Sam Thompson - Communion Town

‘Most noble gentlemen, ladies, and my worthy patrons!’

He towered over the crowd, twitching a moustache that was stiff and pointed with wax, and lifted his mortarboard in salutation. He was bald except for a waxy tuft at the crown of his large egg-shaped head. Along with the mortarboard he wore a dusty black gown, but when he threw back the wings of the drab garment and placed his hands on his hips I saw hairy forearms, gleaming leather trousers, pointed white boots and a waistcoat of threadbare red velveteen over a naked torso. He grinned, showing long, stained teeth — horse’s teeth. The crowd fell quiet as he raised his cane.

‘My boys have but one desire, and that is to please you!’

His voice was an exaggeratedly clear, teeth-and-tongue baritone, penetrating and sustained like a singer’s. You could hear the ornamental curlicues at the end of each phrase. The tip of his cane slit the air.

‘For what have they travelled far through peril and privation? For what have they spent their tender lives in long study and hard schooling? For what have they endured the exquisite educations of which you are to enjoy the fruits? Why, for your pleasure alone. They feast or starve at your pleasure, gentlemen and noble ladies; they live or die, believe me, young masters and mistresses, as martyrs to your pleasure. And so, today, we present to you one of the old tales, which we call the tale of the little sweep.’

An unresolved chord rang out, and two diminutive figures appeared on the platform, one holding a mandolin, the other a flute. They were perhaps ten years old, in white satin suits, silver-buckled slippers and chalk-white faces with red spots at the lips and cheeks. They began to play an intricate overture, its complex harmonies twining around the simple music that tinkled from inside their small chests. As they played, they danced: their movements were minimal, never more than a step one way or the other, but they were so exactly controlled, so synchronised, that in their ornate costumes they seemed less like boys than dainty, elaborate works of mechanical artifice. Every move of a limb, every facial expression, was disciplined and stylised. Their large, liquid eyes kept focus above the heads of the crowd.

Four more children joined them on the platform, and with just a few gestures, rigid, exaggerated, yet graceful, they mimed a busy street scene into existence, singing in pure, unbroken voices in a language I didn’t recognise. Their master had withdrawn to the edge of the platform, from where, his cane twitching like a conductor’s baton, he began to narrate the performance, his voice resounding in the pauses between the boys’ songs.

‘The story goes that there was a poor sweep. This was long, long ago, gents and ladies, in the olden days and the historical times.’

As he spoke, another boy entered, his satin suit simpler and baggier. His movements were as artfully exact as his schoolmates’, but to a different effect: he was expertly ridiculous. The titters started as soon as he appeared. Every detail, from his toes-turned-out walk to the way he slumped his shoulders and lolled his head, won laughter from the audience.

‘This sweep was the lowliest man in the city. Every day he swept up the offal in the slaughterhouse, loaded it up on his cart and hauled it to the dumps outside the city walls. He was filthy and he stank worse than you can imagine — yes, sir, even you! People held handkerchiefs to their noses as he went past, spat on him and cursed him. He never complained.’

The sweep mimed dragging a cart, with enormous effort, across the platform. He evoked the invisible burden so well that you felt it: he strained against its weight, slipped, fell flat on his face and sprang up again like a piece of rubber. The other boys, impersonating scornful ladies and gentlemen, turned up their noses at him. I stole a sideways look at her face. She was laughing along with the rest of the crowd at the clownish sweep. The other performers slipped in and out of secondary roles using nothing more than skilful adjustments of their stances.

‘Now, one day, as our sweep was hauling his cart through the streets there was a commotion ahead, and he saw a squad of eunuchs approaching, brandishing staves, driving the people aside. Behind them came twenty female servants as beautiful as moons, as elegant as fawns, and in the middle of them a fine lady more beautiful and elegant than any, softer and more languid of limb, her eyes darker and brighter. All the women attended on her.’

Still another child emerged from the tent: he was corseted into a white satin dress and crowned with a silver wig, and carried himself with a sinuous femininity that was balanced on the very edge of burlesque. The supporting cast turned themselves into eunuchs and serving-girls, and the sweep goggled amusingly at the lady. Two of the eunuchs supported her fingertips as she stepped daintily forward.

‘As they went past, the sweep cringed aside — but the fine lady paused, looked at him, and raised her hand. The eunuchs came forward and seized him; they bound his hands and dragged him to their mistress’s feet. She proceeded through the city with her entourage, and the sweep was hauled behind her. One or two passers-by began to protest at the rough treatment he was getting, but the eunuchs threatened them and they said no more. As for the sweep, he stumbled along in the mud, thinking to himself, this fine lady must have been sickened by the stink of me; if I am lucky perhaps they will only beat me, but perhaps I will die today and no one will ever know.

‘They dragged him all the way up to the Fair Quarter, to Lizavet where the grandest houses stood in those days, and led him into a villa. As far as our sweep was concerned, it might have been the Autumn Palace itself. The eunuchs prodded him through an entrance hall, and frightened as he was he had to marvel at its columns and murals, its endless marble floor. But they did not stop here. They brought him into a bathroom — need I say that it seemed to him as grand as a ballroom? — and there, three pretty girl servants came in to him and said, take off your rags. He cowered, but at last obeyed and removed his tattered clothes. Wrinkling their pretty noses hardly at all, the servants washed the filth from his skin, scrubbed his horny feet and shampooed his matted hair. They brushed his teeth and trimmed his nails. Before long he smelt of orange blossom. Next they brought him a pile of silk clothing, blue as night and yellow as noon, and told him to put it on. But the sweep had never seen clothes like this; he touched the strange garments helplessly. Laughing, the servants dressed him.’

As he spoke, the master’s eyes followed the boys’ movements with what seemed harried desperation, and his cane danced as if every part of the performance depended on it. The children, still moving with that stiff, stylised perfection of gesture, surrounded the sweep, artfully protecting his modesty as they mimed his toilette. They held their faces fixed in hyperbolic expressions as though they were masks. I wondered how much they had to practise. Next the servants brought in an invisible feast: the sweep could not believe his eyes, and his amazement redoubled when the fine lady entered and sat down to eat with him. The servants danced and the fine lady strummed a lute, then she led him away from the feast and lay down with him in a cradle of the other actors’ arms. All the time the audience’s hilarity intensified, until I wondered whether it could all be in appreciation of the children’s skill.

‘If I have died, then I am in heaven, said the sweep to himself. Or perhaps I am asleep and this is a dream, and my heart will break when I wake up. But when dawn crept into the mansion of the fine lady, the sweep found that everything was real. She was dozing in his arms, warm and perfumed.’