The Motion of Puppets(34)
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 Eadweard 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. No? 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.