Now and then, Webern found himself fantasizing about another kind of circus, one with money and a skeleton crew and doors that shut, a circus where he could have his own boxcar and an hour to paint his face. But every time he daydreamed about it, he felt a twinge of guilt. If it hadn’t been for Dr. Show, Webern wouldn’t have found the circus in the first place—he’d still be trapped at home. He took pains not to forget that. Whenever he noticed himself getting greedy, he squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath until the voices of his sisters chattered again in his ears.
The big top seated seventy, but in the time Webern had worked there they’d never had a full house. It didn’t seem likely that they ever would, despite Dr. Schoenberg’s best attempts to advertise. The ringmaster phoned in notices to print in the next town’s pennysavers, and he always sent Webern out with a can of glue and a fistful of rolled-up posters the morning of their first show. Once, in New Hampshire, they had staged a parade of sorts, with tin cans clattering from the back of the Cadillac and Vlad and Fydor blowing kisses from the jalopy’s roof, but the local sheriff had informed them that such displays after ten PM were considered a disturbance of the peace, then had ticketed their red trailer for double parking. They never attempted such a “spectacular” again.
Despite their efforts, though, the show only drew a middling crowd most evenings. Thirty-five to forty was the norm: mostly frazzled mothers, teens who necked in the back row, kids with fruit-punch moustaches, and a few screaming toddlers thrown in at a discounted ticketing price. That wasn’t bad; the creaking bleachers could hardly support more weight, anyway. But lately, some shows had shrunk to a crowd of twenty-five, or once, even fifteen. Al, who’d been with the show the longest, sometimes waxed nostalgic for the early days, when Dr. Show had displayed him in a curtained box outside of flea markets and they’d turned a profit every time. But Hank, Eng, and most of the others—even Brunhilde in her better moods—still believed Dr. Show’s prediction that things were just about to turn the corner with ticket sales. All it would take was one fantastic performance, and the word of mouth would be out there, the best form of advertising, free and invisible but real as talent itself.
That night in Paradise Beach, it almost seemed as if the prediction was coming true. Webern peeked around the flap at the back of the big top where the performers entered and exited. The bleachers were nearly packed—fifty-five at least. In the low lights of the pre-performance, they were mostly shadows, but a few figures toward the front were distinct: a tubby man in swimming trunks and a bowling shirt unbuttoned well down his hairy chest; a lanky girl with a hula hoop balanced on her knees; a busty blonde, babbling obliviously to her beau, who fiddled with the hearing aid in one ear.
“Get a load of this crowd,” Nepenthe whispered. She leaned in close. She was in her show robe, floor-length satiny green with an oversize hood. “What a bunch of weirdos.”
Webern thumped his bowler hat against one leg, then put it on, careful not to smudge the incredulous black eyebrows he’d painted in the greasepaint on his forehead. He pulled a long balloon out of his pocket and stretched it between his hands. He’d make a flower first—a daisy, green stem with a white bloom, kid’s stuff—and give it to Miss Hula Hoop in the front row. Then he’d go straight into the sweeping routine, the one where he wound up dancing with the broomstick.
“Don’t look so scared, little buddy.” Hank patted Webern on the head. Hank was all decked out in his best safari whites; Freddy, the older tiger cub, trailed behind him on a leash. “You know what I always say: it’s not the size of the lion in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the lion. You’re going to do just fine.”
“Cut it out, Hank. Course I am.” Webern resisted the urge to kick Hank, hard, in the shins. He glanced back at Nepenthe. “It’s you guys I’m worried about.”
“Jerk.” Nepenthe pinched his rubber nose. It squeaked. Out on the dunes behind them, Brunhilde practiced singing scales.
After that evening’s show, the performers celebrated around the campfire, drinking warm rum from toy trumpets. Dr. Schoenberg had bought the trumpets for the shooting booth he’d set up a few towns back, but they’d made lousy prizes; now they were going to much better use. Webern thought so, anyway. He lay in the sand off to the side of the group, still wearing his hobo costume with its fingerless gloves and patched-up pants; he’d washed off the greasepaint, but that was all. The audience had applauded; nothing else mattered now. The beach undulated beneath him, and the stars turned above, orbiting too fast, like the speeded-up fake sky in the dome of a planetarium. His toy trumpet tilted up, empty, from his hand.
All around the fire, the other circus players talked and laughed, but their words blurred to incomprehension in Webern’s ears. Al was playing Louis Armstrong on his portable record player, and Dr. Schoenberg accompanied the album on his concertina. Everyone else was trying to stop him, but Webern liked the combination: the concertina’s yawns and sighs, melancholy and comic at the same time, twisted in and out of the singer’s honeyed voice. Sometimes wonder why I spend the lonely nights . . . dreaming of a song . . .
“Bernie? You out for the count already?”
Webern opened his eyes. Nepenthe towered over him, dressed in the lime green bedsheet burka she usually put on after the show. At first she’d looked exotic, but now she just reminded him of a child in a Halloween costume.
“Hey, what’s so funny?” Nepenthe glared down through the slit left for her eyes. She kicked sand at him.
Webern swatted at her foot. “Stop it, stop it.”
“Get up, then. We’re out of rum.”
“Ugh.” Webern pulled himself up onto his elbows, then sank back to the ground. “Why do I gotta go get it?”
“Because you drank most of the last bottle. Come on, come on.”
It occurred to Webern that he ought to do a drunk act sometime. With a groan, he pulled himself to his feet. He swayed, first to the left, then to the right. He could get a big jug with a skull and crossbones on the side—the Demon Liquor. Maybe Eng could dress up as a devil and chase him across the stage on all fours, with his legs bent back over his head. Then again, that might scare the little kids.
“Bernie?” Nepenthe waved her hand into his field of vision. Her gloves were green too, but darker, the colour of leaves.
“I’m going, I’m going.” Webern pushed past Nepenthe and stumbled off into the dark.
“Come back soon!” she called.
Webern walked carefully as the sand shifted under his feet. Behind him, the campfire crackled, and a chorus of cheers rose into the night as Al finally prized away Dr. Show’s concertina. Webern was a ways away when the sound of waves crashing grew louder than the party around the bonfire.
Even at night, the big yellow Cadillac was not too difficult to find. It gleamed softly in the darkness like an oblong moon. Webern groped his way around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. Inside, batons, leotards, masks, wigs, and tins of greasepaint and rouge lay together in a jumbled heap. Webern saw a burnt skillet—a roll of canvas and Dr. Schoenberg’s special set of paints—a yardstick and a record of klezmer music—and rummaged past a frayed whip, a beaded shawl, and a sombrero. At the very bottom he finally found a half-empty bottle of Jamaican dark, right next to Mars Boulder’s sword.
Webern had never really gotten a good look at the sword, but now, seeing it under the moonlight, he began to understand what the fuss was all about. Jewels crusted over the hilt, an elaborate arrangement of what looked like rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. The blade itself was smooth and flat. Webern saw himself darkly reflected there. He leaned in closer. Even though he practiced funny expressions or made himself up almost every day, it had been a long time since he’d really looked at his face.
“That’s me,” he murmured. “That’s me.” It made less sense the more times he said it. He thought of a riddle he’d heard once: if that’s me in the mirr
or, then who am I? He pulled off his glasses and peered again into the sword. “That’s me. That’s me.” His features began to separate from each other. They were as much a part of the night as of him. “The person in the mirror is me.”
Webern’s trouble with mirrors had begun the day they cut off his body cast, when he was six and a half years old. The carpet had felt strange beneath his feet, uneven, and he’d wondered why he couldn’t straighten up all the way, why he felt lopsided. He’d thought maybe he was just stiff from so much bed rest. He had tried to stretch. Then he had looked into the glass. For a second, before he saw his own face, his own body—stunted and crooked, terrifyingly unfamiliar, but his just the same—he had glimpsed someone entirely different on the other side of the mirror: another little boy, one he had no trouble recognizing.
“O!—Cruel fate! Horror of horrors!”
“Aah!” Webern grabbed the rum bottle and whirled around, brandishing it like a weapon. A spectre loomed a few feet away. It occurred to him that he should have picked up the sword instead. “Get away!”
The spectre moved closer, and Webern lowered the bottle.
“Sorry, Dr. Show. I couldn’t really see you.”
Schoenberg swept the top hat from his head and held it reverently to his chest.
“This wretched, vile duty! I cannot tell you—but I must. Bernie—young Bernie—the dark horseman of fate has swung his cruel axe.” His hooded eyes lowered; one hand stretched out as if it held a skull.
Sometimes Dr. Show was tough to understand when he shifted into full-on Shakespearean mode. Webern squinted at him.
“What do you mean?”
“O, torment me no longer!” Schoenberg turned away. “I cannot say. But come quickly! There may still be time.”
Dr. Show’s black tuxedo jacket rippled in the breeze as Webern followed him back to the campsite. Webern listened for his friends above the plunging waves, but he couldn’t hear them at all now—no laughter, not even a note of Louis Armstrong. When he saw the other performers standing in a tight circle around something he couldn’t see, he wanted to go running down the beach in another direction. But he kept moving forward, drawn almost against his will. He saw his feet plodding along the sand, tasted sea air spiced with woodsmoke, and felt the heavy bottle in his suit coat pocket bump bump bump against his thigh. In his mind, he saw his face again as he’d seen it in that sword.
The hushed circus performers turned to look at Webern and Schoenberg as they approached the campfire. Vlad and Fydor laced their arms around each other, as if they were afraid of being separated. Al held the concertina in one hand; the other covered his mouth, hiding his expression. Brunhilde, fingering her locket, let it drop when she saw Webern coming. Explorer Hank wore an exaggerated frown and held onto his riding crop with two clenched fists. Eng sat on the ground with his legs over his shoulders, rocking. And Enrique stepped aside so Webern could see what so keenly held their attention.
Nepenthe lay on the ground, her burka shrouding her. A huge reddish splotch spilled across its fabric, and a wooden knife handle stuck up out of the centre of the stain, casting a small shadow like the style of a sundial. Webern couldn’t see Nepenthe’s face beneath the veil, but her eyes were closed. He felt lightheaded, dizzy; black stars exploded in the periphery of his vision. He sank down to the sand and found himself clutching one of Nepenthe’s hands in his. Even through both their gloves, he could tell she was still warm.
Webern tried to breathe. In his mind, he saw a kaleidoscope of Nepenthe from the last few months: Nepenthe lighting a clove, Nepenthe spitting; Nepenthe reading philosophy, psychiatry, a book of poems; Nepenthe in a beekeeper’s hat and a pair of oven mitts; Nepenthe yelling, cursing, yawning; Nepenthe throwing a book, a baton, a pail of water; Nepenthe playing pinball, punching the sides of the machine; Nepenthe lying on her lizard rock, dyed green from the lights. None of those images matched up with this one, none of them made any sense, until suddenly Nepenthe sat straight up and declared, “Surprise!”
CHAPTER FOUR
The little clown falls slowly through the deep green water. He wears a black suit and a bowler hat; in his right hand he carries a cane. When he touches down on the sea floor, he uses it to steady himself.
Down here, the water is shadowy, but the sand reflects the light of the moon—a dim yellow, like the tail ends of fireflies. Fish-schools flicker, swimming in rippling formation. The clown cuts a lonely figure as he walks along. He pokes his cane at sea cucumbers and bottom feeders, who stare up at him with bulging eyes.
Just when he thinks he’ll never see her, she appears, veiled in murky water that hangs like a mist between them. A starfish wraps around her left wrist, a living bracelet; above the glimmering scales of her tail, she wears a modest bathing suit of shells and woven seaweed. But dark currents blur her pale face. She could be monstrous or lovely, the age of the clown or old enough to be his mother.
The clown reaches up to tip his hat, but he notices too late that his bowler is floating away; he has to jump to snatch it and jam it back onto his head. Next he bends down to pluck a sea anemone from the bed of flowers that grows beside him. But as soon as he touches one blossom, they all snap shut in a burst of sand. The clown frowns, furrows his brow. Shamefacedly, he turns back to her empty-handed.
The mermaid laughs and shakes her head. Tossing the clown a kiss, she vanishes again into the dark waters.
Webern groaned and rolled over onto his back. He spat out a mouthful of wet, gritty, rum-flavoured sand. His head throbbed, and a whooshing sound filled his ears. He was freezing, too; his hobo suit clung to him like he’d just walked through a rainstorm. With an effort, he opened his eyes. Stars still flickered above; if anything, morning seemed farther away than it had when he passed out. Webern let his eyes drift shut again. Just then, another wave rolled in, engulfing him from head to toe.
Webern crawled away from the incoming tide. He pulled himself onto his hands and knees toward the drier sand. But before he could flop down and fall back asleep, he saw someone approaching, silhouetted against the lights of the boardwalk, which still burned in the distance.
“Aha! I suspected it was you.” Dr. Schoenberg walked swiftly to Webern’s side. He reached down to grasp Webern’s hand and pull him to his feet, but when Webern moaned and collapsed, he reconsidered and sat down beside him instead.
“What am I doing here?” With some effort, Webern straightened his glasses. A strand of kelp hung against one lens.
Dr. Schoenberg gestured toward the empty rum bottle, which rolled in the surf near Webern’s discarded hobo hat. “Continuing your festivities alone, it seems.”
Webern remembered then: the smile leaving Nepenthe’s eyes, his blurred escape into the garish maze of the boardwalk, the hour or so he’d spent staring into the dark waves, drinking and feeling sorry for himself.
“I’m such a fool,” he murmured. He felt dead with shame. With great effort, he sat up. His insides rollicked. “Ohhh. I bet everybody hates me now.”
“Don’t be absurd, my boy. The fault was ours entirely.” Dr. Schoenberg allowed himself a rueful smile. “In hindsight, I can see the prank had a rather macabre edge.”“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Everyone must think I’m crazy.”
“No one thinks anything of the kind, I can assure you.” Dr. Schoenberg removed a white monogrammed handkerchief from the pocket of his tuxedo jacket, unfurled it, and offered it to Webern. “But even if they did, it’s none of their affair. Bernie, let me show you something.” Dr. Schoenberg shucked off his tuxedo jacket and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. “Do you see this mark?”
Webern stared at the inside of Dr. Schoenberg’s arm. Faint pink lines—scar tissue—marked it from wrist to elbow. Dimly, Webern could see they were letters, spelling out a name. Sebille.
“Never feel ashamed of your passions, my boy. When I was your age, I thought I would die for love.” He ran his finge
r over the scar gently. “Her name was actually Sybil, but I preferred the Arthurian spelling.”
Webern imagined a young Dr. Schoenberg, holding a concertina, gazing up at a young girl’s window with mournful eyes. He smiled a little; Dr. Show chuckled and shook his head. He rolled his sleeve back down.
“Most people joined my circus as a last resort,” he said. “They came to me because they were ill-equipped for anything else. I know that. But I also knew from the first that you were different. You’re a young man after my own heart, Bernie: too sensitive for your own good, perhaps, but with extraordinary talents.”
Webern looked down at his hands. In the moonlight, they gave off a pale glow, and he imagined the rest of himself glowing too, greasepaint white, like the clown in his dreams. No one had ever said anything like that to him before.
“Thanks,” he said.
Dr. Schoenberg rose, put his jacket back on, and shot his cuffs. “Now, shall we go assuage Nepenthe’s fears? She’s thoroughly convinced you’ve drowned.”
Webern let Dr. Schoenberg drag him to his feet, but once he was standing up he felt even sicker. He took a step forward, and the ground rolled beneath his feet. Dr. Schoenberg caught him just in time.
“A little off balance? No matter—I came prepared.”
Dr. Schoenberg reached into an inner pocket of his tuxedo jacket and removed a small black wand, about the length of a conductor’s baton. He pressed a button on one end. Click, click, click. The wand telescoped out into a walking stick. Webern took it and tentatively leaned on it. It held under his weight.
Goldenland Past Dark Page 5