WE FILED into the school theater chattering with nerves. The volume increased when we were handed pens at the entrance and informed that choices made in pencil would not be accepted. When we sat down nobody removed their coats or bags; everybody was ready to evacuate immediately. Poor Radha and Gustav . . . their performance was merely something to sit through as we got ready for our shocks or our pieces of cheese.
Gustav’s puppet troupe was already onstage, seated on chairs with their backs to us. Brunhild the shipbuilder was tallest of them, and I could see the top of her head. There was a strangeness in the way that head was positioned: I accept that this is an almost meaningless thing to say about the posture of a puppet, which is intrinsically all sorts of strange. But still. I began to mention this to Radha, but Tyche and Rowan sat down beside us and I thought better of it. Tyche asked Radha which card she’d got: shock or piece of cheese? Radha smiled very sweetly and said, “Wait and see,” and Gustav walked onstage to the sound of TLC’s “No Scrubs.” As he did the puppets’ chairs turned, and after that everything compressed into a split second; we saw that every single one of the puppets’ throats had been slashed wide open so that they erupted strings; they’d been hacked at so savagely that even those internal strings were cut. And when Gustav saw them he lost consciousness. He didn’t collapse, exactly—it was more as if he’d been dropped from a height. He fell plank straight, and without making a sound, and that fall of his was just as unreal to us as the glazed eyes with which the puppets onstage surveyed their own innards. Their expressions were the kind that couldn’t be altered unless physically dismantled, each smile, scowl, or beseeching look disappearing piece by piece. Laughter was the first response, perhaps the only natural response to such excess. It felt intended that we laugh. Puppets and puppeteer slain by an unknown hand; for about thirty seconds the scene was so complete that no one dared intrude upon it. Then Gustav’s friends began to call out to him, reminding him that they’d always known he was too serious for comedy, demanding the next scene, telling him that it was time to get up, that they needed to know if he was OK. From where we sat he seemed to be comfortably asleep, and “No Scrubs” played on and on until Radha ran onto the stage, lifted the boy into her arms, turned his head to the side, and we saw that his eyes were open. Then it became official that Gustav wasn’t sleeping. Those of us in the front row even saw his eyes; they were like a void made visible. Professor Semyonova himself climbed onto the stage, checked vital signs, and shouted for someone to call an ambulance. The professor called for his daughter too, and she arrived on the stage among a swarm of other students proffering bottles of water and Tiger Balm and scarves and asking: “Is he breathing? Is he breathing?”
—
TYCHE, ROWAN, and I were the only ones who stayed where we were. That probably made us look guilty of something, but moving closer to the stage would have broken our concentration. Myrna said something to Radha that caused her to release Gustav and turn her attention to the maimed puppets, gathering the bodies one by one, running her fingers through Hamlet’s hair, knocking on Petrushka’s helmet, closing eyes pair by pair. As she did so Myrna clasped Gustav to her (“Did you know she liked him that much?” I heard one boy ask another), all of her body against all of his body. He moved his head, seemed to return to himself, and pushed her away, his hand seeking only Radha’s. Myrna stepped back into the crowd with a look of shock. What caused it; that the dose she’d given was enough for him? Or the way Radha bent over him looking into those sad eyes that had grown even sadder from the day he’d chosen her? My guess: The biggest surprise was that by looking at each other in this way they were hurting Myrna. A little pain—just enough to quicken her breathing. Tyche was half out of her seat trying to decide whether to go to Myrna or not, and Rowan tried to give me a high five, which I ignored. “As expected,” he said, and looked about him with an air of fulfillment that made it plain he was referring to more than just my snub.
drownings
This happened and it didn’t happen:
A man threw a key into a fire. Yes, there are people who do such things. This one was trying to cure a fever. He probably wouldn’t have done it if he’d had his head on straight, but it’s not easy to think clearly when rent is due and there isn’t enough money to pay it, and one who relies on you falls ill for want of nourishment but you have to leave him to walk around looking for work to do. Then even when you find some there still isn’t enough money for both food and shelter, and the worry never stops for a moment. Somehow it would be easier to go home to the one who relies on you if they greeted you with anger, or even disappointment. But returning to someone who has made their own feeble but noticeable attempts to make the place a little nicer while you were gone, someone who only says “Oh, never mind” and speaks of tomorrow as they turn their trusting gaze upon you . . . it was really too much, as if tomorrow was up to him, or any of us . . .