by Sam Cooper
The little plastic figurine of St. Gertrude of Nivelles on my desk started to move at 12:00AM on the dot, on a generally drizzly and unpleasant Tuesday extremely-early-morning, March 17th 2009, as I was opening my eyes after a sneeze. A tiny twitch on the edge of my attention. It was nothing, I thought, a trick of my bleary eyes, and this quick write-off was seemingly verified by direct observation over a period of a few minutes, during which observation her gaudy two-and-a-half inch frame remained fossilized, head cocked towards her right shoulder, eyes supplicant and fixed upwards. Funny, I thought, and returned my eyes to my computer screen. And then she moved again. This movement I only noticed post-occurrence, as it happened too quickly and too microscopically to catch as it happened. St. Gertrude’s head was now cocked to her left shoulder and her eyes were gazing straight ahead. Straight ahead at me. Eyes into my eyes.
I should probably mention now that this figurine is (was) not really holy or talismanic in any way usually attributed to saintly objects. And hasn’t moved (that I know of, and, believe me, I check) since that nearly-spring night. She still resides on the top level of my half-shelved writing desk, under the lamp (completely static). This particular and very secular St. Gertrude was purchased for me by a family friend as a Christmas stocking-stuffer, for the sole reason of my status of Cat Lover (Gertrude being the patron St. of cats, among other things, the reasoning behind which is most commonly thought to have something to do with that vermin would not drink from her well). She is cartoony in proportion and style—big head and big eyes, tiny hands, straight-out-of-the-tube paint job, glossy sheen just screaming kitsch, the cat she holds and the one peering out from the hem of her purple cloak more cute blobs than convincing feline forms. Her halo a bent disc of sickly yellow, translucent plastic, the thickness and make of which is similar to that rigid plastic of toy pinwheels. Purchased no doubt in a quirky novelty shop, the kind that sells Freud action figures and Band-Aids that look like bacon strips and t-shirts emblazoned with mildly and liberally offensive slogans.
So imagine the magnitude of my surprise upon finding little St. Gertrude not only having incontrovertibly moved, but looking into my eyes. After a moment or stare-down, the figurine seemed to realize that she (it?) had caught my attention, and blinked. The thing didn’t even really have eyelids before. She dropped the cat in her arms to her feet, where it orbited her and joined the other, and both of them (the cats, one chocolate and the other taupe) curled up and went to sleep. Then she outstretched her miniscule shiny hand, palm up like saints are apparently wont to do, and spoke. Or at least made the movements of speech. Her slit of a mouth opened (and I noticed, comfortingly, that there was nothing inside her, tunnel of a throat or organs or anything, which was good; something about the discovery of miniature internal physiology inside this figurine I’ve had on my desk for years I’m certain would have sent me into hysterics, which is of course assuming I wasn’t already in them), a fissure in the plastic of her face, and moved, formed the shapes of words, moving fast, faster it seemed than the speed of normal human speech contortions, but there wasn’t any sound. Well, there was a sound—a kind of teeth-on-edge squeaking—but it was not a voice. Then something horrible: she became frustrated, which of course implies some sort of intelligence, some sort of awareness in the little plastic woman. I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. She touched a hand to her veiled throat, then put out both her arms in a gesture of futility, bobbing them up and down slightly. All her movements were rapid and insectile, fast-forward. She started making speechmovements too, along with the gesture, automatic in her attempts at communication (jesusgodthislittleplastictoyistryingtocommunicatewithmejesuschrist). And the sounds coming from her seemed more voice- and speech-like than before. Maybe not. If anything, a bug’s parroting of a human voice, if that’s possible. The sounds in cartoons when clothed and behatted bugs talk and the words are not meant to be understood. Or maybe it was just really the squeak of warping plastic, augmented by my own (freaking out) mind.
By some force of providence, I had open on my laptop a recording program, with which I had been playing around with prior to St. G’s unexpected kinetics. With miraculous presence of mind I hit record, hoping that whatever sounds the little lady on my desk was making would be picked up by my laptop’s tiny built-in microphones.
She clutched at her belly and squeezed her eyes shut in apparent pain. She reached out towards me, continued making sounds and moving her mouth. She suddenly looked thinner than she had before, gaunt. I said something, frantic, and she winced and held her hands over the smooth plastic habit where, if she had ears, they would be underneath. She “spoke” more. I realized she was matching my distress now, surpassing it, wringing her hands and looking from side to side. The tiny cats awoke and cowered against her. I spoke again. The pain I caused her seemed greater this time. She buckled, fell to her knees with a little clink on the wood of the desk, got up, speaking. Her movements were jerkier now. The brown cat clawed its way up her habit and draped itself over her arm. St. G cocked her head to her right shoulder and emitted one more squeak, looking, searching at me and then upwards.
At 12:01AM on the dot, on a generally drizzly and unpleasant Tuesday extremely-early-morning, March 17th 2009, the little plastic figurine of St. Gertrude of Nivelles on my desk stopped moving, and has not moved again.
I stopped the recording.
I sat for untold minutes, unmoving, unblinking, pupils tethered to the now stonily immobile St. G. Outside, a car’s progress past my house was marked by the swoosh of its tires on wet pavement. The real world letting itself be heard. I moved. I went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror. Same old me. The vomit was in my mouth before I was aware that I was sick. I imagine my cheeks puffed out comically and green like in cartoons; I more or less held it in and made the toilet and there remained for several noisy minutes. I cleaned up. Went downstairs and spent a sleepless night on the couch watching infomercials with all the lights in the living room blazing.
In the light of day, wearing raccoon eyes and exposed nerves, I ventured back up to my room. St. Gertrude stood erect and lifeless under my lap, on the shelf, cat in her arms and eyes decidedly dead. My laptop sat cold and silver on my desk, sleep mode light pulsating. I touched the mousepad and the screen roused, glowing. The recording program was still up, with the last’ nights recording displayed and stopped where I had left it. I piloted the little speck of cursor and zeroed the recording. Played it back to prove my own sanity. There they were, small spiky outcrops in the readout on the computer screen; played back through the laptop speakers the voice was tinny and even smaller than it had been in the room’s air. Then my own voice, booming and huge in comparison, audibly shaky and freaked out. I replayed the 18 seconds I had caught over and over. Can’t even begin to estimate...
I have listened to the recording many times since, but have never shared it with another soul. For days I listened to it straight, trying to discern English or (after I had done some research on St. G.) Dutch or French of German words. Did not find any. Just squeaks. Plastic on plastic. Hinges. My own voice was there; the two lines I had spoken (“What? What are you trying to say?” and “What do you want?”) marked with terror and edged with desperation. Then I remembered how fast her movements had been, quick and possessive of apparent temporal independence like a fly’s. I played back the recording at half speed.
And there were the words.
In English. In a voice that, when played at an intelligible speed, sounds not like a woman’s, but my own (which is also present in the recording, albeit also slowed and stretched and thus booming and syrupy and not sounding at all like me). I have obsessed over the transcription, tweaked it after so many repeated playbacks. Here is what I am nearly certain is what was communicated that night:
“—made known the hour to you? Has it been foretold?”
{pause}
“Please… has it been made known?”
{my own voice, huge and sluggish: “What? What are you trying to say?”}
“The hour? Has it been made known?”
{pause}
{“What do you want? What do you want from me?”}
“—{garbled}—death? Has it been made known to you?
“Has it been foretold?
“Has it?
“Has it?”
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