Алистер Маклин - Circus

‘You may be right, you may be right.’ Wrinfield was hardly listening to him, he turned to talk to an equally excited neighbour as the lights dimmed. A millimetric parting appeared between the upper and lower parts of Sergius’s mouth – one could not call them lips. Sergius was permitting himself another of his rare smiles.

The lights came on again. As usual, in the second part of his act, Bruno used the low wire – if twenty feet could be called low – strung across the cage, open at the top, where Neubauer was, as he liked to put it, conducting his choir – putting his dozen Nubian lions, an unquestionably savage lot who would permit nobody except Neubauer near them, through their paces.

For his first trip across the back of the cage on his bicycle and with his balancing pole, Bruno – without the normal burden of having to carry his two brothers – obviously found it almost ridiculously easy to perform the acrobatic balancing feats which in fact few other artistes in the circus world could emulate. The crowd seemed to sense this ease, and while appreciating the skill, daring and expertise, waited expectantly for something more. They got it.

On his next sally across the ring he had a different machine, this one with a seat four feet high, pedals clamped below the seat and a vertical driving chain four feet in length. Again he crossed and recrossed the ring, again he performed his acrobatic feats, although this time with considerably more caution. When he crossed for the third time he had the audience distinctly worried, for this time his seat was no less than eight feet in height, with a vertical drive chain of corresponding length. The concern of the audience turned to a lip-biting apprehension when, reaching the sag in the middle, both bicycle – if the strange contraption could any longer be called that – and man began to sway in a most alarming fashion and Bruno had virtually to abandon any but the most elementary acrobatics in order to maintain his balance. He made it safely there and back, but not before he had wrought considerable changes in the adrenaline, breathing and pulse rates of the majority of the audience.

For his fourth and final excursion both seat and chain were raised to a height of twelve feet. This left him with his head some sixteen feet above the low wire, thirty-six above the ground.

Sergius glanced at Wrinfield, who, eyes intent, was rubbing his hand nervously across his mouth. Sergius said: ‘This Bruno of yours. Is he in league with the chemists who sell sedatives or the doctors who specialize in heart attacks?’

‘This has never been done before, Colonel. No performer has ever attempted this.’

Bruno started to sway and wobble almost immediately after leaving the top platform but his uncanny sense of balance and incredible reactions corrected the swaying and brought it within tolerable limits. This time there was no attempt to perform anything even remotely resembling acrobatics. His eyes, sinews, muscles, nerves were concentrating on one thing alone – maintaining his balance.

Exactly halfway across Bruno stopped pedalling. Even the least informed among the audience knew that this was an impossible, a suicidal thing to do: when the factor of balance has reached critical dimensions – and here it already appeared to have passed that critical limit – only movement backwards or forwards could help to regain equilibrium.

‘Never again,’ Wrinfield said. His voice was low, strained. ‘Look at them! Just look at them!’

Sergius glanced at the audience but not for longer than a fraction of a second. It was not difficult to take Wrinfield’s point. Where audience participation is concerned a certain degree of vicarious danger can be tolerable, even pleasurable: but when the degree of danger becomes intolerable – and prolonged, as in this case – the pleasure turns to fear, a corroding anxiety. The clenched hands, the clenched teeth, in many cases the averted gazes, the waves of empathy washing across the exhibition hall – none of this was calculated to bring the crowds flocking back to the circus.

For ten interminable seconds the unbearable tension lasted, the wheels of the bicycle neither advancing nor going backwards as much as an inch, while its angle of sway perceptibly increased. Then Bruno pushed strongly on the pedals.

The chain snapped.

No two people afterwards gave precisely the same account of what followed. The bicycle immediately tipped over to the right, the side on which Bruno had been pressing. Bruno threw himself forward – there were no handlebars to impede his progress. Hands outstretched to cushion his fall, he landed awkwardly, sideways, on the wire, which appeared to catch him on the inner thigh and the throat, for his head bent backwards at an unnatural angle. Then his body slid off the wire, he seemed to be suspended by his right hand and chin alone, then his head slid off the wire, the grip of his right hand loosened and he fell into the ring below, landed feet first on the sawdust and immediately crumpled like a broken doll.

Neubauer, who at that moment had ten Nubian lions squatting on a semi-circle of tubs, reacted very quickly. Both Bruno and the bicycle had landed in the centre of the ring, well clear of the lions, but lions are nervous and sensitive creatures and react badly to unexpected disturbances and interruptions – and this was a very unexpected disturbance indeed. The three lions in the centre of the half-circle had already risen to all four feet when Neubauer stooped and threw handfuls of sand in their faces. They didn’t sit, but they were temporarily blinded and remained where they were, two of them rubbing their eyes with massive forepaws. The cage door opened and an assistant trainer and clown entered, not running, lifted Bruno, carried him outside the cage and closed the door.

Dr Harper was with him immediately. He stooped and examined him briefly, straightened, made a signal with his hand, but it was unnecessary. Kan Dahn was already there with a stretcher.

Three minutes later the announcement was made from the centre ring that the famous Blind Eagle was only concussed and with any luck would be performing again the next day. The crowd, unpredictable as all crowds, rose to its collective feet and applauded for a whole minute: better a concussed Blind Eagle than a dead one. The show went on.

The atmosphere inside the first aid room was distinctly less cheerful: it was funereal. Present were Harper, Wrinfield, two of his associate directors, Sergius and a splendidly white-maned, white-moustached gentleman of about seventy. He and Harper were at one end of the room where Bruno, still on the stretcher, lay on a trestle table.

Harper said: ‘Dr Hachid, if you would care to carry out your own personal examination–’

Dr Hachid smiled sadly. ‘I hardly think that will be necessary.’ He looked at one of the associate directors, a man by the name of Armstrong. ‘You have seen death before?’ Armstrong nodded. ‘Touch his forehead.’ Armstrong hesitated, advanced, laid his hand on Bruno’s forehead. He almost snatched it away.

‘It’s cold.’ He shivered. ‘Already it’s gone all cold.’

Dr Hachid pulled the white sheet over Bruno’s head, stepped back and pulled a curtain which obscured the stretcher. Hachid said: ‘As you say in America, a doctor is a doctor, and I would not insult a colleague. But the law of our land–’

‘The law of every land,’ Harper said. ‘A foreign doctor cannot sign a death certificate.’

Pen in hand, Hachid bent over a printed form. ‘Fracture of spine. Second and third vertebrae, you said? Severance of spinal cord.’ He straightened. ‘If you wish me to make arrangements–’

‘I have already arranged for an ambulance. The hospital morgue–’

Sergius said: ‘That will not be necessary. There is a funeral parlour not a hundred metres from here.’