Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“It is a real circus,” Hilda retorted. She put down her battered pail, braced herself before the pump, and glared at me. I did not move from the bottom rung of the stone stairs that led to the azotea . For a while, it seemed that she would shout at me or do something rash, but she lowered her pail and started to pump.

“There was a time,” she said, throwing angry glances at me, “we had two lions and two tigers. Three elephants, tall and strong as trucks.”

“They are not here now,” I said.

“No,” she said, pumping furiously. “The trainer was killed by the tigers. They were all sold to the zoo — but not the elephants because they are easy to take care of. And they work — but even without them ours is still a real circus. Come with me.” Her pail was full. I turned apprehensively to the house to see if anyone was watching. Sensing my reluctance, she taunted, “Don’t be a sissy.”

I helped her with the bucket, spilling the water on our legs as we hurried behind the house and out to the plaza until we were behind the tent. The previous night, rain had fallen, and now the morning was polished to a sheen. The tent was a dull white hump fringed by acacias. In its cool shadow, on planks that were laid side by side, the menfolk rested. The women were washing and cooking, and when they saw me, they smiled in recognition. Hilda was holding my hand, and as we entered the wide awning, her grip tightened. “Wait here,” she said, and darted out. It was warm inside the tent. Tufts of grass rose above the narrow slits between the boards that were laid in the middle for a stage. Around it, on the sides, were boards fastened together, tier upon tier. From the top of the tent, which now looked patched up from within, bits of sun stole in and lay in bright silver puddles on the ground. The two poles crowned by a blue halo of the June sky soared up, and near the halos were swings and ropes that stretched from one pole to the other.

Hilda returned wearing red tights. Her feet were encased in thin-soled leather shoes, and she trotted to one of the poles where the end of a rope ladder dangled. She bade me follow her as she started the climb, nimbly scaling each swaying rung. It was warmer up on the precarious perch near the top, but Hilda did not seem to care. She smiled when she turned and saw me holding tightly to the pole, not venturing as high as she had climbed. She put one foot forward on the high wire that extended out into space — and there was no net beneath her. I called at her to stop, but she answered with a resonant laugh. As she lifted each foot in her slow progress, the wire swayed. Balancing on her right foot, she raised her hands. The wire ominously zagged, and by then, I thought that even the poles were swaying. I turned away, unable to look.

When I looked again at her urging, the swaying had ceased. Hilda was not on the wire anymore; she was perched safe and smiling on the small platform near the other pole.

I was weak and trembling when I got down. Hilda waited for me at the entrance and walked cheerfully with me to the outside, where the sunlight was waiting.

Hilda’s father dropped by the house again the next afternoon, reiterating his invitation. But Father, always enigmatic and aloof, merely nodded and said he would try.

The plaza was in a gala mood that night; the small town band whose services the circus had secured started tooting around the town, even before dusk, carrying placards about Hilda’s death-defying act and the world’s strongest man pitting his strength against an elephant. After a hurried supper, I asked Father if I could go. He called Tio Baldo — I don’t know why I called him Tio when he was really just one of the help; perhaps it was because Father had considered him bright enough to be patron to him; perhaps because of all those who helped in the house, it was only he who attended to my school problems. He was to accompany me with no less than the circus manager, so that I would be given the best seat that night.

The plaza was illuminated by carbide lamps of dice tables and other enticements. Before the makeshift stage that was actually part of a truck with the sides removed, a big electric bulb blazed, drawing many moths, showing the painted faces, the baggy pants of the circus clown, and the barker, urging the crowd to hurry, hurry — the seats were being filled. Some members of the troupe were seated at one end of the stage, and I recognized Hilda at once in the same red tights she had worn that morning, but her face was now thick with paint. She did not recognize me in the crowd as she sat there in the center, basking in her glory while the barker pointed to her and shouted her virtues, her mockery of death. The band stopped playing and went inside the tent, followed by the troupe; the show was about to begin.

Tio Baldo and I had the best seats, beside the mayor and his wife, at the rim of the circular stage. Although outside it was cool, within the tent it was warm, and the smells of perspiration and tobacco smoke were all around us. I did not mind this so much, for soon the clown came out, Hilda’s father recognizable even in his baggy pants and with a pillow tied to his girth; he and the other clowns went through their paces while the kids up on the tiers squealed at their pratfalls. A magician enthralled us as he made balls vanish, drew doves out of a black hat, put a woman to sleep, then proceeded to saw her in two. Next, the strongest man in the world — a hefty six-footer with bulging biceps — bent a steel rod, let a truck run him over slowly, and, as a finale, pushed an elephant toward the other end of the stage. Then the trapeze artists, and finally, Hilda.

Now the lights blinked out except for one spotlight atop a tall tripod. In the middle of the stage, in that circle of white, she seemed so tiny and fragile. While the barker described what she would do, she did somersaults, splits, and back bends; it was as if she were made of rubber. She could put her head down between her feet and contort into every imaginable shape. She did several curtsies, turning around to face the audience, then she trotted to the pole and went up, up to her perch, the spotlight never leaving her. The band ceased playing, only the snare drum rumbled, and now an apprehensive murmur coursed through the audience. The beat of the snare drum quickened as she rose from the narrow platform; she stepped onto the high taut wire on her dainty feet, tested it like a frightened child learning how to walk. One shaky step forward, then a short, ominous pause. Balancing herself, she repeated the same staggering process until — or almost until — she got to the center, for now the wire had started to sway, and from the audience exploded one despairing cry as she slipped and then toppled.

But Hilda did not fall. Below the first wire was another; she had jumped into a dance, each step sure and steady this time, below her no net at all. When she had finished, the applause was deafening.

Hilda was in the yard again the following morning and, of course, in the succeeding mornings with the same battered pail. She worked like the others and did not seem to mind. She did not have much to say when I asked about the different towns she had visited, but her face always brightened as she recounted each.

“I will go to the city someday,” I told her a week later when she said she liked performing best in Manila, for she did not have to work so hard helping in the kitchen. Her chores for the day were over, and we were idling in the bodega , which was now, save for a few sacks of seed rice, almost empty.

“I will study there,” I said, and she told me, too, how she had taken snatches of schooling during the rainy season; Rosales, as a matter of fact, was their last performance for the season, for the circus closed when the rains came, and they started on the road again in November.