The Puppet Maker's Bones (10 page)

“Here, Pavel. Watch me, then you do it.” Prochazka had moved his fingers and hands in a motion that caused his puppet to make a hugging motion. He then walked the puppet over to Pavel’s puppet and used the motion to hug Pavel’s puppet. The boy laughed.

“There now, you see? I’m going to put the puppet down and make the motion with my hands and then I want you to do it.” Pavel watched as Prochazka set down the marionette on the bench, then turned to Pavel and made the exact motion in the air that he had made when there had been a marionette in his hands.

“Now you do it.” Pavel watched Prochazka do it again, and the man and boy repeated the action several times until Prochazka said that it was perfect.

“When Nina and I do this, we are saying we love you, and we are hugging you, our little escaped puppet. If you feel like it, this is how you can hug us back. Okay? This way we can respect your wishes and still hug you when you’re a good boy, all right?”

Pavel faced the floor, unsure. Nina walked into the workshop.

“Darling, look what I have taught our boy.”

“And what is that?” asked Nina.

Prochazka showed Nina the hand motion. Nina and Pavel joined in, and after trying the motion several times they all laughed. Nina’s blue eyes shone.

“Looks like I get to hug my puppet after all,” she said.

Pavel thought about that as Nina stood over his bed, waking him. He sat at the edge of the bed and Nina sat down beside him.

“I’ve got a big breakfast ready for you. Get washed up and come out to the kitchen.”

“I have been thinking,” Pavel said.

“Have you? And what have you been thinking about?” Nina asked.

“I have been thinking that it would be okay if you hugged me. For real,” said Pavel.

Nina’s expression turned from startled to sad in a mere instant. Pavel didn’t know what he had said that was wrong. He tried to reassure her.

“I won’t mind anymore.”

Nina made the motion with her hands again, as she had done for years, burst into tears and left Pavel’s room. Pavel, confused, washed up and headed to the main house and let himself into the kitchen where Prochazka sat, head in his hands. He could hear Nina’s sobs coming from behind the bedroom door.

“What’s wrong with Máma?”

“Oh, puppet. Nina is at an age where women feel many emotions about many things, sometimes happy, sometimes sad. Sometimes she cries even if she’s happy or laughs when she is sad. It often does not make much sense. She is having a day like that.”

Pavel contemplated what his father had said and responded. “Do people lie about other people?” he asked.

“What?”

“The way they lie about escaped puppets. They always lie when talking about escaped puppets. But do they lie about people?”

“Well, of course I
might
be lying,” Prochazka said. “Everyone in theatre lies.” Prochazka put his face back into his hands.

Pavel never again brought up the subject, nor did he ever attempt to hug either of his parents.

***

Pavel’s memory came to him in Mr. Trope’s office as he stared in horror at the look of anguish on his father’s face, and he was flooded with a full and sudden understanding. He began to weep.

“Mr. Prochazka, I think it is best if you leave now. We will send the young man along in a few days.”

Prochazka’s cheeks were wet with tears, and he mumbled an unintelligible reply, turned around and left the office. His father, always larger than life to Pavel, suddenly appeared very small. Small, broken, and unhappy.

Pavel felt alone. Angry, hurt, but most of all, completely alone.

1859

T
he years following the inevitable loss of his parents produced in Pavel an extended period of creation and focus upon the theatre which he now ran. Pavel’s grief at losing his family sparked a period of manic energy that he used to develop projects and inventions, new engineering feats, and exciting, highly advanced puppet designs. He became rather the equivalent of the mad scientist, his behavior becoming eccentric, and the employees and actors of the theatre who came and went, were more than happy to leave him alone to his activities unless they had a question about a specific item needed for a production. He continued to control the puppets in various performances and would perform their voices, but he did not interact with the other puppeteers that he had trained, or the live actors. He became a virtual hermit, venturing out on those occasions that required his presence elsewhere. Interaction with others was contained to the theatre and theatre craft. Industry and invention became his focus, and when he was not in the theatre or adjoining workshop, he was in the library at Trope & Co., reading every book he could get his hands on in every area: language, science, engineering, architecture, literature, religion, art, medicine, and alchemy. There was no subject that Pavel did not devour in his studies. If he required another book, he asked Mr. Trope to acquire it for him. During those occasions when he came to the offices to use the library, Pavel noticed that Mr. Trope appeared to observe him constantly, from a distance, but never engaged him in conversation unless necessary, nor invited him to dine. He left him alone. Everyone left him alone.

During his period of solitude, Pavel used the knowledge he had acquired from some of the books to develop various herbal concoctions that he ingested, experimenting with anything that might have a mind-altering effect. He experimented with a number of highly poisonous plants, flowers and mushrooms, using tiny quantities, in various combinations. He tested foxglove, wormwood, water-hemlock, cow parsnip, petunia or anything else from the nightshade family, and morning glory. He had an endless variety of beautiful and volatile plants available to him, if he went looking, with which he could experiment. He found his preference was for those combinations that increased his wakefulness while producing a slight hallucinatory effect of a shimmering halo around everything that met his gaze.

Decades went by with Pavel unaware of the passing of time. His theatre thrived season after season, both critically and financially. On rare occasions, someone from Mr. Trope’s office would come by with a bundle of clothing for Pavel that was in the current fashion. He did not seem to notice such things and would grab anything available in the theatre or workshop when dressing himself, even old costumes. For someone who appeared to be so youthful, he had taken on the personality of an aging eccentric, though his increasing use of mind-altering concoctions made his behavior somewhat erratic and more similar to that of an immature child than an aging eccentric. He made no friends in the theatre with any of the multitudes of craftsman or actors that had crossed the threshold over the years, even those who stayed beyond a few seasons. He taught the various craftsman in his workshop who came and went how to better create their illusions, how to make grander and more fantastic marionettes, how to design lighting for greatest visual effect, all the while wearing his protective gloves given him years before, at his first meeting with Mr. Trope.

The two did not like each other, but they carved out a civil relationship, since they were resigned to dealing with one another for many more decades than they had already. While Pavel was busy focusing on theatre and reading and concentrating on his next invention or illusion or recreational herbal medicine, a full century passed him by. A century of virtual isolation. The fact that there were actual people coming and going in Pavel’s world was the one thing keeping him from being left in complete solitude, so it had not gone unnoticed that he was becoming more than an eccentric. There was talk that Pavel might be a little mad and rumors of his use of herbal intoxicants ran rampant. Further gossip stated the drugs were making him lose his memory, and in truth, he did often forget his lines during performances. The audience rarely noticed the omissions, but his fellow theatre cohorts were distressed. He was no longer the nice, likeable young boy that had slept in a cot in the theatre when Prochazka and Nina were alive. It was therefore alarming and a little unnerving when Pavel rushed through the door of Trope & Co. with over-animated enthusiasm on a particular day in 1859, more than one hundred years since Pavel and Mr. Trope first met.

“Mr. Trope! You must see this!” Pavel burst through the door of the offices of Trope & Co.

“You can’t—” cried a young man in the foyer.

“Oh, but I can. I’m a
special
client! Didn’t they tell you about their escaped puppet?” Pavel’s swirling pupils were dilated. The man, alarmed, attempted to stop Pavel as he ran down the corridor, past the library, to Leonard Trope’s office. Pavel rushed inside, slamming the door behind him.

“Trope!” he said and shook the gloved hand of the startled man behind the desk.

Pavel moved from one foot to the other and back again as Mr. Trope appeared to be scrutinizing him. Pavel wore what appeared to be a portion of a jester costume, composed of yellow and green triangles of silk fabric with small bells stitched to the hem. Pavel combined the ridiculous costume with an outdated dinner jacket. The fabric of the jester costume was thin and clingy, making it obvious he was not wearing any undergarments. The clothes carried with them a slight odor of cat urine. Pavel was not wearing the clothing that Trope & Co. delivered to him, and the stubble on Pavel’s chin and his strong body odor suggested he’d not bathed or shaved in quite some time

“Mr. Trusnik, to what do we owe the pleasure?” asked Leonard Trope, his own strange pupils swirling, his voice wheezing, raspy. How Pavel loathed Mr. Trope.

“I have an investment to make. I want you to attend to it.” Beads of sweat popped out all over Pavel’s forehead and his hands had a small tremor.

“We would be happy to handle whatever it is. We would, of course, run an investigation to determine if this investment is in the—.”

“Best interest, yes, yes, yes, I’m familiar with the speech. Tell me, did you get the gift I sent you?” Pavel’s rapid speech had a staccato edge to it, and one of the beads of sweat broke free and trickled down his brow.

“If you mean the painting, yes we did. It was kind of you, thank you,” said Mr. Trope.

“Did you find it intriguing, sad, uplifting, melancholy? There are such a variety of emotions one experiences when looking at a piece of art, that one scarcely knows where to begin in describing them. Which was it for you? Which? Hmm?”

“Mr. Trusnik, I believe you are toying with me, somewhat. And you appear to be under the influence of something. Are you?” Pavel made a noise that sounded like something between a laugh and a snort as he paced the room, the smell of cat urine wafting off of him as he moved.

The painting to which Pavel referred, by an artist named Francesco Guardi, was entitled
Allegory of Hope
. The background of the painting depicted a peasant woman on the shore of a body of water carrying what appeared to be a basket of wheat. One stalk of wheat blew out of the basket. In the foreground, dragging himself across the ground toward the woman, or the wheat, and carrying what might be a log for a fire, or a portion of a pillar from some ruined building, or perhaps dragging himself over debris lying about on the shore, was a young child with small wings sprouting from his shoulders. The woman faced away from the cherub, who would more likely be referred to in art circles of the day as a ‘putti,’ the secular and profane expression of non-religious passion and what people like Pavel, according to Mr. Trope, indeed were. Emphasis on the “profane” if Mr. Trope could be believed, thought Pavel, though he did not believe a shred of it and had read almost every book in Trope & Co.’s library in an effort to refute Trope’s claim.

“Well, Mr. Trope, I believe that the painting represents many things. I arranged to have it purchased on the anniversary of the death of my parents. I could think of no better place for it to hang but in your offices. You have done so much for our family.”

“Are you mocking me, Mr. Trusnik?”

“Not at all. I believe you told me, would you believe over
one hundred years ago
, that what you do here at Trope & Co. is
hope
. Hope. Rhymes with Trope. Coincidence? So I bought you a painting that sums up to me what
hope
is.
Hope
means being ignored while I drag myself toward some futile ideal, my longing or passion having no end. Perhaps I should throw a bag over my head, jump in the river and drown, to get it all over with. The painting is so bleak, as if I commissioned it myself, but we know that’s impossible. Do you think this too literal an interpretation? I’m afraid I was never formally schooled, so my observations are rather pedestrian, to say the least.”

Mr. Trope sighed, or what could be considered a sigh escaped him, though the exhalation of air more resembled air being squeezed out of a broken bellows—high, whistling, gurgling.

“You are lonely,” said Trope.

“That’s what you gleaned from all of my dripping sarcasm and expensive gifts inspired by bitterness and mockery? I’m
lonely
? You, Mr. Trope, are a veritable genius.”