Robert Coover - Pricksongs & Descants

“I mean, you go along for years, see, thinking you got a Ring master on accounta you gotta have one. Ever seen a circus without a Ringmaster? No. Well, that just goes to show how history can fake you out!”

It was beautiful! All of it just happening! Acts coming on spontaneously, here, there, it was wild and exciting and unpredictable!”

“Suddenly it hits you, see. All your life you been looking at circuses and you say, that’s how circuses are. But what if they ain’t? What if that’s all a goddamn myth propagated by Ringmasters? You dig? What if it’s all open-ended, and we can, if we want to, live by love?”

“We even started enjoying each other’s acts!”

“I rode the elephant once!”

“Who says clowns gotta take pratfalls alia time? I learned to play in the band and train a bear and ride a horse through a fiery hoop!” But, just when the picture is pinkest, bad news: it becomes all too apparent that fewer people are visiting the stalls of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady, and those that do pass through, do so hastily and with little interest. “Okay, so they’re happy, so they’re in love. So what? You see one lover, you seen ‘em all.”

At first, everyone stubbornly disregards the signs. The parties go on, the songs and the celebrations. The Thin Man lifts weights as always, and the Fat Lady diets. Their glad hearts, though gnawed at a bit by apprehension, remain kindled by love and joy. One could almost say it was the romantic legend come true. But finally they can no longer ignore the black-and-white truth of the circus ledger, now in their care. Somewhere, apparently, there is a fatter lady and a thinner man. Their new world threatens to crumble.

“We didn’t wanna hurt their feelings, you know. We kidded them a little, hoping they’d take the hint.”

“Why couldn’t they just love each other for themselves?”

“For the good of the whole circus, we said.”

In their van one night, doubt having doused for the moment the flame of passion, they agree: the Fat Lady will restore her castoff corpulence, the Thin Man will return his set of barbells to the Strong Man. They re-exchange calorie charts. They begin in earnest to win back their public, found to be an integrant of their attachment, after all.

It is not easy. Worried by business reverses, the Fat Lady must work doubly hard to lay on each pound. And the Thin Man discovers that his little knots of muscle tend to sag instead of disappear. But they are driven by the most serious determination. The eyes of die circus are upon them. Momentary reverses only steel them more to the task.

“Chocolates! For me? It’s been so long!”

“With love.”

“But now that you’ve seen me like this, will you truly love me when I’m fat again?”

“To be honest, dear, I ain’t sure I can even tell the difference.” The worst part of the day for the Fat Lady comes when she steps upon the scales. Disgusted by her fat, she is disgusted she has added so little of it The Thin Man dutifully records her weight each day, and his presence comes to irritate her. He clucks his tongue when she fails to increase and sighs wistfully when she succeeds. She would cry but is afraid of the loss of anything, even tears. She refuses to submit to any activity which might make her perspire, and even demands that she be lifted in and out of the van each day.

The Thin Man steps daily before a full-length mirror. Disgusted by his thinness, he is disgusted that he still wears those little pouches under his skin. He wishes to be mere bone. Hilarious frightening unfleshed bone. The Fat Lady nags and pinches the little lumps that were once his muscles. He wonders if he has come to hate her.

“Hold up your arm there, loverboy, lemme feel that flab — hey 1 how cute! just like a little oyster!”

“Yeah? And so what?”

“So: oysters are a luxury, skinhead. People may pay to eat ‘em, but they won’t pay just to look!”

The Fat Lady, pointing out the Thin Man’s bagginess, doubts he has been firm in his resolution, and snoops about for hidden food. The Man, grimly checking the Lady on the scales each day, begins to suspect her of burning off calories behind his back. They sneak into each other’s stalls during the day, spy on one another at mealtimes, wrangle bitterly over the business books at night in their van. If one day the Fat Lady takes in a single dime more than the Thin Man, he must account for his obvious inconstancy of will. If a child carried past the Fat Lady’s stall fails to laugh and point at her, the Thin Man uses it as proof of her deceptions. Of what use is she to the circus if not even a child is titillated? What is worse than a baggy Thin Man who can’t make a dime?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t build these goddamn biceps overnight, they don’t shrink overnight neither. You can’t exercise backwards, I tell her. You just go limp and hope for the best But I do that and she just laughs at me. I think she’s got her eye on Daredevil Dick.”

“Think of my nerves, I tell him. If they ain’t fat nerves, he says,

I got no use for them. All day, he’s stuffing me. Even wants to add intravenous feedings. One day he brings home this dumbbell. He’s got a mean glint in his eye — Nothing doing, I say. But it gives him this idea. Maybe you oughta get pregnant, he says. That’d work for nine months, I say, but then what? And he gives me this strange look.”

The situation deteriorates rapidly. The Thin Man becomes sour and morose, his shoulders stooped, head sunk in dark thoughts. The Fat Lady, immobile and glum, goes so far as to belch obscenely when a passerby remarks that she is really not so fat after all. They quarrel without cease, and their gloom spreads like wet sawdust through the whole circus. Gate receipts diminish and even the peanut sales drop off.

And then one night, the Thin Man moves abruptly to the old Ringmaster’s van, something of a sacrifice on his part, since in the interim it has been used by a pair of camels. The Fat Lady bellows after him that she is glad to see him go (it’s not true about Daredevil Dick, though: who could think about love in times like these?), as he stamps peevishly out of her van, the business books smuggled under his shirt He renegotiates the old deal with the rival circus, and before anyone realizes what has happened, they have an Ambassador from Mars in their midst and the Fat Lady is gone. There are some unspecific rumbles of discontent, but since no one wishes to be sold to die rival circus, known to be on its last legs and infamous for its corrupt and tyrannical Ringmaster, these rumbles are held within discreet limits.

“Well, it was a crisis, after all. He did what he had to do. You had to think about the competition. They were all out to get us. It was the best thing for everybody.”

“She was my best friend. Everyone loved her. But no one seemed to care. I was alone. What could I say?”

“You get used to everything in this life.”

The Thin Man, in power, gains strength. He squares his shoulders and sets about getting the circus back on its feet He is ruthless with himself as he has learned to be ruthless with others.

The harder he works, the more rigorously he fasts. He will be thin, and damn the world! And even the unhappy Fat Lady, leagues distant, surrenders wearily to her fate and, doing so, finds it easy enough to expand once again.

But wait! See what we have come to! The Fat Lady separated from her inseparable Thin Man! The solution, for all the Thin Man’s admirable will, cannot but fail. It is a circus without pleasure. What are three rings of determination? These are dismal shadowy, tents and who can wander through their yawning flaps without a taste of dread? No, no, it is worse even than the mythological Thin Lady coupled with a Fat Man! Our metaphor, with time, has come unhinged! A rescue is called for!