The Puppet Maker's Bones (18 page)

“They’ll have to wait. This is too exciting!”

With that, the couple walked back to the workshop. Pavel tried not to think about the letter from Trope that was crumpled in his pocket.

***

Robert Lamb entered the workshop, hearing laughter from his friend. Pavel stood over the workbench, his hands in heavy gloves which were covered with some sort of gooey white substance. Below him, a woman with a large glob of plaster completely covering her face leaned back in a chair, and straws protruded from her nose and mouth. She appeared to be shaking with laughter.

Robert approached, keeping his face neutral. He had been watching Pavel’s friendship grow with Žophie. He had been spoken to by Mr. Trope and was quite concerned.

“No, you can’t move, you’ll crack it!” Pavel said. He noticed Robert and waved him into the room. “Okay, Robert has entered the room. Don’t be startled when he starts to talk. I don’t want you to go and do something silly like jump up and start running around the room, screaming.”

“Will he, nill he?” Robert quoted
Hamlet
.

“Cheidu, you are uncannily on time. How would you like to have yourself immortalized?” The two men shared a look. Robert raised his eyebrow at his friend and smirked.

“You mean keep this young and handsome face
forever
?” he said. Pavel punched him in the arm.

“I need to make a plaster cast of your face. To make your puppet!”

“Ah! A doppelganger! How thrilling. Pavel, you are a constant source of amazement to me. Where would you like me to drape myself?” Pavel led his friend over to a chair and positioned him.

“Are you comfortable?” asked Pavel.

“Oh, without question. Out of curiosity, how long will this remain on my face? I have a tea engagement later.”

“Not too long. I don’t want you to start itching.”

Before long, Pavel had both Žophie and Robert leaning back in their respective chairs in the workshop, plaster over their faces, straws out of their noses and mouths, both able only to groan in protest at anything Pavel had to say.

“I believe this is the one and only time I will find either one of you absolutely speechless,” Pavel said. “In fact, I believe this is the one and only time I will ever find myself in complete control of anything that has anything to do with anything where either one of you are concerned.”

His friends groaned.

“Oh, I assure you, when this is all over, you’ll thank me. I plan on making beautiful carvings of you both. Young and beautiful forever, my escaped puppets, yes?”

Žophie’s groan was lilting and sounded more like a question.

“Ah yes, Žophie, you aren’t familiar with the story my ancestor used to tell about his family members. He called them all his escaped puppets. I am but a mere descendant of a long line of them, leading back to Prochazka, founder of the theatre.”

After the plaster was dry on both of them, Pavel removed it, first from Žophie and then from Robert. He turned the masks to show the inside that had been against their faces and watched their reactions as they saw the contours of their own faces.

“Fascinating,” said Robert.

“That is a little unnerving,” said Žophie. “It is almost like a death mask.”

“Oh don’t say that! It will be beautiful. You have to trust me,” said Pavel.

“Thank you, Pavel,” said Robert. “I look forward to seeing my double. We can do all the plays where twins are featured.
Comedy of Errors
, anyone? Can we put white face on a puppet?”

Pavel laughed and gave Robert another playful punch in the arm. “I love you all, madly, but must dash off to tea! I expect those puppets to be gorgeous!” Robert swept out of the theatre as Pavel and Žophie laughed.

***

When Robert returned to the workshop, several hours later, he found Pavel still busy at the workbench, creating a template for the wood carving he would do of the face masks. He created their faces out of clay as a first step in the process, molding and sculpting and making a three dimensional image which would serve as a template when later making his wood carving.

“My good man, you do work late,” said Robert.

“It is not very late. Is it? Have you come from dinner? Would you like to have something to eat?”

“I was supposed to have tea, but I’m afraid there was more whiskey than tea and very little food, so yes. Yes, I’m starved. Back to the house?”

“Yes. Tell me. What do you think of you?” Pavel held up the clay bust of Robert that he had been working on. Robert walked over, a little unsteady after his tea that was more whiskey. He scrutinized the bust, turning the base so that he could review all sides of the creation.

“You are a very gifted artist, Pavel. It looks wonderful. But I do have magnificent bone structure for this sort of thing to make it easy for you. Thank you. It is quite moving to have an artist capture one’s image in a form like that.”

“You’re welcome. In finished form, it will be a marionette. About your size, I think. Rod and wire.”

“Even more impressive. Be sure to make me a good-looking puppet. Some of them can be so hideous and frightening.”

“That is because they are supposed to be,” said Pavel. “Can’t have crones or devils or dwarfs or monsters that are painted in pastels and have pretty smiles on their faces.”

“No, I think not. Shall we to dinner?”

The two men walked to Robert Lamb’s house and worked together to create a dinner. They were silent while each did their part, but the two did not need conversation. Since Robert’s brief residency, the men had grown to be quite close, and a brotherly bond existed between them. Not until the dinner was set upon the table, the wine poured and the two men seated did conversation begin.

“Žophie has informed both me and her father that she means for us to marry and move to America,” said Pavel. He was nervous and concentrated on his breathing. He searched his friend’s face for his reaction to the news.

Robert choked a bit on his wine. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Married? America?”

“Yes. Some place in the south of California in a settlement called the Indiana Colony. She already has the plans for the house she wants there.”

“You. Marrying Žophie.” Robert put down his fork and sat back.

“She is very persuasive when she wants something. I believe she will have that house.”

Robert took a sip of his wine and weighed his words. “Have you received any correspondence from Mr. Trope about this?”

Pavel did not mention the numerous letters of warning. Trope did not know about the plans to marry, so it was not a complete lie.

“Trope doesn’t know.”

“I see,” said Robert.

Pavel saw the horror on his friend’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Pavel you know you cannot marry.
We
cannot marry. How many times must it be repeated to you? Our kind cannot marry. It is not done. You know the consequences, or do you not care?” A lone tear meandered down Robert’s cheek. Pavel stared at him.

“Cheidu, what’s wrong?”

“Let me ask you a question. The whipping scars on my back. Do they not serve as an example to you? We cannot run off and do whatever we want when other people are involved.”

Robert shook his head, stood up and paced around the room, disgusted.

“Your parents. Prochazka and Nina. Were they affectionate with you?”

“Of course they were. They were very affectionate people.”

“How did they express it? Did they hug you? Kiss your forehead? Pinch your cheeks? Smother you in kisses when you were a good boy?”

“No, nothing like that, we had a thing we did as a family. As a puppet family. We played a game Prochazka made up when I was very small.”

“Did it involve touching you in any way?”

Pavel remembered the day in Trope’s office when he realized that they had avoided touching their son his entire life. He did not share the memory with his friend.

“No, but I didn’t like to be touched when I was a boy.”

“So they told you this was for you? Because you did not like to be touched?”

“Well, I outgrew that. But the game kept on.”

“Because they could not touch you.”

“Perhaps this dinner needs to be over.”

“Pavel, you cannot marry that girl!”

“You’re jealous. That’s what it is.”

Robert looked like a man who had been slapped. He rose from the table, his chair scraping on the floor behind him.

“Don’t be ridiculous. And do not flatter yourself. If you decided you wanted to up and move to America, yes. I would miss you. We have barely met in terms of our years. And America is not a good place for me to visit, so it would be many years before we could see each other again. So, yes, I would miss you very much. But this is not about that. This is about people like us. We cannot get close to others. We cannot touch, we cannot hold, we cannot kiss, we cannot
love
.”

“I refuse to believe that. Your scars happened as a punishment for acting out of anger. Not out of love. We know that from every great playwright and play: Shakespeare, the Greek plays, Faust, and Moliere. When there is anger or jealousy or rage or plotting or greed, then nothing good comes at the end of any of those stories. But when people act out of love, nothing bad can happen and everyone is blessed. I am in love.
Nothing
bad can come from love. I won’t believe it. Love gives everyone hope, and isn’t that what we are supposed to do? Bring hope, not destruction? What is more hopeful than love?”

“Pavel, this is not a play, though you are playing a very dangerous game. I refuse to believe you intend to go through with this. Are you that selfish, or completely insane? Which is it? Be Žophie’s friend. Be her confidante, be that wonderful man that makes her laugh with his puppetry. But Pavel, please. Do not try to be her lover. For her sake.”

“I don’t wish to talk to you any more about this. I mean to leave you in charge of the artistic aspects of the theatre and will have Mr. Trope take care of having the property transferred to you upon my leaving for America. I do not wish to be interfered with beyond that.”

“Pavel, please do not do this thing.”

“You cannot tell me that I cannot love. How can you tell someone that they are not allowed to love? You? You of all people.” Pavel got up from the table and left the house.

Robert sat at the table and wept.

1884

P
avel and Žophie landed in a heap on the floor of the foyer, Žophie laughing as Pavel slammed the door behind them with his foot. Her laughing was smothered by his mouth, kissing, searching, tongues meeting, tasting, exploring. His fingers shook as they struggled with the fasteners on the back of her dress. Her hands, inexperienced and eager, tugged at his shirt, pulling it out of the waist of his pants, running over his bare torso underneath and around to his back. Pavel moved his mouth to her neck, over her collarbone and chest, moving closer to her breasts as he continued to work his way through her dress fastenings. Žophie laughed again and Pavel joined her, the two of them tangled together upon the floor in an unceremonious heap. Months of travel in separate berths, bunks and cabins that kept them apart made their longing for one another an ever growing and intense ache that was finally seeing relief now that the two could finally come together as husband and wife.

“We stink,” said Žophie.

“Isn’t it wonderful,” said Pavel, his mouth over hers again as he kissed her. His hand moved down and pulled up the fabric on her dress. He moved his hand up her leg and over her thigh. He stopped kissing her and looked in her eyes as his hand made contact with the moist area between her legs. Žophie placed her hand on his to keep it there as she matched his gaze. She guided his hand over her, rubbing, caressing. He pulled down her undergarments until his naked hand was upon her, unimpeded by fabric. He moved his mouth down her body, over her breasts still bound by her dress and corset, down her bodice, then pushed her dress up and over her hips and put his mouth full upon her sex, inhaling her, kissing her. Žophie cried out, and he tasted her, caressed her with his tongue. While their longing for each other had raged for months the two remained chaste, but the longing Pavel experienced in the foyer encompassed one hundred fifty years and involved more than the final consummation of the marriage to this woman he adored. Rather, what he was experiencing was the letting go of a lifetime of forced loneliness and avoidance of other people. He felt as if he had been freed from a prison. Consumed by passion, Pavel felt as if his entire person might burst into flame at that very moment and if it did, he would not care. Žophie worked her hands over his trousers until she got them almost off of him, enough that they could find each other. He entered her, and she cried out again as the two of them moved together as one, newlyweds who had travelled a very long way by ship, by cart, then on foot, filthy and stinking, in a pile of partially removed clothing, the hard floor beneath them bruising them as they rolled and moved as one for the first time.

***

He rolled onto his side and laughed, tracing her face with his finger. “I had no idea,” said Žophie who joined his laughter.