Lionboy (22 page)

El Diablo was gesturing to the man to walk back across, but the fellow, seemingly in good humor, was shaking his head and gesturing “no way.” El Diablo beckoned to his reluctant guest, but he would not be moved. Finally he took hold of a violin and began to play a sad and beautiful tune, full of minor chords crunched against one another like the beating of a broken heart. Indeed he played so tragically that people nearly forgot he was standing on a high wire way, way up in the air, trying to tempt a member of the audience to walk the wire himself.

Even danger itself is dazzled by how beautiful and clever the circusguys are, thought Charlie, and so it forgets to knock them down, or break their necks, or have a tiger bite their heads off.

By now a clown had entered the ring, imitating el Diablo Aero: Julius’s dad! There he was, elegant in whiteface, Pierrot clothes, and a mischievous manner. He was playing his gigantic fiddle behind his back, doing somersaults with it, playing it between his legs—then running up to the top of a ten-foot ladder to play a duet with Aero, still up on his high wire trying to lure the man across.

By the time they were all down in the ring again, the music had turned bright and parping, and suddenly Bikabhai and the monkeys came in on bicycles. They were all wearing beautiful, white silky pajamas and white turbans with a peacock feather attached by a jewel at the front, and their bicycles were peacock blue. They did somersaults and carried one another around, waving parasols and pretending to smoke pipes. They picked up the rose petals from the ground and gave them to Bikabhai, and then to members of the audience, and then two of them got in an argument and began eating the roses.

The clowns were still acting foolish like nobody’s business. “Here we are again, all of a lump!” they cried. “How are you?” Major Tib came in after them: “If you please, Major Tib,” said one of the fat ones, “he says that you said that I said that they said that nobody had said nothing to nobody!” Julius’s dad had meanwhile set up a tiny little high wire and had rats running along it, dancing, and stopping to eat the chocolates he was feeding them. “Who needs to cook?” he was saying. “Cooking’s fancy. Cooking’s showing off.” And he gave one of the rats his cell phone and said it was calling for takeout, and then he was trying to invite one of the ladies from the audience to join him for dinner, paying her extravagant compliments.

When it’s not being dangerous, it’s just silly, Charlie thought. What a funny mixture. And then in a rush he remembered that this, the rats on the high wire, was his cue. He leaped to his feet, heart pumping like a piston, and, feeling proud and glad, he vaulted into the ring. He knew exactly what to do, and so like a professional he began to pull the polished levers and wind the well-worn handles that would bring down the ring cage, for the next act was Maccomo and the lions.

Charlie had wondered how he would feel about watching the lions perform. He knew what they would do—he’d seen it often enough in rehearsal. But it would be different to see them do it in front of a crowd, as if it were all they could do, and as if Maccomo were incredibly brave and clever to have “taught” them to roll on the floor, and let him pick up their paws, and to roar when he told them to. As if they weren’t really incredibly much cleverer than this and only humoring Maccomo because he fed them—and because he had fed them drugs, more to the point. Charlie had thought he would find the whole thing a bit humiliating for them, and a bit embarrassing.

But he didn’t—far from it. He was enchanted by how strong and graceful his friends were as they entered the ring, staring down their snooty noses, and as they leaped around the ring. Maccomo looked wonderfully stern and brave in his long African robe with his rhino whip, taking the lions by the paws and making them roar, throwing their strong bodies down on the ground and lying on them. When he turned his back on the young lion for a moment, Charlie genuinely feared for his safety; when he harnessed the old lion to a small chariot, and stepped into it to drive him, for a moment Charlie feared even more, because he knew what Maccomo did not, that the old lion had regained his dignity and would not care for this humiliating treatment any longer. But the old lion had also regained his intelligence, and he knew that in order to escape later, he had to be obedient now, so he put up with it even though he hated it—all this Charlie could see in his beautiful old furry face.

Then the lions pretended to fight, and Maccomo separated them, to gasps and shrieks from the more nervous members of the audience, and finally the lionesses did a magnificently effective trick called the Bounce, which used to be done in the old days before there were ring cages. In those days, wagon cages had to be rolled into the ring, and the trainer would go inside the cage with the lions, and they would bounce around on the cage’s walls, running up one wall and down the other and so on. Now the band broke into the special lion tune—“Esprit du Corp” by Sousa—and the lionesses leaped up the side of the ring cage, not holding on with their claws, but bouncing from cage to ground and up the wall of the cage again, like a kitten on the back of a sofa. The audience shrieked to have the great cats leap toward them, and to hear the metal rattle and shake as the great weight of the animals crashed against it, to hear the growls and see the lionesses’ great paws and sleek creamy bellies—it was fantastic, it was terrifying, it was magnificent. It was the circus.

And then came the intermission. Charlie was mighty glad. Between being in the audience and being in the show, and being constantly, silently, nervously aware of what he had to do later, he was already exhausted and exhilarated and overwhelmed—and it was only halfway through. And after that—well, he couldn’t think about afterward yet.

As soon as he had stowed the ring cage and helped Maccomo to settle the lions, he just had time to sit quietly for a moment or two on the deck, breathing deeply, watching the moon with her calming stare, and reassuring himself that yes, that rope attached to the bow was the one down which they were going to run to avoid any crowds at the gangplank. And yes, they could get to the bridge quickly, and yes, it was all dimly lit, and the moon was not so big as to cast too much light, and yes, it was doable and they were going to do it. He wished he had been able to check the route all the way, but he had seen how the towpath led all the way to the river, so as long as they weren’t spotted, how complicated could it be?

When Maccomo went to get himself a cup of coffee from the refreshment stand, Charlie got his bag from the ropelocker and made sure his few possessions were in there: the phones, the letter in blood, his medicine, his tiger, his knife, his mum’s little ball of lapis lazuli . . . He looked at his phone. Ha ha, Rafi, he thought. You didn’t know where I was. Did you? You didn’t come and get me. He stowed as well the bits of food he had been saving from the last few meals and the packages of meat he had purloined for the lions. He just hoped it wouldn’t leak in his bag. It was all quite heavy, but the lions could help carry.

He was very, very excited.

CHAPTER 16

O
n his way back to the ring for the second half, Charlie saw Maccomo, who had showered and changed out of his circus robe into an exceptionally clean and well-ironed pair of stiff white African pajamas—up-and-downs, as Charlie’s dad called them. He was on the grand staircase with a woman.

She had red hair piled up on her head and escaping in curls down the sides, and her skin was like a pearl. Charlie could easily imagine her in a white leather suit.

Mabel!

They seemed to be getting along just fine. Mabel was doing something with her eyes that Charlie thought might be what was called “batting her eyelashes”—he’d heard the phrase but he didn’t think he’d ever seen it done before. It was rather nice actually. Charlie stared at her for a while. He wondered if they were going to go off now, before the show had ended. Would it matter if they did? He didn’t know. Might they finish eating early and come back too soon?

On a whim, he rushed up to them.

“Good evening, Maccomo, sir,” he said. “Good evening, madam.” Maccomo looked at him as if he were insane.

“The show is so wonderful, isn’t it? You must get back to your seats—you don’t want to miss the second half. It’s starting any minute. You should really be getting back, madam!” He grinned idiotically and sort of shepherded Mabel back toward the ring. Maccomo was confused. The old Maccomo would have responded immediately, sending Charlie off with a scolding, but this new, dopey Maccomo just sort of watched, and then followed as Mabel, with an amused look, allowed herself to be led back into the big top and toward her seat. No sign of a Hungarian in tall boots. Charlie smiled madly. Maccomo seemed to be going to sit with Mabel. Good. Mabel said, and her voice was low and beautiful: “Thank you so much. You’re a considerate child.”

Charlie thought it must be rather nice to be one of her tigers.

Once he was certain they were sitting down and staying put, he hurried around to the narrow, crowded back stairway to get back to his ringside position.

Once again the band fell silent.

Once again the big top fell dark.

Once again the drums rolled—

And the spotlight fell on Major Tib, who—well, you know what he does by now, and he did it magnificently, of course, and then he leaped swiftly out of the way as Hans came prancing out with his little Learned Pig. First they did math: Hans would ask “What is five minus three?” and the Learned Pig would stamp his foot twice; Hans would say “What is two times two?” and the Learned Pig would stamp four times. “Stamp once for yes, and twice for no,” said Hans. “Am I very clever?” The pig stamped twice. The audience laughed and laughed.

After a bit of this, Hans said: “So, Learned Pig, who is the most beautiful lady in the audience?” The Learned Pig immediately ran over to a smiling dark girl—one of the ones with the flowers and balloons—and bowed down in front of her. The girls giggled and whispered. They thought it very funny that the pig thought she was beautiful.

Someone else didn’t find it funny, though: Julius’s father, the clown, who had been quietly watching the math, was offended.

“My lady is much more beautiful!” he cried, waving to his dinner date, but adding “No offense, signorina” to the Learned Pig’s lady and blowing her a kiss. The Learned Pig didn’t like that at all—he squealed and rushed at Julius’s dad, trying to knock him over. Julius’s dad didn’t like
that:
He made Hans go and fetch Major Tib, who thought about the problem very picturesquely, holding his folded whip to his brow in deep thought, and finally suggested that they fight a duel to settle the matter. He gave the clown and the pig a pistol each (the pig took his in his mouth), then he blindfolded the clown, and Hans blindfolded the Learned Pig. Julius’s dad complained that the pig was peeking. The pig squealed in indignation at the suggestion. Then they lined up, back to back, and Major Tib counted to ten for them to walk away from each other. Finally there were two shots, and both clown and pig fell down. The clown jumped up again, but the pig didn’t.

“Are you dead?” the clown asked the pig. The pig quietly opened his eyes and looked around, then got up very gently and stamped once, then lay down again with his eyes closed. “You don’t mean it, you don’t mean it!” cried the clown. “Say you don’t mean it! Stamp again! Make it two for no!” Hans joined in the pleading, and so did Major Tib, but to no avail—the pig insisted he was dead.

“Well then, Signor Pennacorrente,” said Major Tib. “That’s murder! You’ll go to court and be sent to jail forever and ever! Or longer!”

Julius’s dad rolled over onto his knees and wrung his hands and wept; Hans was blowing his nose and weeping too, and stroking his poor “dead” pig.

“You’d better run away,” said Major Tib, “and take the body with you!” So they rolled the pig into a sack and the clown started dragging it across the ring—quite a heavy job, you can imagine.

Suddenly the end fell out of the sack—and there was the pig in a flowery bonnet, looking furious, bouncing with good health, and chasing after Julius’s dad until he caught his shirttails between his teeth. The shirttails turned out to be about forty feet long, and each time the pig pulled more out, it was a different color. By now most of the audience, including Charlie, were laughing so hard, they couldn’t breathe properly, and at least four people had fallen off their seats.

Major Tib had to give them a little while to calm down before introducing the next act. Charlie was completely seduced. For a moment, he was just a kid at the circus.

As the people gradually stopped laughing and caught their breath, the lights dimmed, and a long, pure, high note was heard, as if from a distant trumpet. Major Tib, in a calm and almost trance-like tone, called out like a voice from way above: “There’s magic in the air tonight—here—can you feel it? There’s magic in the air!” The trumpet note was still playing—it sounded like a shaft of light—and then an actual shaft of light flew out and lit up one of the high-wire platforms up in the flies, and there was the trumpeter, dressed in white, but though the note could be heard, he wasn’t playing. A second shaft of light appeared—and in its pool was caught the other platform, and there stood another trumpeter, identical to the first, playing the long and slow note. Then he took his trumpet from his lips, and the note continued—it was the first trumpeter, who now was playing. The note passed between the two of them and it was impossible to tell which one was making the sound. . . . Golden pricks of light appeared like stars on the great rounded ceiling of the big top, and the two platforms rolled back toward the edges of the ring, leaving a third standing empty and spotlit way up among the stars.