t like cels,” Franklin began, but Max had already put on his hat. The door shut behind him. Franklin pulled over his drawing board, picked up his pencil, and did not draw. Had he wasted four to six months of his life through sheer stupid stubbornness? He had no dislike of technological progress, of up-to-the-minute systems and methods. He was fascinated by the latest advances in the art of home refrigeration, by recent developments in camera shutters and the steering mechanisms of automobiles. Above all he loved the machinery of newspaper production, from the zinc plates with their dots of blue or red or yellow ink for printing Sunday comics in color to the automatic cutters and folders that transformed the long rolls of paper into thick, perfectly folded newspapers. In the early days in Cincinnati he had taken time to visit the composing room and watch the Linotype operators at work, and observe the splendid machine itself as it dropped the correct brass matrix in place after each key was pressed and, after the slug was cast, distributed the individual matrices back to their original locations in the magazine. His objection to the cel system wasn’t that it saved labor, or that it represented a technological advance; his objection was that it encouraged stable backgrounds, whereas his experiments in changing perspective required continual slight shifts in the entire background image. The cel system also encouraged a split between background and animation, expressed in the studio as a division of labor among different kinds of artists, whereas for him the image was a single complex unit of interconnected lines. Moreover, he had seen dozens of Vivograph cartoons, he had followed the cartoons of other studios, and he had passed judgment: the sequences were smooth, the motions fluid, the gags clever, but the drawing—the drawing was mediocre. And there was another thing, something he had no name for but felt in his mind’s fingertips: the cartoons lacked something, they left him restless and disenchanted; and this thing that they lacked, that had no name, was the only thing that mattered, and was somehow connected with his father’s grave voice in the darkroom and the mystery of the developer tray. And yet—and yet. He had to admit to himself that Max’s words had disturbed him. After all, it wasn’t true that every one of his backgrounds was different from the others; there was a great deal of repetition, of mechanical and laborious retracing. In the future he would have to consider adopting a partial cel system. And one more thing bothered him: the flickers from faulty alignment. If he ever made another animated film, he would use pegs instead of crosses. And at the thought of making another cartoon, tiredness rippled in his temples like a flutter of headache.

  On Saturday afternoon Cora went into town to pick out a present for Max’s party and try on hats, while Franklin took Stella rowing on the river. It was a sunny blue day in September. The pines an
d oaks at the river’s edge, the blue sky, the lifted white oars, all showed clearly in the shiny dark water; here and there the green was streaked with red and yellow. Franklin rowed downriver, away from Max’s house. Mount Hebron ended and hilly farms came down to the water. Strands of green cornstalks edged with brown lay burning in the September sun. Stella, in her straw hat with the brilliant red wooden cherries, sat trailing her hand in the water. In the shade of a spreading oak, seven cows resting on their stomachs all raised their heads and stared at the passing rowboat. “They’ve never seen cows like us,” Franklin said. Stella looked at him with a faint smile; her grave beauty was a darker version of Cora’s. The shadows of branches rippling across the straw hat, the brilliant blue air, the sudden orange and yellow of a turning sugar maple, the distant barns, the lazy amble of cows—all this filled Franklin with delight and a gentle, yellow-orange melancholy. Their first summer in Mount Hebron, he and Cora and Stella had gone picnicking on the riverbank every Sunday. Was it so long ago? Cora had told him about family outings on the banks of the Ohio when she was a child: from the picnic basket had come wineglasses and a bottle of wine and a silver cream pitcher and silver bowls and fresh strawberries. “I wish Mom was here,” Franklin said, watching drops of water fall from the oars. He too remembered childhood picnics by a river, not far from Plains Farms: a willow had trailed its branches in the water. “Mom hates going anywhere with us,” Stella said sharply. Panic flared in his chest. “Well now,” he said, “I wouldn’t exactly say that,” and kept on rowing.

  Back at the house he found a note from Cora on the kitchen table. “Ran into Max all jittery in town. Agreed to help set up for party. Meet us there 5:30—yes? Stella can wear her new patent leathers. Don’t let her wear the blue dress—it’s a fright. C.” It was half-past three. For the next hour Franklin played croquet with Stella and then went inside to change for the party: a dress-up affair, for which he chose his tuxedo jacket. Stella wore her red party dress with the white lace collar and her white straw hat with the black velvet band. Franklin drove to the ferry and missed the five o’clock crossing by two minutes; he stood on the dock and watched three yellow-green leaves bobbing in the ferry’s wake. Half an hour later he stood with Stella at the rail and looked down the river toward Mount Hebron as they crossed. The warm air had an underlayer of chill; a tang of autumn filled the late afternoon. On the other side, dusk had fallen; he drove on a dirt road through a gloom of pines. A new road ran behind the house, but Franklin preferred the old one, which grew gradually impassable and stopped in the middle of the woods. Through the trees he could see the house, its lights burning in the green dusk. He and Stella walked through the underbrush and came out of the trees onto a path leading to the long front porch. The porch and sloping lawn were crowded with guests in pale dresses and summer suits; Max and Cora stood with drinks in their hands, talking to a young couple both dressed in white.

  “Ah, there they are!” cried Max, breaking away and bounding down the steps. Cora, in a shimmering green sleeveless dress with a long transparent scarf flowing down her side, followed slowly. Max seized Franklin by the elbow. “We thought you’d drowned. Everyone’s here. And who’s this? Please introduce me to the princess. No—I don’t believe it. You don’t mean to tell me. It can’t be … Stella?

  Stella

  You’re so bella

  You make a guy feeeel

  Like one heck of a fella.

  Oh Cora, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine: Franklin Payne. You’ve met? Over here, Milt, over here. Milt Crane: man who drew up your contract. There’s not a thing he doesn’t know about the business. We’re very hopeful, Franklin, very hopeful. Drinks are on the porch. Lemonade or strawberry punch for the princess, and you can water yours down with a little high-class hooch. Excuse me. A little crisis over there. Cora, would you mind? Excuse us for just a second.”

  Franklin wandered onto the porch with Stella, where he poured lemonade for her from a big pitcher into a tall glass. An expressionless man in a red dinner jacket and black pants held out a silver tray of little triangular sandwiches with toothpicks in them as a man with wavy gray hair, wearing a white dinner jacket, said, “Franklin Payne, isn’t it? Max introduced us.” “I’m afraid I,” Franklin said, looking for his drink and remembering that he’d forgotten to pour one, and all at once recalling the man under the towel. “Not the Franklin Payne?” a woman said; she had bare shoulders and on one shoulder lay a tiny shimmering drop of liquid. “The other one, I think,” Franklin said. He looked about for Stella, who seemed to have disappeared. He heard a shriek and turned violently; down on the crowded lawn a woman was brushing furiously at her dress as a man held out a handkerchief. Through the trees he could see glimpses of river and, far downstream, the village of Mount Hebron and his tiny house with its tiny tower. “Excuse me,” Franklin said, “I’ve misplaced someone.” She wasn’t on the porch; on the lawn he saw a green dress and made his way down to it. “I can’t find Stella.” Cora said, “I thought she was with you.” With a swift glance she took in the lawn and porch. “I’m sure she’ll be all right, Franklin. I’ll help you look for her in just a minute.”

  He found her in the depths of the house, in a large leather chair in a dark study. Through the partly open blinds was a darkness of trees and patches of dusky sky. “I’ve been looking for you,” Franklin said. “Well,” Stella said, “here I am.” “Yes, you are. What’re you doing in the dark? Don’t you like the party?” “I’m just sitting here. You’re not supposed to ask two questions, you know. Can we go home soon?” “Pretty soon,” Franklin said, sitting down on the floor and leaning back against the side of the chair. He felt a hand shaking his shoulder and opened his eyes to see Max bending over him in bright electric light. “We’ve been looking all over for you,” Max said. Franklin said, “Is this a dream?” His neck hurt; Stella was asleep in the chair. Then he was handing Cora her shawl and Max was holding a flashlight as he led them to the car. The ferry had stopped running an hour ago, and while Stella slept in the backseat and Cora sat with closed eyes in the front seat, Franklin drove slowly over a bumpy dirt road to the nearest bridge crossing, ten miles away.

  Despite Max’s assurance that Toys at Midnight was perfect—perfect—Franklin insisted on a screening. The flicker was unmistakable, but except for one short sequence that needed fixing, oddly satisfactory: the effect of a slight continual tremor, of a black-and-white shot-silk iridescence, charged the images with the shimmer of dream. Franklin was pleased with the episode in the nightmare subway when the enlarging train appeared to be coming out of the dark directly at the audience, closer and closer, until it seemed ready to burst from the screen, though he was now bothered by the transformation in the candy store. On the whole he was less disappointed than he had expected to be, and hoped to iron out the rough spots in a few months.

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Max said. “All right, all right: now listen to me. You can have one month—thirty days—and not a billionth of a second more. We’ve got a tight production schedule and you’ll gum up the works with your crazy fussing. Christ almighty, Franklin. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in ten minutes on the back of a grocery list and Beethoven wrote the entire Ninth Symphony while eating a bowl of Post Toasties Corn Flakes, and you need two years to tinker with a cartoon. Is this just? Thirty days: I’m warning you.”

  Franklin, who had been feeling idle and restless since delivering up his boxes of drawings, took up Max’s challenge almost gratefully. On weekday nights he worked four-hour stretches in the tower study, coming down only to read Stella a bedtime story at half-past nine; and on the weekends, which Max now spent at his new house, Franklin was able to work in the mornings and afternoons, while Stella sat sketching in a corner of the study and Cora and Max went shopping or rode through the countryside in Max’s new Peerless. Sometimes Franklin stopped work and, turning to Stella, offered to take a walk down to the river or play croquet; but she, looking at him gravely, said that he wasn
’t allowed to play until he finished his work. Then Franklin, tired and joyful, returned to his task; and at dinner, which took place sometimes at his house and sometimes at Max’s, he had the sense that he had fallen asleep at his desk and was dreaming this moment, with its steaming ears of buttered corn, its big shining pots in the kitchen, its summer sky darkening to dusk outside the windows and the shadows rising on the sun-topped trees.

  Franklin finished in twenty-nine days; on the thirtieth, a Sunday, he took Stella to the circus in a nearby town. He had hoped to make it a family outing, but Cora begged off with a headache. The clown with his three tufts of orange hair jumped from the burning building, the tightrope walker in spangled blue tights rode a unicycle across the high wire, the balloon man and the popcorn man and the man selling live chameleons walked up and down the steep aisles between the wooden benches stretching up and up, while Stella watched with tense, held-in excitement and Franklin watched Stella watching and worried about Cora’s headache. She had been having a lot of them recently, but she refused to see Dr. Shawcross, and that night after dinner, as he handed three new boxes of drawings over to Max, who agreed to let Franklin view it one more time but refused to allow a single additional change, he saw, in the smooth space between Cora’s eyebrows, two shadowy lines of strain.