by Paul Gallico
Old Mr. Albert—now functioning as prop man and ring manager, the tails of his rusty, black frock-coat which he wore for the performance as a kind of uniform flapping with the effort—was struggling with the taut, steel guy struts supporting one of the platforms of the wire act. Two Spanish roustabouts helped him, trying to loosen the travelling bolts. The suffocating heat and lack of any understanding of the directions Albert was shouting at them in English increased their nervousness and excitability, plus the fact that they were unaccustomed to working in the public eye and the glare of spotlights.
Also, Sam Marvel, clad in a dinner jacket, the ends of his black tie tucked beneath his collar, a red cummerbund around his middle, and a black bowler hat atop his head, was cracking his whip and shouting, “Get on with it!” Acting as his own ringmaster, he insisted upon split-second adherence to schedule, heat or no heat. Indeed, he seemed to be the only one unaffected by the oven-like interior of the tent.
He snapped his whip again, and this time the lash flicked up a bit of the dirt at Mr. Albert’s feet as a bullet might have done. “Come on, get that out of there!”
Albert, clinging to the pole supporting the platform so that it would not tumble too abruptly when released, pointed and shouted, “That way! That way, you garlic-eating barstids!” The two Spaniards inserted the long, flat piece of iron used for leverage into the opening of the travelling screw-bolt and turned it the wrong way, tightening instead of loosening it.
With a loud twang, like the release of a gigantic crossbow, the steel strut snapped and lashed viciously across the ring.
It missed Albert, whom it would otherwise have killed, but the end of it bit into the elegant, white-satin-clad buttocks of Gogo, the classic clown, causing him to leap into the air, expelling his breath in a long “Ooo-ooh!” of pain, clapping both hands to his behind and drawing a great shout of laughter from the spectators, who took it as a part of the comedy act.
But when he removed his hands from his rear, his painted mouth formed into an “O” of surprise; they were red and dripping, and the seat of his breeches was already staining crimson.
There was a gasp from the nearest spectators. Panache, the Joey working as Gogo’s partner, alert to the accident, took off his battered straw hat and began to fan the rear end of the clown shouting, “Hoi, hoi, hoi!” and hustled him towards the exit as though it was all indeed a part of the turn. And little Janos, the dwarf clown, shouted likewise and began turning a series of rapid flip-flaps to distract attention.
Sam Marvel had missed not one fractional moment of the accident, yet there was no change whatsoever in the wry and half-mocking expression he adopted during the time he compered the show, nothing more than a slight gleam of satisfaction in his eyes that his clowns had played it smart and got the injured man off before more than a few in the audience knew what had happened. To distract attention he blew his silver whistle, cracked his whip and, sidling over smoothly to the electric panatrope that supplied the music for the acts, turned up the volume so that the crash and blare of the opening bars for the next turn drowned out the cries of pain and fright from the bleeding clown.
The spectators in the tent, with the exception of those close enough to realise what had happened, were rocking with laughter at the comical finale.
On their way to the exit curtain the group passed close to the Marquesa de Pozoblanco. The green eyes beneath the shining silver lids were ablaze with excitement, for she had missed nothing of the accident. With the sight of the blood, the tempo of her fanning had increased to the speed almost of a hummingbird’s wing, and sweat had suddenly begun to cut furrows from her chalk-white temples through the red patches on her cheeks. The great spheres of her breasts were heaving as though they might at any moment burst and rise like balloons from their bindings, and the corners of the tiny Cupid’s-bow mouth were twitching.
The exit curtain parted and closed again, swallowing up the clowns. The broken guy wire released the platform gear and in a moment the property man and his assistants had hustled it clear of the ring. The whistle shrilled, Marvel’s whip snapped like pistol shots, the panatrope blared into the music of a galop. The eight shining Liberty horses, their consecutively numbered discs, gleaming trappings, and red, white, and blue head plumes glittering in the spotlights that bathed them, trotted into the ring, followed by the lean, leathery figure of Fred Deeter, now appearing as Signor Alfredo, and the girl Rose in her blue-sequined dress, looking elfin, mischievous, yet timid, her eyes glistening in the limelight, her full red lips and pale colouring contrasted with the glossy dark brown of the horses, making her appear desirable. None in the audience recognised her as the girl who, in blue slacks and a too large, red-frogged uniform coat and oversized, peaked, red cap pulled down over her ears, had taken their tickets at the gate, shown the gentry to the reserved star-backed seats, sold programmes, and later passed among them offering drinks and sweets for sale.
She pointed to Signor Alfredo, who took a bow then raised his arms, lifting his stock whip; and the eight horses stopped, wheeled and reared onto their hind legs, their eyes flashing, forelegs, and hooves pawing the air.
The tempo of fanning of the extraordinary creature who sat alone in the front row by the ringside was slowed, but the eyes of the Marquesa were not upon the rearing horses or the figures in the ring, but instead were bent to the trail of blood in the sawdust leading to the exit. The twitch was still at the corners of her mouth and remained there until the horses, now wheeling about the ring, churned up the mingled dirt and shavings and obliterated the last traces of the incident.
The music blaring from the circus tent told Toby, who had been lying on his back on his bunk, that the Liberty act in the ring was half over. He arose and went out into the frightful heat and stood looking for a moment at the brazen sky and the burning sun, still hanging high and potent although it was already past four o’clock.
His slender figure was clad in white doeskin ankle breeches. He wore a short jacket of gold sequins, a red sash about his middle, and on his dark head a white turban with a jewelled spray rising therefrom, marking the Rajah Poona presenting Saba, the Sacred Elephant from the royal stables.
Toby picked up the iron ankus or elephant hook which he rarely used but held during the act to keep Judy attentive to her work and in a respectful mood. He walked slowly along the line of living wagons and cages, for it was too hot to move quickly. King, Rajah, and Bagheera, the big cats, were lying in a torpor on the floor of their respective cages, and Toby wondered how Deeter was going to be able to put them through their paces in the stifling oven of the arena. He wondered likewise whether Judy was going to prove fractious or temperamental.
The tober where the circus was pitched was on the outskirts of the shining, white-washed town, and soon, on his way to where the elephant was staked, Toby came to the edge of nothing, the rim of civilisation as it were, for beyond the town there stretched the flat, bare plain of La Mancha, unrelieved by so much as a tall tree or a hill. The plateau, shimmering grey-green as the heat waves danced above the grape vines and stunted olive trees in orderly rows, stretched endlessly and desolately to the edges of the horizon. There were not even those comforting symbols of the modern world, poles and wires to carry voices, messages, and light. The vista was primitive and, for all of the orderly rows under cultivation, savage. There was nothing to relieve the eye but an occasional peasant’s square hut of white-washed stone with red-tiled roof, or a squat, fat windmill with rectangular sails. Far to the south, uncertain in the heat haze, were the hills of a low sierra outcropping from the plain, and they created in Toby a feeling of even greater desolation, for they gave the impression that one could never reach them, that one could march towards them endlessly and as endlessly they would recede.
Except for the incongruous blare of music from the tent and the thump, thump, thump of the petrol-driven generator, there was an awful stillness in the air, as though the relentless sun in its prodigious marathon had boiled the capaci
ty to utter sound out of man and beast. Not a bird chirped or hen clucked or child cried.
He looked through a gap in the row of low, one-storey houses, their dazzling coats of white-wash throwing off the reflection of the broiling sun. Here a dirt street cut through the town, running westwards, and at the end of it the flat plain with its shimmering, dancing heat waves resumed. And in the far distance, low on the horizon, Toby saw a bank of dark cloud poking up over the rim of the world.
He stood for a moment regarding this irregular line and wondering. For they had not seen so much as a single wisp of cloud to relieve the seamless blue dome of the sky for three solid weeks. It seemed as though never again would the sun be concealed or water fall from the burning heavens.
He went on to the shadeless field where the elephant stood swaying from side to side, “rocking the cradle,” twittering and grumbling to herself.
She greeted Toby with a flapping of her ears and a jangling of her leg chains. Ordinarily, she would have probed and caressed his features with the delicate tip of the finger at the end of her trunk, but the heat had made her irritable, an irritation which Toby shared.
She nudged the empty tub with her forefoot, begging for water. Toby said, “All right, old girl, afterwards. Lets get it over with. If you think it’s hot here, wait till you get inside that tent.” He loosened the chains holding her bound to the stakes driven into the dry, hard ground, hooked the curved spike of the ankus into the strap of the spangled head-harness covering her broad front and cheek pouches, and pulled. She followed him so docilely that he released the hook and left her free to shamble after him. They entered the little enclosure behind the main tent and stood to the right waiting their cue of Indian music from the panatrope. It was the rule of the circus for both men and animals that entering and exiting acts kept to the right and thus avoided entanglement.
The galop came to an end, applause rattled within the tent, the curtain was drawn aside, and the Liberty horses came trotting from the arena blowing, and nodding their plumed heads, to be met by the waiting groom. They passed by the elephant without giving the beast so much as a glance. They were conditioned to the sight and smell of her as she was to them. Fred Deeter emerged upon the heels of the last horse, his jodhpurs stained with sweat, followed by Rose, walking unsteadily in her high-heeled shoes in the sawdust. For an instant she found herself face to face with Toby standing at the head of his elephant and she stood stone-still, taken by surprise, as though she had never seen him there before, and remained there gazing at him with a curious catch of her breath as he, in his turn, looked her up and down with hungry eyes and mounting colour to his face.
The girl broke the spell, but in that second of hesitation moved off to her left instead of continuing on, and thus passed on the right side of the elephant.
With a slow, seemingly ponderous movement, the huge beast swayed towards her, yet fast enough to jam her against the side of the tent, and in an instant the small enclosure was vibrating with the potentiality of tragedy and death, for the girl thus pinned was helpless to move and Judy already had a forefoot lifted to stamp her down.
Over the drumming of the hooves of the departing Liberty horses someone shouted. A half-stifled cry burst from Rose. Toby whirled, the ankus held in both hands above his head, and with all his might struck the elephant on the side of her tender ear. The beast squealed and then let out a trumpet blast of surprise and pain, and for an instant forgot her intent. In that moment’s grace, shaking with fright, Rose freed herself. It was Jackdaw Williams who had shouted and he pushed in quickly between the tent and the elephant, seized Rose roughly around the neck and yanked her out of danger.
“You bloody little fool!” Toby yelled after her. “Get out of here! How often have I told you to keep away from Judy!”
He was himself unnerved and shaking, and at the same time sickeningly filled with desire for the girl and rage at her stupidity.
Within the arena Sam Marvel’s keen ear for trouble had picked up the wrong kind of sounds from behind the entry curtain, and so had Mr. Albert who ran in so swiftly that his coattails stood out behind him.
The elephant was trembling, shocked and bewildered by Toby’s attack, her small eyes aflame. The mind of the great beast was a turmoil of habits, memories, hatreds, affections, conditioned reflexes, and primitive emotions of incalculable savagery. An instant before, everything within her had been concentrated upon killing the creature in blue who had once put the affront of fire crackers upon her. Now that person had disappeared; she herself had a sore ear. She was confused but still dangerous.
Mr. Albert produced a soiled pocket handkerchief from some recess in the tail of his frock-coat and dabbed it at the great fan of Judy’s ear, and when it came away crimson-stained shouted at Toby, “What you been doing to her, boy? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know any better?” Then he soothed the elephant: “Ah there, my girl. That’s my poor good little girl. There now, it’s just a scratch. It’s the heat, I imagine.” And to Toby he said again, “Are you crazy, boy?”
Toby said, “Oh shut up, you old fool. Come on, Judy girl.”
Mr. Albert was still dabbing but the bleeding had stopped and he said once more, patting her scaly side, “See there, you’re all right now. Poor old Judy!”
The red went out of the elephant’s eye and was replaced by a tear shed for the self-pity Mr. Albert was always able to induce in her.
Toby said, “Come on, Jude, everything’s all right now.”
Under the gentling of the voices of the two men whom she trusted, Judy’s confidence returned and she ceased to tremble as the Oriental pipes and drums of her entrance music sounded from within. The confusion in her brain died down, the old habits took over and she entered quietly with Toby, stepping gingerly around the ring. Toby took his bow to the entrance applause, but he was conscious that his legs were trembling and his mind was not on the routine that was to follow, but instead upon the memory of the face and body of the girl, and that curious strained moment when they had been caught up in one another and he had felt his manhood so strongly he had thought he would burst.
Sam Marvel strolled over casually to within earshot, trailing his whip, his mocking expression accentuated by his use of the side of his mouth for speaking rapidly. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Toby replied curtly, and raised his arms to his audience.
Sam Marvel’s rasping voice filled the tent. “Rajah Poona and his wonder elephant, Saba, from the royal stables!” And out of the side of his mouth again, “Come on, then, get on with it!”
Toby commenced their routine. He was aware that the elephant was still miserable and slow to obey, too quick to relinquish a trick or a position, out of time, out of tune, out of sorts, and, for the first time, his heart went out to her for the cruelty of demanding that so huge a beast heave its bulk about in such blistering weather.
Sam Marvel sidled close again and trickled out the words, “What the hell’s the matter?”
Toby said, “It’s the heat. She’s suffering. I’m going to cut three minutes!”
Marvel said, “Okay,” glanced at the stop-watch he wore on his wrist, and moved off towards the panatrope. Toby finished his act, his costume showing dark patches where the sweat had soaked through, and led his elephant from the ring. Another act followed—tumbling acrobats—and in the heavy, sweltering atmosphere their timing was out too, and they flip-flapped and somersaulted through the heavy fetid air as though in a dream. In this manner the first half of the show drew to a close.
C H A P T E R
8
During the intermission Sam Marvel went out through the back of the tent to light one of his inevitable Schimmelpennincks. Almost immediately he became aware of an uneasiness on his lot as well as amongst the spectators who had drifted out from the tent, many of whom stood looking westwards chattering excitably in Spanish.
“Hallo,” Marvel said to himself, and walked to the edge of the tober
where he could get a better look. In the far distance a black wall had reared itself well above the horizon. Ragged, sulphurous streamers and mushrooms of cloud here and there boiled upwards from the solid dark bank.
The lightnings that laced this ominous gathering were a bright purple, and the sound of the far-away thunder, which could be heard at long intervals, had a peculiar, metallic note as though sheets of tin or copper were being vibrated. The break in the stagnant and seemingly endless heat wave they had endured seemed to be at hand.
This burning, airless summer heat, characteristic of the vast Spanish plateau of La Mancha, had pursued them down from Madrid on their trek due south through Toledo, Ciudad Real, Manzanares, and Valdepenas, taking its toll of tempers and exhaustion in both men and animals. Yet the houses had been good and the tour up to that point accounted a success financially.
The proprietor shifted the stump of his cigarillo from one side of his mouth to the other, glanced at his watch, and wondered if there would be an evening performance, and for that matter whether they would be able to get through the matinée before the approaching storm burst overhead.
Sam Marvel having come up to circus ownership the long, hard way, beginning with the penny peep show in the itinerant fair, there was not much he did not know about the hazards attendant to a travelling circus. He had been through fights, panics, and blowdowns. And although he was properly insured against death, damage, and disaster, he didn’t like the looks of the thing building up in the west, for it had a kind of monstrous and chilling quality even at this distance to one who thought he had seen and experienced everything.
Had he been in England, Marvel would not have been too intimidated by the approaching storm, beyond trying to calculate its violence and taking his precautions, for there his tent crews were competent to cope with anything short of a hurricane or a tornado, and moreover there was not the problem of the language barrier. Here in Zalano, as at all their other stands down through Spain, he had recruited local labour as he had planned for this streamlined tour. Up to this point the scheme had proved successful, but Marvel was not unaware that in the case of emergency an untrained crew which could not understand and act quickly to instructions shouted in the stress of a crisis might well prove disastrous. He listened to another distant metallic roll of thunder, and the sound appeared to harbour a peculiar malevolence with which he was unfamiliar.
