Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

He looked across the worktable at the smoking man, then looked away. His eye fell on a rectangular wooden box at the end of the table. One of its faces was glass. He reached for the thing. A crank protruded from the side. “Is this an old automaton?”

“A new one.”

Fergus turned the crank. A bulb went on inside the box. A castle had been painted on the back wall. Three carved soldiers in breeches and jackets with epaulets pointed their rifles at a blindfolded figure in a peasant’s smock. One soldier had a blond beard, another a jutting brow, the third a frivolous nose. Fergus continued to turn the crank. The soldiers lurched in unison. There was a tiny blasting sound. The blindfolded figure fell forward. The light went out. Fergus kept at the crank. The light went on: the scene as before — executioners poised, villain erect and waiting.

Fergus worked the toy for a while. Then he said: “What will you do with this?”

“Oh … we’re fond of the estate agent’s children, and at Christmas …”

“You have a rare talent.”

“Oh, rare, no … It passes the time.”

Fergus turned the crank again. “Yes,” he said. “What doesn’t pass the time? Managing factories, mastering languages, raising families …” He had said too much. “More brandy?” he asked, and poured without waiting for an answer, as if the bottle were still his.

Bernard drank. “Your action figures … they all have the same face, yes?”

“The same face,” Fergus admitted. “Headgear distinguishes them, and costume … Children, young children, identify clothes, equipment, color.”

“Features are too … subtle?”

“Well, research indicates …”

Bernard said: “After all, this is not for the estate agent’s children.” He paused. “I would like to give it to you.”

“Oh, I—”

“Because you value it.”

“—couldn’t take such a gift.” But he took it.

BARBARA RODE ON A LITTLE TRAIN that chugged through the mountains. From her window she looked up at pines, down at a miniature town. She recognized it as charming: the ideal final posting for her sentimental man.

When the train halted she stepped briskly off, carrying one small suitcase and a sack of paperback novels. She wore new harlequin glasses bought in the hope that they would soften her bony face.

She leaped toward Fergus and he leaped toward her.

Then Fergus shouldered Barbara’s books and picked up her suitcase. “Only a few blocks to the inn,” he said. “Wherever we live we’ll be able to walk everywhere. In two months we’ll know everybody here. Have you eaten?”

“There was a nice little buffet car. I’ll bet you know half of the citizens already. Let me take the books.”

“I’ve met the officials,” he said, not relinquishing the sack. “The lawyer, the estate agent,” he enumerated as they walked downhill past soft old buildings. “A doctor, too; I met him at a party the contractor gave. All rather wooden, except for a crazy news vendor who speaks in tongues, sort of.”

At the inn she met the innkeeper. Then: “What a model room!” she said when Fergus brought her upstairs. “That fat quilt. Stencils on the highboy. And what’s this?” she said, spotting the automaton.

She listened to a description of a husband and wife who were devoted to toys. Then she picked up the box and turned the crank and watched an execution several times. “The chin below the blindfold,” she said at last. “Such defiance. I’d like to meet the man who made this.”

“You will. Are you tired, darling?” her husband asked.

“Not too tired. Darling.”

FIVE DAYS WENT BY before Fergus and Barbara could get together with Bernard and Anna — five days of meetings, of house hunting, of the hiring of a tutor. “Though I’m not sure I have the stomach for another language,” Barbara said. “I’ll mime my way around.”

At last the four met on a Saturday night in the dining room of the inn. Under his vest Bernard wore a button-down instead of a T-shirt. He looked like a woodman. Anna wore a cocktail dress — Fergus remembered that his mother had once owned one like it: blue taffeta, with a wide skirt.

The innkeeper sent over a bottle of wine. They bought a second bottle. Guests of the inn and citizens of the town came into the big room in pairs and groups.

“Saturday night,” Anna remarked. “It’s always like this.”

At ten o’clock the innkeeper brought out his collection of big band records, and there was dancing in a glassed-in terrace that overlooked the square. Fergus danced with Barbara, then with Anna.

“I like your wife,” she said.

“I like your village. I think we’ll be happy here.”

“I suspect you’re happy everywhere.”

“Happy enough,” he said, cautiously. “We have a taste for small things.”

“Here you can make a lot out of a little. Old tragedies like the news vendor’s. His father had a fit and chopped off his fingers when he was twelve …”

“Good Lord.” The music stopped.

“He speaks half a dozen languages, more when he’s sober. Life’s a game to him.”

Music again: the big band records repeated. Couples again took the floor. Fergus smiled at the people he’d already met and wondered which would become intimates, which only friends.

“What other scandals can you tell me?” he asked.

“Bernard and I are a bit of a scandal … not being married, you know.”

“I didn’t know. That’s not much of a scandal these days,” he said lightly.

She gave him an offended stare. Though the floor had become crowded, he maneuvered her sideways, backward, forward, without colliding with anyone. He had always been a skillful dancer.

“ I am married,” she said at last. “Bernard isn’t. I’ve seen you watching the photographs. Isn’t she pretty?”

“She is your image.”

“We lived in Paris. My husband owned jewelry shops. I designed brooches, necklaces. Ten years ago Bernard persuaded me to move in with him. I thought to divorce.”

Divorce was not on his list of unbearables; it was simply unthinkable. “Custody?” he asked.

“We’d divide her.”

“She liked dolls.”

“She was careless with the antiques.”

“Yes, well …”

“The bastard sent the whole collection in a taxi across town,” she said, heatedly now. “As if they were groceries. He sold his business, and decamped with our daughter. I traced them to New York but never any further.”

“That’s kidnapping,” Fergus said. “It can’t be done.”

“No? It was done.”

“She would be … eighteen?”

“She is eighteen,” Anna chided softly.

The song had not ended but they had stopped dancing. He stood with his heels together, stiff as a palace guard. Her fingers caressed the silk of her skirt. He took her right hand in his left and placed his own right on the small of her back and moved forward lightly, mechanically. “You and Bernard were young enough to have children together.”

“Oh, young enough,” she said, and nodded; this time she was not offended. “But I would have no further children until my first child was returned. Loyalty. It’s how I’m made.”

She smiled that brave little smile. Her spite uncoiled like a paper snake; Fergus felt its twitch. He imagined Bernard beset by his own longings: raising a rifle to his shoulder and training its sight on the hollow of her neck … Because the music was ending at last, and because Anna’s outdated dress demanded some appreciative flourish, Fergus whirled her once and then urged her backward over his left arm. He did not bend over her as custom demanded, but instead looked fiercely at Barbara and the toyman standing profile to profile against the floodlit square.