We Others (27 page)

All eyes were now turned to the box on the table. The curtains slowly parted, revealing a dark stage, in the center of which stood a small table bearing an empty glass bowl. The table and bowl were brilliantly illuminated by three beams of light falling at angles from the ceiling. A music-box melody began to play. From the right wing emerged a shadowy man about the size of a nutcracker. He walked briskly to stage center directly behind the table and stood facing the crowd. He wore tails and a top hat and carried in one hand a black wand. His face was pale and his eyes were restless, dark, and bright. He stood motionless for a few moments and then rapped the glass bowl twice with the top of his wand, as if signaling for attention. He next held up the wand by one end and with his empty hand he pressed against the other end of the wand, slowly collapsing it until it was crushed between his small clasped palms. When he opened his hands there spilled out a bright white tablecloth, which he held up for inspection, turning it first one way and then the other. He laid the tablecloth carefully over the glass bowl, stepped back, and held up his hands for inspection. When he stepped forward and removed the tablecloth, the glass bowl was filled with water, and a little goldfish was swimming about. He bowed to the left and bowed to the right. Again he laid the cloth over the table, covering the bowl. When he lifted the cloth, the bowl was no longer there. He held up the tablecloth, turning it first one way and then the other. He bowed to the left and bowed to the right. He placed the tablecloth over the table. He removed his top hat and held it out for inspection. He shook it vigorously; he turned it topside up and topside down. He placed the black hat brim-down on the white tablecloth. When he suddenly lifted it, he revealed the bowl of water in which the little goldfish was swimming. He bowed to the left and bowed to the right. He put the top hat on his head. He picked up the bowl and he picked up the tablecloth. He set down the bowl and placed the tablecloth over it. When he lifted the tablecloth, the bowl was empty. He bowed to the left and bowed to the right. He held up the tablecloth for inspection, turning it first one way and then the other. He folded the tablecloth in half, and in half again, and in half again, until it was the size of a little handkerchief. He closed his hands over the folded bit of cloth and slowly drew forth the black wand. He bowed to the left and bowed to the right. Then turning on his heel he walked from the stage, exiting on the left. The lights dimmed and went out. Slowly the curtain fell. The whirring stopped.

Now the rumpled sheet lying on the stage began to flutter mysteriously, slowly it rose up ghostlike before the watchers, and from behind it stepped Konrad the Magician. He collapsed the sheet into a black handkerchief, mopped his brow, and placed the handkerchief in his pocket. Gracefully he bowed. The performance was over.

Never had August seen such an extraordinary toy. The tricks of the little magician had amused him, but far more fascinating was the little automaton itself. Although it was evident that he could perform only a fixed number of motions, the number was large and various enough not to fall into an ascertainable pattern, and the motions themselves were entirely without the fatal jerkiness of the tedious clockwork toys he had seen. True, there was a slight stiffness about the little clockwork magician, but that entirely suited his formal manner. Yet even more striking than the smooth and lifelike motions was the uncanny expressiveness of the magician’s mobile face. He had moved his mouth and eyes, as well as his head, and August had seemed to catch a glimpse of cheek-muscle tightening. Indeed his face seemed so able to express the several emotions required of him that it was as if he were controlled not by an inner mechanism of wheels and levers but by a thinking mind; and it was above all this illusion of an inner spirit that was so remarkable in the performance of the clockwork magician.

To those few minutes in a drab green tent, August ever after traced his devotion to clockwork art. Even then he disdained the phrase “clockwork toy,” for it was precisely those well-loved toys which had failed to strike a responsive chord in him. The clockwork magician was so far superior to the butter-churning maid that it seemed part of another world entirely, and it was that world and only that world which August longed for. Old Joseph encouraged the boy’s new hobby, little suspecting he would never outgrow it. Together they made trips to toy shops in Mühlenberg, and in the winter evenings, after the last watch had been repaired for the day, August and his father took apart and reassembled automaton toys. The mechanisms were startlingly easy for him to grasp, but at first the automaton motions proved difficult to foresee, for he was used to transforming the intricate system of wheels and springs into the simple circular motions of clock hands. Even the mechanical pictures worked only in two dimensions, and now he had to think in three. Often he was angry at himself, as if he had wasted his life. But the toys were far simpler in structure than his beloved clocks and watches, and after a month of odd, irritating clumsiness everything seemed suddenly clear. He even began to introduce little improvements of various kinds: a wooden bear who walked on all fours, turning his head from side to side, was made by August to stand up after ten steps, turn around, and walk on all fours in the other direction. But August knew that he would never make any real progress until he constructed the figures himself. Night after night, alone in his room, he practiced anew his old passion for woodcarving, angry that he had not known what his life was going to be, that no one had ever told him.

The clockwork toys, however clever internally, were externally crude in comparison with the carved figures and above all the dolls for which the town of Mühlenberg was well known, and August began to visit the toy shops and the dollmakers’ shops with an appraising eye. Dolls at this period were enjoying a burst of popularity, and the Mühlenberg dollmakers were not behindhand in the realistic elaboration which was the order of the day. The older dolls with wooden heads, whose hair was painted directly onto the wood, had for a generation been replaced by china-headed dolls, whose hair was of flax, or of mohair, or even of real human hair. But the china heads were themselves giving way to elegant Parisian heads of tinted bisque, with luminous glass eyes. Even the bisque heads were rivaled in lifelike effect by wax heads, which in England were being made with real eyebrows, real eyelashes, and real hair, each hair being carefully inserted in the wax by means of a hot needle. Meanwhile the doll dressmakers of Paris had been startling the world with their exquisitely detailed costumes. German dollmakers could not ignore the latest foreign methods, and August listened attentively to the dollmakers’ talk, taking from it what he needed. He began to purchase arms, legs, and hands from Johannes Molner, an old dollmaker who took an interest in the serious youth. The old man sometimes invited August to stay after the shop closed, and lighting up his meerschaum he would listen with amusement as the boy argued that ball joints should be added to the fingers of dolls, that the movable neck was still in a primitive state and might easily be improved, that movable eyes were only a first step toward total facial mobility. Herr Molner had a strong sense of proper limits, and no understanding of clockwork, but the boy’s fire warmed him and he taught August what he knew about the art of dollmaking. He showed August how the porcelain head was hollowed out on top and bottom; inside, the eyes were fastened with wax and plaster to the two holes in the face. A wig of mohair was carefully glued to the top of the head. The body, of white kid, was lined with linen; between the linen and the kid, the edge of the porcelain bust was held in place. The arms were attached next, fastened by iron wire fitting into iron hooks, and last of all the legs. August, curious about the substances of doll bodies, was instructed in the properties of kid, of gutta-percha, of papier-mâché dipped in wax. One day August brought Herr Molner a small gutta-percha hand, attached to an arm; the fingers were jointed, and a clockwork mechanism caused each finger to lift and lower in turn, after which the hand formed itself into a fist and slowly unclenched. Herr Molner stared for a long time at the little clockwork hand, and raising his troubled eyes declared that the proper end of a work of art was to arouse in the beholder a state of quiet reflection and not of astonishment, that the laudable realism of the nineteenth century, when carried too far, became a form of indiscretion, and that the hand in itself was extremely clever but not commercially practical. August, who had hoped for advice concerning the thumb, at first could not understand what Herr Molner was talking about; at the end he lowered his eyes, embarrassed for the kindly old dollmaker.

That spring, August gave his father a gift. Joseph removed the top of the shoe box, unwrapped the loosely folded brown paper, and discovered a mannequin not much longer than his hand. The plump little fellow was impeccably dressed in the manner of a fashionable burgher, in a tailcoat and vest; he had sidewhiskers and bushy eyebrows and wore a pair of bifocals low on his nose. A gold watch-chain hung in a graceful festoon from vest pocket to vest button. Joseph nodded his head slowly in admiration, and August strove to conceal his excitement as his father placed the little man on a table. A small lever was hidden beneath one sleeve. Joseph touched the lever and quickly removed his hand. The little burgher took three steps forward, and stopped. He reached into his vest pocket and removed his watch. He brought the watch close to his face, raised his bushy eyebrows, and returned the watch to his vest pocket. He took six steps forward, and stopped. He reached into his vest pocket and removed his watch. He brought the watch close to his face, raised his bushy eyebrows, lifted his other hand and slapped himself on the forehead. Shaking his head, he replaced his watch. He took three steps forward, and repeated the first set of motions. He took six steps forward, and repeated the second set of motions. It lasted three minutes.

Joseph Eschenburg was delighted with the little man, whose miniature watch kept precise time, and he showed his pleasure in a way that moved August deeply: he replaced the mainspring with a much stronger one, and set up the little man in the window of his shop. There the clockwork burgher marched back and forth for a full sixteen minutes, taking out his watch and raising his eyebrows in surprise, while passersby stopped to look and point. The clockwork burgher brought forth smiles and laughter, and for a while business picked up noticeably. This gave August a wonderful idea: he would make automatons for his father’s shopwindow. In this way he could justify his obsession while indulging it to the utmost.

The burgher was soon seen in the company of a little clockwork Frau in a feathered hat, who carried under one arm a Swiss clock from which, every five steps, a cuckoo suddenly emerged—whereupon the lady’s mouth opened, her eyebrows lifted, her eyes rolled around. The clockwork burgher and the clockwork Frau, walking back and forth in states of continual alarm, proved highly amusing to all who passed by, and August began to add other figures in rapid succession: a little black schnauzer who ran alongside the Frau, stopping to bark silently each time the cuckoo leaped out; a young man of fashion who sat down on a bench under a linden tree, lazily took out his watch, and suddenly sprang up and hurried away, after which he returned to the bench and repeated the same motions; an old man bent over so that his dirty white beard trailed on the ground, as he carried on his back an elegantly reproduced grandfather clock. Already people spoke admiringly of the sixteen-year-old boy’s shrewd business sense, a form of praise that pleased old Joseph but made August secretly uneasy. He felt that the business part of things was a mysterious and amusing accident that had nothing to do with clockwork at all, that some dangerous mistake had been made, that someday he would be exposed as a dreamer, a ne’er-do-well, a seedy magician in a drab green tent.

One day about a year later a well-dressed gentleman came into the shop, carrying an ebony walking stick whose ivory top was shaped like the head of a roaring lion. After a cursory examination of an ormolu clock, which he praised without interest, the man removed a business card and handed it to Joseph Eschenburg. Herr Preisendanz was the owner of one of the big department stores that were springing up everywhere in the new Germany, and he offered to purchase three of the clockwork figures for a startling sum. When Joseph replied that they were not for sale, Herr Preisendanz smiled, tripled the sum, and offered to purchase the entire stock of figures at comparable prices, even though not all were suitable for his purposes. When Joseph explained that his son had made them, and that they were not for sale, Herr Preisendanz narrowed his eyes, considered doubling the last sum named, but after a rapid examination of the old man’s face—Herr Preisendanz had had dealings with these small-town shop owners before, some of them could be extremely stubborn—he decided to try another tack instead. He stated that he wished to bring Joseph Eschenburg’s son back with him to Berlin, where he would be extremely well paid to make automated displays for the block-long shopwindow of the Preisendanz Emporium. He well understood that the prospect of parting would be a jolt to the old man, but he declared himself certain that the father would not stand in his son’s way. Moreover, he would personally see to it that the young man was comfortably lodged.

Joseph listened gravely to all that was said and then called in his son. August was amused by the coarse-featured, red-faced man in his elegant clothes, not least because he so strikingly resembled a recent clockwork figure that had proved quite popular. But the offer frightened him; again he felt that somehow he was deceiving people, that they ought to realize … he wasn’t sure what. Besides, he didn’t in the least care for Herr Preisendanz and wanted to remain forever with his father, who understood him as no one else ever could. And Berlin was Prussia, he detested the very idea of Prussia. Without hesitation he turned down the offer, and was startled when his father said that every question had many sides. With grave graciousness the old watchmaker asked Herr Preisendanz to return the next day for a final decision. Herr Preisendanz, who had business to attend to, bowed slightly and took his leave.