by Yoko Tawada
Pankov burst out laughing. “If you see three lights in the form of a triangle coming closer, it’s a locomotive. Are you planning to throw yourself in front of a train? You mustn’t do that. Please, get some rest.”
My husband’s jealousy intensified by the day, without any cause. While Tosca and I were practicing our bow, Honigberg walked into the rehearsal room, followed by my husband, who, accusing me of having made eyes at Honigberg, quickly gave my shoulder an irritated shove. Tosca growled threateningly, and Honigberg turned pale when my husband pushed me again. “Stop it!” Honigberg said, grabbing my husband’s arm. He dragged him into the corner of the rehearsal room and kept him there.
“Let go of me! What are you trying to do?”
“Don’t you see that the bear is getting angry? You’re in serious danger.”
•
Pankov ordered me, my husband, and Honigberg to report to his office. I was prepared for trouble, but there was none. “There are rumors that we’re going to have a visit from the Kremlin next month. I’d like to start the new season early so that by the time our important visitors arrive, everything will be running smoothly. We’re not looking to present a ritual sacrifice, so let’s not have Barbara get eaten by a bear in front of the Russian officials.” Pankov’s expression was grave, but Honigberg replied with self-confident levity: “Not to worry! We’re almost done rehearsing. Barbara and Tosca have developed a true friendship. They’ll go onstage together, eat cookies from a bag, pour milk into their cups from a jug, and drink. Then Barbara will place a fashionable lady’s hat on Tosca’s head and put a vest on her as well. The two will stand side by side before a mirror, and everyone will see what good friends they are. That’s enough — the sight of true friendship will move every heart in the audience, even if there’s nothing spectacular about it.”
“The friendships of women are wonderful, but not an appropriate subject for a circus routine.”
“Not to worry! The nine polar bears standing on the bridge behind them will provide all the masculine dynamism we need. Each of these animals weighs well over a thousand pounds, and the nine of them together come to nearly five tons. Little Barbara will swing her whip, and these white giants will obey. These creatures weigh more than twenty sumo wrestlers. Impressive, no?” Honigberg seemed to be looking down on Markus and me, as if he were Pankov’s deputy, but really he was just a vagabond whose presence in the circus was merely tolerated. Markus, trying to extend his neck so as to look taller than Honigberg, hastily asked: “Wait a minute — what’s happening with the strike?” Honigberg calmly replied: “The strike is over. Starting tomorrow, all the polar bears will be back at work.” We looked at Pankov, he looked at the floor. Honigberg continued in a self-assured tone: “There’s no longer any reason for a strike. The polar bears all bought stocks and withdrew their demands. I told them they weren’t allowed to hold strikes any longer because now they were stockholders, not workers.”
Markus cast a hate-filled glance at Honigberg’s thin, denim-covered legs and said with visible annoyance: “So you used monkey tricks to betray their innocent animal hearts. You’re a disgrace to humankind!” My husband was looking like a frill-necked lizard. I wanted to brush the bloodthirstiness from his ruffled collar, so I rested a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged away my touch, saying churlishly: “So now you’re on his side.”
It seemed to me important to clarify the situation to keep things from escalating. “You’re jealous because you suspect us of having an affair. That’s absurd. You’re really imagining things.” My words took him by surprise, as if the possibility of something going on between Honigberg and me was only just now occurring to him. He started screaming, and Honigberg — who appeared equally shocked — was soon screaming too. Pankov heaved a sigh, and on his way out, he said: “Barbara, you’re not well. You’ve got to see a doctor.”
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been compelled to pay a visit to a psychiatrist. As soon as I was old enough to leave school, it was decided that instead of pursuing a university degree, I would work as a domestic. I soon suffered from hallucinations: everywhere I went, I saw the buttocks of a well-to-do man. I didn’t mind shoveling horse dung, but it filled me with revulsion to imagine cleaning the toilet seat on which my wealthy employer had placed his fat, sweating butt cheeks. These buttocks followed me all through the streets, leaving me gasping for breath. I tried to hide by diving into a crowd, but the phantasm gave me no peace. I told my mother about it, and she replied that I shouldn’t think so much. “Think only of things that actually exist.” But what about the things that didn’t exist but nonetheless showed themselves to me?
It hadn’t originally been my mother’s intention for me to become a domestic servant. If I’d gone on to be a scholar, I’d have allowed myself to think about nonexistent things. My teacher had told me I should continue my studies, but I’d rejected her suggestion with defiant resolve. My mother learned of my refusal, which must have come as a shock to her. I saw her sitting at the kitchen table as if turned to stone. She’d at least managed to make tea, but drinking it was beyond her. Her hands propped up her heavy head, and her eyes lay in deep hollows in her grayish skin. In those days, it didn’t go without saying that a mother would send her daughter off to college. I no longer remember what objections I had to university studies. At times I even dreamed of researching the lives of mammals and receiving an academic degree for this work. But just as I hid my favorite books about horses behind the armoire and only read them when I was alone, my dream refused to come out of its hiding place. Ernest Thompson Seton’s animal stories gave me the idea of becoming not just a zoologist but an author as well.
“Why do you have regrets now for not having studied? The circus is your university.” Tosca’s words comforted me; perhaps, I thought, I’d made the right decision after all. But back then I was filled with despair, and the rich man’s buttocks continued to haunt me. The doctor who examined me didn’t take me seriously. He said dismissively that I was suffering from weak nerves and prescribed some drugs.
Either the doctor had gotten his medications mixed up, or it was my fault. In any case, when I swallowed the pills, I was immediately filled with the irresistible desire to work in the circus. I quarreled with my mother and ran out of the house, speeding as fast as I could all the way to the circus like a motorcycle burning fury as its fuel. My circus friends were sitting in a circle, drinking beer in the twilight. They let me join their circle at once, but as soon as I asked them to accept me into the circus troupe as an official member, they looked embarrassed. I was about to start crying when the oldest man got up and rested on my shoulder the fingers he’d just been using to twirl his beard. “Many customs and modes of conduct seem perfectly natural to people who were born in the circus and grew up here. But these same things can appear incomprehensible or unacceptable to the children of workers. Of course a lot of this can be learned retroactively. But there are too many things that are nowhere written down. This is why a normal citizen can’t really survive in the circus. A lion can’t become a tiger. It would be better for you to look for a job in the city.” I burst into tears. The tightrope walker Cornelia got up and said: “I’ll take her to Mr. Anders. Maybe he can find a job for her.” A longstanding fan of the circus, this gentleman worked as a department head at the Telegraph Office. Cornelia set off with me trotting behind her, walking at such a clip that it was all I could do not to lose sight of her back.
A man with broad shoulders opened the door, and immediately I noticed an odor I’d never smelled before. He looked at us, and at once his eyes narrowed with pleasure. I had never before set foot in the apartment of a well-to-do, well-educated man. Intimidated, I sat on the leather-covered sofa with its hand-carved side panels. Upon a silver plate lay roast beef, bread, and fruit, just like in an Old Master painting. Cornelia kept her stiff smile on her face while she elastically juggled the first words. Every now and then she signaled
to me conspiratorially with her eyes. Apparently hypnotized by Cornelia, Mr. Anders promised to give me — a girl of unknown origins — a job.
I wasn’t accepted into the circus, but my paranoid delusions ceased. My mother was thrilled to learn I’d found a job in the Telegraph Office. Working for a government agency, she said — any agency at all — made me a public servant, and this, unlike circus work, meant security. But later the circus was nationalized, and all of us, even the clown and an animal trainer like me, became government employees.
•
“I promised to write down your life story. But so far I’ve only been talking about my own. I’m terribly sorry.”
“That’s all right. First you should translate your own story into written characters. Then your soul will be tidy enough to make room for a bear.”
“Are you planning to come inside me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m scared.”
We laughed with one voice.
•
I became a government employee and rode around on my bicycle all day long. After the first month, you could see the muscles on my thighs and calves. I could ride faster and thus saved time and no longer felt I had to rush, so now and then I would practice bicycle acrobatics in a park or even right on the street.
Once I tried to do a headstand on the bicycle. “You need a special bicycle for that, a custom-built model,” a passerby said. I wanted to engage him in conversation, but he was already gone. I began to sense on my skin the presence of spectators. When I had an audience of even a single person, it was no longer a paranoid delusion, it was a proper rehearsal. And if a rehearsal was possible, there might also — someday — be a premiere.
I trained ever more diligently. One day I was observed by a relative of my boss as I clattered down some stone steps on my bicycle and I received a stern reprimand. Worried about the bicycle, the boss exclaimed: “You aren’t working in a circus, do you understand?” It had been such a long time since I’d heard the word “circus.” It was true enough, just as the boss said: the Telegraph Office was not a circus. The circus was where I wanted to work.
The war broke out before I could start my new life in the circus.
•
“I envy the inhabitants of the North Pole. There aren’t any wars there.”
“There aren’t any wars. But people with weapons keep arriving all the same. They shoot at us.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard that humans hunt instinctually. But instincts are a mystery to me.”
“I think hunting used to be important for human survival. That’s no longer the case, but they can’t stop. A human being, perhaps, is made up of many nonsensical movements. But they’ve forgotten the movements necessary for life. These humans are manipulated by what remains of their memories.”
•
My father returned home once during the war. I saw a man walking back and forth in front of our house. I don’t know what gave me the idea that it could be my father. He looked at me in such a way as to signal that I should follow him. We walked for a while until we reached the bank of our small river, where we sat down on a bench. I looked at his yellowed fingers holding a cigarette stub. “I started torturing animals as a child, just the way many adults torture their children. I killed animals — a cat, for example. I plunged my knife into its heart and was able to watch calmly as it died. It was important to me not to lose my self-control. I required ever new victims, in the end, I even killed an army horse. The military thought it was an act of antiwar resistance.”
I told my mother about my encounter with this man. She was furious because she thought I’d made up the story. “It isn’t possible that your father is still alive. You can’t go around telling people nonsense like that.”
The Telegraph Office soon closed, I lost my job, and began working in the armaments factory along with my mother. On Sundays I washed our clothes in a tub and cooked for us. I would walk into town carrying a large cloth bag to buy the week’s food. The people I would see on the way had coarsely whittled faces. When two people who didn’t know each other crossed paths on a desolate street, they would exchange distrustful glances. Fate might at any moment turn anyone at all into a murderer or a victim. The sight of a soldier standing at an intersection was enough to make me start shaking, even though the soldiers were ours. But what did that mean: ours? Every soldier was prepared to kill. My wish was always that he would shoot somebody else instead of me. I was forced not only to suffer hunger but to be distrustful too. When winter came, it brought not greater hunger but a hunger more intense. My eyes were constantly mistaken, and I rarely raised them from the ground. In the mirror I saw cracks in my skin. It wasn’t just me — others I saw in the street had ruined skin too. Their eyes were inflamed, and they couldn’t stop coughing. My mother was afraid I might accidentally tell someone about my father. “If anyone asks, say that you were separated from him as a baby and can’t remember anything.”
The neighbors’ eyes sometimes spoke a language I couldn’t understand. I often turned around while walking, as if someone had pasted an invisible label on my back. I imagined being arrested and forced to stand against a wall to be shot. “Why do you keep bringing up these fantasies? There’s no reason for anyone to arrest you,” my mother’s voice said. My nose was strangely reprogrammed, and I smelled the dead bodies, a vague but persistent odor, and I didn’t know if I was imagining it or not. It was practically a miracle I was still alive. My mother once asked me if I was a member of a resistance movement. But for this I was too apolitical, alas — I didn’t know anything at all about the resistance.
After the big air raid, the city’s walls and roofs collapsed to form heaps of rubble. When I could think again, I’d been evacuated to a factory building, and the woman lying next to me was my mother. When the moonlight shone gently on the windowsills, the smell of sweat from all the people packed in together intensified, lethally cloying.
I found a scorched lump of iron and thought it had to be the corpse of a bicycle. I began to collect useful items and fragments of broken objects and machines and sold them to a workshop. But even when I managed to come by a little cash in this way, it wasn’t easy to exchange for decent bread. For this reason, I was glad to have the opportunity to visit relatives who had a farm outside of town to help in the fields. I still remember the turnips and cabbage, and especially the rutabagas.
The Telegraph Office was reopened. Among the new management, there were only fresh faces to be seen, and none of them wanted to offer me a job. I helped acquaintances of my mother’s and was given food in return. I cleaned everything that was dirty, and tried to procure everything that was lacking. I also took part in the city’s rubble-clearing operations.
“Why do I feel so lonely?” I asked Tosca.
“You aren’t alone. I’m here.”
“But no one except me believes I can speak with you. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even true. Lots of people want to talk with me — but not about the war, they only want to talk about the circus. They always start their conversations with the same question: How did I end up joining the circus? I tell them that as a child I helped out at Circus Sarrasani, and when I was twenty-four, I was accepted at Circus Busch as a cleaning woman. No one wants to hear about what happened in between. They say: We all know about the war. It’s not that I want to talk about the war, it’s just that it makes me nervous to have a hole in my circus biography. A hole that big might one day become my grave.”
“I’ll listen to you.”
“How can I be sure it’s you? How do I know I’m not dreaming?”
Somewhere a dog barked. “Rich people were resurrected after the war as rich people, even though their money had burned to ash. Don’t you find that strange?” This wasn’t Tosca’s voice, it was the voice of a vital young man. His dog was named Friedrich. Friedrich would always jump up on me
when I came to the apartment and try to lick my face with his large, moist tongue. “Class society doesn’t vanish in a war. On the contrary: the difference between rich and poor is increased by a war and during the postwar period. For this reason, we need a revolution as soon as possible.” The young man, Karl, had chatted me up on the street. I was quickly drawn into a conversation, it felt as if I’d known him a long time, so I followed him to his apartment, which was filled with vintage furniture. His sofa and bed didn’t look as if they’d been subjected to an air raid, in fact there was nothing in his apartment that appeared in urgent need of repair or replacement. The books on his shelves, unlike the furniture, were all recent. I pulled out a book with a red spine. Before I’d finished reading a paragraph I’d chosen at random, I found myself being embraced and engulfed from behind. I was all bones, and my breasts were only just starting to show signs of future roundness. His hands boldly crushed them. With all my strength I twisted my head around, he placed his hands a bit lower down, applying pressure to my abdomen while using his chin to hold my shoulder in place the way a paperclip holds a sheet of paper.
“It was like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. I didn’t have time to long for love, to fall in love, or even to notice the taste of my first kiss.”
“And if you had gotten pregnant, Nature would have quickly attained her goal.”
“Nature, for all her greatness, is small: all that interests her is dividing tiny cells into even smaller ones. I can certainly understand that my heart is of no particular concern to Nature. Cell division and more cell division, that’s all she cares about.”
“Did you go to see Karl every day?”
“We immediately started fighting.”
“Why?”