Regina Ullman: The Country Road

And on the southward side, where I finally found a little bench placed at the edge of the tent, a wind was blowing that was strong enough to numb you. And there was not a soul to be seen. There was just a paper kite that had broken loose and was flying off into the sky, observed by me alone, and no one else. It was a circus of wind that whipped the kite along, a stranger to itself and to the clouds. It was a fantastical drama. I was almost afraid. Solitude may be the only thing that can chasten a man who lacks humility, and bring him back to himself. It widens the space around him, lifts the heavens up like a gigantic banner, and lowers the earth beneath him. And he must live on it — this earth — after it has suddenly taken on the dimensions of the endless universe, has grown at once flat and round again. The earth is a giant, it is a globe on which we are not even a single point.

I had gotten so far away; I pulled myself up short like a dog and followed the scent of the world from which I had come. And we need only seek, and we will find it again. That is how animals, too, can find their way back to their previous masters — though the route may seem impossible.

But I would have had to become a beggar woman, or an orange vendor (I was too old to become a circus rider or an acrobat, let alone a poor child who slips under the wall of the tent, it was much too late for that), just to spend a few hours undisturbed beneath that circus canopy in the meadow.

So we weren’t free to walk about where we pleased. Those who belonged at home had to go home. That was a proper rebuke for me; and so I only meekly returned to take my seat shortly before the performance began.

I was seated a bit below the middle. There were so many heads there, looking on, that at first it all confused me.

A child in a pink ballet dress on a horse! Now and then you could hear an imitative call cross her lips, and you noticed how silent it was in the circus. The music closely followed the child’s lead, seeming to go on tiptoe. But then, as the child left the ring alongside her little horse, like a porcelain figure, the crowd found its voice again, first one and then another. And among those applauding people I recognized a woman who lived in my apartment house. And diagonally in front of me, it couldn’t have been better, was the little hunchback. He sat motionless beneath his cape.

The music didn’t leave us much time for reflection. A greyhound entered the ring. He shot through a paper hoop. His silver hair shimmered, seemingly wet from the speed. He could run through the legs of six wonderfully trained white horses. He wound around in a circle from one to the next like a wreath of flowers. Then suddenly he stood in the middle and took a bow by bending his head backwards. This dog was exquisitely suited to that sort of performance, in which everything depends on beauty. But in the first moment that he was free, he yawned as if unspeakably bored; and he seemed to leap into the jaws of the little lump of sugar that awaited him as a reward for his performance. And finally he disappeared. We were freed, and yet we regretted it. I was already so happy that I had forgotten any ulterior motive for my visit to the circus. (But even so I had not stopped reproaching myself for a single minute.)

How could anyone want to observe a person, to learn about his nature. . Laughter awakened me from this contemplation. Now the horses were alone. They were walking in a line. I looked around. Because I knew that couldn’t be the cause of their laughter. It must have another meaning. Yes, indeed. A little hunchback was running along behind this train of holy white horses. He seemed to be tied to their shining pink tails. And now he was flying, simply by letting his legs go.

The whole circus was laughing, laughing with pipes and drums. The musical accompaniment was made for the occasion. Fear was coursing through my limbs. Yes, here they were, these people. And here was the circus in them. The whips cracked, one after another, invisibly in the air.

In my fear, I looked over in spite of myself to the little hunchbacked spectator. He was wrapped even smaller in his coat, and he wasn’t moving. If someone had jostled him right now, even by accident, it probably would have created a scene; one of those agonizing spectacles that the world refuses to answer for. But the little hunchback in the circus ring was still swinging, and in the end he became like a ring himself, like an orbit. He became a ring that he himself had crafted, he merged with his own orbit, until finally he disappeared entirely beneath the sound of kettle drums and the whirl of snares and laughter. You couldn’t say anything now, not even to yourself, the shouts drowned you out. And you had to stop for a moment in the midst of this watching; having lost your connection to the place where you were sitting. You were tired and wanted to sleep.

But then suddenly he was standing again, the clown, as if resurrected; on the backs of all the horses. He was screaming at them with a single fury. He wanted them to swim now, to drown in the grass that was surging like a flood. Light fell on him from somewhere, the rapidly changing flashes of fireworks. He looked so much like his brother in suffering, up there in the stands, that you could have mistaken one for the other. The circus had caught hold of them both. The latter man must have taken off his coat long ago, for he sat there unmasked before the world. How horrible the world can be. And even to itself. But perhaps this is its health, its only source of courage. By giving voice to everything, perhaps it finds itself again. Nevertheless, the violin maker’s staid Sunday suit was only decorated with a watch chain and a few dangling silver thalers, it was nothing compared to the clown’s finery. And those around him could hardly have noticed the resemblance. For the clown had a silky red shock of hair that stood up on top and stuck out to the left and right. And the face with its make-up looked out sadly from beneath the pointy white felt hat. He had little stars on his cheeks and chin and a half moon on his forehead. All of this made him larger and smaller, and seemed in some secret way to belong on his face. But then there was the many-layered lace collar that completely encircled this neckless man, repeating the circle of the dogs, the circle of the horses, and the circle in which he himself had flown. And after that came the giant hump that made this large man small, that folded him together as if to set him aside. This hump was the circus. It was the leap that everyone had to take here in the circus. First the animals, then the acrobats, tightrope walkers, and horse trainers; and then we ourselves, the spectators in the stands. But finally even those who had never gone to the circus, the whole rest of the world. In a sense, everyone at one time or another had hung from the tail of flying horses.

I sat there for a long time. But even in retrospect, I feel unable to describe the events that followed—.

After many madcap stunts and tricks, it was like a church procession when the twenty elephants left the ring. There was no need for music anymore. The people left.

And only when the tents had been taken down, and there was nothing left in the town that recalled the circus, did I go to my violin maker again to pick up the violin. I went there as if there had never been tents in the distance, I only wanted to feel what was there in the present again: the violin maker’s room. It was nothing but a quiet Sunday that prompted me to go. The threat that lurked there was forgotten. And yet I might very well have still been thinking of it. In fact, it would have been quite possible. And in that case, wouldn’t the whole episode have had to start again from the beginning? But I only fetched my violin, and inside everything was silent, as if no one was there. You could hardly say a word. In that silence, soft as velvet, everything was suspended. Even the hunchback himself was quiet, as if otherwise he might disturb someone. Only the stroke of the clock was there again, with its gentle reverberations. It was just three o’clock. I was on the verge of leaving, lost in thought as always happens there, when I caught sight of the mirror in the dark shadows: