The Stories of Ray Bradbury (81 page)

‘Doone, are ya sick?’

‘Is it fearful news?’

‘Ah, God,’ cried Doone. He shook himself to find the strength, somehow, to speak.

‘Ah, God,’ he said at last, ‘she has the voice of an angel.’

‘Angel?’

‘That one up there.’ He nodded.

They turned to stare at the empty silver screen.

‘Is it Deanna Durbin?’

Doone sobbed. ‘The dear dead voice of my grandmother come back—’

‘Your grandma’s behind!’ exclaimed Timulty. ‘She had no such voice as that!’

‘And who’s to know, save me?’ Doone blew his nose, dabbed at his eyes.

‘You mean to say it was just the Durbin lass kept you from the sprint?’

‘Just!’ said Doone. ‘Just! Why, it would be sacrilege to bound from a cinema after a recital like that. You might also then jump full tilt across the altar during a wedding, or waltz about at a funeral.’

‘You could’ve at least warned us it was no contest.’ Timulty glared.

‘How could I? It just crept over me in a divine sickness. That last bit she sang. “The Lovely Isle of Innisfree,” was it not. Clannery?’

‘What else did she sing?’ asked Fogarty.

‘What else did she sing?’ cried Timulty. ‘He’s just lost half of us our day’s wages and you ask what else she sang! Get off!’

‘Sure, it’s money runs the world,’ Doone agreed, seated there, closing up his eyes. ‘But it is music that holds down the friction.’

‘What’s going on there?’ cried someone above.

A man leaned down from the balcony, puffing a cigarette. ‘What’s all the rouse?’

‘It’s the projectionist,’ whispered Timulty. Aloud: ‘Hello, Phil, darling! It’s only the Team! We’ve a bit of a problem here, Phil, in ethics, not to say aesthetics. Now, we wonder if, well, could it be possible to run the anthem over.’

‘Run it over?’

There was a rumble from the winners, a mixing and shoving of elbows.

‘A lovely idea,’ said Doone.

‘It is,’ said Timulty, all guile. ‘An act of God incapacitated Doone.’

‘A tenth-run flicker from the year 1937 caught him by the short hairs is all,’ said Fogarty.

‘So the fair thing is’—here Timulty, unperturbed, looked to heaven—‘Phil, dear boy, also is the last reel of the Deanna Durbin fillum still there?’

‘It ain’t in the ladies’ room,’ said Phil, smoking steadily.

‘What a wit the boy has. Now, Phil, do you think you could just thread it back through the machine there and give us the FINIS again?’

‘Is that what you all want?’ asked Phil.

There was a hard moment of indecision. But the thought of another contest was too good to be passed, even though already-won money was at stake. Slowly everyone nodded.

‘I’ll bet myself, then,’ Phil called down. ‘A shilling on Hoolihan!’

The winners laughed and hooted: they looked to win again. Hoolihan waved graciously. The losers turned on their man.

‘Do you hear the insult, Doone? Stay awake, man!’

‘When the girl sings, damn it, go deaf!’

‘Places, everyone!’ Timulty jostled about.

‘There’s no audience,’ said Hoolihan. ‘And without them there’s no obstacles, no real contest.’

‘Why’—Fogarty blinked around—‘let’s all of us be the audience.’

‘Fine!’ Beaming, everyone threw himself into a seat.

‘Better yet,’ announced Timulty, up front, ‘why not make it teams? Doone and Hoolihan, sure, but for every Doone man or Hoolihan man that makes it out before the anthem freezes him on his hobnails, an extra point, right?’

‘Done!’ cried everyone.

‘Pardon,’ I said. ‘There’s no one outside to judge.’

Everyone turned to look at me.

‘Ah,’ said Timulty. ‘Well. Nolan, outside!’

Nolan trudged up the aisle, cursing.

Phil stuck his head from the projection booth above.

‘Are ya clods down there ready?’

‘If the girl is and the anthem is!’

And the lights went out.

I found myself seated next in from Doone, who whispered fervently,
‘Poke me, lad, keep me alert to practicalities instead of ornamentation, eh?’

‘Shut up!’ said someone. ‘There’s the mystery.’

And there indeed it was, the mystery of song and art and life, if you will, the young girl singing on the time-haunted screen.

‘We lean on you, Doone,’ I whispered.

‘Eh?’ he replied. He smiled ahead. ‘Ah, look, ain’t she lovely? Do you hear?’

‘The bet, Doone,’ I said. ‘Get ready.’

‘All right,’ he groused. ‘Let me stir my bones. Jesus save me.’

‘What?’

‘I never thought to test. My right leg. Feel. Naw, you can’t. It’s dead, it is!’

‘Asleep, you mean?’ I said, appalled.

‘Dead or asleep, hell, I’m sunk! Lad, lad, you must run for me! Here’s my cap and scarf!’

‘Your cap—?’

‘When victory is yours, show them, and we’ll explain you ran to replace this fool leg of mine!’

He clapped the cap on, tied the scarf.

‘But look here—’ I protested.

‘You’ll do brave! Just remember, it’s FINIS and no sooner! The song’s almost up. Are you tensed?’

‘God,
am
I!’ I said.

‘It’s blind passions that win, boy. Plunge straight. If you step on someone, do not look back. There!’ Doone held his legs to one side to give clearance. ‘The song’s done. He’s kissing her—’

‘The
FINIS
!’ I cried.

I leaped into the aisle.

I ran up the slope. ‘I’m first! I thought. I’m ahead! It can’t be! There’s the door!

I hit the door as the anthem began.

I slammed into the lobby—safe!

I won! I thought, incredulous, with Doone’s cap and scarf like victory laurels upon and about me. Won! Won for the Team!

Who’s second, third, fourth?

I turned to the door as it swung shut.

Only then did I hear the shouts and yells inside.

Good Lord! I thought, six men have tried the wrong exit at once, someone tripped, fell, someone else piled on. Otherwise, why am I the first and only? There’s a fierce silent combat in there this second, the two teams locked in mortal wrestling attitudes, asprawl, akimbo, above and below the seats, that
must
be it!

I’ve won! I wanted to yell, to break it up.

I threw the door wide.

I stared into an abyss where nothing stirred.

Nolan came to peer over my shoulder.

‘That’s the Irish for you,’ he said, nodding. ‘Even more than the race, it’s the Muse they like.’

For what were the voices yelling in the dark?

‘Run it again! Over! That last song! Phil!’

‘No one move. I’m in heaven. Doone, how right you were!’

Nolan passed me, going in to sit.

I stood for a long moment looking down along at all the rows where the teams of Anthem Sprinters sat, none having stirred, wiping their eyes.

‘Phil, darling?’ called Timulty, somewhere up front.

‘It’s done!’ said Phil.

‘And this time,’ added Timulty, ‘
without
the anthem.’

Applause for this.

The dim lights flashed off. The screen glowed like a great warm hearth.

I looked back out at the bright sane world of Grafton Street, the Four Provinces pub, the hotels, shops and night-wandering folk. I hesitated.

Then, to the tune of ‘The Lovely Isle of Innisfree,’ I took off the cap and scarf, hid these laurels under a seat, and slowly, luxuriously, with all the time in the world, sat myself down…

The cellar was cold cement and the dead man was cold stone and the air was filled with an invisible fall of rain, while the people gathered to look at the body as if it had been washed in on an empty shore at morning. The gravity of the earth was drawn to a focus here in this single basement room—a gravity so immense that it pulled their faces down, bent their mouths at the corners and drained their cheeks. Their hands hung weighted and their feet were planted so they could not move without seeming to walk underwater.

A voice was calling, but nobody listened.

The voice called again and only after a long time did the people turn and look, momentarily, into the air. They were at the seashore in November and this was a gull crying over their heads in the gray color of dawn. It was a sad crying, like the birds going south for the steel winter to come. It was an ocean sounding the shore so far away that it was only a whisper of sand and wind in a seashell.

The people in the basement room shifted their gaze to a table and a golden box resting there, no more than twenty-four inches long, inscribed with the name RIABOUCHINSKA. Under the lid of this small coffin the voice at last settled with finality, and the people stared at the box, and the dead man lay on the floor, not hearing the soft cry.

‘Let me out, let me out, oh, please, please, someone let me out.’

And finally Mr Fabian, the ventriloquist, bent and whispered to the golden box, ‘No, Ria, this is serious business. Later. Be quiet, now, that’s a good girl.’ He shut his eyes and tried to laugh.

From under the polished lid her calm voice said, ‘Please don’t laugh. You should be much kinder now after what’s happened.’

Detective Lieutenant Krovitch touched Fabian’s arm. ‘If you don’t mind, we’ll save your dummy act for later. Right now there’s all
this
to clean up.’ He glanced at the woman, who had now taken a folding chair. ‘Mrs
Fabian.’ He nodded to the young man sitting next to her. ‘Mr Douglas, you’re Mr Fabian’s press agent and manager?’

The young man said he was. Krovitch looked at the face of the man on the floor. ‘Fabian, Mrs Fabian, Mr Douglas—all of you say you don’t know this man who was murdered here last night, never heard the name Ockham before. Yet Ockham earlier told the stage manager he knew Fabian and had to see him about something vitally important.’

The voice in the box began again quietly.

Krovitch shouted. ‘
Damn
it, Fabian!’

Under the lid, the voice laughed. It was like a muffled bell ringing.

‘Pay no attention to her, Lieutenant,’ said Fabian.

‘Her? Or
you
, damn it! What is this? Get together, you two!’

‘We’ll never be together,’ said the quiet voice, ‘never again after tonight.’

Krovitch put out his hand. ‘Give me the key, Fabian.’

In the silence there was the rattle of the key in the small lock, the squeal of the miniature hinges as the lid was opened and laid back against the table top.

‘Thank you,’ said Riabouchinska.

Krovitch stood motionless, just looking down and seeing Riabouchinska in her box and not quite believing what he saw.

The face was white and it was cut from marble or from the whitest wood he had ever seen. It might have been cut from snow. And the neck that held the head which was as dainty as a porcelain cup with the sun shining through the thinness of it, the neck was also white. And the hands could have been ivory and they were thin small things with tiny fingernails and whorls on the pads of the fingers, little delicate spirals and lines.

She was all white stone, with light pouring through the stone and light coming out of the dark eyes with blue tones beneath like fresh mulberries. He was reminded of milk glass and of cream poured into a crystal tumbler. The brows were arched and black and thin and the cheeks were hollowed and there was a faint pink vein in each temple and a faint blue vein barely visible above the slender bridge of the nose, between the shining dark eyes.

Her lips were half parted and it looked as if they might be slightly damp, and the nostrils were arched and modeled perfectly, as were the ears. The hair was black and it was parted in the middle and drawn back of the ears and it was real—he could see every single strand of hair. Her gown was as black as her hair and draped in such a fashion as to show her shoulders, which were carved wood as white as a stone that has lain a long time in the sun. She was very beautiful. Krovitch felt his throat move and then he stopped and did not say anything.

Fabian took Riabouchinska from her box. ‘My lovely lady,’ he said.
‘Carved from the rarest imported woods. She’s appeared in Paris, Rome, Istanbul. Everyone in the world loves her and thinks she’s really human, some sort of incredibly delicate midget creature. They won’t accept that she was once part of many forests growing far away from cities and idiotic people.’

Fabian’s wife, Alyce, watched her husband, not taking her eyes from his mouth. Her eyes did not blink once in all the time he was telling of the doll he held in his arms. He in turn seemed aware of no one but the doll; the cellar and its people were lost in a mist that settled everywhere.

But finally the small figure stirred and quivered. ‘Please, don’t talk about me! You know Alyce doesn’t like it.’

‘Alyce never has liked it.’

‘Shh, don’t!’ cried Riabouchinska. ‘Not here, not now.’ And then, swiftly, she turned to Krovitch and her tiny lips moved. ‘How did it all happen? Mr Ockham, I mean, Mr Ockham.’

Fabian said, ‘You’d better go to sleep now, Ria.’

‘But I don’t want to,’ she replied. ‘I’ve as much right to listen and talk, I’m as much a part of this murder as Alyce or—or Mr Douglas even!’

The press agent threw down his cigarette. ‘Don’t drag me into this, you—’ And he looked at the doll as if it had suddenly become six feet tall and were breathing there before him.

‘It’s just that I want the truth to be told.’ Riabouchinska turned her head to see all of the room. ‘And if I’m locked in my coffin there’ll be no truth, for John’s a consummate liar and I must watch after him, isn’t that right. John?’

‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes shut, ‘I suppose it is.’

‘John loves me best of all the women in the world and I love him and try to understand his wrong way of thinking.’

Krovitch hit the table with his fist. ‘God damn, oh, God
damn
it, Fabian! If you think you can—’

‘I’m helpless,’ said Fabian.

‘But she’s—’

‘I know, I know what you want to say,’ said Fabian quietly, looking at the detective. ‘She’s in my throat, is that it? No, no. She’s not in my throat. She’s somewhere else. I don’t know. Here, or here.’ He touched his chest, his head.

‘She’s quick to hide. Sometimes there’s nothing I can do. Sometimes she is only herself, nothing of me at all. Sometimes she tells me what to do and I must do it. She stands guard, she reprimands me, is honest where I am dishonest, good when I am wicked as all the sins that ever were. She lives a life apart. She’s raised a wall in my head and lives there, ignoring me if I try to make her say improper things, co-operating if I suggest the right words and pantomime.’ Fabian sighed. ‘So if you intend
going on I’m afraid Ria must be present. Locking her up will do no good, no good at all.’

Lieutenant Krovitch sat silently for the better part of a minute, then made his decision. ‘All right. Let her stay. It just may be, by God, that before the night’s over I’ll be tired enough to ask even a ventriloquist’s dummy questions.’

Krovitch unwrapped a fresh cigar, lit it and puffed smoke. ‘So you don’t recognize the dead man, Mr Douglas?’

‘He looks vaguely familiar. Could be an actor.’

Krovitch swore. ‘Let’s all stop lying, what do you say? Look at Ockham’s shoes, his clothing. It’s obvious he needed money and came here tonight to beg, borrow or steal some. Let me ask you this, Douglas. Are you in love with Mrs Fabian?’

‘Now, wait just a moment!’ cried Alyce Fabian.

Krovitch motioned her down. ‘You sit there, side by side, the two of you. I’m not exactly blind. When a press agent sits where the husband should be sitting, consoling the wife, well! The way you look at the marionette’s coffin, Mrs Fabian, holding your breath when she appears. You make fists when she talks. Hell, you’re obvious.’

‘If you think for one moment I’m jealous of a stick of wood!’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No, no, I’m not!’

Fabian moved. ‘You needn’t tell him anything, Alyce.’

‘Let her!’

They all jerked their heads and stared at the small figurine, whose mouth was now slowly shutting. Even Fabian looked at the marionette as if it had struck him a blow.

After a long while Alyce Fabian began to speak.

‘I married John seven years ago because he said he loved me and because I loved him and I loved Riabouchinska. At first, anyway. But then I began to see that he really lived all of his life and paid most of his attentions to her and I was a shadow waiting in the wings every night.

‘He spent fifty thousand dollars a year on her wardrobe—a hundred thousand dollars for a dollhouse with gold and silver and platinum furniture. He tucked her in a small satin bed each night and talked to her. I thought it was all an elaborate joke at first and I was wonderfully amused. But when it finally came to me that I was indeed merely an assistant in his act I began to feel a vague sort of hatred and distrust—not for the marionette, because after all it wasn’t her doing, but I felt a terrible growing dislike and hatred for John, because it
was
his fault. He, after all, was the control, and all of his cleverness and natural sadism came out through his relationship with the wooden doll.

‘And when I finally became very jealous, how silly of me! It was the greatest tribute I could have paid him and the way he had gone about perfecting the art of throwing his voice. It was all so idiotic, it was all so strange. And yet I knew that something had hold of John, just as people who drink have a hungry animal somewhere in them, starving to death.

‘So I moved back and forth from anger to pity, from jealousy to understanding. There were long periods when I didn’t hate him at all, and I never hated the thing that Ria was in him, for she was the best half, the good part, the honest and the lovely part of him. She was everything that he never let himself try to be.’

Alyce Fabian stopped talking and the basement room was silent.

‘Tell about Mr Douglas,’ said a voice, whispering.

Mrs Fabian did not look up at the marionette. With an effort she finished it out. ‘When the years passed and there was so little love and understanding from John, I guess it was natural I turned to—Mr Douglas.’

Krovitch nodded. ‘Everything begins to fall into place. Mr Ockham was a very poor man, down on his luck, and he came to this theater tonight because he knew something about you and Mr Douglas. Perhaps he threatened to speak to Mr Fabian if you didn’t buy him off. That would give you the best of reasons to get rid of him.’

‘That’s even sillier than all the rest,’ said Alyce Fabian tiredly. ‘I didn’t kill him.’

‘Mr Douglas might have and not told you.’

‘Why kill a man?’ said Douglas. ‘John knew all about us.’

‘I did indeed,’ said John Fabian, and laughed.

He stopped laughing and his hand twitched, hidden in the snowflake interior of the tiny doll, and her mouth opened and shut, opened and shut. He was trying to make her carry the laughter on after he had stopped, but there was no sound, save the little empty whisper of her lips moving and gasping, while Fabian stared down at the little face and perspiration came out, shining, upon his cheeks.

The next afternoon Lieutenant Krovitch moved through the theater darkness backstage, found the iron stairs and climbed with great thought, taking as much time as he deemed necessary on each step, up to the secondlevel dressing rooms. He rapped on one of the thin-paneled doors.

‘Come in,’ said Fabian’s voice from what seemed a great distance.

Krovitch entered and closed the door and stood looking at the man who was slumped before his dressing mirror. ‘I have something I’d like to show you,’ Krovitch said. His face showing no emotion whatever, he opened a manila folder and pulled out a glossy photograph, which he placed on the dressing table.

John Fabian raised his eyebrows, glanced quickly up at Krovitch and
then settled slowly back in his chair. He put his fingers to the bridge of his nose and massaged his face carefully, as if he had a headache. Krovitch turned the picture over and began to read from the typewritten data on the back. ‘Name, Miss Ilyana Riamonova. One hundred pounds. Blue eyes. Black hair. Oval face. Born 1914, New York City. Disappeared 1934. Believed a victim of amnesia. Of Russo-Slav parentage. Etcetera. Etcetera.’

Fabian’s lip twitched.

Krovitch laid the photograph down, shaking his head thoughtfully. ‘It was pretty silly of me to go through police files for a picture of a marionette. You should have heard the laughter at headquarters.
God
. Still, here she is—Riabouchinska.
Not
papier-mâché,
not
wood,
not
a puppet, but a woman who once lived and moved around and—disappeared.’ He looked steadily at Fabian. ‘Suppose you take it from there?’

Fabian half smiled. ‘There’s nothing to it at all. I saw this woman’s picture a long time ago, liked her looks and copied my marionette after her.’

‘Nothing to it at all.’ Krovitch took a deep breath and exhaled, wiping his face with a huge handkerchief. ‘Fabian, this very morning I shuffled through a stack of
Billboard
magazines that high. In the year 1934 I found an interesting article concerning an act which played on a second-rate circuit, known as Fabian and Sweet William. Sweet William was a little boy dummy. There was a girl assistant—Ilyana Riamonova. No picture of her in the article, but I at least had a name, the name of a real person, to go on. It was simple to check police files then and dig up this picture. The resemblance, needless to say, between the live woman on one hand and the puppet on the other is nothing short of incredible. Suppose you go back and tell your story over again, Fabian.’