Mephista

by Maurice Limat

  However, the lion-tamer was back to his initial suspicions.

  “You didn’t come here for nothing, for the fun of it… You have nothing new to tell us… So, I know you were talking with someone.”

  Mirk started to deny it, but Crucifer seemed to be particularly irritable and Teddy Verano easily imagined that this strong man, who was probably very handsome before being mauled by some wild animal, must have seen his personality deteriorate afterward—and likely, it probably wasn’t very easy-going to start with.

  “You’re going to talk, right?”

  Teddy Verano was starting to feel uneasy. His story was a total lie. He had tried to fool the gnome with his tall tale of an article, photos, and an interview, but this would probably not hold up with a brute like Crucifer.

  On the other hand, if Mirk apparently had accepted without question what Teddy Verano had told him, it was because he seemed to be not normal, mentally speaking, but he had responded with strange ramblings that the detective was still waiting to sort out, seeing that it only added to the mystery that he felt was looming over this circus haunted by monsters.

  Crucifer belched out some words that got lost in the wind, which had started whistling again around Montdidier. The detective saw the poor clown literally lifted off the ground with one hand by the animal-tamer.

  “Are you going to answer me?”

  Mirk talked, terrorized, hanging above the snowy ground, struggling to get free and nodding his head in Teddy Verano’s direction. The detective knew that he had been made.

  Scared by the heavy hand of the lion-tamer, the clown, with no costume or make-up, the miserable human waste, gave up any thought of defense and admitted that somebody had come and this somebody was still close by.

  Crucifer let go of Mirk, who rolled in the snow, and barked:

  “Photos! A guy who wants photos! I’ll give him some photos of Mahlia!”

  He leaped, pushed the young woman back, forcing her to scramble up the stairs, and forced her back into the trailer. In the process, Teddy Verano saw her once again, in full light this time, with her silken bathrobe clinging tightly to her body. Thus, for a second, she looked almost nude, which shook him up. Because it reminded him of a distant memory of a naked woman… but who?

  Crucifer reappeared, slamming the door on Mahlia, crashing down the steps and running into the snow, still in shirtsleeves like he was laughing at the cold, the wind and the snowflakes fluttering around him.

  In a mad rage he kept shouting:

  “Photos! The swine! He’s gonna see…”

  Teddy Verano thought he could stand up to him, physically. But practically speaking, he was in the wrong. He did not belong to the police department and, in any event, no police officer would be allowed to question a suspect at such late hour.

  His only choice was to disappear, which he would have done willingly if he could have gotten his bearings. But the night was dark, and the blinding snow and cold wind were not very encouraging for an honorable retreat.

  “Hey everybody!” Crucifer rumbled. “Come over here! Zigano! Lack-o-Luck! Wildor! Everybody come here! There’s a guy who wants pictures of us. Ha, ha, ha!”

  His raucous laugh rang out louder than the snowstorm and, for a brief instant and he punctuated his call with a particular sound: despite being troubled, the detective recognized the crack of a whip. The expert tamer had grabbed his work tool and was searching for him, tracking him like a wild beast.

  Yvonne’s husband quickly thought, What nest of vipers have I gotten myself into?

  He could have asked himself another question: Was all this of any use to his investigation? Had the things he heard between Crucifer and Mahlia, and from the mouth of the scarlet clown, any connection to the macabre adventure of young Agnes or the violation of Vivienne Lefort’s grave?

  But this was no time to ask himself such questions.

  In the snow falling onto the fairgrounds, in the middle of the Crucifer Circus, people started popping up.

  Dragged out of their sleep, dark shapes appeared in the black and white night; everyone in the troupe, those hideous people, frightening to look at, those ugly freaks, answered the call of the disfigured lion-tamer to began the hunt for their prey.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The smell was enough for Teddy Verano to know where he had just run to: the animal cages. The musty smell of straw and the huge animal bodies, in spite of the chill, smelled strongly. The detective had slipped under a canvas sign, being especially careful to stay out of sight, helped by the dark night.

  Except that, now, he was here.

  A faint rumbling could be heard nearby. He figured that he was too close to a cage and moved away. Not only was he aware of the danger, but he also felt completely ridiculous. And he was furious. He thought about Gerard, his stepson, his protégé.

  If he saw me in this bind, he would crack up. Teddy caught in a trap… now, that’s funny. I can hear him already.

  The big cats were rolling around in their beds of straw that their keepers had piled into the cages to protect them from the cold. On passing by, two or three times before, Teddy Verano had felt the aura of heat from the infrared lights, which cast red splotches in the darkness, and sometimes sparkled off the eyes of the lions and tigers who were arranged in couples in two different cages. It was very dim, only a relative light; Teddy Verano preferred the dark. This was no time to get spotted.

  He could still hear Crucifer screaming outside, and other voices answering. They had called out and yelled, and with the rumbling storm, it all melted into a muffled cacophony that was broken every now and again by Crucifer’s whip lashing at the wind, or the muted curses of crowd, or the soft roars of the wild animals being disturbed in their tranquility, smelling the stranger and crouching in their cages.

  Mirk had collapsed in the snow. Crucifer had tossed him there, but now the runt, obviously aware that he could not avoid the madman’s anger (which was why he had changed his mind and ended up confessing that there really was a visitor) had decided to give up the intruder. Finally, he scrambled to his feet and started searching with the others around the trailers.

  In fact, they found little evidence of the detective’s presence. The snow and the wind had covered his tracks within seconds. Moreover, the members of the troupe all arrived at the same time, only adding to the general confusion, which allowed Teddy Verano a few seconds’ headstart that he used to sneak, a little blindly, under the canvas.

  He now was with the animals, but maybe they were not as dangerous as these weird people in the Crucifer Circus. Besides, as he moved forward, just feeling his way, instinctively avoiding the dim light of the infrareds, it sounded like the muted thunder of voices being carried away by the snowstorm was coming closer, louder, more intense.

  He understood. He had no other choice.

  Very agilely, even with his overcoat, Teddy Verano rolled under one of the cages that was sitting on its wheels and sealed with hay underneath to resist the cold. He huddled up there and did not move, suffocating in spite of the cold, very uncomfortable, bothered by the hay that tickled his ears and crept into his sleeves and pant legs. But as it was, he was nearly invisible.

  Crucifer and the others barged in and Teddy Verano, lying on the ground, saw in the vague red light a strange merry-go-round of the performers. They were dripping with snow and shook it off. They were not completely dressed, but wrapped up enough, except for the lion-tamer who seemed unmindful of the cold.

  They were here, led by Crucifer. The entire Circus except for one person—Mahlia.

  Despite his position, that was as awkward as it was ridiculous and dangerous, Teddy Verano thought again of the beauty who always wore her mask, a mask that she even refused to take off for Crucifer, a mask that hid…

  ...What kind of face?

  “Miss Mahlia has no face.”

  Crazy words from an even crazier creature. Mirk, the scarlet clown, had spoken this nonsense and Teddy Verano believed he was saved
by this eccentricity. Except that the idiot, under Crucifer’s threats, had betrayed him and thrown the gang of ugly misfits on his trail.

  He saw them and wondered how long they would continue searching for him. But, all of a sudden, they changed their attitude. They started laughing in a weird way and shouting at each other so loudly, so noisily, that with the background of the storm and the roaring of the animals fed up with the disturbance, not much of what they said could be understood.

  Teddy Verano, however, could make out that they were talking about him among other things. He heard:

  “Photos… get out of here… scared… photos… he’s crazy… no right… photos… forbidden… photos… beauty…”

  The word “beauty” had suddenly rang out and everyone repeated it continually.

  “Beauty… beauty… beauty...”

  Teddy Verano breathed deeply, but with great caution, because he did not want to be caught.

  They were talking and laughing, laughing hysterically, especially the women, which was painful. They made jokes, which caused more laughter. But everything was as painful to hear as it was to see. For Teddy Verano, even in his awkward position, could see them.

  Every man and woman, surrounding Crucifer, who stood beside the sinister gnome who turned into a scarlet clown for the shows.

  The fat man with the swollen, lipless face and huge ears, who was horribly ugly, was the Ringmaster; both he and the ludicrous clown introduced the shows. Teddy Verano had imagined his ugliness before, but now, without make-up, he saw him as a tragic horror. The Ringmaster, a monstrous swine…

  And that deformed, endless nose like a trunk… That nose marring the face of a woman, whose melancholy eyes were not without beauty, and whose mouth remained sensual. The amazon, who had so nimbly jumped through the paper hoops. This poor woman was good-looking, but could easily be made fun of, which had probably happened far too often in her life.

  And the Zigano family… the hideous one-eyed woman with her husband and son, the albinos whose bald, repugnant heads glistened in the infrared, making them look like ridiculous demons. And the couple’s daughter, so poorly favored, this awful girl with the lunar head, maybe a half-wit, whose squat body, all muscles, looked like an athlete’s seen in a concave mirror, with no traces of femininity...

  Here was the magician without his top hat, without his make-up and novelty tie, which had half-hidden his face during the show, looking horrendously ape-like.

  And his partner—Teddy Verano guessed that she was the one called Fever Blister—whom he had smiled at, who looked horribly ravaged, with her skin all wrinkled and folded, shriveled up, but with younger hands than he could have imagined, affected by some mysterious sickness that made her a kind of living mummy. Without make-up she, too, came out of the dark and recalled some spectral apparition.

  All the acrobats were there. The woman with the awful birthmark; the man with his lazy eye stuck in a corner of the socket, so that you did not know whether to laugh or be scared at his terrible face.

  All of them were there… and now, they seemed to have forgotten that they had left their trailers because Crucifer called them to search for the crazy guy who wanted a photo of Miss Mahlia. A photo of a member of this grotesque band.

  Crucifer suddenly shouted:

  “Be quiet!”

  And he cracked his whip.

  Overhead, Teddy Verano heard the animals rumbling and the heavy footsteps of a digitigrade echoing on the planks. The wild cat was pacing, not happy. He heard it moving around the straw. But the whip cracked again and even the lion quieted down.

  Teddy Verano wondered what all this meant, and inevitably thought of the wake in Péronne, and the opened grave near Senlis.

  Little by little, he sensed that this gathering of the circus freaks held something mysterious. They were already forgetting about the intruder who had snatched them out of the beds. Since Crucifer had called them, they had come, but they were happy to have an excuse to come here. For what purpose? That was another question…

  Impressive, with his whip in hand, Crucifer managed to quiet them down.

  Teddy Verano was still hiding, awkwardly, scratched and pricked and annoyed by countless needles of hay. He squirmed around and strained his neck to the breaking point in order to see. The frightful faces, emerging from the night in splotches of dark purple zones, looked almost supernatural in the startling décor.

  The lion-tamer’s fist seized the little man called Mirk by the collar. He pushed him roughly into the middle of the circle formed by all the ill-fated, either from birth or from some unfortunate accident.

  The tamer moved around and appeared sometimes with his good profile, which showed him off, or sometimes with the opposite side, and the awful scars in the infrared glow that made him more hideous than ever.

  “Mirk promised!” he roared. “You know what he promised us!”

  A kind of muffled clamor came out of the mouths of all those present. And the inarticulate voices expressing some weird feelings, maybe of desperation or of anger, maybe of hope or of repressed, hysterical madness, echoed through the wild animals and stirred them up. Teddy Verano shuddered on hearing them above him, very close, separated only by the wooden planks of the cage that shook under their powerful paws as their huge claws scraped dreadfully, making him break out in a cold sweat, even though he was safe from their attack and the men might be more dangerous.

  Crucifer jumped, cracked his whip, and made the big cats move back, growling but obeying.

  Mirk had not moved. Obviously, he was scared. Teddy Verano saw that the gnome was trembling, but, at times, the detective glimpsed the nasty look on the scarlet clown’s face. And he understood Miss Mahlia’s fears.

  In his eyes, those strangely bright eyes, Mirk had a real glimmer from Hell. The little man, no doubt, hated the lion-tamer. He could have hated him for a number of reasons, but the main thing (it was not hard to guess) was the privileged situation that he had with the masked dancer.

  After controlling the animals for the moment, Crucifer stormed back into the circle, shoving the performers in the process. But nobody said a word. It seemed that, in the weird Crucifer Circus, the actions and the will of the boss was law.

  Teddy Verano had seen many fairs in his lifetime, been friends with many performers in the ring and in the music hall, but he was thinking that he had never seen an ambiance like this. Where was that famous fraternal solidarity among travelers, always ready to help each other and never leave a comrade in trouble? Here, he figured, these people were brought together and held together by some infernal pact, by some dreadful power.

  “Mirk promised,” Crucifer resumed. “He came to see me tonight. He still hasn’t found it but…”

  Everyone started fidgeting again and talking at the same time. The commotion lasted 30 seconds before Crucifer ended it with a crack of his whip.

  “Mirk knows. Mirk’s got the secret. He can give you... give us what belongs to us by natural right. We must all benefit from his aid.” Another crack of the whip cut through the murmuring and he continued. “Tell them, Mirk. Tell them what you’re going to do.”

  The gnome looked up and his face rose directly into the infrared glow. Even though he was in regular clothes, with nothing special about them, and had no make-up on, Teddy Verano thought he was seeing the scarlet clown again. But not the funny, friendly performer, amusing children and young souls. No, something like a demon, god-awful ugly with eyes spitting flames and a body that more than ever recalled the nightmares of Hoffman and Grimm.

  “I’m working on it,” his thin voice said. “I’m working for you, for all of you. For you, Crucifer, for you, Wildor, and for you, Vera Zigano.”

  He turned and pointed to each of them in turn. Nobody said a word and, in this movement, the terrorized runt suddenly took on an authority that he had lacked so far.

  “For you… for you… for you…”

  He stopped. The big cats were growling in the shadows. Teddy Vera
no held his breath.

  “I asked for you help. So far, you’ve done what I asked. Oh, I know, Crucifer blames me for not succeeding yet. But be patient! I tried to snatch away from life that beauty that you’re all dreaming of. I wasn’t able.”

  He paused before continuing and his voice squealed unpleasantly. He was panting, but he shouted, which would have almost been funny if it were not so frightening.

  “I sent you out to look for death. I went myself. Neither life nor death has yet delivered to me the secret of true beauty, of living beauty.”

  It looked like Crucifer was about to do or say something. The scarlet clown stopped him by raising his hand.

  “I know… I believe I know what it takes. To satisfy all of you, to satisfy you, Crucifer, so that Mahlia can be what she ought to be, I’m going to try something else… I’m going even farther.”

  He hiccupped and you could not tell if the sound coming out of his mouth was laughter or moaning, threats or cries of terror.

  “Yes! Even farther! Since life and death haven’t given me what I want, I’m going to catch it in between. Do you understand?” He clenched his small, thin, knotty hands and pronounced, “In between… life and death.”

  His words fell in the silence. Crucifer did not move, as if subdued. He stood there with arms crossed over his whip. The hideous carnies encircling him in the red glow looked frozen but their eyes were alive, intensely. Even the wild cats were quiet.

  In between life and death… What does he mean? Teddy Verano, captivated, panicky, asked himself.

  Mirk suddenly stood as tall as he could.

  “But you have to obey me.”

  With one voice the men and women yelped:

  “We will obey you.”

  “You have to go farther than I have pushed you so far.”

  “We will do it.”

  “We will do it!” Crucifer barked. “We will do whatever you say. But watch out! I warn you. You’ve jeopardized us. You’ve demanded outrageous things. You’re going to incur the wrath of the authorities. We’ve already had to make good an escape a few times. We’ll do anything for what we want, but you’re forewarned—you’d better not deceive us.”