Dark Mondays Page 10

  Katherine sat reading the letter over, uncertain how she ought to feel. She had a momentary vision of red taillights winking, receding, leaving her in darkness.

  Mama. Bette Jean was staring at her, and one little white hand beat against the blanket with a motion like a leaf fluttering. Mama!

  Katherine went into one of her trunks for writing paper and a pen. She began to write, hesitantly at first and then swiftly, with decision.

  * * *

  Mother sent the money. Katherine made it easy on Bert; it was only for the child’s health, after all. She needed a warmer climate. They both knew it would end in a divorce, but the word had lost its power over Katherine. Bert was so relieved he became kind, attentive, made the last days almost nice.

  * * *

  The journey was interminable on the train, but her heart was singing the whole way. Bette Jean sat propped beside her, in her best dress. With her tiny feet stuck out before her in their patent leather shoes, she looked more like a doll than ever. She whooped and moaned in excitement, staring at everything, fascinated; and the silent voice kept up its running commentary too. Mama, nice! Mama happy now? They came into California and Katherine felt as though she’d escaped into her books at last, because it all looked like a Maxfield Parrish illustration: the smooth golden hills crowned with stately oak trees, the glimpses of Spanish-style houses with their red tiled roofs and white walls, the green acres of orange trees in blossom. The fragrance came through the windows of the train for miles.

  “We’re going to Hollywood, Bette Jean!” Katherine told her. “We’ll see all the movie stars. We’ll be together, and we’ll never be cold anymore, and this is such a beautiful place, don’t you think? Are we about to have adventures?”

  There was a wordless sense of affirmation. Bette Jean’s little face was slack, her limbs useless; but her thoughtful soul looked out and wondered. What was so strange in the idea that she might have found some way to communicate? In a world so full of heartbreak and disappointments, why not indulge in a little irrational hope?

  As they neared the station, the porter came to see if she’d need any help getting Bette Jean down to the platform.

  “Well, hello, Miss Big Eyes!” he said, bending to look into Bette Jean’s face. “My goodness, that baby’s got pretty eyes.”

  “Thank you,” said Katherine, smiling.

  “My sister’s boy was born like her,” he said, standing straight and pulling down Katherine’s suitcase.

  Katherine started to say, Oh, I’m so sorry. She paused and said: “They’re a blessing from God, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, ma’am, they surely are,” the porter replied. “And I surely believe they’re sent down here to Earth for a good reason.”

  Katherine stepped down from the train, with her daughter and her suitcase. She had come to the land where miracles happened to ordinary people. She lifted Bette Jean to her shoulder and walked away down the platform, into the sunlight.

  OH, FALSE YOUNG MAN!

  “Push that lighter over here, will you, Dick?” said Madame Rigby, out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Right away, ma’am,” said her assistant, hopping up from his workbench. Four paces from Madame Rigby’s chair stood a squat column on casters, the top of which was surmounted by the little tin figure of a grinning devil, standing amid a heap of painted coals. “May I wind him for you?”

  “Sure,” said Madame Rigby, not looking up from her task.

  Dick pushed the column within her easy reach and, fitting a crank into its socket just under the devil’s left hoof, wound it three or four times. The devil shivered briskly, as though waking; then, tilting its head and winking once, it thrust its pitchfork out. There was an audible click and a tiny jet of flame danced on the centermost tine of the fork.

  Dick, who had not worked for Madame Rigby very long, applauded in delight. Madame Rigby scarcely noticed; she merely leaned over until the tip of her cigarette touched the flame. Two or three puffs obscured her in smoke; when it cleared, Dick saw that she was once again preoccupied with the work before her.

  “It’s looking very nice, ma’am,” he said. “Makes you wonder how so much dust could get into a sealed glass case, though, doesn’t it?”

  “Mm,” she said.

  The object of his admiration was a glass-fronted box, fully six feet long and eighteen inches high, resting on a wooden case of roughly the same size. It was a mechanical diorama, a set of six miniature tableaux. The style of clothing worn by the tiny manikins within made it plain the thing had been built some twenty years earlier; that, and the dust, and the faded paint.

  However, all was being made new by Madame Rigby. Scene by scene, the dust was being cleaned away with diminutive sponges; the wax faces of the dolls given fresh and lifelike tints with a delicate brush. Already the first scene in the little play, He Comes A-Courting, glowed like an immortal memory.

  It depicted a clock shop, with its walls lined with clocks of all descriptions, and when the scene was in motion all the little hands must have spun round and round on the dial faces, and pendulums rocked to and fro. A tiny calendar gave the month and year as January 1880. Through a rear doorway was represented an horologist’s workbench, at which a lean, old man sat, peering through a jeweler’s loupe at a gold watch. His neck was clearly jointed to permit his head to nod.

  In the showroom, however, a petite beauty stood behind the counter. She wore midnight blue satin with a bustle and train, and her upswept chignon and ringlets were a glossy black, rather as Madame Rigby’s might have once been. The object of her smiling attention was the handsome young man before the counter, whose jointed arm was raised to his hat; clearly he was meant to sweep it from his head and bow to her.

  Beneath the second scene was painted He Vows To Be True. Here the same little man stood in a painted representation of a front parlor, and by the action of a pin and lever in his jointed leg might well be made to kneel before the little beauty, whose hand was placed in his. His neck was cleverly jointed as well, and perhaps enabled the head to drop forward upon the beloved’s hand when he knelt, in imitation of a kiss.

  It was plain that the painted furnishings behind this demonstration of affection were meant to represent a certain threadbare gentility. And what could the artist have meant to imply, by showing a lady’s boudoir so plainly through the painted arch to the rear of the room? And was that a gentleman’s waistcoat, finely embroidered, draped over the foot of the bed?

  The third scene was Upon Reflection He Grows Cold, and here was another public location: an expanse of painted lawn, and in the background an admirable representation of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, with the delicate tracery of its spires and glittering dome. Charming; less so was the action in the foreground, where the young man stood stiffly upright. His face was turned from the young lady, his left hand extended in a gesture of repulsion that would become more emphatic when the forearm rose and dropped, as its jointed elbow clearly permitted it to do.

  The young lady’s arms were jointed too; they must permit her to raise them in a beseeching motion. She clutched a handkerchief no bigger than a postage stamp. Infinitesimal tears were painted on her pale cheeks. And could the dollmaker have really meant to present the young lady in a gown cut so loosely about the waist? What a shocking implication!

  The next scene, He Seeks a Wealthy Bride, showed the little gentleman at the seaside; he wore a straw hat, and the flush of sunburn on his cheeks was very well rendered. He stood with his hands in his pockets on the gray sand, apparently one of a party. Here, seated upon a checkered cloth, were three dolls, two meant to represent a well-to-do older couple; or so one might assume from the expanse of the old man’s waistcoat with its gleaming golden watch chain, and the ostentation of the old woman’s hat, and the richness of the painted wine, cake and roast chicken in the miniature picnic basket between them. The third doll was clearly their golden-haired daughter, smiling up at the young man without expression in her
great, flat blue eyes.

  In the distance behind them rose Cliff House, not Sutro’s splendid castle, but the little boxy structure that had been there before it; and if one looked very carefully one might spot the tiny, woeful figure in midnight blue, standing poised on its parapet as though she were about to jump into the saw-edged wooden waves—a proceeding sure to grind her to a pinch of sad dust, were they moving back and forth on their respective tracks, as presently they were not. The artificial perspective made it difficult to ascertain the young lady’s condition, but managed to suggest a reason for her desperation.

  The fifth scene was titled Oh, False Young Man! Here was the interior of a grand church, seen through its open door; perhaps Grace Church. Real painted glass had been used in the windows, and perhaps there was an electric lamp behind them when the mechanism was switched on. If so, this would backlight the tiny, tiny figures of the groom and his golden-haired bride, standing one step below the tinier minister all in black, holding an open prayerbook.

  All this through the door; without, on the church steps, sat the wretched doll in midnight blue, bowed forward in a transport of grief. Her body was jointed at its unmistakable waist; when she rocked back and forward, as she must, and raised her handkerchief and lowered it, there could be no question of her particular sorrow.

  The sixth and final scene was titled She Meditates upon Her Vengeance, but was represented at present by a bare and dusty void, into which gears and wires protruded. Madame Rigby had removed the little scene which once occupied the space, and it sat unrestored to her left: a graveyard by night, with a solemn moon casting blue radiance over the doll in mourning black. She stood beside an infant’s grave, with her clasped hands lifted as in prayer. A black cat, perched on one of the tombstones, arched its jointed back when in motion; perhaps its glass eyes were lit from within too. Hinges on certain of the tomb lids suggested that the spectral occupants might emerge to regard the young lady’s anguish.

  All this was being replaced, however, by a new final scene: the shabby front parlor once again, and the doll in midnight blue seated by a cradle containing a peanut-sized bundle in swaddling clothes. The doll held in her hand the finely embroidered waistcoat, last seen forgotten on the foot of the bed. Her face had been painted with a distinct expression of bitter regret. Madame Rigby, reaching in with a pair of long-nosed pliers, threaded a wire between the doll’s foot and the cradle’s front rocker and twisted its end to fasten it in place.

  “That’ll do it,” she muttered, and felt under the scene’s floor for the wire’s other end. She tugged experimentally; the doll’s foot tapped, and the cradle rocked to and fro.

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, ma’am, but I’m awfully glad you’re taking out the old ending,” said Dick. “It’s just too unbearably sad.”

  Madame Rigby cocked an eye at him. “You think so, do you?” she said, as she slid the new scene into place. “What a lot you men find unbearable.”

  “I guess that’s true, ma’am,” said Dick, abashed. He opened the front of the lower case for her, in order that she might connect the wires into the greater mechanism. A second’s careful work with the pliers, and it was done. Madame Rigby leaned back; Dick closed up the case, felt in his pocket for a slug nickel, and dropped it in the coin slot on the left side.

  Six little curtains dropped, like window shades. Then each one rose in succession, revealing the respective scenes properly lit and animated. The tiny drama played out to its tragic end. The lamps extinguished themselves; the curtains dropped once more.

  “You men,” repeated Madame Rigby, with a hoarse chuckle, and added a word seldom heard in polite society. Dick blushed and hung his head; then attempted a witticism to restore his composure.

  “Why, it’s true we’re not perfect creatures. Maybe you’ll improve on the original design with Mr. Waxwork, over there.”

  “Ahhh! You bet,” said Madame Rigby. She smiled, and pushed herself up from the bench, and went to a cabinet at the far end of the workroom. It was plain that if she had ever once resembled the doll in midnight blue, the years had made alterations; she was thickset now, bespectacled, gray-haired. But there was a certain vigorous pleasure in her step as she approached the cabinet and threw it open. She beamed with pride at what was disclosed within, and Dick caught his breath.

  Anyone seeing the occupant of the cabinet for the first time might be excused for thinking they beheld a living youth, interrupted perhaps on his way to the bath, for he was loosely draped in a sheet. Every limb, every hair and eyelash, were perfect counterfeits; the human form was here presented with a degree of perfection unknown since Praxiteles. Yet this was no marble image of snow. The bloom of robust health was in the image’s cheeks, his thick hair was black and glossy as a raven’s wing. His eyes were a dark blue—one might almost say a midnight blue—and gleamed as though with intelligence and ready wit.

  “Gracious, ma’am! When did you put in those eyes? He had ’em closed, last time I peeped in the cabinet!” said Dick.

  “So you peeped, did you?” Madame Rigby scowled at him. “You’re a regular Pandora! The eyes are lenses, you see? There’re little shutters in his head, on timers. You must have stolen your look at night.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It was when I’d come up to turn off the lights, before going out to dinner.”

  “Well, mind I don’t catch you prying where you’re not asked again; or I’ll fire you, and I mean business, mister! That young wise-ass from the Polytechnic College thought he knew a trick or two Eudora Rigby didn’t; but I guess I showed him,” she said. She took a last pull on her cigarette, dropped it to the floor and crushed it out with her foot.

  “Oh, no, ma’am, I’d never presume!” Dick protested. “It was only that I felt such an admiration of your work! I’ve never seen anything to beat this fellow.”

  “Haven’t you?” Madame Rigby looked at him sidelong. “Well, here’s an eyeful for you!”

  She pulled the sheet away, and laughed heartily when Dick turned scarlet with embarrassment.

  “Oh, my hat!” Dick averted his gaze; then, unable to resist, looked again on the figure’s generous perfection with a certain horrified envy.

  “The human form improved,” said Madame Rigby, in complacent satisfaction. There came a rap on the door, and she swiftly covered the figure once more and shut the cabinet. “That’ll be the moving van fellows! Let ’em in.”

  Dick obeyed, and two hulking men in overalls and brogans stepped into the room, removing their caps.

  “ ’Morning, ma’am. We’re here to see Mr. Rigby, about his exhibition?” said the elder of the two.

  “That’s Madame Rigby, and it’s my exhibition, my good man,” said she, tapping her foot briskly. She waved her hand at the crates piled against the wall. “This all goes to Cliff House. Fourth floor, Gallery Hall, see? I’ll want you today and Thursday too. Make it snappy!”

  * * *

  Thursday evening Madame Rigby returned to the hotel where her workshop was presently housed. She was followed by Dick, who was drooping with exhaustion, having worked all day at setting up the exhibits. She unlocked the door, entered, and stood looking around her in satisfaction at the absence of packing crates.

  “Now we’ll see, by God,” she said. She went to the table and rolled herself a cigarette, and the obliging little devil lit it for her.

  “Oh, no!” said Dick. “We’ve gone and forgotten Mr. Waxwork!”

  He went cautiously to the cabinet and opened it. There stood the figure as before, but with its eyes closed. As Dick watched, however, some inner mechanism reacted to the light of the street lamp falling upon the face; the eyes flew open, and appeared to view Dick’s consternation with gentle amusement.

  “I haven’t either forgotten him,” said Madame Rigby. “Why, he’s the main attraction, boy!”

  “But we’ll have to hire another van to get him out to Cliff House,” said Dick.

  “Tut-tut! A cab will do perfectly well,” said M
adame Rigby, smiling as she exhaled smoke through her nose.

  “I suppose. Still… that’ll be some job for you and me, carrying him up all those stairs. He must weigh a couple of hundred pounds,” said Dick.

  “Two hundred and nine,” said Madame Rigby. “But we won’t be carrying him, you fool. He’ll walk up on his own, as easily as you or I.”

  “Walk!” cried Dick, delighted and astonished. “Why, you don’t mean he’s an automaton too? Like your spinet-playing girl, or the two little boys that write and draw? Or the old Turk who deals cards?”

  “Ah! Those? Toys, all of them,” said Madame Rigby, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Early lessons. No more complicated than clocks. This fellow’s the real goods. My masterwork, and no fooling. And he’ll do the job—you’ll see.”

  “Holy Moses,” said Dick. “What will he do, ma’am?”

  “Let’s start him up, and I’ll show you,” said Madame Rigby. She went to a side table, where there stood a decanter of some colorless liquid. Drawing a long funnel from a drawer, she took it with the decanter to her creation, and tapped gently at his mouth. He parted his lips; Dick had a glimpse of white teeth and pink tongue, rather than the hollow of steel frame and silk lining he had expected. Madame Rigby thrust the funnel in, and poured the liquid down the automaton’s gurgling throat—or down a pipe, Dick supposed, into some unseen tank.

  “Invented this fuel myself,” said Madame Rigby proudly. “One part cod-liver oil, one part Paris Lilacs parfum, and eight parts gin. He’ll run a week on a bellyful of this.”

  “I should say he would,” said Dick. “I think I would too.”

  “There now, my darling; that’ll set you up,” said Madame Rigby, with a tenderness in her voice Dick had never before heard. “Your day has come at last! Time to make Mama proud of you.”

  She withdrew a curious long key from her reticule, and thrust it up the automaton’s left nostril. She turned it smartly. There was a click, and she withdrew the key. Dick half-expected to see the figure shiver with disgust, and clutch his nose; but he only began to breathe, or rather to go through the motions of breathing.