The Circus of Dr Lao and Other Improbable Stories

by Ray Bradbury

  “Man and boy,” said Larry, “I put in six goddam years among the heathen and I come home to get civilized all over again. Jees, I was like a little farmer kid in a city fer the first time when I got to Frisco.”

  “Whereabouts was you in China, Larry?”

  “Up in Tientsin most of the time. That’s where the Fifteenth is stationed. Course we did a lot of chasing around, too.”

  “Wot kinda beer they got over there?” asked Harry Martinez.

  “Oh, Asahi an’ Sakura an’ Gold Bottle an’ Five Star an’ Kupper an’ Chess an’ Spatenbrau an’ Munchen an’ a hell of a lot of other kinds. The Kupper was the best, though. Gawd, I drunk enough of it to float a battleship. Sure was fine beer.”

  “Well, wot kinda women was there?”

  “Oh, there was all kinds—Koreans an’ Manchurians an’ Japs an’ Russians an’ Cantonese an’ Annamites an’ Jews an’ Latvians an’ Slavs an’ French an’ Alsatians an’ Filipinos. Hell of a lot of women. The Manchurians was the best, though. Big old cowlike girls with soft eyes an’ big feet what they didn’t never bind. They wore trousers an’ jackets like men; and their hair was like black smoke, black, greasy smoke.”

  “I always heard,” said his friend, “that them Chinese women was made different. Is that a fack?”

  “Nah,” said Larry, “they’re just like any other women. Funny thing, though, a lot of Chink men think the same thing about white women. Wonder how that damn idea started, anyhow?”

  Neither his friend nor Harry Martinez could help him in his bewilderment.

  “Lord God,” Larry’s friend said, “I sure would like to travel around over the world and see funny people and queer places like you have. I all time wanted to travel, but I never will, I reckon; I’ll just stick here in Abalone with the wife an’ the kids and scratch along till I die. I was just thinking the other day why couldn’t I slip off an’ beat my way to the coast an’ stow away on a boat goln’ to Australia, maybe; anywhere so long as it was a hell of a ways off. And when I got there I could change my name an’ start in all over again an’ maybe have some fun some more. But I reckon I’ll just stay here in Abalone with the wife an’ kids till I rot.”

  “Ever see ‘em do any beheading over there, Larry?” asked Harry Martinez.

  “Oh, sure. Back in ‘27 they done a lot of it when the bandits got so bad. Us guys used to go to the nr.tive city every time there’d be an execution an’ take pictures of the goddam thing. I got some good ones in my trunk what’s in hock back in Frisco.

  “One time down at a burg called Tongshan where we were doing guard while a revolution was goin^. on, the Chink soldiers rounded up a bunch of deserters an’ took a notion to have a public killing. They staged it in a rock quarry, an’ all us guys went down to watch.

  “They shot ‘em that time instead of us ; ng the big knife. They’d take a guy out an’ make him kneel down, an’ then one of the Chink non-coms would ccme up with a big Mauser pistol an’ let him have it between the horns.

  “There was a hell of a big crcwd of peeple standing around watching. Looking at executions was about the only thing there was to do in Tongshan anyway, except dig coal.

  “Well, the Chinks they harl out the last £uy, a great big bozo, an’ fixes to bump him off an’ call it a day. The non-com he snaps back the slide of his Mauser an’ sees he’s got a live shell in the chamber, an’ then he steps over to phi*; ths b : g boy. Weil, the big guy he’s awful nervous, an’ he watches that Mauser out of the corner of his eye, an’ just abcut the time the non-com pulls the trigger, the big boy jerks his head to one side, an’ the non-com misses. It was the first time he’d missed a shot all day, too.

  “But that doggone Mauser bullet it wanted blood, an’ it hits a flat rock an’ ricochets up into the crowd of onlookers an’ smacks a little kid right in the temple an’ drops him in his tracks.

  “An’, damn me, if them Chinks didn’t think that was a hell of a good joke. Why, they laughed an’ laughed till they like to bust a gut. Sure are screwy people.”

  “I seen Pancho Villa ‘dobe wall a bunch of guys once,” said Harry Martinez. “But there didn’t nobody laugh.”

  “Well, sir, the Chinese are a great outfit, all right,” said Larry. “I kinda like ‘em at that. Hey! Aint that circus run by a Chink?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, come on; let’s go. It oughtta be good.”

  All the way down Main Street Larry kept shuffling his feet, trying to keep step with his companion.

  “Look at this damn town,” mourned his friend. “I been stuck here since nineteen nineteen. Come here fer the wife’s health, an’ I reckon I’ll always be stuck here. Good Gawd! The rest of my life in Abalone. Damn place was dead when I got here, an’ it’s been getting deader. You been to China an’ Japan an’ the Philippines an’ all them places, but I aint been nowhere ‘cept Abalone, Arizona. Good Gawd!”

  “Yeah, it’s tough, all right,” said Larry.

  “What are you figgering on doing, Larry, when you pull out of this place?”

  “Oh, I reckon I’ll hunt up a recruiting station somewhere and enlist for the 11th Engineers in Panama. That’s supposed to be a good outfit, an’ it’ll be a change from the infantry at any rate. After I get done with that hitch, I reckon I’ll try the coast artillery in Hawaii, an’ after that the air corps in the Islands, an’ then maybe I’ll go back to China. I dunno; there’s a hell of a lot of places I want to see yet.”

  “You don’t believe in settlin’ down in one spot, do you?”

  “Hell, no! I never did see the layout I didn’t get sick of inside of a few years. That’s the good thing about the army. When yer time’s up you can get to hell out an’ go somewhere else. ‘Taint like holdin’ down a civilian job.”

  “No,” said his friend, “by God, I’ll say it aint!”

  They reached the circus grounds just as the two college youths landed on their ears in the middle of Main Street, Larry and his friend went over and helped them up.

  “What’s the matter, boys; get bounced?”

  “Something of the sort,” said Paul Conrad. “No matter; it’s a lousy circus, anyway.” He and Slick climbed into their old automobile, ground on the starter awhile and then swept away. On the back of the car was a painted legend:

  FLAMING YOUTH . . . MIND OUR SMOKE

  “Great guys, them college punks,” said Larry admiringly. ‘They don’t give a damn about nothin”

  People laughed when Doctor Lao went up to Larry Kamper and addressed him in Chinese, but their laughs turned to stupefaction when Larry replied in the vowel-fluid music of High Mandarin. He sang the four-tone monosyllables as shrilly as did the doctor, and they talked as talk two strangers finding themselves in a foreign land with the bridge of a common language between them.

  Their talking done, the doctor and Larry bowed and scraped and parted. And Larry went over to his friend and said: “Come on, the doc tipped me off to something hot. It’s in this tent over here. Come on, you been wanting to see things. This ought to satisfy you.”

  They scuttled into a little dark tent. The doctor was already there. In a low cage a great grey bitch wolf whined and belched.

  “I can’t understand how it happened,” said Doctor Lao. “Usually she’s so regular about her periods. She wasn’t due until October. Now right here in the middle of the circus she has to metamorphose. The equinox has something to do with it, I’m sure.”

  “Wot’s he talking about?” whispered Larry’s friend.

  “The doggone old wolf’s gonna change into a gal,” said Larry. “Watch her; you never seen anything like it before, I’ll bet.”

  “Aw, hell,” said the man; “wotcha trying to feed me?”

  “I aint feeding you nothing,” protested Larry. “Aint you ever heard of werewolves? They change all the time. This here’s one, an’ she’s fixing to change any minute now. Gawd, listen to her groan!”

  “Well, I won’t believe it till I see it,” said the man.
“An’ then I dunno whether I’ll believe it or not.”

  The wolf’s guard coat, inturning, slipped under her wool. Across her belly her dugs marched, uniting as fat twins. Her canines blunted and recessed. Her tail shrunk.

  “By gosh, something is happening to her,” agreed Larry’s friend. “Wotsa matter; is she sick?”

  “No, no,” said Doctor Lao, “just the usual preliminaries. Directly, you’ll see her hind legs undergo drastic elongation. After that she changes very rapidly. Interesting, if you are interested in mutable morphology.”

  The wolf voiced sounds of agony, but not the sounds wolves customarily voice.

  “You see,” said Doctor Lao, “when a pollywog, for instance, metamorphoses into a frog, it is a long-drawn-out process, and any physical pain attendant to the change is counteracted by the very slowness of it all. But when a wolf changes into a woman, she does it in a very few minutes, and, hence, the pain is perceptibly intensified. Notice that as she changes she flits through the semblance of every animal figure that forms a link in the evolutionary chain between hers and the human form. I often think that the phenomenon of lycanthropy is nothing more than an inversion of the evolutionary laws, anyway.”

  There was a gasp and a moan and a sob, and a woman lay shuddering in the cage.

  “Aw, doc!” said Larry in disgust, “why didn’t you tell us she was going to be so goddam old? Jees! That old dame’s like somebody’s great-grandmother. Hell, I thought we was going to see a chicken. Fer crying out loud, put some clothes on her quick!”

  “Sensualist,” said the doctor. “I might have known your only interest in this would be carnal. You have seen a miracle, by any standard sacred or profane, but you are disappointed because it gives no fillip to your lubricity.”

  “I’m a soldier, not a scientist,” said Larry. “I thought I was going to see something hot. How old’s that old girl, anyway—a hundred?”

  “Her age is about three hundred years,” said the doctor. “Werewolves command a remarkable longevity.”

  “A three-hundred-year-old woman! Wow! An’ I thought I was going to see a chicken. Gawd, let’s go, pal.”

  Sonorously the great bronze gong banged and rang; and from all over the circus ground the people, red and black and white, left the little sideshow tents and shuffled through the dust. The midway was thick with them for a minute or two as they crowded toward the big tent. Then the midway was desolate, save for its wreath of dust, as the people all disappeared beneath the canvas. And the ringing of the bronze gong diminuendoed and died.

  The big tent was a dull creamy lacquer within. Black swastikas were painted on it and winged serpents and fish eyes. There were no circus rings. In the center of the floor was a big triangle instead, a pedestal adorning each angle. Doctor Lao, in full showman’s dress of tails and high hat and cracking whip, attained the top of one of the pedestals and blew on a whistle. At a far entrance a seething and a rustling was heard. Chinese music, monotonous as bagpiping, teetled through the tent. Figures could be seen massing at the far entrance. The grand march was starting. The main performance had begun.

  Snorting and damping, the unicorn came leading the grand march. Its hoofs had been gilded and its mane combed.

  “Notice it!” screamed Doctor Lao. “Notice the unicorn. The giraffe is the only antlered animal that does not shed its antlers. The pronghorn antelope is the only horned animal that sheds its horns. Unique they are among the deciduous beasts. But what of the unicorn? Is it not unique? A horn is hair; an antler is bone; but that thing on the unicorn’s head is metal. Think that over, will you?”

  Then came the sphinx, ponderous and stately, shaking its curls.

  “Say something to them!” hissed Majordomo Lao.

  “What walks on four legs, two legs, three legs?” simpered the androgyne.

  Mumbo Jumbo and his retinue came. The satyr syrinxed. The nymphs danced. The sea serpent coiled and glided. Fluttering its wings, the chimera filled the tent with smoke. Two shepherdesses drove their sheep. A thing that looked like a bear carried the kiss-blowing mermaid in its arms. The hound of the hedges barked and played. Apollonius cast rose petals. Her eyes blindfolded, her snakes awrithe, the medusa was led by the faun. Cheeping, the roc chick gamboled. On the golden ass an old woman rode. A two-headed turtle, unable to make up either of its minds, wandered vaguely. It was the damnedest collection Abalone, Arizona, had ever seen.

  Mr. Etaoin, sitting behind Larry Kamper, said to Miss Agnes Birdsong: “Well, that’s the whole outfit, I guess, except for the werewolf. I wonder where it is?”

  Larry turned around. “See that old woman on the donkey’s back? There’s yer goddam werewolf.”

  Round and round the great triangle the animals walked, danced, pranced, fluttered, and crawled, Master of Ceremonies Lao directing them from his pedestal. They roared and screamed and coughed; rising from strings and reeds the Chinese music teetled monotonously and waveringly whined. Too close upon the fastidious unicorn, the sphinx accidentally nuzzled its rump; and the unicorn exploded with a tremendous kick, crashing its heels into the sphinx’s side. The hermaphrodite shrieked. With its great paws it struck and roweled the unicorn’s neck and back. The unicorn leaped like a mad stallion, whirled and centered its horn in the sphinx’s lungs. Nervous, the chimera dodged about, its flapping wings fanning up dust clouds. The sea serpent reared into a giant S, launched a fifty-foot strike, caught the chimera by a forefoot, and flung seven loops about its wings and shoulders. The hound of the hedges curled in a tight ball, looking like a stray grass hummock. The Russian passionately kissed the mermaid. Lowering his horns, taking a short run for it, the satyr spiked Mumbo Jumbo in the rump when the black god’s back was turned. The old woman changed back into a wolf and ravened at the roc chick. The little faun threw stones at Doctor Lao. The nymphs and shepherdesses and lambs hid and whimpered. From the face of the medusa the blindfold fell; eleven people turned to stone.

  “Oh, misery!” screamed the doctor. “Why do they have to fight so when there is nothing to fight about? They are as stupid as humans. Stop them, Apollonius, quickly, before someone gets hurt!”

  The thaumaturge hurled spell after spell among the hysterical beasts. Spells of peace, mediation, rationality, arbitration, and calmness flashed through the feverish air and fell like soft webs about the battlers. The din lessened. Withdrawing his horn from the sphinx’s lungs, the unicorn trotted away and cropped at sparse grass. The sphinx licked at its lacerated side. The sea serpent loosed the chimera, yawned his jaws back into place. Shaking itself, the hound of the hedges arose and whined. The mermaid patted the bear. Mumbo Jumbo forgave the satyr. The werewolf remetamorphosed. The faun stopped throwing rocks. Back came the nymphs and shepherdesses and lambs. Once again the medusa assumed her blindfold.

  After the storm, tranquillity. Peace after battle. Forgiveness after hate. The animals stood idle, panting, caressing their traumatized flesh. But in the eyes of one the heat of combat still burned. Blazing in its body, the lust to kill still flared; and the great snake coiled suddenly, struck like a catapult, and snatched Doctor Lao from his perch. All the way across the triangje the snake struck, nor could the eye follow the lightning flash of his head.

  “Ah, my old implacable enemy!” gasped the doctor. “Only you would never become tame. Only you could never forgive. Help me, Apollonius, quick, lest he slay me!”

  About the serpent the mage sent a haze of coldness; as the frost bit into the reptile’s skin, its writhings slowed and its hot eyes glazed. Colder, colder, colder grew the haze; and the great snake grew sluggish as his blood thickened in the icy air. At length he lay still, a great grey ribbon, seeing but perceiving not, quiescent; rage still twisting his coils, but frozenly, not actively, twisting them.

  Doctor Lao crawled away. “Keep him chilly until we get him back in his cage,” he ordered. “Luckily I am immune to his poison. But he is treacherous and vindictive. I should have known better than to have let him out.”

&
nbsp; The show went on.

  All others withdrawing, the sphinx was left in the triangle to perform solo—an acrobatic dance. Flinging tail, rump, hind feet into the air, it waltzed and schottisched and morrised on its forepaws, keeping time to indifferent dance music. Elegantly it curtsied upside down, dancing clumsily, humming and grinning.

  “Ef it’s gonna dance it oughtta have a partner,” said someone.

  “Heh, heh,” laughed a quarantine inspector. “That there animal don’t need no partner, does it, Al?”

  “Nope,” said Al. “It’s Pierrot and Columbine all at the same time, by golly.”

  A huge boar trotted into the triangle.

  “This is one you all haven’t seen before,” yelled the Chinaman. “The Gadarene swine itself. Fiend-infested, it searches the earth for salvation, but finds it not. Biblical beast, it symbolizes the uncleanliness of all flesh. Hence, sacramental butchery—to drive out latent devils; that is the purpose of the mummery of the priest-butchers,”

  Grunting and mumbling, the boar stopped to root. Out of its ear popped the head and shoulders of the devil that infested it. The little beelzebub waved his trident at Doctor Lao. “It’s hotter than hell in this tent,” he said.

  “You ought to know,” submitted the doctor.

  The little ass of gold came forth. Ass and boar tripped a minuet.

  “Why in the world,” asked Mrs. Howard T. Cassan, “is it that everything in this circus dances all the time? I never saw anything like it.”

  “It’s the dance of life, madam,” said the old-like party in the golf pants. “You’ll find plenty of precedent for it, if you look far enough.”

  The triangle cleared. Doctor Lao whistled; the hound of the hedges trotted out. It walked on its hind legs and flipped to its forelegs. It played dead and counted with laconic barks. Doctor Lao flung it lettuce leaves as a reward.