19
With Odille and her lusty sway vanquished from the room and the promise of meats on the horizon, the Professor and I got back to business.
I took a breath.—There was something, then, about Puppets.
The Puppet Man emerged from the bearing of the Professor. His whole face changed shape. It became eager, lost ten to fifteen year’s worth of wrinkles and the wisdom anecdotally associated with them. The eyes gleamed, glittered. His cheeks rouged like a showgirl’s.
—Yes yes. I admit, I was surprised—pleasantly surprised, yes, so very pleasantly!—when Binelli alerted me to your interest. Your organization’s—it’s an organization, yes?—interest, indeed, pleasantly, not to assume that you have a personal interest—but you do, don’t you, that’s why they assigned you, yes?
—Perhaps, I said, holding up a silencing hand,—I should be asking the questions?
The Puppet Man clamped shut his lips like a child but nodded vigorously and made for me an agreeable face.
But for the lips.
They were too full, somehow. All pursed up in that way.
There was a long silence.
I stared at the Puppet Man. What was he trying to pull. We locked eyes, his bright and moronic, mine narrow as Lavendar’s.
I cased him.
I waited for him to crack.
He waited for me, I realized suddenly, to ask the questions I’d indicated were stewing in my brain.
Vital questions, yes. For the edification, yes, of the organization.
I don’t know what Binelli tells these people.
—Can you, I said,—bring the Puppets out. Slowly.
He nodded, lips still all one smashed into the other like a bloody trainwreck above his chin.
—You can speak, I said.—Please.
—I just get very excited, yes. My family, he waved his hand grandly through the air, as though surrounded by teeming hordes of relations,—they do not understand. Or, they’re quite clever, they understand, I misspoke. They do not, he groped what might have been Dame Uppal’s left breast, if she’d been in the room and standing just so,—care.
His eyes lost none of their luster so I spent not a shred of sympathy on the Puppet Man right then at that moment. Many people care not for many things.
I care not for Puppets, as I’ve made clear.
I cared not particularly for the Puppet Man either, but in not the same way. In that I had no reason to loathe or fear the Puppet Man.
I had reason to loathe and fear Puppets.
I had reason also no doubt to loathe Russians, but that reason was locked away. The Puppets I remembered. The Puppet encounter from which emerged my loathing toward and fearing of Puppets happened in the stretch of time since I’d emerged from the silence, and for this stretch of time I have an excellent memory.
Elephantine, one could say.
If one were in the habit of comparing persons to pachyderms.
Which I am not.
The Puppet Man directed my attention to what I might have up until then assumed, if I were the assuming type, to be a window, being curtained. Which I am not.
The assuming type. Not curtained.
Which I am not, either.
Neither curtained nor assuming, that is.
Nor unduly suspicious of inanimate objects unless, for instance, those objects are of a sudden imbued with animation and grow and contort with a grotesquerie last known in this world during, what, the reign of the gods? So suspicious, yes, but not unduly so, when one is walking down a crowded street of a scaffolded town on a Sunday morning, just taking an hour away from focused Investigating to have a bit of air, find a shrimp, get oneself refreshed, and one doesn’t right off the bat notice the ropes and pulleys, the teams of struggling Puppet Men trying to keep their unruly charges at bay.
—Are you talking about the Parade again, Murphy said.
—It is difficult, I said,—to write an accurate yet gripping report with the frequent interruptions.
The Puppets had been many in hue and shape and girth and demeanor, similar only in an unwavering maniacal hovering. Looming.
—I’m not sure, Murphy said,—that those would even be considered officially Puppets.
Murphy had found me a bit later that particular Sunday morning in an alleyway, sharing a canteen of something resembling hinge-oil with someone who resembled a chimney sweep.
—I was not aware, I said,—that you were here in the capacity of an official representative of the Federation Against the Defamation and/or Misidentification of Puppets. If this is, I said,—indeed the case, might I suggest you write up your own report. We can each be quite silent and write our reports on Investigations and Puppets respectively.
—You’re not even writing about the Investigation, Murphy said. He rattled his pockets with great agitation.—That Parade was years ago. You wouldn’t even have remembered it if Binelli hadn’t assigned you to Puppets.
—I remember, I said,—everything, despite the fact of almost constant and purposeless interruption, without which in this case I would have long since finished recounting the fact of Mr.—Professor—Uppal’s Puppets, which is certainly about this Investigation, presumably the entirety of this Investigation, as you seem to have little enough to do with this Investigation that you’re able to spend your time here interrupting me.
—You remember everything, Murphy said, with exaggerated incredulity.—You.
He jangled furiously.
The curtain in question was red, in keeping with the study’s overall décor, and there seemed to be light emanating from behind it, in the manner of the outdoors. Even if one were not generally the assuming type, one might very well have, not assumed, per se, but deduced, in the logical and observant fashion as befits certain logical and observant professions, that the curtain hung before a window that hung before the outdoors. Each keeping the next at bay.
I would not have faulted someone for assuming this, at any rate.
The Puppet Man paused before the curtain.
I blinked, anticipating sun.
Then, with my eyes already streaming anticipatory tears, I pulled a pair of enormous aviator-style sunglasses from an enormous hidden pocket secretly located upon my person and donned them.
Some tears dribbled to my chin.
The Puppet Man gave me a look that wondered if I was quite ready, and though he couldn’t see it behind my enormous aviator-style sunglasses, I responded with a look that affirmed yes, I was ready, ready as I’d ever be.
He pulled away the great red curtain.
20
Behind the curtain was a tiny stage, held up by the sort of stilts that can be found propping up precariously located oceanfront homes. These stilts held up the little stage so that it hovered at about eye level to a grown human being.
I am, despite my countless other shortcomings, a grown human being.
There’s that, at least, going for me.
I should clarify the tinyness of the tiny stage. It was tiny in the vertical sense, in that it did not go up very high. But it was in relation to its short vertical stature large in the horizontal sense, in that it had quite a wingspan. It was a tiny town suffering from suburban sprawl. None of the grandeur of cityscapes, no, but