Mannequins

I

His mom had a lot of friends from the time not far off at all when she was a maiden and couldn’t bury them in oblivion just because she wasn’t so any longer. In addition, she had lots of works to do, so she needed to cross the town back and forth, which meant Nestor had to accompany her hopping everywhere not daring utter a word. He had to call ‘auntie’ mom’s friends though he perfectly knew they weren’t familiar nor were they relatives, but every time they leant downward their gleaming eyes, smiling at him lovingly, and sometimes they winked at his mom while smiling. One of the mom’s friends was senior to her, had a less wide smile, and gave Nestor a big, nice, brown cheese bun. Nestor didn’t bite it off at once as his eyes were caught by the unfamiliar interior where they had got, full of knick-knacks and tapestry. Yet, while he was lost in admiration, the cat stealthily got near and, with a malicious movement, lifted as quickly as lightning her paw with her claws out and—snap!—snatched the cheese bun. Nestor started howling in a great sorrow, but the elderly lady, mom’s friend and housewife, first heartily laughed, then indulgently smiled, then gave the boy a kind smile and extended affectionately a plate brimming with cheese buns so that the boy should pick a new one. However Nestor felt too humiliated to accept another bun. The cat had sheltered herself behind the edge of the sideboard and, sitting there, her back arched, concentrated on the prey as if she didn’t do anything wrong, was hastily swallowing his cheese bun. Nestor didn’t stop howling, so the housewife, mom’s friend, seized a flapper. The cat raised her head grinning with her tooth sunk into the bun—which was twice as big as her head—despair shining in her eyes; she casted looks around to find a way out, but finally chose the right way of reason. She left the bun on the floor and scampered off. Mom’s friend picked up the cheese bun from the floor and gave it to Nestor.

“But you should know,” she said, “it isn’t a good idea to eat something after a cat. Or from the floor, either.”

Nestor had stopped howling as he was not quite sure whether to admit that recovering a bun from a cat was honorably solution, or to keep lamenting over his humiliation. Because one couldn’t deny it: taking advantage of his one moment’s inattention, the cheese bun had been treacherously clawed from his hand. Not a good idea to eat after a cat? That seemed to be a reasonable advice. He gave up eating the cheese bun and stubbornly refused to take another.

Then mom, who kept all the day long crossing the town, wanted to buy something from a clothing shop. Holding Nestor’s hand, she crossed the doorstep. But, unlike other cases, crossing the doorstep there didn’t now mean stepping in. Nestor looked up with fear in his eyes, and instantly stopped. A narrow long staircase stood up in front of him. It had no connection with the bottom floor of the building but led straight to the store upstairs. One couldn’t see the store from the doorstep. The staircase looked like a sloping tunnel bordered by white walls. The whiteness of the walls didn’t come from the light outside. Its source was indoors—it came from the store itself. Oh, but the light had to travel a long way from the store to the bottom doorway! Before reaching down there, the light had to pass the landing between stories, where it was mysteriously gamboling among the folds of a mannequin’s gown, confounding the colors—yellow, scarlet-red, irradiant white, and mainly diffuse discreet black, and true black, frightening black about the edge of the walls, where the mannequin’s shadow was falling. There was a female mannequin slightly bent onward, seemingly making a welcoming gesture with one hand lifted up a little more than the other, her fingers sprawled and treacherously twisted, so Nestor couldn’t be sure whether she wanted to give him something or take something from him, maybe his life even. Treacherously and perversely. The female mannequin was displaying an alluring smile while staring down the staircase.

“It’s just a mannequin,” mom said, amused, in a reassuring tone.

But Nestor, though taken in tow, could no longer be budged from his place.

“It’s a mannequin,” mom repeated a bit upset. “It’s not animated. It can’t do any harm to you.”

The ficus wasn’t animated either—meaning their ficus at home—couldn’t have any initiative, couldn’t move a bit, but it wasn’t pretending, either. One could pass it just like passing any other tree on the street. But the female mannequin was alluringly, treacherously smiling, one leg stretched forward as if it was about to cross your path, though it wasn’t moving for the time being. Just for the time being. As for the color of that stretched leg—oh dear!—what color could that be? It was apparently the color of mom’s leg when wearing beige winter stockings. But she didn’t wear stockings. It was her color.

Nestor would not longer go into any clothing shop but couldn’t refuse to accompany his mom when she chose secluded backdoors to enter while having him in tow and smiling encouragingly, as he felt emerge inside him a will, too frail though to resist mom’s smiling will. Here they are getting into a shaded backyard, elongated between two old walls down which flatten tin gutters stretch below the eaves. A plush of moist green moss covered the round stone pavement which the foot felt insecure and shook when stepping on. A double door: one opening outside, the other one inside. Mom crossed the doorstep and stopped for a moment leaning towards him.

Please don’t make a fuss about that. There’re no mannequins where we’re getting to.”

Lots of sewing machines worked in there making a deafening noise while vigorous women’s legs relentlessly pressed treadles under the tables to put those machineries in motion. Nestor turned to the window that looked on the backyard where they had come in, and saw on the dusty sill a huge spiral shell. A cowry.

Mom laughed while talking to a lady standing between the two ranges of sewing machines—and pieces of sewn fabric curled up rushing under their foot pressers with furiously moving needles—and they both in turn threw smiling–protecting eyes towards him, first the lady and then mom. The lady shouted something to him over the tables, but the noise was too big for him to hear what she said. He hadn’t even time to get near and seize the cowry, when mom came from behind his back to take him by the hand and pulled him, among the sewing machines that spun mad, towards the high wall at the end of the hall, where there was a wide space free of sewing machines, the noise was lower and voices could be heard quite well. Authoritative voices.

“I don’t want you to remain with that foolish fear of mannequins,” his mom said. “So put this under your hat that mannequins are made by humans and are meant to show the buyer what kind of clothes he can buy in a store. Here where we’ll get in is not a store, here they create models. Got it?”

And saying this, mom pulled him through a doorway without threshold into another room with high ceiling, while carefully watching him and maybe with a bit of concern when Nestor had to face mannequins there.

But they were naked mannequins—almost all of them—the color of the stockings his mom would wear in winter, and the noise of the sewing machines could be heard coming from beyond the door and beyond the walls. A plump and pretty lady was approaching, but mom was not yet ready to talk to her, but again lent towards Nestor.

“Look,” mom said pointing to the mannequins, “you see them? They are the same as that one on the staircase. They look like humans but aren’t humans. They don’t move and don’t hurt anyone. OK, Nestor? Do we agree?” The plump lady had come within a couple of steps, and mom had to break off to welcome her: “Hi, Ivona. We got problems. We have to get used to mannequins.”

Maybe because mom spoke referring to them both, Ivona laughed and ruffled Nestor with a hand gentle and firm at the same time.

Nestor curiously approached a stark female mannequin and moved around her examining her carefully. One could see it was a woman mannequin.

“It’s like a sort of big doll,” came from one side the encouraging voice of Mrs. Ivona, with a touch of irony over the kindness. Kindness or irony?

But it wasn’t a doll. There were no joints between its legs and its torso, or between its arms and its shoulders. There was no way to play with something so big, either. Mannequins had to have a fully different purpose. But which one? The two women merrily whispered a few steps away and perhaps gazed at him. The waist of the female mannequin was thin and graceful and the body got wider to her hips without exceeding a certain width. Yet boundlessly. But this, too, hid something. Nestor reached out and touched the mannequin’s hip with his finger. The mannequin swayed slightly. He turned to Mrs. Ivona his frighten eyes, because she should have been the mistress in here. But she encouraged him.

“You may touch her.”

Her or him? Nestor put his palm on her smooth and cool hip. “Let him get accustomed,” a whisper reached his ear. Mom and the other lady named Ivona chuckled. The two women chuckled even louder when Nestor’s hand slipped down her thigh—a smooth and cool thigh; it was like a motionless embossed beige picture; but the picture didn’t stand for anyone known, and if you didn’t have anyone to complain you’re fooled, that meant you wasn’t fooled. You had to be very serious. Nestor’s palm moved to the inner side of the thigh, and from there went up a bit quicker, though unwillingly, until his knuckles touched her other thigh, which made a slightly hollow sound. There was already a tight spot, really tight. But besides that, there was nothing else there. Except the spot above the crotch, at the bottom of the belly, was unusually embossed. The two women could be heard holding their breath. Nestor withdrew his hand. There were other mannequins, too, in that room and, indeed, none of them looked scary. From afar, Nestor turned his head and sent his mom a smile of goodwill. His mom smiled back, relieved and reassured. Now mom and her friend Ivona could talk of their own business, and only their own, without anyone bothering them. They turned on their heels and moved away. Here, too, in this room without sewing machines, on the sill of a window wider than high, made of small panes, there was a cowry. The sill wasn’t even dusty. Nestor seized the cowry and put it against his ear. At the other end of the sill, far away, a russet white cat bounced on the floor—gently on her soft pads. Shhhhhhh—he heard continuously from deep inside the shell. The cat passed—sneaked—behind a mannequin lying abandoned sideway by the wall, one hand oddly raised in the air, and appeared on the other end, from behind the head, two steps away from Nestor, with peaceful intentions.

“The cowry whispers one’s future. So they say. What is it whispering to you?”

Nestor looked up without taking the cowry off his ear. A pretty, slim young woman, a really pretty and really slim one, had kindly leant towards him, her forearms rested on her thighs, her fists halfway tightened and her wrists crossed between her knees. Her forearms perhaps stood that way to support her, but at the same time they were saying: No, I’m not going to hold you, so stay still. Her very-very soft voice spread again in the air like a whispered song.

“Do you tell me what the cowry is whispering to you?”

Nestor shook his head without hostility and just afterwards wondered: Do I not tell her because I don’t know what cowries whisper, or because it’s a secret? Anyway, it’s No.

“Will you give it to me to find out my future?”

It was clear that if he gave it to her, that won’t be forever. The young woman would give it back to him because she looked trustworthy. Nestor stretched his hand and gave her the cowry, and she, without drawing herself up, put it against her ear, and, happy and concentrated, gazed somewhere by Nestor’s side. Then her eyes set, bright, on his eyes, and the smile of the slender young woman widened, full of generosity and delight. She looked straight into his eyes, but did she saw him? Yes and no.

“The cowry tells me I’d become a much appreciated mannequin.”

How come? She was alive and had a bright white skin. Would she one day become completely still, a stone on a stand, and would her skin take the color of beige winter stockings? And after all that being happy of such a dreadful future? Nestor remembered that mannequin on the landing in the clothing shop, and wondered whether she had not previously been a living young woman who once wanted with all her heart to become a mannequin. There weren’t many chances for the issue to get clarified very quickly for, behold, his mom was approaching—approaching him and the slender young woman, whom mom called Felicia.

“You have such a sweet boy, Tereza, Felicia told his mom.”

“Yes,” said mom. “His name is Nestor and he’s afraid of mannequins.”

Nestor had clearly perceived a touch of taunting reproach in her voice.

“Oh!” Felicia exclaimed disappointed. “I can’t believe it! Nestor! But Nestor seems to be a hero’s name, or something, right?”

“Something in Greek antiquity,” mom confirmed, but didn’t evince pride.

But Felicia wasn’t really disappointed, for, her back now straightened, she smiled to Nestor as a fellow from the height of her pretty head of young woman, sympathizer of the boys. And as a sympathizer of the boys, she couldn’t betray.

The russet white cat came to flatteringly and caressingly rub herself against Nestor’s leg, and he withdrew his leg and moved one step back.

“She’s friendly,” Felicia explained in a tuneful voice, “she doesn’t do any harm to you.”

Felicia was siding with the cat.

“Huh!” mom said. “He knows what he knows!”

Mom was now cold and almost didn’t conceal anything. Discrete and tired, she would hardly get involved in the talk. And finished by becoming entirely silent.

Mannequins lay overturned about the walls, in the strangest positions. Cast off. Some of them, even though they had no couplings between their arms and their shoulders, had instead rods right in the mid-forearms. In some, the added pieces—the arms’ ends—were completely missing, so that the arms looked amputated. Cut short. And in the center of the arms’ cross-section exposed to view without any decency you could see not the bone but the end of a hollow metal rod—a pipe. “Do you tell me what the cowry is whispering to you?” ... The cat had curled around his leg and, because she’d been given no attention, had gone to seek friendlier places...

II

Nestor wasn’t going to walk through the passage at the end of which, far away, he could behold a street, yet attractive, in the golden yellow light of the September sun. Crowded on weekdays and even more crowded on Saturdays, on Sundays instead you could appreciate it in its entire splendor since emptied. A baroque piece of art—a town branching out under a glass dome. A cool, relaxing half-light persisted in all the time. Shops were closed of course, but you felt like you’d been given the freedom—once in a lifetime—to choose not to buy anything, and wanting nothing but walking along those windows of perfect taste that lined up all the passage long. Nestor stopped at a window where camcorders and digital cameras were exposed, with all imaginable accessories. Prices were steep for those who chose less well-paying professions, even after having left behind a whole career. But if you didn’t want shopping, it didn’t matter. Nestor passed without linger the next a few windows and stopped right where you were lured by picnic accessories. On a rug of artificial grass rendering a slightly uneven ground you could see in a side a black iron grill under the bars of which a red light was meant to suggest a pile of hot embers. For those who didn’t believe in the genuineness of that imitation of embers, bags of charcoal were offered in different sizes, exposed right at the foot of the grill. A white lime-striped arbor completed the open space behind a station wagon, while a folding table surrounded by folding chairs was laid for five people with the necessary cutlery, all plastic of course. Nestor’s eyes came upon a trawl-like net, stretched all over a window’s back wall as a background adorned with a shower of artificial leaves, green and yellow and rust in a sophisticated arrangement of color spots. And at both sides of the window, two small trees—birches—but with artificial leaves attached lent the whole picture a painful genuineness. Though there was no one beyond the window’s glass to enjoy that piece of nature built up masterfully.

In the space between that window and the next one, a panel stood fixed to the wall, narrow and as tall as the ground floor of the store, showing a slender young woman in white swimsuit. Nestor had to step back a little so he could take in the entire panel. Tanned and in great health, slightly tilted back, her head turned to the limit of her neck’s flexibility, the woman still gave out a certain apprehension. However her eyes didn’t seem to anticipate a threat from where she was looking at. On the contrary, she exhibited a very self-confident smile, as if that someone from outside the panel, to whom she looked, was about to fall a prey to her power of seduction. The prominent, stretched tendon in her neck might be one of her weapons of seduction. And another, the iliac bone edge barely piercing her sun-browned, lithe and powerful belly above her slip. Nestor felt someone passing behind his back and, turning, he saw a little vagrant, about thirteen, the kind of streetwise fellow, who feels equally at ease anywhere, in the outskirts and downtown. The kid passed indeed a few steps’ distance, looking as if he didn’t have to explain anything, whether he had been noticed or not, not even for his cheeky grin which he gave Nestor while moving away in a lazy pace, not only his head turned towards him, but occasionally his whole body turned towards him, so he finished by shuffling backwards on the glossy mosaic of the passage. The mocking eyes of the little vagrant seemed to say without the least embarrassment: So, you didn’t leave this stuff yet? Still clinging to babes, even at your age? But since he met with no response he stopped going backwards and went his way a bit faster, moving away while dangling his arms on one of the passage’s recesses, into the shadow of verdigris silver.

Nestor moved to the next window and approaching again found himself face to face with a female mannequin. Face to face is just a way of saying it, for the female mannequin beyond the glass didn’t pay any attention to him. And nobody in the world she paid the least attention to. Sitting on a stool, alone in the discrete light of a spot in the ceiling, elbows rested on her knees wide apart, the way women do to relax in privacy, when they can afford to give up social conventions, one of which requires them to always keep their knees close together. But there was nothing improper in the attitude of that female mannequin, even exposed that way in a window, as a broad skirt of heavy fabric fell into folds covering her legs to mid-calves and making a deep crease between her thighs, in her lap. Nestor viewed her skin color and, with an inner smile, found it didn’t remind him, not the least, of the beige stockings that his mother used to wear in winter many years ago. Her skin was a perfectly natural ocher.

“Yup,” Nestor told himself, “the mannequin industry evolved dramatically.”

Suddenly, he turned and looked along the passage, and he saw the little vagrant that still didn’t leave. He had stopped somewhere far away, near the exit of the passage, where one could see the sunny street. He had stopped and—Nestor couldn’t see very well—he was eyeing him from afar.

But where the female mannequin looked to? She had eyes so vivid that Nestor waited a few moments to see whether she was blinking or not. Where she looked to? Nothing in the surrounding material world could cause that serene satisfaction on her face. She certainly didn’t want the picnic that was happening in the next window. She didn’t want anything from the windows around. Her forearms were resting on her thighs, and her hands were lazily hanging, slightly crossed between her knees.

“C’è tanta pace,” Nestor remembered a piece of a song once in fashion, in his childhood.

Mom was pulling him by the hand, but he had got stuck, stubborn, in the doorway, looking with dismay up the stairs leading to the clothing shop above. On the landing, the female mannequin was about to cross his path while the light coming from inside gamboled among the folds of her dress.

“Come,” mom was saying. “It’s only a mannequin; it won’t do you any harm.”

Nestor was raising his eyes and looking straight into her eyes that were trustworthy because she was a sympathizer of the boys and could not betray. So he was passing the doorstep and, holding her hand, began to mount the staircase in the white light.