Heather O'Neill: Daydreams of Angels

One afternoon in 1946 a child was telling his toy soldiers the tale of a certain tall, menacing-looking Gypsy who was walking down a road in rural France. He had a trained bear and he played the violin. Something magical was meant to happen to him, naturally. However, in the middle of the tale, the child was called to lunch and never returned to the story.

The Gypsy stood there, contemplating his existence. He wasn’t even a real Gypsy, not a member of the great Romany people, but more like the fictional kind, like the ones that you see in old-fashioned storybooks. He had on a pair of black leather boots, a pinstriped suit and a hat with its brim pulled down over one eye. He had a twinkle in the eye that you could see and a violin case under his arm. At least the boy must have thought that Gypsies were the most handsome men in the world, because he was darn good-looking. He was just a stereotype, a collection of spiffy attributes and flashy characteristics. He was one dimensional in that sense. He had no depth.

And he was stuck with a bear that wore a jacket and followed him around and talked non-stop. The bear had tiny deep-set eyes that looked like buttons in an armchair and spiky black hair. What a nuisance, he thought. How could he travel by train with such a monstrous creature? The bear was actually quite gentle and kind and was oddly erudite. The child’s father was a university professor, and the bear seemed to have been modelled after him. But despite the gentilesse, the bear informed the Gypsy that he would raise his great paws and slap him to death if he would dare to try to abandon him. He had no intention of being a bear without a Gypsy. He would be shot to death immediately, and furthermore, he had absolutely no plans to return to the wild. Quite simply, he did not have the constitution for it.

They were stuck together in the country. Why had that idiot child put them out here on this road? He was at home in the kitchen, drinking chocolat chaud out of a fancy teacup while his maid wiped his cheek with a napkin. Then he would be tucked into bed under a comforter filled with goose down. His rocking horse would never have any idea what it felt like to have gravel under its hooves.

Where had he seen this country road? The field next to them was filled with cats with bells on their necks, and a donkey with a straw hat on its head. A line of hens marched past them, single file. This boy really knew nothing about country life. And he had created two characters — a Gypsy and a bear — who equally knew nothing about country life.

The boy hadn’t even had the wherewithal to put any money in the Gypsy’s pockets and they were forced from the get-go to earn their own keep. From the presence of the Gypsy’s violin and the bear’s jacket, they could safely assume that they were performers, but they needed a town to ply their trade. They needed an audience. They couldn’t just stand on the road, waiting and waiting for random passersby.

You could not have adventures in the country. Actually, you could have adventures in the country, but not the kind of adventure that the Gypsy wanted to have. He swiped a bicycle from the side of a farmhouse. The Gypsy allowed himself a small moment of joy when he discovered that the bear was quite good at riding a bicycle. With the Gypsy balanced on the handlebars, the bear rode the bicycle all the way down the road that led to a big city.

As soon as they got to the city, the Gypsy thought, This is more like it. There were so many buildings, as though all the blocks in a toy chest had been piled up one of top of the other. People stuck their heads out their windows to get a look at the pair of them. Much as the citizens of this town were interested in the Gypsy and the bear, these new arrivals were just as absolutely amazed by the city. They tried not to act like tourists — in awe of everything that they saw and eager to take it in. The Gypsy slyly nudged the bear in the side to make sure that the animal was seeing what he was seeing. The bear nodded, indicating that he most certainly was.

There were all these rows of stores to look at. There was one with prosthetic limbs that hung in the window, looking to complete a person. There was one that had beautiful ladies’ hats. There must have been a thousand apples for sale at the fruit store. The Gypsy turned his head and noticed that there were pigeons exploding off the side of a building, as though a mortar shell had hit it. The street they were on was so narrow that it almost seemed as if two people on opposite sides of the street could lean out of their windows and kiss one another. Children stood on their balconies, looking down at the Gypsy and the bear, and called out to them. One little boy leaned over the railing with a pot and a wooden spoon and banged them together. They had their own marching band.

As soon as they entered the town square, they were happy. The bear liked it because it gave him the sensation of being little. Everybody on the road to the city had looked at him as if he was huge and as if they had never seen anything so enormous in all their lives. When he was in the square, it made him feel innocent, like he was a little beloved kid that everyone would be kind to.

The Gypsy liked being in the square because he was a protagonist, and thus he had to be the centre of attention. When the Gypsy began to play his violin, both he and the bear were taken aback for a moment. The musical phrase did cartwheels across the square like a tiny Russian gymnast. He had known that he was able to play, but he hadn’t expected to be quite so talented. He was suddenly thankful that the boy who created him had been spoiled. He had obviously gone to quite a few musical presentations and listened to all sorts of wonderful records. Perhaps he had recently begun taking lessons himself and this was what he wanted to be able to sound like someday.

For his part, the bear was able to do all sorts of amazing things that you would never in your whole life imagine that a member of his already highly regarded species could do. These were feats that had never even been performed in any of the venerable European circuses before. The boy had seen them in an illustrated storybook about bears or maybe he had even seen them in a dream. The bear was able to roller skate with his arms behind his back and his feet pushing out behind him. He was able to ride a unicycle and juggle, spinning the balls around as though he was God deciding where to put what in the solar system.

The Gypsy continued to play his violin in a strange way as the bear performed. When people listened to him playing the instrument, they fell under his spell. Watching their big eyes and their nodding heads, he realized that he could persuade anyone, through the music, to do whatever he wanted. He knew all sorts of tunes that weren’t even really tunes per se — it would be safer to call them magical incantations. There was a repertoire in his mind, although he didn’t know how it had come to be there.

He cast an eye around the crowd to see what kind of tune would get him the most money. He could play a tune that made you feel so guilty about past deeds that you would feel the need to pay amends. There was another that would make you fall head over heels in love with him. The girls would drop their coins into his hat, hoping that it would somehow get him to notice them long enough so that they might entice him.

He had a tune that made the listeners feel ashamed. And when he was done, he would look them in the eyes and people would give him their coins in order to get him to look away. He had a melody that made you feel as if life was so short that there was no point in holding on to anything. It was silly to hoard their money and not give it to the young violin player, because the truth was that they didn’t even know if they were going to be here the next day.