Life on a trapeze
I am that man you have seen sometime, or heard of, such that I can be vividly pictured, with a nose redder than Rudolph's. The one who dons polka dot outfits with frills for bracelets and anklets, red ringlets for hair on a cheap ancestral wig, a face painted white as a geisha, and eyes that bulge overtly expressive. And for the purpose of the role I play upon the stage that's 'All the World', there is a bright red painted wide grin - far wider I daresay, than my own mouth could stretch if it were upon my life. Its a nice smile nonetheless, sometimes I glance at my image in the mirror and a real smile, much smaller though, under the cover of this larger, does appear.
I am, as the people in my caravan have tagged us for generations now, the joker, and this, is my story.
I grew up in not one town, if you know our kind we are the 'nomads'. Provoked by the comments of a rich kid in the audience one summer evening long, long ago, when I was little myself, I expressed anguish at the strangeness of the term. My father, alive then, could not explain what it meant. (To be fair to him, he said they were people who moved from place to place without a home). I understood him not. In my stubborn resistance to ignorance, and more than a little of bruised boy ego, I refused to eat dinner that night. Father had his without bothering much and retired to bed, there was a big performance the next evening, rehearsals for which would be in place undoubtedly all day.
Mother, as she was, came to offer her solace, and the familiarity of her cozy bosom. I asked her, how 'no', and 'mad', together could mean the homeless. For however uneducated I may have been there is no person in the world who can't say a 'no' (whatever the language) and no person who should not understand it so. Its an expression to a simple shake of head, is it not? And mad? Really now, you have to be thinking I was quite the dork to not know that word. The little knowledge and its combined meaning in my opinion, formed no remote connection with the real meaning as my father explained, it bothered me, I daresay, too much.
How, I asked my mother, very perturbed that night, not to forget an empty stomach which poses its own issues, could I be a nomad - not mad/no mad person - a homeless hence? Was the caravan not my home? Were these people not my own? Was this work to not be mine as much, when I had grown up to take over from father? No, I said to her repeated pleading with me to put it off my mind and eat, or at the very least rest, I would get to the bottom of this problem. An understanding, that not all in life follows ones plans, was to come to me, very soon.
The break of dawn, that next day so long ago, was met with running errands. There was no escape for I was a little boy back then, and disobedience only meant plenty of licking - maybe no food - and ego aside, the rumbling of my stomach stood testimony to how famished I was. It was evening before I had blinked an eye, and the show had begun. A show that is part of this narration for a reason. For swinging from trapeze to trapeze, that same evening, my father, a veteran though he was with his work, had a nasty slip. The trampoline cushioned his dead weight impartially as it would a person alive but the angle of his fall had caused a fatal snap in the neck - and amidst the cheering of oblivious audiences, my father breathed his last.
It was a second sleepless night in tow, the cause much more grave than my identity crisis the evening past. For the breadwinner was gone, and mumbled in between sympathies from our fellow 'nomads' came speculations of what use we could now be put to in this entertainment business on wheels. We were, to be crudely candid, two mouths to feed, with next to no return. Somewhere in the process of cradling and putting me to sleep, mother, lifeless as the loss had rendered her for then, fell prey to an unconscious sleep. I took my chance and slipped away.
In a short distance, I saw her alone for the first time, sitting under a tree.
The daughter of our ring master, who played dangerous games with the fire, bred a tiger that jumped through torched hoops to the whip of his lash. Needless to say, his whip, if it could tame a beast, had always kept us other lesser kids of the caravans at bay. When I saw her at first, wrapping a strand of long stray grass around her finger, I considered returning unnoticed. But she looked up that instant, and in a voice I had never heard before, she said, "I heard about your father."
"You did?" I sounded incredulous as I was, that she had heard, after all the ring master and his family never involved themselves with the affairs of us others.
"I'm sorry it happened."
Tears had strained my face for several hours earlier, although I confess never having felt intimate with my father as a son rightfully should. Still, mother had been miserable, and the air around had been utterly depressing, cried I had all that time. But now my eyes remained dry. Perhaps it was the embarrassment of crying before a girl, an act too meek for ruffian boy in me. But then again, it was not as if I was willing myself to not cry, it just wasn't happening. Instead, her words brought a gravity upon my being. She was the first person, I recall to this day, who had offered her condolence to me, and me alone. I did not realize the transformation it caused, but I suppose, in retrospection, the onus of my new responsibility as the man of the family had stirred my understanding..
"Father said you might have to leave with your mother soon." She went on, when I had not replied for several silent seconds. I looked her straight in the eye.
"What's your name?"
"Heidi." She spoke in a strange accent, last phonetic circling, so it sounded much more like 'hide-it'. "And you're Carlos I know." I was surprised again, even skeptical for a moment to be honest, at her knowledge, so much that I skipped correcting her with my name, which she had made sound more like 'car-lost' - twisted accent, I say to this day. At that point, after some contemplation, I walked up to her and sat down against the tree trunk, by her side. After all, by herself she was just a girl, not a potential danger in my considered opinion. She continued when I had settled, "Father said they will send you away cause there is nothing for you to do here."
"What do you do all day Heidi?" (I emphasized the name, saying it as I believed was right - 'high-dee').
"I learn to read and write." I barely managed to contain my scoff. "I also have many dolls. I play puppets acts with them."
"That's not doing much you know." I pointed out, hoping to be politely superior. She shrugged.
"Sometimes when I want a new doll, I throw an old one into the tiger's cage."
"Do you always get a new one?" I had intended to show her there was nothing she did either, but she was still here with the caravan people. Instead, I had gotten sidetracked by her answer.
"Sometimes I don't. Father retrieves the tattered one from the cage and tells me I shall not get a new one cause I am being spoiled."
"And then?"
"Then I just wait for the next time I can throw an old doll into the cage and ask for a new one. It works if I try it on the day of a good performance by the circus."
"Hmmm." For a while, we sat in silence. Human silence so to say, for the wind was sure on a high, moving places, and the trees in its path were gruffly brushed away, making the nightly swishing sounds as the ones they use in horror houses with kid rides. Some untimely birds at this post midnight hour cooed here and there in a distance, adding to the eerie air. She hugged her knees close to her torso and pulled the knee length dress all the way to her ankles. Then slowly, she started rocking herself to and fro, and humming. All that while as she looked ahead, I had a strange feeling inside. To dismiss it I thought about her last words, and a different idea begun forming in my head from her last statement.
"Why do you ask for new dolls Heidi?" I asked her. I was thinking that mother and me were the old 'dolls' that the ring master wanted to get rid of. The idea was to understand why someone would do that.
"Because I tire of playing with the same ones."
"But don't you get tired of playing the puppet act itself? Always the same thing?" Right, right? If mother and I were being disposed cause we were old and boring now, why was the entire entertainment system of circus never dumped, for a newer attraction?
"Its all that I know. There are not many things I can do alone. Its how I live." Again her answer sidetracked me. I had abruptly recalled something from last evening.
"Do you know we are nomads Heidi?"
"Yes. Because we don't have a fixed home." I was slightly disappointed by her answer.
"But we do," I protested, as I had with father, and mother last night, "Its these caravans."
"But caravans are not home homes. They are caravans."
"But that is how we live. It is our home." I insisted. She shrugged again, not keen to pursue anymore. Ironically, I wasn't satisfied to have my way so easily. "How do you imagine a home home to be?" I asked her instead.
"Like the other people have. The fixed houses which cannot move."
"But that would never change, always be the same. Would you not grow tired of that like your old dolls?" She looked up at my words, and I was nearly proud to have won her attention with greater rights. "You did not think about that now, did you?" I asked her triumphantly.
"I did not. Because it doesn't matter. This is how I live, why should I care about fixed houses?"
"So then this is your home." I told her wisely. Again, she shrugged, and said no more.
"What will you do when they send you away from here Carlos? Is this not your home too?" It was unusual, I think to this day, that she who was not affected should have cared far more than I was caring about it then. Anyhow, I was silenced by the thought. She was right.
"I will not leave to go anywhere else." I told her determinedly.
"But what if you have to."
"No. I will not." I looked at her furiously, like it was her fault, "I will not!" Her eyes widened and I realized I had scared her. "Sorry!" I mumbled.
Some more quiet moments passed us by. I was glad she did not just get up and leave after how I had taken it out on her. Although I had walked out of my mother's embrace to seek comfort in solitude, her company sure had been a boon, much less than I understood or accepted that fateful night.
"I have an idea," she said suddenly and I looked at her with expectation. "You can marry me, and then father will not make you leave." I stared at her. In all honesty, not at the implication of what she had proposed, for it had made only as much sense to me as it did to her.
"Marry you?!"
"Yes! When my brother married his wife, she had to come and stay with us. If I marry you, then I shall have to stay with you. And then father will not send you away."
"But how ... us ... we ... ?" Quite simply, I was baffled at the oddity of her suggestion. That neither of us had even attained puberty at that time did not occur to me as a necessary condition, for we had not attained puberty you see. How were we to know what necessity was amiss? Then again, only adults got married, right?
"Its simple silly!" She told me, dismissing my silent qualms, and I would have retaliated to her name calling, if she had not grabbed my hand suddenly and begun tying a grass strand on the third finger of my left hand. "Thats the ring finger, my mother told me. When people get married, they make each other wear a ring in this finger. My brother and his wife have one each." When she had finished tying a knot with the long strand upon my finger, she plucked a new one and handed it to me, then extended her hand. "Here, tie it for me now." When I sat unmoving, staring, she made an annoyed hissing sound. Thoroughly puzzled, I simply obeyed.
"What now?" I asked her, uncertainly. She sat with a little frown tracing her girl like facial features, thoughtfully, then said, "Say, I do."
"I do?"
"Not like a question."
"I ... What do I do?"
"I said NOT like a question Carlos!" 'Car-lost' again. I tried not to be agitated by that, someday I would spank and tell her how to say it right. If we were getting married here, I could well spank her? Father had spanked mother sometimes! I wondered that second, why mother was so upset that he had left us. Wasn't she happy no one would boss her around anymore?
"Carlos?!" At her voice, I looked up into her waiting eyes.
"I shall not spank you ever, Heidi." I told her solemnly. Occasionally, when I think of it to this day, it makes me laugh, my replacement for the usual marital vows. As of then, she rolled her eyes impatiently, and hastily I said those words, not three, but two, "I do."
"I do too!" She clapped her little hands, then shocked me out of my wits by throwing her arms around me. "We're married! Father cannot send you away!" She chirped in glee, while my own sense of present had been paused by the feeling of the hug. When I had not responded at par with her expectation, she pulled away slightly, and spoke into my face, "Aren't you glad?" Uncomfortably, I pushed her away, trying hard not to be harsh, for I had said I would not spank her.
"I need to sleep," I mumbled, without meeting her eye.
"Great. Lets go! Take me to our new home." Apparently, she had forgotten, they were just 'caravans' when she said this. That I was further taken aback by this suggestion from her, would be very much the truth, but that I resisted even a tad, would be as much a lie. I was very certainly lost with the series of events in these past few minutes.
Of course, I had underestimated how far reaching the results would be next morning. When the ringmaster found out, he snatched Heidi out of my hand hold, pushed my defending mother aside, when she came in the way of the painful blows from his thick leather whip lash on my boy bones. As I was being marked and bruised bodily, from the peaking crevices that I could manage to keep open and through the haziness of the tears that I angrily sought to fight but couldn't for all the pain, I saw her - Heidi, watching it all. At the moment, I wanted to shake an answer out of her, for why she had done any of this.
I had known her too little then, I know now. When we were packing off our stuff the next morning to leave as per the ring master's orders, she came standing at the door, with a little cloth bound pack of her own.
"What do you want?" I screamed to her face, mustering the little reserves of strength that had remained past the severe beating and the injuries incurred.
"I'm coming with you," she said simply. "Did you forget we're married?" As if in evidence, she held up her hand with the grass strand I had tied. In my frustration and helplessness alike, I lunged forward to tear it off that fragile finger, but she had pulled it away too fast for me. I raised my hand and she said, her voice quiet like before, "You said you will not spank me." It infuriated me to no bounds. I turned my back to her and glared at my mother, who had most strangely been a silent spectator. When she gasped seconds later, I was compelled to turn around to face her again - only it was her father who stood before me.
"You can stay," he said through his teeth, to my mother, and my eyes widened. "But you have to move into a new caravan, a bigger one that the dancers' family will vacate for you."
"Why?" I had uttered before I could check myself.
"Because we're married." Heidi said in a steady voice. From the corner of my eye, I saw the ringmaster give her a dirty look. But I dared not say a word. She however, was not the one to be silenced. "Carlos and I shall stay in this same caravan father," she announced, "This is his home, and now mine." When I think back of the entire scene today, it makes me laugh out loud. That a mere pre teen should know what she is saying, and say what she knows to such extent of maturity still astounds me. Though, as she came to explain later, it was her brother's wife, who had taught her most of these details, the grasp of this evidence in but a child still evades me by far.
What happened, was that we stayed. The ringmaster put me to all odd jobs in the circus, stuff that took my dawn to dusk, day after day, but he never ill treated me again. As for Heidi, she came to stay with us. Each night, she took to teaching me what she learned from her regularly changing hired teachers in the day. A first I resented, later I just gave in.
If you're curious as to how her father consented, here's the story. Apparently, as she tells me, Heidi managed to get her hands onto a sedative of sort, which she fed the ringmaster's priced tiger. When the beast was unconscious, she led her father into believing, she had poisoned it because he had refused her rights. She told him she had the antidote which she would give him only when she was assured of all her conditions, which needless to say revolved around me - her 'husband'. Additionally she skipped all her meals, her lessons, her daily chores, and the tiger remained inactive long enough. The evening show had to be called off, it caused the circus folks a heavy loss, and brought many to question the ringmaster, as had never happened before. Past all the chaos, into the night, by when the beast had finally come around, she had assured him, that he would live to see each day such unless he let us stay together, and here. Maybe the ringmaster reasoned and thought it was best this way, before his eyes. For if he knew his daughter, my now wife, he couldn't have thought it impossible of her to run away in my search once I left. And after all, as Heidi tells me time and again, she was the apple of his eye. Whatever he thought, and fell into defeat before, I have never asked of him, and he has never told me.
The point is, we stayed on. In that short span of less than a day, I had lost my father, nearly lost my home, gotten married, and gotten back my home and a wife. It wasn't until several years later, that we truly became man and wife. In between that period, we went from losing awkwardness (which was primarily mine, not hers) between us, to developing easy camaraderie, to becoming thick friends, to falling in love with each other. At first, my boy gang pulled my leg endlessly. Then one day, Heidi showed up where I was slogging with some tents that had holes which needed fixing. Perhaps it was the sight of the ringmaster's daughter, indulging in such knowing interaction with me, a mere go-fer, that earned me respect among the boys, that I thought would never return to me. It was the end to all cajoling. Mother, for her part, made sure nothing odd happened between us, two growing kids. The ringmaster had threatened and pleaded with her to ensure as much. He need not have, she is quite a woman of morals, my mother. Eventually, as I turned sixteen, the ringmaster put me into training for the jokers, as had been our family's business for generations. It was the first time we struck a cordial chord. He saw I was a quick learner, and gradually, he softened on me, as an individual.
From the rag doll story she had told me on the night we got 'married', of her means to get new dolls, to the time she had gotten her father to retain my mother and me, and accept us married, to her insistence that I learn to read and write, to many more such things that have happened over the years of our married life, I have realized, Heidi is one persistent human, who bids for the right moment and time, but never gives up. She still calls herself 'hide-it' and me 'car-lost', and I have still kept my word and not spanked her once. We have had quite an interesting life. And today as I cradle my first new born, some days old, in my arms, and she sleeps snoring lightly by my side, I think back and wonder still - why we, the nomads, are thought of as homeless? If 'All the World' is a stage, and the stage is where we belong, is 'All the World', not our home?
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Afternote: This short story has been inspired quite simply by the title. I read the phrase some days ago in some advert, and although there is nothing striking about it, I decided to write something circus based. There was no story line in my mind as I begun and worked on it, and although this is neither suave, nor melancholic, not even my usual description style, I think I'm happy to have experimented with the theme this once - just an odd something for transient amusement!
Overwhelmed by the response to Voila! Viola?; shall look forward to reading more from you all!
(S.L.)
Edited by scarlett.lady - 15 years ago
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