by Richard Ayre
I lived with, but apart from, the ordinary humans who surrounded me. In the blink of an eye they ripened, faded, and died: like rotten fruit. I grew older and stayed the same. Once more, the idea they were below me began to slink through my mind. I viewed them impassively and kept away from them as much as I could, because I could feel myself becoming more and more different. I grew aloof to their pain and hardship, their luck and their greed. I began to dislike them. My walking kept me fit and healthy; that, and the poisonous curse that ran through my blood.
I got to know Italy well, and it was in Italy in 1975 where I joined the circus. And, in a strange and roundabout way, the circus ultimately led me to the truth about Herbert Pfumpf. I’ve said it many times and I mean it: there is no fate.
But sometimes coincidence makes it seem like there is a destiny.
*
I came upon the circus one autumn afternoon outside Sienna, and I acted on a spur-of-the-minute intuition. What did I have to lose?
I’d been in Sienna for only a few weeks and had spent my afternoons busking with my guitar and flute and my evenings sitting outside cafes, whittling away at wooden figurines and dispassionately watching the people go by.
One afternoon, I saw some men pull up in a van which had a huge, grinning clown’s face on the side. They began putting up signs for the circus and I wandered down to the area outside the town to find the Big Top erected and the cages with the animals already set up around it.
I’d never visited a circus before, so I bought a ticket for the evening show then sat on a low hill, drinking from a bottle of wine and eating bread and cheese as I watched the circus folk get ready for the show.
I saw men going into caravans and emerge dressed as clowns. I heard lions roaring and saw them being fed. A man and a woman dressed like a Red Indian and a saloon girl were doing their make-up outside in the warm evening air. Trapeze artists flounced about, warming up for the show.
At the allotted time I joined the small crowd and took my seat inside the tent. The smell was wonderful: warm and sweet, the tang of fresh sawdust in the ring. It reminded me a little of the stables back in Rothbury when I was a lad, and I smiled at the memories.
I watched the show and it was entertaining enough. The lion tamer was good, although I could see that the lions were not all that fierce; they kept going up to him for a hug and a lick of his face, even though he tried to coax them to roar from time to time. The elephant parade was okay, but only to watch in awe at the size of those wonderful beasts. The trapeze artists were excellent, the clowns were stupid and boring. But I liked the idea of it; I liked the circus.
After the show, I hung around outside. I saw the ringmaster and sauntered over to ask him if there were any jobs going.
‘What can you do?’ he asked, gruffly, in thickly accented Italian.
I shrugged. ‘I can carry things around.’
He looked at me sideways. ‘Come back tomorrow. Senior Gravaldi will be here then. He’s the owner. We’ll see what he says.’
I shook his hand and left, returning the next day. Gravaldi shrugged and said there was always room for one more set of shoulders. He warned me the job would be seasonal and on a bed-and-breakfast basis only. I agreed and he sent me off to see the boss hostler, who would be my immediate superior. He asked if I had any experience with horses and I told him I had been a stable boy when I was a kid, which was true. Of course that had been nearly seventy years ago, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
He checked me out as I worked and saw that I knew what I was doing. Over the years of touring with the circus I became responsible for all of the show horses and even mucked out for the elephants, remarkably intelligent animals which have remained a favourite of mine ever since.
Working in the circus was good for me. My boots lasted as I was no longer walking them into the ground, I had a bunk to kip in, and there was hard physical work to keep me fit. But the best thing about it was that, apart from one notable exception, I was never fully accepted by the circus folk.
It wasn’t that they gave me the cold shoulder or anything, but it was very quickly made clear that I was not like them. I was an outsider. They spoke to me—said hello, that sort of thing—but I was never invited to their campfires at night and they never really asked too much about me. Which was perfect for me. I kept my distance, I did my job and before long I became a “trouper”, a veteran of the circus circuit.
My years with the circus allowed me plenty of time to think. I didn’t want to think of Madeleine because that hurt too much. Instead, I sat at night and strummed my guitar, harking back to my past and how the Medic had changed me
*
October 1917. It was pouring with rain. It had been raining for months now and the trenches and shell holes were full of freezing, filthy water.
A lot of the men had gone down with trench foot, which wasn’t surprising as we were all constantly soaked and frozen. There was no shelter, no hiding from the incessant rain. We couldn’t even get into in our dug outs as they were all underwater. We huddled in the filthy pools and shivered and sneezed, waiting for the attack we knew was coming.
The German guns had been battering us for days, and reams of men had already been killed. Those of us left alive had been driven almost mad by the continuous barrage.
But the guns had stopped, so we knew an attack was imminent. We crouched, up to our waists in the freezing water, waiting.
A flare went up from the German lines and we heard them shouting and cheering as they scrambled over their trenches.
‘Not long now, lads,’ came Greene’s calm and confident voice. ‘Not long now. You know what to do.’
I glanced at his soaked, exhausted figure and he winked at me and smiled. The man was incredible. I turned back to the enemy trenches.
No Man’s Land was a boggy mess, so it would take a while for them to get to us. But come they did. We jumped up and began shooting at the oncoming figures.
Men went down in twos and threes. At first it was easy for us because they were slipping and sliding over the deadly, sucking mud, some of them disappearing completely into its cold, dark embrace, but then their guns opened up again in a creeping barrage that covered their advance.
The shells crashed into our trenches; the gunners’ aim was perfect, and deadly.
Beside me, Tom Laidlow, a new recruit and only eighteen years old, was eviscerated as shrapnel tore into him. His body was flung to the four winds and his blood splattered into my face: a sudden warmth in the cold rain.
I ignored his death and kept firing, shouting at the lads around me to do the same. The shells kept coming.
Along our lines, the machine gunners finally got their act together and started firing into the murk, shooting at anything they could see.
Another shell exploded, high above us this time, the shrapnel throwing itself mercilessly into our trench.
There were screams as men were struck by the metal balls inside that shell. I heard the noise as they hit soft, wet bodies. It was a thud, thud, thud sound, muted in the rain.
Men were thrown down all around me, and I felt at least two pieces smack into my left arm and shoulder. My arm immediately went numb, but I continued to fire one-handed.
The Germans advanced inexorably.
We kept firing and we kept dying. The shells were doing some wicked work that day. Men were killed and wounded all around me. Me and another new recruit, Billy Fryer, pulled the corpses of friends from a Lewis gun and began battering away at the grey figures, seeing them fall like stalks of corn.
Billy and I were almost the only men left in that trench when the advance was finally pushed back two hours later. Incredibly, Billy had not been hit. His face, however, was white and his eyes were black holes of terror. Billy was killed a week later by a random sniper shot. We found out then that he had been only sixteen years old.
I had holes all over me, but I believed nothing vital had been hit. I had survived. Again.
Whe
n we were relieved and I got patched up, I watched as the torn bodies were carried away, the blood already washed from their carcasses. I followed them through the support trenches, towards the rear where we could hopefully find some rest and some shelter.
It was only later, sitting in the dubious shelter of a dank barn on an abandoned farm, that I discovered I had been hit in the chest as well as the arm.
The hole was small and round, and already forming a scab.
It seemed to be right over my heart.
I lit a cigarette and tried to forget about it. It had obviously not hit anything vital.
Luck. That’s all it was. Just luck.
*
My disinterest in other people continued to grow at the circus. I tried to fight it, but it was impossible, and the crowds who turned up every night for the performances only seemed to reinforce my beliefs. They started to resemble cattle to me: stupid and unthinking.
I was so different to them that their lives seemed insignificant. It seemed they were born only to die, mostly after pointless existences. The odd news reports I read of disasters and loss of life left me cold. I watched the Cold War wax and wane across the globe, and new Presidents and Prime Ministers and Premiers grasped at their powers and ultimately fell from grace. And all I felt was disinterest. It didn’t matter, for they would all die one day. I didn’t care about them. I didn’t really care about me; but then again, I didn’t need to. Life clung to me like a leech. For them, it sucked them dry and left them dead in a heartbeat.
I really began to despise them for their pointlessness. I would see people grubbing and scrabbling to create wealth for themselves, wondering all the time what the use of it was. Each and every one of them seemed to think they would live forever and I, who had every reason to believe I would do just that, watched them sardonically. I remembered my feelings the day the Great War ended, thinking that I was a watcher now, not a doer. I seemed to have fulfilled that destiny. From my impervious throne, I watched humanity live and die. And it left me cold.
Yet that was the problem. If humans were so pointless, if their fleeting lives meant nothing, then what was the point of me? Logically, it would seem I was different for a reason, yet I had no idea what that reason was. Everything seemed to point to the fact that my special life was just a twist of nature, a mistake. I was an aberration, created for no good reason, and I didn’t even have the luxury of knowing it would all end someday. I began to hate myself as much as I hated everyone else.
God knows, I tried not to. I knew Madeleine would have been disappointed in me, but I couldn’t help it. It seemed to be inherent in me. I began to think that whatever it was that kept me alive, whatever kept me young, demanded payment. And that payment was a growing belief that humanity was an utter joke. A waste of time.
It was the Yin to the Yang, the up to the down. My body was eternally young, but my soul was slowly being strangled and embittered and darkened by my condition.
I think it was because of this growing arrogance and hatred of humanity that I decided to seduce another man’s wife.
*
In my defence, I didn’t make the first move.
Her name was Anya and she was a trapeze artist. She was twenty-nine and married to an ugly fellow called Bruno, who was built like a tank and who also swung high above the crowds in the circus shows. They were a double act: “The Flying Gombos”.
I had noticed her around the circus. As I’ve already said, although I had a growing disenchantment with other people, and despite the fact that the circus lot kept themselves to themselves, I still had the physical wants and needs of a man of twenty or so. So yes, I had noticed her.
Primarily because Anya Gombos was the most beautiful woman I have ever met, even more beautiful than Grace. She was nothing compared to Madeleine of course, but I had loved her not because she was the most physically perfect woman in the world, but because she was perfect for me. I ached for Madeleine every day. But Anya Gombos was in a different league as far as looks go.
Being a trapeze artist, her body was amazing. She was lithe and graceful and slim, with breasts that seemed to strain against the thin material of the leotards she wore for the show, and legs that went on forever. She had long, straight dark hair and her eyes were electric blue. Her face was a perfect heart, with wide lips and teeth of pearly whiteness. She was absolutely stunning.
I often watched her and her husband practising high above the floor of the Big Top, and it always amazed me how they could make something so complicated and dangerous look so easy. They trained hard. Every day they were up there with Bruno shouting his gruff instructions to her, telling her when to let go, when to grab on, and so on. It was all very exciting.
I loved to watch them, but only because I loved to see Anya’s amazing body contorting itself into unimaginable shapes. However, I would always tire of it soon enough. The old darkness would come along and swamp any fascination I had with their expertise and I would leave and get on with my tasks.
Neither of them really noticed me down there, but on a couple of occasions Anya had smiled at me as she passed me by when I was outside the caravans or mucking out the horses. I would nod back and then watch her walk away, her backside swaying deliciously in the tightest jeans I have ever seen anyone wear.
I had been with the circus almost two years before Anya and I became more than just acquaintances.
The last performance had ended and I had been finishing up some tasks, ready for the Top to be taken down early next morning. We were moving on again.
It was getting dark and I was walking through the ranks of trailers and caravans, looking forward to nothing more than sitting in front of the radio in my own trailer, maybe with a whiskey to top off the night before getting to bed.
I went past the Gombos’ trailer, and from inside I heard Bruno’s hoarse voice bellowing. Anya screeched back at him and I heard a crash; she must have chucked something at him. I never found out which East European country they had originally come from, but their voices sounded like wet barbed wire as they screamed and shouted at each other.
I shook my head and moved past the trailer, annoyed by their passionate altercation. There was always an argument going on somewhere around the circus, as the travelling folk were pretty zealous when they got going. I think they liked the arguments only so they could make up again later on. One would see a couple having a proper old ding-dong and then twenty minutes later they would be ensconced in a passionate embrace. It was just the way they were.
I had barely moved past the door when it banged open and Anya stormed out. She turned and bellowed something incomprehensible to Bruno inside and then slammed the door shut with such force that the trailer rocked. She stormed off and, before I could move, she had banged into me; she hadn’t seen me in the dark.
She jumped back and stared at me, glowering in the night. I remember she looked stunning. Her high, Slavic cheekbones were pink with fury and she was panting hard. She wore a tight t-shirt and jeans, and her pert breasts heaved up and down in time to her breathing.
She hissed something at me that sounded like a rusty knife scraping on a wall and then stormed off again into the darkness.
I shook my head again. Bloody stupid people.
I had hired my own trailer, sick of having to share with three other men, and it was set a little away from the others, where I liked to be. When I got to the door I spotted a red glow wavering just beyond it.
I squinted into the darkness and made out a slim form, accompanied by the sound of a muted voice as Anya smoked a cigarette and muttered to herself. I ignored her and opened the door of the trailer, climbing in and turning on the gas lamp. When I returned to close the door she was standing there, looking in.
I nodded to her. ‘Everything all right?’
She nodded too. ‘You have vodka?’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘No. But I have whiskey, which is much nicer.’
She thought for a second and then stepped up into the trai
ler.
‘I have whiskey with you.’ She paused, staring at me fiercely. ‘Unless you do not want to share.’
I shook my head once more, a little dumbfounded by her. ‘No. Please, have a whiskey with me.’
She sat down and I opened the bottle, pouring a couple of glasses. I gave her one and sat opposite her. She lit another cigarette then, as an afterthought, offered one to me. We smoked, Anya deep in thought and me wondering what the hell was going on.
‘Bruno is bastard,’ she finally said.
‘Really?’ I didn’t know what else to say.
She nodded. ‘He always tell me what to do, where to go, who to see, what to think. He’s bastard.’
I scratched my bearded cheek. I had suddenly had enough of her. I didn’t care what her husband was or what she thought of him.
‘I suppose you shouldn’t have married him then,’ I muttered and drained my glass, hoping she’d get the message.
But she didn’t. She just cocked her head to one side and studied me.
‘You are strange man,’ she eventually said. ‘You work and sleep and never go anywhere. Why you with circus? Are you thief, or criminal?’
She wasn’t frightened of the prospect, just curious.
In spite of myself, I poured another drink and topped her glass up when she held it out. ‘No. I’m not a criminal. I just want to be left alone, that’s all.’
‘Ah!’ she said, as if she had solved all the problems of the world. ‘A woman. You join circus because of woman, eh?’ She smirked at me and I felt the old dark anger begin to flow within me.
‘Why I’m here is no business of yours,’ I snarled. ‘Please finish your drink and leave so I can get some sleep.’