Rawi Hage - Carnival

The next Thursday, I waited for Sally outside the club but she didn’t show up. I asked the bouncers, who knew me by then, and they said that she’d quit. I called her phone and it was disconnected. I went by her place and asked around. The caretaker told me she was gone. She had paid her last month’s rent and left, he said.

I never saw Sally again. For months, I looked all over for her. I even went to the meat-packing town and found the motel at the end of the road. I bribed the receptionist. He was a big, unshaven Turk. I bribed him because I know the histories of empires and their subjects; the Ottoman Empire was notorious for a system based on bribery, I read all about it in a book written by a British traveller and I still have the book in my library: to be precise, on the second shelf from the bottom at the entrance to the bathroom, with the rest of the orientalists’ literature.

When I asked the Turk about the Magdalena girls, he said that the fiesta had ceased. The three girls didn’t book the rooms anymore, and the workers had stopped showing up. Except for a tall Arab, he said, who comes at the end of the month, rents a room for the night, and sits on the ledge of the window and smokes.

THE BEARDED LADY

WHEN MY MOTHER woke up, that day my father left, and didn’t see the camel and its saddles, she fell to the floor and pulled her hair and screamed. The dog, the chimp, and the horse circled around her and scooped up her tears, patted her arms, and licked her face into consciousness. The strongman carried her to bed, and I watched as the bearded lady caressed my mother’s face and covered her forehead with wet towels. My mother became so weak that I started to eat my meals, take my naps, and do my homework in the bearded lady’s tent. And when I asked about my mother at night, before my bedtime, La Dame, as the bearded lady called herself onstage, would say, Your mother is in a parallel world. Eat and let me tell you a story.

She began reading to me from French classics. We wept for Cosette in Les misérables , we laughed at Le malade imaginaire of Molière, we read Les fables de La Fontaine to the monkey.

Once I saw the bearded lady taking a shower and I asked her why she had a penis like mine and breasts like my mother’s. She came close to me and said, Because I am everything. Men want to be men and women want to be women, but there are those who are both and neither at the same time. One day when you grow up, the world will tell you that there is only this or that. When you leave and live among those people who applaud and cheer your mother and me on the stage, you will notice how different we are, and what a magical childhood you had. Here in these circuses and carnivals we all love each other with our oddities and queernesses. People leave us alone because we mesmerize them with tricks, tickle them with feathers, tie them up in wonder and hope. We never let them know that we read books, that we love everyone and accept everything, that our bodies are free, that we travel, resist, and fight and that we give refuge to convicts and revolutionaries, that we have saved gypsies and Jews. We never let them know that we untie ropes, that we train horses to dance without the weight of armour or swords, and we keep it a secret that the strongman loves the cannon man, that they cook dinner for one another, that they share the same bed, and that every time the cannon man is up in the air with smoke trailing from his feet, the strongman waits on the other side to catch him if he falls. And, my little child, do not tell a soul that we are knowers and non-believers. We know that after this grand act of life nothing is left but the dust beneath the elephants’ feet and the sound of the monkeys’ clapping. When they come to you with prophets and promises of heavens of honey and milk, remember that we are no more than flowers having our last glance at the world before we die, with grace and with gratitude for the wonders we witnessed, for the magic box we built, the animals we loved, the carpets we flew, the stars that we encountered after the spectacle ended and the spectators were left to lament and to wait for the coming of their phantom trains to take them to their imaginary heavens. .

Then, late one night, my mother wailed and shouted and ran between the tents. She tried to open the locks of the cage and throw herself to the lions, but the lion tamer came to her rescue and covered her naked body with a quilt. And again I stayed with the bearded lady, whom I loved and whose beard I kissed every morning before she offered me bread, butter, and milk.

One day, my mother gained back her strength and went up on the ropes and hanged herself. She was discovered because of the dogs’ howls, and because the chimp pointed to the sky and the elephant walked in circles around the large tent, trumpeting an end.

I know that my mother was buried somewhere between the Danube River and the heel of the Italian peninsula. I remember holding the hand of the bearded lady and marching behind the band of gypsies, the elephants and the horses in coloured feathers above dancing hooves. Her coffin was carried by the clown, the strongman, the cannon man, and her favourite white horse. We walked in silence, and then the music began and got loud and we all danced with umbrellas in our hands.

Wanderers, tent makers, and animal herders have the privilege of dying anywhere, the bearded lady said as she gave her eulogy. The earth is their land and all the roads are their burial ground.

Above the open grave, my little left hand was squeezed in the bearded lady’s palm, and my right grasped a handful of dust. I threw it over my mother’s remains and the gypsies played again.

The next day, the circus packed up and moved on. On the way, we were stopped by border guards who blocked our roads and mocked our ways. The officers tried to steal the horses but the clown distracted them and the magician made all the animals disappear. And then food became scarce and the animals’ bones bulged against their sides. They all slept in hunger, they all whimpered, and our money ran out. Finally, we came together and the owner of the circus gathered some sticks and threw them into the bottom of the magician’s long hat. One by one we drew them out. I was handed a gun and five bullets. I walked to the stable and I shot the biggest horse.

After six days of horsemeat and feeble fires, the mime drew sad faces and the strongman gathered everyone and said: We all must depart upon our different paths. We’ll take the horses to Ireland and set them free, the dogs to Spain, and the elephant and the chimps to Africa. The rest of you should go wherever you see fit. The world has gone mad and our way of life was bound to change.

The bearded lady packed our bags and told me: I’ll write to my distant cousin in the Americas. He lives in a city where a carnival takes place.

HAT

AFTER WE HAD all wept, sung, and danced our goodbyes, the bearded lady wrapped me in new clothes, a hat, and new shoes. We took a boat from Marseilles and sailed through the Mediterranean and then into and across the Atlantic.

On the boat, we encountered a magician who was doing all the tricks we knew so well. The bearded lady and I stood there and smiled as he performed: the Floating Wand, the Protocol of Knots, the Lantern of Diogenes, the Frame of Cards. And when he was done, the two of us went to him and asked if he could perform for us, in private, the Enchanted Bank Bill, or the Wreath of Flowers in the Hat, or the Magical Bell and the Butterfly.

The magician laughed and introduced himself as Mr. W. Frinkell. And when the bearded lady asked his real name and offered to feed the birds in his hat, he said, Call me Pips, and we all shook hands and I, who was rehearsed in the art of illusions and sleeves, offered to assist him with his next show. I picked up his tall hat and collected the riches while the handkerchief turned into birds and the stick turned into flowers and the horizon into a sun and the hat into the world. At night, as we walked along the deck, he told the bearded lady, I’ve been around the world, and the sweetest people I’ve ever met are dwarfs and misfits.