Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

‘Sometimes.’

… I cannot imagine the loneliness of this woman’s life. And yet she appears content. The question of course that is never asked but is in every mind is the question of romance. How can such as she aspire to the joys of womankind? One cannot imagine she will ever marry or experience motherhood. And yet she clearly has a mind capable of understanding her situation. I would not have raised the issue had she not mentioned it herself towards the end of our interview, when the artist had done his work and was preparing to show his subject her image.

‘They all want to know the same things,’ she suddenly informed me, and affirmed that the audiences she was used to always asked, have you ever been in love? Do you have a beau? Will you ever get married? At which she laughed and said that so far she had received at least twenty proposals of marriage. When I asked why she had not blessed one of the candidates with her hand, she replied, ‘They weren’t good enough.’

Germany sold out. The circuses at Vienna and Budapest sold out.

‘You see,’ said Theo, ‘now they show some respect.’

She would fall only half asleep on a train and all the circuses and stages and sideshows of here, there and everywhere took to spinning in her head, the crowds awestruck, agape, eyes out of control. Robin Adair, Old Zip Coon, redskins, Chinamen with cues, ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt’, real slave darkey slapping on his thigh, ladies, gentlemen, the eighth wonder of the world, the incredible ape-woman, ugliest in existence.

In came the money.

The circuits crossed, criss-crossed, faces came, went, reappeared, faded, loomed. She never forgot one. Some of the old ones from America turned up from time to time. She met Ted in Freiberg, Maud Sparrow and her husband in Pizen, but it was never Myrtle Dexter and Delia Mounier, Armless and Legless Dancing Wonders, or Zeo the Wild Human, and at times she still remembered with a pang the feeling of being in Madame Soulie’s yard in New Orleans: Delia wanting to comb her hair, Cato hanging round the door, Myrtle making a crimson bow of her mouth at the mirror.

I was happy then, she thought. Am I not happy now?

I’m happier, much happier, rattling along with Theo in carriages and trains, all this travelling together, a kind of peace between us. If I didn’t look like this, she thought. Theo and Julia. Julia and Theo. Everything changes, everything moves on, he’ll be gone too, like Solana, her old face, her boys long gone, turned legend. That’s what time does.

Then she’d feel as if a great wave bigger than the world was coming, the whole of the sea rearing up like a living beast, slow but sure, rolling over everything. When she got scared, she’d slip her hand under his arm. It was warm there, and he never seemed to mind. Sometimes he’d smile but go on reading his paper.

One day in Bautzen, waiting for a coach, Theo said, ‘This looks like your pinhead.’

She leaned over his arm and looked at the picture in the paper he was reading. A sawdust ring. Plumed white horses. Circus, Rakovnik. Acrobats, jugglers, rope-dancers, magicians, a boy with three legs, clowns, puppets, dancing dogs. And Zeo the Wild Human.

‘That sound like him?’

‘Oh Cato, Cato,’ she said. ‘That’s him. Oh yes! Oh Theo, can we go there? Please? Can we go there? I’d love to see Cato again.’

‘Oh, you know what it’s like, Julia,’ he said. ‘We’ll probably run into him somewhere along the line if he’s crossed the herring-pond. We can’t just go running off willy-nilly though, can we? We’re tied up for the next six weeks at least.’

Three months later they caught up with the Circus Raniello in Prague. Not a bad idea, Theo said, we should get you on a horse. Wait and see, they’ll be glad to have you. And indeed the man’s eyes bugged out of his head when she raised her veil. ‘Oh, si,’ he said, ‘si, si, si, si, si…’

His English was poor but Theo could muddle along in Italian and she caught a few words here and there. Money. Zlatkas, escudos, dollars. Laughter. Out came a bottle of wine and two glasses.

‘E per la mia signora…’ said Theo, turning and gesturing towards her. A third glass was produced.

‘You don’t have to do any fancy tricks,’ Theo said, ‘just ride into the ring and a couple of circuits. Maybe just one or two little tricks if you feel you could…’

The man had bright eyes in a square brown face. They jerked on and off her face as he poured her a drink.

‘Oh, I can ride,’ she said, ‘I used to ride Marta’s pony. Ask him where Cato and Ezra are. Zeo.’

More babble. A lot of babble. The man’s face was shiny, as if someone had spent all morning polishing it.

‘They’re in the town,’ Theo said. ‘There’s a house.’

Here in the park, the wagons made a small village along the edge of a meadow, by the trees. But some of the company were in a house nearby, Raniello said. The landlady was very good, very discreet, no trouble at all, and very reasonable. They were taken on for a two-week run till their Vienna season should begin, given two rooms in the old house, a part of a tenement, with a courtyard and many stairs and unexpected passages leading into unknown realms. The landlady lived on the ground floor with her son, and the show people kept to the second floor on the right-hand side of the courtyard.

When Ezra Porter heard from the landlady that his friend Julia Pastrana was here, he came lolloping down the passage like an enthusiastic bear. ‘What a gift, what a gift!’ he kept saying, grinning hard, shaking her vigorously by the hand over and over again. His chin looked bigger, more double. He was trying to grow whiskers but you could see it was a struggle. Apart from his head hair he was smooth like an Indian, even his chest. She knew this from seeing him wash it at the pump in Madame Soulie’s yard. Hovering with his smile and raised brows in the background, Theo was thinking, this isn’t a bad set-up, not bad at all. Wonder if he plays poker? When the girl came out, thin, very dark, sour-mouthed, with her arms folded in front of her, she stared at Julia’s heavily veiled face then looked at him but didn’t smile.

‘Theo,’ Julia said, ‘this is Ezra Porter. This is my manager, Theo, Theo Lent… oh hello Berniece… where’s Cato?’

‘Asleep,’ Berniece said.

‘Go and wake him,’ said Ezra.

‘You go and wake him.’

‘Oh no, don’t wake him!’ Julia said. ‘How is he?’

‘Oh, fine.’

‘No he isn’t,’ said Berniece, ‘he’s been having ear-ache.’

‘Yes, but it’s on the mend now.’

‘You’re not the one that’s up all night with him,’ Berniece muttered, clicking her nails.

‘Look, my room’s just here,’ said Julia.

‘Terrific! Mrs Vels! Mrs Vels!’ Ezra called down to the landlady, a worn-down, kind-faced woman who was half way up the stairs with a bowl of water. ‘You don’t mind if we change rooms with Angelo, do you?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ she said, ‘ask him.’

Ezra rapped on the door of the room next to Julia’s, and it opened at once as if the person on the other side had been listening all the time and knew what was going on. Angelo was a beaky Italian with sad eyes. ‘You wanna move?’ he said in perfect American, ‘Fine with me, I gain.’

‘You do,’ Ezra agreed, ‘you get a view over the river and the town.’

‘Nobody asked me,’ said Berniece.

‘Oh, come on, Niece. You don’t mind.’

‘Suits me,’ said Angelo. ‘I got hardly anything to move anyway.’

‘I have,’ Berniece told his retreating back.

Mrs Vels trod heavily across the landing, spilling a little hot water as she went.

‘Let me,’ said Theo.

‘For the lady’s room,’ she said patiently, letting him take over.