Circus

by Wayne Koestenbaum

  I am sick of Matilda’s wealth: she flaunt her rubies, Gertrude’s leavings. I sat on Matilda’s bed while we watched the long-lost, recently surfaced video of Alma’s 1964 breakdown. Alma sat at the piano, eyes closed; she stopped playing. I shouted at the screen, “Wake up!” Alma is a sorceress, even in her slump. I dozed, trying to defend magic, trying to picture the insignificant, undignified ridges that surround East Kill. At five o’clock Matilda nudged me awake by encircling my erect penis with her mouth, but not bringing me within a mile of orgasm. We don’t consider the mouth a likely source of transmission. I returned home to a phone message from Alfonso Reyes: to print the program, he needs my final repertoire list.

  Aigues-Mortes is France’s most defended town—ancient ramparts intact. Some of Moira Orfei’s postcards show parapets, while others come from St-Rémy-de-Provence, Les Baux, Orléans, Passy . . . Each image offers an assignment: picture of the road leading to Rocamadour (pilgrims walking up the hill on their knees) tells me to think about humiliation as I prepare Poulenc’s Mouvements perpétuels. Poulenc insists that his music be performed sans nuances; if I omit nuance, Moira Orfei will compensate with a double load.

  I may not live long enough to finish my notebooks. Closure depends on Moira Orfei cooperating, our performances proceeding as planned; they have not yet been organized. I am scheduled to appear for a full week of recitals in Aigues-Mortes, with the guest-starring collaboration of renowned and ephemeral circus artiste Moira Orfei, but we have not nailed down a single program; she has neither agreed to appear nor specified her manifestations. She may contribute fireworks, aquatic dives, animal-tamings, ordinary nostalgic ballet movements, interpretive dances—or postures of stillness, sculptural, bodhisattva-like, to wow the crowd. When fever descends, I’ll get practical. Problem: it’s difficult to telephone Moira Orfei directly. If I began to tell the truth about my relation with Moira Orfei, the likely reason for her decision to “bump” me from her routine, then Alma, reading these notebooks, would close off my communications with the outside world. It is not always possible to turn one’s life into a movie. Some existences must be slow, dull, without women.

  Dear Theo:

  En route to Aigues-Mortes. I fear the loss of reputation, the “stain” you attributed to me, years ago, in Positano, before you understood circus eminence, the “misterioso” mood I cast over you as you sat beneath the lemon bower.

  Moira Orfei

  I sat beneath the lemon bower

  under Moira Orfei’s power:

  I remember Positano with Moira Orfei—starched Hotel de Anza linen. She demanded more hand towels. Tonight I’ll forgo Aigues-Mortes preparations and escape to the water district—Space Bar, Statute of Limitations, Camera Baths, Fortune 500—and try to memorize a few faces so I can describe them tomorrow. I want to caress the notebook itself, but I have called an end to the human; I use notebooks not to “liberate the expressive potential of dissonance” but to avoid the hard work of listening to intervals. There is no time to gauge each phrase before I produce it; I cannot plan Aigues-Mortes, I must let it occur, explode without premeditation, even if calamities ensue and Moira Orfei never forgives me for involving her in a colossal embarrassment, an epic disaster, like Airport or The Adventurers. Moira Orfei, not an appropriationist, is a fabulist; circus is the least realistic art, therefore the most despised. Gypsies, in May, gather in Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Alma suggests I include them in my festival. I’m planning a Super 8 film called The Water District. The Aigues-Mortes concerts, tape-recorded, will be the soundtrack.

  At Jacob’s Ladder yesterday I bought a pair of checked trousers to wear as “rehearsal pants” in Aigues-Mortes. There may be no rehearsals, only performances. If I start treating Moira Orfei as a principle of realism, then I jinx Aigues-Mortes. Long ago, a ballet dancer, Cyndie Val, embraced me and offered her breasts, though she was sexually my superior. I could see asscrack above her stretch pants when she bent down. Later in the Berkshires she opened the door of a moving car, fell out, and died. She was trying to escape the predator who’d picked her up: she’d been thumbing a ride. Her mother sent me Cyndie’s obituary; scheduled to perform at the memorial, I canceled. To me she was mostly optimism, breasts, buttcrack, and a willingness to eat Baked Alaska and to consider it (the organic vanilla ice cream rather gray) a treat, which it is not, because no one loves Baked Alaska or understands its identity, despite the name’s saloon atmosphere.

  Anita read me the riot act—no more gay sex—and then she fixed me a Brandy Alexander. I may agree to intercourse tonight. Reading Tsvetaeva, Anita is trying to reach transcendence: Guadalquivar territory. Perhaps I lack the strength to perform Liszt in Aigues-Mortes. My Mephisto Waltz octaves don’t puncture or bite. Though I play the sentimental middle section adequately, Aigues-Mortes audiences will think me a whiner.

  Theo,

  I write to you from Belgrade. Quick detour, unforeseen, unwanted. I am taping a pathetic TV show. On it, I must pretend to be drunk: an insult to circus. My earlier appearances on Belgrade TV were lovely work. I can’t justify my eleventh-hour return.

  Moira Orfei

  I faxed Moira, via Chloe (“Please Forward to Belgrade”): I told Moira not to worry about TV humiliations. Complaining about weight loss and failing vision, I asked why she didn’t mention Aigues-Mortes in her last postcard, and whether she’d sue me for embarrassing her. I visited East Kill Cemetery’s Mangrove plot, larger than the Guadalquivar. The world has deference for Moira Orfei, but not enough. My Toulon palpitations, Nice memory lapse, Ferrara fainting spell, Carcassonne absence: Aigues-Mortes will be my final, unforgiveable bewilderment.

  In Atrani’s Hotel de Anza I drank espresso macchiato and Moira Orfei drank lemon verbena tea. Before a circus, she’d get the bends. Everyone in the café was staring at Moira Orfei, her makeup vermeil. I wanted to be her identical twin: if I moved slowly enough, without bump or discontinuity, I might match her frozen poise.

  On the phone Alma discussed her recital at Sala Leopoldo Marechal in the Biblioteca Nacional. I mentioned the Aigues-Mortes notebooks. She approved. She said that they are “adequately Guadalquivar.” My bone structure and blood type are Guadalquivar. Although she hates the Guadalquivar genotype, she uses it as cudgel. I will bring the notebooks to Aigues-Mortes, so Moira Orfei—her judgment impeccable, terminal—can embrace or reject them.

  Tanaquil wastes her mind on Dragnet reruns. Our family contract has an immortality clause: we observe no temporal limits. Has Moira Orfei arrived in Aigues-Mortes? Her last postcard was ambiguous. Alfonso Reyes, when I called, withheld specifics. We speculate that she has rented a flat in Aigues-Mortes, rather than a hotel suite. Trying to forget Moira Orfei’s alarming plea that I rescue her (from what kidnappers?), I follow Matilda’s advice and reread Simone Weil. Weil’s witty. European martyrs lubricate my path to Aigues-Mortes, home of the first Crusaders.

  Anita wants to star in the East Kill Lyric Opera South Pacific. Her audition piece is “Do-re-mi.” I hear her practicing it softly at night, downstairs, while I, upstairs, am reading Weil and perusing the Années de pèlerinage score. Anita’s voice was never properly trained, though she has modest natural abilities. Tanaquil, too, harbors operetta ambitions: she yearned for a role in Li’l Abner, years ago, before Alma discouraged her. She still wants to appear on soaps. She has a library of great plays (from Sophocles through Strindberg), potential parts optimistically highlighted. Tanaquil’s theatrical cravings complicate the family scene and pay no respects to our dead father, who hated illusion. If Anita comes home in tears from the “grocery store” (her euphemism for the East Kill Lyric Opera headquarters), the solution is Ambien, a private stockpile in my porn drawer. Dr. Crick, careless prescriber, pushes legal boundaries.

  Anita returned triumphant from the “grocery store.” She won the role of Nellie. Apparently at the auditions there was a “buzz” about my Aigues-Mortes recitals, though I’ve made no local announcement. Ross Sachs, an East Kill Lyric Opera coac
h, is planning a tour package—flying twenty East Kill folks to Aigues-Mortes to hear my concerts and then wander the Camargue. Ross doesn’t know beans about the étangs, my inexplicable ponds. Seeing a gaggle of East Kill loyalists in the audience might unnerve me. Moira Orfei has never come to East Kill, its residents blind to circus.

  Matilda telephoned to accuse me of “slapdash compartmentalization.” She said that until I came to terms with “the nature of the vagina,” I’d never make musical progress. She suggested that Moira Orfei do Aigues-Mortes in the nude. Matilda misinterprets circus. Moira’s filmed nude scenes don’t betoken live striptease.

  “Crisis is a Hair,” Emily Dickinson wrote, but it is also true that Crisis is my student Rabbi Gershon, who wrote, several years back, an article in the East Kill Times trashing the Mangroves, suggesting that we had too much influence. Contemplating conversion, I once visited East Kill Synagogue to convene with Rabbi Gershon. An old grumpy man with a messy beard and a perpetually unzipped fly, he kept a skateboard in his office. He asked about my conjugal relations: was I sufficiently pleasing to my wife in our “intimate traffic”? I assured Rabbi Gershon that erection with her was never a problem, although I preferred impromptu water-district sojourns. The rabbi’s face brightened.

  Yesterday’s pianistic revelation involved the simple phrase “cash box.” If I say “cash box” while playing Ravel’s Sonatine (1905), then its melodies speak, no longer sullen, closed. Cash Box. The word “cash” is higher in pitch than “box.” Each vowel’s length—a, o—is equal, though I tend to hold the a of cash longer than the o of box. Cash box matches Ravel’s primary rhythmic module! Two equal notes, the first accented, the second unaccented. We call this sad phenomenon an appoggiatura. Alma asked me to drop Ravel in favor of Frank Bridge’s forgotten character-piece “Fragrance.” Matilda called “cash box” a nonsense phrase. She thought I meant “whore’s vagina.” She said, “I’ve asked my Boston friends how far they’d travel to see Moira Orfei perform. Most wouldn’t drive to Medford.”

  Dear Theo,

  I want to fill your holes.

  Call.

  M. Orfei

  Problem: Chloe will not give me Moira’s number. A circus artiste’s location changes daily. I overheard Alma say to Tanaquil, “Your brother does exactly what he wants, and only what he wants, and only when he wants.” Alma laughed as she offered this character analysis; my whimsy—my weather—originally wounded her, but she learned to respect it. I worry about our country’s aggressions. Today we’re dropping bombs. Tanaquil started a magazine bonfire, destroying my porn back-issues.

  Phone message from Buenos Aires: “Emergency. Ring me immediately.” I delayed. When I finally called, Alma said, “Moira Orfei is unreliable.” Wrong. Alma means her own 1964 breakdown. Moira Orfei has never canceled a booking, though she occasionally faints in the ring.

  Moira’s circus master class dominates June. She admits students via grueling auditions. Five winners are flown to Montecatini. I’ve seen photos of apprentices sitting on Moira’s white leather couch (the very couch I accidentally vomited on). Moira, I want to sit on your sofa and understand your ankles, your secret sloppiness, your housedresses, your scrapbooks, your fights with Chloe.

  If I were to ask Moira Orfei about her body, the Aigues-Mortes notebooks would become a replica of an earlier set, called False Flowers, detailing my first visits to the water district, and the men I found there: unlikeable confessions, in a void. Years ago I read them aloud to Tanaquil, in an unattractive whisper. Last night after dinner, she sat on my lap. We occupied the third-from-the-bottom stair. The longer I held her, the smaller she seemed to grow, the less capable of living without my warlock genitals. Someone (Alma?) watched me fail; the failure continued, while she watched. I tried to explain the failure and her watching of it, but she watched me explain the failure, too, on a step outside the living room, where den met kitchen, and where a lamp composed of three clown-hat cones bought my patience.

  Theo,

  I have arrived in Aigues-Mortes to prepare circus groundwork. I won’t stay long. Stop sending me fantasies. Chloe has forwarded several. The town is surrounded by towers! Quaint. I give you them: Tour de Constance, Tour du Sel, Tour de la Mèche, Tour de Villeneuve, Tour de la Poudrière, Tour des Bourguignons.

  Each tower must inspire a tribute. You may use them to salute anything you wish. Warn me beforehand.

  Moira Orfei

  Towers! Panicked, I called Alma in Buenos Aires to complain about mouth cankers. She loves my distress, as if she were discovering it for the first time: “Sweetie, you have no memory. You forget birthdays, and yet you are always so worried—and have been, since a tot—about the need to complete projects. Why not leave them unfinished? We must get rid of the word ‘project.’ Walt Whitman said (according to my good, late friend Edward Steuermann, one of my links to Schoenberg), ‘We must march my darlings,’ and I’m in one hundred percent agreement. Theo, we must march. But toward what destination? Into a rose garden? A lilac bush? Do we avail ourselves of every allusion, or leave some fields fallow? Have crocuses appeared yet on Mechanical Street lawns?”

  She complained about her leased Pontiac: “I can’t drive a dirty car.” A birth-damaged body can never be repaired. Her voice sounded like a computerized automated help line, vowel intonations inhuman. How much candy does she keep in her desk drawer when she stays at the elegant Hotel Panorama in Córdoba? Are there fruit cocktail jars in her mini-bar? She sees lightning flashes, a Guadalquivar affliction, in the corners of her eyes. She dyes her hair black, to distinguish it from her late mother’s.

  Chance encounters in East Kill bathhouses resemble chance procedures in John Cage, who dedicated one piece to Alma: “Sexual Practices in Indochina in the 1960s,” for solo piano and television set, a difficult, prurient work she was ashamed to perform. She favors musical zoning: keep X-rated shops out of residential neighborhoods. I favor musical mixing. Also slashing and burning.

  Theo,

  Belated one! I wait in Aigues-Mortes.

  Moira Orfei

  Shame on me. Lazy in East Kill, I let a world-class circus star do my prep-work. My mouth sores ache. Falling asleep, I see Moira Orfei’s horses performing tricks—the Levade, the Courbet, the Capriole, the Cupada, the Ballatade, the Perotte, the Piaffe. I can’t live without the 1962 Levade, in Castelfranco, a wound, a video, better than anyone believed possible, not frequently enough credited, never praised enough, a clear high step, an innocent leg and arm. No one said, “Moira Orfei, do the Levade.” Her soul instructed. Moira Orfei’s relation to the horse brings transcendence and wakefulness to the circus tent. In Aigues-Mortes I will tell Moira Orfei about her 1962 perfection.

  Notebook Twenty

  Theo,

  I write to you from Aigues-Mortes. Sardines. Chloe took a photo of me standing outside a yellow house I could imagine buying. The town’s charms wane. Each gateway has an appalling likeness to earlier gateways I have seen and fled. I give you them: Porte de la Gardette, Porte St-Antoine, Porte des Cordeliers, Porte de la Reine, Porte de l’Arsenal, Porte de la Marine, Porte des Galions, Porte des Moulins, Porte des l’Organeau, Porte des Remblais.

  Each gateway must host an entrance: mine or yours. We will enter together and reverse the exit of the Crusaders, heading East. We feel guilty about the Crusades and wish to expiate French guilt?

  I am not just an idea you are entertaining. Chloe told me that you called. She described your progress toward circus.

  Moira Orfei

  I called every hotel in Aigues-Mortes; not one has a guest named Moira Orfei. She may be registered incognito, or she may be staying at a private home.

  I believe her. Moira Orfei knows my sordid pastimes. As surety we hold between us the memory of that fine restaurant in the lobby of St. Sebastian’s Hotel de Anza, the Branding Iron, where we ate fried chicken and orange sherbet and discussed future tours, future visits to churches, future trips on which we would climb towers and look past cit
y walls at surrounding marshes and wonder together about wildlife (horses, flamingos) and contemplate our distance from early tribulation.

  Theo,

  Still in Aigues-Mortes, still commemorating, at breakneck speed. I wrote out directions to my house in Montecatini, as if it were a compound I was forced to flee at gunpoint.

  I have visited each of the churches. I give you them: Église des Sablons, Chapelle des Penitents Gris, Chapelle des Cordeliers, Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs—from which the crusade began. “The slain,” Chloe said, “are really slain.” Here are no plaques, no memorials. Next to the crimes of Aigues-Mortes crusaders, yours are nothing. Forget our Cyprus argument.

  Moira Orfei

  Alma said that I ruined Tanaquil, years ago, in childhood, by flashing her. Last night Tanaquil sat on my lap again. I had room enough in my heart, after cold beef supper. I regretted my generosity: kindness might dilute Aigues-Mortes preparations. We sat in my studio, beside the two Bösendorfers. Low-grade fever intensified my love. Anita was rehearsing South Pacific at the “grocery store.”