Page 75 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

breathes; I do not. It’s not that I believe that I could ever have my body back

again—the one I used to have, I mean. Those who drove me into this form did
what they did and that’s all. I was on my way out and they thought they were
helping me; instead they turned motion and intelligible speech into a currency
with which personhood is earned.
This craving for consideration is the only real difference between my youthful
self and the old, old Gepetta of today. The puppets who made me were shocked
when I sold them. Shocked because puppets don’t need money, but also because

of the care I took to separate them—they couldn’t understand that at all. No two
to the same home, or even to neighboring cities. I consulted maps and made sure
each of those puppets would be held apart by forests and deserts and the spans of
rivers. The likelihood of any kind of reunion is almost impossible for them, us. I
wonder if that broke their bond, but being able to find an answer to that question

would mean my project failed. A shattering so absolute that no word can be
picked up again—that’s my success.
—

AT THE END of the second week of Tyche and Myrna’s absence a personal essay
was due. The title was something along the lines of “What Can a Puppet Do?”
The students were required to state their current ambitions, and though the

statement would receive a grade it would remain private. In an environment that
relied so heavily on public demonstration of progress this was a rare opportunity
to be earnest without simultaneously putting yourself at a severe disadvantage;
for this reason the teachers imposed a word limit so things didn’t get out of hand.
Rowan claimed that the title made his mind go blank, so I dictated his essay to
him word for word. What can a puppet do? We didn’t have an uncynical answer

between us, so I simply reassembled a few lines I remembered from lectures I’d
heard Brambani give back when he was still in the process of writing War
Between the Fingers and the Thumb. The role of the puppeteer is to preserve
childlike wonder throughout our life spans, etc. Radha’s essay was so brief that
it only met half the required number of words; she copy-pasted the paragraph
she’d already written and added a line at the beginning explaining that she was
making use of the technique of repetition for the sake of emphasis. Hard copies

were required, so Tyche e-mailed her essay to Radha, who handed it in without
reading it and ran off hand in hand with the Grimaldi boy. Rowan Wayland
intercepted Tyche’s essay before it reached Ms. Alfarsi’s desk, putting a finger