The Circus

by Olivia Levez

  Soon she will chop tiny pieces of me and I will be nothing.

  Bed of Nails

  When I wake up, Suz’s face looms close. She’s holding another mug of the cardamom tea, and something that steams in a tin.

  ‘Chocolate porridge,’ she says. ‘I let you sleep. You were crying out a lot.’

  I breathe in with a shudder. I am still here, in Suz’s terrible house and her terrible sheets. I look down beside me and there are the rafters, with the yawning space below.

  Then I look around frantically.

  ‘My bag,’ I say. ‘My Kit of Happiness. What have you done with it? You’ve stolen it. You –’

  She puts the tin and mug down. Nods towards the corner. ‘It’s here. It’s here. Your stuff’s here. Jeez. Why would I want that bag of crap, anyway?’

  My heart slows. There’s my bag, as she says, hanging from a nail on the rafter.

  ‘I need the loo,’ I say.

  Suz shrugs. ‘There’s the backyard. Anything else, you have to use the public toilets. I wash in the ones by the beach.’

  I look at Suz’s dirt-ingrained face, and doubt that she bothers to make the journey that often. Then feel bad. Then don’t, because it was her, after all, who stole from me. So she’s just paying something back.

  I curl my hands around the tin of porridge and sniff it. It does smell of chocolate, although it looks like something a child would make out of mud and wood chippings.

  ‘Cacao nibs,’ says Suz.

  ‘From the market,’ I say.

  She laughs and coughs. Her fingers shake a little as she fumbles around for her Rizla papers and her tin. She leaves me to my porridge and walks across the rafters to the counter, ducks down behind it, and there’s silence. I wonder what she’s doing behind there. I taste the porridge with the fork she has given me. Apart from the fact that it’s made with water instead of milk, it’s not so bad, the cacao nibs crunching into the oats. I eat it between sips of scalding, perfumed tea, and start to feel the warmth back in my bones. Later, I will find somewhere to wash and go to the loo, and maybe look for my toothbrush, and then I’ll start to make plans.

  I get up cautiously, testing out my shaky legs and keeping well away from the drop between the rafters. Apart from my still-damp socks, and the faint memories of my dream, I feel all right. As all right as it’s possible to feel in a squat with no floors or ceilings, which stinks of stale garlic and staler weed.

  Suz has risen from behind the counter. She’s picking her way carefully towards me, and she’s a little unsteady on her legs. I look at the can in her hand. It’s black coloured and looks like it’s strong, whatever it is. She looks down at it and laughs.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s totally vegan,’ she says, but her voice sounds sort of thick and distant.

  ‘I’m not staying,’ I say, but even to my ears my words don’t ring true. I have nowhere else to go.

  Suz’s breath has the sweet-sour reek of cider, and her hair looks like it could do with a good wash. But I suppose that goes for me too. I step away from her, nearly losing my balance as I forget about the lack of floor.

  She grips me in her strong hands. ‘Careful,’ she says, only slurring a little. She shakes her can and places it carefully next to a jar of something brown and lumpy that says it is almond butter. The paper birds flutter, and she sees me looking.

  ‘Make them out of scraps of paper I find,’ she says. ‘I’d sell ’em, but they take too long to make. Gotta measure your input against output, right? The bracelets, though – now you’re talking.’

  I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  ‘We’ll make beautiful art first,’ she says, ‘to earn our living.’ She pulls her satchel from a Barbie-doll hook, and stoops to lace her boots. Then she beams a wide, huge smile at me. ‘And then,’ she says, ‘I’m going to teach you to walk on air.’

  Chalkdust

  We climb back down the fire escape until we are in the tiny backyard. From this level, in the bright, cool morning light, the contrast between the two sides of the building are even more apparent. On Suz’s side, it’s all gaping broken- and boarded-up windows. Graffiti tags are sprayed hurriedly over the back walls. Suz scowls when she sees them.

  ‘Absolute garbage,’ she sniffs. ‘Where’s the beauty in that? Where’s the art?’ I watch her as she chalks on the wall: 3/10 Could do better.

  ‘What is this place?’ I ask.

  ‘It used to be a hotel before it became a department store. Then druggie squats. Then it won lottery funding to get turned into an artists’ residence for the whole community, then it was bought for uni accommodation.’ She shrugs. ‘But that fell through. So it’s back to squats, I guess.’ She winks. ‘On my side anyway, but that won’t be for long. The other side’s already been turned into posh apartments. They’ll come for this side soon.’

  She points to a For Sale sign poking out of a straggling hedge. I wonder what she’ll do once it gets sold. I shiver. What I’ll do.

  Out on the pavement, Suz darts forward to grab a paper bag that’s caught in a hedge, folds it carefully and puts it into her pocket. ‘Needed some more blue,’ she says.

  After we wash in the public toilet block – well, I wash, using what’s left in my little plastic travel bottles, and she just ducks her whole head under the taps, then shakes her hair like a dog and sighs – we make our way past the pier to the promenade. Suz chatters on about her absurd scheme, which she ‘dreamt’, she said, ‘like it was effing fate or something…I can totally be your manager. It was my dream that gave me the idea, and then waking up and seeing you there, asleep and moany and sweaty. Then I looked out of the skylight this morning, and saw two pigeons sitting, just looking at me. Two pigeons, Frog! You know what that means?’

  I don’t know what that means.

  Suz surveys me with her blue-green eyes. They’re not sea-glass today, more the colour of a storm-darkened sky. ‘It means LUCK, Frog. We’re going to be successful, and have our heart’s desire!’

  The sky seems to shiver then, and the sun comes out. Suz laughs delightedly.

  ‘Draw!’ she commands. We kneel down on the pavement, and she gives me chalk.

  We sit all day, absorbed in creating strange worlds. Hers are of mad, monstrous flowers, with tiny rooms in their stamen and eyes in their buds. Insect people crawl up the stems, hairy human legs on grasshoppers’ abdomens.

  ‘It means nothing,’ she laughs, when I ask her. She switches to drawing her dream: pictures of a dark-eyed girl with a smudge of yellow hair, flying through the air and back-flipping on a tightrope. The girl has thick wrists and ankles, and I don’t need to ask to know that it is me.

  ‘It’ll be you, when I’ve stage-managed you,’ she laughs. ‘When I’ve taught you all I know, and made your costume and done all of your promo.You’ll make our fortune, Frog.’ She leans over her drawings, careless of the chalk dust over her knees and feet and Aladdin pants. She starts to hum. She is utterly absorbed.

  I draw buildings with small, tightly shut windows and great creeping ivy and wisteria bursting out of the bricks and tiles. I draw flying pigs in white ruffs, and flying babies with wings.

  I don’t tell her what it means either. I don’t draw my dream.

  Sometimes, we make money. Mostly we don’t.

  Suz’s Vegan Curry

  To feed two

  2 onions

  1 tin of tomatoes – valu range

  1 tin mixed veg (‘or real if you can get them’)

  1 beetroot* (Don’t ask. This is Suz’s special ingredient

  and is ‘good for the brain’.)

  Curry powder/spices

  1 banana/desiccated coconut (optional, but both highly recommended by Suz)

  1. Fry the onions and spices together, taking care not to burn them. (Suz always does.)

  2. Chop the beetroot. It will stain your fingers, and everything else it touches. This does not matter. It is a vital ingredient, according to Suz.

  3. Thr
ow into the pan, along with the mixed veg. What they are is irrelevant. They’ll all turn purple by the end anyway.

  4. Pour in the tomatoes and an extra can of water, taking care not to step backwards into the gaping cavern that is the missing floor as you do so.

  5. Leave to burp and splatter (for at least an hour.)

  Optional: If you’re feeling decadent, serve with chopped banana and sprinkles of desiccated coconut. This is not advised as it tastes absolutely disgusting, but according to Suz, makes it ‘even more vegan’.

  * If you visit the loo the next day and happen to look down, do not think you are bleeding to death. This will be the beetroot making its way through your system.

  Walking on Air

  ‘This is the perfect spot,’ says Suz.

  I make a face. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure! Just look at it. You’ll be like the Karate Kid. I’m like your guru, mentor, whatever.’

  ‘Except you’re not Chinese.’

  ‘Except I’m not Chinese,’ Suz agrees. She squats down and draws a line on the floor with chalk. ‘This here’s your tight rope. All you have to do is walk the line.’

  ‘But it’s on the floor,’ I point out.

  ‘Well of course it’s on the floor, dumb-ass! What do you think I’m trying to do – kill you? She finishes drawing the line and straightens up. ‘That comes later,’ she grins.

  We are up on the rooftop. We can see for miles, towards West Hill to the left and Beachy Head to the right. Somewhere are the twin funiculars, caterpillar-crawling their way endlessly up and down the cliffside. And the new shopping centre, with its brand names and plazas and retail outlets. There’s the station. There, Old Hastings, with its twisty, twiny streets and fishing shacks.

  And always the sea, endlessly moving. It’s behaving itself today, all pink and gold shimmer.

  ‘Are we safe?’ I ask, nodding towards the neighbours’ skylight. There’s no smell of cooking today, and it’s firmly shut.

  Suz nods. ‘They’ll be at work. Only their cat’s at home. A ginger monster. He’ll crush you in his maw like a spider if he ever sees you.’

  She says this carelessly, as if it’s a perfectly normal thing to say. I watch her move the broken trellises on our side, defeated by the relentless sea gales. There are a couple of chairs, orange plastic and losing their springs. We have some like them in our prefects’ common room, but ours are covered in pillows and cushions and throws. Had, I remind myself. I am not part of that world any more.

  ‘Ready?’

  I shrug and walk the chalk line rapidly. ‘It’s not exactly difficult,’ I say. I turn and do it again.

  Suz doesn’t answer straight away. She’s sitting cross-legged under a huge, holey sun parasol, which is all horrible seventies brown and orange flowers. Beneath it, the shadows make her seem unworldly, Puckish.

  ‘Hmmm,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure…’

  I begin to get impatient. ‘What aren’t you sure about?’ She frowns a little, like an X Factor judge about to give her verdict.

  ‘Fair,’ she says.

  I scowl. ‘So what do you suggest, to make it better?’

  She jumps up. ‘Feathers,’ she says, ‘and fire.’

  She disappears down the skylight, and returns, huffing and gasping, trying to push her precious silver case through.

  I help her.

  ‘You want me to carry fire?’

  She takes out her lighter. Flicks it with a chalky thumb. ‘I want you to eat fire.’

  Suz keeps calling out commands while I struggle, swear, sob and hiss with pain.

  She keeps yelling as my throat rasps, the skin around my lips blisters and the inside of my mouth burns when I get it wrong. My mouth aches from stretching it around the cotton. My eyes stream and I am high with breathing in the fumes.

  But I don’t stop.

  Days and days later, I still don’t stop.

  ‘Keep ya hair tied back, ya nonce.’

  ‘Hold your breath. Hold your breath! Jeez, are you trying to kill yourself?’

  ‘Tip your head back far enough that the fire goes straight up toward your hand.’

  ‘Close your lips. Close your lips now – mind the torch.’

  ‘I have a headache,’ I say.

  ‘That’s totally normal. Keep going.’

  ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘Have some water. Again.’

  Until finally: ‘Not bad, Frog. Not bad.’

  After I’ve swallowed enough fire to fill a thousand dragons, I try it while walking the chalk line. Suz sits beneath her parasol like a queen. A queen who drinks extra strong cider and has a liking for subversive art.

  ‘You’ve got to let yourself go more, Frog. Be really wild, release your inner fire demons. Like this.’ And she capers around the roof in her broad bare feet, shaking her dreadlocks, rolling her eyes. In her hands, the fire sticks become magical weapons, brands forged from a nest of dragons.

  When she tires, which is soon, her breath rasping like a hacksaw, she tosses them to me, one after another, panting. ‘OK, now your turn, Fire Girl.’

  And she whoops and she hollers as she watches, drumming her beaded feet on the ground as I dance and whirl, clapping her hands at my fire-eating finale.

  ‘OK,’ she says after a while. ‘Time to raise the stakes.’

  I shake my head, peering out to sea. ‘It’s getting dark.’ I say.

  She shoves her parasol into a plant pot full of desiccated soil and begins to climb down the ladder. I hear her coughing as I pack the devil sticks carefully into their case.

  I am tired. I keep burping petroleum. Even a pan of slimy vegan sausages might be welcome.

  Suz’s Vegan Sausages

  1 handful of flour (‘S’posed to be chickpea flour, Frog, but what the hell is that, anyway?’)

  2 tins of beans ‘Any type will do.’ (But not baked. Suz tried that once, and even she said it was a mistake.) Mixed herbs (If you have them. We don’t.)

  Something to mash it all up with (Suz sometimes uses the edge of a brick. So it was real dust I tasted the first and only time I tried these.)

  A little oil (‘Not too much though, or it’ll get on the candles and set the whole place alight.’)

  1. First, use the facilities at the beach toilets to wash your hands.

  2. Mash everything up together and mould the sticky mess into sausage shapes with your hands.

  3. Wash out your only pan and fry the sasusages in the oil. They will totally stick to the bottom, but apparently ‘the burnt bits are the best’.

  Which doesn’t say a lot for the rest of it.

  Crescendo

  ‘I’m not doing that,’ I say.

  Suz rolls her eyes. ‘You’re ready. I feel that you’re ready.’

  ‘But I can’t see anything. It’s almost dark.’

  She sighs. I hear her suck in a lungful of cheap shag tobacco. ‘That’s the whole point. We’re building you up to doing it blindfolded.’

  ‘Blindfolded?’

  ‘Of course. It’s called crescendo. When you build up the excitement and tension to an effing amazing all-out climax.’

  ‘I know what crescendo means,’ I snap. ‘I did violin and cello.’

  I try to peer through the gathering shadows at the beam. Suz has picked the longest one, which joins both sides of the house. It’s not exactly narrow, not like a real tightrope would be, but then it’s not exactly wide either. And I’ll be stopping halfway to swallow fire.

  ‘Just do it, Frog, you know, like the Nike ads.’ Suz’s voice is slurring again. She’s cuddling up to the can of cider that she’s rescued from its perch next to the organic almond butter.

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  I move the flickering candle closer to the beam and try to focus on what I can make out of the far side of the wall. If I slip, I’ll die, there’s no other way of saying it.

  I push down the sneaking voice, and try to slow my breathing. I have no more pills an
d no way of getting any more, so I can’t afford a panic attack right now – not ever.

  ‘In your own time,’ drones Suz. It’s difficult to sound sarcastic when you’re cider-soaked. I decide to ignore her.

  I place my right foot onto the beam and squeeze my abd ominals, try to imagine a heavy sphere settling in the core of my belly, which was what we had to do when I did gymnastics.

  It’s the same as you’ve always done, I think. Up on the roof, back home. It’s just that, this time, there’s a half-drunk homeless girl egging you on, and a mile of black empty space below you.

  I take another step. I am committed now; I may as well go forwards. I keep my eyes trained on where I think the far wall may be, and, all too soon, I am in the middle of the beam, the very centre of this huge, gaping, cavernous house, balanced like a dancer.

  If I should fall…

  Somewhere, I can hear Suz humming under her breath, and it’s the same tune that the Romanian musicians were playing at the Art Café, days or weeks ago.

  ‘Fire!’ Suz shouts suddenly, and I wobble. Curse her under my breath. I reach for my devil sticks and light them. The room burns into brightness. Shadows swoop and dance and lunge. I am in the very belly of hell.

  ‘Eat the bloody fire!’

  And I do. Teetering in the middle of an ancient beam in a crumbling house, I perform and swirl the sticks and dip my head. I am dancing with the devil and playing with fire.

  I have cast off Willow like a burning snakeskin.

  Pavement Art

  ‘Paris is a city of dreams,’ says Suz. ‘You go down the Champs Élysées and every shop’s a work of art, every cake a miniature sculpture, every window a giant canvas. I could sit myself at the Place du Tertre in Montmartre and set up my easel and draw and paint all day long. A bit like what I do now, Frog, but earning heaps more money. I’d draw the passers-by, sketch them sitting on giant birds,’ she sighs. ‘I’d look at their faces, and hold up their chins, and tell them what sort of bird they are. I’d be appreciated there, Frog. You can charge over twenty Euros just for one drawing. Instead of waiting for some tosser to chuck in twenty pence. Know what I’m saying?