THE PUPPETEER

IDENTITY • RE-ENCHANTMENT • eLEGANCE

The point of departure for this story was a quote: “A sustainable world is one that evolves, as life has evolved for three billion years, toward ever greater diversity, elegance, beauty, self-awareness, interrelationship, and spiritual realization” (Donella Meadows). It ended with a cat sitter and a puppeteer. But maybe the heart of the story isn’t as far from the starting point as you’d think. Elegance, self-awareness, and interrelationships are woven deeply into it. This story is a delicacy for the imagination.

INFO:

Read or listen (9 minutes) and consider/discuss the questions that follow.

Relevance in general: Definitely!

Professional relevance: If you work with the significance of art and imagination in people’s lives, The Puppeteer won’t surprise you; but it may still inspire you. If you’re far from any kind of magic in your professional work, this could be a reminder of its potential.

Prefer listening? We’ve prepared a recording of The Puppeteer for you. You can hear the full story below. Remember to check out the exercises afterwards. You find them at the bottom of this page.

CHAPTER 1

You’ve never been a cat person. In fact, cats freak you out. It’s something about their tails and the way they watch you, coldly and calculating. Like they’re considering which part of you to eat first. And you’ve never been a doctoral student of literature; you never had the money to study so you’ve been sneaking into classes at the city campus, pretending to be someone else, pretending to be bored. No cats, no studies. What else? You smoke and drink and enjoy both. But here you are, seated in the parlor of a beautiful apartment in an old and affluent part of the city lined by trees, expensive shops, and artisan studios playing the part of an animal-loving, dedicatedly studying, non-smoking, and non-drinking cat sitter. You laugh politely and ignore the two fluffy cats staring you down as you chat with the apartment’s owner, a charming and probably blue-blooded lady calling you “dear” and “darling”. You pass the interview and get the job: a week’s stay in the apartment with the cats while the lady manages her property in the countryside. You could have told her that there’s no reason to go to the countryside. You barely escaped it and came here, to the city, to find out who you’re supposed to be. Easier said than done.

You return to the apartment the following evening. It’s a stunning place, bathed in soft light and immaculately decorated. The lady hands you a key and a handful of bills, tucked in between the pages of an illustrated atlas. They look like they’ve been cleaned and pressed. You wave goodbye and quietly lock the door. You lean against it and exhale. You’re here, cat sitting. This is who you’re supposed to be for the coming week.

CHAPTER 2

You sleep in a small room behind the kitchen. There’s a washbowl and a smell of soap and old floor polish. This is probably where the servants slept. The servants’ room. You don’t mind. You can hear the sparrows chirping away in the maple tree deep in the backyard, and there’s a comforting sound of water running through the building’s pipes. You lean out of the servants’ window and smoke, your arms moisty and red from the sun. The air is humid, sweltering, stale from too many people trying to squeeze every drop of freshness out of it.   

The cats drive you crazy. They’re meowing and knocking over things. You find a pair of scratch marks on one of the sofas. They look fresh. You cover them with cushions and acknowledge that the cats run the show. You spoil them with food from the fridge and a bowl of milk. They still stare at you but fall silent. A truce, you think. A truce between the servant and the lords of the house.

You haven’t had time to think for months, but now you’re sinking into yourself. You wander the rooms, sit in the evening light, examine the bookshelves. You uncover a bottle of cognac behind a row of books, covered in dust and with a year scribbled on the label: 1974. You bring it to the kitchen and pour a glass. The taste makes you think of your grandfather. The kitchen is roomy and airy with a no-nonsense, faded elegance. It has been a place for working and scrubbing. The floors are marked by the constant passage between dining room and kitchen. You stand by the stove and take in the view of the street. The light is low and autumnal. These are the final days of summer. And then what? you think. What will follow?

Then you spot him, across the street, in a window a floor higher than you, lit by only a single spotlight. It feels like an electrical jolt, like the phone ringing in the dead of night. Has he been there the whole time? You want to rush out the kitchen, but something tells you that this is somehow related to who you are or who you want to be. So, you remain in the kitchen with your eyes fixed on the man across the street. He waves and makes a stiff, comical bow. He raises his hands, and something rises from the floor below the window. A puppet, suspended in strings. It’s a beautiful, strange puppet, clad in a velvety costume. Like looking back in time, you think.

You wave back.

The puppet waves shyly.

You smile.

Then the puppeteer repeats his bow, and puppet and puppeteer engage in dance. First slow, then faster and faster. In and out of the light, perfectly synchronized, never touching but as close as lovers. Then – as suddenly as he appeared – the puppeteer disappears from the window, and the light is switched off.

You pour yourself another glass of cognac with a trembling hand.

What was that?       

CHAPTER 3

Days pass. You wake in the servants’ room and listen to the sparrows in the backyard maples. Water runs through the pipes in the walls, and you imagine the old building sprouting. There’s a sense of lived life in the rooms and hallways, of seeds from past generations waiting to spring alive. You stroll the leafy streets of the neighborhood and return with a feeling of urgency, like you’ve finally become aware of all the stuff that’s not important. Rain falls, and it is warm to the skin. You return to the apartment and drop your damp clothes on the floor. The cats ignore you if only you keep the food coming. You keep the food coming.

In the evening you stand by the kitchen window and wait for the puppeteer to make his entrance. He’s older than you; maybe the same age as the lady. Does she know about this? Is she as moved as you by the small, silent performances? Does she stand like you, glass in hand, with a sense of urgency? You like to think that the puppeteer is only waiting for you, but there could be other people in other windows and other buildings. He could be waiting for the cats.

You lie in the servants’ room and feel something bubbling inside you. The chirping sparrows, the water in the pipes, the old building with its lived lives and mannered residents, even the cats; it all makes sense. You resist an urge to run across the street and knock on the puppeteer’s door. You have a thousand questions for him. Who is he? Why is he doing what he does? How can a dangling, wooden puppet make your heart jump?

You resist the urge, not wanting to break the magic found in silence, in not knowing.

The week comes to an end, but there’s no sign of the lady. You wait in the parlor with your backpack by the door. The cognac is hidden again, the cats lazy and content. Hours pass. You walk to the kitchen to get a last glimpse of the puppeteer, and you feel tears running down your cheeks as he engages in a comic argument with the puppet and finishes with his trademark bow.

The lady doesn’t arrive. Have you misunderstood her plans? You have no telephone number for her, no address.

Days pass. You wait. One night there’s a sudden and loud knocking on the door. You remain in the servants’ room, and then it’s over. You hear someone mumbling in the hallways, then footsteps. You decide that the apartment and the cats are your responsibility until the lady arrives. You will look after them.

One morning you cross the street. Rain falls again, this time colder and more relentless. You can’t resist the urge any longer. You find the puppeteer’s building and scan the names. You step back and count the floors. It can’t be true. A man exits the building, and you ask him about the resident on the fourth floor, the aging gentleman with the wooden puppet. Impossible, the man answers and pops up his collar. There’s nobody living up there. The owner died several months ago. Everybody’s waiting for the place to be sold.   

You let the man pass and take a step back on the sidewalk. The rain is pouring down by now, nourishing the city’s old trees, washing off a long summer’s dust and dreams. One day the lady will return, and you’ll be waiting for her with the lazy, well-fed cats. But for now, you have a mystery to solve. You look up and feel your head spin.

Credits:
Written and produced by The Empty Square
Illustration: Samuel Toi
Voice artist: Susan Harden
Watercolor: Zheng Yanbo