The stage upon which the Corsican Brothers worked was a stretch of sidewalk some four feet long and three feet wide, their backdrop a brick wall darkened by the soot of centuries. An audience composed of summer out-of-town visitors, shoppers, and cinema buffs (who had wandered over from the twenty-five-cent peepshow displays slightly farther west), some two dozen people in all, watched as Alfred reached into the box. Benny stood to the left of the crowd, also watching. To the right of the crowd, standing almost against the brick wall, his hands in his pockets, stood Vinny, the star performer in the amazing dancing doll act, but a performer who sought neither applause nor recognition, a performer whose role necessitated that he remain absolutely silent, anonymous, and practically invisible. Standing directly opposite Alfred and the cardboard box that contained the amazing dancing dolls, Vinny watched like any other curious member of the audience, his hands in his pockets.
“Now this may look to you like just an ordinary doll made of cardboard and flimsy paper,” Alfred said to the crowd. “In fact, as you can see, the head here is made of cardboard, as are the hands and the feet, and the arms and legs are just this flimsy accordion-pleated paper, practically tissue paper, you may wonder how this doll can do what it is about to do. That is the amazing thing about this doll. This doll, which is only sixteen inches tall from the top of its head to the tips of its toes, is going to dance. I can make it dance, you can make it dance, and it will continue to dance for hours and hours without ever needing recharging or replacement of parts because there are no batteries in this amazing dancing doll (how could there be when the whole thing is made out of paper and cardboard) and there are no mechanical parts to wear out or break. It is paper and cardboard, that is all, but the paper is specially treated so that it gathers electric ions from the very air you and I, all of us, are breathing all around us. And once those ions are gathered and stored in these flimsy little legs, why the amazing dancing doll can hardly stand still with excitement, it just begins dancing all over the place for hours on end. I’m going to show you in a minute how this little doll dances, but I want to explain first that the reason we can offer it at the low price of fifty cents is that the doll is made out of just this flimsy paper and cardboard, as you can see, and that’s practically what it costs to manufacture and ship, with a very small markup for profit. The electric ions in the air are free and, as you all know, it is the power source that causes most prices to soar and become a burden on the consumer. Not so with this amazing dancing doll. Now let me show you.”
Alfred, holding the doll by the top of its cardboard head, bent over so that the dangling cardboard feet on their accordion-pleated paper legs were almost touching the sidewalk. He shook the doll vigorously. He shook it again, even more vigorously.
“I am gathering in the electric ions,” he said.
He shook the doll again.
“One, two, three shakes, sometimes a few more depending on weather conditions,” he said, “that is all it takes to store the energy and set the thing in motion. Now watch.”
He released the top of the doll’s head. The doll began to bounce. Unsupported by Alfred, who backed away from it, the doll began to jiggle and jump on its flimsy paper legs, up and down, up and down, as though dancing for joy now that it had been infused with all those marvelous life-giving electric ions, free in the air for all to breathe. What the crowd did not see (because the brick wall backdrop was so filthy with soot) was the slender black thread stretching tight from the rim of the carton to where Vinny stood across the sidewalk, silently watching the performance albeit a performer himself. The taut black thread went directly into Vinny’s pocket, where it was wrapped around the forefinger of his right hand. As Vinny jiggled his forefinger, the black thread simultaneously jiggled, and as the thread jiggled, so did the doll because what Alfred had really been doing (while earlier shaking out the doll to gather in all those electric ions) was hanging it onto the thread from a tiny hook on the back of the cardboard head. As the crowd watched goggle-eyed now, Alfred picked up the doll and said, “Who’ll buy the first one, ladies and gentlemen? They’re only fifty cents each, who’ll buy the first one, there is only a limited supply.”
A sucker in the audience (there are suckers in every audience, Benny mused silently) asked the anticipated sucker question.
“How do we know all the dolls can dance and not just that one doll there?”
“They can all dance,” Alfred answered, “because they have all been specially treated with the ion-attracting matter. Would one of you people here just reach into the box and hand me any doll that’s in there. There’s nothing special about this particular doll, believe me. They are all of them exactly alike, they are all amazing. Madam, would you please do us the favor?” he said, turning to an old woman who looked like a minister’s wife, but who may very well have been a retired prostitute. It made no matter; Alfred truly did not know her, and his claim that all of the dolls were exactly alike was a valid, honest, and legitimate one. The old lady gingerly picked a doll from the box at random.
“Now please shake it out for me, madam, just as you saw me do with the other doll,” Alfred said.
The old lady shook out the doll.
“Again, please, a little harder. Thank you. And here, sir,” he said to the man who had raised the question, “you give it a few shakes, too. Madam, may I, please?” He took the doll from the old lady, and handed it to the man. The man studied the doll with the scrutiny of Geppetto, gave it two vigorous shakes, and handed it back to Alfred, who immediately bent low, smiled at the crowd, and said, “Few more shakes for good measure,” as he swiftly hooked it onto the black thread that ran arrow-straight into his brother Vinny’s pocket. Alfred released the doll, and lo and behold, the cunning little darling began jiggling and bouncing and dancing its little heart out! Any skeptic in the crowd was immediately convinced. Common sense stridently warned that a paper and cardboard doll could not defy the laws of gravity in such a manner, even if it were specially treated with monosodium glutamate or aluminum chloral hydrate. But an old lady and a disbeliever, both as honest as the day was long, had each shaken the doll and passed it back to Alfred, who did nothing more than shake it again and set it on its feet — and now look at the damn thing dancing! Dollar bills appeared in anxious fists. Alfred busily began making change and dispensing dolls from the carton as Vinny’s forefinger twitched and the doll on the unseen black thread danced its way to fame and glory. In less than five minutes, Alfred had sold fourteen of the dolls, for an almost pure profit of seven dollars. He might have gone on to sell another dozen to the growing crowd had not Vinny emitted a low whistle at that point, the signal that the cop on the beat was approaching. Alfred snatched up the amazing dancing doll in the middle of one of its more complicated entrechats, tossed it into the carton, said, “Good night, folks, thank you,” and bolted off after his brother, who hastily left behind him on the sidewalk a broken cotton thread, his only invisible means of support.