The Motion of Puppets(42)

Theo noticed her, this young woman whose story he invented, time and again in Muybridge’s Human Figure in Motion. Sometimes she appeared shy, hand across her eyes, her posture betraying her embarrassment. In other sequences, she could not be more natural. Seated on the floor, a white shift draped across her lap, she awaits the approach of a young girl of four or five who presents her with a small bouquet, and in the final frames, she rises to accept the flowers and kiss the child on her cheek. He and Kay had talked about children in their whirlwind courtship, but it had been no more than a passing dream, a promise for the future that now felt shattered. He stared at the woman embracing the child, the look on the model’s face genuine and unabashed. It seemed to him a tenderness in a dozen images, a moment of unintended beauty in Muybridge’s obsession.

“Your door was open.” The voice behind his back startled him, and he swiveled in his chair to find Dr. Mitchell, pensive and curious. “You have a visitor. Should I show him in?”

“Harper!”

Theo recognized the voice at once and was surprised to see Egon in the threshold. “I can’t believe it. What brings you here?”

“You are a hard man to find. I looked for your address through all the phone books of New York.”

“You had my number. You could have called,” Theo said.

“No cell phone for me,” Egon said. “Gives you cancer of the brain. Besides, this is too important. I remembered all our talks in the evenings this summer and, of course, you are a college man, a professor, and then it becomes a matter of deduction to find you. I had to see you, so I scraped up the cash. It’s about Kay.”

“Is there some news?”

Egon waved away the question and launched breathlessly into his story. “Remember telling me how your wife loved the puppet shop? After the circus closed, I had no place to stay. You and I had seen that the Quatre Mains was vacant, so I made a little home for myself in an empty room upstairs.”

“You just snuck in there?” Mitchell said. “Like a squatter?”

Laying a finger against his nose, Egon nodded. “Not so bad. Downstairs was the remnants of the toy shop, but upstairs there’s an old bed, a kitchen, a kettle, running water. And I said, Egon, you are so lucky. Whoever was there skipped out in a hurry. Left half their shit behind. This will be easy as a wink. So, I settle in, keep quiet, have a place to call home. Better than the streets, eh?”

“Wouldn’t you worry about being found out?” Mitchell asked.

“As long as nobody sees me go in and out, and I keep the lights out in the storefront, I am invisible.”

Theo cleared his throat. “I wish you had let me know, I could have helped.”

With a small bow of thanks, Egon continued, “Anyhow, one night the wind rattles at the windows like to blow the house down, and it sounds like there is something alive after midnight in the toy shop. I crept down the stairs. Holy cows, there was a storm inside like a tornado blowing across the floor in tight circles sending all the dust and papers and old bits and pieces of broken toys flying. I was tempted to run out, but the wind stopped after a bit, and everything went quiet.”

“You were drunk,” Theo said.

“Maybe I had one drink too many? Maybe I see the truth. I lay in bed, not able to shake the feeling that some sort of enchantment was at play. A spell, a haunting. I don’t know how to say it, but that the room was looking for something alive.”

“The room itself?” Mitchell said. “I’ve often felt that same sensation. The house with a soul.”

“So, next morning, I wake up early as usual, because I like to be about before anyone else, and I creep downstairs to the back room, and there are all these neat little heaps of debris arranged on the floor like a miniature landscape. Like that wind blew in and arranged them just so. I poke around in some of these mountains and there are doll parts, a wooden finger, a curl of hair, and cotton stuffing and sawdust and such. And that’s when I find this.” He reached into the inside pocket of his vest and produced an ordinary matchbook, holding it up like a talisman. “Tell me what you think after you have read it.”

Theo examined the matchbook. On the printed side was a silhouette of an exotic dancer at a Montreal club called Les Déesses. He turned it over and read the inscription on the blank side: “HELP. Get me out of here.” The letters penciled in a faint, unsettled hand, as though the message had been written in a hurry. He handed it to Mitchell, who seemed equally puzzled.

“Don’t you see?” Egon asked. “The message was from someone inside the toy shop, trying to get out.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Theo took the matchbook from Mitchell and examined the note more carefully.

Egon looked him in the eye. “Some might say this message is a mere coincidence. I say the place is haunted. Or something terrible happened here. And I cannot help but feel that I was led there by the memory of a puppet in the window. The puppet you said your wife adored. I am not a superstitious man, did you ever think so? But I can’t help but feel that I was led there to find the note. I hope I have not upset you, Harper, with all this speculation, but it was a powerful feeling. Down to my bones.”

Like a magician, Theo twirled the matchbook between his fingers.





14

The van stopped and started, rolled forward a car length, and idled again in park. While they were in line, the giants switched off the air conditioning and cracked open the windows, but it was hotter than hell in back. Kay squirmed in the straw. They had been playing the theatrical vagabonds, setting up their shows and staying for a day or two at provincial hamlets, performing cleaned-up variety skits in high school auditoriums and Grange halls for clutches of country people desperate for entertainment, or afternoons with restless children, the worst of all, a crowd of tots expecting Sesame Street and getting an old slapstick Punch and Judy instead. Now they were waiting in the heat and the dark to get to the next place. Soon after the engine had been stopped, the giants began talking English with another person. Muffled by the boxes, their voices were indistinct, but Kay could tell by the rise and fall that a strange man was asking a series of questions to which the giants replied softly and politely. The doors opened and the people moved toward the back. All at once, the cargo space was flooded with light.