Circus of the Grand Design

by Robert Freeman Wexler

  "Here's the boat," Dawn said, and Bodyssia laid him in the middle, then got in.

  A motor sounded, and they pushed across the river, again wide and full. He stared up at the gray sky, which appeared to be thicker toward the direction of the cave. Swirling as though alive, the gray flowed outward, accompanied by rumblings that didn't come from the sky. Someone stroked his forehead; he smiled at Dawn and closed his eyes to shut out the swirling gray.

  He felt himself being lifted again but kept his eyes closed. When he opened them, the sky had ended, and they entered a room with a familiar ceiling. He heard voices, someone who sounded like Dillon saying something about breaking up and getting out. Bodyssia with firm hands undressed him and laid him on his bed. He heard more voices, fragments of conversation, but didn't feel a need to respond. At some point his insides lurched and he looked up to see clouded windows. Another time he awoke to the touch of a moist cloth on his forehead. Later, Dawn handed him a mug of clear broth and another of Cinteotl's tea. He drank them both and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again he was alone. Someone had removed the dead rosemary shrub; scatterings of needles remained, brown piles on the landscape of his desk.

  Chapter 36: Return

  After the performance ended, everyone gathered in the dining car to say goodbye to Lewis. Cinteotl grilled the last of the acrobats' fish and one of the flightless birds. Lewis gorged on bird, but the thought of fish, of anything from that place, nauseated him. Cinteotl had brewed beer as well; János and Perry kept Lewis's glass from emptying, despite Dawn's worry that he wasn't convalesced enough to be drinking. It was true he hadn't regained all his weight or strength, and he would have liked to remain longer, nursed by Dawn and Bodyssia, but Dillon said they had reached a place where Lewis could leave.

  Lewis didn't ask for details. With all that had happened, whether or not he believed the tale was irrelevant. He found himself willing to trust Dillon's judgment.

  Miss Linda was now several months pregnant, the last of Cybele's babies.

  Looking around the car at his companions' faces, he thought about their lives with the circus, the places they visited. The events back in the cave, in that parched land—his companions had no way of knowing how he had saved them. But that didn't matter. He smiled. In a way, they were all children, though with adult bodies and desires. He had been able to return them to their way of life. That was enough.

  He would slip out later, without a big farewell, though really, most of them appeared indifferent to his departure. Its parts changed, but the circus remained, an organism immune to the exits of its members.

  Desmonica, Lullaby, and the Chala women rinsed plates in the sink and left; Dawn kissed his lips; the acrobats kissed both cheeks and embraced him; Gold and Leonora carried their baby out without comment; Bodyssia picked him up and held him.

  "You've gained a bit of weight since we found you out in the waste," she said. She set him on the edge of the table. "We'll see you around, then."

  Perry shook Lewis's right hand with both of his. "Don't forget to check for Oblong Henry in the stores. We'll be here a few days, so you can always come back if this place isn't suitable."

  Cinteotl presented him with a packet of food. "Never know what you'll find here," he said.

  Lewis returned to his room. The view outside the window showed city streets with a familiar look. He had the money he had brought with him when he cleaned out his account before joining the circus, and Dillon had given him more, much more. Are No's fishing lure still hung over his desk; he took it down and wrapped it in a sock as he had when he fled that burning house. The etching, with its sad Cybele faces, he left on the wall, a present to whomever next used the room. He wore the boots and thick cotton shirt of his costume with the jeans he had worn the day he arrived. Shouldering his backpack and satchel, he walked away, down the hall to the caboose and out of the train.

  Cold wind cut through his shirt, and this surprised him—he hadn't expected to return to the same season he had left so long ago, after Are No's fire. Around him on the broad avenue stood apartment buildings, restaurants, and bodegas. Horns honked. Taxis raced across lanes to pick up fares. He walked uptown, glancing at the windows of stores selling watches and silver jewelry. Had he seen that same display of chains and watches the week before visiting Are No's house? At 35th Street he turned and passed what appeared to be his favorite Korean restaurant, and a few doors farther, the hotel that housed the salon where he used to go for haircuts. He walked and walked, and though the walking brought him no closer to knowing whether he had returned to his own city, he found the question no longer troubled him.

  Acknowledgments

  This novel originally appeared in a hardcover edition from Prime Books in 2004.

  The World of Clowns by George Bishop provided much useful information; Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus gave inspiration. Apologies to William Shakespeare for adapting Pericles Prince of Tyre.

  Robert Freeman Wexler interviewed by Jeff VanderMeer

  JV: Robert Freeman Wexler snuck onto the scene with his novella In Springdale Town (PS Publishing), which garnered well-deserved praise from John Clute and many others, including myself on Locus Online. In addition, the novella was taken for The Best Short Novels of 2004 (SFBC). Prime Books published his first novel, The Circus of the Grand Design in 2004, and second novel The Painting and the City came out in 2009 from PS Publishing. In 2007, Spilt Milk Press published a short story chapbook, Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed. A graduate of the Clarion West Writer's Workshop, Wexler lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with his wife, writer Rebecca Kuder, and daughter. I interviewed him via e-mail in November 2004 (with updates in April 2011).

  Now that you've had a chance to sit back and reflect on Circus of the Grand Design, what do you think the book is about?

  RW: It's a classic tale of good and evil, cleanliness and garbage, habit and spontaneity. And it's a straightforward story about a restless guy who doesn't have a lot of friends and joins a circus, not knowing that it's a fantasy circus and he's totally fucked. Which is probably a metaphor for something. Probably has to do with me, feeling like an outsider, wanting to find someplace where I'm not an outsider. But since I'm pretty sedentary, I sent Lewis out in my place, to have some adventures.

  JV: You say Lewis is "totally fucked," and you mean that literally. Did you know from the beginning that there would be sex scenes in the novel, and were they difficult to write?

  RW: I didn't plan them at the beginning. My original notes said: "Man meets woman in circus of course for romantic angle." Once I discovered that she was a fertility goddess, the sex followed of necessity. They weren't difficult to write, other than technical aspects of trying to keep them from being clichéd or boring. It's rare to find sex written in interesting or even erotic ways. And I suppose a good sex scene should arouse the writer a bit while writing.

  JV: You get the sense that no matter how deep into the surreal world of the circus Lewis gets, and no matter how exasperated, he'd rather be there than in the more mundane world. Do you consider Circus to be an escapist fantasy? Is it about Lewis' inability to face his problems in the "real" world?

  RW: It's escapist in the sense that he's left his world for another. The idea of a person going to an alternate world has been done (and overdone) a lot in fantasy. But escapist has more to do with people entering an alternate world and finding love and adventure, which they somehow couldn't do in the real world. Obviously I'm borrowing some of those tropes (Lewis finds a sword and uses it). I suppose I think of escapist as derogatory, a term for shallow entertainments, so I'm trying to distance myself from it. Maybe that's a dumb thing to do. There's nothing wrong with entertainment.

  I like having the fantastic intrude on the real world and real-world characters. Lewis has to figure out what is going on around him. He's continuously doubting his place there, questioning his attitudes, the way he talks and interacts with the circus people. And when he f
inally feels that he's fully part of things, he gets kicked around. One problem with writing this kind of normal-person-encounters-the-fantastic is that I have to balance his worldview, in which the fantastic hadn't previously existed, with the expectations of the reader of fantastic fiction, who might become impatient with Lewis's slowness in figuring things out. Lewis has never seen this sort of thing, but the reader has.

  JV: Is Lewis is a sympathetic character?

  RW: Yes. Assuming by sympathetic you mean that he's someone the reader will care about. He's not exactly likeable (Faren Miller, in Locus, called him a "restless mundane jerk."), and to some readers (and writers) a character has to be likeable to be sympathetic.

  JV: What does Lewis learn from his adventures? Or is it necessary that he learn anything at all?

  RW: He'll probably be calmer. People like Are No won't bother him as much. I don't think he has to learn something. I don't like fiction in which you can see, as you read, where the character starts to go through "character change" in a textbook, writing manual way, then later the change increases, so that by then end it's obvious they've Changed.

  JV: Maybe he just learns that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the world remains a mystery? Do you believe in revealing mysteries in your work, or in perpetuating mystery?

  RW: Oh, both. I don't like explanations for mysteries, but sometimes they're necessary because the characters would want them. And sometimes they're not necessary. In The Circus of Dr. Lao there's a part describing the peep show. Here's a circus in a small, dusty Arizona town during the Depression; the peep show is in "a small tent off by itself," with a curtain that has holes for people to peer through. They see things like fat nymphs lounging on rocks by the ocean, and there's no questioning by the characters, or the authorial voice; the scene is presented as is, with the reader interpreting it however they might. That's the kind of fantasy intrusion on the real world that I like best.

  JV: How did you come up with the character Are No?

  RW: Are No (and his house full of crappy art) is based on someone from whom I rented a vacation house on Long Island. There's a clue about his real name in there somewhere, but I'm not saying. I reserved the house for four nights, two alone and two with my girlfriend at the time. I didn't much like it. The upstairs heat didn't work (though the guy swore it did), there wasn't enough firewood, the walls were covered with pretentious art. So I left after two nights (with the house intact). On the train ride home, I wrote. It was the first time I've fictionalized an experience immediately after it happened. Because of that, I now have trouble remembering what actually happened and what I made up. My brain never had time to absorb the experience. I do know some things. No locked cabinet full of fishing lures, though there was a locked closet upstairs. He didn't allow meat in the house, so my big revenge for the useless heater, etc., was to cook a pot of stewed beef tripe. I know that's not as exciting as burning the place. My purpose in going to the house was to come up with a new beginning for the novel, so it worked out. Before, I didn't have motivation for Lewis to join the circus.

  JV: However, you can't offer definitive proof, since you're unsure what you made up and what actually happened, that you didn't burn the place down. Is it at all possible that "Are No" will read this interview and call you on your tripe revenge?

  RW: It's possible. If he really exists, and it wasn't some fantasy house I found myself in, from which I was fortunate to escape before I really did burn it down and join Dillon's circus. What if that had happened? Then I could have written a circus memoir and made barrels of money, would have a huge print run from Bantam or some other giant conglomerate instead of a small press limited edition. Then the movie, with Ben Affleck as Are No, Liam Neeson as Dillon, Julia Roberts as Bodyssia, the giantess, and of course Matt Damon as Lewis.

  JV: Do you plan to write about Are No in the future? He's a very compelling and unintentionally funny character.

  RW: His artwork appears in The Painting and the City, which is about a sculptor named Jacob Lerner. Lerner's gallery also represents Are No, and when Lerner goes to visit the gallery owner (a man named Ventricle Savage):

  In Savage's gallery, Lerner encountered an exhibit of Are No's iridescent flop.

  "If you'd like to know more about the artist, we have information handouts at the desk."

  The speaker was a thin, youngish man. Some new imp-hireling of Savage's. He smiled at Lerner, the measured smile of someone judging the likelihood of Lerner's being able to purchase art. He had obviously started working there sometime after Lerner's most recent show. When was that—September? Already nine months. Long enough for him to have gestated a new body of work. Savage likely wouldn't give him another solo exhibition so soon. His general rule was every other year. And if someone's work didn't sell adequately, even more time passed. Lerner was eager for his recent sculptures to be seen. Sometimes Savage would arrange a group show of one or two new pieces by his main artists. Lerner asked the young man to get Savage, and waited, focusing on an area of floor rather than Are No's rancid shapes.

  An inescapable fact: he had to share the same gallery with mindless crap. Are No's pieces—made using spray cans of insulation foam, the kind that expanded and hardened in the air, which he then painted in neon colors—sold well, and sales drove any gallery's list. Fortunately, Lerner liked and respected most of Savage's other artists, Joyce Harkness, Scott Eagle, Jane Andrews, Olaf the Wise.

  JV: What role does humor play in your fiction? Clearly, Are No and Ventricle Savage are not particularly serious names.

  RW: I like humor. I like the absurd. In the past, I've had a tendency toward trying to be funnier. I try to be careful with it. I'll take some stuff out in revision because I don't want humor to overwhelm the rest of the story.

  There's a North Carolina folk artist named Mary Paulsen. Behind her house/studio/yard gallery are piles of junk that goes into her art, or rots. A sign in the driveway says "Savage." I assume it means "Salvage." I thought, what if someone from that background ends up as a gallery owner in Manhattan. His re-invention of self (everyone who goes to New York re-invents themselves) would take something from his background, hence Savage. Ventricle probably has to do with gallery owners being heartless bastards.

  JV: Changing direction for a moment: Have you been to many circuses?

  RW: Not really. Maybe three in my life. The sister of my college girlfriend had been in Ringling Brothers and was married to a Hungarian teeter-boarder. I spent some time with them, the teeter-boarders' teeter-boarder brother, other teeter-boarders here and there. At some point before I came along, a whole camper full of teeter-boarders and who knows what else spent a winter at my girlfriend's parent's house, which I heard stories about.

  JV: What is a teeter-boarder, for those who, like me, won't know?

  RW: It's the big seesaw thing that acrobat types use, jumping on one end to send the other person into the air so they can somersault, back-flip, land on another acrobat to make human pyramids, etc.

  JV: Have you ever performed in a circus?

  RW: Not yet.

  JV: Would you like to? What type of circus performer would you be?

  RW: A zebra rider, but it wouldn't be possible at my age. Zebras riders are trained from infancy. The first thing they're allowed to do with a zebra is polish the fangs of young zebras. Becoming accustomed to a zebra's fangs is, obviously, important. And the activity helps determine who has the ability to advance into the zebra training academies, because a zebra rider must have two hands.

  JV: Do you have any favorite circus short stories or novels?

  RW: Including carnivals too, Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. The Circus of Dr. Lao, Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. Katherine Dunn's Geek Love. There's an amazing book. I'd love to be able to tell a story like that. Quin's Shanghai Circus, which isn't really about a circus although there is one in the book.

  JV: What, in particular, did you like about Nights at the Circus?

  RW: T
he freedom of it. The barely-restrained chaos. The fully-imagined characters, the story, the stories within stories, the lustiness. I consider it my inspiration, but I wasn't trying to emulate it. I don't think I'd be capable of emulating it. Though Lewis is based somewhat on Jack Walser. Walser the reporter/Lewis the publicist, both wanderers, but somewhat blank, waiting to be filled. I read Nights at the Circus and Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale about the same time, and they exploded my ideas of the fantastic.

  JV: Out of curiosity — what did Helprin's novel explode for you, specifically?

  RW: Style, for one thing. Slow, descriptive passages, fantasy that builds layer by layer, including landscape and city that feel familiar but aren't quite real. Style that differed from the more plot-oriented genre books I had been reading. Also, the timing of when I read it was important. Soon after college I got a job at a Waldenbooks, but because it was a small store in an old, '50s era shopping plaza, it didn't have that plastic, shopping mall chain store feel, and everyone who worked there was into books (which I doubt is true in the shopping mall stores). We could get away with a lot of special ordering of books that the store wouldn't normally carry. So if I heard about a particular book, or writer, I could order books for the store and read them myself. During this period I also got into J.G. Ballard, Robert Coover, things with fantasy elements but published outside of the genre (aside from Ballard of course, though at the time his books were being repackaged as literary rather than genre).

  I started working there in the summer of 1984. Neuromancer came out that year, as did Nights at the Circus and Empire of the Sun. Winter's Tale came out in 1983, with the paperback in 1984. I loved Neuromancer, but stylistically, it wasn't my kind of thing. Unfortunately, reading all this non-genre literature of the fantastic led me to believe that literary journals would be open to my style of writing, which turned out not to be true.