The Somber Ventriloquist
If the truth is to be told Lana Sertioni wasn’t the best ventriloquist in the world. The audience on the first row could frequently see her lips move, and her repertoire of jokes mainly covered crude sexual innuendo.
Even so she was a very popular performer. Lana Sertioni wore a classy evening gown on stage. Her dark hair was set in the short fashion of a 1930s lipstick lesbian. She let her dolls rest on her D-cup bosom for effect, as she pulled out one-liner after one-liner from the artificial lips of her considerable collection.
And these dolls were spectacular. Their appearance was, in spite of some exaggerated features, so exquisitely lifelike it almost gave the appearance she was talking to a miniature human being. Her own act was not particularly exciting. Lana would be still for most of the show, only opening her mouth to create the set-up for her dolls, and she would keep the same still face throughout like she was wearing a mask of indifference or, as some critics commented, as if she was the doll and her stage props alive.
“Lana Sertioni has singlehandedly taken a stagecraft that largely consists of mediocre comedians with hand dolls and transformed it into a virtuosic performance art”, the New York Times wrote.
As somber as she would appear, as witty and clever her dolls would come off. Other ventriloquists in Manhattan were so disturbed by her sudden overnight success they rushed to her performances to study her from the back rows, some almost mad with jealousy and others curious to learn how she, a female artist in a branch of showbiz dominated by men, had been able to cause ventriloquism to become household entertainment.
One such student of necessity was Gerhardt Zala, a young Hungarian ventriloquist who had come to America to make his fortune after experiencing relative success in bars in Budapest. Unlike his colleagues he was not riled up about being overshadowed by a woman. Zala was not prone to lose his head. His approach to the art was that of rigorous practice and careful gathering of material, if need be by the means of theft. In order to uncover the secret to Lana’s success he brought a concealed camera and a tape recorder to the shows.
Studying the photos and recordings he realized something startling: Lana was an even more shameless thief than he. Not only did her act consist of large segments of repertoires created and performed by artists from all over the world he had admired since he was a teenager, but her dolls also resembled them. After contemplating what to do he decided not to inform his fellow ventriloquists, but rather keep it a secret until such point where he could use his knowledge to his own profit.
To his surprise Zala was not turned away in the door, but granted access to Lana’s dressing room, when he presented himself as a big fan seeking to meet her and get her autograph. It was the night after the fourth show he attended. Zala had carefully contemplated how to approach the impostor and what to say, but when he stood in front of her in the narrow room that was multiplied by a wallpaper of mirrors, he found himself dumb like a doll in its suitcase.
“What is your name, dear?” Lana said, as she put her pen to the back of a photo of herself on stage and printed her signature with large, swirly letters.
“Gerhardt Zala.”
“Are you a ventriloquist yourself?”
Zala nodded. Lana looked up at him and handed forth the slip of paper, urging him to come forward to pick it out of her hand. Zala stepped forward, took the paper and, finding nowhere to put it without folding it or risking creasing it, kept it in his hand.
“I know your secret”, he said.
“My secret…?”
Lana raised an eyebrow and met his gaze.
“What secret would that be? I have so many…”
“The secret to your success… I know all the best ventriloquism acts in the world. I have studied since I was 10 years old. Your show is comprised of stolen material. Some of your passages are, line by line, the repertoire of other ventriloquists. The only thing I cannot figure out is how you have managed to avoid lawsuits.”
“They must think I do a bang up job”, Lana said. She had begun to undress, caring neither about Zala’s accusation nor his befuddlement at her increasing nudity.
The gown dropped down below her waist, and steadying her body on the tip of her gold mirrored peep-toe sandals, she pulled off the dress and dropped it on the floor like a serpent shedding its skin.
She wore no bra beneath her dress, or she had already removed it before he came into the room. No matter where he looked, due to the surrealistic manner in which the walls were covered by mirrors, he saw her breasts with the firm pink nipples pointing towards him.
Lana Sertioni opened the ankle strap and slipped her delicate feet out of the shoes.
“I could use a hand”, she said.
“With what…?”
Zala’s mouth was dry from breathing through it, and his voice sounded strange in his own ears, as if the words were spoken by someone else through him.
“On stage”, Lana said and got up. “I’m going to go to the shower. When I get out you can show me a bit of your act. If I like it, I may implement you in my show.”
“You would do that?”
“Yes. You shouldn’t think of it as charity. If you are good, you belong up there with me, and my own show can only get better from it.”
While Lana was in the shower Gerhardt Zala frantically rehearsed the lines he had decided to perform for her. Everything had gone much better than he expected. It was as if Lana had read his mind and, without the slightest bit of coercion, offered him an opportunity that far exceeded the benefit of driving a competitor out of business.
Lana stepped out of the shower wrapped in a white towel. She sat down on her chair and began to comb her hair.
“Show me what you got”, she said.
Gerhardt Zala stood in front of her with Linka in his arms and bid her good morning.
“Why do you say good morning? It’s evening, you fool.”
“Because you have slept...”
“I didn’t sleep.”
“You did.”
“If I slept, then I must be turning gay, because I dreamt about some woman stripping.”
“Come closer”, Lana said.
Zala stepped closer to her.
“Closer”, she repeated. “I’m not going to bite you.”
A few small steps more brought the young ventriloquist so close to her he could feel the heat of her body on his skin. Lana reached out with both her hands and put them on the back of his thighs.
“What are you doing?” the magical deer said, her mezzo-soprano distorted by anxiety.
“I am just trying to get a feel for what you can offer”, Lana said, pulling Zala towards her, until he was straddling her thighs.
“Get a room, you guys”, the deer sighed. “I can’t perform like this.”
“Then we better get it over with, so I can concentrate again”, Lana said, opening his zipper. She proceeded to pull down his jeans and his shorts.
The young ventriloquist stood there in front of her like a statue, as she put her face to his chest and began licking his nipples with her tongue. Her hands were on him, one grabbing firmly on his left buttock and the other stroking his erection.
“Why must he get all the attention”, the deer complained. “I am much cuter, and I do all the work.”
“You are history, Linka,” Lana said. “I’m taking over from here.”
Gerhardt Zala did not have time to consider how Lana knew the name of his teddy bear. He was inside her mouth, at first only partly but then slowly due to some mechanical trick or illusion still further down her throat until completely trapped to the neck. What happened next escaped him. He fell through a trap door into dark room with his eyes closed. When he opened them, it was still dark. He no longer felt Lana’s hands on his body or the moist of her lips. He was supinely resting on some soft foundation, banging on a wooden plate only half an arm’s length from his face.
“I’m buried alive…”
The thought shot into his brain and took over all functions of his body. He wanted to scream, but no sound came from his mouth. His throat felt like cotton.
Zala was a smoker, so he carried in his pocket a lighter. Recovering from his panic he reached into his pocket and lit it. What the flame revealed sent him once again into hysteria: Not only was he buried alive, but the soft yet uneven foundation he was resting on consisted of lifeless bodies. He was buried alive and conscious in a coffin full of corpses.
He lay in silence for a long time, until he passed out from anxiety and exhaustion. Zala woke up to a bustle like that of an old train moving along uneven rails. Then the lid was removed, and bright light entered the coffin. He heard the sound of thunder; it was the applause he had always sought for.
Lana Sertioni walked into the stage. She did the smile, and she did the bow. She was dragging her famous chest of drawers behind her. Opening it she picked a doll and said:
“Tonight I want to present a new friend I’ve just made. Zala, say hello the audience.”
The doll rose his head, turned it in the most comical fashion first to the left and then as wide as the head could go, to the right.
“Jó napot”, he said.
“Don’t speak Hungarian. These people are American”, Lana said. “We have to speak to them in their own language, so they can understand us.”
“Americans?” Zala said, rolling its eyes in a most lifelike fashion that already stirred some people to giggle nervously. “Well, in that case: Fuck you, you moron. Learn to drive! Your momma’s so ugly she went to a freak show and got in for free!”