Little Kingdoms

by Steven Millhauser

  In the morning Cora laughed her old laugh and said that her headache had lifted. Franklin, despite her laughter, seemed to see the same shadowy lines between her eyebrows, and on a Saturday afternoon two weeks later when he happened to glance at her, seated between him and Max in a darkening movie theater, he thought he saw the same shadowy lines, as if she had a slight perpetual frown. The newsreel and travelogue barely held his attention, though he found Toys at Midnight interesting enough. He noted several flaws, was pleased by the night storm and the rings of rain-haze about the lampposts, and in general had the slightly confusing but not unpleasant sense that, thrown up on the big screen before an audience, none of it any longer had anything to do with him. They left after the first film of the double feature, a cloak-and-sword adventure, and as Franklin pushed open the heavy doors he stopped in confusion as he saw not the dark autumn night but the brilliant afternoon sunlight shining through the glass doors, flashing on the glass-covered lobby posters, polishing the silver posts, lying in warm parallelograms on the crimson rug.

  The reviews in the film trade journals were lengthy and laudatory, though several critics complained that the deliberate rejection of studio techniques, the elaborate detail, the painstaking finish, set the cartoon so radically apart from its contemporary rivals that it existed in a world by itself and could exert no influence. One critic, attempting to define its baffling quality, said that it was at once daring and old-fashioned, casting one eye boldly toward a realm of animation that had not yet come into being and the other eye back to the comfort and stability of a vanished past. “I wonder what sort of eyeglasses he’d recommend,” Franklin remarked, while Max reported that the overall marketing strategy he’d discussed with Cinemart and the jazzy promotional posters in particular had been so successful, so very successful, that other studios were already beginning to copy them and the head of Cinemart had paid him a personal compliment.

  On Wednesday morning, four days after he had sat in the darkening movie theater and seen shadowy lines between Cora’s eyebrows, Franklin was asked to report to the office of Alfred Kroll. As he walked down the darkening corridor toward the dingy door whose glass pane was covered by perpetually closed Venetian blinds, he wondered vaguely what possible cause for complaint Kroll might have against Toys at Midnight, if indeed that was the reason for the unusual summons; for although the cartoon bore Franklin’s name, it was an entirely original creation that made no use of any comic strip and could in no way injure the World Citizen. His relations with Kroll had been coolly cordial since the summons three years ago, for Kroll practiced among all his employees a kind of cryptic amiability, and as Franklin pushed open the rattling door and stepped into the twilight of the reception room he had the sudden sense that no time ever passed in this realm of gloom, with its tarnished floor lamp and its faded, barely visible secretary.

  In his dim-lit office Kroll sat immobile behind his desk, looking out from melancholy and intelligent eyes above their dark pouches. Franklin, as he sat down across from him, had the sensation that Kroll had been deftly sketched by a cunning hand: the large head boldly indicated by three or four strokes, the powerful plump body roughly outlined, here and there a few skillful shadings. His large, soft hands lay folded on the desk before him. Without moving, Kroll spoke.

  In no way, he said, did he wish to meddle in the private affairs of his employees, except, to be sure, when those private affairs affected the fortunes of the World Citizen. For some time he had sensed a—what should he say?—a slight falling off, a lack of verve, a loss of passion or energy in Mr. Paynes editorial cartoons. He had not known whether to attribute this puzzling deficiency to general fatigue, to overzealousness in the performance of his other newspaper duties, to a failure to engage imaginatively with the crucial issues of the day, or to some other cause. It had now come to his attention that Mr. Payne had been engaging in an activity that in no way concerned the World Citizen—an activity that, however admirable it undoubtedly was in itself, was bound to consume considerable time and energy. He had no wish to go into the matter, which he had had the pleasure of discussing with Mr. Payne on another occasion. He did however wish to insist, indeed he was incapable of not insisting, that workers in the employ of the World Citizen devote their full energy to the business of the World Citizen and refrain from any activities that might detract from or diminish that energy. In a word, he was forced to order Mr. Payne to cease immediately to occupy himself with animated films, on pain of severing his happy association with the World Citizen. In addition, he was taking it upon himself to cancel two of Mr. Payne’s three comic strips so that he might devote himself with full energy to the editorial cartoons for which in the past he had demonstrated so great an aptitude. If there were no questions, he wished Mr. Payne a good morning.

  The cool brashness of it impressed Franklin, even as the gray meaning of it, like an exhalation of Kroll’s gloomy cave, came over him in a thickening drizzly fog. The sense of clouds and chill was still with him at lunch the next day in the arcade building, where he told Max that he felt as if his hands had been cut off at the wrists. Max, saying that he’d recently thrown out a rotten eggplant that looked better than Kroll, leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.

  “I have news, Franklin: big news. It’s not official yet, so your lips are sealed, but listen to me now. I’m leaving Vivograph next week. I’ve got the office space lined up two blocks away and all the guys are coming with me. I’m calling it Maxograms, Inc.—don’t laugh. It’s a surefire thing. In a week I’ll be a corporation. I’m sick of working for clowns like Kroll, and so are you. Franklin, listen to me. Tell fatso you’re kissing the old dump goodbye. Tell him thanks for the buggy ride but it’s time you rode your own jalopy. Franklin: listen. Come to work at Maxograms. I’ll give you the freedom you need to do the work you want to do and I’ll put my staff at your disposal—inkers, in-betweeners, all the little guys who can take care of the dreck while you take care of the art. Franklin: forget Kroll. You need him like a hole in the head. He’s nothing but a five-and-dime Buddha. Ask yourself what you’d rather do with your life: have free run of Maxograms and do what you want to do, or spend the rest of your life drawing funny faces for the likes of Alfred Kroll, who sits there drowning in his own butterfat scribbling trash about the fate of the nation and jiggling his wienie under the desk.”

  Franklin told Max he’d think the offer over, but even as he spoke he knew he would say no. At night he lay awake, trying to understand what was wrong with him. To work every day on animated drawings, to be paid for his work as he did it, to have at his disposal the camera, the projection room, the help of skilled assistants, the practical advice of professional animators, to watch his work take shape under an expectant and well-wishing communal gaze, above all to have time: all this was not to be refused lightly. But even as he felt the temptation of it he was aware of an inner recoil. For the flaw was this: even if Max should remain true to his word, and an unlikely freedom should in fact be granted to Franklin within the strictly run studio, his work, for better or worse, had always originated and flourished in secrecy. Whatever Max thought he was offering—perhaps a room of Franklin’s own, with a locked door, at the farthest end of the studio—Franklin knew that Max could never prevent himself from following each day’s work, making suggestions, urging one direction rather than another. For the spirit of a studio was communal, and it was precisely this public and open spirit, which in one sense was a temptation, that in another was sheer death to the solitary, secretive, perhaps unhealthy, but utterly necessary spirit in which he did his work. There was one more thing. Kroll might be harsh, Kroll might be pompous and cold, Kroll might enjoy exercising power to the point of tyranny, but he wasn’t corrupt, he wasn’t self-serving, and he was in no sense a fool. His passion was not for himself but for the World Citizen, and his fanatical demand for total devotion to the paper was not in itself ignoble. And Kroll’s instinct, when all was said and done, had been entirely right: Franklin had
in fact been slacking off, even the comic strips no longer engaged his deepest interest, his passion lay elsewhere. Kroll’s decision had been ruthless, but not unreasonable—or if it had been unreasonable, it had at any rate been understandable. Kroll’s fanaticism ran deeper than Max’s; in some black corner of Franklin’s brain, he felt an odd kinship with Kroll, even as he raged at his punishment.

  Max received his refusal wryly, as if he had thrown a drowning man a rope that the poor devil refused to take because it felt a little rough to the touch, and Franklin bent to the task of seeing exactly how things stood with him. Kroll had canceled “Dime Museum Days,” which had long ago played itself out and was dragging a shadowy half-life through the dailies for no conceivable reason. He had assigned “Subway Sammy” to another artist, and he had asked Franklin to revive one of his old Cincinnati strips, about a likable hobo whose dreams were continually shattered by reality but who kept on dreaming anyway. But Franklin’s real task was to supply Kroll with editorial cartoons—not only for Kroll’s daily column but for other news articles as well. Franklin threw himself into the task, intent on making amends for his halfhearted work in the past; and as the days flowed by, and his editorial cartoons grew more accomplished, he found a kind of contentment in his work, marred only by sudden sharp bursts of irritation or restlessness.

  Two weeks after his refusal of Max’s offer, Franklin received in his office mail a three-color circular announcing the birth of Maxograms, Inc., and including a scribbled line from Max: “Think it over. It’s never too late.” The next day Max called to say that the whole staff had gone with him, leaving Vivograph on the brink of collapse. Since Vivograph was under contract to supply their popular cartoon series to Cinemart, Max had been forced to abandon the series, which he himself had mostly created. But he had signed a fat two-year contract with Cinemart for a spectacular new series, which would make the rival studio look like a bunch of bush leaguers. Meanwhile Vivograph had refused to go under and had hired a whole new staff to churn out the old stuff. But since the copyrights to all the cartoons were held not by the studio but by the distributor, Cinemart was under no obligation to renew the contract with Vivograph, and had given Max to understand that the old series would revert to Maxograms when the contract with Vivograph expired. Cinemart had insisted on holding onto Toys at Midnight, which was still attracting bookings, but Max had worked out a deal that gave Maxograms the option of purchasing the distribution rights twelve months down the road. All this was part of a larger plan to combine production and distribution and leave the other studios choking in his dust. In the meantime Max wanted Franklin to know he had faith in his work. He hoped Franklin would rethink his offer and keep Maxograms in mind when it came time for the next cartoon. Franklin said he was miles away from even thinking about a cartoon. “That’s okay,” Max said quickly. When Max hung up, Franklin had the sensation that Max had been talking to someone else, whom Franklin had been impersonating for obscure reasons.

  Again he avoided his tower study, which seemed the haunt of a mad scientist with a foaming beaker; again he sank into family life as into his soft armchair. The sharp sense he sometimes had of falling into a pattern was blunted by the equally sharp sense of a difference, for if Cora was present at these family occasions she was also somehow absent. Often she complained of headaches and went to bed early, leaving Franklin to put Stella to bed. One evening she sat down at the piano and played a few bars, but suddenly stood up, raising a hand to her temple and shutting her eyes. She refused to see Dr. Shawcross; and once, trying to raise a window in the parlor, she kept banging her palms against the upper rail, over and over again, while a muscle worked in her cheek and the hair on her forehead grew damp.

  He was often alone with Stella. In the evenings, after dinner, she seemed content to sprawl in a lamplit corner of the sofa reading Anne of Avonlea, or to sit at her old worktable cutting out paper costumes that she designed herself and fitted to her paper dolls. Franklin drew a series of hats for her: a dashing cloche to go with her flapper’s dress, a broad-brimmed straw hat with fruit and flowers, a checkered beret, a cowgirl’s hat with a picture of a steer on it. Max, obsessed with his new studio, was rarely visible on weekends; and while Cora went on errands or sat practicing scales to the click of a metronome, that eerie clock without a face, Franklin and Stella took long walks on autumn trails or went rowing on the river.

  At the office he was spending more and more time on editorial cartoons, fussing over details, making small adjustments, adding minute refinements; and holding out a sketch at arm’s length he would examine it carefully, searching for defects of composition.

  One darkening autumn day when Franklin drove home from the station he walked up the porch steps and saw through the window Stella reading Chronicles of Avonlea on the lamplit sofa. In the front hall he hung his hat on the coatrack and was about to call out to her through the partly open parlor door when he noticed a pale blue envelope on the hall table. It was Cora’s stationery. On it she had printed his first name. Franklin opened the envelope, unfolded the pale blue piece of paper, and read: “Dear Franklin, I can no longer live a lie. Max and I”—he crumpled the letter, thrust it into his jacket pocket, hung up his coat, took out the letter and scanned it wildly, then thrust it into his pocket again and walked into the parlor. “Dad’s home. Did you have a good day at school? Your mother won’t be having dinner with us tonight, something came up—did she say anything about the lamb chops?” In the kitchen he uncrumpled the letter and tried to read it through, but his brain was pounding, something was wrong with his vision, the words kept splitting apart and falling into fragments—“six mon,” “unf,” “tter for ev,” “nbear”—and later that night, after he had put Stella to bed early and, evading her sharp gaze, explained that Mom was visiting friends far away and might not be back for a day or two, he went down to the parlor and unfolded the letter, but the words were crisscrossed by hundreds of little creases and kept falling into cracks, abysses.

  He turned off the lamp and sat in the dark, staring through the windows at the night and waiting for Cora. His temples throbbed, his stomach trembled and rippled, his eyelids felt burning hot. At two o’clock in the morning he heard a car approaching on the road below. He felt his mouth open, as if to emit a cry, but the car slowly passed. Toward three he heard footsteps on the stairs, and suddenly he realized it was all a hideous joke, Cora had been punishing him, he would forgive her despite her cruelty, and when the parlor door opened he saw Stella staring at him gravely, her eyes heavy with sleep and her hair wild. Without a word she sat down next to him and fell asleep against his arm. In the morning he made her breakfast and drove her to school. All day he sat in the parlor, closing his eyes from time to time but not sleeping. Stella came up the walk at four, and that night after he had put her to bed he climbed the stairs to his tower study. In the dark room he stood to the left of the right-hand window It was a clear night, and he could see far up the river. Max’s toy house was well lit. Through the dark pines the yellow lights seemed to tremble like candleflames and on the black river they lay in wavering lines.

  He became aware of the glass-cased clock on his desk. The pendulum, immobile, hung down heavily over the slumbering key. And an irritation came over him: it was not right; someone should have wound the clock. In a burst of anger he opened the glass door, seized the clumsy key, and wound the clock tightly. Then he took out his pocket watch and set the clock hands to the precise hour. He pushed the pendulum to one side, releasing it into its arc. The clock ticked. His father had once shown him what made a clock tick: it was the sound of a toothed wheel escaping from first one and then another little hook. The sound of time was the sound of a continual effort to escape from something that held you back. He replaced the key on the mirrory floor beneath the pendulum and the exposed gears and closed the glass door. The clock ticked, the pendulum swung back and forth. And he felt soothed, soothed deep in his bones, as the clock ticked and the pendulum swung back and forth. S
lowly the pendulum swung back and forth. The clock ticked.

  Toward eleven the last light went out in the little house far up the river. Then pictures streamed in his mind: Cora in her lavender nightgown, Max and Cora laughing in the rowboat, Cora frowning and running a hand through her hair, Cora as a girl of ten in the Vaughn family album, wearing a white dress and straw hat and reaching up to pick a rose from the rose trellis. Then he imagined, in careful detail, Max making love to Cora; and when she reached her three short sharp cries, he began again from the beginning, more slowly, as if he had been a little hasty the first time, a little careless and irresponsible.

  A sound startled him. When he turned his head sharply toward the door he felt a dizziness seize him, as if he had turned and stopped his head while his brain, unattached, continued to turn slowly. A dark form stood in the doorway.

  “It’s late,” Franklin said. “You should be in bed.”

  “You should be in bed too. She’s not coming back, you know.”

  Toward dawn he stumbled and lay on the floor with a fiercely beating heart. Pictures streamed through the deep blue of the room: the façade of Klein’s Wonder Palace, his father’s finger rising and falling slowly as he counted out the numbers, the green leather chair in Judge Vaughn’s study, Cora’s hip bumping open the wooden screen door, a mouse scampering across the back of his hand in the cellar of his home in Plains Farms, Max’s tin mouse moving along the boards of the porch. He remembered his moonlit walk across the roof; and suddenly he longed to be out of this world entirely, up there on the cool white moon, far from his heavy body lying in blue light.