The boy had other concerns, of course. Before leaving home, he had had daydreams that there might be some girl in New Orleans waiting just for him. But those dreams did not pan out. All the girls were older. He was literally the youngest individual in his class. Most of the girls had boyfriends with driver’s licenses. They were friendly enough but definitely not interested in any fourteen-year-old “mechanically minded” boy. On several occasions he hunted for but did not find the girl next door, nor, for that matter, did he ever hear her again.
Under the circumstances, the question that became paramount for him was how long the doll would run. It dawned on him that it might be somewhat difficult to tell. The doll might continue to tick long after she had stopped moving because it should take less energy to do that. In fact, every day, after class, he would wonder, has she stopped already?
He began to leave things in her hands, little bits of paper, to see if she had moved in his absence. Infinitesimal, these pieces of paper were, some of them virtually the size of lint. He would find them later, on the sofa, on the armrest, on the floor beneath her feet. After a while he began writing tiny messages on them. To camouflage, as far as possible, what he was doing, he would write very small, so that what she ended up holding was an unreadable blob of ink. But in each case he knew what he had written and was pleased to think she did as well.
Hello.
Thinking of you.
Sleep well.
Or:
I think you’re beautiful.
Will try to dream of Switzerland for your sake.
(He would find the messages on the cushion of the sofa, on the armrest, on the floor beneath her feet.)
The boy did try to dream of Switzerland for her; and, in order to get a focus for his dream, saturated himself with ideas and images of the area from two sets of encyclopedias in the house: pictures of the Alps, of cows, of cheese, of Zurich and Bern. He thought that perhaps she might come alive for him in a dream.
(And, as he began to learn more French, he tried speaking to her.)
Je t’aime.
On the sofa sometimes, unmoving for hours, he would stare at her, trying to saturate his brain with her beauty. Her hazel eyes were so realistic it was impossible to believe she was not seeing him too, watching him, waiting for something.
Nothing came of the dreams, though. That is, they did not happen.
In truth, the two of them didn’t get much time absolutely alone together. Other things would intervene. The maid would come in. The husband would enter with his pipe, the wife with her cigarettes, or both, simultaneously. They seemed mainly to smoke in that room. The boy noticed one evening that the doll was looking directly at the husband as he fiddled with his pipe, and he suddenly realized he was feeling something very like jealousy.
One afternoon, while waiting for the doll to move, he began looking at the family pictures in the shadow-box frames. He noticed there was a resemblance, a definite resemblance, between this doll and certain of the women in the pictures. He thought they might be the wives. The maid came on Tuesdays and Thursdays and he began to ask her questions. She knew the answers to most of them, and the woman eventually provided him with the rest. He found that the daughters in the family had something of a resemblance, passed on, no doubt, genetically; but what he had guessed initially was the truth. The real resemblance was to the wives.
The boy opened the leather box, looked at the crank with its mahogany handle, lifted it up, set it back. There were some spare buttons for the blouse, a long Allen wrench with a T-shaped handle, some regular wrenches too, three screwdrivers, a button hook. (There was also an impression of these things crushed into the velvet lining of the top of the box.)
How long could the spring last? he wondered. It was already more than “days,” as the woman had suggested. It was “weeks” now, past two, and well into a third. But then it quit. The boy came home one afternoon and found his last message (unread?) in her hand. The doll had run down. She was stopped, frozen, dead, caught in the middle of a motion. It was a most unnatural-looking position for her, her eyes on the floor, her neck in the process of a turn. Seeing it, he immediately understood the importance of a little-appreciated role and function of funeral directors, who have as their responsibility the final, strictly physical disposition of a human body: the adjusting of hands and feet, the closing of eyes, the stopping of life at a node.
The boy felt strongly that the doll shouldn’t be left like this. Did they even notice, the man and woman? Why didn’t they? Maybe they weren’t really looking at her. He decided he would rewind her himself. He decided he would fix the problem.
It would be three days before he could do that, though. The man and woman were going to dinner at Commander’s Palace on Saturday. Afterward they were going to a party in the French Quarter. He would have two full hours at least, maybe more, maybe considerably more.
(In the meantime, she sat there, gathering infinitesimal dust.)
* * *
Saturday evening he waited a full twenty minutes after they left. Then he waited another ten in case they had forgotten something. Finally he went into the parlor, locked the doors, closed the curtains, and opened the box of tools. He saw the mahogany handle, the black velvet lining, noted, in passing almost, that the top section of the box (where the images of the tools were crushed) was somewhat thicker than it had to be. He realized the velvet lining of the case might hold or conceal something, might, in fact, fold down (did fold down, he discovered with the aid of a bent paper clip). What he saw immediately inside was a certificate.
The certificate had a name, Moriya, printed in ornate black script at the top. There was some more writing too, near that, in a smaller, different script: Austral Kraftwerk, Prague. Then there was a paragraph of print and some handwritten specifications in an antique and purple-looking ink in a series of printed blanks. The writing might have been German, might have been Czech. He did not know. He had had two years of Latin and now, of course, a smattering of French. But he had no idea. Austral Kraftwerk, Prague. What he saw now was that the design on the medallion on the doll’s neck was the trademark for the company. Not one word of the writing was meaningful to him. There was a serial number and part of a decorative scroll around the edge of the certificate. One of the bottom corners of the scroll had been torn off. He thought there might once have been an engraved picture of the doll in that corner. If so, it had been torn off. Why had it been torn off?
The boy thought that there might have been such a picture because there was something else engraved on the other corner, something totally unexpected: the sofa! But of course! The sofa was part of the doll! Not connected, obviously, but a platform for it, as it obviously had to be. Probably the doll had to be placed at the end of it, at the far left end, too. There might be things inside it, magnets, for instance, that allowed the doll to orient herself. Who, then, in this family had known to put her there? Someone was not telling the whole truth here.
Well, well, well, he thought. So, then, the doll’s name was Moriya.
“Moriya,” he said, coming around in front and looking at her, touching her fingertips.
But she continued to look dead to him, distorted; and, of course, there was no movement of her eyes.
Still, the boy realized, it was very possible that only he knew the rest of the story. This doll had not been made in Switzerland; she had been made in Prague. His hands were slightly tremulous now as he began to undress her. He was worried, at first, about how to handle her arms; but her maroon velvet jacket unhooked in the back, came off immediately, he discovered. He unlaced the back of the dress, which also came apart easily. The dress had innumerable pleats and revealed underneath what he would have called a black corset, but which the woman, outside of the house now, would have known was a bustier. The boy saw that he didn’t have to remove that. There was a hole in the fabric itself in the low back. As a precaution, though, before he inserted the crank, he moved the wheel in her neck to the “off” posit
ion. He inserted the short, stubby, but rather massive crank and began to turn it. He was expecting a heavy sound like click … click … click. What he heard instead had more of a roaring quality and feel. He wound it on and on, tighter and tighter: ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty, thirty, a total of forty times before the spring began to feel really tight to him. At the end he relaxed the crank very carefully to be sure the ratchet would hold. Then he turned the wheel in her neck and watched as she completed the turn she had begun days ago. She came to rest in a position he had seen many times before, her eyes slightly averted. Was she being shy? Flirtatious?
Disheveled now, her jacket down, her young back showing, what he saw was the breathtaking, incredible modeling of her scapulas and vertebrae. Her skin was not ceramic, but what was it? Ivory? Alabaster? It was something that looked like ivory to him. It was slightly warm-feeling. He saw the dark bustier, the stunning shoulder blades, the pleated cloth hanging off her right shoulder, and all of a sudden the temptation became too great for him.
He began to undo the front of her dress.
The little fabric-covered buttons were somewhat difficult to manipulate. He saw it would be rather easy to break one. The doll’s breasts were not overly large. Her nipples were of a deeper hue than her lips. Her pigments were getting darker, it seemed, in the more caudal direction (a word he would not have known but a principle he might have appreciated). What he noticed about the breasts was that they were not unfinished. The doll’s breasts, like her back, were perfect; they were not just forms and armatures for fabric; they were meant to be seen. He began to see very clearly now; this doll was not designed around a dress. She was designed around a nude body.
The doll’s nipples were of a rubbery material, darkly pink. Where the rubber came together centrally, it could be pulled and teased apart. It dawned on him that something might be hidden beneath the rubber. Screws, perhaps. This might be the way to take off the front of the doll.
The boy was well familiar with the deviousness of mechanical constructions. In disassembling such things as vacuum cleaners, radios, televisions, and lawn mowers, he had learned long ago (virtually in kindergarten, in fact) that the innocent-looking moldings and chrome strips frequently hid the mounting attachments for a motor or chassis. This was wildly different, of course; yet, all things considered, it was right up his alley. He turned the doll off, ran to the kitchen, and got a flashlight. With the light, he looked carefully as he pried gently into the rubber nipples with the tip of the button hook. No, there were no screw heads. The holes went deeper, though, so maybe something else would fit. The Allen wrench, perhaps. It was possible that he was on the right track. Another thought, though, was beginning to bother him. Would a dress of this era normally lace in the back and button in front? He had no idea.
It seemed this doll’s clothes were made to be taken off quickly.
Behind him, on the marble table, the clock continued to tick. The boy was taking rather more time with all of this than he realized. And now, in his rush to get the flashlight, he had left the door to the parlor unlocked.
He took the T-shaped Allen wrench out of the case and tried to insert it directly through the rubber in the right nipple. He was not successful. He met resistance immediately. Still, to be thorough, he tried it in the left as well. It went in. Not a little. It went in the full length of the shaft.
With one hand on her back and one hand on the T-shaped handle, he now had a decision to make: whether or not to turn the wrench. The doll’s eyes were still averted. This could possibly cause her body to spring open. He might not be able to get her back together again. There was no clue as to what was going to happen. He waited several seconds, thinking, deliberating, resting his full palm flat against her bare back. Then the doll’s eyes began to move. They moved upward a matter of millimeters and began to drift steadily to the right toward him. It was a move he had never seen her make before. Finally her eyes met his, not exactly but almost. He leaned down to intersect her gaze. It was impossible to believe she was not seeing him, talking to him, begging him silently. He took a quick breath and turned the handle clockwise. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. He met complete resistance. (Actually, he was almost relieved to find it.) Then (being very thorough again) he turned the handle the other way.
Something clunked deep within the interior of the doll. Deep within the doll, he heard something rather heavy-sounding move into another position.
The boy listened quickly, almost desperately, holding his ear to her bare shoulder. There was no change whatsoever in the noise (tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic). Then again, maybe there was. Maybe the ticking was faster now.
The boy held the Allen wrench in his hand, waiting, but nothing happened. He sat down beside her; still nothing. He looked at the clock on the table. Fifteen minutes, he thought.
He waited beside her, the doll with her breasts bared, her black bustier open. She seemed to be looking toward but not directly at the clock. A woman ignoring you might look in such a direction. Suddenly the boy remembered the unlocked door. He jumped up, ran to lock it, sat down again.
He should be safe anyway, he thought, should have plenty of time. They should still be at Commander’s Palace now. He should have plenty … hours, maybe. On the other hand, what if they dropped by here on the way to the Quarter.
Fifteen minutes, he thought.
But it didn’t take that long.
After six minutes of ticking, the doll blinked. Actually, what the doll did was a good deal more than a blink; it was slower, and more prolonged:
She fully closed and opened her eyes.
Then she began to move her right hand. The doll moved her right hand forward and set it down rather firmly near the boy’s knee and began to pull along his leg and thigh. She did not stop. She pulled steadily and directly into his crotch and stayed there for a long time. What she was doing now was evidently not unintentional. She was steadily moving her hand. The boy did not know whether to look at her or not. He could barely see her dark and tender lashes. Then he felt her hand on his shoulder. The doll had changed positions somewhat; she had put her gloved hand on his left shoulder and leaned into him. This was an entirely different, beseeching, sort of movement. In a human being you would say that what was wanted now was a kiss; the girl—or lady—wants a kiss. In a doll, of course, you could not say that—not accurately, that is. But the boy said it anyway. He kissed her. He kissed her on her mouth. The doll’s mouth was not unpleasant-feeling. Her mouth was electrifying. She looked up, seemed to lock onto his eyes. He felt more and more pressure in her kiss, more and more and more of the pressure. Then he realized what was happening.
The doll was climbing on top of him. The boy fell the full length of the sofa, and her sudden, unexpected heaviness was upon him. Her dark hair fell completely over both of them. By helping her slightly he got her legs on the sofa too, and centered in his groin area. She was as heavy as a small sack of fertilizer. Altogether the sensation was unexpected, weird, and magical; she felt real. Not that he had ever felt a girl in this situation. But then again there was no object that had ever felt like this. Her balance was perfect. He had already been phenomenally, wildly turned on by the kiss alone. With this extra activity, he was reaching unprecedented heights (or lengths). But he didn’t feel any receptacle for what had now grown between them. Steadily, powerfully, the doll began to grind against him. Her searching eyes locked firmly onto his. He felt desperately, but her groin was perfectly smooth. He inserted his hand down beneath her clothes to make absolutely sure. There was nothing. She continued to pin him with her mouth and grind against him. What must such a doll have cost? was almost his last thought before he exploded into his own underwear. She ground into him for another full minute, then stopped, leaving him with her weight and the warm, soapy stickiness.
Je t’aime, the boy said. J’ai la tête de la mécanique.
The doll’s eyes remained closed, as though sleeping. The boy put his hand on the back of her head.
He stayed on the sofa an additional ten minutes, feeling her satisfying weight, the slight vibration of her body, all fear of being discovered gone, the glass clock on the table steadily ticking, all centers of gravity in the room perfectly balanced now. The boy waited another five minutes, even afterward, vaguely curious, vaguely thinking something else might happen. But nothing did.
At last the boy sat up, then sat her up and turned her off. Her dress was still more or less in place. But he wanted to take a closer look at her groin area. There was nothing there, nothing. The area was perfectly smooth, sexless in a way, an ivory groin. No, wait a minute. There was something, but it was not a part of her. There was something written, embroidered in the cloth of her underpants (they didn’t really look like panties to him, but it was the last garment before her bare body). The writing was in script in dark letters, a phrase in Latin: Talis umbras mundum regnant.
The boy smiled and said it aloud, musingly. So the sole use, thus far, in his life of two full years of Latin was to understand the message written on a doll’s underpants. He began to put the doll back together. He checked carefully for stains. All was fine, perfect; no stains, nothing. Finally, with the Allen wrench, he set her back to the clockwise position, waited a moment, looking.
The doll suddenly opened her eyes.
He kissed her and turned off the light.
* * *
Have you thought of a name for her?
No.
(This was three days later, in the parlor, where the boy was sitting after class, studying a list of verbs. The woman had come in to retrieve a pack of cigarettes from a carton.)
The Uncanny Reader Page 34
