The Puppet Maker's Bones

by Alisa Tangredi

  A voice spoke from behind Pavel’s shoulder.

  “It isn’t easy, is it, knowing you’re responsible?”

  Pavel spun around to see a man standing behind him in the corridor. The man was large, with red hair. He seemed familiar to Pavel, but in his grief he could not place where he might have met him or where he had seen him before. The red-haired man held a hat in one hand and had an overcoat draped over his other arm, which was unusual for the warm weather of Pasadena. Pavel could not discern his age, maybe thirty, maybe fifty. Pavel had never been good with that sort of thing. The stranger held the countenance that Pavel had seen on countless hospital clergy since his and Žophie’s arrival, a combination of knowing resignation and hope that only a person in the profession of religion could effectively get away with without appearing to be ridiculous. This particular man, however, had something very different about him. It was his eyes. Where the pupils should be, with their unrevealing darkness surrounded by iris, instead appeared a flickering glow, bluish at first and then amber, then red, then back to blue again and ever changing. Pavel started, for he knew those eyes. The constant changing color and intensity emanating from their center, generating out into the irises, gave them an unnatural depth and knowing quality that frightened Pavel. Yet he thought the eyes seemed familiar—Trope?

  “What did you say?” Pavel asked.

  “It is never easy. Watching them fade.”

  Pavel’s voice faltered. “Are you the other doctor they sent for? Please tell me what is wrong.”

  The man’s eyes met Pavel’s. “You do know what has brought you here?”

  Pavel looked back through the sliver of open doorway at Žofie. “They say she has the consumption.”

  The man grabbed Pavel by the arm and forced him to look him in the eye.

  “Pavel. It’s McGovern. You know me. It has been years, but you know me.”

  Pavel started crying.

  “McGovern? Yes. I remember you.”

  McGovern seemed to be very angry, as if he was trying to refrain from striking Pavel in the hospital corridor.

  “What will happen to her?” Pavel asked.

  McGovern led Pavel to a bench against the wall and sat him down. The large man was breathing long deep breaths in an apparent effort to calm himself.

  “You were warned. You were told. You were schooled in your youth. You chose to ignore the advice of people who have been keeping our very existence quiet for hundreds of years. You ignored the experience of your best friend. Did you honestly think you could get away with trying to be normal and no one would get hurt?”

  Pavel’s gaze held no comprehension.

  McGovern continued, speaking in a low voice so as not to be overheard. “Do not try to play the ignorant, injured person here. And do not try to act like an old drug user, because that habit ended over a hundred years ago, and you can’t claim to suddenly forget who you are. You know what this is. You were told under no uncertain terms. Pavel. The Great Rule must not be broken.”

  McGovern leaned over and put his face in his hands, dejected. Pavel got up and returned to the spot in the corridor outside Žophie’s room where he was keeping vigil.

  McGovern stayed on the bench, shook his head and crushed his hat between his large hands, helpless.

  ***

  Žofie died, mere hours later. Pavel’s anguished cry, when Žofie’s last breath abandoned her, filled the hospital corridor and the one beyond that. He wanted to die as well, but McGovern remained by his side, unrelenting in his reminders and explanations of all that Pavel knew already, but chose to deny the moment he and Žofie stepped on the gangplank to the ship that brought them to America. Pavel’s death would not come for quite some time. Žofie was Pavel’s one and true love, and they had been so very happy. He had never considered that one day someone like Žofie would enter his world, but when she did, he had felt as if a long and unfinished puzzle had its final piece put in the right place to complete a perfect picture. The warnings of others had not made sense to him. He understood about anger. But not love. How could he be filled with such hope and possibility and have that love be something so catastrophic and wrong? Everything was perfect. The long years of extreme loneliness were worth every moment of his years of solitude and waiting.

  They had been married for one week when Žophie sickened. Pavel was already one-hundred and seventy-three years old.

  Pavel allowed the red-haired man with the familiar, yet strange eyes to lead him down the hospital corridor, away from Žophie, away from the doctors and nurses and sounds and smells. He needed to go back for her body. Arrangements needed to be made for her burial.

  “I will help you with all of the arrangements that need to be made. You do not have to do this alone,” McGovern said. They walked out of the hospital together into the front courtyard. The sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky. Rose bushes in full bloom lined the walkway that led from the doorway to the street. The roses seemed wrong to Pavel. Disrespectful and garish. The sun should not shine on a day when the entire light that was Žophie had been snuffed from the world.

  “We should go to your home.” McGovern guided Pavel by the arm. His hold was firm, but not rough.

  “Did Mr. Trope send you, or did you come on your own?” asked Pavel.

  “I was sent by Trope to keep an eye on you when you arrived. He anticipated there would be a problem. Actually, he anticipated there would be a disaster. We will have to send others to ensure that Žophie is the lone casualty.

  Pavel did not fully comprehend what McGovern had said. Casualty?

  “Will Cheidu be coming?”

  “You mean Mr. Robert Lamb? Ah. Good. You do remember. That is good. A letter has been sent, and I’m sure your friend will be here as soon as he is able.” McGovern did not sound convincing.

  “You say I did this to her? To my Žophie? How could love do this? I was never angry. I was told never to get angry.”

  “You were warned about more than that. You ignored the letters from Mr. Trope. We tried to see you at every opportunity before you married and travelled here.”

  “I did not believe Trope. He is an insufferable man living his superior and distant life behind a desk. Do you know in all the years of our ‘business’ acquaintance we have never so much as shared a meal, as two regular people would? I endured his constant and rote statement telling me that things are ‘in order’ and ‘when I am ready’ and a lot more stuff and nonsense. Trope has never been in love. He could not possibly know.”

  McGovern squeezed Pavel’s arm a little harder.

  “That is a lie, and you know it. And you know nothing about Trope or what he may or may not have experienced during his life. You put your dislike of Trope above your common sense. But your best friend? How could you not listen to him? How could you be that selfish?”

  Pavel wrenched his arm away from McGovern, and the two men continued to walk.

  “Have you ever been lonely, McGovern? I think I asked you that once. A long time ago.”

  McGovern rubbed his gloved hands together and breathed deeply. “The fact you would ask that question of any of us proves that we have failed you. We should never have allowed you to stay in that theatre all those years. You have been sheltered like china doll in a cabinet. There is something wrong with you, with your mind. Over a century playing make-believe in a theatre where you have learned no concept of the real outcome of things—we are to blame for leaving you there. You have become a man without empathy, without consideration of anyone but yourself. Let’s get you home. We should not speak of these things out in the open,” said McGovern.

  The two men walked in silence for a little more than an hour, the amount of time it took to walk from the hospital to the new home that Pavel had commissioned as Žophie’s wedding gift. They walked up the stairs together and entered the foyer. McGovern took Pavel’s hat and his and hung them both upon the rack that stood to the right of the door. He guided Pavel into the kitchen and into a chair at the k
itchen table. Pavel watched as McGovern moved around the kitchen, lighting the iron range, putting the kettle on, opening cupboards and drawers until he found the teapot, the tea and the various cups and biscuits. McGovern picked an orange out of a bowl on the counter and peeled it, putting segments onto a plate that he found in another cupboard. He did not ask where anything was, and Pavel did not offer anything in the way of information that might help. Pavel sat in his chair and watched. McGovern seemed comfortable familiarizing himself with the kitchen as he put together their small meal.

  Žophie had picked out the house’s design from illustrations, and Pavel had made all of the arrangements with Mr. Trope’s office to build the home, with some additional modifications of Pavel’s design, namely the plumbing. Mr. Trope repeatedly protested the purchase and the move to America, but Pavel insisted. Mr. Trope’s company took care of the house and travel arrangements while Pavel made separate arrangements on his own for his bride-to-be. He’d left Žophie’s name out of the business arrangements, stating it was his desire to finally travel. He was not sure that Mr. Trope believed him or his deception. Pavel was counting on the fact that despite how Trope might feel about any given thing, his job was to keep his clients comfortable and happy. Pavel knew Trope & Co. would handle all the proper arrangements, whether or not the company agreed with its client. Pavel had promised Žophie’s father he would take care of her in their new world. Pavel did not want to arrive in America at their new home and discover they had been swindled. One heard about such things happening. Trope & Co. arranged, over the course of several months, the purchase of everything pertaining to the home, including the furnishings and a business to keep the house clean until their arrival. While Trope handled all of the arrangements for the property’s purchase, he continued to mail numerous letters to Pavel advising him against a continued association with his beloved. Pavel and Žophie said their goodbyes to friends and family and left for America immediately following the wedding, which was Žophie’s plan and greatest desire. She was a forceful personality and did not take “no” for an answer. Her father was against the plan, as was Pavel, who had never lived anywhere else in well over one hundred seventy years. In the end both men relented.

  On the long journey by ship, the newly married couple could not share a bunk because quarters were split between men and women. The wedding night they longed for would have to wait until they were in their new home. After what seemed to both to be a prolonged journey, they arrived in America, and dusty and dirty from travel, neither having had a proper bath for weeks, they approached their new house. No sooner had Pavel carried Žophie over the threshold of their brand new home when their hands and mouths were all over each other.

  Pavel inhaled upon reliving the memory. Such a recent memory.

  “I suppose without someone coming right out and stating their own experiences at tempting fate by living a normal life, you had no way of accepting, not without proof,” James McGovern said, placing a plate of orange slices on the table. Pavel worried that this strange man could read his thoughts. “What I mean is, none of us truly knows unless there is an accident, and we tend not to speak of such things because they are terrible. Did it start with a bloody nose?”

  Pavel was horrified by the man who asked if Žophie had gotten a bloody nose in the same tone that someone might ask if it had rained the night before.

  “I did know,” Pavel said. “I think I always knew. I wanted to forget. Žophie made me want to forget. Cheidu tried to talk some sense into me, but I thought that was because he—”

  “Mr. Lamb is a homosexual, yes, but he was not trying to talk sense into you because he desired you.”

  Pavel slammed his hand on the table. McGovern gave him a stare that caused Pavel to immediately regret his outburst. He must control his emotions.

  “I know that, you imbecile! Cheidu is my friend. My brother. Cheidu is my only friend and I am his. I thought maybe he did not want to be left alone. We were moving so far away, and he has had trouble here in America.”

  “None of us wish to be left alone. It is our circumstance in life to be creatures bound by hope for a connection. A lasting, human connection. For love. For something we cannot have and must not pursue,” said McGovern.

  Pavel considered the man’s words.

  “I mistook hope and love to mean the same thing. I honestly thought—”

  McGovern rubbed his face with his hands. “It is our curse.”

  Pavel shook his head.

  “I don’t believe in curses. I believe in scientific explanations. When I was a small child they told me I had killed my family because I was some sort of demon. A vampire,” Pavel said.

  “There are no such things as vampires. We certainly don’t go traveling around at night, sleeping by day in a coffin, drinking the blood of our fellow man. What a preposterous myth.”

  “I know that. But I have never understood how it is that we can be the cause of such destruction when we do not desire it? Which myth are we attached to? What is real?”

  McGovern considered the question. He reached up and rubbed his shoulder, close to the spot where the scars would be that were identical to Pavel’s.

  “I have been called a changeling, a demon, a hobgoblin. I have read every book in Mr. Trope’s office. The religious, the scientific— books do not explain us.”

  “Daoine Sidhe,” said McGovern.

  “Theena Shee?”

  “Well, yes, that is how it is pronounced by the Celts and the Pagans. That’s another name I have been called.”

  “What is that?” asked Pavel.

  “A man-sized faerie sent to do all brand of mischief and steal souls. So some say. Others find them to be quite charming.”

  “I’m sure there are those that would find a vampire charming.”

  McGovern got up from the table and began searching around the cupboards until he found a block of chocolate and brought that back to the table and sat. He broke off a piece.

  “How could you make yourself ignore all of Trope’s letters? Did you dislike him that much?”

  Pavel shook his head. “I don’t know. When I was with my Žophie I could forget about everything else.”

  “But Mr. Lamb was there—”

  “I told him to stop talking about it. He was my friend, so he did.”

  “You did have a family, though.” McGovern got up again. He was highly agitated and began to pace the kitchen.

  “Prochazka and Nina. My parents.”

  “Yes. The puppet maker and his beautiful wife.”

  “You say that like you knew them.”

  “Our paths crossed many years ago. First, when you were a child, and then when your father first brought you to meet Trope. You don’t remember?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Yes. They were good people. Kind people. And they loved you.”

  McGovern stopped pacing and faced Pavel.

  “Perhaps that was our biggest mistake with you. Placing you with such exceptional people. Most of us do not have that. Perhaps that makes us more accepting of our nature. Too many years of creating make believe in your world, perhaps?” McGovern resumed his pacing.

  Pavel was silent. He could not imagine a world other than the one Prochazka and Nina had created for him.

  Pavel’s eyes teared. “They didn’t live very long either.”

  “Yes, I know. I was there. Contrary to what you might try to convince yourself, they lived the normal lifetime of normal people. But they were careful.”

  “Normal people.”

  McGovern’s eyes searched Pavel’s. “Žophie was also normal and subject to the same lifespan as other people. You would have seen her die after a normal, healthy life had she not been taken so abruptly. Had you done what your friend urged you to do and remained her friend.”

  Pavel whispered, “I fell in love with her. I could not let her go. I was going to. I thought of all the best ways to break it off. I couldn’t. I loved her.”

 
McGovern shifted in his seat and appeared to change the subject. “Are you religious at all, Pavel?”

  Pavel seemed to remember this man, or someone, asking him that identical question. Who was it? It must have been a lifetime ago.

  “You know that I am not. Don’t tell me you are. I don’t remember you being so.”

  McGovern regarded Pavel with scorn. “You choose to remember little. Some of us are. Perhaps I am. A little. Now. Not always. It is hard to live as long as we do and not adopt some sort of belief in something powerful over time.”

  Pavel stood and joined McGovern in pacing the kitchen.

  “On the contrary. I have ascribed everything to the natural sciences.”

  “Very well. As you know, some of us enter the clergy as a way of keeping to themselves. I suppose after a period of playacting at that, they begin to believe. Or the customs become a kind of comfort to them.”

  “Why would you adopt a belief in something that has others believing that you are something evil and that you should be killed? How many of us believe that we are angels of death sent by God who has tired of his creation? That’s what Trope tried to tell me. We were sent here to do God’s bidding? Get rid of the whole lot of this failed experiment called humankind?

  McGovern stopped in his tracks. Pavel was in a dangerous mental state at present and had to be dealt with carefully.

  “So, you do know. You never forgot.”

  Pavel made a disgusted noise that came out of the back of his throat like a gurgling rasp that made him cough.

  “You don’t honestly believe that? Do you feel this way as well? Because if you believe as they do, then you must think that of us. Are you here as my executioner today? Is our little conversation to precede my demise? If so, then please make sure that Cheidu gets everything, and try to come up with a good story for Žophie’s family—why she died and why I was put to death.”

  McGovern shook his head. “You have seen many years in the theatre, Pavel. You are quite dramatic, I give you that. Your wife’s father will be informed, by you, distraught as you may be, that she became ill during the voyage from Prague to America and that you put her immediately in hospital upon arriving here. As far as Eduard Rychtar will ever know, his daughter never arrived at her new home. The two of you never had the opportunity to act as husband and wife. There was no opportunity that could have resulted with her being with child before she became ill. The marriage was never consummated.”