Katherine Dunn - Nightmare Carnival

You’re the only person I trust to keep him safe.

Rebecca leans over Christos. Leo can’t tell if she’s screaming or not. Everything sounds muffled to him, even the shrieks of the crowd. He doesn’t understand. His aim was true. He wants to tell Rebecca it was an accident. Not even his desire for her could make him hurt Christos. Or her.

Rebecca looks up, wet faced. Then she bursts into flames, a rapid progression that’s uncontrolled. This isn’t her act. By the time he reaches her she’s a bonfire. She’s not just engulfed, as he’s accustomed to seeing her; she’s consumed. Rebecca’s burning up.

He takes off his jacket and tries to smother the flames but it’s too late. The fire’s too great. There’s nothing for it. Leo puts his arms around her, marvelling that she still has the strength to try and push him off.

It hurts at first. His skin sears but he won’t relinquish her. There’s insufficient smoke to choke him. Let it come . His sordid corners cry out to be purified by fire.

Rebecca’s embrace is hot. Hotter than the center of the earth. Hotter than the surface of the sun. She’s holding him close now and he wishes he could see her face at the heart of the blaze. There’s no one now but the two of them.

Love , Leo thinks, how it burns us up.

The high-striker — you know, that game with the sledgehammer and the bell? — was gaffed. But the belly gaff was out of whack, so when the carny running the game pressed his stomach against the gaff button, it got stuck, and nobody even came close to winning. Every able-bodied man in Scranton, PA, was thereby an official Sissy, no matter how hard or accurately they swung the hammer. Worse, the carny running it was a new hire, a real First of May, so couldn’t talk his way out of it when even the local football jock — and the son of a leading member of the Keystone White Citizenship Association — failed to make the meter climb past Puny Weakling. There was a small panic, threats of a fight — the carny called out, “Hey, Rube!” but nobody came to back him up — and so the carny bailed the counter and ran to the woods, the football jock on his heels with the carnival’s sledgehammer in hand. “The beef had left the awning,” as an old-timer, which Jeff Gordon, owner of Jeff Gordon’s All-Star All-Comers, might say. The carnival’s official patch — whose job it was to make nice with the cops, or make fast with the bribes — was officially out for the evening, and the police were officially in and handing out citations, mere moments behind a wave of the whispered excuse “Baby needs milk!” from carny to carny.

Fraud or battery ? That was the choice Jeff Gordon was given by the local constabulary. An officer was rounding the backside of the All-Star All-Comers trailer, poking at it with his truncheon like the whole setup — the trailer and the wrestling/boxing ring that opened up out of it like a Murphy bed onto the midway — was gaffed. Gordon was pacing the cop, not saying anything. Then the cop ran into the Black Raja, in mask and cape.

“And what are you supposed to be?” the cop said. “The Black Negro?” He laughed at his own joke. The Raja looked down at the cop through the eye slits in his Zorro mask, and said nothing.

“The Black Raja,” Gordon corrected. “Our star attraction.”

“So tell me, Mr. Black. I mean, Mr. Raja . Do you engage in unsanctioned, nonpermitted fights, or fixed matches?” The cop had landed on the classic question: is pro wrestling a shoot , or is it a work ? Are you really dressing up in panties and booties and beating one another up, or is it all just a show? The cop tucked his truncheon into his belt and pulled out a pad and pencil. He brought the graphite point to his tongue and flipped open the pad with a flick of his left wrist.

“I exhibit my grappling skills,” the Raja said, his voice like a truck. “I perform with fellow professional wrestlers, and with members of the community who wish to understand the nature of scientific wrestling via a hands-on display.”

The cop lowered his pad and squinted his eyes. “Where are you from, anyway?”

“Hehehe,” Gordon said, sliding between the cop and the Raja. “Why, the Black Raja is from the black hole of Calcutta itself! He struggled his way, with nothing but the power of his limbs, and an understanding of the human joint system, from the depths of squalor to the heights of the world championship in just eight years!”

“World champion, huh?” the cop said. “So, if I were to ask your Raja for some identification, he’d produce an eight-year-old passport from the old Indian Empire, stamped by the viceroy and governor-general and all that.”

Gordon found his patter leaving him. This cop was an unusual one — he was more with it than his big white pie face suggested. The Black Raja stepped in. “I can do exactly that. I do not normally carry a passport in my trunks, but you are welcome to pat me down now.” With a flourish of his cape, the Raja revealed his body — skin taut and leathery over well-defined muscles. The cop looked a little pudgy next to him. The pad went back into the belt and the truncheon was slipped out. The cop twirled it by the leather loop, casually.

“I’ll just have to come and observe the exhibition of grappling skills this evening, then.”

“So we can stay open?” Gordon asked, too excited for his own good.

“This evening, gentlemen,” the cop said. And he left without giving Gordon a citation.

Gordon glared at the Black Raja. “Kalamatas, why the hell did you have to go and live your gimmick and tell him that you had an Indian passport? How are we going to get a reader that looks like that?” he said. A reader was a fake ID. So many words for bullshit in the carnival business. “You know they’re going to drag us in — on fraud charges or battery — and you’ll need ID.”

The Raja only said, “Don’t worry about it, boss.”

This particular carnival was a real fireball show, so crooked it never even used the same name twice. Poor ol’ Jeff Gordon was stuck with his real name on his trailer, and as carny wrestling was being displaced by Gorgeous George and the DuMont Television Network, there wasn’t much other truck and traffic for Jeff and his crew. He could no longer even show boxing, though there was a white pugilist, dukes up, painted on the side of his trailer.

All he had left now was the Black Raja, and Johnny the Plant. So many layers of kayfabe — fakery, or ake-fery, or plain old bullshit — so hard to keep track. Kayfabe was the key — never let anyone know that wrestling, and everything about it, from the origins of the wrestlers to the outcome of the matches, was a lie. Fake wrestling was harder than the real thing; that’s why the boys always called it work . Always keep kayfabe up, even if you had to wrestle for real — to shoot —to keep the marks bamboozled by the worked matches. The Black Raja had always told his bosses, at All-Star All-Comers, at Midwestern Entertainments Inc., and Big-Time Pro Wrestling, that his name was Kalamatas — that’s how deep into kayfabe he was. Once in a while, back when he was touring the territories and showing up on local Saturday morning TV, the brass would have a bit of an education, and stick him in a toga and call him Atlas or Ajax the Great.

But mostly Chattopadhyay was the Black Raja. An Indian pretending to be a Greek pretending to be an Indian. So he did have an Indian Empire passport, with the photo of his younger self, before the cauliflower ear and smashed nose, staring out into the world. And he had another secret as well. He could actually fight. Work or shoot? Fraud or battery ? Chattopadhyay could pick and choose.