The thought of how the Queen was being slandered filled Vesna with a fresh sense of rage that coursed through her entire body. Taking a few steps towards Dragan, she said, “You may leave now, lieutenant. We’ll meet this evening at the circus. I spoke to the head of the palace guard and he told me that you have been relieved from duty for the next two nights.”
The circus tent was so immense that the Queen’s palace and gardens could have fit inside it, with room to spare for trapeze artists to soar through the air, tightrope walkers to perch on their ropes high above, and Japanese gymnasts to circle around the arena, balancing on giant balls.
Nobody there, except for those who had seen the Hagia Sophia or the Duomo in Florence, had ever been inside such a colossal structure. The posters proclaimed that the circus had travelled the whole world, from New Zealand to America, and now it had come to Belgrade. It was rumoured that the real circus was in London at the time and the performance in Belgrade just a side show, but some found it inconceivable that anything could be more grandiose than what they were seeing. Everyone knew that Belgrade was anything but a lifeless, barren city of the East. The previous year, the famous traveller Sir Algernon Bunberry had published a travel guide in which he described his time in Belgrade ten years earlier, saying that any self-respecting gentleman would stay at least three nights in the city, enjoying its comforts. For the Serbs, the fact that the circus had stopped in Belgrade meant that their country was now firmly on the world map.
In Serbian lore, the Ottomans had for centuries held those lands by the nape of the neck, preventing them from becoming a country of their own. Treading on the world like a Japanese acrobat perched on top of a ball, the Ottomans had deluded themselves into believing that they ruled the globe. The truth of the matter, however, was that the world was turning and they were being left behind, less powerful than ever before.
Dragan was excitedly expounding on such patriotic themes in an attempt to pry Vesna’s thoughts from the newspaper story, as they sat in one of the rows upon rows of wooden benches which ran around the circus ring. Gypsies were performing with their dancing bears and monkeys as people streamed into the tent, but their routine, which was seen on the streets every day and ill-suited to the grandeur of this setting, was a mere warm-up act for the real show.
But Vesna’s thoughts were elsewhere. After a while, she turned to Dragan and smiled distractedly. Driven to paroxysms of enthusiasm by that glimmer of hope, Dragan launched into a harangue about the importance of travel guides, and the pride he felt because Belgrade was a favoured destination among European travellers. Soon enough, however, Vesna was rescued from his tirade by a boom that shook the very fabric of the tent.
The sound had come from a massive brass gong suspended by cables high above them. When a hush fell over the tent, a dwarfish red-haired announcer appeared. After greeting the audience first in French and then in German, he started to sing an aria in a resounding tenor. The audience looked at each other in confusion, and the children, who had been expecting clowns, were caught between surprise and fear. In the middle of the aria, the dwarfish announcer started doing backflips, singing all the while, and he continued flipping around the arena until the end of the song. As he held the very last note, he suddenly disappeared in a yellowish puff of smoke.
As the smoke in the tent dissipated, the audience saw that a man of gigantic proportions had appeared in the dwarf’s place. He was wearing a leopard skin that left one shoulder bare, and a devilish leather mask adorned with ivory tusks. Five powerful-looking men appeared out of nowhere, rolling a stone with great difficulty towards the towering man. When he charged at them with a snarl, they scattered, and then he paused to look at the stone, polishing the tusks on his mask with a piece of canvas he held stretched between his hands. Suddenly he seemed to fly into a rage, spinning around on one leg several times—Dragan estimated at least fifteen—and emitting the most horrific of howls, until he finally came to a halt and brought his right hand down on the stone, splitting it in two. The audience gasped as one. Tugging at his leopard hide, the devil-man walked up to the split stone, picked up one of the halves with a grunt and heaved it into the air. The stone soared towards the middle of the arena and then disappeared into a hole in the ground that had suddenly appeared. After hurling the other half of the stone into the same hole, he wiped his hands on his thighs, ignoring the roar of applause.
At that moment there was another puff of smoke, from which appeared a woman holding a flaming hoop. She held it out at waist-level and a lion, its mane braided and adorned with pearls and gems, leapt through the flames, landing gracefully in front of the man in the mask before leaping back through the hoop. Next, the lion trainer held the flaming hoop up at head height and stamped her highheeled boots three times, at which the lion leapt through the hoop again and roared, its mouth open wide, whereupon the masked man knelt down and placed his head in the lion’s gaping jaws.
The lion closed its mouth gently but firmly around the man’s neck, and began to growl. The audience held its breath. Then, very slowly, the man raised his right hand to the lion’s throat and started choking it. The growling stopped and the lion began to writhe, its back paws scratching at the ground, but slowly the huge cat’s muscles started to relax, until only its legs were twitching. As easily as if he were taking off a hat, the man removed his head from the lion’s mouth and bellowed in triumph, at which point the lights in the tent suddenly went out.
The pearls braided into the lion’s mane glimmered in a single beam of light. After a while the other lights slowly came back on, revealing the outlines of the caveman, the lion tamer and the lion, which was still lying motionless on the ground. As the lights went out again, the sounds of a piercing scream and growls echoed back and forth across the tent.
When his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Dragan noticed that Vesna was breathless, but he wasn’t sure if it was out of fear or excitement. After a moment of hesitation he reached out and took her hand, which was clutching her knee. The fact that their hands had touched twice in the same day was more startling for him than the lion jumping through the burning hoop and nearly biting off a man’s head.
In the darkness of the arena, a glowing form appeared, spinning round and round as furiously as if it were trying to drive right through the floor into the heart of the earth, tracing flames through the air. These twirling rings of fire flickered so quickly that, at first, no one in the tent could work out what they were.
But as the spinning slowed, it became clear that the form was a whirling dervish of sorts, arms rigid, one pointing up at the top of the tent and the other at the ground. Fire shot from his arms at regular points, balls of light burned along the hem of his skirt, and brief bursts of flame shot from the tips of his shoes with a whooshing sound.
As the dervish slowed, the audience’s astonishment gave way to awe as they beheld the spectacle that was revealed before them. Dragan looked over at the flames reflected in Vesna’s eyes, and he realized that he was still holding her hand. Blushing with the shame of having been so impertinent for a second time in a single day, the lieutenant pulled his hand away.
As the dervish sped up again, his skirt, which had begun to droop, billowed out again. The sound of drums filled the tent and the whooshing flames became a tornado of light once more. The sound of the taut leather drums drew the audience’s heartbeat into its rhythm.
A sudden explosion rocked the tent and the flaming dervish rose into the air, only to plummet to the ground in a ball of fire.
Columns of fire shot from the man, who was now doubled over and writhing on the ground, shooting flames in all directions like a squadron of archers on a hilltop raining arrows down upon an enemy. It was only when Vesna saw the tent beginning to burn that she realized it wasn’t part of the show.
The flames spread and engulfed the entire tent in flames. In the dark, no one could see the smoke billowing forth, but their eyes and noses were burning and they began trampling one another in
the stands as they tried to rush out of the tent. When Dragan tried to take hold of Vesna’s hand to lead her out, he was knocked down by the stampede.
Blinded by the darkness and choking on smoke, Dragan lost sight of Vesna. As people trampled over him, he felt his freshly healed ribs crack again. Knowing that he would choke to death if he didn’t get out, he summoned the last of his strength and forced himself up. In the hope that it would ward off the swarming crowd he drew his sword, but in that chaos no one paid him any attention and he was shoved aside yet again. He swung out with the hilt of his sword to keep himself from falling to the ground, and knocked down a man who was stumbling along in front of him. Leaping over him, he cleared a path with the hilt and finally made it outside.
The right side of the tent was completely burnt and rags of flaming fabric floated down like a rain of phosphorescent insects.
As Dragan walked backwards gazing up at that majestic tower of flames, he heard someone calling his name. Turning in the direction of the voice, he saw Vesna, her face and clothes covered in soot.
Shaking him by the shoulders, she said, “Something’s happening. I have to get back to the palace. You’re in uniform, so stay here and help people as best you can.” Then she ran off, dashing between people rolling around on the ground in a desperate attempt to put out the flames engulfing their clothes.
Dragan looked left and right. The field surrounding the tent was filled with people shouting, dashing around, and carrying the dead.
The circus was collapsing as it burned, but from a distance it looked like a ship sailing through the night, its sails filled with a red wind. Dragan was captivated by the spectacle, the likes of which he knew he’d probably never see again.
When he was young, Dragan had always enjoyed fairy tales, and his childhood was filled with them. He believed that there was a dragon lurking beneath every boulder and that there was an ill-starred princess waiting to be saved in every castle tower.
From fairy tales he knew that the immortal spirit of a monster lived on in the body of a bird that itself was sleeping in the heart of a fox high in the mountains. To overcome the undying beast you had to go up into the mountains, find the fox, cut the poor creature’s heart in two, pull the bird out, and let the monster’s soul drift up into the air.
So as a child he set off down a path that led from the village to the town to catch a cat, imagining that he would cut it open so that he could pull out its heart.
With two vicious swipes of its claws, the cat he’d found in a field dashed little Dragan’s dream of having the bird living in its heart chirp a song in the palm of his hand.
Perhaps that tabby would have been proud, if it had known that Dragan had thought of it as a fox that carried a bird in its heart, in the heart of a snow-covered forest where the trees swayed in the clouds. More likely, however, the cat was glad to have been saved from little Dragan’s preposterous plan.
“Cats are always like that,” Dragan thought, and elaborated on the story:
“One day the fox was bragging to the cat, saying that its enemies can never get hold of it because it knows a thousand tricks and a thousand ways to escape. The cat’s tail sank in humility as it murmured, ‘I only know of one way to escape.’ One day a hunting party came by and a dozen greyhounds set off in pursuit of the cat and the fox. The cat climbed up a tree and escaped. By the time the fox had decided which trick it was going to use to get away, the greyhounds had already sunk their teeth into its beautiful throat.”
The large tent pole, which had been swaying for some time, broke with a resounding “crack”, sending embers flying across the field. The people watching from a distance saw that ship driven by red winds crash into a rocky outcrop and vanish.
Dragan decided to be a cat with nine lives rather than a fox. Without a second’s thought he started running towards what remained of the tent, jumping over the dead and dying as he ordered the stragglers to flee. As he swung left and right with the hilt of his sword, he headed for a small opening in the tent that hadn’t yet caught fire. But when he leapt through the opening he tripped over a smouldering beam, smacking his forehead on the ground as he fell.
The pain kept him alert as he crawled onwards, clambering over dead bodies. He didn’t see any survivors. Still, Dragan shouldered his way through that scene of death and destruction, giving what he assumed to be the dervish’s remains a wide berth. At one point he stood up and looked around, hoping to spot a sign of life, but just then the floor, now weakened by the fire, gave way. The lieutenant plunged downwards.
Unsurprised by the fact that he had hit his head again, he pondered the captain’s words, wondering if perhaps material truths could only be apprehended through experience. Indeed, after being pummelled by boards, concrete, earth and fists, his head had arrived at a material truth that was quite solid.
This time, however, the lieutenant hadn’t hit his head against a board, concrete or earth, but bone.
The lion’s mane, adorned with pearls and jewels, was still smouldering. Choking on the black smoke, the lion had writhed in agony as the flames tore into its body, strewing its organs on the ground like a bucket of freshly cut fish cast onto a boat’s deck. When the lieutenant had plummeted down, he’d hit his forehead against the lion’s side, cracking one of its ribs with a snap.
Once, while waiting in the area below the stage for its turn to perform during a show in Salzburg, another lion with a decorated mane—actually the mane was fake, as the real one had fallen out in tufts after the lion was neutered—had decided to stave off its hunger pangs by devouring a rather talented make-up artist. After this gruesome event, the makeup artist’s twin brother, a trapeze artist, went down in history as the first person to go on strike at a circus.
On another occasion, at a nameless village near Lake Constance, a strongman had hurled a boulder down into the space beneath the stage, breaking the arm of one of the gypsies’ monkeys. Irritated no end by the monkey’s screeching a Japanese tightrope walker killed the monkey, and then one of the gypsies, with a barrage of throwing stars, but since the members of the circus lived on the fringes of society the matter was never taken to court.
And when the circus was in Deauville, on the shores of the English Channel, the cook, who had a penchant for pleasuring himself on fresh lamb livers, had scratched his arm on a nail brown with rust, while he was under the stage getting supplies. Within two months, tetanus led to lockjaw and the cook shuffled off his culinary coil.
Doubtless these are just a few of the many misadventures that had taken place in this shrine that was home to so many secrets.
As Dragan staggered to his feet, he realized with a sinking heart that his sword had broken in the fall and the blade was now lost among the lion’s organs scattered on the floor. It was a ceremonial sword, good for little other than looking impressive on parade, but still Dragan cursed its loss. Despite his setback, he was determined to hew a heroic future for himself. Taking a deep breath, he thrust what was left of his sword into the scabbard hanging at his waist.
Just then, Dragan spotted what appeared to be a machine encircled by serpentine glass tubes inside of which filaments glowed dully in the darkness. Some of the tubes were lying in pieces, shattered by the beam that had crashed down under Dragan’s weight, but he could hear the cogs of a whirring gearbox rattling against one another somewhere inside the machine.
He examined the apparatus in the dim light, knowing that reconnaissance is the key to all military matters. If you don’t know the lay of the land, there’s little chance of success in battle or executing a smooth retreat, which explained why Dragan had paid the price for his blind rush into the tent with a broken sword and two welts on his forehead.
Reaching out to brace himself, he took hold of a steel lever on the machine. The steel was hot—not yet hot enough to burn his hand, but getting hotter by the second.
As he proceeded farther along, his eyes now accustomed to the dark, he found that his path was blocked by a
boulder, and then the machine’s slowing clatter was replaced by a massive rumble as the entire floor of that ill-fated stage collapsed, bringing the raging orgy of flaming timbers thundering down like an army breaking through a battlefront. Everything disappeared under the burning debris: the lion, the mysterious machine, the magicians’ props, the piles of pulleys and ropes…
Dragan found himself doubled over, pinned under the weight of a beam, his right cheek pressed against the boulder as cinders seared the back of his neck. As he felt the cinders burning deeper into his flesh, he regretted the fact that he would not die a beautiful death. He recalled a poem befitting his sense of regret:
“Everyone is defeated in war / Tsars and sultans alike fall under the blade / A young soldier, his right hand and left foot hewn off in battle / His once proud chest now crushed / Drifts into the glowing waters of a lake / And a haloed angel lifts him up / Washing his wounds in the cool clear water / And ruby wine and ambrosia / Ah, haloed angel, outwit the Devil.”
As he muttered the last lines, preparing to make his final salute in this world, he felt the weight on his back lighten as the beam was pushed away.
A man wearing a leopard skin picked Dragan up and carried him over his bare shoulder down a short tunnel. Dragan sighed, “Ah, angel, haloed angel” and surrendered to his saviour.
“Lieutenant, I specifically requested the leopard skin. Most circus strongmen prefer jaguar skins because they have large spots, but the spots on a leopard skin, while smaller, are closer together and more orderly. People like to wear big, showy patterns because they want to seem impressive, not because they are. Let me emphasize that point—it’s because of how they want to be seen. First you desire something and then you take on the form of that which you desire. If you want to shape someone according to your will, you have to know what they truly want. You can’t shape someone into something they don’t desire. If a jaguar doesn’t want small spots, it’s not going to happen.”
The Peace Machine Page 12
