The Motion of Puppets (15 page)

Backstage a makeshift rehearsal space had been arranged. A single mahogany banquet table dominated the room, and lying there were some of her old familiars along with a few puppets she did not recognize. With casual disregard for their comfort, the Quatre Mains dumped Kay and Irina on the table and hurried away, muttering about how much remained to be done. Kay had landed awkwardly, her left elbow resting on the sharp shin of a marionette she could not see. Though she was hyperaware of her circumstances, she could not move, and dared not say a word, for the giants might reappear with more of their colleagues and other materials fetched from the van.

Late in the afternoon, the Deux Mains arrived and rearranged the puppets in two straight lines. Working quickly, she picked up a puppet and did something to it that Kay could not see, but she could hear the clip of scissors and the pull of thread through cloth. One by one, she worked on the others, adding a touch of paint to a worn face, a scrap of cloth transformed into a new dress. Midway through the repairs, the Quatre Mains joined her. They worked in silence for the most part, concentrating on their tasks, but occasionally, they shared a few thoughts.

“This one,” said the Deux Mains, holding up Olya. “She'll need three changes of costume.”

“Let's start her as Jo in
Little Women,
” the Quatre Mains answered. “You think she would be the best Jo? Even though she usually plays the oldest, yes, I can see her as the lead. And the other two can be Amy and Meg. And, of course, the new one will play the narrator.”

“Can she double up as one of the Little Women as well?”

“She can be Beth.” He laughed. “Perfect, our late, lamented mistress of ceremonies.”

The Deux Mains held up Kay for inspection. In the corner of the puppeteer's mouth hung a needle, a loop of red thread dangling like a strand of blood. She took a long look at Kay, allowing her a long look in return. Kay had not yet had such an opportunity to get a thorough sense of the woman, and she drank her in like an infant studying its mother's face. And as she watched her, she saw her jade eyes darting, searching for imperfections. Steadying her fingers against Kay's wooden face, the Deux Mains dipped a paintbrush and wicked in the puppet's eyebrows, laid a fine edge, and quickly stroked in long eyelashes. As she worked, she pursed her lips and the curled tip of her tongued darted. Caught in the flow of her craft, the Deux Mains worked with a satisfied smile, laying Kay on the table. She brushed the lint from her blue gingham frock and then reached into a box and found two sets of dowel rods and fixed them at the wrists and ankles. In one swift motion, the Deux Mains had the puppet on her feet and walked her a few paces forward and tested how fluidly her arms could be raised and lowered.

“You'll do, little one. You'll do just fine.” She held her up to show the Quatre Mains. “Is she ready for her debut?”

“This mouth isn't right. What sort of hack butchered her so crudely?” He laid her facedown on the table and sifted through a toolbox for a hammer and a chisel. The first blow skited into the wood at the back of her skull, and then he yanked out the blade and repositioned it for another strike. Kay felt no pain but was in shock over the sudden rough treatment as he chipped away at her mouth. With trial and error, he rasped out an opening and found a lever to fit into place, and then he sawed away her lower jaw and planed and sanded the edges for a good fit. He screwed the whole apparatus into place and fiddled with the lever. Her wooden jaws clacked together and opened wide, just as she had been able to do as a person. The Quatre Mains bent round to see her face as he spoke and made her mouth the words “I am nobody's puppet.” With a satisfied grin, he set her down with the others.

As they were tinkering with the last of the puppets, a cell phone blurted out a melody, startling in its novelty after all this time. The Quatre Mains answered, and when he was through with the call, he rejoined the Deux Mains at the worktable. “That was Finch. They'll be here in fifteen minutes and are bringing the new man. Name of Delacroix. Finch and Stern have given him his parts. Not too many lines. Mostly the slapstick. If he can get down the blocking, we should be okay for the show.”

They arrived in peals of laughter, announcing their presence in the theater long before they reached the rehearsal space. Delacroix was a pencil-thin Frenchman, mouth at rest in a sneer, fingers stained by Gitanes, but deeply attentive to the rapid instructions fired at him in both languages. Stern came from the other pole, a refuge from a commune, a bushy white beard covering his chin and reaching down to the collar of his red plaid shirt. But the biggest surprise was Finch. She was a giant among giants, a head taller than the Quatre Mains. She had a pleasant long face, big mitts for hands, long legs and feet, broad hips, and a bust like the prow of a ship. How would she ever fit in the tiny space below the puppet stage? How would she ever get those fingers into the opening of a glove puppet? Like many large people, she moved with a panther's grace, the delicacy of her care a well-earned compensation for her size. The three new puppeteers handled the cast of characters, hefting each puppet to judge its weight and the intricacies of the mechanisms. They tried out Kay's newly hinged jaws, walked her a few steps forward and back.

“This one is the narrator for the whole show,” said the Quatre Mains. “She'll do the
entr'acte
's jokes and stories as well as play the part of Beth.”

“Seems reasonable,” Delacroix said. “Nothing I haven't seen or worked with before.”

“That's good,” said the Quatre Mains, as he clapped him on the back, raising a cloud of dust and dander. “We have thirteen blackout scenes along with the prologue and epilogue and a few in-between monologues, which needn't concern you much. And one of the scenes involves only two characters that Finch and Stern have created out of their stormy imaginations. So, an even dozen for you to learn. I propose we take on the six most difficult before our supper, and when you return, you can pick up the rest,
toot sweet
as they say. Not too many lines, and you can be on book since nobody in the audience will be able to see you most of the time. As a matter of fact, in one skit, ‘Lassie, Go Home,' all you need do is bark like a dog. You can bark, can't you?”

“Arf, arf,” said Delacroix.

“Oh no,” said Finch. “Bark like a collie.”

“Woof, woof.”

“
C'est bon,
” the Deux Mains said. “Shall we get to it?”

The rehearsal lasted well into the night, a swirl of talk and motion that left Kay baffled. The Deux Mains handled her most of the time, carrying her to a small ledge built into an opening of a tall flat where Kay sat, legs dangling over the edge, facing a sea of empty chairs. When the Deux Mains addressed the stage, she moved the lever behind the puppet's head so that her words,
sotto voce,
appeared to be coming out of Kay's mouth. And then Kay would be ducked away and laid to rest on the floor as the other puppets started another sketch. She enjoyed playing both the narrator and Beth in the
Little Women
skit with the Three Sisters and a matronly figure who was vaguely familiar. It all happened so quickly and furiously that she could not be sure of any part, much less the whole, of the show. The giants moved like dancers, their hands in constant motion, backs bent, heads hidden, slipping on the glove puppets, twisting the sticks and wires to make the marionettes flit across the stage, talking, laughing, swearing when they made a mistake. The Quatre Mains lorded over the chaos, calling out the titles for each new blackout sketch, hollering up to the invisible person manning the lights over a missed cue. In the end, all the puppeteers collapsed to the floor, congratulating one another on their performances, and after putting away all the puppets in the backstage room, they shut off the lights for the night.

Exhausted, Kay could hear them retreating and was grateful for the peace and quiet. Far from the inner sanctum, a door closed and was locked. She heard a giggle in the darkness. A small lamp burst into brightness. She sat up, surprised that she could move on her own, and saw Mr. Firkin with his fingers on the switch.

“
Mes amis, mesdames et messieurs,
welcome!”

Around her the puppets awakened and rose.

 

12

“I'm dead,” Kay said. “But you already knew that, having read the book.”

Out in the dark, a single person gasped. The audience was settling into place, waiting, saying entertain us, make us laugh or cry, willing themselves to be carried away in the promised dream. They listened for what she had to say, words conjured by the unseen voice, and watched the puppet manipulated by invisible hands, until at last they believed. The Deux Mains lifted Kay's hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the stage lights. In that simple gesture, she became real, and they were hers.

“I am your host, Beth March,” she said. “And this is ‘A Little
Little Women
and Other Puppet Tales.' You know the story of the four March sisters: Meg, Jo, Amy, and me. Well, I'm the sister who bites the dust. No need to feel sorry for me, though. I kind of like it here, up in the wings, watching it all from above. Gives a girl a certain freedom. And, besides, let me tell you a secret: all art needs a little sadness in it, a small tragedy to balance the human comedy.”

She stood on the ledge like a jumper at the window. The Deux Mains made her totter before settling into a comfortable position. “Don't worry, dear friends. May I call you friends? Perhaps not right away, but I hope we are friends in the end. We are not here to talk of life's tragedies but to entertain you with a number of sketches, some happy, some sad, in our little revue. Like life, our show has plenty of laughs along the way. Sit back, relax. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain or the hands that fiddle with our strings. Let us be friends.”

The spotlight went off and Kay was swept into hiding. The Deux Mains hurried to another opening for the first scene. From her resting place, Kay could hear the crowd roar with laughter during the ribald bits from “The Regina Monologues” and “Adam and Eve and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.” Some sniffled during the rocking chair denouement of “The Olden Girls,” and Kay eagerly waited for the key moment in “Lassie, Go Home,” where young Timmy, played by Nix, fell down the well, and Lassie, played by the Dog, barked incessantly instead of rushing off to find help. The first woof, woof from Delacroix brought a few chuckles, the second, a ripple of titters, but by the fifth plea for Lassie to just go home already, the audience was in shock, and when Lassie lifted a leg, they were fully in on the desperate joke.

The Russian sisters played a series of roles in many of the scenes, but Kay's favorite was “Cinderella Goes Shoe Shopping,” with Irina in the title role and the other two as the stepsisters complaining about their feet. Mr. Firkin played the hapless clerk trying to serve all three at once. But it was the ending that fascinated and terrified Kay. By some magical trick, the shoes—also wired—began to dance by themselves in a frenzy, clattering on the stage as the puppeteers stomped on the floor behind them. All five puppeteers worked the actors, but the Quatre Mains handled pairs and pairs of shoes, furious with the sticks, so many flying wires that he indeed seemed to have four hands.

Most of the time, Kay's role as MC was to fill in the intervals between the skits, but for “Punch and Judy's Final Grudge Match,” she played the part of the ringside announcer as Stern's Punch was relieved of his slapstick and pummeled senseless by Finch's Judy. Unlike most of the puppets in the show, the Punch and Judy were strangers to her. They had not come from the Back Room, and it took her a while to figure out where she had seen them before. They had been in the front display window of the old store in Québec. They were stock characters, mere toys compared to her friends. Kay caught herself longing for someone she used to love. The man in the bell jar.

Every performance sped by, barely time backstage for the troupe, soaked with sweat, to change the puppets' costumes, shift props, wheel backdrops into place. The giants possessed a manic energy, their faces lit with joy as they pulled strings, worked the rods and levers, donned the glove puppets. Bending to her, the Deux Mains smoothed the wrinkles from Kay's dress and checked the straps to ensure the rods would stay in place.

“The grand finale,” she whispered to Kay. “Keep it real.”

In the darkness, the giants took their places. Finch, Stern, and Delacroix handled the Three Sisters and the puppet playing Marmee. The Quatre Mains took control of the rods at Kay's feet, and the Deux Mains operated her hands and mouth. A spotlight shone, and they walked Kay to the edge of the doorway.

“The death of Beth,” she intoned. “Or, the last of a little woman.”

With an assist from Finch and Stern, she maneuvered into bed. A pneumatic device arranged under the quilts of the sickbed made it appear that a doll was breathing her final death rattle. The March sisters and Marmee had gathered around her, watching, their simulated breathing in sync with Beth's. The only motion came from the trembling of the strings. Their stillness added an air of dignity. The expressive limits of their wooden faces matched perfectly the emotions of the moment. They were born to grief and in their grieving expressed most clearly the defining sorrow of their faces.

A puppet seagull flew by the window. The tape recording of its call sounded like a laughing maniac.

“She's much too young,” Meg cried.

“How can she do this to us?” Amy asked. “How can she leave us? Oh, Beth.”

“I cannot bear it,” Marmee said. “My angel.”

Jo faced the audience. “She was the only decent one among us. Beth, I will write about you. You won't be forgotten, and your sacrifice will make me a better writer.”