The Motion of Puppets

by Keith Donohue

  Had it not been for the Worm, they might have carried off the plot. The moment Mr. Firkin called for time, Noë let out a banshee cry and raced for the exit, her wooden feet clattering against the floor. The Devil chased her, wailing and gnashing his jaws. Nix dropped his juggling, sending the balls bouncing wildly, and stepped in her path, and the rest of the puppets moved forward in the rush, the Dog barking at the sport, the Queen aflutter, even old Firkin gasping to intercept her mad dash for freedom. Seeing her chance, Kay slipped away to the back door, the matchbook clutched in her hands, looking for a blank space to slide it through, when the Worm threw its body across the bottom draft, its crazed eyes spinning, and hissed at her to stop.

  8

  The trial had to go forward without the Judges. In their absence, the Queen presided from her oatmeal box, and Mr. Firkin agreed to play the prosecutor, with the Devil on defense. The puppets spent most of the night constructing a courtroom out of wooden boxes, old tools, and spare parts. Ordinarily they would have preferred a few rehearsals, but given the gravity of the charges, they decided there was no time and ultimately improvised as they went. The Worm acted as bailiff and led the prisoners past the jury of the Three Sisters, the Good Fairy, and Nix. To have included the Dog in passing judgment would have made a farce of justice, so he was left to wander, sniffing at the two women in the dock.

  Kay was penitent, head bowed, hands folded as if in prayer. Next to her, Noë stared straight ahead, her straw hair sticking out like a dandelion puff, a hint of anger shining in her button eyes. The Queen brought down her gavel and Mr. Firkin rose for the prosecution, a scrap of lamb’s wool serving as a wig.

  “Mum.” He bowed first to the Queen and then to the jury box. “Ladies and gentleman, the province intends to show, beyond the doubt of a shadow, that the defendants on the night before tonight, that is to say last night, did willfully and knowingly conspire, plot, scheme, and connive to make good their escape from this place. Using a forbidden pencil and paper—Exhibits A and B, my friends—they did write a note and then tried to slip said note under the door.” He turned on his heels to face the accused and pointed his finger at their faces. “This is well known to be in direct violation of the rules, what you are allowed to do. Furthermore it is, on a personal level, disappointing. And upsetting. Especially from those of you who have been here a long time and should know better.” He dabbed his eyes with the tail of his shirt.

  “Thank you, counselor,” the Queen said. “Does the defense wish to make opening remarks?”

  The Devil stood on cloven feet and paced in front of the jury box. He was trying to make eye contact with the jurors, but they would have none of it, averting their gazes at the last possible moment. “Who among us is not guilty of having a dream? My friend the prosecutor would like you to think that a crime has been committed. He’ll show you a pencil stub, a matchbook, a note. Mere props in this sordid drama. And he’ll say that my clients were attempting to contact people outside the Back Room in some wild cock-and-bull fairytale notion that said matchbook, said note would convince a human bean—”

  The Good Fairy burst out laughing and had to cover her mouth. The chuckle infected the whole courtroom. Two swift bangs from the Queen’s gavel silenced her.

  Raising a black eyebrow, the Devil continued. “As I was saying, as though this pitiful scrap of paper, this so-called Exhibit B, would a) be found by a real person and b) mean what it was supposed to mean. To wit, that there was a puppet inside the toy shop asking to be saved. Imagine such a thing, ladies and gentleman of the jury, and you will have an imagination that outstrips my own. The absurdity of such an SOS, why, it beggars credulity. As if a body would happen to pass by, discover said note among the debris of the alleyway, and break down the door. No, my clients were not attempting their escape. They, my friends, were only pulling your collective leg.”

  The Three Sisters put their foreheads together in a private consultation, with Olya keeping watch at the Devil’s retreat. From the bench, the Queen motioned for Mr. Firkin to begin.

  “Call Nix the clown,” he said.

  “Objection!” the Devil roared. “Nix is a member of the jury, Your Honor, and you cannot expect him to be a witness for the prosecution as well.”

  After a second’s thought, the Queen ruled. “As we are so few in number, I will allow it. But, Mr. Nix, your own testimony must not prejudice your deliberations. Bailiff, if you please.”

  Carrying a miniature book in its mouth, the Worm sidled up to Nix, who placed his hand on it and swore to tell the truth. Mr. Firkin hitched his thumbs into a pair of suspenders he had fashioned for the occasion. “Now, then, if you will kindly tell the jury—including yourself—where you were on the night in question.”

  “Last night? Here, same as always, m’lord.”

  Firkin paced before the witness box, contemplating the phrasing of his next line of attack. “Tell us in your own words what you saw those two hoodlums getting themselves up to on the night in question.”

  “They were conferring in the corner, Mr. Firkin. I could not hear what they were saying, but I had my eye out. Not literally, of course. And that one—”

  “Let the record show,” Mr. Firkin intoned, “that Nix the clown is pointing to the codefendant, Miss Harper.”

  The Queen gaveled on the makeshift desk. “There is no record, Mr. Firkin, just so you know. We have no stenographer. We have no paper on which to write, and our pencil is currently Exhibit A, so I see no need for a record.”

  Hiding her voice behind her hand, Noë whispered in Kay’s ear, “Do you see a pouch on the Queen? For this is fast becoming a kangaroo court.”

  “I heard that,” snapped the Queen. “May I remind the defendant that my feelings are very easily hurt?”

  Nix jumped in to fill the awkward silence brought about by the embarrassing remark. “I saw Kay Harper fetch the matchbook, Your Grace, and next thing, Mr. Firkin here is saying it’s time for us to go to bed. Quick as a wink, Noë makes a break for the curtain. Chaos ensues, I don’t mind telling you, but you were there. You saw it. Everyone here is a witness. I had to stop her from trying to run through between the strands of beads. She would have been injured. Or worse. She may have awakened the Original.”

  The Three Sisters crossed themselves. “Without a cat in the room,” Olya said, “the mice feel free.”

  Mr. Firkin scowled at her to keep quiet and then clapped Nix on the shoulder to show how well he had done. “Your witness, Devil.”

  “I have no questions for this clown. The province concedes the point that he stopped her in what he believed to be an attempted escape. His bravery is not germane to our case.” He winked and gestured for Nix to step down.

  On his way back to the jury box, Nix waved to the defendants and honked a toy bicycle horn concealed in his trousers pocket. When the laughter died down, Mr. Firkin announced in a loud voice, “The prosecution calls the Devil.”

  “Your Honor, please, this is preposterous. I cannot be expected to testify against my own clients.”

  “Overruled,” she said and beckoned him to sit. There was no show of swearing him in.

  “May I remind you,” Mr. Firkin said, “that as an officer of the court, you are bound to tell the truth, even if that is against your nature. Did you not last night pursue Noë as she tried to escape through the curtains?”

  The Devil nodded. A fat white spider slipped from one of his horns and hung from a silken thread.

  Picking up the matchbook, Mr. Firkin said, “Please the court, Your Majesty, Your Honor, I place into evidence Exhibit B, and now ask the witness if he did not retrieve said matchbook from one Worm. And then, Old Devil, did you not read the note for yourself and give it to me as guardian of the entrance to the Back Room?”

  “Firkin, Firkin. You know that I did.”

  Having no rebuttal questions for himself, the Devil was dismissed.

  With his thumbs again hooked around his suspenders, Mr. Firkin took a dramatic pause. “Ca
ll the two defendants to the stand.”

  “I really must object, Your Honor. My clients are not required to incriminate themselves, and it is most unusual to put two into one box.”

  “Mr. Devil,” said the Queen, “we are not amused. The hour of our long sleep is at hand, and much remains to be done. We must finish the trial, decide the punishment, and then make ready.”

  “String them up.” Someone in the room was throwing his voice.

  The gavel crashed down. “Order, order. If that voice was not a marionette’s, well, that is just in extremely poor taste. There will be no stringing, there will be no up. Now, Kay and Noë, please step forward and be quick about it.”

  The two puppets held hands and walked gingerly to the witness box. The Worm slithered in to give the oath, but one joint sneer scared him away. Mr. Firkin marched forward like a Dutch uncle and handed the matchbook to Noë. “Did you write this note? Would you please read it out so everyone can hear?”

  Noë nodded. “I don’t see why I’ve got to say the words. Everyone already knows what I wrote: ‘Help! Get me out of here.’”

  “And you, young lady.” He trained a stern eye on Kay. “What were you thinking by trying to slip it under the door?”

  Kay sighed and did not know what to say.

  He left her quaking in her chair and returned to his own, a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were contemplating the eternal verities, or perhaps he was merely daydreaming or thinking of nothing at all.

  The Devil rose to cross-examine the witnesses. In the hollow of his left clavicle, the spider had found space to knit a web. The Devil snatched the matchbook from Noë’s fingers and read the message again to himself. “Surely, you were only joking. You were having your way with us.”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “And you, Kay Harper, you were in on the gag?”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “Heh-heh. Help with her little practical joke?”

  “No. Help her go home.”

  With one voice, the Sisters in the jury box gasped. The Good Fairy snapped a twig. Nix gave his horn a desultory toot. The Dog, who had been resting under the witness chair, began to whine. Kay searched the room for a sympathetic friend, but they had all turned their faces from her. The Devil was behind her, leaning against the back of her chair, his long fingernails clacking against the balsa wood.

  “You cannot go home,” he said. “You cannot ever leave the Back Room. The Quatre Mains might come for you, but even then, he may bring you back, just as he has done with each one of us at one time or another.”

  “But she wrote a note.” Kay looked at Noë, who was sobbing quietly, her face buried in her hands. “She said that someone could come and save her. Rescue us.”

  “A thin hope,” the Devil said, “to base your dreams upon. Yes, if someone knows you are here. And, yes, if they come for you after midnight when we can move about. And, yes, if they know it is you—who you used to be—and not how you are now: a mere puppet. And, yes, if in escaping, they trust you will follow and not look back.”

  “Oh, dahlink,” Olya cried out. “If they get past the puppet in the Front Room. If they love you, if they know where to find you. If, if, if. Too many ifs.”

  “Better,” the Devil said, “to put away such dreams.”

  “I am sorry that I ever had them.” She thought of her husband and wondered if he had forgotten her by now. The Back Room was as quiet as she had ever heard.

  At last the Queen cleared her throat and broke the silence. “Since you have confessed and apologized for what you have done, and I know that in your hearts you promise never to try to run away again, this court finds that you have been punished enough.”

  And with that, the trial was over, the verdict rendered, yet they all sat still and in place, like dolls in the window, until the time came to put away their playthings.

  * * *

  The beauty was in the conception of the problem, and the elegance was in the solution. It all started with a horse. Muybridge had been commissioned to photograph the horse in motion, ostensibly to determine just how it moved, whether or not all four feet left the ground at once. Hard as it is for the modern mind to conceive, in centuries past, no one really knew. The eye was not quick enough. Artists guessed. Scientists speculated. Until Muybridge figured out a scheme to use a series of wired cameras tripped by the animal as it galloped. The mare’s name was Sallie Gardner, and the twenty-four pictures were made on June 15, 1878. Theo sat at the kitchen table surrounded by his abandoned work, the translation of the life of Muybridge. He studied the famous images, in which he could clearly see that as the horse moved forward all four feet left the ground at the apex of its stride. The legs folded together under its belly, the horse appeared to be flying in midair. Flipping on his smartphone, Theo watched a short video that ran the photos in sequence. At regular speed, it lasts for three seconds, but the anonymous poster had looped and slowed the images, capturing the motion of the filly’s fluid stride. He could not stop watching Sallie Gardner and her jockey, hitting replay again and again. Eventually the light behind the tiny image began to bother his eyes, and he wiped clear the screen and set down the phone.

  The pages had fallen out of order, the translation broken from where he had left off his work. In fact, the whole apartment was a shambles, the bed a wreck of sheets and blankets, Kay’s pillow hugged to death, the sink awash with dishes, dirty towels and stacks of laundry in the bathroom. He had let the place go. Kay would be horrified by the clutter when she walked through the front door, though he had given up listening for her key in the lock. All the usual reminders of their daily routines were falling away. He had stopped believing she was just in the other room.

  Kay used to jump slightly when he entered or at the knock on the door or the ring of the phone, just a reflex, no more than her muscles flexing, but he had always noticed how easily she startled in such moments. Yet for all her expressive energy, she was most compelling in the stillness of their time together. She had a way of curling herself into the smallest possible space when alone, reading a book or watching TV, and it often surprised him to find her wedged into the corner of a sofa or hiding behind the wings of an armchair. He would watch her surreptitiously and study the emptiness in her expression or the concentration behind her eyes. More than the sound of her voice, the music of her laughter, her body next to his in bed or walking hand in hand on a warm summer night, more than action, he missed the stillness of her and felt that slipping away. He could be alone with her, but it was difficult learning to be alone without her.

  In the midst of all his desperate searching for her, he had to fight the thought that Kay might never be found. He had to push away the fear that she was gone forever, that he would never see her again. On the surface, he allowed the possibility, and in long conversations with Egon or the police, they had broached the subject now and again, and he thought how kind they were, trying to prepare him for the eventuality, or should we say possibility, probability, likelihood, chance. But underneath all their palaver, he refused to accept any other reality than that she would return, alive, whole, the same as she had been. She would have been shocked to see how he had let himself go.

  He stabbed at the disorder, piling his books and papers into neat stacks. Washing the dishes, gathering the sheets, linens, and piles of clothes for a drop-off at the laundry. He cleaned out the fridge, discarded every open carton, and he made a hash from what remained edible. For the first time in weeks, he sat down to a normal homemade meal alone in the apartment.

  Between bites, he took out his phone and leaned it against his glass and searched for more Muybridge. In his fascination with animals in motion, Muybridge had made scores of other studies—a running bison, a charging lion, an ostrich, an elephant, a parrot in flight. And then he photographed people, how they moved in the simplest of tasks. All very clinical, the bodies in question either barely draped or without any clothes. Theo was entranced by the sequence of a
nude woman descending a short staircase over and over, and he suddenly remembered what happened the night Kay disappeared. The light in the toy shop. He had been eating at Brigands bistro on rue Saint-Paul, just down the street from her favorite store, when the lights went on in the abandoned building.

  In all of his interviews with the police, when Thompson and Foucault had asked him to re-create the events of that night, he had neglected to mention the incident, perhaps because in comparison to Kay’s disappearance, it seemed inconsequential in his confused mind, but now he remembered clearly his surprise that evening. He had told them all the rest, leaving the apartment and walking to the restaurant, what he ate, how long he stayed, at what time he arrived back home, and the long wait to hear from her, the message in the middle of the night. Perhaps the lights in the toy shop meant nothing at all. The juggler in the bowler hat had reminded him of the puppets, and a string of synapses fired in his tired brain, but despite the late hour, he needed to go check that shop, if only to fill in the puzzle.

  “Wait just a minute,” she had said, tugging on his crooked arm. “Stop, let me see.” Kay acted like a child when they passed the Quatre Mains. She could not resist staring at the dolls and puppets on display, sometimes putting her hands on the glass to peer inside and stare at the wonders. And nearly every time, Theo indulged her whim, for in those moments, the little girl emerged, the one he had never known, the essential child inside, like the core of a matryoshka, the Russian nesting doll. Some bright spirit responsible for the grown woman he loved.

  The chilly night air foretold the end of summer and the autumn soon to come. He stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and ambled along the sidewalk, vaguely excited about remembering the missing detail. A few stragglers lingered at the outdoor café tables, and a fiddler’s reel from an Irish pub spilled out onto the cobblestoned street. At the corner nearest Quatre Mains, a ghost appeared, and at first, he mistook her for the drowned woman and shook with a spasm of fear, but it was a scullery maid in white cap and apron, her face ashen and nicked by makeup scars, with an iron necklace and a length of chain ringed around her neck. She nearly ran him over, and then looked as though she recognized him for a brief moment. “Pardonnez,” she said, smiling. Both hands were clenched to hold a hurricane lantern which glowed with the flicker of faux whale oil that gave a deathly pallor to her makeup. He laughed, realizing she was one of the actors from les Visites Fantômes de Québec, the nightly summer ghost tour through the Old City streets. Looking back once, the phantom sped away to join her hidden comrades.