The Motion of Puppets(68)
“We thought you were unmade,” said Kay. “We thought you were dead.”
“What happened to you?” the Good Fairy asked.
“Dead? Not dead. Come with me and I will show you what happened, but you must not be afraid.”
His hooves clopped on the wooden floor like a billy goat crossing a bridge, and they followed his horns into the adjoining room. A dozen puppets stood frozen in a line. Blue from head to toe, they were dressed in tattered rags and wore rough beards and wild hair of tangled curled paper. Each man had an arm on the shoulder of the man in front of him save the leader of the gang, who bent forward as they trudged grimly toward a primitive cell with real iron bars, and around their broken shoes an excelsior snow had fallen. They looked cold and miserable and forlorn.
“I don’t think I’ve seen a sadder bunch of creatures,” the Good Fairy said.
The Devil held the lantern close to the leader’s face. He bore a frozen expression of utter despair in his eyes. “These comrades are headed for the gulag. Some Russian play—the Three Sisters might know the name.Perhaps one day soon we can arrange a rendezvous between these lonesome souls and those charming young ladies.”
The first prisoner cracked a smile, and a chuckle ran the length of the chain, intensifying man to man until the final prisoner burst into a hearty laugh.
“The Devil puts a spoon of honey into another man’s wife,” the leader said. “We have been waiting for you for ages.”
The line broke apart as the puppets roared to life, laughing and clapping one another on the back. A pair of the prisoners broke into a chorus of a drinking song, and the leader embraced the Devil and pumped his hand in congratulations. One of the men winked at the Good Fairy and mimed his appreciation for the cleverness of her unusual wooden construction.
“Follow me, comrades,” the Devil said. “More wonders to behold.”
In the next room, more puppets cheered their arrival. They were dizzying in their variety, long and short, fat and thin, bright and somber in design. Three giant disembodied heads—long-forgotten buffoons made for a political satire—propelled themselves forward by chomping their jaws. A quartet of skeletons shook their bones and danced a mazurka. Old familiars from children’s stories sang out: the Three Little Pigs pink as hams, a Dish and a Spoon with the glow of the recently eloped, and a little old lady who sat by a giant shoe, eight tiny heads peering through the eyelets and another young one sliding down the tongue. All the people were happy to see the new arrivals and clamored for their attention.
“No wonder we heard voices from our room,” Kay said.
“Wait,” the Devil said. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Some of the gulag refugees stayed behind in the impromptu celebration, but the Devil and his entourage crowded into the narrow hallway and proceeded toward the next room. Stopping suddenly and holding his hand for silence, he motioned for Kay and the Good Fairy to join him. The space was dark and cool, and a small circle of light appeared and expanded from the size of a dime to the size of a dinner plate. Delicate notes from a koto set the tone, and a bunraku puppet took the stage, a beautiful Japanese woman in a marvelous embroidered kimono whose movements harmonized with the music for six measures. Then a switch in her head was thrown, and she rolled back her eyes to a hideous yellow, horns popped out of the front of her skull, and she grimaced to reveal two rows of sharp teeth. Kay yelped at the sudden transformation, and the demon quickly changed back into the young woman and began laughing hysterically at her own joke. A deranged monkey clapped its hands against a gong. Two samurai drew their swords and waved them in a blur, and a braggart waggled his bushy eyebrows.
Introductions followed all around, and bowing low, the ningyō proved gracious and begged forgiveness for having scared the visitors. The Devil took delight in the machinations set in place but could barely contain his enthusiasm to show them the next chamber. He led them into a tableau which Kay recognized at once from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Fairy marionettes hung from the ceiling and spun slowly, the light reflecting off their silken wings—Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Moth, and the rest surrounding a life-size Oberon and Titania reclining on a mountain of pillows brocaded with gold and silver threads. The changeling boy, an Indian prince, done as a rod puppet, nestled in the bed between the fairy king and queen, and off to one side lolled the rude mechanical Bottom in his ass’s head crowned with a garland of paper hibiscus. The four youthful lovers were shadow puppets flat against the wall, and perched on a cider barrel, Puck awaited his cue.
“My people,” the Good Fairy exclaimed.
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Puck shouted, and all at once, the puppets danced to life, shouting their huzzahs. Bottom brayed. The lovers swapped places and swapped back. Oberon joked, “Ill met by moonlight” to Kay, and the fairies swam in the air on invisible wires. Kay felt as though she was back in the cirque and stretched her limbs, wondering if she might ever be so fluid as to tumble and balance again. The others from the other rooms jammed into the scene till it nearly burst with puppets exuberant with performing before a new audience.
“I had no idea you were so many,” Kay said to Puck.
“This is but the floor below. Wait till he takes you to the loft. Wait till you see the Original.” He pointed to the wooden staircase leading up.
“The Original?”