The Mannequin Makers

by Craig Cliff

  I know my old admirer was out there, penetrating my gaze as I stood atop my pedestal in an exact replica of the previous day’s pose.

  I know Eugen was kneeling in wonder before me. The sculptor in love with his own creation.

  I know that when the curtain was lowered and we returned to the anteroom, I had been stewing over the question of our parentage for three hours (in addition to all of the previous night) and came right out and asked Flossie, ‘Was Louisa our mother?’

  She did not seem taken aback by my forthrightness. She nodded.

  Eugen entered the anteroom behind me and I grabbed the sleeve of his loose white sculptor’s shirt. ‘It’s true, Eugen.’

  His bottom lip disappeared beneath his front teeth and he shrugged his shoulders. It would clearly take more to discourage his fantasy of being Sandow’s heir.

  ‘Is she alive?’ I asked her.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I knew it.’

  Eugen had stripped off his shirt and was running cold water over his hair.

  ‘She died giving birth to the two of you.’

  ‘Oh my.’

  ‘Your father loved her very much,’ she said with care, as if she had rehearsed this moment often, ‘and was greatly changed by her death.’

  ‘You knew them both? Before . . .?’

  ‘She was my sister.’

  Her face was whiter than my seashell pendant.

  ‘Oh Mother,’ I said, ‘that makes you my aunt!’ I gave her a hug. ‘I knew we were blood. Why ever did you keep us in the dark about this, about our mother?’

  ‘Your father, he couldn’t bear to hear her name spoken.’

  ‘It must have been so hard for you both.’

  ‘I,’ she said and her hand reached around her head, as if the back of her skull were about to lower like a drawbridge. ‘I was only your age. I should have been stronger.’

  ‘Oh Mother.’ I embraced her again. ‘I mean Aunt. Oh, what should I call you?’

  ‘Flossie is fine, my dear.’

  Over her shoulder I met Eugen’s eyes. He was standing shirtless in the corner of the room, his abdominal muscles tense, his eyes piercing and pitying all at once. I saw he didn’t believe her. That he couldn’t let himself believe. He wanted so badly to be linked to another family, to Sandow. To be a prince. To be special.

  I never got the chance to tell him that he was special. If there is anything my time in the window and the last three days have taught me, it is that Eugen is one of a kind.

  The hour was soon over and I returned to my pedestal, Eugen to his pose below me. I had gained a dead mother and a living aunt. If I thought my head was spinning the night before . . . But the curtain was rising and I quickly fixed my pose, stilled my chest and let my eyelids fall into their regular rhythm.

  The old man stood on the far side of the road, looking on. The hours passed. Eugen’s young admirer arrived on his bicycle. I had learnt to approximate the time by judging the light in the sky. I began to expect the sound of the door to the anteroom opening, the sound of the winch starting and the curtain falling, but it did not come. The aches in my back, the arm I had raised to my forehead and the arch of my left foot told me we had indeed posed for longer than normal. Eugen tried not to show any discomfort, even to me.

  Outside, the usual flux of passersby continued around the constant old man and the boy with the bicycle, though pedestrians began to stop and comment among themselves more frequently.

  The boy with the bicycle pedalled off, no doubt for his dinner, and I heard Eugen’s own stomach grumble.

  I began to worry that something had happened to Flossie. Perhaps she had fallen ill or been involved in an accident on the roads. Or perhaps Father had returned from Christchurch and they were both on their way.

  The daylight began to soften and fade. The woman with her hair in a bun arrived, looking harried. She paid us both a longer glance than she usually allowed herself before turning to face the street, the back of her white blouse pressed to the plate glass and her hands upon her hips.

  The hubbub on the street began to increase until it was nearly as packed as on the first few days of our season. The gentleman with the large belly and brown skin arrived and began to make his way around the townspeople, shaking their hands as if he were working a butter churn. The electric street lights came on and the last light drained out of the sky. Orphans and their minders stepped right up to the window, ignoring the woman, to peer at us. With only two small lights illuminating our side of the glass, we must have been getting very hard to make out, which was just as well as we had both begun to falter after so long in the one position. The rearrangements Eugen undertook to ease the weight on his kneecap sent tiny shivers around his body, terminating in his eyebrows. I had developed a slight wobble that was proving difficult to still. We had never posed for so long, not in the window, not even in the comfort of Father’s workshop. We had no alternative but to grit our teeth behind closed lips and maintain the tableau. Perhaps it was another test of our mettle. One last trial before we graduated to the great windows of Christchurch. This is what Eugen seemed bent on convincing the both of us. It will be all right, he told me with his eyes.

  When night had completely fallen the townspeople began returning to their homes. The orphans peeled their foreheads from the glass and followed their minders to the orphanage (I tried not to think about the meagre meals and cruel treatment they might receive once there). Only the old man remained, standing on the far side of the road as he had been since the curtain rose. I could make him out in the glow of the street light but evidently he could not see me well as he soon crossed the road and stood a foot away from the glass. He seemed changed. His tongue made frequent forays out of his mouth to moisten his lower lip. His customary handkerchief was nowhere to be seen. He frequently glanced to his left and to his right, breaking our gaze, checking if he was alone on the street.

  And then he slunk away.

  At first I suspected he had only stepped to the side of the window and would leap forward once more to catch us as we yielded to our bodies’ demands for rest and relief. But the street remained perfectly deserted for some time.

  Eugen continued his encouraging looks. There was no way he was breaking pose while the curtain remained up.

  I longed for Flossie to open the anteroom door. Not just for the relief of our bodies but the relief of my heart and mind, for I feared (and still do, at certain moments) that she was badly injured or worse. What else could have prevented her from lowering the curtain?

  My thoughts continued to oscillate between the pain in my limbs and the pain in my heart.

  Then, at last, I heard the door between the giant wardrobe and the anteroom open.

  Eugen’s eyelids fluttered in an involuntary round of applause.

  I let out the first full breath I had breathed in what must have been ten hours. Ten long, torturous hours.

  But who had entered the anteroom? Why had they not worked the winch to lower the curtain? The thought of an intruder suddenly crossed my mind and leapt over to Eugen’s. I thought of the man from Christchurch weighing my hair and prodding my flesh, the way he clutched his top hat to his chest. I heard footsteps approach the door to the window. We both held our poses as best we could.

  The door opened. No one announced their arrival, not even in a whisper. Eugen and I were both turned toward the glass. I could only hear the rustle of the curtain and the creak of the door between the window and the anteroom and feel the slight breeze that suggested the first door had not been shut and locked securely according to Father’s protocol.

  I heard the curtain that concealed the door to the anteroom being pulled back and the light from that room mingled with the two small bulbs in the window. Eugen and I had altered our poses by degrees since we commenced our session at one o’clock that afternoon, but in that moment we kept perfectly still. I was staring ahead at the reflective surface of the window. The world beyond was no more, but I could se
e Eugen and me and the shuffling form of the intruder.

  It was my admirer.

  He placed one cold finger on the calf muscle of my right leg. The sensation was infinitely more testing than when the man from Christchurch had inspected my ‘materials’. One finger was followed by the entire rough hand, which clamped on my calf and gave a gentle squeeze. Eugen kept looking up into my eyes. It was clear that he too had caught a glimpse of the intruder and that his identity was no great surprise. It made perfect sense that my admirer would be the one to bring an end to this ordeal, but what sort of an end would it be? Was he the dark figure who lurks throughout a novel only to reveal his benevolent side at the climax and remedy all of the heroine’s misfortunes? Or was he the dark figure who lurks throughout a novel only to bring the final misfortune upon the hero’s sister?

  I had no choice but to hold my pose as I felt his hands on my hips. I focused every last ounce of energy on contracting my muscles so that I might hold everything in place as I was hoisted from the pedestal. For a small, old man, his strength was surprising. He managed to take me down and bring me horizontally against his hip. In the moment, I believed I was keeping my entire body rigid, but now I cannot be sure. After posing for so long, where did my strength come from? But the man did not act as if I had given myself away. He carried me through the tiny room that had so tried my patience and into the giant wardrobe, for the first time in nine days. It was completely dark, as it had been the night Father brought us in to the window. My nose was assaulted once more by a thousand exotic odours. The elbow of the arm I held to my head brushed against clothing on the racks as we made our way along a row. As we turned, my feet collected a few items that then fell to the floor. The clatter of the wooden hangers against the hard surface of the floor reverberated in the giant wardrobe.

  We continued to twist and turn among the rows, taking a much less direct route than when I had come in with Father. I wondered if my abductor was making evasive manoeuvres. Perhaps Eugen was giving chase. But I knew deep down that whatever Eugen felt for me, he would not break pose. This realisation hurt in the moment but with three days to think on it, I know that my brother thought little harm could come to me. We had lived such cloistered lives, away from crime and depravity and death. He could not have conceived of a fate worse than a spoiled season in the window and one’s prospects being dashed.

  Dear, sweet Eugen. When will I see you again?

  We finally made it to the double doors and my admirer pushed slowly through with his free arm, careful to protect me from any knocks. The wind was up outside and the cool night air was like a razor. I could feel my skin turn to gooseflesh: this is one bodily function Father did not teach us how to control and I wonder if it is even possible. But I kept my limbs as rigid as possible and maintained, as best I could, my horizontal attitude to the ground, seesawing slightly against the pivot of my admirer’s hip with every step, as I imagine a real statue might.

  We rounded a corner and I was set upright once more. He spread a rug out across the flat bed of a wooden cart that was hitched to a single grey horse not much bigger than a dog. I was hoisted once more and slowly slid onto the platform so that I was lying comfortably (a relative term in this case: I still held my pose in a manner, but did not have to support any weight). Another rug was then drawn over me completely.

  I heard the reins being whipped and the small horse began to trundle forward.

  As before, I tried to follow the twists and turns to keep some measure of where we were and where we might be heading, but it was hopeless. I know so little about the town of Marumaru beyond the stretch of street I could see from the window and the pocket of our property, which lay somewhere further up the hill and away from the sea. The cart soon began to incline so that my feet were lower than my head, suggesting we were going uphill. For a moment I considered that we were heading toward home because Mother Flossie needed me, but we plodded for far too long. No, we were well beyond our home and, perhaps worse, we were moving further and further from the sea!

  After some time the exhaustion and the repetitive swaying motion of the cart got the better of me and I fell asleep.

  When I awoke the top rug had come down from over my head and I had broken pose completely. The cart was stationary, and tentative morning light trickled through the leaves of a tree. I could hear what sounded like running water. I tried to look around without moving my head but I could not see enough to know where my admirer was. Slowly I lifted my head to see the small horse that stood patiently, still hitched to the cart. We were almost enveloped by the branches of a large tree, which hung down with the weight of their narrow green leaves. Through the foliage I could make out the dirt trail we had evidently been following and the old man, still in his heavy suit, crouched beside a stream some twenty or thirty yards distant. The water was a strange, milky, opalescent blue. When I lifted myself higher the stream turned out to be a strand of a much larger thing—I hesitate to call it a river because in my mind a river has always been a single line of water, larger than a stream, straighter than a creek, with two sloping banks. This river, if that was the correct term, was more a series of shallow streams braided together by nature’s haphazard hand.

  I saw my admirer stand up from the smooth grey stones at the edge of the water and I lay back down, though I was unsure what position to assume. He had surely seen me sleeping, but I was less mortified than I might have been. It was hard to imagine the rules of the window applied any longer. Even so, I decided to pretend I still slept and shut my eyes. I heard the sound of his boots on the stones and felt him pull the blanket up over my shoulders. Then we were off again.

  Lying on my side I was able to observe some of the landscape we were passing through. It seemed we were on a kind of plain or plateau, relatively flat with only a slight incline which the trail ascended. The braided river was to my back and I faced grassland dotted with scrub. The hills shimmered brown and red in the distance. As we continued on the trail they appeared to approach and recede, approach and recede, as if in a kind of dance.

  The sun reached its apex and signalled twenty-four hours since I had eaten or drunk. The worm traced a figure eight inside me. I found it harder and harder to keep my eyes open. The hills felt closer now, ready to embrace me. My lips were dry and cracked. My head pounded. If I had had something in my stomach it would have come back up.

  Late in the afternoon we finally came to a stop. I felt the blanket being cast aside and the cart bounce as my admirer climbed up to collect me. I did not have the strength to hold any sort of pose. I could not straighten a leg if my life depended on it. I was carried limp and half-conscious up a path. It must have been uneven or unstable as I remember my head being jolted several times, my thoughts being thrust back into my body before drifting once more, out into the blues, greens, yellows, browns and reds of the wide, windowless world.

  I was taken into a small wooden hut and placed carefully on a bed that later inspection would deem quite modest but in that moment felt like a giant marshmallow. I felt my lips being pried open and cold water—the coldest—being poured into my mouth. The water hit the back of my throat and made me cough and splutter over the man’s hand and the bedding. I looked up weakly and met his gaze for the first time since the previous evening. His eyes were moist. In them I saw kindness. I let myself relax, relent, drift away.

  This morning I awoke at my usual hour. Six o’clock. There is no timepiece in this small hut to verify this, but I could recognise this time of the morning, its smells and sounds and subdued colours. The man was slouched in a sitting chair, his suit coat draped over his shoulders, his head cocked awkwardly to one side, his eyes closed. I surveyed the small hut. It was not much bigger than the anteroom and seemed smaller still, owing to the pitched roof that started four feet or so from the ground. A small peak protruded above the doorway in order to accommodate its greater height. The walls were made of vertical slats of wood, similar to Father’s workshop but with even more gaps to le
t the daylight knife inside. There was no ceiling, just the blackened underside of the shingles and the supporting timber frame. My bed lay at one end of the hut and at the other there was a bench with a basin recessed into it. There were no taps over the basin (I have since learnt there is no plumbing whatsoever). Behind the old man’s chair was a fireplace constructed from bricks that looked so porous they might float. A cast-iron pot sat in the ashes and a smaller one hung from a hook inside the chimney.

  I rose from the bed that had been such a comfort. Despite the strain upon my muscles of posing for so many hours I felt no pain in my limbs as I stood, but when I moved forward it felt as if my brain were sloshing inside my head like soapsuds in a bucket. I made my way slowly to the door and eased it open. The hinges gave a creak but the man did not wake. Outside, I surveyed our destination for the first time. To my left a curving wall of rock rose up to a height of thirty feet. The rock was yellow with black tarnished edges and greenish-black vertical stripes. A collection of square-sided boulders lay at the foot of this cliff, their surface brownish-grey with pocks of the same sandy yellow. Dry, thorny bushes and larger trees with waxy green leaves sprang up from gaps between the boulders but I stood on a sort of plain with knee-high grass that swirled in the breeze like some diaphanous material. The grass was bound by another curving wall of rock perhaps forty yards away. It was as if I stood between two cupped stone hands.

  I stepped forward, letting my fingers run through the grass as I walked. The sky was bluer than anything I had seen in Marumaru. The few patches of white cloud were stretched thin as cotton wool so that the blue still shone through. Every few steps I stopped to inspect some new discovery. The tiny flowers, dried and brown like Cape gooseberry skins, that sat atop thin red stems tangled among the tall grass. The small brown and orange butterfly that alighted on the top of a boulder. In the distance a range of mountains rose up, dusted white with snow even in these dog days of summer.