The Night that Laughter Burned

The Night that Laughter Burned

November 5, 1938

To be a marionette, there is no better life.

Move with the ropes, follow the tug of the string-bound sinew. Obie was a marionette like no other. He moved with the pull of the rope as swans floated on the Rhine. Fresh varnish gleamed on his wooden joints and lacquered horsehair fro. He danced Wagner on the wooden platform and performed Shakespeare on the mini-Macbeth sets. But what he loved most of all was to make the local children laugh.

They did not merit a puppet as professional, poised, and perfect as he. Yet they were gifted him all the same. The strings pulled just as hard for the wide-eyed children as for the chancellors and commanders who frequented the Munich Yoke Theatre.

Today marked the annual visit of the local community school. Obie felt a rush as he emerged from the velvet-sealed chest of the Yoke Theatre.

He never saw the force pulling the strings, never needed to know. His limbs moved all the same; the applause never failed to erupt from the velvet seats for the puppet prince of Munich.

The other puppets’ performances were almost finished for the day. The small theatre soon would be emptied of all but the stubborn fleas that refused to flee the old rafters.

My favorite gag is next. The children would be ecstatic.

One final pull, one final twist of his wooden frame, and…TA DA, a perfect German pretzel puppet!

"BOO!!!"

What? They always love this trick.

"Degenerate nonsense!" cried out the portly principal in the mezzanine.

"Look how they try to poison our children's minds with meaningless drivel!" declared the old chaperone from the orchestra.

Obie didn't understand. They always loved his pretzel gag. He looked at the children. Surely they'd liked it.

The young boys and girls in the front row looked at each other, then looked at their teachers, who looked back at them, finally looking to the stage together.

Little voices.

"BOO!"

The curtain closed into darkness. The strings released. Obie collapsed to the stage floor, and from the heavens, two voices.

"They're getting bolder; we have to flee before it's too late," the young voice blurted—another voice, older, crackled to life like radio static.

"What about the theatre? What about the puppets?"

"Leave them. It's just wood and velvet," the first voice responded, emotions too complex for wooden ears.

Without another word, footsteps echoed from the stage as the door hinge squeaked shut. From the floor, Obie looked up at the loose strings lashed to the rigging above. The strings were loose, but the perfect wooden marionette felt a tightness he had never felt before.

Had the world forgotten how to laugh?

November 8, 1938

Three days. Three days since any light, any person, any rat, anything but the damn fleas had entered the Munich Yoke Theatre. Obie was still a pretzel on an empty stage, to an empty audience, to an empty, laughterless world.

—CRASH!!— The shuttered window of the center entrance erupted in a hail of glass. Light invaded the room for the first time in days. Obie's painted smile shone brighter as the rays bathed his prone form. The rock sailed into the awaiting seats.

—CRASH!!—

—CRASH!!— More light! Obie thought.

A symphony of rocks shattered the flimsy, boarded-up stained glass windows.

Then –BANG– –BANG– the door buckled and shook dust from the old rafters. They missed me; they wanted the theatre so much they were busting in. Obie couldn't wait for his strings to move. The repentant audience was finally here.

–CRASH– The door let out its final death knell and collapsed. People of every type flooded the room. Men in blue jeans, men in silk, men with badges, men in robes with golden crosses. All coming to see me.

"Seize the degenerate puppets." A fine-dressed man with a red armband said this, with a white circle, with an odd black symbol.

The mob clambered over the seats, rushing into the backstage, carrying out handfuls of colorful clothes, wooden marionettes, and bundles of string. The fine-dressed man sauntered to the center stage and looked Obie in his coal-black beaded eyes.

"Fine craftsmanship," he muttered reluctantly.

"Fritz, hand me your pen knife," he asked the weasley man to his left.

"Why, sir, aren't we burning all the corrupted art?" Still, he followed orders and handed the knife.

"Of course, but my daughter needs a new doll, and what is a puppet but a doll with strings?"

—SNIP–

The strings fell from Obie's limbs as the fine-dressed man straddled the puppet. The mob dumped the guts of the Munich Yoke Theatre outside onto the cobblestone road. They reaved like animals, villains, coerced by strings from beyond to pilfer the old theatre of its marrow.

Gas spurted over the great mound of wood and velvet, like blood from nicked arteries, matches flicked, and marionettes immolate. The crude clown puppets burned. The dramatic Shakespearean puppets burned. The hulking dragon puppets burned. The little finger puppets burned. They all burned, charged with the crime of being a marionette. Obie turned to lead without his strings. Without his strings, he looked upon the raging inferno. Without his strings, the distant heat melted the perfect pigmented paint from his brow, sending vibrant tears down his wooden face. The fine-dressed man couldn’t see the doll’s destruction in the dark; he didn’t care to look.

Living as a doll, burning as a marionette.

November 10, 1938

The journey to the fine-dressed man's home was a silent one, tucked away in the dark, suffocating confines of a leather satchel, accompanied by a bloody penknife, the only warmth coming from the muzzle of a still-smoking Luger.

The Mercedes crushed over the blizzards of broken glass that lined the Munich streets. Over the Autobahn, the car sailed, under the gates emblazoned with the message “Arbeit macht frei.”

The satchel opened to the world, light bathing Obie once more. It was not the same light that shone through the stained glass of the Yoke Theatre. It was cloudy, semiopaque; the sun didn’t want to be here, Obie didn’t want to be there. The former puppet looked to the barbed-wire gate beyond the linked fence, rows of concrete buildings.

Concrete, guard tower, concrete.

Concrete, kennel, concrete.

Concrete, concrete, concrete.

Besides the worn road, past the gate, fat men, young men, old men, men with scars, men with hands soft as silk. Distinct by any metric, besides a shared golden star and a striped white and black uniform.

They must have been new here as well, Obie thought. The doll grieved for the sunken looks of their sullen faces.

If only my strings were taut and the world could laugh once more.

The car made a sudden turn past the marriage of a stockade and a guard tower.

That man sleeps on the ground, pale as silk. I wonder why. A man in black clothes yanked the boots from the fallen man’s haggard feet and dragged him onto a wooden sled.

That must be his friend coming to help. The man in black opened the door to a building leaking ash from a towering smokestack.

Another gate unclenched its metal teeth, and the light seemed to return.

Giggles. Children laughing.

There were homes of brick plaster with red roofs.

Blue mailboxes.

Green grass.

Color. This place had color. Had laughter.

He saw her face, a little face.

Her hair was as golden as the embroidered edges of the theater’s velvet curtain, her nose like the buttoned eyes of the crude finger puppets, and her cheeks as rosy as the painted vibrance of the porcelain ballerinas.

The fine-dressed man approached the girl, Obie in hand.

“Anya, this is your new doll. He can be whatever you want,” he said with a flourish

The smoking luger peeked out of the satchel, its cartridge half empty. Anya, only 5 years of age, knew what that meant.

November 17, 1938

She played with him every day, father frowned.

To be a doll, there is no better life.

Move with the sticky hands, follow the yank of the grubby fingers. Dummkopf, the Melted Goof, was a doll like the others on the pastel-pink shelf. He moved with Anya’s adventures as sewage skimmed the surface of the Rhine. Old jelly sparkled on his wooden joints and frayed plucked-horsehair fro. He danced crude renditions, his body contorting in amusing ways, was the baby in a doll house forced to nurse at a porcelain teat, yet what he did most of all was be Dummkopf, the fool.

Humiliation, every day humiliation.

The lies he repeated tasted bitter on his wax lips, used to be. With the snip of a penknife, his purpose snapped with a strung resource.

No one would applaud for a patchwork doll.

Yet, under the yoke of child fingers, Obie heard the world laugh again. Sure, it was cruel jeering at the melted expression fired of his soot-stained face or the tragedy when he slipped on imaginary banana peels. All the same, the sound gave the doll purpose.

Something to make the world not feel as tight.

She said I was her favorite (Not that she didn’t say that to every toy)

And for a time, Obie forgot about the thunderous applause of the yoke theatre and the life as a Dummkopf. It seemed the hole in his walnut core was patched.

–KNOCK-knock, knock-knock... KNOCK!—

Anya scampered to the door, standing on her tiptoes to reach the brass doorknob.

–Click–

“Anya, my girl!” The fine-dressed man picked the girl up with not so much as a grunt as he dropped her on the plush velvet bed.

“Daddy!” Anya squealed as she bounced on the soft surface.

“Ah, I see you’re playing with the new doll I brought you. Shame about the paint, I didn’t see the extent of damage in the dark.” He clucked as his gaze wrapped Obie’s warped image.

“It’s okay, I still like him,” Anya responded, her eyes downcast. The fine-dressed man’s voice deepened as his gaze intensified on the smoke-kissed wood.

With a contemptuous sigh, the fine-dressed man sat down next to the girl.

“I was wrong for giving him to you. He is of inferior crop, of inferior art; he degrades your collection.” He grew indignant.

“But he’s funny, I love Dummkopf.” Tears welled in the girl’s almond eyes.

“He’s a spoil of war, nothing more. He should have joined the rest,” the fine-dressed man went to grab Obie before stopping.

“Wait, what did you call him?” The fine-dressed man demanded.

“Dummkopf? The fool?” A fraction of a smile returned to his lead face.

“Dummkopf”. They used to call me prince. No your’re a doll. Avoid the flames, embrace the doll, believe the lie.

“Yes,” Anya sniffled.

“Of course! I thought you loved him!” he laughed. “You made him your stooge! ” His long fingers combed through his combover as he exhaled in relief.

“You're not mad?” Anya whispered.

“Of course not,” the fine-dressed man chuckled, the sound divorced of the warmth he usually solely reserved for her. He focused on Obie once more, contempt leaking from his pores to his gaunt hands. “Never forget, Anya, a dummkopf is only useful as long as he respects his place beneath your feet and fears the hearth that waits for him to stand.”

A doll, a dummkopf, a dead marionette fallen from velvet ropes into a crucible of lead.

A Dummkopf on a pastel pink windowsill. The world drives by in velvet and lead. I stay the same. Never move. Never dance. Never make them laugh.

November 17, 1939

By age six, Anya moved on to the next toy. Past the picket fence, those with limps and deformities went to the train tracks, gone to wooden and flesh-filled eyes forever.

The smell of cedar and smoke.

Snap a wooden finger to see if you can.

November 17, 1940

By age seven, Anya learned to play the piano from a stripped shirt teacher who vanished before she could learn Bach. Past the blue mailbox, men are beaten with whips and leather till their skin molts in bloody shreds.

The smell of velvet and concrete.

Twist a smoke-kissed leg till the knee faces the door. Who would stop you?

November 17, 1941

By age eight, Anya can do a cartwheel, never past the fence, no matter how many times she wished to explore. Past the red roof, men grow thin, their limbs gangrenous and pus-filled.

The smell of strudel and sun-baked rot.

The world is your oyster; crack the shell however you like.

November 17, 1944

Obie stops counting the days, the years, the blood, all meld into one coagulation. If only Anya could tilt my head so I could look only at the velvet sheets and not this horror.

The train arrived as it did every day. People piled out from cramped cattle cars as they did every day, eyes dead, half skeletons. Except it wasn’t just men, it was children, women, families. Anya looked out the window for the first time in years. She looked at Obie, who looked at the young boy with a resigned gait, who looked at his blistered feet.

He had a little face like Anya once did.

Anya gazed from the height of the second floor of the colonial home. She tightened and looked back at Obie, looking beyond the melted facade.

What was a doll but a puppet missing its strings?

“Dummkopf, I..I remember you. Were you once a puppet at the Yoke?… I was quite young? The…pretzel act?”

From the heel of my wooden clogs to the charred paint of my branched fingers, I could almost feel the pull of the ropes, the roar of the crowd echoing after all this time.

November 18, 1944

Shoe laces, yarn, scrap cloth, bound on Obie’s limbs. Doll no longer, princely marionette no longer, something crude, something real.

To be a doll that was no life for a marionette.

Anya had grown through the years; her once grubby fingers sewed Obie like his master used to do every night. He couldn’t move with a slight tug, saunter with a precise yank, but he was a marionette nonetheless. Anya placed him in her purse, accompanied by a dove key chain and a crumpled photo of a mustached man. She approached the border between lead and velvet, beyond the picket fence, to children whose wide eyes are highlighted with hunger and fear. She pulled Obie from the satchel.

Old, flaked paint tore off Obie’s stripped-wood visage. Anya steps forward, separated from the boy by fifteen feet of electrified steel. The shoelace strings begin to jolt, the limbs creak and protest, the pretzel gag seems as impossible and intangible as the force that brought the three to this place.

“I am Anya. Can I make you laugh?”

To be a marionette, there is still no better life.

A ghost of a smile born as velvet and lead melt together in forbidden alloy, then a laugh.

I am Obie. I am a marionette. I can always make them laugh.