The Transfiguration of Mister Punch (15 page)

Ela hurried off, leaving Stephie rather confused. But soon she was whisked up by a group who were going down to the riverside to perform a little show they’d devised called ‘The Inebriated Professor’. She went along for a laugh, but it rained and they all ended up in one of the bars, making up filthy limericks about him instead.

On Monday, while they were putting the finishing touches to the scenery flats, they were graced with a fleeting appearance from Marceuil, who arrived on his bicycle, as usual, but this time with two saddlebags stuffed with red roses and a new handlebar basket in which sat a pug dog with a bright yellow ribbon around its neck.

He dismounted, stuffed and lit a huge meerschaum pipe, carved in the figure of a reclining nude, and paraded up and down the workshop surveying their efforts, leaving trails of cherry-scented smoke behind him.

“Hmm, these are the standard representational nonsense, lacking charm or any aspect of originality, artistic merit, or indeed skill,” Professor Marceuil boomed, tears already welling in the eyes of many that had worked so hard on them the past few days. “It is precisely what I was looking for! Now we need to paint the back of them black and turn them from the audience so that they shall never see them, only we know the filthy excrement that is daubed upon them and we must fight against the filth of it seeping, via exosmosis, into our performance, which flows and glides, skates and shimmers, with a different energy—the energy of youth and revolution. This show will sing the sorrowful song of souls forgotten, rather than the pompous fanfare of the decrepit bourgeoisie. And we just need the finishing touches for our little creations to breathe.”

He took from his pocket a purple cloth pouch, tied with a silver cord, and sprinkled into his palm what looked to be sawdust and wood shavings. He walked to each flat and blew a good cloud of it upon each, before spitting upon them. Then standing back from all three he surveyed them again, nodding appreciatively. Then, apparently content that all was in order, he let out a loud fart followed by a dirty chuckle and strode back over to his bicycle.

Everyone stood around, tools and brushes in hand, staring at him. There was a long silence.

“Well it’s been a tiring day, and no mistake. Now, do excuse me, I must go and have my ears syringed in preparation to peruse some pornographic photographs my solicitor has nailed to the doors of Freiburg Minster,” the professor said, consulting his watch, which appeared to be made of cardboard. “And my dentist is due to take a plaster cast of my nose, in the hope of conducting surgery upon my genitals next week. You will understand the need for me to keep my prior appointments!”

He hopped on the bicycle, the terrified dog letting out a little yelp, and rode away, calling out, “You buggers get on and sort out the performance, I’ll be back one day.”

The following morning a delegation went to see Oscar concerning Professor Marceuil and the state of the project. Ela was not among them, although she had agreed to be spokesperson (a job that fell then to Wulf, although he managed it without his usual pomposity). Oscar agreed to talk with the professor and the resulting row was, as previously mentioned, audible throughout the building, but at least it resulted in Marceuil’s dismissal, much to everyone’s delight.

During the following week they remodelled the performance back upon Bauhaus principles. It became another exercise in form and light, which all were pleased with. Ela had still not turned up and all efforts to contact her, through family and friends, had failed.

So we’re back now, to the start of our tale, after the final performance sequence was devised. Stephie is elated, if you recall. It is such a joy to have worked with Oscar again, rather than the wretched Professor Marceuil, and to have been able to drag the performance back to the form that interested all of them, rather than the ragged charade that Marceuil had proposed—self-indulgent, shamefully farcical and debased theatricality, like a mutated children’s puppet show, she thought.

The rest of the group were off into town for another celebration. Stephie thought she had done rather too much partying of late and decided to grab a quick coffee and some supper in the cafeteria before doing some reading, in an attempt to consolidate some of the advances she thought she had detected in the performance they had made.

She was the last in the cafeteria and she hurried her food and drink before heading back up to her small apartment. As she did so she caught a glimpse of a figure darting into the theatre. She had seen a flash of red and yellow on what looked to be a short figure, clad in an old-fashioned costume. Then she heard a high-pitched voice and laughing echoing through the auditorium.

She thought it said, “
Stop and hear my merry little play; / If I make you laugh, I need not make you pay
.”

She went in to investigate. It may have been Professor Marceuil returning to sabotage their hard work.

The lights were out, but the high windows backstage cast a little of the late afternoon light into the space, illuminating swirling mites of dust amidst the rows of metal chairs, whose regimented arrangement seemed eerie, suggestive of an invisible and silent audience.

How weird the place felt, she thought. She was not superstitious, partly because her mother
was
, but there was what could only be described as an
aura
about the place. She had heard stories about haunted theatres before, but these were in old buildings that had seen many years of use and had had time to build up their histories, and embellish the experiences of the many performers and spectators that had been through their doors. But theirs was a modern space, and one that rejected the artificial separation of audience and actor, of stage and auditorium. They were striving for a reinvigoration of the theatre, testing boundaries of movement, light and sound, and the actor as component within a total composition. Theirs was a project in metaphysical engineering, not a ridiculous rehashing of dead words followed by some tittle-tattle in the greenroom. But Stephie did not understand how ancient ceremonies of the body and the voice are, theatre being one mask among many of their guises, and anywhere that such rites are practised slips a little further into a world not entirely our own.

To ease her anxiety she flicked the lights on and that helped a little. Something about the artificial light gave her a sense of security and control.

Then there was another flash of the figure darting behind the ‘Versailles’ flat, stage left. She had caught more of it this time, a red puffy jacket and thin legs in yellow tights. She heard the tinkle of a bell.

“Is that you Wulf? Or Karl... Marcel... Erich...” Stephie called each name in turn and heard the bell respond, as though from a shake of the head.

“This isn’t much fun, I’ll tell you that now,” she said, making to reach for the light switch again. “I’m going to leave you in the dark, so you can play your stupid game on your own. Hopefully you’ll fall over and it’ll knock some sense into you.”

A high-pitched squeal came from backstage. It sounded like laughter, but with an irritating screech to it that was almost as excruciating as someone dragging their fingers across a blackboard—and then a voice called out, in a disturbing, nasal falsetto.

“
Yet, why should I grumble and fret / Because she’s sometimes in a pet?
”

Although Stephie was scared she was sure this was a stupid prank by one of the others, who must have waited for her to leave the cafeteria. She stormed over to the stage angrily and peered around the first flat, stage right, “When I get you, you’re really for it, I’m telling you.”

She saw the figure ducking back behind the furthest flat, again singing its taunting words, “
Though I really am so sorry to say, sirs, / That that is too often her way sirs.
”

“Now that really is enough,” Stephie yelled, striding over to where the voice came from. “Show yourself now, or I’m going to tell Oscar and Walter about this.”

The voice seemed to come from behind her this time as she edged cautiously around the ‘Versailles’ flat, “
For this, by and by, she shall pay, sirs. / Oh, artists, are an obstinate set!
” Before she could turn around she was struck with a length of wood that had been used to brace one of the flats. It splintered across her head and she could feel blood running down her cheek.

She was dizzy from the blow and staggered backwards from the flat. The scene of Versailles seemed to undulate and pulsate with glowing lights. As she desperately attempted to focus Stephie peered into the swirling patterns of colours and shapes and saw faces forming in the background; laughing and scowling, grinning and grimacing. As she watched she thought she detected a tendency in their expressions towards the pained and the sorrowful, rather than the gleeful and celebratory. Then Ela’s face burst into view, clearly mouthing Stephie’s name and pleading for help.

The flat flashed back to its scenic aspect, but in the distance of the garden she could make out the figures at the party, that had taken Stephan such a time to paint. One of the servants in the scene had the diminutive and slight frame of Ela, and her signature short hair. Then the figures began to move and the party came to life, with lords and ladies dancing about upon the great expanse of lawn. The figure she had thought was Ela turned and ran towards her, pursued by other servants and another character that had leapt out from behind a fountain’s statue. It was a dwarfish man, with a hunched back and a short cudgel, attired in a red and gold tunic. He hobbled and cavorted after the fleeing servant who, the closer she got, was clearly Ela.

Stephie stumbled further back from the flat, whose thick oils now rippled and flowed to create the moving picture before her. Stephie adored silent films and went to them whenever her finances would allow, but here she witnessed a full-colour moving picture. It was like something from a dream, and had its subject matter not been the plight of her friend she might even have been enthralled by its strangeness. As it was though she backed further and further from it, its supernatural and unreal aspect made more uncanny by the presence of her friend’s painted form, running towards her, screaming for help.

She backed into the ‘props room’ flat and heard a clatter behind her. The mannequin that Wulf had painted in, of an abstracted Professor Marceuil, with its rusty human frame and long steel tripod legs, had vanished. Instead there stood an ominous, leering metallic creature with a red jester’s cap, whose bell was tinkling furiously, as its whole form shivered with gleeful delight. Its face was a contorted mask of bent metal shards, with a distorted hooked nose. Its arms reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her into the stretched canvas. As she passed through the material her whole body shuddered in anguish as though every atom within her were being toyed with by a thousand fingers and examined, analysed and reconstructed by microscopic tweezers.

Inside the canvas, for that was where she appeared to be, the metal monstrosity cooed to her with an automatic voice, “
Stephie, my dear! Stephie, my love! Pretty Stephie, you’re home!
”

Stephie’s mind disintegrated in fear and panic as the thing laughed with its piercing, squeaky voice. She looked down at her new ‘painted’ form and saw a stuffed-thing, made of rough sacking, filled with straw and wool, and, having no structural form with which to support herself, she collapsed.

The group were disappointed when Stephie did not appear for the following morning’s rehearsal, or any of the others over the next few days, or indeed for the opening night a week later. She had probably made contact with Ela again and run away to join the circus with her. They laughed, in the hope that something of the like
had
happened, rather than the possible horrors that played through their thoughts, provoked by the real terrors already materialising throughout the angry streets of their desperate country.

The first performance was a success and the audience, mostly others in the movement—artists, architects, intellectuals and sculptors, commented positively upon it, seeing therein a favourable mirror to their own work.

Over time the show was phased out. They moved on to other things, performing a restricted repertoire of pieces that had proved more instructive to their further work;
Triadic Ballet, Space Dance
and
Gesture Dance
, and alongside them the fleeting moments of their parties and private performances, in which the
gesamtkunstwerk
was grasped for with increasing urgency as the drums beat louder and faster in the deep, dark forests of a greater, bolder Germany.

The flats for ‘that which rolls’ were no longer needed. They were stored in one of the buildings out of town, along with other materials that had ceased to be of use. Some of Stephie, and Ela’s, friends had assisted in transporting them down there. They could have been forgiven for missing the additional figure at the ‘Versailles’ garden party, it was difficult to make her out clearly, and the performance had been some time ago. But it was odd that nobody noticed the life-sized ragdoll doll in the corner of the scene on the ‘props store’ flat. Perhaps they missed the remarkable likeness the face bore to Stephanie Grosz because the doll was partially entwined by another human-like figure, made of metal, with an odd red jester’s hat upon its robotic head. Or perhaps they failed to notice because they were, after all—and had only ever been—enfolded in their own worlds and their own projects; projects that would soon be engulfed by a continent already seething with a lust for violence, its quaint villages and verdant fields smouldering with hate.