by Yoko Tawada
The postwar period passed so quickly I barely saw it. When I was running an errand in town and happened to look up, I’d be surprised by the new facades of an era that had apparently started without me. There was even a rumor that soon television sets would be available for purchase. We remained isolated from all such developments — the circus was an island.
“You had a lot of success with your donkey once. Wasn’t his name Rocinante? You went to Spain with him too, right?”
Markus brought this up several times when we were freshly married. He was envious, and wanted a piece of my past to call his own. “It’s true, I went to Spain, but we weren’t tourists, there wasn’t any time at all for sightseeing. During the day we had rehearsals, and at night were the performances.”
“But surely you went to restaurants and ate paella.”
“Not even that. We’d brought plenty of bread and pickles with us, and tons of Hungarian salami.”
During our performances in Spain, I could feel success tingling on my skin. But I didn’t know what enormous praise my modest donkey act had garnered in the Spanish press. The circus director knew, but he kept it from me. Perhaps he was afraid I’d become stuck up instead of continuing to work for him with such gratitude and industry.
I woke up in the middle of the night, the air sultry. Thirst pulled me from my bed, I crossed the laundry area and saw the trapeze artist sitting on a shabby plastic chair. Perhaps she’d come outside to cool down. When she caught sight of me, she quickly looked around and then beckoned me over to her. “The newspaper said: ‘Her proud, feminine contours and an innocent, solemn face framed in blond enchanted the audience.’ Do you know whom they were talking about?” I thought for a moment, then my cheeks burst into flame. “Yes, that’s right,” she said, “they were talking about you. A Spanish newspaper wrote about your act in great detail. That’s fantastic. Your donkey act has won the heart of the country that knows the donkey best. I understand Spanish, my mother was from Cuba. Have you heard about the passionate nature of Latin Americans?” I was confused, didn’t know what to make of her question. “I can teach you how to dance the tango. Then you can fly to Argentina and enjoy enormous applause thanks to your new tango number.” She placed her hands on my hips, hummed a tango melody, and taught me the first steps. It wasn’t just two legs I had, there were an indefinite number of them. I tripped and fell to the ground, my legs twisted, imagining myself lying helpless on the beach, a skinned rabbit with naked pink skin. A rescuer found me and stroked my head, even my hip and belly were given a cautious massage. Life returned to me. But I mustn’t continue, a voice within me said. “The night air is beginning to grow cool. Shall we go in?” I was hoping to use these words to escape from my rescuer, but she replied: “At the North Pole, a tongue can be hot.” On this day I learned for the first time how thick a human tongue can be.
After learning from her how to stop time with a kiss, I never again had the opportunity to enjoy a similar encounter with another member of my sex. The Latin American night was interrupted, though it would be reprised again much later on.
•
The director of the circus was searching in vain for a good stage idea that would satisfy the public’s expectations. People wanted to see me back onstage again next season. Thinking I should take the offensive, I proposed working with the big cats and bears.
You have to be prepared to surrender your own intentions the moment you catch a whiff of danger: this is the most important thing to remember when working with beasts of prey. You have to understand that courage alone is of no use. Even when my condition and motivation were at their peak, I often had to break off a rehearsal if the leopard was in a bad mood. I had to stay relaxed, fill my empty day with other tasks, and not impatiently count the days until the premiere. It was like mountain climbing in the snow. The climber who lets his ambitions drive him is the most likely to suffer a fatal accident. Fear isn’t something to be overcome, it’s there to protect us from an untimely death. I never went anywhere near these animals if I sensed even the faintest trace of fear inside me. But after several days without a rehearsal, the pressure was almost unendurable. The director didn’t always understand my situation. He would snarl at me: “Why aren’t you working? You didn’t work yesterday, and today you want to laze around again?” The Master, who always understood, had to gesture to the director to leave us in peace.
One day a couple of policemen appeared from nowhere and took the Master away. The director told us several days later that the Master had secretly been arranging his own exile. Back then, the word “exile” sounded to me like the name of a ghost. The director now had quite different worries than we did. He gazed despairingly at the little circle gathered around him, as if hoping to find an answer in one of our faces. “What can I do? The police brought me in for interrogation too. I told them there won’t be a next season for us — without the animal trainer, there’s no circus! Then one of them said to me ironically: ‘What’s the problem? Don’t you have that new girl who trains the big cats? You don’t need your old Master anymore.’”
“It doesn’t matter if he meant it ironically or not. Let’s make the most of it — don’t worry, I’ll manage something.”
“But you don’t know how to do anything yet.”
“The Master trained me to be ready to go onstage all by myself next season.” The director gaped at me in surprise, then this expression was replaced by a calm look that was perhaps nothing more than despair run aground.
My number began and ended successfully. Knowing the limits of my artistry, I reduced my performance to the simplest possible elements. To distract from the simplicity, I put on a striking, glittery costume and asked the lighting engineer and musicians to transform the stage into a fantastical realm. A leopard, a brown bear, a lion, and a tiger sat together in a pretend living room. One beast sat nicely on a chair, another on a bed. They were harmoniously distributed across the stage. Through the painted windowpane, you could see a projection of the full moon trembling in the nocturnal mist. The animals kept changing places, slowly and calmly. At the end, the lion gave me his paw as if to wish me good night. I knew that somewhere in the middle the tiger would roar. The audience shrank in horror, I cracked my whip, and the tiger fell silent. He never meant to threaten me. He knew he’d get a meatball as a reward for roaring loudly at this point. But the spectators thought that by using my whip I’d brought the difficult relationship between these animals back under control, and there was thunderous applause.
After the show, a journalist with flushed cheeks burst into the dressing room and said: “It was wonderful to see a delicate young woman with several dangerous beasts of prey in her power!” I was surprised and for the first time realized that in the eyes of these others I appeared delicate and young. In a newspaper the next day I read that a beautiful young woman had by force of will freely governed the movements of these beasts of prey. The expression “beasts of prey” troubled me.
Since the act had gone well, I ventured to suggest to the director that he let me work with an all-lion group. My wish was fulfilled, but unfortunately I couldn’t lead this group for long. If I hadn’t kept a photograph, I might not remember this peaceful island in time that I spent among the lionesses. You can keep a photograph, but not the sense of satisfaction. Who took this photo? Five lionesses and me in a room: one lay stretched out on a sofa, while another, out of personal preference or solidarity, had selected a hard wooden chair. No housecat could display so peaceful an expression as any of my lionesses. It was as if they meant to say: No drudgery for us, we wish to rest, and only after resting shall we undertake something . . . provided it accords with our whims and desires.
I’ll stop rhapsodizing about the lions. As long as bears exist, there’s no reason to speak about the past. It may be that the lion is King of the Beasts, but the bear is President of the Animals. The age of the lion monarchy has ended. When you see ten polar be
ars standing in a row, you forget all the other mammals.
•
Just five minutes till curtain. I sat on a stool, shifting my buttocks uneasily back and forth. The clown adjusted his collar for the nth time, the director drank his clear liquid from a bottle, his free hand trembling. The music started in, the seven-hued light licked the stage with its colorful tongues. Markus stood in the wings behind the curtain on the left, grinning. He was the husband of the animal trainer the public so revered. Today he would play the role of an assistant whose name wouldn’t even be mentioned. He seemed satisfied with this status. I surveyed the colleagues around me: some of them accepted the fact of their own stage fright, while others struggled to relax. I had never before consciously observed my colleagues’ art. For a Homo sapiens, it was certainly quite a feat to be able to leap from one branch to the next like a squirrel, or to clamber up a rope like a monkey, but I’d never been attracted to acrobatics of this normal sort.
After dreaming up and then abandoning the most motley and outlandish stage ideas, my team decided to show the audience simple, quotidian scenes. Sitting on a chair; lying on the bed; opening a box on the dining table, removing some sweets, and then snacking on them. Pankov was capable of uttering mortifyingly official sentences with a straight face: “The function of the circus is to demonstrate the superiority of Socialism.” We’d come to the conclusion that it was already glorious enough if we — humans and bears, such different creatures — could join together to meet the challenges of day-to-day life without slaughtering each other. That’s what gave us the idea of showing a peaceful, uneventful, ordinary day. When Pankov dropped in to observe our rehearsals, he remarked that our performance bored him to tears. He wanted to see us dancing the tango on top of a large ball. He insisted, and I thought: I can put on an ordinary acrobatics show anytime — that’s what would be boring.
Barbara and I decided on a certain finale for our act without informing Pankov and Markus. We rehearsed in our shared dream. I was scared because I wasn’t sure if I’d only dreamed this on my own or if Barbara had really had the same dream too. What would I do if I realized in the middle of the number that I was the only one who’d had the dream? This thought made the sweet taste of the sugar turn sour on my tongue, and I felt my back stiffen unpleasantly.
Finally it was time for our grand entrance. Barbara and I walked onstage hand in hand. The audience clapped enthusiastically even though we hadn’t yet done anything. I sat down on the stage relatively close to the audience, and stretched my legs out like a human child. When Markus gave the command, the nine polar bears marched onto the stage. Three of the most athletic bears balanced on large blue balls, rolling backward. The other six waited on the bench to the side. Barbara struck the floor with her whip. The three balancing bears skillfully spun their balls around, displaying their white backsides to the audience. For some reason the entire audience burst out laughing, and Barbara made a deep bow. I didn’t have time to find out why the audience found white polar bear bottoms so funny.
Markus brought out a sled and hitched two of the polar bears to it like sled dogs. Barbara got into the sled and took the reins. When her whip whistled, the sled glided off, circling the iron bridge. Next, all nine polar bears climbed onto the bridge, and at a new signal from the whip, they all rose to stand on two legs. At precisely this point, the band started playing a tango melody. I slowly got to my feet, took up my position in front of Barbara, and began with the first steps. My dancing, I believe, was magnificent. When the tango music came to an end, I was given a sugar cube, stood facing the audience, holding hands with Barbara, and took a bow. That was the end of the official program.
I was nervous until I saw Barbara’s fingers place a sugar cube on her tongue. Finally I knew for certain that we’d been having the same dream. I took up position quite close to her, inconspicuously correcting my angle, for from this moment on every centimeter counted. I stood twice as high as Barbara, and if only for this reason, I had to make an extremely deep bow. My neck elongated from my shoulders, my tongue stretched out before me, and I took the sugar cube from Barbara’s mouth. Barbara raised her arms in the air, and the audience roared.
We were able to repeat this scene many times during the following weeks, for scandalous as the kiss was, it wasn’t censored. The circus adopted the name “Kiss of Death” after a newspaper used it as a headline. The tickets sold out every day, and we got invited to give guest performances in various cities in both East and West. To my astonishment we were even invited to tour the United States and Japan.
•
During our international tour, we were confronted with unexpected problems. In the United States, authorization for the kiss scene was refused on the grounds of hygiene and health. Jim, the booking agent who’d brought us to the New World, must have been shocked, because tickets had been sold out for weeks, and it was obvious that the Kiss of Death was the main draw. The agency responsible for hygiene and health standards claimed I had too many roundworms in my belly. When I heard this, I was so angry that I wanted to sue the agency for libel. Why should I allow some bureaucrat to determine my roundworm quotient? All animals should decide for themselves how many worms to keep in their bellies for optimal health.
Jim explained it all later. He said we shouldn’t blame the hygiene authorities because pressure had been put on them by religious fundamentalists who refused to tolerate our kiss. One of the many threatening letters they received apparently said: “Sexual fantasies involving bears are a form of Teutonic barbarism.” Another letter contained the remark: “The decadence of Communist culture is an affront to human dignity.” I already knew by then that every country has its religious extremists whose immoderate imaginations often produce involuntary humor. But what a ridiculous exaggeration to speak of sexual fantasies. Barbara and I were just playing with a sugar cube and our tongues. Apparently it was true that for Homo sapiens, pornography had its seat in the heads of adults.
During the performance, I took great pleasure in watching the children in the audience. They stared at us open-mouthed and wide-eyed. In Japan we received a letter that said: “It must be exhausting to put on a bear costume in this heat and perform onstage. Please accept my heartfelt thanks for your wonderful performance! Our children were ecstatic.” Apparently there were audience members who were incapable of believing I was really a bear. How fortunate that no one came into the dressing room and asked me to take off my bearskin.
An American newspaper published a large photograph of Barbara. We did well in West Germany too, though it disturbed me to see a few grim faces in the audience. When we returned home after touring the West, we were received with odd smiles. One colleague said: “So you didn’t go into exile.” Barbara put her arms around my head and said: “Do you think I could go into exile alone?” Barbara was expected to answer strange questions. Did you eat hamburgers? Sushi? Did you drink Coca-Cola? Did you see a geisha? Indifferent, Barbara replied: “The circus is an island, a floating island, and even when we’re far away, we never leave our island.” We never had any time and considered ourselves lucky if we got an hour off so we could buy a souvenir. Our appointment books were crammed full of rehearsals, performances, photo shoots, interviews, and travel from one place to the next.
In Japan, Barbara bought herself a bathrobe printed with cherry blossoms. I wanted to buy one too when we visited Asakusa together, but all the robes they had featured colorful prints, and I realized it made me feel panicky to abandon my white camouflage. I asked the saleswoman if she didn’t have an all-white bathrobe. Surprised, she asked if I was intending to celebrate a ghost festival. In Japan, the ghosts of dead human beings dress all in white. The Japanese posters announced us as “The Bolshoi Circus of East Germany,” which immediately spoiled my mood, since we certainly didn’t want to figure as a secondhand copy of a Russian circus. The interpreter, Miss Kumagaya, reassured us, explaining that the Russian circus, which had enjoyed such grea
t success in Japan in the 1960s, had remained fixed in people’s memories as the “Bolshoi Circus.” Emphatically she added that it was to our advantage to encourage the association. And after all, we represented a more evolved form of this circus, one suited to the 1970s, so there was nothing secondhand about it. “You were even born in Russia, weren’t you?” she asked me. “No, I was born in Canada,” someone answered in my place, which reminded me that I hardly had any connection to my native land anymore.
In Barbara’s memory, two bears intermingled later — the older one was named Tosca, just like me, and Barbara had already kissed her in the 1960s. I too was born in Canada, but in 1986, and I came to Berlin just before the fall of the Wall. I am Old Tosca reborn and carry her memory within me. We look the same, and there is scarcely any difference in how we smell.
In the circus, none of the animals suspected the day of German Reunification was approaching. I saw something glittering in the air as if to foreshadow an unsettling spring. The soles of my feet itched unbearably. If human beings had taken seriously the wisdom of ancient peoples who entrusted bears with the task of predicting the future of the community, they would have been able to usefully diagnose the future in my itchy feet. And even if they hadn’t managed to discern the concept “reunification,” they’d have perhaps spotted some other words, like “abducted,” “apartment share,” and “adoption,” that would have provided enough clues to let them approximately understand what lay in store.
During this time of upheaval, Barbara enjoyed the enthusiastic applause of enraptured crowds twice a day in a Berlin park. All the women of her generation were already retirees. Barbara, on the other hand, got up early each day, put on makeup, and transformed herself into the queen of the North Pole. The budget had been mercilessly cut, but thanks to her old connections, she had a top-notch costume. After the first performance of the day, she would fall sound asleep on an old sofa in her dressing room. After the second performance, she ate a mountain of spaghetti, then carefully washed her face and fell into bed. All that was left of our performance now was the kiss she and I shared. Back in the 1970s, the scenario had been more substantial: first the nine polar bears had danced on balls and pulled around a sled on which Barbara stood, followed by Barbara and me dancing a round of tango, with the finale of the Kiss of Death.