The Palace of Laughter

by Jon Berkeley

  The throne rose on a pillar of steel. It was midnight blue, and on its high back was painted the same laughing clown’s face that was on the side of the Great Cortado’s wagon, the same face into which the very hill itself had been carved. Looking down on it now, Miles could see it in a different light. The wide-open mouth looked ready to devour anyone or anything that came near, and there was danger in the staring eyes. Seated beneath that manic face was the Great Cortado himself. As the throne reached its full height, he stood up (which didn’t make a great deal of difference, it has to be said) and began to speak in the same deep, hypnotic tones with which he had introduced the show. There was no “Ladies and Gentlemen” this time, no “Immense Privileges,” no flowery introduction at all. This time the Great Cortado got straight down to business.

  “Now you have felt the true power of laughter,” he said. “Elemental laughter, that has reached deep down into the center of your being and cracked you open like a tree root cracks a rock.” The audience stared. Their mouths hung open. Miles spotted Genghis sitting at the back, his arms folded and his mouth very definitely shut. His eyes roamed around the stupefied audience, and his face wore a smug look. Miles tried to see his pockets, as though he might catch a glimpse of Tangerine’s grubby head peeping out, but it was too far, and too dark, and there were too many things in the way. As though awaking from a dream, he remembered what he was doing here, and he missed the feel of the bear in his pocket more than he could ever have imagined.

  “Now you know the weakness of humanity,” the Great Cortado continued in a quieter voice. “The debilitating millstone of laughter that hangs around the neck of the human race. Neither beast nor fish nor fowl carries this flaw. It is a cruel trap that nature has made for man alone, for it comes uninvited and saps the strength of whoever is afflicted by it. It distracts and confuses the mind and lies like a thick fog across the path of progress.”

  The crowd soaked up his poisoned words like blotting paper. Their jaws were slack, their eyes were glazed, and everything the Great Cortado said went in one ear and stayed there.

  “Tonight,” he continued, his voice growing stronger, “you have finally been set free. With the help of our unparalleled entertainment, you have emptied your souls of every last drop of useless laughter. When you leave this place you will remember nothing of what you have seen, yet so complete is our treatment that you will be cured of laughter forever!”

  His voice was as smooth as polished stone and as rich as chocolate, and the audience listened without a murmur. Miles, perched in his balcony, could not help thinking that the Great Cortado’s words made a certain sense. Now that the music and the performance had abruptly stopped, he could not quite remember what the point of laughter was, or why it had always seemed such a missing element in his Pinchbucket House childhood. Yet moments earlier he too had been laughing at the mere fractured glimpses he could catch of the performance. He felt confused and a little light-headed, and he shook his head as though to clear it. He knew that there was something twisted about the Great Cortado’s words as they wrapped themselves around his thoughts like a snake.

  He leaned out from the balcony to see if he could spot Silverpoint. A large sandbag of yellowing canvas blocked his view. It hung from a pulley just above Miles, on the end of a rope that stretched out from the center of the gantry. He felt the weight of the sandbag as he tried to push it to one side, and this gave him an idea. He looked at the point where it appeared the far end of the rope was tied. He looked down at the Great Cortado, and he made a quick calculation. The little man seemed to be nearing the end of his speech.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he was saying, “I, the Great Cortado, have finally got laughter on the ropes. With the help of the learned Dr. Tau-Tau, I have tamed it and bottled it. If ever you find yourself with the foolish inclination to indulge in this intoxicating waste of time, you may purchase it by the bottle (ten cents from all reputable dealers), and cork it when you are done. Collect your free sample on the way out. Thank you for coming.”

  Miles reached up and began to pry the taut rope over the rim of the pulley wheel. Little looked at him, and her eyes widened. “Are you sure…,” she began, but she never finished what she was about to say. The rope came free with a sound that would have to be spelled “Thungg,” if it could be written down at all. The bag dropped like a stone, then swung out in a long and graceful arc across the huge auditorium. The Great Cortado was still standing on his throne with his arms outstretched like a letter “Y,” and the heavy sandbag was swishing through the air, aiming straight for his head. There was no doubt about it. Little held her breath, and Miles held his. He had time to wonder, as the sandbag curved through the air in slow motion, if this was his most brilliant idea yet, or whether it was an act of foolishness that would have consequences more terrible than any he could possibly foresee.

  At the very moment the Great Cortado caught sight of the approaching sandbag, the raised throne jerked into motion and began its descent back into the floor. The sandbag whistled over Cortado’s head, ruffling his hair as it passed. He looked up in surprise as it swung over to the other side of the theater and up, up into the spidery gloom among the bars and wires. It reached the top of its swing and punched the glass out of a large yellow spotlight. The yellow glass rained down in a sparkling shower. Most of it landed behind the outer row of people, but one piece fell, as though it had been given precise directions, and stuck itself into the back of Genghis’s right hand, already bandaged where it had been scratched by a cat and bitten by Miles himself. Genghis jumped up with a roar. The stupefied people sitting around him did not even turn their heads.

  The sight of Genghis hopping around and holding his injured hand distracted Miles for a moment, but the sandbag was on its way back to him. It curved back across the auditorium, spinning now from its impact with the spotlight, and sailing well over the head of the Great Cortado, whose throne was sinking rapidly into its trapdoor.

  As it passed over the ring, the three small clowns in their top hats and tails watched it closely. Suddenly the clown with the green nose hopped up onto the shoulders of his two companions, and without a word or a signal they tossed him high in the air, as though releasing a racing pigeon. Although the circus band had fallen silent, the drummer was unable to contain himself, and began a long roll on the snare drum. Green Nose somersaulted twice and landed on the sandbag as it flew past, grasping it with his legs and flinging his top hat into the air with a shrill blast on his whistle. The drumroll ended with a clash of cymbals. The audience stared, but did not laugh. They seemed to have forgotten how. Genghis watched from below, glaring and sucking his knuckles. The trapdoor in the floor swallowed the Great Cortado, throne and all.

  So quickly did all this happen that Miles didn’t know what to do. The sandbag that he had released had failed to connect with the Great Cortado’s head, and now it was on its way back to him, complete with a small wiry man in a funeral suit and a green nose. If he scrambled to his feet he would be in plain view of Genghis and the other clowns. If he stayed where he was he would be a sitting duck.

  “Get back from the edge,” he whispered urgently to Little, but he himself seemed to be glued to the spot. The little man was getting closer by the second. The drummer had fallen silent.

  When he remembered afterward what had happened, it always seemed to Miles that this part had been a dream. As the clown on the sandbag approached the balcony, Miles could see him in sharp detail. His head was covered in black curls that shone like raven’s feathers. He had wide, green-painted lips that matched his nose, and bushy black whiskers on either side of his whitewashed face. His glinting eyes were like tiny black olives. The sandbag slowed as it drew level with the balcony, and Miles found himself inches away from the small clown, who was suspended in midair, waiting for gravity to recover its grip. Suddenly he reached out, quick as lightning, and pinched Miles’s nose hard with his bony fingers. His mouth opened in a grin of little pointed teeth, and he sa
id something that sounded like “Ommadawn!” Then before Miles could even say “Ouch” he was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SILVERPOINT

  Miles Wednesday, light-headed and nose-pinched, stared in disbelief at the retreating figure of the clown riding the sandbag like a Wild West cowboy. The clown spun with the sandbag, and whistled as he spun, and all at once he let go. Just like that. He curled into a ball as he fell, and hit the middle of a waiting trampoline as though he had been doing it all his life, which indeed he had. As he bounced high in the air the unicycle wobbled past with his two brothers perched on it, one on the other’s shoulders. Green Nose landed on top, and the three clowns did a lap of honor around the ring.

  The audience stared, glassy-eyed. They were wiping their mouths with their sleeves, and patting their pockets as though they had forgotten something, but couldn’t remember what it was. The red-faced woman had picked herself up from the ring and was brushing sawdust from her rumpled skirt. Behind her the priest hitched up his black trousers and tucked in his black shirt, and the thin man beside him straightened his tie and ran his fingers back through his floppy hair. They all seemed somehow grayer than they had been before.

  Genghis was talking to Silverpoint and a clown dressed as a tramp with a downturned mouth. He pointed up at the balcony where Miles was hidden, then turned and moved out of view. The other clowns led the people out through the doors that stood at intervals around the theater. A stilt-walking clown stalked among the shuffling people with a tin megaphone. “Don’t forget to collect your free gift on the way out,” he was calling in a pinched voice. The clowns were still in their bizarre outfits, but now as straightfaced as undertakers, all except for Red Nose, Yellow Nose and Green Nose. They had jumped off the unicycle and were helping to herd the audience out, but there was a skip in their step. Now and then one would steal another’s hat or do a quick cartwheel, as though they couldn’t help it.

  The theater was almost empty now. Miles sat up and found that Little was gone. He looked up at the mouth of the tunnel. “Little?” he said. Her head poked out of the hole.

  “Just hurry up, will you?” she said. He recognized his own words and smiled sheepishly as he scrambled into the tunnel mouth. Little was waiting for him inside.

  “We have to find a way to speak to him,” she whispered.

  “To the Great Cortado?” said Miles

  “No, to Silverpoint. We have to find out what he’s doing here.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea. He might just bring us to Cortado,” said Miles.

  Little looked at Miles as though she had been slapped. “You don’t know him!” she said. “Silverpoint could never do anything like that.”

  “But you saw him. He was right in the thick of things. He can hear the Great Cortado just the same as us, and he knows what’s going on.”

  “It doesn’t matter. If he’s doing it, he must have a good reason.”

  “Maybe he has,” said Miles, “but we will have to be very careful.” He could see that it had come as a shock to Little that Silverpoint was taking part in the Great Cortado’s scheme, and he didn’t want to upset her any further.

  “Little…,” he said.

  She looked at him, her eyebrows raised. Miles searched for the words. He had never been very good at apologies.

  “I wasn’t very nice to you earlier,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Little smiled at him in the gloom. “Forget it,” she said. “There is bad music going on here. It turned your soul for a while. I could feel it too.”

  “It was just music,” said Miles.

  “There’s no such thing as ‘just music,’” said Little. “Trust me. Now we have to find a way out of these tunnels. There are so many of them we could be lost in here forever.”

  “I think we crossed over a trapdoor on our way in,” said Miles. “That must lead somewhere.”

  They went back the way they had come, making the steep climb at the start of the tunnel with difficulty. There was no sound now, except for their own breathing and the shuffling of their hands and knees on the stone floor. Miles found that the way back was easier to find if he didn’t think about it too hard and just went with his instinct. The tunnels twisted and turned until he began to feel as though he had been swallowed by a giant snake. Some trick of acoustics made the sound of Little’s breathing seem louder by the minute, and Miles had the uncomfortable sensation that she was getting heavier and larger at the same time. A panicky feeling was growing in his stomach. “Are you okay?” he called.

  “I’m okay,” said Little, “but I think somebody’s following us.”

  A chuckle followed them down the dark tunnel. “She’s right you know. Got it in one. Bang on the nail! The cat’s on yer tails, little mouses.” It was a man’s voice with a nasal sound, as though its owner had one of those nasty sore throats that make it difficult to speak.

  “Go faster,” hissed Miles. Terrified as he was, he would have preferred to let Little get in front, but the tunnel was narrow, and he was afraid that they would simply get jammed.

  “Faster, he says,” came the voice from behind him. It was getting closer. “Faster’s no good. Better if yiz stop now and make it easier on all of us. Well, easier on me anyhow. I reckon youse two are dog meat either way.”

  Miles could feel his chest tighten. He was sure that they should have reached the trapdoor by now. “Keep with me,” he called to Little.

  “I’m right here,” panted Little.

  “Me too, little mouses!” chuckled the man’s voice. “Right behind yiz.”

  Thunka thunka thunk went Miles’s hands and knees on the wooden boards. He was moving so fast that he was over the trapdoor before he realized it. “Stop there,” he hissed to Little as he squeezed himself around in the narrow tunnel. His fingers scrabbled around the edges of the trapdoor until they felt a smooth brass ring. He yanked at it. Nothing happened. He took a deep breath and pulled again, but the door was stuck fast with time and dirt. “Hurry,” said Little.

  Miles wished the tiger could have come with them into the dark tunnels. The memory of the smooth power of the animal’s muscles working effortlessly beneath him seemed to fill his tired arms with new strength, and he heaved at the trapdoor again. This time there was an unsticking sound, the trapdoor lifted, and light flooded up into the tunnel.

  “Gotcha, little mousey” shouted the nasal voice. Little squealed and reached out for Miles across the open trapdoor. Half blinded by the light from below, he could just make out the battered hat and downturned white mouth of the tramp clown behind her in the tunnel, holding on to her ankle. Miles leaned forward and grabbed Little’s outstretched hand. He pulled as hard as he could. The man holding her ankles was taken by surprise. He lost his balance and fell forward through the open mouth of the trapdoor, but he did not let go of Little’s ankle, and a moment later all three were out of the tunnel and tumbling through the air. Miles did not have time to see what was below them before the boy, the clown and the angel landed in a heap on the floor.

  Unfortunately for the clown, it was he who landed first. Fortunately for Miles and Little, the clown was heavily padded in his tramp’s outfit, and it was almost like landing on a rather lumpy sofa. The clown said, “UFFFFF,” and lay winded on the floor. Miles grabbed Little’s hand again and jumped to his feet, ready to get a good head start before the clown could regain his breath. He turned to see which way offered the best chance of escape, and found himself face to face with Silverpoint.

  They were in a long corridor that curved away into the distance in both directions. It was lit at intervals by gas lamps. Now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the light, Miles could see that in fact the lamps were rather dim. Silverpoint stood right in front of them. Even without the ludicrously tall chef’s hat, bent sideways by the ceiling, Miles would have had no trouble guessing that this was the Storm Angel they had been searching for. He was slightly taller than Miles and, forgetting for a m
oment that he had lived for a millennium or more, looked just slightly older too. His face was pale, almost white, with a thin, straight nose and eyes so dark it was hard to tell if they had any color. He watched as Miles and Little picked themselves up off the floor, much as an eagle might watch rabbits far below him.

  “Well done,” he said, and Miles realized he was talking not to them, but to the tramp clown, who had picked himself up and stood panting behind them.

  A smile lit up Little’s face. “Silverpoint!” she said. Miles gripped her arm, but she did not seem to notice.

  Silverpoint looked at her coolly, with no sign of recognition. “There is no Silverpoint,” he said.

  Little opened her mouth to speak, but Miles squeezed her arm tighter. The smile faded from her face, and she looked down at the floor. “You’re hurting my arm,” she said quietly.

  Silverpoint turned his gaze to Miles, looking him straight in the face for longer than most people feel is comfortable. Miles stared back, determined not to be the first to look away.

  “Come,” said Silverpoint at last. He turned on his heel and marched down the corridor, his hat swishing against the ceiling. The tramp clown gave them both a shove from behind, but they would have followed anyway. They had, after all, come to this place to find Silverpoint (and Tangerine, of course), and besides, there seemed to be little option. As they walked, Miles looked at Little out of the corner of his eye. She was fighting back the tears.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he whispered.

  “What does that mean?” she whispered back.

  “It means…we’ll find the answer,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Little.

  The corridor ended in a pair of elevator gates, with the darkness of the elevator shaft beyond them. Silverpoint pushed the brass button, and the cables shuddered to life with a grinding sound inside the shaft. A rectangular stack of iron weights, coated with a layer of grease and dust, slid past them slowly on its way down. The cables continued to move and the grinding grew louder, and still the elevator did not come.