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What use is a heart that refuses to beat? There is no sound, no life.
Giuseppe holds it in his hands: a cold, metal heart. He is the only one who will ever know its brassy scent, the only one allowed to brush his fingertips against the hard metal.
When he wakes up, he will remember. It is a plea to a dead son from his desperate father: Your heart will live. The gears will turn.
Come back to me, Carlo.
Soon Giuseppe will be free of the string of train cars that have been his makeshift home. Books litter the floor, half-empty bottles dot the tables. He rarely drank before Carlo died — and even then only for public engagements — but now it is his second-favorite perfume. The heaviness of alcohol, the way it makes his nose wrinkle — distractions, all of it.
But here, alone with the puppet made to look like his son, Giuseppe allows himself these brief moments. These slivers of humanity as he straightens a stool he knocked over in anger, in frustration. He sits down, pulls a bottle to his chest clumsily, spilling precious intoxicant on his vest.
Giuseppe watches his lifeless puppet in the dim light of the train, slumped over in the chair. He will keep it safe, if nothing else, until Carlo awakens. Until his son is born anew.
The alcohol burns Giuseppe’s throat, makes his vision swim, but for a mere moment, he is an onlooker. A voyeur peering into the home of another, lazily scanning the hovel that he has claimed as his own. Giuseppe’s life has been his work for so long: there is nothing left but puppets. Crate upon crate of twisted puppet legs, arms, heads. Wide, glaring eyes. No personal memorabilia adorns the train. Giuseppe left all that back at their family home, dead and buried with his memories of Camille as well as Carlo’s childhood. Someday perhaps they will return once Carlo is whole again. Together they will unlock the front gate, and maybe the creaky hinges will make Carlo smile like they used to. As a child he would grip the bars excitedly, fists wrapping around iron, hollering as he slipped his feet between the bars and clung on for dear life. Giuseppe chastised him then, but he would give anything now to hear the sound again. Anything.
Together they might breathe in the dust, determined to return warmth to their home. The fireplace, unused for so long, will be awash in flames, made to snap at ancient wood. Giuseppe will sit on the floor, achy joints be damned, and he will pull Carlo into his arms. With nary a complaint from his son’s lips: Carlo will be such a good boy now, after all. A better boy. Giuseppe will read to his son until the fire dies, until every scrap of wood has been spent. Until his eyes threaten to fail on him, shimmery with exhaustion, Giuseppe will read to his son. His only love.
Giuseppe blinks away the memories, his vision clearer now as he stares at P. He pushes away the bottle of alcohol — a momentary respite — before approaching his creation. The puppet looks so much like Carlo that it makes his chest ache. Is this not simply Carlo sleeping? Waiting to rise, to reclaim his heart. Once Giuseppe is ready to wave the proverbial magic wand.
Soon.
His life’s work has led him here: to forsaking his son, to regret, to rebirth. He cups the puppet’s cheeks as if the mere motion could rouse his son, skin soft against calloused hands. Everything will be better this time. The world is full of rot and decay now, but that is a trifling matter. Once Carlo is back in his arms, it will be as if every question in the world is answered. Every sentence will have a flourished, poetic end, and Geppetto’s life will be full of joy once more.
“You are my answer,” Giuseppe murmurs, voice low as if he might awaken his son. He is so careful now; he must be. No one can know the pain that consumes him from within lest they try to capitalize on it. Turn it against him. He shudders: the thought of anyone taking Carlo away from him, of snatching his last chance at happiness, is too much. Giuseppe is an old man now, his aching heart aged beyond its years. There is Carlo or there is death.
He circles the puppet’s cheeks with his thumbs. Trails down to touch its lips, soon to be flushed with life. This closeness to perfection almost feels too good to be true.
“You are my everything. And I hope I can be that for you, too.” His voice is a whisper now. When Carlo awakens, will he remember his father looming over him here on the train? Will he recall the way Giuseppe’s hands shook as he touched him, sculpted him? How he would pull the puppet’s hand to the front of his pants, willing his creation to breathe, to sate his needs without the pull of the Grand Covenant?
Carlo will be better this time. He will be obedient. He will understand his father in ways he never could in life.
But life will have to wait. Giuseppe wipes away the tears in his eyes — such emotion threatens to overwhelm him when he looks upon his son — and turns his back on the puppet in the chair. He looks across the clutter of the train car: upended furniture, half-empty bottles, and books strewn about. Pages torn and littering the floor. It is such a hopeless place. Carlo deserves better. To awaken somewhere beautiful: with the sun on his face, his father sitting beside him.
Finally we meet, son. Giuseppe has had the words on his tongue for what feels like a lifetime. Through this puppet, he has told Carlo so many things. As he’s worked on it, tinkering and carving and loving, he has shared his every secret. His every hope. The nightmares that haunt him. The aches and pains that plague him after working on it for hours upon hours, but also the insistence that it’s all worth it. Carlo is worth it.
There isn’t anything Giuseppe wouldn’t do for his son now, the world around them be damned. And yet, as he shuffles away, making his way to the train’s exit, another feeling squeezes his chest. A most unwelcome sensation.
Uncertainty. Carlo will be a good boy, of course. But if he didn’t love his father while he was alive, why would anything change in this second life? What emotion might flicker across Carlo’s face when he first opens his eyes?
Giuseppe pulls on his hat. Shrugs into his coat. He thinks of the quiet moments he’s had with the puppet, forcing its hands against his body. Taking off its clothes and pressing their chests together. Spreading its legs, drinking in the lifelessness of its form.
Carlo will be warm. He will be life. Of this, Giuseppe is certain.
He has to be.
It is equal parts elation and dread that fills Giuseppe’s heart as he hears his study door creak open. Anyone else would knock first. Anyone but Carlo, who was always determined to make his presence known. Trying to take up more space than he truly did. Needing the projection of his shadow on the wall to swallow his father whole.
If only Giuseppe had let it. How might things have turned out then? Where would they be now, as father and son?
“You’re here,” he says, rising from his chair. The puppet is quiet where Carlo would have been mocking: No need to get up, old man. Waving him away while drinking his father in with his eyes, soaking up every new wrinkle on his cheeks, every strand of graying hair. They saw each other so little and his son was already hurt by the passage of time, the proof that the clock tumbled onward even when he wasn’t there.
It wasn’t until Carlo died that Giuseppe realized how much he had missed. How his son had been so much smarter than him.
“You came back to me,” he continues, and the stupid puppet bobs its head comically. Unbound to the Grand Covenant, this imitation of his son should have more free will than it appears to. Giuseppe could tell it to slaughter everyone in the hotel and it would nod then, too. He clenches his fists at his sides: It needs to triumph in this world if it is to awaken Carlo’s memories. It needs to experience trauma.
And how might I orchestrate that if all it does is nod?
The puppet doesn’t seem to notice Giuseppe’s bristling. It just lumbers in, shoulders twitching robotically. Giuseppe winces: while he managed to lessen such quirks, they still remain. This is unacceptable. Carlo deserves the best. He will have the best — even if it means flaying this puppet, plundering its innards to knead away such imperfections.
These inconveniences. Because that is what P — a mere title, unworthy of a true name, especially of the character Carlo adored — is. It struts around Giuseppe’s office, standing in front of his desk now, wearing Carlo’s face. Icy blue eyes and a smattering of freckles, yes — to speak nothing of the other changes he made, hidden beneath the puppet’s clothes — but a painful imitation all the same.
It takes everything Giuseppe has, every shred of decency, to beckon the puppet toward him. He sits back in his chair, peering up at the familiar face that he spent so long sculpting. Agonizing over every pore, every freckle.
“Come here,” he says with a flick of his wrist, urging the puppet closer. It will be heavy in his lap, but the puppet knows how to hold itself to keep from hurting him. Not that they’ve been this close since the puppet woke up, but oddly — perfectly — there is some inherent goodness within the machine. Like a good boy, it loves its father. Perhaps it is Carlo’s heart that pushes it to kindness: it would never hurt its father. Not physically. In this singular instance, the Grand Covenant is irrelevant.
Carlo’s will amazes him, even in death.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, guiding P down onto his lap. “That’s a good boy.”
The puppet is still wearing Carlo’s shirt: the white one with the draped, ruffled collar that he wore so often. He was wearing it the day he brought Romeo home for a school break, and Giuseppe was so fixated on work that he didn’t even realize they were there until the larder had been almost completely cleared out. Not because the two teenagers were ravenous for food but because Carlo was desperate to be seen. Remembered. He wore the same shirt the last time Giuseppe saw him, leaving home after another brief respite from school. Drenched by the rain, shirt clinging to his skin, all because it was Giuseppe who told him to wear a coat. Defiant until the end.
This was the last thing he said to his son: Remember your coat. Carlo snatched it out of his hands without a word, understandably bitter. These were the only words Giuseppe said to Carlo the whole time he was home.
On his lap now, P stirs. Wriggling its hips against him, perhaps feeling its father’s need. What might it think of that? Does it feel compelled to oblige, to please, despite not knowing what forces it contends with?
Giuseppe wondered if P might remember all that he did — all the time they spent together — before the puppet awoke. He still doesn’t know, might never know, but P is cupping his cheeks now. The metal of his prosthetic arm is ice as he wipes away his father’s tears. Giuseppe thinks to scold the machine — You know not what these tears mean, you have no idea who they are for — but it is moving of its own accord. It says nothing, damning him with silence as Carlo once did, but it pulls Giuseppe’s hand into its own. Imitating a motion a lover might make, he thinks at first — until the puppet pulls his hand to the front of that oh-so-familiar white shirt.
Within the puppet’s chest the P-organ thrums, vibrating as wildly as any human heart. As Giuseppe gazes up at P it beats faster, so loudly he thinks it might burst from his chest. In a moment of vulnerability he almost wants it to. Just to prove that this is real, that Carlo’s heart is tangible and becoming whole. Seen by his father at last even if it took death for him to open his eyes. To be able to see Carlo in his mind, clearer than he ever did in reality. A father’s curse: to be haunted by his son’s visage so that he might wholly recreate him.
“Don’t cry,” P says, in Carlo’s voice and yet with an echo all his own. He presses his forehead to his father’s, their noses brushing.
Giuseppe weeps.