The Curfew - Jesse Ball [24]
Cries went up behind him. There were three, no, four of them. They were gaining. The black ground sped past him. Lights whirred in the distance.
—There he is.
They were on either side. He ran into the park, and down a path. The dim, glowing bulbs of the park seemed to multiply shadows. He might do it. He might get away. Then, onto uneven ground, a moment, a moment, and then his feet were out from under him. The violin case was lost, it, too, was in the air, and then he hit the ground. The papers were gone. A second later and a body crashed into him, pinning him. Where had the papers gone? He struggled to get free.
—He’s here. I’ve got him. Here.
Rough hands were on him, and a great deal of weight. William lay, lungs heaving, face cut from the fall. He could not even see the people who had caught him. This was the sort of war they were in.
—I must get home. My daughter. I, I fell asleep. I didn’t realize what time it was. I was working late.
There was no response.
He said it again,
—I must get home. I have a child.
—No one is out now who doesn’t mean to be.
It was an awful voice. It gave nothing beyond itself.
—I, I beg you.
William tried to turn off his stomach, but the man pressed down harder. He could hardly breathe.
—The others will be here soon.
The hands that bent his own arm down into his back must belong to that voice, but for all that he knew, it could have come from anywhere. There was a creaking high up in the branches of the trees, and it would continue through the long night. It meant nothing, just that the wind was blowing. The action of a thing is the same as the naming of it—is, in fact, the real name. The trees creak and they are saying, trees creak through the long night. The long night—what is it? Trees creaking. There wasn’t anything that tied life’s moments together, except life. And when it was gone?
They were finishing their painting of the figures. They had been hours at it, or mostly Mr. Gibbons, who was an expert, and could fix a figure at a moment’s notice and with no effort whatsoever. Meanwhile, Molly wrote the dialogue, the scenes, and slipped them back and forth for Mr. Gibbons’s approval. They were doing it backwards as he had said, backwards, except for the final scene. It was the compromise they had reached.
There was a mouse whose face had been given the features of Molly, a mouse dressed in a yellow slip.
There was a man and he had been cleverly painted. He really did look like William, and Molly said as much.
Two bird-puppets bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons.
A wolf with a crown had been Molly’s final, and most difficult, choice. She had run back to her apartment to fetch a photograph from her father’s desk. Now it was a she-wolf, in a long dress, and it looked like Molly’s mother.
*I don’t remember her very well.
—That’s all right. You remember who she was, and your father has spoken of her.
*He told me all about her.
—I know he has.
And so the work continued.
—The motion of the puppets, Mr. Gibbons explained, is too complicated to teach now. You will have to be satisfied with my doing it. After all, you wrote it all down, everything, and I understand it well. I have the voices as they are, and for the Molly-marionette, we have the boards.
There were boards on which was written each portion of the dialogue of Molly’s puppet. They would slide out at the appropriate time.
Molly had been so caught up in the preparations for the play that she was astonished to find, when she turned around, that many of the seats of the theater were now full. Mrs. Gibbons had placed life-size puppets of various kinds throughout.
—Every theater, said Mr. Gibbons, must have an audience, no matter how small.
The lights dimmed.
—Seats, everyone.
Molly sat in the front. The theater rose up before her and engaged her entire field of view. A fine curtain hung across it. Gilt edges ran the length through the poised air. The wood was painted in expectation