by Robert Lax
“Wonderful,” I said.
Jacques smiled, looking at me intensely but with amusement and delight, measuring all meanings in his glance. From the beginning he had regarded me familiarly as one who had been born in his household. Considered exteriorly, he might have seemed thin, nervous, intellectual; more mind than heart. Actually the balance was more human, his way of regarding me avuncular.
While we talked William Randal came up with a neatly folded soft wool blanket. “My mother sent it,” he said, smiling. “Do you think it will be warm enough?”
“Sure it will,” I said, handing it to Fritz, who put it beside him in the wagon.
“I’ll get ours,” said Jacques, going over to his car. It was one they had had around the rear right tire to keep it from the sun as it stood in the field. He tugged at it a minute until it came loose. “OK?”
“Great.”
I carried it back to Fritz, who folded them both together, took them and stowed them on top of his bunk. And we sat down to wait again for the generator truck.
It was 8:30 before it arrived and then we discovered it didn’t work. Crowds stood inside the tent, mystified at the total darkness. Fritz left his perch on the steps and beelined it for the other side of the tent. He had to work against the darkness, striking matches, cursing in Czech, French and Italian, grimy and glowering. Angry at the dynamo, at the management, at the totality of things.
I had some cigarettes and popped them to him; never too often. He was always glad to see them, always laughed as they arrived through the air. Matches too (he was always out of them). I would light them and cup them. He would lean into the light; over a rope, under a rope, bending down to couple the great plugs and sockets. “Merci, Robert,” he would say through the cigarettes as he ran and scuttled about the edges of the tent, working like a man with eight hands.
At last there was light and Fritz, disgusted with how long it had taken, walked from the field. The crowd, never discouraged, moved in for the performance.
By this time I had grown too fond of the performers to watch their acts. If they wanted to balance high in the air, that was their privilege. More likely I would stay some distance from the ring, outside the tent, hearing the music, being with them silently from afar and imagining the performance.
One time at Rome during an aerial act, I stood in the tent beside Jacques, who realized I wasn’t watching. “Why aren’t you looking?” he said. “Don’t know,” I replied. He laughed again, giving me a quick, penetrating glance.
After the performance Fritz pulled out the khaki-colored mattress from his bunk and put it down beside the tent, across from the electric wagon. He laid the blankets down on it, threw me a cushion for under my head, brought out his sleeping bag, and unrolled it at the foot of the steps that led to his wagon.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said. I lay still, watching the tent move in the slight breeze, shadows of the ropes in moonlight moving as the canvas moved; looking, too, at the iron stake with hammered head. Lions, muffled in their cages, roared. The tent breathed heavily, creaking at the poles like a vessel at anchor.
Fritz and three friends, laughing easily, passed at a distance. Then lions again, and the chattering of monkeys. The circus was like a quiet night in the jungle.
In the morning I looked over at the sleeping bag. Fritz was just waking up too; eyes friendly and good smile.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Robert!”
“Bonjour, Monsieur Fritz.”
“Bien dormi?”
“Très bien. Et vous-même?”
“Oui, très bien.”
He sat up, reached for his straw visored cap, rolled up his sleeping bag, and threw it into the wagon. “I’ll see you later,” he said, and disappeared around the tent.
I lay still a few minutes, watching the morning, then got up, folding the blankets and sliding the mattress back into the wagon. I took a turn around the tent, then found a little dusty road that led off toward the hill that overlooked the town. There was a monastery at the top of the hill. I had seen it yesterday and thought I’d climb up there today.
The climb was winding and not too far. The hill overlooked the neatly cultivated valleys, fresh and child-like in the morning haze. The monastery seemed to be deserted, but eventually I ran into two young monks, tonsured and wearing the brown robes of the Capuchins.
“Are you a tourist?” they asked me.
“No, I’m with the circus. You see it below there?” The green tent in the valley looked big and was clearly the most living thing on the landscape.
“Is it a good circus?”
“Oh yes!”
“Very big?”
“Quite big, yes.”
“Many animals?”
“Yes; elephants, lions, tigers, monkeys, wolves too.”
“Imagine! Would it be a good circus for a monk to see?”
“Oh yes!”
“No vulgar acts?”
“Oh no!”
“No naked women?”
“I don’t think so; it’s a very nice show.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. You ask for me and we will get you some tickets.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, we’d be glad to have you.”
“Afternoon or night?”
“Whichever you like. You will see the animals. It’s a very beautiful show.”
“Maybe we will come down and just see the zoo.”
“Good.”
“Good then, we will see you later.”
“Yes, I’ll look for you.”
I went down the hill feeling happy.
Later, going up toward the main street of Rieti I saw the Le Forts; Jean wearing a white shirt and shorts and a white cap. They were shopping, but had found all the dairies closed.
“Dové la latteria, per favore?”
“La latteria é chiusa.”
“Perché la latteria é chiusa?” asked Jean, liking the sound of his own Italian.
“Perché la latteria é chiusa?” He kept it up all the way down the street. When we were sure all the dairies were closed, we went back up the hill for an aperitif; the first white cinzano I had ever drunk.
“How do you like traveling with the circus?”
“Great!”
“It’s not too bad.”
(I was part of their family by now, having married an imaginary sister)
That afternoon Fritz and I went down to the river, took off our shirts, and lay in the high grass and the hot sun. Everyone was there from the show. The managers brought folding beach chairs. Their children played near them, standing on their hands and turning cartwheels. The Le Forts, in bathing suits, waded and swam a little in the swift rocky stream. I took pictures. Fritz stretched out facedown in the grass (contented) the director’s children astride his shoulders.
Later, as the sun went down, Fritz and Harry (the cage-boy) and I walked through the town. Fritz got himself a new white cap and, it being payday, another just like it for me. The label inside said “Sporman” and it was obviously meant to be worn at yachting parties. We got some marsala at a wine shop and drank it in the cool of what seemed to be a sweets shop with tables. Later we all walked up the dusty road toward the monastery, but now in the afternoon it seemed too far away.
Just before supper, Freddy (a German 22-year-old who worked in the menagerie) asked if I could make a call for him to Rome. He wanted to leave the circus and there was someone in Rome who’d give him a job as a chauffeur; an English fellow. I called the number he gave me.
“Hello, I’m calling for Freddy Muhlhaussen.”
“Oh good!”
“He says he wants to leave the show and come to work for you. Have you still got the job?”
“Yes, I’m glad to have him come. Just tell him to call me when he gets to Rome.”
“OK then.”
“All right, and thank you.”
He seemed very happy.
“Are you sure you want to go?” I asked Freddy
.
“Yeah, I’m sick of the circus.”
“OK then.”
“OK, thank you very much, eh?”
“Yeah, so long.”
He looked troubled but he had made up his mind.
I ate bread and cheese at a store in town and walked back over the bridge as the lights came up. The sky was beginning to cloud and I looked down at the grey river, roaring swiftly over its rocky bed.
The next morning Fritz said,
“You can ride on the chapiteau today.”
That meant his second trailer. First the truck with sections of the iron fence stacked in the back. Then the first trailer; all the steel masts and girders laid out lengthwise on it and bound with wire cables. Then a flat trailer for the chapiteau; the big tent in six huge rolls (like blinis) tied with the ropes that hold it in place on the field.
I climbed onto the middle and lay down on the canvas. It was soft as a mattress. Fritz laughed, went forward to the cab of the truck, and gunned the motor.
We swung around the field majestically and put out toward the town, leading the procession of trucks, trailers and caravans (all red and battered-looking, all driven by people I now knew well) over the bridge and out through the town.
On a high plateau we went through orchard land. Leaning on one elbow, my feet in tennis shoes hooked underneath a rope, I watched the countryside go by. The day was bright. The fields were like children in the early morning.
The trailer rumbled, stopped often at every rise. If it was in danger of rolling back, Puncho would jump out of the front seat, while Fritz was still rolling, and get ready to set little wooden wedges behind the rear wheels of the truck and trailer to keep them from rolling back. I only watched, snug enough on the tent, and not knowing what to do.
The smell of the exhaust was like burning badger hair; it got in my eyes and made them sting. I closed them and lay my head down on the canvas. The poles rumbled and clanked in the trailer ahead. Those on top joggled about loosely. If ever one had slid back toward my trailer, I’d have had to jump for it. My trailer was tied to the one up ahead by a little twisted piece of metal.
I was at ease lying on the tent, feeling princely, riding under the open sky, watching the fields go by. But I was also disquieted, knowing that except for the love of God and Fritz’s vigilance, everything about the truck and trailer was makeshift; that the managers, for the most part, were probably trusting to luck.
We rode barely squeezing through the narrow streets of three little towns. Old ladies in the windows waved to us. Young men and children on the streets would shout, and if there was a policeman on the square, he would nod gravely and smile familiarly (a smile for the right kind of circus).
I was wearing Fritz’s Sporman cap and, where it seemed right, waved it.
Down a long road, through an avenue of trees, we approached Aquila. Rough spots and sharp rocks caused a few big jolts.
As we came to the field, preceded by one or two cars, the right rear tire on Fritz’s truck blew out. He stopped, got out of the truck, kicked the tire, hurled a Czech malediction at it, and got back into the cab. We had arrived, so I jumped off. He wheeled the truck and trailer around onto the field. I was about to follow him on foot when Harry showed up.
“Hi,” I said, “where are you going?”
“Over to town for something to eat,” he said.
“I’ll come with you. Just want to tell Fritz.”
“He’ll know,” said Harry, “come on.”
It was hot (noonday) and we went down a little dusty road to a country store that sold grain, farm supplies and a small stock of groceries. We bought rolls, cheese, sardines and bottled lemonade; ate them at a table with the sun beating in. Harry liked the meal and he liked being away from the circus. He joked with the tired lady who ran the store, and with an all-day customer who sat on a crate against the wall.
As we started up the little rutted path that led to the field, I saw Fritz heavily running down the path. “Robert!” He grabbed me by both shoulders. “Where have you been?”
“I got something to eat,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. “I get out of the truck. I look in the chapiteau. And where is he? He’s bounced off the truck. I go back and look for you, all along the road …”
“I was going to tell you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s all right. Only I thought we had lost you.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“No. Forget it. Did you eat?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll go and eat too.”
“Yeah.”
“See you later.”
All the trucks were in now. The performers had arrived, by families, and were beginning to set up their tables for the noon meal.
I ran into William Randal.
“Hey, Fritz is looking all over for you.”
“I know. I just saw him.”
“Where were you?”
“I went down the road to get something to eat.”
“Should have told him.”
“I wish I had told him.”
“He was looking all over for you,” said William. “Come over here, I want you to meet someone. This is Monsieur Le Deuff.”
A man in a well-made panama hat, his face the shape of an almond, his physique as delicate as that of a praying mantis, Baron Le Deuff, whose home was in St. Malo, traveled with the circus as paymaster, but thought of it as a sort of hobby, too. Behind his thin-rimmed glasses his brown eyes were lively and perceptive. His thin lips were made to pronounce words clearly. His French was good to hear, and his English too. He sat in the shade of William Randal’s tent. Before him was a table with salad and wine, as though he were eating on the deck of his yacht.
“I hope you’ll enjoy the journey,” he said. “We must get together sometime and talk about the circus.”
“I’d like to,” I said. “Right now, though, there’s nothing for me to do but sleep.” I suddenly felt overcome with exhaustion.
“Yes, you must sleep,” said Monsieur Le Deuff. And William Randal agreed.
I stopped by a moment to see the Le Forts. They had just sat down to eat under a little canopy outside their white trailer.
“We were looking for you,” said Jacques’s wife.
“You were?”
“We wanted to ask you to dinner.”
“What a shame. I just went down the road and had something to eat.”
“Ah well, another time!”
Randal, I felt, was my friend; un copain. We would drink an aperitif, or pass the time of day. He presented me formally to Monsieur Le Deuff, to his mother, and his fiancée who rode bareback. But the Le Forts, though they were younger than I, were somehow aunts, uncles, and cousins. I felt at home in their trailer, or looking over their album of pictures. It was a place I could visit whenever I pleased.
“The truth is, I would have been too sleepy to eat. I’ve never been this tired.”
“You should take a nap this afternoon. You shouldn’t do anything else.”
“I will,” I said.
“Do you need a blanket?”
“No thanks, I’ve got the one you lent me.”
“What about a pillow?”
“I’ve got a pillow too … over at Fritz’s.”
“Did you see him? He was looking for you,” said Jacques.
“Yes, I know.”
“Get some sleep. We’ll see you later.”
Fritz was back at the electric wagon, throwing out coils of wire.
“I’m beat,” I said. “Going to take a nap.”
“Sure,” he said. “Take a blanket and a pillow and go up there in the field. No one will bother you.”
He pointed to a white terra-cotta wall. It was all that remained of a ruined house a little way up the hill, away from the traffic and the noise of the montage. It would cast a shadow all afternoon.
Scarcely able to move, almost drunk from exhaustion, I went up the hil
l, around the back of the wall; spread out the blanket, threw down the pillow, and lay down. The earth spun under me as I lay back.
Before I closed my eyes, I looked down at the field again: the circus rising, the tent shining in the sun. I slept for several hours, more deeply than I can ever remember. When I woke, it was late afternoon. Light slanted in from the far hills; shadows were long in the grass.
I woke feeling as though in sleep something significant had fallen into place, and I had become part of the whole.
That night we slept under the wagon. Fritz gave me the sleeping bag and two blankets. He kept the mattress and a third blanket. We spread them lengthwise under the wagon trailer where the electric equipment was kept. I went to bed early and was asleep before the night performance was over. At three in the morning I woke up. Fritz was asleep but tossing unhappily, coughing every few minutes. My extra blanket made it too hot, and I wanted to throw it across to him. I sat up carefully, because the wagon was low, wondering if I could do it without waking him. He coughed again. Let it go, I thought, he’s maybe used to it. I went back to sleep, burdened with the extra blanket.
When I woke up it was late in the morning. Fritz had already gotten up and gone, leaving his mattress on the ground beside me.
I wandered up to town and had breakfast on the fine colonnaded terrace of a café which caught the morning sun. George Wong and his father and a little sister joined me, eating peaches out of a net bag, while I drank coffee and ate rolls.
Before noon I came back to the lot and saw Fritz hurrying from the main entrance of the tent where the switchboard was to the electric wagon. From the way he carried his head I knew he was feeling bad. He ducked under the wagon, and by the time I had gotten over there, he was back on his mattress half asleep.
Monsieur Jean, one of the directors, went by shouting for Fritz and muttering to himself. But he didn’t think of looking under the wagon.
At noon I came by again and spoke to him. “Hey! Fritz, do you want something to eat?”
“No, I’ve got a fever. I want to sleep.” His lips were chapped, his eyes half closed and weary; their movement seemed to be turned inward, like quicksand. He was unhappy, sick and angry about his condition.
At about three I started up to town. The afternoon was bright and hot. Vendors had set up stands and were selling slices of watermelon. Paul, Fritz’s assistant, brought three little slices; one for me, one for him, and one for Papa Zavatta, who, as everyone seemed to know, was very fond of it. Standing up on one of the trucks, looking down into the skylight of his reflex camera, was George Wong. He had it pointed toward the tent and the crowd. “How do you think this will be?” he asked from up there.
