BARTÓK FOR CHILDREN
Once upon a time there was a young Quebec soldier in occupied France. The Germans couldn’t differentiate between a Québécois and a Parisian accent, and so French-Canadian soldiers made perfect spies. This unfortunate Canadian soldier, however, had been turned in by an angry Parisian girlfriend and was shot fifteen times in the chest by a German soldier. He lay on the ground in the woods, looking up at the sky, waiting to die.
The branches of the trees were all laughing at him. It was winter and the snowflakes were falling from the sky slowly. They were enormous, as though old women had crocheted them for a church sale. Looking at them, the soldier didn’t think that death would be so bad after all. All he had to do was close his eyes for good this time, but he kept opening them to get one more peek at the world around him and because he wanted to be human for one more second.
His life wasn’t flashing before his eyes at all. In fact, he couldn’t really recall anything about who he was. Or perhaps he couldn’t be bothered to remember anything. He just wanted to have these last moments to himself. He felt as if he was on the verge of figuring something out, as if some greater meaning was about to be revealed to him, but then it wasn’t.
Two faces appeared above him. They were the round faces of two little girls. They had on black peacoats and red mittens. One had a pale face with blond curls tumbling onto it. The other had short black hair and thin bow lips.
“Bonjour, bonjour,” they said.
Their words turned into small puffs of smoke in front of their faces. They took him by the shoulders and shook him. Their dogs were hopping all over his legs and licking his cheeks. He felt them lifting his body onto a little cart. They were scolding their dogs and calling them all manner of beasts.
The soldier closed his eyes. It was all over for him. The bumpy road turned into the soft waves of the sea. He was sailing away, away, away to some place.
As the girls drew up to the doctor’s house, one of them opened the lapels of the soldier’s jacket and put her ear against his chest. When she raised her head, her ear and cheek were covered in his blood, but she hadn’t heard any heartbeat. They brought him to the doctor, who quickly pronounced the man dead. He told them to bring the man to the mortician’s, as he himself was in the middle of a meal. The girls decided to bring him to the Toymaker’s house instead. He could fix any toy and bring all sorts of broken things back to life. Their cheeks were the loveliest pink known to humanity due to the effort that they had taken in pulling the soldier all the way to the Toymaker’s house, which was all the way out of town.
The Toymaker had always been shy. He had thought that he would overcome it as he grew older, but this had not been the case. He walked through the village with his head down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. He felt wretched when he was anywhere but his toy shop.
His workshop was where all his friends were. He was busy all the time, bringing things to life. He made dolls with porcelain faces that would speak if you pulled the little chain on their backs.
The dolls had red, glistening lips. They looked as if they were dying to say something but had been warned not to say another word by their teachers. Their eyes were so shiny that at times it seemed as if they were welling up with tears. Their cheeks were rosy, as if they had come in from skating moments before. And their hair was so curly that it always seemed to be shaking, as if they had just taken the pins out and now it was tumbling down and they were laughing.
The Toymaker looked in the mirror and couldn’t help but notice the contrast between himself and the dolls. He was so old that great bags had formed under his eyes and his nose was bulbous and covered in spider veins, but inside he had always felt like a boy. The voice that spoke to him in his head was that of a boy. He dressed the same way that he had when he was ten years old, always wearing a vest with red buttons. He made toys that were exactly to his liking, which turned out to be the same tastes of the children who came into his shop. His refusal to grow up was what made him so good at his craft.
The Toymaker was also able to make little clockwork figures. He made monkeys in tailcoats and white bow ties — like waiters at fancy restaurants — that would bang their cymbals together. What a strange occupation for a ten-inch monkey. He would laugh and laugh while looking at them. There was a bear that waddled back and forth with a suitcase in each hand as if he were on his way to catch a train. There was a goose that held a trumpet to its mouth and played a lovely tune.
As much as people found his toys wonderful, no one loved them quite as much as the Toymaker did. He thought they were all so, so enchanting. They broke his heart. But what he could not do was get a doll to love him. Every time he created something that was beautiful, he was struck by a feeling of terrible loneliness.
Before the war, the Toymaker charged top price for his dolls. It was only the very richest of children that were able to afford them. His dolls were renowned and were shipped to rich families in other cities throughout Europe. The children would pull off the huge ribbon from the box and then they would gasp at what was inside. Now there were no orders for expensive dolls from the families in Paris or any other big city.
But he had a soft spot for all children. The children from the village would knock on his back door. They would be weeping and holding up their dolls that needed emergency treatment. They brought him teddy bears that looked like they had dropsy. They looked like little piles of cold porridge. Some had lost their ears, having been viciously mauled by cats. They were anemic and hungry. There were dolls whose eyes had fallen out and others whose fingers had broken right off.
He had an illegal doll hospital. The Toymaker would pull out the rows of tiny screwdrivers and tweezers. They were so small that he might as well be operating on insects, giving a beetle bypass surgery. He would put on special glasses with magnifying lenses. The children would cry out in surprise when they saw his enormous eyes. He would take his tray of ceramic hands out of the oven, and his bottles of glass eyes that looked out at him from the cabinets, and make all the dolls come back to life. He would lay the dolls on the operating table and he would mend their broken crowns.
One little boy arrived once with a notebook and asked the Toymaker if he would do his math problems with him. His father used to help him, but now he had gone off to fight and was in a prison somewhere. They sat together under the table lamp — the golden glow of the dim bulb — doing his homework together.
But the children always went home at the end of the day. They didn’t really belong to him. That’s why children wanted and loved dolls. They wanted to have something to keep with them always. They wanted to give something a name. The Toymaker wanted that too.
The Toymaker had a black cat named Cleo that hopped around the house. Its slick fur looked as though it were made out of the same material as a magician’s top hat. But that wasn’t the same!
The Toymaker yelled at the girls to bring the soldier in. He couldn’t believe it. If he fixed this young man, maybe he could keep him. This might be his chance to have a real boy!
He worked through the night, sewing all the soldier’s wounds with invisible thread. He mended his broken leg with tiny screws and plaster. He ran wires through his arms and his legs and then put an electrical box at the bottom of his head. He bestowed on him a clockwork heart. Ever so carefully, he placed a small speaker behind his vocal chords. Finally, he filled the soldier with oil. Then he took a step back and hoped the soldier would come to life, but he didn’t.