Katherine Dunn: Nightmare Carnival

“What are you doing to him?”

“Giving him the future he wants.” It took every ounce of strength she possessed, but Mae shook him off. He stepped back, as if resigned. “Rosie will be big enough to wear Madelaine’s old howdah next season. All that’s needed is someone who can fit into it.”

As the meaning of his words dawned on her, she felt her knees threatening to buckle. “But you’re not a doctor, not a real one! You’ll kill him!”

“Ah, but I am a real doctor. Trained and certified with the best surgeons in Harley Street. I’ve cut hundreds of legs off lads barely old enough to shave while the Chinese fired so many shells we worked nearly blinded by ash and smoke, the fusillades so loud we had to shout to be heard.” His eyes had gone soft, memories turned inward, but there was little mercy in them. “Missionary nurses reading scripture to dying children as the hospital burned around us. Beds soaked with blood and pus and shit while we prayed and cut and prayed and cut. ” He blinked, as if awakening, then smiled at her kindly. “You have to go now, Mae. I’m very busy.”

“Please, sir,” she whispered, pleading. “ Please . Don’t do this. What has that poor boy ever done to deserve this?”

He steered her down the steps, making sure she had her footing before he straightened in the doorway of the carriage.

“What have any of us? Everyone pays, Mae. Everyone . There are no free tickets in life. You should know that.”

He shut the door, this time locking it, while Mae collapsed on the broken rock of railroad ballast and wept.

Henry Ellard, aged eighteen, can’t believe that he’s just witnessed three people die, only hours ago.

One of them was Rebecca Saunders. The Firebrand. How he loved to watch her as flames danced across her outstretched hands.

Henry strikes the pink head of a match against the side of the matchbox. There’s the flare and the familiar smell as sulphur and phosphorus combine. He passes a finger through the flame.

Bearable , he thinks.

Henry tries to hold his finger in the flame but fails. He throws the match into the ashtray and watches it burn to a shriveled stick, his scorched finger in his mouth.

Three deaths. What combination of murder, suicide, and accident has he seen?

The first time he saw Rebecca was as he wandered through the crowd. She stood, her sequined costume winking in the sunlight, handing out flyers. A remarkable woman, able to withstand flames and who looked right at him and smiled as though he were the most handsome man she’d ever seen. She reached out and touched the livid purple birthmark that covers the left side of his face with a fingertip.

Equally remarkable is that she’s died in a pyre that’s consumed both her and Leo Saunders. Henry could hear the man roaring from the heart of the inferno. The thing Henry doesn’t understand is that Rebecca didn’t scream. Not even once.

“Henry?”

He looks up to see a waitress standing over him. Her gaze flicks from his eyes to his birthmark. “I’m Katherine. From your history class.”

“Oh, hi.” He’s chosen this café to avoid such encounters.

“I work here,” she adds, as if an explanation is required.

Henry tips his face away from her to hide the unsightly port wine stain. The gesture makes him look reticent at best, dismissive at worst, but it’s instinctive.

“What are you having?”

“Black coffee, please.”

Katherine hesitates, as though she has more to say. He wants her to leave him alone. It’s too complex, trying to work out whether her friendliness is genuine, mockery, or from pity when his mind is so full of the recently deceased Rebecca, Leo, and Christos Saunders. He lights another match and stares at the flame until Katherine walks away.

Henry Ellard, at sixty-four, feels indignant that he’s had to start afresh. His new house has no claim to his history. It’s not where he embarked on or ended family life. It’s not where he and Katherine raised their child or where Henry had a heart attack, pain crushing him to the floor.

The house does have charm though. It’s at the end of a lane, single storied, with a veranda that wraps around the whole building. There’s a galley kitchen and two bedrooms, although the spare one’s never used. The lounge window overlooks the woods. The trees are company. The room’s unfit for entertaining as he’s made it his sanctuary. One wall’s covered with shelves laden with box files. The desk that was built for two dominates the room. Henry used to sit opposite Katherine, then his wife, as they marked student papers late into the night.

A single poster, an original, acts as the room’s sole decoration.

Something new and unique comes to Paradise. The Firebrand! The world’s only burning girl!

Rebecca Saunders has been rendered half woman, half phoenix in the illustration. Her costume’s pinched at the waist and her sloping tail is red and gold. She smiles, despite being on fire.

Henry always keeps his own personal copy of his book to hand. The Firebrand: Death in Paradise by Henry Ellard. His ex-wife once threw it at him during a fight.

“Your responsibility’s to us, not the past,” Katherine had shouted.

She was across the room upending files of photos, programs, and transcribed interviews. He lunged after her, trying to protect his archive of lost lives.

Henry’s book is stuffed with original snapshots, letters, and his own handwritten notes. He flicks through until he finds his favorite photo, pressed like a leaf between the pages. A cropped version’s reprinted within the book, but the original is of the whole Saunders inner circle, dressed for dinner.

This group portrait was taken against the backdrop of Paradise, a mile-long plot of land that was part fun fair, part circus, part county show. There’s Rebecca, Christos, and their dog sitting on a picnic bench. The Russian trapeze artists, Nikolai and Lara, are standing beside them. Nikolai’s arm is around Lara’s neck, pulling her close. His lips are planted on her cheek and Henry can never decide if she looks annoyed or amused. Whether they were sister and brother, or lovers, remains a mystery. The Giant, real name Jacob Stein, has dark eyes in a long face. Nancy Fotheringale, the Wax Lady, leans on his arm. There’s Rollo, the clown, face unpainted and hair slick with pomade. And Leo Saunders, of course, at the center of everything.

Henry looks at the photo, back across forty-six years, and wonders if his memories have been colored by research. These people are vivid in his mind, even though he never knew them, just orbited them during his eighteenth summer, every spare penny and evening spent in Paradise. He wasn’t a freak when he walked among them. Disfigurements were a mark of pride among this wondrous clan, like the Wax Lady’s melted face or the long, cadaverous features of Jacob the Giant. If anyone did look at Henry, he fancied they might mistake him for one of these fabulous people. So fabulous that someone like Rebecca Saunders made the thing he was so ashamed of feel like an artful embellishment.

Henry watches the interviews he recorded when he was writing his book. Although the light falls and fails, he doesn’t turn on the lamps, just lets the glow from the screen wash the room. He can hear his twenty-nine-year-old self talking to Rollo, the man in the frame.

This film version of Rollo has reached that perplexing stage called middle age, yet at forty-three he shows no sign of a sedentary paunch. He lounges on the chair like it’s a throne.

“So, why clowning?” Henry asks.