The Motion of Puppets (14 page)

In the darkness, Kay could sense Noë was facing her, her breathing close, her fingers pressed against the partition. “That was you,” Noë whispered.

“Was it? I am trying to remember. There seem to be two worlds—one of words and one of motion—and we are tied to one or the other, never quite able to be in both.”

Long afterward, when everyone else was asleep, Kay heard the two sets of footsteps approach and the languorous voices of the giants. The aroma of coffee hit her like a dose of speed. The doors opened and closed, bang, bang. The key clicked in the ignition, and the wheels crunched onto a gravel berm, the van lurching from reverse into drive. The Deux Mains rolled down her window to let in the first sweet smell of autumn.

 

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 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. 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.”