Breaking Light

by Karin Altenberg

  ‘What’s going on?’ Rey asked in a level voice.

  ‘They pimped the twins to a couple of men from the village,’ one of the prop gang replied without taking his eyes off Charlie and Stan.

  ‘Where are those men now?’

  ‘They ran off; Hutch and Chris are after them.’

  Rey nodded slowly and turned to the twins. ‘Are you two all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ Mary replied, curtly. Anne was covering her eyes and clutching at her pale blue dressing gown; her hair looked like spring sunshine against it, Gabriel noticed.

  ‘If you ever try something like that again, you’re dead men, do you hear me?’ Rey said, calmly, turning to Charlie and Stan, his green eyes afire.

  ‘Who are you to tell us what to do, pretty boy?’ Stan sneered and spat on the floor. ‘What makes you so bloody righteous?’

  ‘Ever sinning, ever righteous – I embody the contradictions of human nature; hadn’t you realised?’ Rey replied with the ghost of a smile.

  Stan, it seemed, was losing his cool. ‘You book-reading faggot! How the hell do you think you can tell me what do?’ he shouted, bunching his fists.

  Charlie took a step closer but Rey held up his hand. ‘No, Charlie, put the knife away. I know the boss put you up to this.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t come between the boss and his business, if I were you,’ Charlie snarled.

  ‘What’s in it for you, then, eh, Charlie? An extra week’s pay? A trial run of the goods?’

  Charlie didn’t reply.

  ‘You’re a fool if you think he’d let you in on the proceeds.’

  Charlie gave him a look of contempt; he was not the kind who would take advice. ‘Oh, yeah?’

  Rey laughed sarcastically. ‘You think you know him, then? You think he’s just some petty crook, like you? Somebody who grabs a bit of fast cash when he sees it coming his way? Well, you’re so deluded. Dr Buster is a greedy devil, a wolf of hell; he’s been trading in people – their bodies and souls – since long before you were born. It’s what he does. And he’d get rid of you in the wink of an eye, if he didn’t need you to carry out his dirty work.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? And how come you know him so well, then? Are you one of those abandoned kiddies he picked up at the side of a road somewhere, eh? Brought you up in his menagerie? Well, I’ll tell you a thing you may not know, Rey. Buster’s fed up with you. Do you hear me? Fed up!’

  ‘You don’t say.’ There was ice in Rey’s voice and his eyes looked dangerous. Gabriel had never seen his friend like this. A field of energy seemed to flicker about him and yet he was eerily composed, separate, as if he was something quite other. Gabriel was struck by a strange sensation that this was a game played between greater forces, a game that was already ancient, and that he, Gabriel, was just sliding past, moving quickly along the edge.

  There was a snigger from Stan, but more uncertain now.

  ‘I knew you bastards were up to something,’ Rey muttered in a tone which indicated that he had already lost interest in them. Turning to Gabriel, he continued in a softer voice, ‘Gabe, can you help the girls back to their own caravan?’

  Gabriel nodded and tried to squeeze past Stan to get to the twins. ‘Boo!’ Stan exclaimed, blowing smoke into Gabriel’s eyes.

  Charlie laughed. ‘Something wrong with your eyes, tinker?’

  ‘No, it’s the smoke …’

  ‘Awww.’

  Gabriel ignored him.

  ‘Piss off, Charlie. Gabe, get those girls out of here, now.’ There was real danger in Rey’s voice.

  Gabriel blinked again and, pulling a cotton cover from the couch, he helped the girls to their feet and wrapped the cover around them.

  ‘Very neat, tinky,’ Stan commented, his quick eyes glinting. ‘Very neat indeed.’

  As he followed the twins out of the caravan, Gabriel looked back once to see Rey, standing alone amongst the other men, like a figure out of antiquity.

  *

  Maryanne’s caravan was in the other part of the enclosure, just behind the big top, where garlands of light bulbs were strung up between the colourful trailers. It was an old-fashioned show wagon, painted in red and blue with Maryanne printed in gold letters across the side. A silver Ford business coupé was parked behind it.

  ‘Nice car,’ Gabriel said, to break the silence.

  Mary looked up at him with disdain, but did not reply. Anne buried her face deeper into the folds of the cotton throw. It was clear that Mary was in charge of their joint body; she led the way, half a step ahead of her sister, who hardly needed to see where she was going. They climbed the steep steps to the caravan and Gabriel, who could not think what else to do, followed. The interior was like the inside of a barrel – a domed fairy hut, decorated in pink and blue chiffon. Soft pillows shared a large raised bed at the back of the wagon with small fluffy toys, the kind you would win in a raffle. Above the bed, covering the only straight wall, was a large mirror. A sofa, dressed in gold velvet, bent around one wall, flanked by a matching armchair and a small mahogany table. Posies of dried flowers hung from the barrel roof and a crystal chandelier sprinkled confetti of golden light around the room. Gabriel stood, horribly reflected in the large mirror, stiff and angular in the curved room. A square peg in a round hole.

  The sisters did not pay him any attention. Mary was busy boiling a kettle on a small stove in a corner near the door and Anne was folding the cotton throw, painstakingly, her hands taking care to match up each of the four corners perfectly. He thought they might be naked under their dressing gowns. Finally, Anne put down the folded throw on a chair and smoothed it once with a careful hand, as if it was a baby that she had just put to bed. Then she stood quietly with her hands along her sides, her eyes vacant. There was silence, but for the purring of the kettle.

  Gabriel listened to the unsteady beating of his heart. Surely they must hear it too? He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, touching his upper lip.

  ‘What for?’ Mary turned on him quickly. Her accent was American, but with a slow twang to it.

  ‘For what happened to you over there.’

  ‘It was nothing. Don’t feel sorry for us.’

  ‘I only thought …’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well, most people do,’ she replied, scornfully, and poured the boiled water into a teapot.

  ‘You have tea, then?’ he asked, foolishly. ‘I mean, real tea.’

  ‘We have most things.’

  Anne picked out three teacups from a small painted cupboard. The cups were bone china with a pattern of pansies. Their rims were lined in gold. Gabriel tried to catch her eye as she stretched to place them on the table, momentarily pulling Mary away from the tea-making. Mary looked around. ‘Why are there three cups?’

  Anne looked up mutely and nodded towards Gabriel.

  Mary sighed and shook her head reproachfully. ‘All right’, she said and, turning to Gabriel, ‘Have a seat.’

  He lowered himself onto the golden chair. It was surprisingly small and he sat awkwardly with his knees close to his chin. ‘I saw you perform once, many years ago.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ The twins sat down too, in one graceful movement.

  ‘Yes, I have never forgotten it. You were dressed in a mermaid costume that sparkled like the sun on the sea. You were … You were stunning. But there was this other thing, too, this mysterious thing … You seemed so close, as if you were one.’

  ‘No kidding,’ Mary said, dryly, and poured the tea.

  He blushed and looked quickly at Anne, who kept staring at something in her lap. ‘I don’t mean physically – that’s obvious. I can’t explain myself very well. It was as if you were whole – or, perhaps, as if your duality was not a dichotomy but … something more interesting; a mirror image, perhaps.’

  ‘You say the cutest things.’ Mary sipped her tea and turned away from him.

  He turned to Anne, desperate now. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her, as if he didn’t know.

  She looked
up, frowning, and glanced over at her sister, who was studying her nails. ‘Anne,’ she replied, shyly. Her gown had slipped back a bit to reveal a scattering of freckles on her white shoulder.

  ‘Ah, she speaks!’ he said, in mock triumph, feeling a thread of silk in his heart.

  ‘She does, occasionally,’ Mary broke in, ‘and, unfortunately, I’m usually the one who has to listen to her nonsense.’

  Anne smiled to herself, as if this was a funny joke. Gabriel couldn’t take his eyes off her, the way her bobbed hair fell along her chin, as if it, too, longed to touch her soft face. He felt his flesh tightening under his skin and swallowed hard, his saliva had suddenly thickened into glue.

  ‘Do you like it here? The show, I mean.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Mary shrugged.

  ‘I hate it.’ They both turned to look at Anne, whose cheeks wore a tint of roses.

  ‘Why don’t you leave?’

  ‘We can’t. Dr Buster secured our contract when we were just children. We would have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘But surely he can’t own you forever. How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-one next week.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  ‘There you go,’ Mary mimicked his voice. ‘Do you realise what happens to freaks when they are out of the shows?’

  ‘I suppose I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘Exactly. And now I think it’s time for you to leave. We’re tired.’

  ‘Of course. I am sorry to have kept you up. I did not mean to—’

  ‘Of course you didn’t mean to – no one ever does.’

  He stood up and looked at her uncertainly – at both of them. They were almost indistinguishable, apart from the gaze in their eyes, those astonishing sky-grey pools. He watched them in turn and realised with shock that it was not at all as he had thought all those years ago. They were not whole, after all; they too were unresolved – individuals, just like himself, surrounded by contradiction. He turned abruptly and walked to the door.

  Mary giggled softly behind him. ‘Goodnight, young hero,’ her voice sang, mockingly.

  ‘I like you,’ said her sister, her other half, whose voice touched.

  12

  After leaving the house on the rocks, Mr Askew ambled for a while along the coastal path, trying to remember what falling in love had felt like, the first time. Far out over the sea, the darkening clouds were piling into the stacking thunderstorm, dove-grey, purple and steely blue. Colours – yes, he remembered the spark of bright colours and trembling, minute details, suddenly vivid – highlighted in his mind like flash photography: a silver bracelet feasting off the pale skin of a thin wrist; the golden down on a jaw, just under the ear; the darkening in an eye, which revealed that there was so much more.

  He had read somewhere that love could befall you in stages. At first, you would fall in love with yourself as the lover – that would be the vanity: natural, inevitable. Then you would fall in love with the feeling of being in love – ah, the stirring of hormones. Lastly, if you were so fortunate, you might fall in love with the other person – the subject of your love.

  What about the twins, then? Had that been love – the tenderness he had felt? It was true, he was fairly sure, that he had first been fascinated by Maryanne’s oneness – that harmony, which can only be achieved by reducing the multiple to the single. That was why he had been so frightened, at first, to discover their individuality. In them, he had hoped to reach some kind of safe ground – a deserted shore on to which he could be tossed out of the long swell that follows a storm.

  Stopping for a moment to look out over the darkening waves – was this Homer’s wine-dark sea? – he remembered that ardent feeling, that tender ache in his heart, wanting to give her a gift he could not afford, wanting to carry her further than his strength would bear, that overbearing wish to overcome himself and all his limitations for her sake – for his own sake. And, at the same time, always that sense of foreboding, thin and silky, like a blusher veil – French netting, perhaps, or tulle.

  *

  It was inevitable, somehow, that Rey should have known before he even knew himself. After that fateful night, Gabe had sought out the twins whenever he had the chance. He was oblivious to everything else that happened around him. The show travelled from site to site. He never knew where he was; he was not really part of what went on around him. His attention was trained on Mary and Anne. But, in his oblivion, he was aware of one thing: wherever he went, he felt Rey’s watchful eyes upon him. It did not bother him. Had Rey not promised that he would look after him – that he would be safe? And he spent the nights in Rey’s caravan, which made him beholden to his new friend. His backpack was still in the same place, just inside the door of the caravan, where he had put it down when he first arrived. He collected his three shillings at the end of each long tear-down night and he took his meals on the benches by the food shack.

  Sometimes, in order to get closer to the twins, he would do odd performances in the sideshow. For a while, he was a ghost in the House of Horrors, a pathetic tent that had been raised over a small track with an electric train going around it. Along the track, in complete darkness, bolts of lightning would suddenly flare up and reveal a misshapen fluorescent plastic skeleton hanging from one of the tent poles, and a tape with recorded screams and horror sounds played on a loop. Gabriel’s job was to jump out in front of the cart as it rattled past, his face made up in white with black around his eyes, and hoot in a ghost-like way. The House of Horrors was just next to the big top and, between carts, Gabriel could sneak out at the back and peek in at the freak show through a tear in the canvas.

  This ghost-train farce came to an abrupt end one evening as a protective father lurched out in reflex and knocked Gabriel to the ground. He must have been unconscious for a while. The man operating the train noticed that two lots of carts came out looking even more bored than usual and went in to find him. Rey, who happened to be nearby, patted Gabriel’s cheeks and poured some bourbon into his slack mouth from his hip flask – elixir for the poor, wounded god. After that, Rey arranged for him to do another job.

  For a few weeks, he was Mr Electrico, the Human Dynamo. This was a proper act. Gabriel was strapped to a frightful looking ‘electric chair’ on a high stage. The caller announced the act: ‘Come and see! Come and see! The boy who defies death in the electric chair! Watch the beautiful boy being seared by twenty-seven thousand volts! Will he survive? There’s only one way to find out! Don’t miss this incredibly risky act!’ As the crowd gathered around, Gabriel pressed his arm against a metal plate, fastened to the chair, and received a current from a hidden transformer. He could then reach out his hand to light a bulb with his fingers or swing a wand of violet sparks. Sometimes, for fun, he would twist and writhe in the chair, pretending he was being tortured by the electricity. In reality, the current, although high in voltage, was low in ampere, which made it quite harmless. As his body jolted and shook, he remembered that other chair in which he had been put to the test, all those years ago. Had there really been any electricity in Michael’s battery box? What would his life have been like if he had failed the test, if he had not felt the current that time? But he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as he saw Rey at the edge of the crowd, smiling encouragingly. Once or twice, Mary and Anne watched him from the back of the stage. On those occasions, he jerked with extra vigour, flexing the muscles in his arms against the straps that fastened him to the chair.

  Then, one evening as Gabriel entered the caravan, Rey looked up from a book with cracked leather covers. The soft light from the hurricane lamp infused the copper in his curls as he shook his head slowly and sighed.

  ‘You’re in love with her, aren’t you?’ he asked, with a waxy smile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Gabe; I have been watching you.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe you should stop snooping around.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s what I do, my friend. Although,
I wouldn’t call it snooping, exactly … I’m gathering intelligence.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To bring down Dr Buster.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? I can’t stand the man. He’s a charlatan … and a full-blown psychopath,’ he replied, casually, and stretched his legs under the table. ‘Anyway, going back to your love, there’s only one thing I have not yet worked out: is it Mary or Anne?’

  Gabriel, defeated, looked at his shoes and mumbled, ‘It’s Anne.’

  ‘Anne. Ah, Gabe, Gabe.’ Rey tutted and shook his head, his eyes still smiling. ‘Has your heart chosen wisely? Who can tell?’

  ‘Lay off it, will you?’ Gabriel flared, feeling a sudden rush of red fury rising inside him. His face closed on itself in a strange grimace. There was a faint twitch in his upper lip.

  Rey studied him for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, Gabe; I didn’t mean to annoy you. It’s just … Well, I’m not sure it’s all that practical. But then, I suppose, love never is.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘No, I can see that.’ Rey sighed and continued. ‘If you really care as much as you claim to do, would you be prepared to do something – anything – for them?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But how?’ He was not sure he wanted to know.

  Rey seemed to be lost in thought for the moment. He was drumming his fingertips together in front of his mouth.

  ‘Rey?’

  ‘Eh? Ah, yes … Tell me, Gabe, the twins had their twenty-first birthday a few weeks ago, didn’t they?’

  Gabe nodded, not sure where this was going.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ he said, clapping his hands once, ‘I think it’s time for them to free themselves from this show, don’t you? It’s high time they got away, before Buster’s business closes in on them.’

  ‘Yes … Yes, I do, but—’

  ‘You can drive a car on your own now, can’t you, Gabe? You remember what I taught you?’

  ‘Yes, sort of … But, where?’

  ‘Where? What kind of a question is that?’ For once, Rey looked irritated. ‘Does it matter?’