The Toymakers(100)

‘A long time ago and half a world away. But, yes, I am proud to say that I did. You might say that I was his apprentice, though perhaps he would not himself have used such a word. I am sorry for your loss, boy. Men have lived worse lives and lived on and on.’

The stranger touched Kaspar’s hand with the ruin of his own, then drew back into the crowd. In the gap he left behind, Cathy caught Kaspar’s questing eye. She tracked the man as he left.

‘My papa?’ Kaspar said. ‘An apprentice?’

Cathy had no strength to stop him; Kaspar disappeared after the man, angling his way through the mourners. By the time he breached the last of them, the man was already shambling into the hawthorn, disappearing around the looping trail. He had drawn up his collar, lost himself beneath a tall Homburg hat, and Kaspar had to strain to catch up. Finally, he grappled for the man’s elbow.

‘My papa never took an apprentice,’ he gasped. ‘My brother and I, we—’

‘Calm yourself, boy. I didn’t mean to alarm. Of course, I use the word loosely. I only ever set foot in your Emporium once, and by then I pray he did not recognise me. In the days I knew your papa, he was a different man. All of this – all of this was for the future. The Jekabs Godman I knew was a carpenter, but he turned sticks into soldiers, just for something to do with his hands, and he …’ The man stopped. ‘Your family, they are waiting for you, are they not?’

Kaspar looked over his shoulder. Cathy was watching him from the graveside.

‘They have been waiting for me longer than I can say. They can wait a little longer.’

‘It has been a lifetime since I saw your father, but when I saw the notice of his death … I had to come and say my farewell. I believe …’ The man’s face seemed to crumple for an instant, lending him a haggard, almost leering air. ‘… I would not be alive were it not for him. Certainly, I would not be the man I am today. You might say that Jekabs Godman saved my soul. He didn’t know that he did it, and he never knew what I did with it – he never knew that the little soldiers he showed me how to make went with me back home, never knew all the places I travelled to share them, places where the children don’t have any toys, places where they deserve to be reminded. Toys made me … good again. Perhaps you can understand? I had never thought of myself as a good man, not until I met your father.’

At the graveside, as the crowd fanned out, each to their private griefs, Cathy watched her husband embrace the stranger, then let him go, off into the trees. Martha was already gone, helping Nina corral her boys, by the time Kaspar returned. His strides, as he returned along the trail, had new purpose.

‘We should retire. Back to the Emporium.’

Cathy was still staring after the man, long after he had vanished.

‘Who was he?’ she asked.

Kaspar put his arm through hers and, together, they followed the path.

‘A stranger. Papa knew him long ago. Long before he knew either me or Emil …’

Halfway along the trail, when the carriages were already in sight, a thought hit Cathy and she dug her heels into the frozen earth, straining on Kaspar’s arm until he too came to a halt.

‘That man,’ Cathy said, ‘did he say what his name was?’

‘Chichikov,’ Kaspar answered. Then he drew his collar up, against the cold and wind. ‘The man said his name was Chichikov.’

Seven days is an aeon in the lives of toy soldiers. For simple wooden minds, a day might be a lifetime; a week, time beyond measure. And though they were there on the night Papa Jack passed away, their best and bravest seeking communion with him as he slipped from this world, up and down the skirting board he has already passed into legend. All they know, now, is that the Old One is gone, that a season has passed with not a heart beating anywhere in the Emporium halls; and that, now, the two younger gods and their families have returned. The toy soldiers lurk in the skirting boards now, silent but for the ticking of their motors, spying through thin cracks in the wood. And what they see is this: on one side of the room, the daemon lord is playing with his children. On the other, the Kaspar god is seated with his wife and their daughter, the one who tells the soldiers Truths out of Books. Between them sits a table, heaped high with the foods of Banquet – and not a roast potato, not a glazed carrot, not a vareniki or bowl of hot broth is being touched. Instead, the gods remain famished on the borders of the room, casting each other glances whenever the other one is unaware.

And the toy soldiers think: to whom does the world belong, now that the Old One is gone? Which one is it? The Lord of Light, or the Lord of Death? Are we to live in peace, or be sent back to wage the Long War, from this day on and for evermore?

Cathy was late to bed that night, for in the kitchens Mrs Hornung quaked over the wasted food, the mountains of crockery, the pots and pans that needed to be scoured and stacked away. For hours they worked in companionable silence, and only once did either one speak. Her arms deep in soap suds, Mrs Hornung uttered, ‘He was a good man,’ and after that returned to her work with newfound fire.

Some time later, when the Emporium clocks were tolling and Cathy was ready to leave, she spoke again. ‘Those two boys have been squabbling since they were young. But there was love in it back then. Tell me, Cathy, is there love in it now? Because all I see is hate …’

‘There’s love,’ said Cathy. ‘No understanding, but there’s still love.’