Counternarratives (32 page)

ACROBATIQUE

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somewhere far down there, below, from the sandy circle of the
circus floor or a seat in the lowest ring of tiered chairs,
plus haut!
the
voice I can easily discern, it's the ringmaster's, the crowd's, the words, now a
lone one in my head,
höher
, repeating, fleet and fluttering, soaring, past
me up into the rafters, scattering among the trusses, vaulted arches, the cupola,
clambering amid the bats and the blackbirds, across the brickwork seen only by its
masons and ghosts, though I see it, often scale it with my eyes when I ascend, every
night I am performing, on the cables or trapeze, sometimes studying that map of
bricks and buttresses and plasterwork of this chocolate jewel box and nothing else,
this elaborate testament to human handiwork, rather than the lights flickering
blue-white against this hexadecagon's drafts, or the violet Paris night flowing in
through the high, narrow windows, or, at least at first, the flaring faces of every
evening's audience, until I dare myself to look at them too and do, all those brows
and chins masked in chiaroscuro, all those muffs and fans and ruffles and opera
spectacles, all those glowing pipe bowls, cigarillo embers flashing like starlight
quilting the surface of the Oder on a mid-summer night, and I do but see no one,
only a blur no more distinct than the ceiling's shadows, until I fix a face fixing
me, lips agape, eyes firm as beads of beryl, amazement streaming out of them that I
am hovering above, the mouthpiece in my teeth and no harness or net to rescue me, or
more startling when I hang upside down with the cannon suspended from my teeth, its
chain clenched like a whistle, which after the build-up of the horn and drumroll one
of the assistants ignites, and when it fires everyone screams, but I have never,
ever let it go, never dropped it, never come close to allowing it to slip, though
the metal cuts my embouchure and my jaws and head and neck ache for hours after, and
someone is crying out,
Bravissima, Madame La La,
une miracle
,
magnifique
, followed by the barely audible But how
does she do it? and another, My God, it is impossible, but she is an angel—or do I
hear
an animal?
—
la mulâtresse-canon
,
la
Venus noire
,
elle là la nôtre
, a marvel of nature, cheers,
applause and catcalls fire, that mouth, that body, unnatural, such strength you'd
see in a
monster
, as I prepare for the next series of maneuvers and rest my
hips and torso on the bar while the clowns caper in reprise below,
awaiting
my sister butterfly, Theophila, Kaira la Blanche, her hands a
doll's in mine,

about that moment almost a year ago when a pallid,
absinthe-cheeked frequenter of the local cafés ferreted his way in and asked her, as
I sat beside her in the chamber where we ready ourselves and retire afterwards,
about a new trick in which she spun like a corkscrew in the air before I snatched
her from certain oblivion, What does it feel like to touch her, hold onto those
muscles, do your fingers melt into that skin, his gaze never grazing hers but
grappling in its designs upon me, Do you all live together here in the Montmartre
district, can I come visit you in your lodgings, and Kaira is shivering with
embarrassment as my own regard hardens to wrought iron, They say that you may be
closer than sisters, is that true? the drunkard winking, fingering his lapel and
drawing his chalky digits down to the open button at the head of his fly, not once
releasing his stare from me, even after I dip my kerchief in the glass of peppermint
water and bring it to my tongue and arcade, letting the muscles in my throat relax
as I turn away; and I have heard everything, far worse, sometimes making me laugh
aloud as I lie on my cot for want of weeping, but much better too, here and
everywhere we have toured, greetings and grace notes of gratitude and praise from
people I could have never imagined as I scrubbed the kitchen floorboards beside
Mummi or walked from the schoolhouse in silence watching the carriages clatter up
the Grabowerstrasse in Stettin or sitting eating taffy with Lili and Ulli and Maria
in Töpffer's Park, I write them all whenever I can about everything, they have heard
every possible new technique I've acquired, every wire I've walked, every new member
of the company or employee of the Cirque Fernando, though so as not to bore them I
began to concentrate on the noteworthy things, such as how at the end of a
performance last spring—May 18, 1878, I wrote out the letter before bed—I received a
peck on the cheek from elderly M. Dumas fils, received a little melody, with
camellias, from M. Saint-Saëns, how I have been feted in Lisbon and Antwerp, bathed
in a bath of gifted rosewater and roses in London, how in Budapest a prince or
count, I cannot remember, offered me his wizened gray palm and the castle and
estates he held in it, how in Naples, that ancient, southerly city, a gentleman who
I was told is richer than their king handed me a pouch of velvet as light as breath
and in it sat a band of gold crowned by a sapphire; but I would never want to be
entombed in a
palazzo
, however grand, however many jewels in my tiara or
necklaces, and I already am being courted again by a former acrobat from England, my
Toffee
, with his buttery voice and supple juggler's fingers, and I have
not yet seen the busy streets of New York or the palaces of Saint Petersburg; and I
also write about the daily miracles with the war now over and barely a memory, the
Paris sky like a winter crocus, and the serpentine Seine under evening lamplight,
and the thousand unforgettable treasures secreted—the restaurants, the cabarets, the
music halls—along the byways radiating out from Boulevard Haussmann, and I write
about the ugliness too, the throwaways sleep-standing in the nearby doorways, the
streetwalkers hurrying past with their frayed hems down the rue des Martyrs, all the
people from the colonies looking and wandering as if perpetually lost, so like and
yet so different from the Kaiser's capitals, and I detail the indignities also, the
haggling over
sous
and Marks despite my contract, the pain that radiates
throughout my collarbone, the battles to keep my costumes immaculate, acquire new
ones, my inexhaustible appetite for new boots and perfumes, my hunt for the best
maquillage
for my complexion, pomade for my hair, the too-rich soups
and meat dishes in sauces and the lure of sweets on every other corner, how last
fall because of an extra-heavy flow and no time to get back to my rooms I had to
stuff any gloves I could find into my tights and only Kaira knew, and we prayed like
Catholic girls to the saints that there would be no accident—there wasn't, though
their letters in return never mention those bits, nor do they repeat a single word
about all the other things I relate to them, how I intend to spend every waking hour
in the air, to soar with the brio of a sparhawk and glide with a sparrow's ease and
float, as Kaira and I do, as the audience perches on the tips of their seats, with
the lightness of two creatures who have fully emerged from the chrysalis, how I want
to suspend the entire city of Paris or even France itself from my lips if I could
achieve that, how I aim to exceed every limit placed on me unless I place it there,
because that is what I think of when I think of
freedom
, that I have
gathered around me people who understand how to translate fear into possibility, who
have no wings but fly beyond the most fantastical vision of the clouds, who face
death daily back out into the waiting room, and I am one of them, Olga, the
kleinste Bräunchen
, but no, Mummi—since Vati has only ever penned one
letter I recall—never repeats any of this, instead writing
Th
e night,
especially in the city, is the Devil's playground
and
A groschen set
aside keeps you out of the almshouse
and
Remember that not only an
accordion makes a pretty song
and
Don't forget your family and your
Prussian
, though how could I, whenever I hear that accent I pause to remind
myself where I am, like the night a week ago when after our performance Jean-Michel
said that several notable Parisians were waiting to meet us, meet me, one of them a
poet I had never heard of and I prefer German novels anyway, I read the American and
British ones in translation though I speak that language, my daddy's, fluently, and
all he had to say to me was
Guten Abend
and instantly I knew, a Pomeranian,
living in Berlin, a publisher's agent, he and one of the Frenchmen handed us each
flowers and they all invited us to dinner the following night, then another group
mentioning a salon exhibition that we absolutely must attend, and another with a
journalist who asked me a few questions about my sense of balance, poise, not
listening to a single one of my answers, and as I was heading back into our dressing
room another man drew forward, bent down, gray threading his beard, his large,
lidded eyes hard at me like lead shot, he introduced himself as
M. Edgar
Degas
, a painter, he said, Kaira, I noticed, had moved to my side, I have
not missed a single performance of yours these last few days, and I have been
sketching you, here and at the Nouvelle Athènes, and I nodded, smiling and waiting
to see his drawings, saying,
Merci, M'sieur, ça me plaît beaucoup
, but he
did not show the sketches as he glanced from K to me and back, his eyes returning to
my own, I would like to invite you to my studio on the rue Fontaine, bis no. 19, I
will show you the drawings, I would even like to paint you but I know they will not
allow me to set up an easel here which would be so helpful because of the
complicated nature of the perspective and architecture, and I looked at K who looked
at me, neither of us understanding what he was talking about, so I'll have to work
from the drafts, I already have several, even in pastels, I nodded again, noting he
barely blinked,

were a pencil but my inner contours

as if they themselves were wet clay and I backed away,
Oui, M'sieur,
I would like that, and he extended his hand, which was
trembling, in it a
carte de visite
, with his address, I will even make sure
you have a chance to chat with my friend Gervex, also a painter, who is often here,
and M. de Goncourt, do you know his work? he is writing a story on the circus, and I
smiled and brought my palms and fingers together, and assured him I would call upon
him as agreed, telling myself I would bring Kaira with me, and the strange, intense
man bowed and seized my hand and kissed it hard, whispering
Fort enchanté
,
African Princess, muttering something else beneath his breath then he spun on his
heel, vanishing past a small new cluster of people waiting to speak with us, and it
is early on a Thursday morning that I am now writing to Lili recounting the
incident, though at first I sincerely could not remember his name, even though I
will go to his studio the following day to meet him and his friend and see his
drawings and exchange pleasantries, all I could recall was that he had claimed to
have been drawing me, and how the next night after that encounter as I rose up on
the tether, watching Kaira standing in anticipation below I remembered that after
the painter left she said, Ooh La La they always come looking for you and I replied
to her as I sipped my cup of tea, Yes, they do, they find me too, always, and as I
rose, amid that collection of expectation and excitement, the gas lamps raking waves
of shadows over them, there, in the ring's front row, to my right, I could have
sworn I saw the board which held the paper, the hands moving furiously across it,
the eyes darting from it to me, his eyes, large and tourmaline and climbing their
own invisible ladder, trying to seize and hold onto my waist, my ankles, the perfect
aerial cross of my body, this space, performance, the one whose name I could not
remember, then I do, as I elude him and all of them, gliding higher, toward the
freedom of the dome, high as the summit of Mont Blanc, the mouthpiece tightly in my
bite, the name, severe and aristocratic in its brevity, reappears, him, the
painter,

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