The Motion of Puppets

by Keith Donohue

  4

  Forms, there are always many forms for these situations. The desk officer helped with the Fiche descriptive outil profil by asking Theo the questions and filling in the boxes. After the preliminaries and general description of the missing person, she moved on with the rest of the form.

  “State of health? Any ongoing medical conditions?”

  “She’s fine. Fit. Nothing wrong with her. That’s an odd question.”

  “You would be surprised. Many missing persons cases, it’s the elderly. Alzheimer’s, dementia, they wander off from home and get themselves quickly disoriented, and there’s no bread crumb trail to follow. Their poor families find out, or the neighbor hears the cat crying through the night, they come to us to help find them. That’s a tough one.” The sergeant looked down at the form and translated the next question. “Does she go to any medical specialist or have regular treatments? Therapy?”

  “No,” Theo said. “How many missing persons do you have?”

  “I know of a dozen or so, outstanding, but, as I say, most are the old ones who are lost. Or runaways. Bad scene at home. Abuse. Maybe drugs. Does she take any drugs?”

  Theo shook his head. Once upon a time, she had confessed to experimenting with an old boyfriend, but that was ancient history.

  “When children are involved, we look at the parents. Sometimes they are split up, and Mom or Dad kidnaps the child from the other. Of course, she is no child, but perhaps a friend has heard from her? Can you give me a list of her contacts?”

  Taking out his phone, he scrambled through his own lists for mutual friends, knowing that hers were different—and in her phone, wherever that may be. As he wrote them down, he asked if the missing were usually found.

  “In many of the other kinds of cases, the missing aren’t missing at all, just gone for a time. Run off with a lover for the weekend. Or on a bender. Gambling. The old folks wandering away. But unless something happened to them, they turn up fairly quickly.”

  “Is that why the police won’t start looking until twenty-four hours have passed?”

  “Mr. Harper”—she laughed—“you watch too many American police shows. No, we decide how to proceed on a case-by-case basis. If it seems a medical emergency, a matter of life and death, we start right away. If a minor is involved, of course, we spring to action. A likely affaire de coeur, perhaps we wait a bit. Do you think your wife might be having an affair?”

  He hesitated with an answer, unsure as to whether or not to share his suspicion about Reance. It was only that, only a feeling and not based on any evidence. In fact, until this afternoon he had known of the man only by reputation. And Kay had been the same as always, or at least since they had come to Québec. He had no reason to doubt her. “No,” he said at last.

  “You’re sure? Do you have a list of places she frequents?”

  “Just home and the theater mostly. Some days we get a bite to eat in Old Town or go window-shopping, but no place she haunts. A jog along the boardwalk. But nothing frequent, unless of course you mean the same shop windows she stops at each time we pass by.”

  “We’ll skip ahead to the final section, then. Where she last was before her disappearance and the circumstances.”

  Theo told her the story that he had been told. The restaurant after the circus, drinks until two, Kay heading away alone from the group on her way home. Before that, she had been in the show, of course—there were hundreds of witnesses—and before that, they had been alone together in the apartment.

  “And that is the last time you saw her, Mr. Harper?”

  “The last time.”

  She did not miss a beat, perhaps because she was not looking at his face. “And we’ll need a photograph of her. Recent.”

  “I don’t have a photograph. Only what’s on my phone.”

  “You can e-mail or text it to me, Mr. Harper. That’s even better, and I can get it out to our officers to be on the lookout for her. In the meantime, you should go to the American consulate, if you please, tomorrow. We’ll share this information with the QPP, the provincial police. Of course, we’ll call you at once if we hear anything. That’s all for now, unless you have any more questions for me?”

  Standing to leave, he could not resist the fear in his heart. “But what about the other missing people? How many are never found?”

  She lifted her gaze from the form and looked him straight in the eye. “This is Canada, Mr. Harper, not the US. There are about five or six hundred homicides annually for the whole country. Of course, there are accidents and so forth, but there’s no reason to suspect foul play, no need to worry about murder.”

  He flinched at the word. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he wondered how the police station had grown so hot, so suddenly. “What do I do now?”

  “Go home. Get something to eat. Maybe ask a friend to keep you company. We’ll be in touch.”

  A friend. He had no friends in Québec. All they had was each other. He rarely left the apartment but for meals or to see her to rehearsal occasionally. Once in a while, he went to use the library at the Literary & Historical Society, and there was a nice young woman at the reference desk, but he didn’t even know her name.

  He checked his phone again, nothing new. It was just before eight, so he hurried over to the cirque and found Egon loitering by the box office and asked if he could watch with him, bide the time. They sat out of sight from the rest of the crowd. The show was drawing a full house every night since admission was free, part of a provincial scheme to draw more tourists to the Old City. The story, like the plot of an opera, was impossible for him to follow. It was about a boy confined to his bed, watching TV, listening to the radio, surrounded by computer screens and tablets and smartphones, something about the mediation of the imagination in the modern age, but really the setup was simply the scaffolding upon which to erect the electric dreams and flights of fancy, high-wire acts, tumblers and daredevil bicyclists, acrobats and contortionists. The circus played out on the scrim of his fantasies. In Kay’s place, an understudy played the part of the second flower, the bohemian dancer in the tableaux, the fifth person to tumble and somersault down the gangway during the grand finale. He kept his eyes on that girl, expecting her to magically transform into his lost wife, and when she wasn’t on stage, he watched the master of ceremonies, Reance, project a sigil on the sky to guide the boy, as he aped and mugged for the audience. The whole time, Theo wondered what the bastard had done with his wife.

  After the encore, the crowds dispersed into the night. Stray papers and forbidden cigarette butts littered the grounds, and the lights shone down on the empty sets. Always the saddest part of the performance, the aftermath dingy and sad, after the ball is over, after the dance is done. The artifice and glamor gone.

  “What did the police have to say to you?” Egon asked. He pulled a flask from his back pocket, spun off the lid, and offered Theo the first drink.

  “The usual bureaucracy,” Theo said. “What you might expect, the filling of the forms, until the very end when the sergeant brought up the possibility of murder.”

  “Murder?” Egon took a swig. “Surely they can’t think of such a thing yet. She’s only been gone the day, and there’s no body.”

  “No body,” Theo said softly. All of the people were deserting the place. The high schoolers had just finished their cleanup, the crew performed one last safety check on the flying apparatus, the steel bicycle cage, the wires and ropes and the rest of the equipment, and one by one the banks of stage lights were extinguished, and it was time to go home.

  * * *

  A new face stared at her, cocking its head sideways to better see her. Pear-shaped, the wooden head rose to a peak upon which was perched a toque in blue and white. He had jug ears, a perfectly round red nose, and two cobalt glass eyes. A seam divided the face in two and served as a rudimentary mouth. He was about her height, perhaps an inch or two taller, and much wider in the belly. Dressed in baggy pajamas in the same color
s as his cap, he wore shoes three sizes too large. A clown of some sort, a puppet who could move on his own. He poked her in the ribs. “Are you real?” he asked.

  Kay tried to answer him, but she had no mouth. She was surprised to discover that she could move her arm independently and point to the smear of paint standing in for her lips.

  “Zut alors!” said the clown. “Don’t move a muscle.” He passed in front of her and retrieved an object and then hid it behind his back, crossing around to her side. “You must trust me. This won’t hurt a bit.”

  With one hand, he quickly pinned her head to the table. In the other hand, he held a small keyhole saw, its jagged teeth sharp as a tiger’s. She wanted to scream, but she could not make a sound. Thrashing around to escape only made him tighten his grip. “I assure you, mademoiselle, this won’t take a minute.”

  The cut itself did not hurt, but merely vibrated against her wooden head, and almost instantly she felt a strong urge to breathe, as if she had been suffocating and gasping for the first swallows of air. After a few strokes, he stopped sawing and gently removed his hand and then stood to admire his handiwork. She clacked her rough lips together, opening and shutting her new mouth.

  “Voilà! Later a little sandpaper to smooth down the edges, but for now, bienvenue!”

  “Where am I?” The sound of her own voice surprised her, having been locked in her throat for so long.

  “You’re in the Back Room,” the clown said and waved his arm with a flourish, showing her the scope of the surroundings. She sat up to take a better look and immediately regretted her decision. Colors and shapes mixing and spinning before slowly settling into view. It was a surprisingly small space. In the middle was a rectangular worktable, littered with tools—hammers and saws—and a miniature lathe with what appeared to be a wooden leg pinned in place at the top of the thigh and bottom of the foot. A sack of overflowing cotton batting stood next to a glass jar half full with fine sawdust. Beaded curtains ran from the floor to ceiling to her left, covering what she remembered as the entrance to the toy shop proper. Opposite the curtain was a bare cinderblock wall broken in the corner by a wooden door to the outside, its single window covered by a sheet of brown butcher’s paper and locked on the inside by both a deadbolt and a strong chain. Along the other two walls rose industrial metal shelves upon which sat an assortment of other puppets who were lined up along the edges. Still as a statue, the clown had been holding his arm up in the air as Kay gathered her wits.

  “What is the Back Room?”

  “It’s where they make the puppets.”

  “You are a puppet?”

  “My name is Nix. At your service.” He dropped his arm and bowed deeply.

  “Am I a puppet?”

  A mischievous leer was pasted on his face as he rose. “That you are.”

  On the shelves, all the other puppets twitched and moved, burst into applause. They clapped and hooted, waving their arms and legs, jumping for joy. Their voices were strange, out of key for adults but not childlike either, some register in between. She was frightened by their enthusiasm but not by Nix’s revelation. Long ago, she had grasped her situation. She understood that somehow she had been transformed into a puppet and was relieved to hear his confirmation.

  A fat marionette, twice the size of Nix, with a barrel stomach and a giant walrus mustache launched himself from the shelf, leaving behind his wires and bars, and waddled over to her, leaping up and landing beside her. He was astonishingly spry in the way that fat men sometimes are. Offering his hand, he helped her to her feet. Nix grabbed her other hand, and they both steadied her as she wobbled on spindly legs, knees buckling once or twice. Her gaze darted back and forth between the two walls as those weird creatures came to life. Some sat in groups of two or three, feet dangling over the edges of the shelves, watching intently. Others stood leaning against the metal sides, affecting a more casual air. She counted twelve altogether, plus the two men at her sides. She wiggled her fingers, and they let go.

  “Careful,” Nix said. “The first step is a doozy.”

  She teetered like a toddler and nearly fell to her face. For the next steps, she shuffled forward before daring to lift her foot again.

  “Bravo, good show,” the walrus man said. “They call me Mr. Firkin.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Firkin. How is this all happening?”

  “We come into life of our own accord. We lucky few can move about as long as the people are not watching. Midnight to first light, we are free. Well, freedom is all relative, of course. Free within the confines of the Back Room. Free to move about, talk with one another, reconnect with old friends and meet new ones. Like you.”

  She remembered that there were people who would be wondering where she was. “And we cannot leave the Back Room?”

  “Why would anyone ever want to leave?” Nix laughed.

  “Not on our own accord,” said Mr. Firkin. “What would people think if suddenly puppets could move like ordinary folk?”

  One by one, like raindrops trailing down a windowpane, the others slid off their places on the shelves and moved toward the table. The marionettes and rod puppets marched her way. The hand puppets appeared to be gliding on the hems of their cloth bodies, silent as ghosts. Some of them leapt to the floor as Mr. Firkin had done. Others climbed the legs of the table to join the rest as they surrounded her, curious, tempted but tentative. Three of the creatures, large marionettes in nineteenth-century dresses in dark formal colors, stayed behind, whispering to one another like sisters. She counted a devil, a fairy, a hag. A black man with white hair in a white judge’s robe, and a white man with black hair in a black judge’s robe. A rod puppet dared to touch Kay’s hair and then quickly drew back her finger. A glove puppet with long ears, wide black eyes, and a sharp muzzle sniffed at her feet with his black rubber nose.

  “He looks like Pluto.” She laughed.

  “Well, he’s not,” said Nix. “He’s just an old dog who does nothing but bark and get into trouble.” On cue, the hound woofed twice and then sat back on its skirt, wagging a thin leather tail that curled at the tip.

  “These are the players,” Mr. Firkin said with a flourish. “Our company.”

  “And who are the giants? Where have they gone?”

  None of them wanted to be the first to speak, as though they were operating on a covenant of silence. Nix shrugged his shoulders, and Mr. Firkin looked away when Kay confronted him. From their place at the back of the crowd, the Three Sisters cracked. “They are the puppeteers,” they said in unison.

  “The makers and unmakers,” the wooden fairy said. “In service to the man in the glass jar.”

  “Tut-tut,” said Mr. Firkin. He put a finger to his lips to silence her. “Enough of your philosophy. The man is called the Quatre Mains, the woman is the Deux Mains. They decide when you are to stay in the Back Room and when you get to be part of a show. They choose who performs, who must wait.”

  “And what if I don’t want to wait?” Kay said. “What if I want to go home?”

  The tallest of the Three Sisters sauntered to her side and draped a thin arm over Kay’s shoulders. On her sharp angular face, she wore a melancholic expression, a look of long suffering and heartbreak over the absurdity of life. She stroked Kay’s face with a delicate finger. “You don’t go home, dahlink. Not by your own doing, in any case. You are here for duration.”

  5

  In the alley behind the Back Room, a mockingbird was singing, trying out a few bars from a dozen different melodies, looking to impress any potential females in the area. How strange, Kay thought, to wander so far north. He might be repeating those same songs for a long, long time. The bird reminded her of her husband and how long and ardently he had wooed her, how long she had resisted. For the first time since her transformation, Kay was missing him. Not in the way she used to long for him after a few days apart, but in a deeper way, a feeling she had not had before, a realization that their destinies had changed, perhaps inexorably.
The thought that he, too, might be lonesome troubled her, yet she knew that little could be done.

  The bird sang on in the last of the night. Mr. Firkin stood by the door, but guarding against trespass, though he seemed more anxious about a visitor from outside than an escapee from within. Perhaps it was all for show. After they had examined her, most of the puppets returned to their tasks. Nix practiced juggling with three small heads taken from a bin of spare parts. He must have just begun to learn this new trick, for he would often miss and clumsily drop one of the wooden balls, the head bouncing across the wooden floor, with the clown in pursuit. The Russian Sisters—they had made their introductions and proved her hunch—lounged indolently nearby on makeshift furniture, sighing when the mood struck them and holding their hands dramatically against their foreheads as though stemming a migraine or an existential woe.

  Beautifully carved, the Sisters were tall and willowy, adorned in long elegant gowns of crushed velvet in dark shades of mauve, aubergine, and navy blue, with high lace collars, and on their feet they wore button boots. Their long hair was pinned and coiffed in a modest style that threatened to unwind, and their beautiful faces were adorned with matching aquiline noses. Irina toyed with a strand of pearls at her neck, and Masha twirled a parasol to a rhythm only she could hear. They adored being watched, and after a time under scrutiny, Olya motioned to Kay with a languid wave of her hand to come join them.