Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted

by Gary Barwin

  “I am prettier without the beard. And without a belly,” she said. “Many of us here are in disguise. In disguise.”

  She held out her hand and waited. Was she miming a one-handed strangling?

  They weren’t sure what to do. Then Esther poured a mug of Pilsner and set it in the curve of the ringmaster’s palm. She nodded.

  “Circus folk know performers. Unlike dogs, we don’t need to sniff, but we know. We know. And we know you’re not. It’s how you use the air. How you move through it. How you stand in it. How you use time.”

  She raised the glass to them. “Za nas! To us!” And drank the beer in a single draft, wiped her lip on the brocade of her sleeve and again held her hand out, motioning to Esther. As soon as the mug was topped with foam, she began again. “But circus folk are nomads. Some spend lives moving through the air, hardly touching the ground. Wandering Jews. Bucket Riders. Cowboys. Travellers. Rovers.

  “So though I doubt you can shoot gnats or fleas, stars or wisecracks from the air or dance on the spine of a filly, you can stay with us. Hide with us. Jew or Romani. Homosexual or Communist. There’s always a broom and a cage or a bucket and comb. Or shoes to polish. Big shoes.

  “We don’t need to know who you are. Perhaps it’s better not to know. Unless you’re Gestapo. We allow our lions to crunch Gestapo skulls then suck their brains. Like eating Fascist snails. A delicacy. Though the next day, there’s digestive problems. You’re not Gestapo, are you? Are you?”

  “If we were, we wouldn’t tell you,” Mike said. “But by saying this, perhaps you will believe us more.”

  “You’re not Gestapo. This I know. Gestapo use the air, move through time differently also. Especially when in a lion’s jaws.

  “Nazis steal who you are, turn you to what their Zyklon eyes desire so their balls shudder with righteous loathing, their tongues coil in intoxicated revulsion. Most of their victims become wraiths haunted by memories of what was, if they can remember, and what could have been.

  “But in the circus, it is us who tell Nazis who they are. Our enchantments twist and orchestrate, capture and con.”

  She downed her beer again in a single action, then wiped the foam from her mouth.

  “But alas, this magic is for moments only, for the times they watch and cheer, turned into little boys in knickerbockers. And when it is done, they return to the poisoned world.”

  Esther refilled her mug before she asked, and then everyone else’s. Together they lifted them.

  When it is difficult to toast the future, then one raises a glass and drinks to the amber moment itself, to those who cannot drink. “Za tych co nie mogą.”

  They drank.

  “Tonight,” the ringmaster said, “the Führer’s bootlicking sidekick Heinrich Reichsführer Himmler himself will be in the audience as he has come to Poland to do some Schutzstaffeling. And so, we will have the honour of providing him a rejuvenating distraction from the demands of his work. And Heinie loves Wild West shows. So you will, after all, perform in buckskin and loincloth. I’ll send in someone to get you fitted.”

  And she left to attend to circus affairs.

  * * *

  —

  “I am Gretl,” a young woman dressed in a dark and too-large greatcoat announced to them all soon afterwards, and escorted the would-be Wild West troupe to the costume boxcar. She outfitted Motl in a ten-gallon hat, a leather vest, and a scarf of a striking Polish folk design of red, blue and black flowers, which would serve as a bandana. When tied around his face, its heritage wasn’t apparent. His wasn’t either.

  Gretl helped him strap on an elaborately tooled gun belt and double holster around the waist of a pair of boot-cut blue jeans, images of swirling birds and flowers embossed into the brown leather. She gave him two brightly polished nickel-plated six-guns, mismatched but resembling Smith & Wessons. He held them up and spun the cylinders, listening for the sound of possibility.

  Gretl retrieved two cowboy boots from a pile of mismatched and improbable footwear that were approximately his size, and decoratively stitched with what looked like the spiky leaves of weeds. Spurs with golden rowels that resembled two bright suns with jingo bobs attached, so Motl made a pleasing tintinnabulation as he jangled around the boxcar.

  Motl. Dressed for the first time as a Litvak cowboy, rider of the fabled Pale-of-Settlement range. Its open air, its fenceless opportunity, its wide-skied freedom. Its hard-won, leathery optimism.

  Motl, who was not just a middle-aged Jew, mad with terror, forced to stampede by the crush of history, but instead a tough hombre woven into its tapestry. There he is, squinting into the hot sun and dry wind, teeth clamped around a cigarillo, facing life with resolve and determination. What heartbreak he carried would be only what he chose to ride toward, or away from.

  But so often things come after their time.

  The cure for the fatal disease arrives at your wake.

  You tote your saddle to the corral, but White Flash is gone, wearing another’s saddle.

  You jump from the window, but the ground doesn’t show up and, when it does, you’re unprepared.

  And now Motl was to be this cowpunch.

  Gretl handed Gerry and Mike what appeared to be the wilted scalps of smeary geezers to use as their loincloths. They lobbied and were instead provided leather chaps and smocks. Black Pippi Longstocking wigs surmounted with chicken feathers dipped in paint completed their transformation into fearsome Indigenous warriors.

  A farmer’s straw hat, a floral skirt, a blouse and bright neckerchief served as Esther’s sharpshooting cowgirl outfit. She was also given an almost comically large revolver with pearl handles by a rangy props man who resembled beef pizzle left too long in hot sun.

  “It’s our most feminine weapon,” he said with the certain knowledge of a scholar.

  * * *

  —

  The green room, an area at the back of the tent where performers gathered before going onstage, was a bustling market square of preparations. Clowns strode around, adjusting wigs, noses, tent-like costumes and suspenders, preparing trick flowers and step-ladders. Greasepainted soldiers in striped and spotted costumes prepared for a comic war.

  Acrobats in spangles stretched their impossible spines, casually contorting as they chatted. Beyond the canvas, trainers purred intimately to their animals.

  The sound of fervent anticipation filled the tent as the audience gathered, the singsong of vendors offering peanuts and beer and the enthusiastic patter of jugglers and magicians. Motl and the other members of his not-very-wild Wild West show had been led through their routines by the ringmaster only moments before and now they waited for the show to begin.

  15

  The ringmaster, clad in her tumbleweed beard and impressively rotund midriff, green tails and towering stovepipe hat, silently stepped into the middle of the ring.

  A click and she was revealed to the audience in a moon-sized pool, brass buttons and silver whip handle sparkling. A dramatic pause and she spread her arms like a prophet and proclaimed: “Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, Officers, Soldiers, Aryans, Herrenvolk, citizens of this our Third Reich and especially Reichsführer Himmler. Welcome. It is our honour to entertain you.”

  Cheering.

  “And if you happen to be a Jew, please identify yourself so we can pay special attention to you on this, the last night of your life.”

  Laughter.

  “Prepare yourself to be blitzed by marvels, invaded by thrills. Get ready to collaborate with clowns and surrender to joy. If it feels like the Reich has gone on for a thousand years already, relax, sit back and enjoy the delights we have in store. Tonight we are especially happy to feature a Wild West show. Real Winnetou Indians and an Old Shatterhand Cowboy. A chief, a brave, an outlaw and a lady sharpshooter from Oklahoma.

  “Why are these Americans in the Fatherland? They feel the sam
e way about their government as we do.”

  More laughter and huge applause.

  A flash of light and a blast of pink smoke. A tiny clown, fired from a tiny howitzer, lands, then somersaults into several goose-stepping clowns. They jump so they’re not bowled over like pins.

  A miniature Beetle careens in, honking.

  A clown falls from the window.

  “How many clowns can you fit in a Volkswagen?” the ringmaster shouts. “Ach, don’t worry, if you need more room, just take your neighbours’ car.”

  More clowns leap from the windows. An inconceivable number.

  Now they’re soldiers in line. A self-important clown in an enormous feathered hat is Gruppenführer. He begins the inspection. First clown Hitler-salutes and knocks off Gruppenführer’s hat. Gruppenführer retrieves it and examines the second clown who salutes and knocks off Gruppenführer’s hat. Gruppenführer retrieves it and examines third clown. Sieg Heil and the hat is knocked off Gruppenführer. Fourth clown. Sieg Heil and the hat falls. And so on, a clown salutes and the hat is knocked off. Until the last clown, who sports a prodigious flower in his lapel.

  “Soldier, that’s not dress code!” Gruppenführer barks. He leans in and—just as the audience expects—water shoots, first in Gruppenführer’s eye then at Gruppenführer’s hat, which falls to the ground.

  Exeunt Nazi clowns, Gruppenführer, shaking his hat, in pursuit.

  Enter a battalion of poodles, feet and heads like meringue. Skinny chests half-immersed in hair like bubble-bath suds.

  Enter the trainer in jackboots. “Achtung, Pudelhunde,” he barks, and the poodles run in circles, yipping and jumping miniature Arc de Triomphe hurdles. They’re French poodles, after all.

  The trainer whistles and more dogs rush in wearing Moulin Rouge skirts, turn tail to the audience and begin to cancan.

  Again the trainer whistles and still more dogs appear, this time wearing berets. He pretends to pour wine into each dog’s open mouth, and each dog falls down on its back, passed out drunk.

  Then all the dogs sit before him.

  “It is time, mes chiens français, to fight the Germans,” the trainer says.

  All thirty dogs fall down, playing dead.

  Fade to black.

  The sound of a banjo.

  Spotlight on ringmaster.

  Then spotlights on Gerry and Mike in full Indianer finery, holding bows and arrows.

  “Though red as canyons, our warrior braves stand straight as pine trees, strong as Reichsadler eagles, their noses Roman, the six-packs of their bellies like Tuscan hills, or the bulging coils of bratwurst in a shopping bag. They gaze into the vast and unknown prairie night, last of a vanishing race, and know what courage is, what it is to fight without fear for their nation.”

  Spotlight on the other side of the ring: Motl and Esther, the light lustrous on their nickel-plated pistols.

  “The outlaw and the sharpshooter. The front and the frontier. We make room for civilization, seek blood and soil for new settlement. And these valiant freedom fighters, range-riding putschists, soldiers of the future, dare to imagine a new world as our Führer did.

  “Attend now to marvels, to these Paganinis of the trigger, virtuosi of the bullet and the bull’s eye, as they perform feats even William Tell would tremble in the face of.”

  From the shadows, two women dressed like Indianer squaws. Pocahontasbergers. They balance bottles of Red Eye Whiskey on Gerry and Mike’s heads. Gerry holds another bottle on his outstretched hand.

  Motl stands steady, legs apart, arms akimbo, hands resting on his holstered guns. Esther holds her pistol at eye level, one hand supporting the other.

  Two men, duded up as cowhands, blindfold them then spin them around several times. They do not end up where they began.

  The audience: murmuring.

  Drum roll.

  “Are you ready, Billy? Ready, Emaline?” the cowhands say to Motl and Esther.

  A quick nod from Motl. “Since I was weaned from Mama,” he shouts.

  He pulls the hammers on his guns.

  Click.

  Esther pulls the hammer on hers.

  Click.

  The ringmaster raises her whip.

  It happens all at once. Esther squeezing the trigger. Motl’s guns out of his holsters and smoking, the three bottles balanced on the heads of Mike and Gerry shattering. Glass jewelling their hair and faces.

  The whip cracking in the air.

  The audience: gasping.

  The three circus clowns retracting their guns and slipping back through the curtains.

  The ovation.

  16

  Intermission. Der treue Heinrich, the “half-starved shrew,” Reichsführer-SS Himmler himself, requested to meet the Wild West troupe, the “cowboys” separately from the “Indians.” Nazis maintain an interest in sorting by categories.

  Esther and Motl waited outside the private lounge where Himmler was holding an efficient and ruthless reception.

  “I can shoot a bottle blindfolded, but no matter the distance I’ll never find his chin,” Motl said.

  “Or his heart.”

  “He’s a bootlicker—trying to lick hard enough to please Hitler’s stunted little toes.”

  “Still, one weaselly nod and mama’s boy Heini could send us to Dachau.”

  “Of course. We’ll lick his boots, too. That’s how it works.”

  “He must know we’re not really cowboys.”

  “I’ve brought the Ḥakhan’s papers. So he’ll know we’re Karaites.”

  “Yes, it’s more convenient to die here than to have to travel all the way to Berlin to do it.”

  “The papers are supposed to help us.”

  “Ask Indians how that usually works out. Anyway, we could just leave with Gerry and Mike instead.”

  “I’ve still got to go to Switzerland—and not just to yodel.”

  “Why don’t you forget that and just be safe? We’d go together.”

  An officer opened the door and spoke to one of the guards posted outside.

  The guard saluted and turned to them. “The Reichsführer is ready.”

  “Whatever we decide, we’d better do a bit of cowboy first,” Esther said.

  * * *

  —

  Chinless Himmler sat at a table, brocaded and laden with insignia. He was a weasel in rimless glasses, his roadkill moustache, a strip of balding mouse-hide, his receding hair revealing the waxen territory of his head, a delusional land of murderous functionaries and Teutonic cartoons. Himmler the petty emperor of a gas station or roadside fruit stand, he aspired to Genghis Khan greatness, attempting to compensate for his weak physiognomy through cruelty.

  “Right proud to meet you, sir,” Motl said, tipping his hat. “The heart in my brisket is swole big as a saddle blanket. You’re ace-high with us cowpokes.”

  “We’re powerful glad to make your acquaintance,” Esther said with a combination curtsey and buckaroo nod. “Heil Hitler.”

  “Heil Hitler,” Himmler said, and they all saluted. “Now sit. We were pleased by your performance. We value discipline. We value diligence. And my SS officers were entertained. A drink for the performers.”

  A waiter placed whiskey before them.

  “When I was a boy in Munich, and my schöne mama read to me, I thought cowboys to be our Teutonic Knights. Strong, courageous, steadfast and loyal. They, like us, cleared territory for their people to live. We value such warriors.” Himmler pursed his lips primly. “And now we are at war with America. Who are your people?”

  “The Reich.”

  “Of course. But you are not Americans.”

  “We…” Motl began, then reached for the bag slung behind him. “We have papers.” He slid the sealed documents onto the table as if laying out a poker hand. Five aces.<
br />
  The Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of Germanness regarded the folio.

  “Our Ḥakhan wished for us to deliver this to you, Reichsführer.”

  “Jews.” It was as if the room had darkened. And darkened Hebraically, right to left. The soldiers in the room straightened.

  “No, Herr Reichsführer: Karaites,” Esther said. “We are a Mosaic religion, but not Catholics. Not Jews. Respectfully, your commission has determined that.”

  Himmler raised his hand. A pause and then a soldier strode forward and placed a Totenkopf Nazi death’s head letter opener in his hand. With the slightest twitch of acknowledgement, Himmler cut open the seal and then the envelope. He removed the document as a sword from a sheath.

  “Yes,” he said. “From your Ḥakhan. He is known to us. He has provided information in the past.” Himmler’s face was as emotionless as an empty sink. “A list of who is a Karaite. Who is posing. Very helpful, don’t you think, meine cowboys?”

  He poured some water from a jug into a glass on the table before him and took a precise sip, then touched a linen napkin to his lips, as if reverentially kissing it. A stylized eagle balanced atop a swastika, the initials H H on either side, was embroidered on the corner.

  “This document you have delivered provides such information. And it arrives with a letter.”

  Esther and Motl did not see any indication of an order from Himmler. But it seemed that the invisible tilt of a single Reichsführer-SS molecule was sufficient cause for the four soldiers in the room to move forward, silently gathering around the table.

  Himmler held up the letter and a soldier took it from him.

  “His Excellency Hajji Seraya Khan Shapshal…” the soldier began.

  “Your Ḥakhan,” Himmler interjected, staring at them with intent.

  “Writes that ‘upon receipt of this letter and the list which accompanies it,’ ” the soldier continued, “ ‘the two messengers delivering it…’ ”