11 March 2022
Steam leaves my mouth. The hall of mirrors shows a ram at every angle, undercarriage, horns, and fur of gold. As it gallops away the hall becomes red, then purple, blue, then black. Sunlight fades as glasses clink. We run in circles then throw up, stumbling into spaces between tents. You had a popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth, I picked it out with my tongue. I drank another pint. Where did you go? I can never spend a decent amount of time with anyone else, they always get swept away.
I am a person who stays.
I wake up in a straw pile after close. Only the company tent remains lit. An ambrosial smell of meat and vegetables emanates from it, drawing me in. On my way there I pass by the animals, they whimper at me, all but the mighty elephant who's being fed straw by an old man. He turns around to my footsteps, reveling the pure whites of his eyes—a blind keeper.
"You unlocked the tiger's cage."
"I did what?"
The orange and black cat nuzzles into my side, and I notice how soft it is, like a puppy. The blind keeper feels his way towards me, petting the tiger then pulling it by collar into the tent. He gives me no indication to follow, but I do so anyway. The tiger’s tail wags, knowing there’s food to come. My stomach growls too.
A woman with a yearning tenor sings pure sorrow, purple and red. I can taste her voice on the air, it’s synesthesia and it’s delicious. There’s something underneath it too an added ingredient, but I can’t make out what.
Everything else is a backdrop to her, trapeze artists or clowns, strong people who carry lighter ones like dinner trays or contortionists who sit indifferent in their stretched forms. I realize that I'm the one out of place, my jeans and t-shirt stand out amidst their vibrancies.
They regard me with hesitancy. I see one of the strong men crack his knuckles, the contortionists unfurl and sit normally, and the clowns remove their red noses. All of them seem to side-eye me except for the singer, who’s lost in her microphone like it’s a maze.
I reach the serving tables , where three other blind keepers are prepared with a large meal. All the food sits in huge metal skillets over an open flame. I notice they handle the pots without gloves.
"They always ask us how we don't burn our hands,” one says.
"Well, how do you do it?" I reply.
"We've burned them enough times, now there's nothing left to feel."
One of them shows me, a thick layer of burned skin covers their palms.
"It's unfortunate, we know,” another says.
"You're awfully capable despite the circumstances."
"Thank you, that's why we're here, they appreciate us, unconditionally, may we ask why you’ve came?"
"I’m hungry,” I say.
"Naturally."
"I heard the music.”
"Naturally, of course."
"The freak show, why not go to the freak show! You know?”
"Maybe you’re a freak too.”
"Maybe," I reply.
The old man hands me a platter of food. Our conversation seems to ease the crowd as to my
prescence. They begin again in the way a crowd always does, with sparse conversation until it snowballs into something like a blanket. Suddenly the tiger enters the center of tent, and its tamer is performing a dance around the singer. She holds a steak in her hands, throwing it in the air, letting roll down her shoulder and the tiger pounces in and around her chasing the meat.
"The Job feeds awfully well,” one of the Blind men comments underneath his breath. He says it like he’s offering me something.
I’m not one to move around, place to place. The circus is my natural opposite, however delicious the food may be.
“Seems that way,” I say.
The singer is crouched on the ground now, her billowing red dress fans out behind her and the tiger and tamer lay next to her. A spotlight ever so subtly highlights her, allowing everyone else to act in shadows.
Then she trails off from a loud expression, and a massive man with a violin absolves himself from the background. He’s seven feet tall and dressed in a satin tuxedo that glitters like stars. The light travels up to his head, revealing a powerful jaw and two horns. They're magnificent, sprawling pearly white and curving down the shape of his back like braids.
His eyebrows furrow into his instrument. The taste of my food pales in comparison to the thought of my mouth elsewhere. I throw my plate on the ground, not knowing where else it should go. The song he's chosen not only complements the one sung beforehand but evolves upon it, it’s sorrowful and rageful and fast with straining moments of pain—it rises in speed and a devilish smile blooms across his face. His arms are a blur, and the crowd is stunned silent. He continues with grand gestures; his horns even vibrate back and forth. The lights that pepper the circumference of the tent start to spin in circles and the air from outside blows in creating a plume of dust around his feet. The image is like an intrepid dream.
A tiger, an arm wrapped around a head, a face populated completely by hair, an elephant and three blind men. All of us inside, sitting on the dusty floor, enraptured as the horned musician plays.
Before I know it, he recedes into the background, holding a note. The audience remains silent for the first time all night. All of us look at the shadow of the Musician and hold our breath for his tremolo to conclude. When it does, we exhale, sending tendrils of vapor into the night sky. Though his figure is in shadow, I catch his eyes, hoping that his gaze is fixated solely on me. I imagine how I must look against the backdrop, an abnormal spec of blue jeans. I can see the outline of his horns and picture the body underneath his satin tux. His shadow moves the violin from underneath his chin, and he exits the tent.
Then the singer resumes. Only now she's beginning a shanty, and the circus has reinvigorated itself. Beer is being thrown across tables and the trapeze artists are wrestling on their beams. As if the musicians interlude had never existed.
"Who is that?" I ask one of the keepers.
"Mr. Caligari"
"May I speak with him?"
"Everyone wishes to speak to him"
"Will he not see me?"
"Everyone wishes to see Mr. Caligari, but not all can,” one keeper says with a chuckle.
“Would It be rude to run after him?”
“I think he’d like the company, but don’t get your hopes up,”
With that cryptic comment, I rush into the newly invigorated crowd, accidentally bumping into the singer. She pulls me into her dance. Drunkenly, I begin to follow her steps, my Irish family lends me a hand from beyond the grave. We’re soon moving in a broad circle, a trapeze artist flies above my head.
Each person is different, whether in ability or appearance, chosen or otherwise, and yet they all share a commonality as outcasts, and whether they look forward to their futures or not, they enjoy this night in completion, and accept me in without forethought past their initial hesitation. I was thankful, and yet as a strong man threw me through a ring of fire, and a clown caught me like he would a juggling pin, I could only think of Mr. Caligari and his violin.
After being involved in an elaborate musical number, where I’m pretty sure my body was used as a ball, I exit the tent feeling sober. The night was crisp and absolute. It’s funny how, in darkness, sources of light create the world in patches. I see the subtle glow of a carousel, and Mr. Caligari underneath it, appearing like all unwatched people do—moving without a mask. He puts his violin back into its case while sitting on one of the aluminum animals, content in his solitude.
“Excuse me.” I intrude.
He turns to face me.
“I just wanted to tell you how beautiful your piece was.”
He smiles.
“What are you doing out here? Everyone’s inside.”
He points to the Carousel.
“That thing’s been broken for years.”
He shakes his head and enters the center room of the machine from between mirrored panels, the sounds of tinkering follow. I jump up, memories flashing before my eyes. As a child I had ridden here, when it was new and cared for. Now spots of rust have chipped away the paint. Somewhere inside of my body a small spot has grown too. I have walked past this carousel every summer, watching it die.
Then the mirrors became like the sun, and through that blinding light Mr. Caligari jumps out. He begins to prance from animal to animal avoiding every obstruction with grace. I felt like a statue looking out across a museum at a far greater piece of art. Was he performing or was this his way of expressing himself? His horns had deep crevasses in them, hidden by the favorable light, but easily visible with enough careful watch, scars on his neck, too, and his thick body hair was patchy in spots as if someone had tried to rip it out, none of these things took away from his beauty, but were rather a marque of something I felt both appreciative and embarrassed to see.
Memories exist outside of time and this moment exists only in memory. I feel selfish, apart from my words I had nothing to give him back. He gives me this revival so quickly by fixing the broken carousel. Mr. Caligari Danced, his movements mirroring that of the machine, then departing from it. I imagined speaking through his body, not his mouth—
“You can offer me your loneliness,” He would say—but not say.
“Can I come with you?” I did say.
Everything in the Circus is liquid, staying for a week, then pulling all its mass to someplace new. In this way it’s like a great wave, and I wanted nothing more than to be swept up by it.
Then he stops the ride, and he’s standing on a painted Ram, his body leaning over mine. We retain eye contact, and I can feel my pupils trembling. This close, all imperfections and fantastic appeal are necessary to me, there’s nothing else. His horns are like the pillars of a building that exists around my body, without them I’m crushed. Within his labored breath, I assumed a question. He asked me what I wanted. I didn’t say anything at all because I thought we understood each other quite well.
In my dreams, the hall of mirrors has a deep pool and if you swim long enough downwards the world flips right side up again. You are in a familiar place, but everything is backwards. This makes it all fresh, like the taste of popcorn and tongues. You realize all the glaring, beautiful inconsistencies of the world. Like the horn that can wrap around a body and lift it up into the air, people watching as you shamelessly enjoy the embrace. But you know that home is waiting for you too and as much as you adore this brevity and magical love, this heaving, and this steamy canvas tent, you know that it cannot last. To reconcile I think of this beautiful memory created beyond time, waiting in the pool whenever I want to take a dip.
I wake up to an empty tent.
And the fairground too.
But the carousel works
And on the wind is the wilting sound of a violin.
I am a person who stays.