THE PUPPETEER

THERE WAS AN ELDERLY man on the steamship with such a contented face. If it wasn’t lying, he must have been the happiest man on earth. He was too, he said. I heard it from his own mouth. He was Danish, a countryman of mine, and a traveling theater manager. He was a puppeteer, and had his whole personnel with him in a big box. His innate cheerfulness had been strengthened by a technology student, and from that experiment he had become completely happy. I didn’t understand him right away, but then he told me the whole story, and here it is.

“It happened in Slagelse,” he said. “I gave a performance at the coach inn and had an excellent audience, all young except for a couple of old ladies. Then a fellow who looked like a student, dressed in black, comes and sits down. He laughs in all the right places and claps when he should. He was an exceptional spectator! I had to know who he was, and then I hear that he’s a graduate candidate from the Polytechnical Institute, sent out to instruct the people in the provinces. My show was over at eight o‘clock because children have to go to bed early of course, and you have to be considerate of the public. At nine o’clock the candidate started his lecture and experiments, and then I was his spectator. It was remarkable to hear and see. Most of it was Greek to me, as the saying goes, but I did think this: If we humans can find out all this, we must also be able to exist longer than till we’re put in the ground. He just did small miracles, but all of it went slick as a whistle, and straight from nature. In the time of Moses and the Prophets such a technological student would have become a wise man of the land, and in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake. I didn’t sleep all night, and when I gave another performance the next night and saw that the student was there again, I was really in a good mood. An actor once told me that when he played a lover he thought about just one person in the audience. He played to her and forgot the rest of the spectators. The technology candidate was my ‘her’—the only one I performed for.

“When the performance was over, all the puppets took their curtain call, and the technology student invited me to have a glass of wine with him in his room. He talked about my play, and I talked about his science, and I think we both enjoyed them equally, but I got the best of it because there was so much in his presentation that he couldn’t himself explain; for example, the fact that a piece of iron that goes through a coil becomes magnetic. What is this? The spirit comes over it, but where does it come from? It seems to me it’s like human beings here on earth. God lets them fall through the coil of time, and the spirit comes over them, and you have a Napoleon, a Luther, or another person like that. ‘The whole world is a series of miracles,’ said the candidate, ‘but we are so used to them that we take them for granted.’ And he talked and explained, and at last it was as if he lifted my skull, and I confessed truly that if I weren’t already an old fellow, I would at once go to the Polytechnical Institute and learn to see the world with a fine-toothed comb, and I’d do that even though I was one of the happiest of men.”

“‘One of the happiest!’ he said, and it was as if he tasted the words. ‘Are you happy?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I’m happy and I’m welcomed in all the towns where I come with my company. It’s true that there’s one wish that sometimes comes over me like a nightmare and disrupts my good mood, and that’s to become a theater manager for a real live troupe of human beings.’ ‘You wish that your puppets would come to life. You wish they would become real actors,’ he said, ‘and you yourself the director. You think you would be completely happy then?’ He didn’t believe it, but I did, and we talked back and forth, and we both kept our own opinion, but we toasted each other, and the wine was very good. But there had to be something magical in it because otherwise the whole story would simply be that I got drunk. It wasn’t that because I saw quite clearly. There was a kind of sunshine in the room, shining out of the technological candidate’s face, and it made me think about the old gods with their eternal youth, when they walked the earth. I told him that, and he smiled, and I would have sworn that he was a disguised god, or one of their family. And that’s what he was! My highest wish would be granted, the puppets become real, and I would be a director of people. We drank to it. He packed all my puppets in the wooden case, tied it to my back, and then he had me fall through a coil. I can still hear how I fell. I was lying on the floor—this is all true—and the entire company jumped out of the case. The spirit had come over all of them, and every puppet had become a remarkable artist—they said so themselves—and I was the director.”

“Everything was ready for the first performance. All the actors wanted to talk to me, and the audience too. The dancer said that if she didn’t get to pirouette, the performance would be a flop. She was the star of the show and wanted to be treated that way. The puppet who played the empress wanted to be treated like the empress off the stage as well because otherwise she would be out of practice. He who had the part of coming in with a letter was just as self-important as the star lover, since he said that there were no small actors, only small parts. Then the hero demanded that all his lines should be exit lines, since they always got the applause. The primadonna would only perform under red lights—not blue ones—because they were the most becoming to her. It was like flies in a bottle, and as the director, I was in the middle of the bottle. I lost my breath, I lost my wits, and I was as miserable as a person can be. These were new types of people I was among, and I wished that I had them all back in the box, and that I had never become a director. I told them straight out that they really were all just puppets, and then they beat me to death. Then I was lying on the bed in my room. How I got there from the technological student’s room he must know, because I don’t. The moon was shining in on the floor where the puppet case had tipped over, and all the puppets were spread around, big and little ones, all of them. But I didn’t waste any time. I jumped out of bed and got them all in the box, some on their heads and some on their feet. I slammed down the lid and then sat down on the box. It was quite a sight, can you see it? I can. ‘Now you can stay in there,’ I said, ‘and never again will I wish that you were flesh and blood!’ I was in such a good mood, and the happiest person. The technological candidate had purified me. I sat there in pure bliss and fell asleep on the case, and in the morning—it was actually in the afternoon, but I slept so strangely long in the morning—I was still sitting there, happy, because I had learned that the only thing I’d ever wished for had been stupid. I asked about the technological candidate, but he was gone, like the Greek or Roman gods. And from that time on, I have been the happiest of men. I am a happy manager for my personnel doesn’t argue with me, nor does the public. They enjoy themselves thoroughly. I freely put together the pieces myself, and take the best parts of the plays I want, and nobody bothers about it. I produce pieces that are now despised on the stage, but that the audience flocked to and cried over thirty years ago. I give them to the young ones, and they cry like father and mother did. I do Johanna von Montfaucon and Dyveke, but I shorten them because the young ones don’t care for a lot of love nonsense. They want it sad but quick. I have traveled up and down Denmark, back and forth, and I know everyone, and they all know me. Now I’m going to Sweden, and if I do well there and earn good money, then I’ll become a Pan-Scandinavian. Otherwise, I won’t. I can tell you this since you’re my countryman.”

And I, as his countryman, am repeating it immediately, of course, just for the fun of telling it.