Strings

A young man in shabby clothing drops off a dark, windswept cliff. Flashbacks tear through his mind: a catching glimpse of Kate’s eyes at the marionette show; their first kiss on the beach; her handkerchief waving him off to Europe; the final, pleading letter he failed to answer. Other flashbacks reveal clues to his despair: dead comrades in smoking battlefields; the long, painful hospital stay; sleepless nights beneath bridges; a thief scampering off with his puppet case . . . .

Kate sleeps soundly in her lighthouse across the sea, moon full and bright over the Maine landscape. On a nearby chair sits a wooden marionette, a figure sculpted by Martin in his own image; a gift in his time away. It starts to lean forward, slow and deliberate, like a plant leaning toward the sun.

Waves crash and spray against Martin’s inert body. He slides off the barnacled rocks on a layer of blood, slips into the cold ocean and floats facedown beneath indifferent stars. Salt water fills his lungs. He sinks into darkness.

The marionette slides off the chair to the moonlit floor. Kate moans, turns to her side, dark hair falling across the shoulder of her white nightgown. In a dream, a handsome puppeteer waves from a transport ship and disappears into the fog.

Tiny fish dart about the darkness, nipping at Martin’s skin. He feels no pain, yet there’s an awareness of submergence, of a heaviness thrust against his body and limbs. He lingers in a cloud of blood, waiting for the nightmare to end, to be released from limbo into God’s arms.

Wobbling on skinny legs, the marionette gets to its feet and starts to lurch forward, dragging its cross-handle. It falls to its knees several times as if under a great weight. “Martin, is that you?” Kate whispers.

A jellyfish flits through the blackness. It is strikingly beautiful, illuminating the dark like a green moon in a turbid sky. Kate’s eyes coruscate inside of it, piercing Martin’s soul, tempting him to follow. But his body is useless, he cannot move. So his thoughts turn to puppetry, to the manipulation of inanimate objects: strings are envisioned on his arms, legs, shoulders, and head, all controlled by a higher force. This he imagines. And when thick, tangible strings actually do appear, seemingly from nowhere, it fills his heart with hope, triggering a telekinetic response that plucks his body toward the passing eidolon.

The marionette now moves steadily toward Kate’s bed, cross-handle lifting it straight into the air. Wooden legs clank together as it floats to a bedpost and wraps its segmented arms around the ornate finial. Kate rises, grabs a green bottle off the nightstand, and clambers out the window between billowing curtains. Outside, she sleepwalks beneath the rotating lighthouse beam. The puppet descends to the grass behind her and begins to follow.

Strings twist and tangle chaotically around Martin’s distended body in their haste to pull him toward the jellyfish. But there is no need for the grace of a stage performance here. If he can simply catch the elusive jellyfish and wrap his arms around it—wrap his arms around her—then he and Kate will enter a new world together; of that he is certain—the appearance of the strings a sign of divine guidance. And the closer he gets to the apparition, the clearer her face within that ghostly green glow.

Kate meanders down a moonlit path of sand, rock, and stunted pine, the bottle clutched tight against her chest. The puppet jerks along a few steps behind, elevated cross-handle twisting from side to side as if gripped by an invisible hand. She traverses a swath of windblown grass and arrives at a steep ledge over the crashing sea. There she pauses, leans forward, sways. The marionette creeps up behind her.

Martin is now moving at a tremendous speed. Water rushes into his mouth, nose, and ears like wet cement. The writhing bodies of myriad creatures press up and quiver against his blue flesh, causing him to lose sight of Kate. But he knows the strings will guide him right, that their sole purpose is to reunite him with his lost love.

Rolled up inside the bottle is the most difficult letter Kate has ever had to write: a letter which speaks of terrible waiting, of the sadness of saying goodbye, of the heart’s need to move on. She casts it to the waves as the wind blows wildly through her hair. The marionette wobbles up beside her and peers down at the floating bottle. Now its legs twist; the knees buckle. The puppet drops from the edge and falls to the barnacled rocks below; a moment later it slides into the foam.

The strings lift Martin out of the sea and into the cold, starry night. Water spills away in a white rush. With a wet thud he is flung across the deck of a ship where he rolls and flops in a landslide of sea things; a slimy mass of scales and fins and tiny mouths gasping for air, the jellyfish not among them.

Kate returns to the nearby swath of grass and lies down. The lighthouse beam circles quietly overhead. She shuts her eyes in peaceful repose, lets new, unanchored dreams rise to the surface. Meanwhile, the marionette floats out to sea, one arm slung over the glimmering green bottle, its face covered in moonlight. Across the ocean, a fishing vessel sounds its horn, heads to port.

(From the book The Hunchback's Captive and Others)