The Motion of Puppets

by Keith Donohue

  11

  Muybridge wept like a child after the verdict was read. Collapsed in his chair, he sobbed so effusively that the prosecutor and several men of the jury fled the courtroom to avoid the spectacle. Not guilty.

  Just five months after the trial, his wife, Flora, died suddenly of the ’flu or fever. Their son—if indeed the infant was Muybridge’s and not her lover’s, as she had boasted—was sent to an orphanage, and though he paid for the child’s care, Muybridge had little to do with him for the rest of the boy’s life. Word of Flora’s death reached him in Panama, where he was traveling under the name Eduardo Santiago Muybridge. He had departed almost immediately after the trial, on a commissioned expedition to photograph the people and the scenery of the Central America Pacific coast. Big painting-like landscapes, with clouds added to the skies in the darkroom. First in Panama and then steaming north, stopping in Costa Rica, Honduras, and El Salvador before his final stop in Guatemala. He spent nine months on the trip, forgetting her, and on his return to San Francisco, he made a gift of a portfolio of his best images to Mrs. Stanford, seeking her patronage. She, in turn, recommended the photographer to her husband, Leland, who was looking to find a way to stop time. Together they hatched the experiment that led to the “moving images” of the famous Sallie Gardner at a Gallop, the horse in motion.

  Theo set down his pen and wondered about that year away. Did Muybridge grieve for his dead wife on the wide blue Pacific? Or did he throw himself headlong into the work, setting up the huge negative plates, the portable processing tent? He liked to imagine old Muybridge among the natives, the strange Englishman with the wild white beard, so thoroughly eccentric to the men and women of the coffee plantations, the half-naked children clambering over the ruined Spanish colonial churches abandoned to the relentless fecund vines. And though the plates were in black-and-white, Theo could feel the greenness of the landscape, hear the birdcall, see the lizards and insects wither beneath the heat bearing down.

  Through his office window, he could see the approach of autumn in the reds and golds of the trees lining the rolling lawns on campus. It would be getting cold soon. How Kay hated these first frosty nights, the time it took for her body to acclimate to the new season. Perhaps I should take a leave of absence, he thought, and go somewhere tropical for the winter. He could picture himself with Muybridge in the jungle, and then returning home next April and there she would be, waiting for him, wondering why his skin was so dark, his hair so light. Wondering where he had been all this time.

  And where are you now, Kay? What fills your day? Who do you talk with now that we are apart? He held a running conversation with her, as though she were across the room instead of inside his head, and he knew that what she said in these imaginary dialogues was just the sound of his own voice talking to himself, but it was the best he could do, it was all he had. A kinder, more sympathetic version of the woman he loved.

  “Why did you leave me?” he asked.

  “But I haven’t left you. It wasn’t a matter of choice.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Just beyond reach.”

  Just beyond actually being there, an illusion shattered by harsh reality a hundred times each day, like a forest of memories chopped down to stumps.

  The knock at the door was so soft that he could not be sure if anyone was behind it. The hinges creaked slowly, and from the edge Dr. Mitchell’s face appeared, already contrite for the interruption. Theo waved him in.

  “Dr. Harper? Theo? I thought you might be here today. I’m not disturbing your meditations?”

  “Have a seat.” Theo smiled. “To what do I owe this rare pleasure?”

  Taking a chair across from him, Mitchell considered his opening gambit. He ran his fingers through his hair and drummed his fingers on the desk. Theo studied him, suddenly aware of how little he knew of the man’s private life after working together these past five years, whether Mitchell was married or single, straight or gay, as some had speculated. Despite their long acquaintance, they had spent no more than a few moments alone together. Aside from the faculty meetings when he spoke only to defend the classics, Mitchell kept to his office and classes. He was an enigma, a scholar so deeply serious that he seemed to exist in a world apart. Behind his glasses, his eyes shone clear and strikingly blue. As usual, he paused before speaking, gathering his thoughts from the confluence of memories and languages, faces and stories milling about his brain.

  “I’ve come to talk with you about your wife.”

  Shifting in his chair, Theo willed the man to go away, but Mitchell stared at him like an owl. “I can understand your reluctance.” Mitchell smiled and continued. “And I certainly respect your privacy and don’t mean to pry, but you’ve no doubt heard? Or then again, maybe you haven’t. Fact is, there’s been some gossip, I’m afraid, and while I don’t believe a word of it, I must speak with you like this. How does Virgil have it? ‘The monster Rumor flourishes by speed, and gains strength as she goes.’ Best to snuff it out quickly, before Rumor gains wings.”

  “What is it you want to know exactly?”

  Mitchell cleared his throat and searched for a suitable way to broach the subject, but, finding none, he simply began. “There’s a vicious story going about that you and your wife had … been floundering on a rough patch of ice.”

  Theo smiled at the delicacy of his metaphor. “Nothing of the kind. We were having an extended honeymoon of sorts, at work but happy as could be.”

  “Students get all caught up in what they are reading and impute the lives of fictional characters to real people.”

  “Well, we are reading Bovary,” Theo joked.

  The allusion escaped Mitchell, who read little that had been written after the birth of Christ. “You said she simply vanished one night. The police have no clues, no theory of the case?”

  “I thought—” Theo began, but cut himself off and considered where the story might lead. “The night she disappeared, she was out with a group of performers from the show. There was a man, an older man, who was seen attempting to follow her home after the party.”

  “A snake in the grass.”

  “Of course, I confronted him, but he denied everything. Said she took off in the wrong direction and he never saw her again. The police questioned him as well, but there wasn’t any evidence. No … body. Not a trace.”

  “I am sorry for your troubles, Theo. Gossip can be difficult to strangle. Perhaps you remember when you first joined the faculty, all the stories about that student, that boy who made such astonishing accusations. A more benighted time, it’s true, but still I understand how quickly rumors spread and what a strain you are under.”

  Grateful for an ally, Theo confessed. “I feel bombarded by suspicious looks, whispers behind my back. All the more hurtful, given the truth. I miss her horribly.”

  Slipping a finger behind his eyeglass lens, Mitchell wiped a tear. “I’ll spread the word, if you like, to have the professors and the staff put a stop to this mindless speculation among the students. They can be reasoned with.”

  “I’m grateful. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your looking out for me.”

  Mitchell nodded but appeared to be reluctant to take his leave.

  Theo stole a glance at the framed wedding picture next to his computer, vaguely concerned that he might betray Kay by speaking directly of her. “Excuse me for not knowing, but are you married, Dr. Mitchell?”

  “Heavens, no, never,” he said. “But I have been in love, and I can only imagine what hell you’ve been going through.”

  They regarded each other for a moment before Mitchell hoisted himself by the arms of the chair, and clutching the back of the rail, he hesitated. “But your work is proving adequate distraction? I understand you are commissioned to make a translation.”

  Theo stood to be on an equal plane with his colleague. He thought of his morning’s jaunt to Central America and the difficulties of translation. “Do you know the photographer Eadwear
d Muybridge?”

  The name did not immediately register, and Mitchell shook his head. With some excitement, Theo rummaged through the books stacked at the elbow of his desk, procuring at last his treasured copy of Animals in Motion, the dust jacket tattered at the edges. He gave it to Mitchell with the delicacy of handing over a roll of papyrus. With a childlike curiosity, Mitchell leafed through the book, raising an eyebrow at the pacing lion and the kicking mule.

  “I see your man Muybridge is an Aristotelian. Come with me.”

  They walked down the quiet corridor of the old stables that had been converted to offices and small classrooms. As he passed each open door, Theo could not resist the urge to peek inside, catching a few teachers busy at their lectures, Frau Morgenschweis’s famous seminar on Faust, and in the empty spaces the blaze of October leaves framed by windows. Mitchell’s office was crammed with books and papers, cheap posters on the walls, and reproduction busts of the great minds of antiquity staring down from the shelves like gods. Despite the clutter, Mitchell knew precisely where to find the book he had in mind.

  “De Motu Animalium,” he said. “Among his many interests, Aristotle was a zoologist of sorts. On the Motion of Animals. Feel free to borrow it. A bit peculiar in spots. Science has not been kind to some of his ideas, but he is to be praised for the vigor of his speculation. Your Muybridge animals illustrate one of Aristotle’s points. He says that the motion of animals can be compared to automata, puppets, wound up and released. Your pictures catch them in midair, at a precise instant. What is a photograph other than the quest to stop time? To hold that one moment before the eye and plant it in memory? So that we do not forget.”

  * * *

  For a moment, Kay could fly. Lifted from the ground, like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz, the carton of puppets spun in the air, rocking them in their cardboard tombs. Noë cried out softly, and Nix chuckled. As suddenly as it had launched, the box descended, landing with a soft thud. The pent-up air let out a gasp when a knife punctured the packing tape seal, and when the flaps popped open, the temperature inside dropped a few degrees in an instant and took Kay’s breath.

  “We’ll need the Sisters,” one of the giants said. “And the new girl beneath them.”

  Olya, Masha, and Irina were freed. The ceiling no longer sagged under their weight, and soon the cardboard fell away, and Kay felt the sun warm her and saw the light of day bright in her unblinking eyes. Every instinct screamed to close her eyes lest she be blinded, but she could not and soon found that she could stare into the blue without fear. A pair of hands lifted her from the box and laid her in a patch of grass next to Irina as the giants unloaded other gear from the back of the van.

  The world was a beautiful place. Soft as a bed, the ground yielded to her feathery weight. A breeze caressed her in intermittent waves. Birds sang in nearby trees, the leaves rustling, the branches gently creaking. A stray memory toyed with such sensations, a man warm and pleasant lying next to her in the tall grass declaring in the shapes of the clouds they watched a camel, a duck, a white rose. At the edge of her thoughts, she detected the giants moving, carrying boxes from the lawn into the back of a small building. Faraway music floated by, the song of a carousel, and children’s laughter in the wind. How she had missed the sound of children, their unabashed joy in the face of newness and wonder. A shadow appeared and blotted out the sun.

  Squatting on his haunches, the Quatre Mains reached for her and Irina, taking one in each hand. His grip was firm but gentle, and Kay nestled in his hand as he walked across the lawn, swinging in the rhythm of his gait. He pushed with his hip and opened a door into the dark. When her eyes had adjusted, she could see they were traveling along a narrow hallway, past faded posters on the walls, dodging bits of scenery, foam rocks, a stack of leaning stage flats, a fake chandelier, tattered sofas, rickety chairs, obstacles in a warren of corridors.

  A rack of costumes—gowns and robes and a pair of angel wings—rolled toward them, and Quatre Mains stopped to let it pass. At the back end was another giant, a red-haired man in a dingy black sweater, and he paused to say hello. Kay had not seen anyone other than the two puppeteers in ages, and the fact of the man amazed her. The two giants talked to each other in French, so she could not understand half of what he said; but he was real, not a myth at all, and she wanted to join the conversation, be heard, or attract his attention in some way. Wave her arms and legs, shout, just to see if he recognized her for who she really was—a woman trapped inside a puppet’s body. But the red-haired man took scant notice of her or Irina. He simply nodded when the Quatre Mains lifted each puppet to give him a closer look.

  “Just the week?” the man switched to English.

  “Eight shows through Sunday,” the Quatre Mains said.

  “Well … bienvenue à Montreal. Much success to you.”

  Backstage a makeshift rehearsal space had been arranged. A single mahogany banquet table dominated the room, and lying there were some of her old familiars along with a few puppets she did not recognize. With casual disregard for their comfort, the Quatre Mains dumped Kay and Irina on the table and hurried away, muttering about how much remained to be done. Kay had landed awkwardly, her left elbow resting on the sharp shin of a marionette she could not see. Though she was hyperaware of her circumstances, she could not move, and dared not say a word, for the giants might reappear with more of their colleagues and other materials fetched from the van.

  Late in the afternoon, the Deux Mains arrived and rearranged the puppets in two straight lines. Working quickly, she picked up a puppet and did something to it that Kay could not see, but she could hear the clip of scissors and the pull of thread through cloth. One by one, she worked on the others, adding a touch of paint to a worn face, a scrap of cloth transformed into a new dress. Midway through the repairs, the Quatre Mains joined her. They worked in silence for the most part, concentrating on their tasks, but occasionally, they shared a few thoughts.

  “This one,” said the Deux Mains, holding up Olya. “She’ll need three changes of costume.”

  “Let’s start her as Jo in Little Women,” the Quatre Mains answered. “You think she would be the best Jo? Even though she usually plays the oldest, yes, I can see her as the lead. And the other two can be Amy and Meg. And, of course, the new one will play the narrator.”

  “Can she double up as one of the Little Women as well?”

  “She can be Beth.” He laughed. “Perfect, our late, lamented mistress of ceremonies.”

  The Deux Mains held up Kay for inspection. In the corner of the puppeteer’s mouth hung a needle, a loop of red thread dangling like a strand of blood. She took a long look at Kay, allowing her a long look in return. Kay had not yet had such an opportunity to get a thorough sense of the woman, and she drank her in like an infant studying its mother’s face. And as she watched her, she saw her jade eyes darting, searching for imperfections. Steadying her fingers against Kay’s wooden face, the Deux Mains dipped a paintbrush and wicked in the puppet’s eyebrows, laid a fine edge, and quickly stroked in long eyelashes. As she worked, she pursed her lips and the curled tip of her tongued darted. Caught in the flow of her craft, the Deux Mains worked with a satisfied smile, laying Kay on the table. She brushed the lint from her blue gingham frock and then reached into a box and found two sets of dowel rods and fixed them at the wrists and ankles. In one swift motion, the Deux Mains had the puppet on her feet and walked her a few paces forward and tested how fluidly her arms could be raised and lowered.

  “You’ll do, little one. You’ll do just fine.” She held her up to show the Quatre Mains. “Is she ready for her debut?”

  “This mouth isn’t right. What sort of hack butchered her so crudely?” He laid her facedown on the table and sifted through a toolbox for a hammer and a chisel. The first blow skited into the wood at the back of her skull, and then he yanked out the blade and repositioned it for another strike. Kay felt no pain but was in shock over the sudden rough treatment as he chipped away
at her mouth. With trial and error, he rasped out an opening and found a lever to fit into place, and then he sawed away her lower jaw and planed and sanded the edges for a good fit. He screwed the whole apparatus into place and fiddled with the lever. Her wooden jaws clacked together and opened wide, just as she had been able to do as a person. The Quatre Mains bent round to see her face as he spoke and made her mouth the words “I am nobody’s puppet.” With a satisfied grin, he set her down with the others.

  As they were tinkering with the last of the puppets, a cell phone blurted out a melody, startling in its novelty after all this time. The Quatre Mains answered, and when he was through with the call, he rejoined the Deux Mains at the worktable. “That was Finch. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes and are bringing the new man. Name of Delacroix. Finch and Stern have given him his parts. Not too many lines. Mostly the slapstick. If he can get down the blocking, we should be okay for the show.”

  They arrived in peals of laughter, announcing their presence in the theater long before they reached the rehearsal space. Delacroix was a pencil-thin Frenchman, mouth at rest in a sneer, fingers stained by Gitanes, but deeply attentive to the rapid instructions fired at him in both languages. Stern came from the other pole, a refuge from a commune, a bushy white beard covering his chin and reaching down to the collar of his red plaid shirt. But the biggest surprise was Finch. She was a giant among giants, a head taller than the Quatre Mains. She had a pleasant long face, big mitts for hands, long legs and feet, broad hips, and a bust like the prow of a ship. How would she ever fit in the tiny space below the puppet stage? How would she ever get those fingers into the opening of a glove puppet? Like many large people, she moved with a panther’s grace, the delicacy of her care a well-earned compensation for her size. The three new puppeteers handled the cast of characters, hefting each puppet to judge its weight and the intricacies of the mechanisms. They tried out Kay’s newly hinged jaws, walked her a few steps forward and back.