Almost Insentient, Almost Divine Read online

  We hope to count you amongst our humble fraternity. Please return the finished puppet to the enclosed address as soon as you have completed her, in whatever timeframe is necessary.

  Yours sincerely,

  The Pütershein Authority

  Stanley ran his calloused and gnarled fingers across the fine cream parchment paper; broken though they were with the work of wood, metal and fabric they had evolved through patient and dedicated craft solely for the detection of quality, and beauty. It was the finest paper he had ever touched, thick and durable, yet silken and smooth. He caught sight of the watermark in the gentle morning light that illuminated his workbench. It was a familiar figure to him—Pulcinella, intricately rendered in the trace of luminous lines glowing strangely within the paper; his distended belly and hunched back (that looked more like a great fin, so exaggerated was it), and that ridiculous crooked hat, hooked nose and those absurd, spindly legs, and, of course, his ominous stick. How many times had he brought this little being into existence before the excited screams of children and the uneasy laughter of their parents.Yes, the rebellious Mr Punch. And how many of those little Punches, along with all of his extended family of characters, had Stanley fashioned over the years, for fellow professors? He had always returned to that peculiar, traditional show, and had performed it on beaches and at festivals across the country. As the tides of death gathered steadily within his beloved Dorothy he had squandered his hours with a glove puppet, all for the nostalgic evocation of a vanishing world.

  Returning from self-pity he sighed and thought to himself what a kind gesture this group had made. They must think a lot of his work, although how they had come to know of it he really couldn’t fathom. Few knew of his puppets, save from the dwindling band of other puppeteers that used him. Someone must have passed his details on, Stanley surmised. He chuckled, it sounded a bit like one of those secret societies, like the Freemasons; The Pütershein Authority, he said in a booming bass voice, with outrageous melodrama. Perhaps this was his initiation—how silly!

  Anyway, with a smile on his face he looked over the plans for “Lilith”. It was rare to encounter such detailed designs. The drawings themselves were works of art, let alone the puppet they proposed—for always Stanley’s mind had been able to translate even the most basic of diagrams into a three dimensions within moments of study. But this, this was nothing short of remarkable. Every pinion and joint, each careful curve of wooden limb, drop of string and knot of assembly seemed so perfectly calculated that he could almost see the thing dancing in his mind. And Lilith was indeed the most appropriate name for her. She was a powerful temptress. Wooden she may have been, but in every element she spoke of perfection, her movements more sure of absolute command than anything he had previously seen, or heard of.

  He made a start on her immediately, bringing the delicate curvature of her back and the intimate suggestion of her breasts into being. It seemed that the wood was with him, its grain bending and relenting beneath the precision of his chisel and the gentle caress of the graded planes and rasps he set to work with.

  The figure comprised many separate wooden components, each of which Stanley dutifully manufactured according to the specifications laid out for him in the incredibly detailed plans. What seemed significant, already, was the simplicity of the pieces he was constructing. So far, only the upper torso in any way resembled a being of any kind. Even the hands seemed somewhat indistinct, approximating, he thought, a pair of mittens without apparent fingers.

  After the first two days had elapsed, with long hours spent working long into the night at his workbench, he had finished the basic wooden elements and could attempt a first construction through the elaborate stringing mechanism proposed. Even the control jig was far advanced in its design, but spoke of simplicity and organicity that meant that just holding it, even without the puppet attached, felt natural and comforting.

  The next stroke of genius, Stanley discovered, lay in the threading of the thorax, abdomen and pelvis, through a spinal cord offset by two free-running cords anchored in the pelvis and playing through screw-eyes beneath the shoulders. Then, once strung and anchored to the thighs, the wooden blocks of the torso—which had seemed so abstract—took on the posture and gait of a young woman. It seemed strange to him that the designer, who must have been an incredibly gifted puppeteer and craftsman, had not wished to make the puppet himself. There is no way, Stanley thought, that he would have given such a task over to another, however good their work might have been.

  The whole puppet was balanced through the head strings which held it upright, with slack shoulder strings to take up the weight as the head moved to give expression—and what expression! For, despite possessing only the most rudimentary of features, she seemed so capable of suggesting emotion through even the simplest of inclinations of the head, or shoulders. Again, the quality of the design further revealed itself once the hands were attached to the forearm by a free joint, and then fixed to the control jig. The expressivity in something of such basic form was extraordinary. Even the feet, anchored in similar manner, but without control strings, were capable of precise angle, purely through the weight of the limbs and the structure of the trunk that kept all points of support along a single plane. Stanley imagined he might even be able to make her tap-dance, so perfect were the controls.

  Three feverish days had passed. Stanley was exhausted. He left Lilith upon a holding beam to prevent her strings becoming tangled and he attended to the neglected house and its interminable chores.

  The following morning, after an unusually long sleep, he carefully twisted her strings, wrapping them in tissue paper and tying them with twine, to avoid tangles, and then folded her limbs in bubble wrap and more tissue, before making a suitable package for her to be sent through the post to the address provided by The Pütershein Authority. This whole process filled him with sadness, even though he had begun the day buoyed with the thrill of having made her.

  He thought of Dorothy and her coffin again.

  Over the next week things got slowly back to normal. He caught up with some bookings that were left on the answerphone, whilst he had been immersed in the intensity of making Lilith. He caught up too with Sean Nevill, who had been invited out to Eastern Europe to tour his “Dark Designs” show, the puppets for which Stanley had made.

  It was about a week later that the postman rang the bell with a small, and rather battered package. The full postage hadn’t been paid and so he had to pay an extra three pounds, but he’d recognised the writing on the front and was intrigued.

  It was from The Pütershein Authority. The letter inside read,

  Dear Stanley,

  We’re delighted that you have made such efforts for us in such a short time. Truly, this is an incredible feat. The quality of materials you have used and the care you have taken to follow our plans is to be commended. Please find herein the agreed payment, in cash, for your work.

  However, you will also find, as no doubt you have already discovered, the puppet itself. We have decided, following some initial rehearsals, that she is rather too complex for our performance, and we require some further changes to her stringing, the joint constructions etc., all of which you will find detailed in the enclosed documents.

  Obviously we will be happy to compensate you for this further work, at a similar rate to that offered previously.

  Yours sincerely,

  The Pütershein Authority

  The letter was not written on expensive paper this time. It was typed, with a fading ribbon, on cheap white copy paper.

  Inside the package, wrapped in an old rag, was a thousand pounds in well-used twenty pound notes (a quite incredible amount) and a forlorn looking puppet. He lifted the crumpled Lilith from the flimsy box. She hung limply in his hand, like a dead pet rescued from the roadside. Her strings were badly tangled and her arms and hands seemed, however he held her, to fall across her face, suggesting an expression of pain, or anguish—or no, was it a sort of shame? />
  It was certainly not unusual for a puppet, even an important character puppet, to serve a single purpose, or even a limited series of functions. They were always made in a manner that addressed the needs of their role within the show. But to reduce this puppet, his Lilith, to such a thing, seemed outrageous, even insulting. Why commission such a flawless piece and then have it vandalised—for such it would be—by such degeneration of her capabilities?

  How ridiculous, Stanley thought.

  As attached as he was to the puppet—and he had become so with many of his creations over the years—it was still just a puppet: wood, wire, and string, and only that! This was just another job. The customer wasn’t satisfied and he’d have to rework it. It was as simple as that. After all, they weren’t even quibbling about paying more. It was their design and he’d have to make the changes until they were satisfied. He’d set to work on it straight away, after all there couldn’t be that much they wanted doing.

  Beneath the puppet there was a crumpled piece of tracing paper, upon which had been written the modifications they wanted.

  Firstly he was to remove the legs.

  Remove the legs! The whole balance of the puppet would be ruined. Her whole upper frame relied on the weight of the lower limbs to give it structure—that was the whole point of the first design which, and especially now that he saw her again, was ingenious.

  Secondly, a crude weight was to be attached to the pelvis—they suggested a heavy coin—so that she should drag along the ground, with the right hand to be pinned to her forehead to suggest mourning or woe. The left arm was to be made rigid by the use of metal pins and then fixed at the shoulder. The only remaining moving feature of the strings should therefore be the roll of the head and the slope of the shoulders, all other strings were now redundant; the control jig to be suitably reworked and limited to this effect.

  Stanley was amazed. How could they want to do such a thing?

  So infuriated was he that he wrote back to them this time to query the proposed changes.

  The letter he received from them, by return, was not what he was expecting.

  Dear Stanley,

  I suggest you don’t contact us here again in this manner. Either you can do the required modifications to her, or you can’t. You let us know which it is by sending her back to us with, or without, the repairs. If it’s the latter then we’ll have to find someone capable of making what we consider to be perfectly reasonable and—for God’s sake—rather simple changes.

  We expect the puppet returned, as per current specifications, as soon as you can complete it. I wouldn’t have reckoned you’re inundated with work are you, eh? An old puppeteer whose travelling days are over and done with. I’d have thought you’d be glad of the money!

  Yours impatiently,

  The PA

  It was days before Stanley mustered the courage for the first part of the modifications, which had taken on the import of major surgery in his mind. He snipped the legs off with some scissors.

  A day or so later he managed the minor modification and rethreading of the left torso cord that drew her body into a leaning pose.

  As more days went by, some in pained inertia, others completing elements of the alterations, he seemed to drift into an odd reality, where his dreams (day or night ceased to have any real meaning) played with the graceful movements of the once magnificent Lilith.

  What he refused to do was pin her left arm and shoulder. This he also left attached to the jig, so that she was still able to offer a little expression in her abject movement across the floor. It was the least he could do, to give some agency to her sorrowful crawl.

  He packaged her up and sent her on her way.

  Returning from the post office he sat at the kitchen table and felt he had committed some terrible crime. He shook with fear and guilt. He paced the house. He walked the garden, desperately attempting to put from his mind the significance of what he had done, all for money. He had betrayed his trade. But worse, he had betrayed the soul of Lilith.

  Again, the absurdity of his thoughts struck him and he resolved to put his mind to some much needed housework.

  In the dusty and forgotten lounge his answering machine was flashing at him. He recalled how many times he had heard it ring over the last few weeks until it had finally fallen silent a few days ago. The tape was full of show bookings, most of them over two months old, and many past the proposed date. Could it really have been this long that he had been working on these alterations to Lilith?

  Interspersed between the messages about shows there were others, from friends and relatives, enquiring as to his welfare and also from fellow puppeteers keen to have repairs made, or arrange to meet up and discuss new projects. The following morning he’d have to attend to all those messages; he couldn’t face it now.

  He was awoken by the postman, at nearly midday. Another package had arrived, with a set of small denomination stamps half covering its surface. Attached to it, with a single strip of tape was a used envelope with the previous address scribbled out savagely in red biro and his own alongside it in bold capitals. Inside the envelope was a folded out packet of B&H cigarettes written on the back of which was,

  Look here, Stan, you useless idiot! This really is the last time. We warned you—or, we thought we’d warned you—in the last letter. Do you know how busy we are here? Do you have any idea of what effort and sacrifice it takes to run a network of this kind?

  What are you trying to do to her? This isn’t bloody rocket science. You had detailed instructions. You did not follow them, that’s clear enough. Why are you trying to give this thing false life—you’re not fucking Geppetto, you know! Just make the puppet! Follow our simplified alterations. Let us do the rest. Your bumbling “improvements” are surplus to requirements!

  The alterations were far from “detailed” though. They read simply, in scrawled and angry marker pen, “ERASE FEATURES. ERASE FORM. ERADICATE INDIVIDUALITY.”

  He had no will left to resist. He followed their instructions. With gouge, chisel, saw and rasp he set to work upon the remains of the once wonderful Lilith.

  *

  The authorities—that is to say, the “proper” authorities—assumed that Stanley Headingley had suffered a stroke at his workbench.

  His bleeding hands, lacerated with a hundred tiny cuts from the blood-stained tools that were strewn across the bench, and studded with shards of wooden splinters, were evidence though of a mind that had sunk into the depths of madness. He must have spent hours working on the puppet on the table, one of the police officers in attendance said, observantly. And such intense effort had been the cause of his attack, answered one of the paramedics, with a professional air.

  The case was solved to their satisfaction.

  They both looked at the puppet. There was little left but a blood-stained stick, wrapped in dirty rags. Had it not been so grotesque it might have belonged in a nursery school art class. The head had been fashioned from a block of wood that had been whittled down to a ball no bigger than a walnut, its surface cracked and fractured from random chisel blows, with great chunks of shavings hanging from it. The face, if such it could be called, had been crudely drawn in with felt-tip marker pens, the eyes lop-sided, the mouth a gash of bright, vulgar red. The ridiculous nose was moulded from a lump of blu-tac, the monstrous hair a crumpled brillo-pad. They looked pityingly back over at Stanley, whose arms hung uselessly at the side of the wheelchair they had lifted him into.

  “It’s a shame, I bet he was quite good at making them once,” one said.

  “Yes, it’s very sad, very, very sad,” the other replied.

  Stanley looked up at them, almost insentient, almost divine.

  A Delicate Craft

  His first months in England had been prosperous, maybe even the first couple of years. There was plenty of work, too much really. He had, regrettably, had to turn people away. If only there were so much now. Early on he had regularly sent money home to his mother in Białysto
k and even to his sister in Łodz. But, now that he was forced to make do with seasonal jobs picking vegetables on local farms, he could barely pay for his little room, with its increasing bills, in the house that he had shared with his four friends that had come over with him from their homeland, back in 2006.

  They were all capable tradespeople. Bogdan was the plumber among them and they always joked that he would be the first one to make his million pounds. For most of those couple of years they had worked on construction sites around Nottingham and across Leicestershire. They were a happy team and the regular money, from a decent employer, provided them a good life.

  That all ended with the recession. Then, early in 2009, Tomasz, the plasterer, was caught up in a fight in the city centre, whilst trying to protect two girls from what turned out to be their boyfriends. He ended up with a broken bottle through the back of his neck and would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his days. When his family came over to collect him he asked Bogdan to promise him that when he called, to say he’d had enough, Bogdan would fly back to Poland and put a pillow over his face. Thankfully the call had not yet come, and besides he couldn’t afford the flight ticket anymore.

  Piotr, the electrician, was the next to leave, in 2010. His wife, who had stayed at home in Bydgoszcz, was pregnant and he’d decided that he’d rather bring his child up at home, now that the decent work had dried up. “Nie zamierzam zbierać kapusty do końca życia,” he’d said, “pozwól im wybrać własne warzywa albo głodować, nie obchodzi mnie które.” Maybe he’d been right, Bogdan often thought.