by J. M. Walker
An owl hooted. Another returned the compliment. The Ring Master took his cue and belted into action.
“Lords, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, exaggerating each word. “Tonight you have chosen to attend Whyte and Wingate’s world famous circus, the most extraordinary circus on these shores. A show so amazing, you won’t believe it’s real. A show you will never, ever forget!”
He threw up his hands, encouraging his audience to applaud.
Suddenly into the tent ran Jim the Strongman, holding a small woman horizontally above his head. As the strongman walked the ring, arms locked, grinning, a horde of other young women cartwheeled into view, some flipping the others over their shoulders. The clowns flowed next, making the children squeal, then the adults gasped too as in rollicked Doris, head bobbing as she started her single circuit. Bear followed, trying to keep close to Doris’s ankles, while upon his back, Edward the tufted capuchin held tightly on to the bespectacled anteater’s fur. Bessie the Budgie flew high above, as the whole troupe swirled and danced their way around the Ring Master.
Every show needs a big opening, and this was topped by the fierce leopard running into the ring. The cat made straight for the Ring Master before his chain tightened on cue, arresting his attack a foot short. The leopard pawed at the air, the crowd began to cheer and the Ring Master knew he was all set.
As he ushered his acts from the Big Top he glimpsed Lord Morgan stroking his terrier upon his lap, sitting in seat 28, row E.
Since the moment he’d agreed to stage this show for the professor, the Ring Master had been scripting its story. He would open with a flourish, bedazzling his punters with his many moving actors, both human and animal. He would then divide his troupe, conducting a show of two parts. The first would be replete with his swirling, twirling boys and girls, throwing themselves in their skinny tights about the place, spinning on their heads and from their swings. The crowd would oo and aar. But deep inside, every person watching, including the younger ladies, would compare themselves to his costumed athletes, and wonder if they too were capable of such prowess.
So he would call for an adjournment, and whet their appetites with a promise of more exotic feats in the second Act. Feats they had never seen, and could never mimic. Exhilarated and expectant, his audience would wander the meadow, paying good money for old chestnuts and cheap candies. They would talk and chatter and whip themselves into frenzy. And then he would send in his trained animals.
The first Act went to plan. The wind had died and the Big Top stood still in the night air. The trapezes flew true and the audience craned their necks trying to spot the smallest boy at the top of the tent, before he swallow dived some thirty feet into a fraying net staked into the ground. The clowns played. Jim the Strongman lifted his weights and almost dropped his girl. But he managed to catch her as she fell, planting a kiss upon her cheek to more applause. The Ring Master cracked his whip, maintaining a pace, conscious of Lord Morgan’s comments about not boring him with human acrobats.
Soon thirty minutes had passed and it was time for the intermission. As the crowd left their seats, the Ring Master found his monkey outside. Edward was already holding three small sticks sweating paraffin. The Ring Master handed Edward a fourth, forgetting to douse it. Edward chattered his teeth, looking at the two sticks in his left hand and the two now in his right. He became confused and a little frightened. He looked about him for help, but Doris was drinking from a bucket, while Bear was dozing some more. Bessie was gone and he couldn’t remember being helped by the old leopard in all his days. He tried to speak to the Ring Master, who ignored his little shrieks and cries.
Suddenly Lord Morgan appeared carrying his terrier, much like a maid might carry her kitchen kitten.
“I’ll be very interested to see how this primate performs,” he told the Ring Master, nodding down at Edward, now fiddling with the sticks on the black grass. “I have a theory you see. Animals aren’t stupid, no, far from it. But they’re not thinkers. They don’t rationalise things like we do. They have a more simple intellect.”
The Ring Master stood tall, trying to act the professor’s equal.
“Yes, stupid creatures really,” he agreed. “But biddable. Nothing like a bit of carrot. And a big stick. And with a master trainer, you can create any illusion you like.”
“Precisely Sir!”
Lord Morgan chortled, trying to be agreeable.
“Illusion is just the word!” he continued. “I’m betting my last pound that animals can be highly trained. I expect to see a real show in a moment. But I stake my professional reputation that this here monkey can’t improvise. It can’t plan, and it can’t scheme. Its brain works like the cogs and machines in a factory. It whirs, and it processes things alright, but that is all. Trial and error. Learning by repetition. That’s how a monkey learns. That’s how any animal learns. That monkey is no man. What he makes up for in undoubted character, he lacks in imagination.”
The Ring Master nodded in agreement, but he was only thinking about fame and money. He would give Lord Morgan a show, one great illusion if that is what he wanted. He would play the professor and satisfy himself that being clever wasn’t all about studies and qualifications and degrees.
The Ring Master looked at row E, seat 28 and made sure he caught the professor’s eye. He threw up his arms and cracked his whip.
“Lords, ladies and gentlemen, the second half of the most amazing show on Earth!” he cried.
He immediately took off his hat and bowed, giving way to the huge animal rumbling into view through the curtains.
Doris made for her large red metal stool. She placed her front legs upon it, raised her left back leg off the floor, extended her tail and curled her trunk to the sky. As the tassels swung about her body, she let out the most enormous sound. It was a bellow rather than a trumpet. The sort of sound a wild elephant would make when it stood upon a thorn or met a blunderbuss. It was enough to impress half the audience and frighten the other. Lord Morgan removed a pencil from the spine of his notebook and with his dog nestled upon his lap he scribbled a thought. Bessie, keen-eyed as birds are, noticed. She flew into the ring and between Doris’s legs, pulling up and about.
“He saw you. He saw you,” she said, flying past Doris’s huge ear.
She circled about.
“Do something else. Something different.”
Excited and emboldened, Doris started to think and remember. She recalled her youth, and the rivers of Munnar in the state of Kerala. She had been born high in the mountains, her first breath of air so fresh it tasted like iced water. Her mother and her aunts came to mind, and her cousin who had shown her how to dance a two-step, a useful manoeuvre when the mugger crocodiles crawled too close.
So on the floor of the circus she performed a little two-step. The crowd clapped in delight.
“More,” shouted Bessie, on the wing.
Doris started to find her feet. Long ago she had worked out that elephants didn’t walk like people thought. They could amble and run and they could jump and have fun, when they wanted. And right now, Doris decided she wanted a little fun. She wanted to impress her Ring Master, the crowd and the watching Lord Morgan. She would help save the circus.
So she picked up her left front leg, and left back leg. To gasps, she didn’t fall. But by carefully transferring her weight, she was able to swing her two legs underneath her belly, using her trunk and tail for balance.
“That’s it Doris!” chirped Bessie, watching from up high.
The Ring Master became unsure of himself. He’d never seen Doris do something original. She was a good, solid elephant. The kind he used as an example to his troupe, the humans and animals. He and Doris had a strict routine, an act that worked, that was orchestrated, choreographed and timed. He didn’t teach the two-step and didn’t know elephants could stand that way. Whip t
o the floor, he watched as the crowd cheered Doris on.
She did a little jump, just enough to raise all four feet off the floor at once, and pranced like the white horses of circus days past. Bessie was beside herself as she saw Lord Morgan move forward in his seat, his dog licking the hair of the lady in front.
Doris then began to tire. Her tassels fell still as her movements became smaller. Soon she found herself standing next to her stool, panting through her mouth, her ears flapping to cool her great girth. She was done, having invented in the moment her very own five minute variety act. The boys from the cigarette factory jumped to their feet, ash falling as they forgot themselves, applauding the best girl in the house. The parents shook their kids’ shoulders while the orphans looked on, any adventure a treat.
The Ring Master recalculated.
“I give you the biggest, boldest and most exquisitely trained elephant in all the Empire,” he announced, bowing towards the professor.
At that moment, off script, Bear the giant anteater plodded into the ring. Usually a circus boy held him by his spectacle strap until it was time, but all the hands had forgotten their jobs, absorbed by their dancing elephant.
Bear too had decided on something different. He ran in the opposite direction to that planned, gathering speed as he hugged the barrier. Wary of the whip, he added a flourish. He ran and he ran, but in ever decreasing circles, closing the gap between himself, Doris and the Ring Master. He became giddy and let his tongue flop free, adding a comical pink protrusion. The factory boys stayed standing and even the ladies took to their feet.
The Ring Master raised his whip, but the gap was now too small. So he cracked it above his head. The crowd thought it part of the show and shouted back until the dizzy anteater came to rest underneath the belly of the tired elephant.
The Ring Master cried out in French.
“Voila!” he screamed.
He hated the word and the language. But it was all that was left to him, a remnant of his time in the Paris slums where he’d first plied his trade.
The word caught the ear of Jim the Strongman. He immediately knew something to be wrong. But the Ring Master seemed excited, and Lord Morgan pleased. The crowd loved it, and would surely spread the word through the ships and markets on the harbour. Anyway, did any circus performance ever go exactly to plan?
Suddenly a tiny creature staggered into view, holding firesticks. Edward the pin monkey had gathered his thoughts, composed himself and decided what he must do. He could juggle four sticks at once. It was easy when he thought about it. It was all about balance, and monkeys were good at balancing. It was about using his hands and his thumbs, and monkeys had the best thumbs of anyone. He had stereoscopic vision and an agile mind. And so he staggered on his hind legs into the circus arena, standing tall in his little waistcoat and bowler hat. He wobbled about his hips, two sticks in each hand, and made a fateful decision. He would juggle his firesticks, and he would do it on Doris’s back, high up where all could see.
The monkey ran up Doris’s trunk, over her head and settled on his bum. He jumped up again and twirled, letting out a cry, to be sure the audience had noticed. Then he placed his sticks on Doris’s thick leather skin and dipped into a tiny pocket. He withdrew a match and flicked it against a callus on Doris’s neck.
The Ring Master’s mouth dropped. Beholden to the small orange flame climbing from Edward’s fist, he watched, powerless to intervene as the monkey held it to two of his sticks, which caught fire like a Christmas pudding. Edward squealed in delight and ignited the others. He stood like a revolutionary upon an elephant’s back, holding aloft his beacons of change. Out of a single hand he tossed two sticks into the air. Time seemed to freeze as the Ring Master, Jim the Strongman, the circus boys and girls and every man, woman and child in the audience watched. Up went the sticks, one spinning faster than the other. Edward too looked on amazed as they reached their zenith. Then down they came, and Edward suddenly realised he had to catch two sticks, with only one free hand. He stretched his arm, opened his little hand and grasped at the air. He had calculated well. Gravity spun one of the sticks and it landed plumb in his fingers, the flames well away from his fur.
Only Bessie seemed to notice the second stick. Perhaps being a bird, she was used to registering and calculating the trajectories of airborne objects. As Edward and the crowd shrieked in delight, Bessie swooped down as the second flaming stick bounced off Doris’s back, tumbling to the floor. She caught it within her tiny beak, the pink ridge between her eyes glowing, and dropped to the sawdust, landing next to Bear.
Edward stood to milk the applause, his heart beating strong within his chest. Bessie’s heart too was aflutter, while Bear felt more exhilarated than perhaps an anteater had even been. The Ring Master stared at his charges, aghast.
And then came the cat. For the first time ever, the cat was not on its leash. The old boy had already thrown his collar and was running naked. He looked young and lithe. He moved smooth and fast.
He’d spent all afternoon working it out. He had planned to escape his collar in the ring, to dance the dance with the Ring Master, and then pace just below the barrier, where he’d be harder to see from row E. When the Ring Master withdrew his whip, he would bound over its edge and leap at the unsuspecting Lord Morgan.
But the actions of Doris, Bear, Edward and Bessie had altered his calculus. Just like he was born to do, he had to improvise during the hunt. He first adjusted his approach, deciding to attempt a quick kill rather than stalking his prey. The old leopard burst through the canvass curtains and closed the space between himself and Lord Morgan.
Then he corrected his course. He knew he had to first confront and confuse the strongest member of this human herd, before turning to strike at the newest, most naive member. He bound forward with such verve that the Ring Master staggered back and tripped over his own boots, falling on to his back. As his hat toppled from his head, the crowd cheered.
The leopard pretended to strike at the Ring Master lying on the floor, then turned to his left and leaped up on to the side of the barrier. As he landed he paused. He hissed and calculated the distance to Lord Morgan sitting just a few rows higher. Only now did he spot that the white, black and tan dog was sitting in Lord Morgan’s lap.
The old leopard had a thing about dogs. He loathed their pack mentality, how they ran with the humans that owned them. How you’d never see a dog brave enough to hunt alone, or at night. But much as he loathed them, he remembered the jackals and the African hunting dogs that once chased him down, stealing his kills. He knew they could be tenacious and they could bite.
Lord Morgan’s terrier had already realised the threat. He was standing now, his paws upon his master’s knees, eyes keen. He was a fox-terrier, and feared no predator. Though his breed had become a popular show dog and family companion, he instinctively thought he had the measure of the cat. He would attack the lunging leopard’s throat, and throw him off balance before chasing him into the fields and running him to ground.
The old leopard leaped, clearing the first row of scrawny kids. The terrier too committed to the fight, launching his small, stocky frame off his owner’s lap.
Suddenly, the blast of a shotgun cracked the air.
The sound whipped at the old leopard’s body, throwing him off balance. The dog, used to it, came at him, burying his teeth into the leopard’s belly.
Jim the Strongman stood in the centre of the ring, a wisp of smoke rising from the Belgium-made gun in his hands. Knowing he couldn’t risk firing into the audience, he had shot high, puncturing the canvass behind and above Lord Morgan’s head.
The crowd panicked. Those near the fighting animals fell off their benches, while mayhem spread around the tent, as gentlemen pushed past ladies and ladies pulled at the shoulders of the orphan children, all trying to flee the confines of Whyte and Wingate’s Big T
op.
The moment gone, the old leopard executed a fighting retreat. He scraped and he tried to claw. He almost caught the terrier’s leg in his mouth, being moments from ending it. But the terrier kept digging into his body. So the leopard turned and ran along row E, dancing between the legs of the terrified punters as Jim the Strongman tracked him with the gun, hoping to fire the second barrel.
Doris, Edward and Bear were soon surrounded. The clowns ran into the ring unsure what to do, while the audience kicked dust into the air, covering the mouth and nose of the Ring Master, who was still lying on his back, shouting in French.
Doris too panicked. She reared on to her hind legs, almost toppling Edward off her back. Bear the anteater curled into a ball beneath her, while Bessie took to the air again, still holding a burning fire stick. In all her time, Doris had never been frightened inside a Big Top. But this evening, she began a stampede.
She stepped over Bear and charged at a gap in the benches. She put her head down, steeled her shoulders and ran at the wall of the tent, bursting through it into the cool spring air. The blow of the canvass knocked over Edward. He dropped the sticks he had so carefully controlled just minutes before. They fell to the grass, and nibbled at the canvass as Edward bounced upon Doris like a tiny cowboy riding a giant, angry bronco.
By the time Doris stopped running she was on the other side of the meadow. Her shawl was torn from her back, the red ropes from her legs, her hat crumpled upon her head. Edward was shaking, two little hands clenched on to one of her ears as he dangled just below her tushes.