The Marionette Workshop – Part 1: On a String

"Don't pull," said Felix. "Let the weight do it."

"I'm not pulling."

"You are directing. Puppets hate directors."

Katharina laughed and loosened her grip on the wooden control bar. The little marionette, a lanky fox in a green waistcoat, swayed on its strings, tipped one foot forward and took a wobbly step across the workbench. She gasped.

"There," said Felix. "He walks."

The workshop was a low-ceilinged room in the old town, crammed with wooden heads and hands and half-painted bodies, with bolts of silk on the shelves and a small stove in the corner. Sawdust lay golden on the floor. A line of finished puppets hung from the rafters, a queen, a clown, a dragon, all watching with painted eyes.

Katharina, thirty-five, a stage designer from Vienna, had come to commission a cast for a children's opera. Felix, thirty-eight, the maker, was tall and slightly stooped, with ink-black hair, round glasses and fingers as delicate as a watchmaker's. He had inherited the shop from his grandfather, and talked to the puppets like old friends.

"They are not toys," he said. "They are actors who cannot speak. They need someone patient."

She came back every day. She carved a nose. She learned how to hang a limb so it swung naturally. She laughed when the fox fell over. In the long, quiet afternoons, with a pot of tea on the stove and snow falling beyond the window, she found herself watching Felix's hands as much as the puppets'.

"You are looking at the wrong thing," he said, without turning.

"I'm looking at the right thing."

He put down his chisel. His ears had gone pink. "Katharina. May I say something? I am better with puppets than with sentences."

"Try."

"I would like to take you to supper. And then I would like to kiss you. If you agree."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Cut the Strings.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Cut the Strings.