The Trapeze Act

by Libby Angel

  The officials’ wives, my mother supposed, were sterile from bitterness and did not have the legs for anything above the knee. They shielded their husbands’ eyes with their stubby fingers. So, said they: This town and its people must rise above the common lawlessness and moral vice that characterises other colonies, which are founded on the lust of gold-diggers and the viciousness of the criminal classes. We must protect the sanctity of the family unit and thereby the future of our colony.

  They humbugged their husbands into taking civil action.

  It was envious women who caused the Rodzirkus to be shut down and ordered to set sail back across the ocean to the land of cheese and clogs, taking what remained of its stinking animals with it.

  Four generations down the line, my mother’s inheritance was poor. Gone was the three-ring big top with silver pennants, the Russian teeterboard act, the poodles, tigers and chimpanzees. Many of the troupe’s members, including Leda’s own father, had been killed or injured in the war; others had fled Europe and never returned. Audiences dwindled; people were no longer in the mood for jest. Leda’s mother fell into depression, retired early, and died soon afterwards. The flying rig was sold, the net folded and stored in the boatshed where it rotted away in the Dutch winter.

  Skilled acrobats and aerialists soon sought more lucrative contracts than the Rodzirkus could offer. Animal liberationists made touring with animals near impossible, scaring away crowds with their placards and shouting, spooking the very beasts they claimed to be liberating. By the time Leda was sixteen, the once-mighty Rodzirkus was reduced to a seedy little sideshow in a patched and dirty tent, appearing for brief seasons in suburban parks across Holland. The only remaining animals were two arthritic poodles and a balding pony. Leda’s solo cloud swing was the only noteworthy act left on the bill. The outfit barely even made enough money to cover truck and caravan registration.

  Throughout her youth, my mother ate little other than seaweed and lemons, which, she reckoned, suited the sour flavour of her existence. Encouraged by her own mother (who believed she was consolidating her assets and protecting her daughter, but whose faculties were perverted by grief) Leda had become the third wife of the Mighty Mandos, an ageing Cuban acrobat inevitably turned clown.

  Mighty Mandos was by this time better known for feats of drinking than any skill in the ring. His most spectacular turn, Leda believed, was the tumble he took down the stairs of an Amsterdam sex shop one Saturday evening.

  My mother recounted the anecdote in the usual way, perched on the edge of my bed while I lay trembling under the jungle-themed covers.

  How the tourists laughed, she told me, not without satisfaction. And I laughed too, she remembered, as I watched the old fool somersaulting down the stairs, across the cobblestones, then splash, ha-ha…right into the Oudezijds canal!

  Lucky he could swim, she concluded, because I would have left him there to drown.

  My mother’s stories often began with promise but ended in disaster: with eyeballs hanging from sockets or bones protruding through skin; with aerialists falling from the sky or flattened beneath props; with acrobats scalped by hair caught in cables, ratchets or swivels. Tiger handlers were mauled to death, dancers trampled by elephants.

  Why else, my mother posited, did people go to the circus, if not for the chance to witness a spectacular accident, perhaps even the majesty of death?

  She told stories about the many guest artists from the Eastern Bloc, Cuba and China who defected in the middle of the night when the circus was on tour, how it was circus policy not to report them to the authorities. She told of how, having failed to make their way in the wider world, some of them turned up in the next town on the tour and asked for their jobs back.

  Leda knew all too well how difficult it was to leave behind a life of razzamatazz. You can take a clown out of the circus and all that…For what else is a person to do—a person whose entire existence has been geared to executing a double pirouette on a swinging trapeze or a one-armed handstand on a tower of chairs or standing on horseback or on the handlebars of a trick bike? What is such a person to do in such a po-faced world?

  I would like to present a clearer picture of her, my mother, but she was like water, monster wave one minute, glass sea the next. I can say with certainty only that she was tall with broad shoulders and grey eyes, that her skin was brown from the sun. As for her hair, who knows? It changed so frequently in colour, length and texture that I couldn’t tell its natural state, besides which, she often wore wigs—long, short, bobbed, curly, red, grey, blonde—amassing an extensive collection over the years. There were also her costumes, everything from men’s suits to sequined bikinis, often worn in arbitrary, inappropriate, mix-and-match style. She once picked me up from school wearing a spacesuit, for instance, with a pair of heels, the helmet sitting on the back seat of the car. When I asked for an explanation she said only that she had come straight from work.

  If she had only worn a clown nose, Leda’s motives might have made more sense. Dinner guests might have understood when she cracked eggs over their heads; my father’s lovers would have been less surprised when she bowled up to them at public events and unzipped the backs of their dresses.

  Zo. That is what Leda said to punctuate a moment, as did my great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, and Maartje May before her. Zo, issued with a sigh. It was an inerasable mark of her lineage, along with her impulse every New Year’s Eve to make appelbollen dumplings. The only other relic my mother salvaged from her country of origin was a carved blackwood cuckoo clock featuring a miniature boy and girl in traditional Dutch dress, a demented bird that flung itself out of engraved saloon doors on the hour and two brass weights rising and falling on chains through time.

  But my mother was not a sentimental woman, and even this, her clock, she later threw over the side of a skip without compunction.

  When my parents married, my mother-to-be strutted down the aisle with burgeoning belly, past all the other women who had hoped to secure my father’s hand, now sitting in pews, reduced to friends of the groom. My father’s lovers, once one another’s rivals, now comforted each other and wept.

  Leda could not restrain herself: Ha-ha, she scoffed at them. Although that was by no means the end of my father’s lovers.

  My father, Gilbert, was not tall—he was roughly the same height as my mother—but he had a gifted tailor and his suits often brushed against those of the Mafiosos, which lent him a seductive air, or so some people said.

  Gilbert himself was quick to dispel any illusions on that front: There is nothing chic about a man standing at the bottom of the river wearing concrete boots, he told those who alluded to the glamour of his profession. I spend my days with the sad and desperate, with low-lifes and liars, he lamented.

  But you couldn’t deny the man’s gravitas as he swept through the marble foyers of the courts in his cape and wig, flashing his gold-capped tooth, sending the young lady law students aquiver. Women fawned—the wives of other men, teenage girls, grandmothers—other men, too, come to think of it, were often reduced to playthings in his presence.

  Even after he married my mother, Gilbert continued to be propositioned at every turn: at legal functions, at the grocers and, once, at the zoo. What was Leda to do?

  She watched my father’s many admirers, laughed and clapped her hands like a queen observing her slaves wrestle to the death for her pleasure.

  6

  ON THE seventh day of his sabbatical, Ernest rose from his piano stool, bathed, then left the house. He set out walking and did not stop until he arrived at the British Library.

  After rummaging through the catalogue and finding a few titles of interest, he filled out a request form and handed it to the woman behind the desk. The librarian looked at the form then looked back at Ernest over her spectacles.

  Gold fever? she whispered. You know, my brother is making a fortune in Victoria.

  No, Ernest replied.

  Sheep and wheat?

>   No, Ernest said with finality. Wildlife.

  The librarian vanished into Special Collections.

  While he waited for his number to be called, Ernest searched the shelves, pulling out a recently published study of Antipodean flora and fauna and a volume concerning voyages of exploration in the south seas. (Later, he related to Henrietta what he had learned of Terra Australis. It looked like the Portuguese had discovered the continent way before the English, but for some reason they hadn’t deemed it worthy of settlement. Next came the Dutch, who showed sufficient interest in the place to name it, somewhat unimaginatively, New Holland, but they too saw nothing worth staying for. The land was too big, too brown, too far from civilisation, and the natives made them nervous. So they, too, swiftly rowed back to their clunky ships, weighed anchor and sailed back across the sea, back to their dark parlours, back to their caraway cheese. All in all, the big brown land was a vast disappointment to the Europeans. Even the buccaneers who sailed within the vicinity couldn’t be bothered with it. So, nobody argued when, in 1770, Captain Cook sailed up in his sideways hat and claimed to discover it all over again. Nobody except the natives, that is. Of course, much had happened since. Convicts had turned into landholders; settlements turned into cities. Gold was discovered; sheep and cows were being run. But for all this marvellous progress, Ernest observed, much of the continent’s interior remained a mystery to the Europeans, unwilling as they were to venture very far from the coast.)

  The librarian returned with a large scroll. With hands that worship history, Ernest carried it into the reading room and unfurled it on a table.

  FAICTE A ARQVES, PAR PIERRES DESCELIERS, PBRE: LAN: 1550, it read, in a fancy font. The Portuguese coat of arms was stamped right in the middle of the map, its crown and cross speaking to the sacrosanct nature of Man’s endeavours in the region. Ernest pulled a magnifying glass out of his pocket and traced his eye down the latitude column past the Eqvinoctialle line. He hovered over the mystical lands of Java, Timor and Indonesia, which extended all the way south to the northern-most region of the mainland. There were cryptic names scattered across the land mass—Pego, Melalque, Angenie—accompanied by small picturesque scenes: an oasis with palm trees, a ring of sun-worshippers dancing in sombreros. Ernest scanned the latitude lines: Forty-one, forty-two…and when he ran his finger across the map—Lo and Behold—there in the interior were depicted two mighty mammoths frolicking in a waterhole.

  Ah-ha! he cried out, causing the librarian to raise a finger to her lips and the woman at the table next to him to pack up her pile of books and papers.

  What Ernest did not yet know was that the artist and author of the map had never been to the Antipodes, but merely improvised from findings and descriptions related by the survivors of the sixteenth-century expedition, none of whom had travelled more than a mile inland.

  Looking at the map now, Ernest noted that the 26th parallel South circle of latitude—the same circle of latitude that crossed Southern Africa above the Kingdom of Zulu—also crossed the very centre of the Australian interior. Surely this suggested comparable meteorological conditions? How else to explain the drawings of elephants at the same point?

  He rushed out of the library into the rain and opened his arms to the sky. A ray of light burst through the sultry sky. A portent!

  No, he reminded himself, I am a rational man. He put on his hat and gloves and began to walk home. He walked through the heath enjoying the first signs of spring, picked some wildflowers for Henrietta, counted the ducklings on the pond, all the while assuring himself that his joy was predicated on the unshakeable grounds of scientific evidence.

  As he approached the gates on the far side of the heath, Ernest saw a man dip a large brush into a bucket and paste a poster to the gatepost. Upon that poster Ernest beheld the second fortuitousness of the day:

  FREE IMMIGRATION

  TO

  AUSTRALIA

  An opportunity now offers itself to all MARRIED persons of useful occupations, particularly to all AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS, CARPENTERS, STONE MASONS, SHEPARDES, and BLACKSMITHS, of obtaining a FREE PASSAGE to A FREE COLONY in the southern part of the continent, where every person who emigrates is as free as they are in this country. The applicants must be able to obtain good character references as honest, sober, industrious men. They must be of sound mind and body, not less than 15 nor more than 30 years of age, and married.

  The Colony is a delightfully fertile and salubrious country, in every respect well adapted to the constitution of the Englishman and is one of the most flourishing of all our colonies. It should be borne in mind that complaints of scarcity of water relate to other settlements not connected to this Colony.

  In order to ensure a passage, application should be made forthwith. Every kind of information, and the necessary papers may be obtained from Mr. I. Latimer, agent of Her Majesty’s Colonisation Commissioners.

  Beneath were details of a meeting where Mr Latimer would issue application forms, speak more about the colony and take questions.

  When Ernest arrived home, Henrietta was pottering in the garden, picking sprigs of valerian and chamomile with which she hoped to cure Ernest’s (and by association, her own) increasing bouts of insomnia. She often dreamed that she was lying in a rowboat being rocked by a storm at sea, and woke with a start as if being dashed upon rocks.

  When she saw Ernest burst through the gate and run towards her, she wondered if she would ever sleep again. He hugged her so tightly they fell into a clump of catnip before he again reminded himself that he must rise above the rip-tides of emotion, that he must be sensible.

  He helped her to her feet, leaning in close to her pale brown hair, which smelled vaguely medicinal; it always comforted him to smell his wife’s hair.

  Henrietta brushed some leaves from Ernest’s coat and smiled. She was used to this sort of thing. They went inside. Henrietta made tea and heard him out while he recounted his various epiphanies. Finally, she agreed to at least go with him and hear what Mr Latimer, Director of the Board of Free Passages, had to say.

  The day of the meeting was unseasonably warm and the hall was crowded to capacity, the windows opened as wide as they could be. Throughout the proceedings, audience members fanned themselves with their leaflets. Ladies rose from their seats, shuffled along to the ends of their rows and were escorted outside to take the air. One poor fellow, clearly too old to apply for a free passage, keeled over sideways, prompting his wife to administer a glass of water to his face. Row upon row of people languished in their seats. Nobody could remember such a hot day, certainly not in the middle of spring.

  Well, you’d better get used to the heat, Mr Latimer advised in his opening remarks; it would be twice as hot in the colony as it was today in the hall. The temperature in the New Country could climb to over a hundred and stay there for the greater part of summer.

  A collective sigh rose from the audience.

  But there were plenty of compensations, Mr Latimer quickly added. While the summer could be oppressive, the temperature rarely dropped below freezing in winter. Overall, the weather in the south was perfectly clement.

  He cleared his throat for the selling point. The colony in consideration was uniquely placed as a sanctuary for free settlers. Unlike other colonies, the town and its surrounds would remain untainted by the presence of released convicts. Its relative distance from the goldfields, renowned for attracting the most desperate sort of people, ensured a low crime rate. This colony alone would be peopled with men and women of virtue and good breeding who were committed to social harmony and stability. In short, the colony of the south was a truly wonderful place to raise a family.

  Along with married couples of childbearing age, sisters of married men were encouraged to apply. Indeed, ladies need not be intimidated by fictions of bunyips and bushrangers, Mr Latimer assured his listeners. It was possible to make a home in the colony to rival any in the centre of London. The infrastructures of civilised life were already well estab
lished: bustling ports, a postal service and shops where you could buy an ever-increasing assortment of foods, hardware and haberdashery. The main settlement was destined to become a city as refined as any in the modern world.

  After an hour waxing upon the colony’s unsurpassed advantages, Mr Latimer turned to a discussion of the voyage itself, which, he said, would take three to four months. The Electra, a fine first-teak-built ship of 1200 tons, boasted spacious and lofty accommodations. There would be surgeons, priests and schoolmasters aboard to service passengers’ needs, as well as plenty of food and a variety of entertainments.

  At the end of the session, Mr Latimer fielded questions from the audience. What were their chances of being shipwrecked and laid to rest at the bottom of the sea? Who else, besides fellow Englishmen and women, had been invited to settle in the colony? Were there enough medical supplies in the New Country to cope with the influx of arrivals? What were the rates of pay in comparison to those at home?

  One woman had heard a rumour that an entire shipload of passengers had died of typhoid during the passage, leaving the ship adrift at sea. Another claimed a native had speared her cousin the moment he set foot on the shore.

  Mr Latimer answered these concerns as best he could, deftly sidestepping any matters that were beyond his expertise by assuring his listeners that in all his time as head of the board, not one immigrant who had taken advantage of the offer had asked for a refund.

  Ernest looked around the hall. Most of the men were wearing coveralls replete with grease stains, sawdust or soot. These were the sought after tinmen, wheelwrights, farriers, brickmakers, lime burners and so on. There were also a number of servants and maids in uniform. He felt conspicuous in his suit. How to describe his own, less obvious assets, he pondered? His usefulness?

  After Mr Latimer drew to a protracted close, Henrietta and Ernest filed out of the hall with the others, application forms in hand. It had become cooler outside and it smelled like rain was on the way.