Orphans of the Carnival

by Carol Birch

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That her face might—cause some misfortune—to the mother—the baby—”

  “What!”

  “Miscarriage—”

  Theo laughed, a hard cry of a laugh.

  “Spoil the baby,” Huber went on, as the policeman rambled on in German, scribbling notes on a piece of paper. “Make it like her.”

  She didn’t wait to hear more. She went back to her dressing room, closed the door and sat looking in the mirror. Someone had stuck a colored drawing in the side of the glass. It showed a handsome round building in a grand park, with elegant people strolling about in front. Dear Miss Pastrana, the writing said, here is a picture of one of the many beautiful buildings in the glorious city of Vienna—your friend, Hermann Otto.

  The scent of flowers was thick.

  Theo bashed the door open. “Those idiots. Those beasts. They’re living in the Middle Ages.”

  Julia veiled and stood up, began putting on her shawl. “Is it very cold outside?” she asked.

  He stalked about, venomous. “Aren’t you angry?” He stopped, glaring at her. “Aren’t you furious?”

  “Is it snowing?”

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  “How can you stand there like that?” he said. “How can you be calm?”

  “So what now?” She stood by the door.

  “How would I know?” His hair stuck up greasily. “Damn Huber carrying on as if it’s my fault. How was I supposed to know these benighted peasants believe in old wives’ tales? Obscene! They’re obscene! I hate them!”

  Someone came to the door and said the carriage was ready.

  “I’ve never liked Leipzig.”

  The drunker Theo got, the more bullish he became, striding up and down her room with a glass in his hand, spilling pale liquid over his fingers.

  “When were you here before, Theo?” She was sitting on the end of the bed, twisting a ribbon between her fingers. A fire blazed in the grate.

  “Ten years ago.” He stood looking down into the fire, remembering the Gatti Twins, the awful awakening from his first great venture. “I’m done with this place now,” he said, “it’s bad luck for me. We shouldn’t even have come. Stupid.” He hit himself on the head. “Fool you are, Theo! Should have gone straight to Vienna. That’s what we’ll do, that’s what’s next. I’ll get onto old Otto first thing. Vienna!”

  He walked over to the window, lifted the curtain and stood looking out at the snow falling fast across the flat white facade of the buildings opposite.

  “I wonder,” he said, “what’s next.”

  Suddenly afraid, Julia began to cry.

  “Huber just standing there, saying, ‘yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.’ Looking at me as if everything was my fault.”

  A formless gloom was on her, and she felt far from home. Certain words had cut. Obscenity. Not ugly, she knew she was that. Fact was fact. Ugly was ugly and beauty was beauty, and nothing anyone could do about that. But obscene? Immoral?

  “Bestial,” she said.

  He turned sharply.

  “After all, what am I really?” Her voice was thick.

  “Are you crying?”

  “What if I am? What am I?” She laughed. “It isn’t who am I? It isn’t who am I? I know who I am, I’m Julia. It’s what I am.”

  Oh God, poor creature, poor creature, he thought.

  “Julia,” he said, striding across the room and falling on his knees in that ridiculous theatrical way she was getting used to, grabbing both her hands. “I will not have you bothered by ignoramuses and bigots. The words that drip out of their mouths are worth less than the spewings of a sewer. They don’t matter.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said.

  “Julia, forget them.”

  “How can I? I blight babies in the womb.”

  Don’t, he thought. I can’t deal with this. “They’re the ugly ones,” he said hopelessly, but she pulled her hands from his and covered her face. “You’re much better than them. Stronger,” he said, but she just shook her head and turned away. He got up, sat down beside her, putting one arm around her shoulders. Touching her sent a thrill of excitement up his arm.

  “I want to go home,” she said, stiffening.

  “Home?”

  “Mexico. Home. They’d have me back.”

  “Ssh!”

  “At least they didn’t hide their babies.”

  “We’ll go to Vienna,” he said. His arm felt awkward.

  “It’ll be the same there.”

  “No, it won’t, I promise you.”

  She started wiping her face with the ribbons.

  “Here.” He gave her his handkerchief. “What do fools matter? You can’t let this stop you.”

  He took his arm away.

  “You’re a wonder,” he said. “A fascination. A miracle.”

  Julia dried her face and composed herself.

  “The people who really count adore you,” he said. “They go home and tell everyone—when they’re old, they’ll tell their grandchildren—how they saw the great Julia Pastrana on the stage, how beautifully she danced and sang, and how charming she was afterward when they shook her hand.”

  “No,” she said.

  “They’ll remember you all their lives.”

  She turned to look at him. “I don’t think so. I think they just go home and say, guess what? I saw a monkey in a dress today.”

  Theo said nothing. The shine of tears caught in the down on her cheek. Poor soul, he thought. “I’ll never put you through that again,” he said.

  “I know you won’t.” She sniffed, wiping her face, “Because I won’t do it. I’ll go home.” She was starting to cry again.

  After all, he thought, it’s only like stroking a dog. It’s only hair.

  “You don’t want to go home,” he said, putting his arms ’round her and stroking her big shaggy head. “You don’t want to go home, Julia. And be a servant again?”

  No one had held her since she was small. Solana probably, it was hard to remember. Maybe even her mother. There had once been arms around her though, she was sure of it. “I wouldn’t be a servant,” she said, closing her eyes. “I have some money now, I could be independent.”

  “Of course,” he said, “in a few years, but not now. Not while everything is so perfect for you. They want you in Russia. They want you in Warsaw and Prague. In Vienna. Everyone wants you.”

  The embrace had become stiff.

  “We’ll throw that stupid play aside and carry on as we were.” His voice was strained. “Just you and your talent. There’s so much waiting for you, Julia.”

  “You know, Theo,” she said, and her voice was steady again. “I really don’t know what I am.”

  He drew back. This was the moment when in any normal circumstance there would have been a kiss, she even saw the flicker of it in his eyes, but she also saw that he simply couldn’t do it.

  “It’s all right, Theo,” she said, and smiled, and a peculiar understanding passed between them.

  “Julia, I will never abandon you. Never. I will always look after you, I promise.” He smiled and proclaimed with mock solemnity, “I will look after you in this dark, dirty little world,” then laughed and kissed her forehead, drew her head down and stroked again. “You have lovely hair,” he said.

  It was all off with Laurie. Adam had hung around and hung around, till the right night came, rain, candles, her birthday cards fluttering from the mantelpiece at regular intervals, one from her mother, one from her brother, one from Auntie Irene and Uncle Bob who she hadn’t seen since 1962 when they came to her father’s funeral. A world beyond this house. He didn’t know her, he realized, didn’t know her at all. Who are these parents? These people? Oh, they were just parents, she said. You know. They were OK, I suppose. That scar? How d’you get that scar? Wouldn’t you like to know? Fought a bear.

  She’d teased her hair out in a big bush and wore a red hat on top of it. Bri
ght red lipstick too, a big wide slash of it to match the hat. This room, this house, this whole smoky moment, stuck in time, as every moment surely is. The raw rich smell of burning herb, the thick dope air. Ultrareal. She rolled and licked and lit a cigarette casually, as if her hands had done it a million times.

  “Oh, Rosie, my little Rosie, my little Rose,” Adam said, then felt a fool and didn’t know what to do.

  She smiled. Then kissed him.

  Ever since, they’d been in bed more or less all the time. The rest of life stopped. Of course lust was in it, but it was love more than anything he’d known. He thought it might kill him.

  “I’ll go down with you,” he said, “if that’s what you want.”

  “Go down where?”

  “Wherever you’re going. The rabbit hole. Madness. I don’t care.”

  “What?” She was hardly listening. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  Forget all. Forget and fall. Skyscrapers rise, grand edifices of junk, towers, a wooden cobra, teddy bears and dolls, pictures, ropes, Buddha, a horse, old jigsaws, shells, ashtrays, boxes and bottles, umbrellas, fans, books, books, books. Chewed pencil stubs among the shoelaces and discarded shopping lists, the boxes things came in.

  The madness increases. The weeks roll on, four, five, six, more, forever. Getting on for six months, and he’d look at her and wonder what was real, this or some odd remembered thing, far down at the other end of a telescope, a life as unreal as the mother, the brother, the auntie and uncle, all that mysterious stuff she dragged behind her, her backdrop; only this was his backdrop, the piano in the school hall, his uncle Tommy’s grayhound, his grandma, his mates, the band he was in, the drawings he did all over the walls in his room. A whole existence she’d never know, just as he’d never know hers.

  He started painting her.

  Draped, naked, sleeping, bathing, reading, at a window, in shadow, in white like an angel, fully clothed, made up like a forties movie star, full face, close-up, profile, distorted. All in purple. Photorealist, impressionist, in miniature, on a vast canvas or on the wall, in pencil, watercolor, oils, acrylics.

  He never painted anything else ever again, just her, and the funny thing was, nothing he ever painted after he met her was ever as good as his old stuff. He knew it wasn’t going to last. It was like drinking for the moment, not caring about the hangover. If he’d been wood or sad plastic, torn or fragile, worthless, she’d have put him on her shelf and kept him forever. Now and again her heart would have bled softly for him. People though—people with their mysterious pesky hearts—she couldn’t cope with that. The way she’d turned on a dime with poor old Laurie, one day all over him, the next just a friend, surprised and mildly indignant at his grief. It’d be the same with him when his time came. And in the end she’d be alone because it was the only way she could be, and he wondered what it was in that bland otherworld of mother, brother, uncle and auntie that had made her that way.

  A HUMAN MONSTER

  Readers will recall last week’s report concerning the furore at Leipzig’s Kroll Theatre. The outcry, which resulted in the immediate closure of Der Curierte Meyer, a lively little musical comedy, was a consequence of several impassioned complaints from both citizens and members of the medical establishment concerned about the possible harmful effects of the public’s exposure to its lead performer, the remarkable Julia Pastrana. In short, it was decided that the theater’s aesthetic frame was harmed by association with this deformed creature.

  What are we to make of this? Very little, one imagines. There is nothing new about the display of human oddities. The problem arises when the sideshow is brought into a respectable theater. Yet we learn that Miss Pastrana has graced the stage of the St. Charles in New Orleans, where once the divine Jenny Lind enchanted the cream of society. She has been guest of honor at military balls, converses ably, sings tolerably, dances prettily and speaks three languages. Unfortunately German is not one of them, as I discovered when I interviewed her in her dressing room at Wirth’s Circus. Her English, though, is fluent, so we got along remarkably well.

  Miss Pastrana is a young woman of 23. By birth a Mexican Indian, she grew up in the Spanish Catholic household of the state governor of Sinaloa. I cannot begin to convey the full horror of her appearance. The accompanying pencil drawing, brilliant as it is, does not do her justice. No mere representation could. For the full effect, you must see the shine in her depthless black eyes. You must hear the voice, low and womanly, emerging from the thick-lipped mouth, catch the occasional glimpse of the lumpy muscle mass of tongue as she speaks, the veritable rampart of coral-like excrescence behind those lips. Her nostrils are vast, her nose wide-bridged and domed. Her head is very large in relation to her body, her shoulders broad, her bosom voluptuous. She is absolutely covered in thick black hair, face and all, except for the palms of her hands, which are dusky rose and delicate. There is a melancholy in the eyes, which causes pity. I do not think she is very intelligent but she does seem to be aware of her situation.

  “Miss Pastrana, life must have changed so much for you.”

  “So much!”

  “Is it tiring for you to be so constantly traveling?”

  “Of course, sometimes. But there’s good and bad in every situation. Sometimes I get tired, but if I wasn’t traveling I wouldn’t be seeing so many interesting places and meeting so many people.”

  “Would you describe yourself as a happy person?”

  “Sometimes one thing, sometimes another—”

  You tell them, Julia. You tell them. You show them. Theo had given her a glass of wine for confidence before he let the man in. You remember—

  “In fact,” she said with that terrible smile, “the entire experience has been wonderful. I have sold out theaters in America and England. This small upset in Leipzig—that is nothing.”

  She had dressed herself carefully, done her hair, thought herself back into a defiant state of mind, composed herself in dignity and made herself cheerful.

  By God, you’re a tower of strength, he’d said, his lips brushing her fingertips.

  “Does it pain you, Miss Pastrana? Your condition. You are clearly a creature of…”

  “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 toward 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, crisscrossed, 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 traveling 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, sì,” he said, “sì, sì, sì, sì, sì…”

  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.