The Congress of Rough Riders

by John Boyne

  I undertook a commission to write a book, collecting various articles of mine over the years and writing some new ones and the advances on this, combined with my income from my other work, meant that Hitomi and I became reasonably affluent for a couple in their late twenties. Although we could have easily afforded a mortgage on a house in the city, we continued to rent our apartment, as our social life with Luc and Annette was important to us and not easily sacrificed.

  The wedding day passed quite peacefully and with little drama. We exchanged our vows in a simple ceremony, we kissed, and then we enjoyed a raucous evening with all our closest friends in a restaurant in the city. At the end of the night, we took a boat trip down the Seine before checking into the most expensive and luxurious hotel in Paris for two nights, a wedding present from our neighbours. We had agreed to postpone the honeymoon for a couple of months, until the summer vacation came, and had not yet decided on a location. For my part, I couldn’t have been more surprised when Hitomi came to me with her idea.

  It was about three weeks after the wedding and we were settling comfortably into married life. Things did not seem so different from when we had been simply living together but the rings on our fingers did, I feel, add some dimension of adult behaviour to our romance. We were grown-ups now. A married couple. We shared a bank account and divided up tasks dependent on our temperaments; Hitomi handled the bills and most of the household repairs. The kitchen was mine and interfered with on pain of divorce. I washed, she ironed. I never made the bed, she never cleaned the bathroom. We knew what we were doing and we were happy.

  Our apartment in Paris had a huge central window which, when opened, gave the room an airy and fresh feel which we both enjoyed, but it also had a wide ledge and I often liked to sit there on warm evenings with a bottle of beer and a book as I waited for Hitomi to come home. On this particular evening, there was something of a heatwave going on and I sat there wearing just a pair of white shorts and a baseball cap to screen the sun from my eyes. I remember I was reading The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea and had reached the part where Noboru has been discovered spying on his mother as she makes love with Ryuki Tsukazaki, when Hitomi came in and collapsed on the sofa, exhausted from her day and the heat.

  ‘You want a beer?’ I asked her as a greeting, waving my own in the air as I did so.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I wish we had a swimming pool.’

  ‘When we’re very, very rich,’ I replied, walking towards the kitchen, my bare feet padding lightly on the expensive wooden floor which Hitomi had installed after she’d pulled up all my carpets shortly after moving in. It felt quite cool beneath my feet and as I handed her the cold beer I reached down to kiss her but she pushed me away with a giggle.

  ‘You stink, baby,’ she said; she often called me ‘baby’ in a curious, Japanese way. As if she had heard people say it in movies and wanted to emulate them. ‘Go back to your window ledge.’

  I smiled and retreated as she had suggested. She was probably right. I’d been working from home all day and hadn’t bothered to shower. Sitting for hours in a hot apartment had done nothing for my personal hygiene. I returned to my beer and my book; we had long ago established that being in the same room together did not mean that we were obliged to be constantly speaking to each other. In fact I think we both quite enjoyed the fact that we could cohabit and do different things without feeling the need to be always chattering away.

  ‘I’ve made a decision,’ she said eventually and I looked across at her, leaving the book open on my knees.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About our honeymoon,’ she said. ‘I decided today.’

  ‘Right,’ I replied, a little surprised, for I had started to think it was one of those things which was going to be put off indefinitely until we would finally take a holiday somewhere and call it a honeymoon, despite the fact that we might have been married a couple of years by then.

  ‘It’s bad luck not to,’ she said. ‘And we should do it anyway. We haven’t had a—’ She corrected herself. ‘In fact, we’ve never had a holiday together. Other than the odd weekend away.’

  ‘We went to Cannes last year,’ I said, for we had blagged our way into a trip there with Annette and Luc.

  ‘We need a honeymoon,’ she said determinedly. ‘And I think we should combine it with a family reunion.’

  My heart soared and I put the book away, spinning around on the ledge to face her. We hadn’t really discussed it much, but I was very keen to return to Japan for a holiday as I missed the country enormously and didn’t even mind that it would mean spending a couple of weeks with Mr and Mrs Naoyuki and the mail-stealing son. ‘That’s a great idea,’ I said. ‘Actually I really wanted to go back there soon myself. Not to live, but for a break.’

  ‘Yes, I thought so,’ said Hitomi, smiling happily. ‘It seems like the right time to do it. It’s been put off long enough through my silliness. But let’s do it now, in the next couple of weeks so it really is a honeymoon.’

  I thought about it; the university term would be over in a week and I was on top of my work and could afford a break. There was nothing really stopping us. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You better call your parents though and see if they can put us up. Or should we stay in a hotel? Or would they be offended if we did that?’

  Hitomi looked at me and frowned. ‘My parents,’ she said, a little confused. ‘Why do we need to tell them?’

  I blinked and shrugged my shoulders, as if it was obvious. ‘You meant Japan, didn’t you?’ I said after a pause. ‘That’s where you want to go, right?’

  ‘Oh dear no,’ she said, a quick shudder running through her. ‘No, I meant London. I meant we should go to visit your father.’

  ‘Isaac,’ I said, amazed. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  I scratched my neck and could feel the heat of the sun already hitting in. ‘But you’ll die if you go to England,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, nodding. ‘I know, I know what I’ve always said. But maybe I was crazy. I’m not going to die if I go there. It’s a stupid superstition on my part.’

  I frowned. I was surprised for she had always been determined on this point in the past. And now that she was saying that it didn’t matter it started to occur to me that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all, that maybe we shouldn’t tempt fate. ‘Perhaps we should think about this,’ I said. ‘I mean it’s not like we have to rush into—’

  ‘Honestly, William,’ she said, coming over and taking my face in her hands, reaching forward to kiss my lips lightly. ‘I’m telling you, it was just a stupid superstition, that’s all. I’ve replaced it with another.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That it will be bad luck if we do not take a honeymoon soon. So what do you think? Should we go?’

  I thought about it and exhaled loudly. ‘I guess so,’ I said eventually, unconvinced. ‘I’ll phone Isaac.’

  Joseph Craven didn’t particularly like Ellen Rose. In fact, he despised everything about her except her beauty. Her natural abilities on the trapeze and tightrope irritated him as she had already become, at the age of only eighteen, the most naturally talented performer he had seen or worked with, while he had to practise constantly in order not to kill himself while he was up there. Even after ten years of performing, he never felt that one hundred per cent confidence which those who are born to the craft feel; instead he was just good at learning it. Ellen’s effect on the audience was also obvious; she had them in the palm of her hand. Her celebrity was growing within the circus world and her arrival in the Big Top always preceded a rapturous and sustained round of applause, in which she revelled. Her worst moments came when the show was over and the people had gone home and there was no one left to watch or applaud her any more. She came alive in front of an audience.

  ‘She’s a different girl out there, you know,’ Russell Rose remarked to his wife Bessie one evening as they prepared for bed. ‘She’s sh
y outside the show, you know. She’s not very sure of herself. But the minute she goes out there and starts performing, it’s like she turns into a whole different person.’

  ‘She likes the limelight, that’s for sure,’ said Bessie, who disapproved of her daughter’s activities. ‘It’s attention seeking, nothing more.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. She doesn’t seek that kind of attention when she’s not out there. When she’s not in character. I’m telling you, Bessie, she puts on that outfit and steps into the Big Top, climbs the ladder and she’s exactly where she’s meant to be. There’s no question about that. It’s like she creates her own character.’

  Bessie knew this was the case also but didn’t like to agree with him. She still wished that her daughter would leave the circus and find her own life outside of it but that was appearing less and less likely as time went on. In the meantime, Joseph Craven, ten years her senior, continued to lust after the young girl as she had once lusted after Howard Losey and eventually decided that the time had come to be paid back for all the training he had given her.

  It was after a show one evening and, unusually, they were alone in a trailer together. Ellen was drinking a cup of tea; she was tired that night because it was a Wednesday, when there was always a matinée and evening performance, and she sat rubbing her legs as Joseph Craven drank from a bottle of beer.

  ‘Sore?’ he asked through gritted teeth, watching as her fingers dragged themselves along the pale, porcelain skin. His tongue ran along his chapped lips greedily as she answered.

  ‘I hate Wednesdays,’ she said. ‘I always feel tired after them.’

  ‘Here, let me,’ he said, stepping off his seat and kneeling on the ground before her, taking her hands away from her legs and replacing them lightly with his own. She jumped back a little in her seat but didn’t get up; she was unsure how to take his gesture and grew irritated as he rubbed her legs. ‘How’s that feel?’ he asked, looking up at her. ‘Any better?’

  ‘Much,’ she said quickly, trying unsuccessfully to brush him away. ‘I might go straight to bed though. I’m tired.’

  ‘Not till I’m finished, you don’t,’ he said, forcing her back in the seat with just enough power to keep her there but not so much that she could feel threatened. ‘You’re all tense,’ he said. ‘You let me do my magic now and you’ll be fine.’ His hands caressed her legs and she decided within her head that she would allow this liberty to continue for another minute or two before standing up suddenly and going back to her own trailer. Before she could do this, however, she felt his hands working further and further up her legs, higher than they had any right to go, and closing in to meet each other as they moved along.

  ‘Joseph!’ she said, jumping up now and knocking him back as she did so. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Oh come on Ellen,’ he replied, standing up and wiping a line of perspiration away from his forehead. He moved towards her and put his arms around her as she struggled to free herself. ‘Stop it now, girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t I deserve any reward for all my training of you?’

  ‘Get off, Joseph,’ she said firmly and, determined not to let the situation get out of hand, acted promptly, raising her knee sharply so that he crumpled to the ground in pain. ‘I’m sorry to have done that,’ she said quickly, brushing herself off, ‘but there can be nothing like that between us, Joseph.’

  He sat up, humiliated, but he was not the sort to try and force her further and so attempted to recover his dignity and, potentially, save his job. I’m sorry about that, Ellen,’ he said quickly through gritted teeth. ‘Just the drink getting the better of me, I suppose.’

  ‘Well see that it doesn’t again,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t like to have to speak to my father about you.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Joseph quickly, an image of the hulking Russell Rose coming into his mind. ‘No need for that. I made a mistake, that’s all. It won’t happen again.’

  Ellen stared at him, unsure whether she believed him or not, unsure whether this was a situation which was indeed over. Eventually, she determined that it was, for she simply gave him a curt nod and left the trailer quickly. She wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened, she decided, but if he tried it on again then she would speak to her father. In the meantime, she would not speak to him of it again and instead try to put the incident out of her mind and concentrate on her audience and performance instead.

  Joseph Craven was an unpleasant character, however, and although a coward, was not the type of man who took rejection easily. Even as she prepared for bed that same evening a plan was forming in his head. If he could not have her, then he would deprive her of the thing which she valued the most in life. Her days as a trapeze artist would be numbered.

  There was a lot of staring going on. I couldn’t take my eyes off Isaac, who had aged terribly since I had last seen him. He was seventy-eight years old now and his whole body seemed to have shrunk in on itself. His face was lean and perhaps because he had shaved before we got there, his cheeks were inflamed and rough looking. When he shook my hand, his long fingers felt bony within my grasp. Despite myself, I thought: this is my father, my genetics. This is what I will look like one day.

  And Isaac could not help but stare at Hitomi. I could tell that her unfamiliar Japanese features were a source of curiosity to him. He watched her as she spoke, barely registering the words, but just watching her face instead. And Hitomi, probably feeling a little nervous by being in London for the first time, kept glancing across at me, holding on to my hand for fear that I would run away suddenly and leave her alone with this ghost of a man, her new father-in-law.

  ‘You better call me Isaac,’ he said at one point. ‘Everyone else does. Even him,’ he added, nodding across at me. ‘Almost never calls me Dad.’

  ‘You always told me to call you Isaac,’ I pointed out. ‘So what do you expect?’

  ‘Gets very touchy too when you criticise him,’ he said in a whispered voice, as if I couldn’t hear him, already beginning a complicity with my wife against me which might give them a bond. ‘But then you probably know that about him already.’

  Hitomi smiled, wanting to remain pleasant and friendly with him, but unwilling to appear conspiratorial against me at the same time. I poured tea for all of us but we barely touched it, catching up instead on our news. I described the wedding day to Isaac and he seemed pleased with our happiness. He insisted on telling me over and over again how lucky I was to have found such a ‘catch’ as Hitomi, complimenting her on her beauty constantly. She knew he was just being chivalrous and polite but I appreciated his making the effort all the same. Afterwards he insisted on giving her a tour of the house – which took all of five minutes – and he showed her my old bedroom, where we were to sleep.

  Getting ready for bed late that night, Hitomi sat on my old single bed and looked around in amazement. ‘This is so interesting to me,’ she said. ‘Seeing the room where you grew up. All these things …’ she muttered, getting up to take a look at the various possessions I had built up over the years. Although I had ripped my posters off the walls and thrown away much of my western memorabilia after my worst fight with Isaac, somehow he had managed to save those things which I had not fully destroyed. In my absence, he had returned the room to its former glory as a shrine to the west. I could tell that the room had been recently cleaned and aired but wished I was elsewhere nonetheless. For one thing, the bed was too small for both of us; it would be fine for a night or two but as we were supposed to be staying in London for a week, I figured that after a few days, neither of us would be able to get any sleep. Given the choice, we would have stayed in a hotel but Isaac had insisted we stay with him and we thought it would be rude to decline his offer.

  ‘This is supposed to be our honeymoon,’ I said. ‘And look. We’re sleeping in the same single bed that I slept in until I was eighteen years old.’

  ‘I just hope he’s changed the sheets then,’ said Hitomi with a smile. ‘Maybe we can fulfil som
e of your teenage fantasies while we’re here.’

  ‘Not likely,’ I said. ‘The walls are very thin. I think this is going to freak me out too much.’

  ‘These pictures,’ she said, walking around, looking at each of the posters and photographs in turn. ‘You put these up?’

  ‘When I was a kid, yes,’ I said. ‘Isaac got them for me. That’s a replica of one of the posters from a play which my great-grandfather put on in Chicago in 1875. Apparently he was performing in that play when he heard about Custer’s last stand and practically scalped some poor actor on stage.’

  Hitomi grimaced and pointed to another one, a sepia photograph of Buffalo Bill sitting outside a theatre with another man, a cigarette clenched tight between closed teeth, his long white hair flowing towards his collar. ‘And this one,’ she asked. ‘When is this from?’

  ‘A year or so before that, I think,’ I said. ‘That’s Texas Jack Omohundro on the left. My great-grandfather brought him with him from Missouri to Chicago and they both got hired as actors to play themselves. This was before Bill took over the productions himself. And this one here,’ I said, showing her the biggest, most colourful poster of all which was framed on the wall facing my bed. ‘This is an original print of a poster used when he was travelling across Europe with the Congress of Rough Riders of the World.’

  ‘The wild west show,’ said Hitomi, nodding.

  ‘Not really. The wild west show was more of a Cowboys and Indians set-up. The congress took warriors from a bunch of different countries, America, Japan, Russia, Britain and so on, and set them up in traditional costumes to act out battles. It was more international than the wild west show. It still had all the elements of that though, he just added a lot more to it.’

  ‘It’s interesting,’ Hitomi muttered and I couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘You think?’ I said, sceptical.

  ‘Well to have such a famous ancestor,’ she said. ‘It’s interesting because it’s strange. It is true, isn’t it?’