The Second Greatest Show On Earth ~The Chinese Acrobat~ This guy, he was once a Chinese acrobat. Truth is he was labeled a Chinese Acrobat but in fact he wasn’t even from China. He came from a small village in Laos. His parents taught him how to balance a bowl over his head and eventually he learned to balance twenty. For them it was a necessity. It really was. Don’t ask me why or how. I don’t know, but I don’t suppose they do so to put on shows as they do here. Not when your brothers and sisters, your cousins, your second and third distant cousins, your neighbors and even the President know how to do this and do it well. (He swears that once, when he was a little chap, he witnessed the President of Laos himself balancing a Persian cat on a large stick placed over his head, but then of course he wasn‘t the President back then.) I mean who’d be entertained or the least bit impressed by doing something that everyone else does? He says to me, very sarcastically: Well, Joe, it not our fault that your country people is weak in skill and easily impressed. I nod. He came here sneaked in a cargo box that was shipped in a plane. And that is how he lived with an elephant for a week or so. Smelling elephant dung, drinking from its water, and eating fortune cookies. Yes, fortune cookies. He carried a box of Chinese fortune cookies that his mother had given to him to present people with, you know, as a gift from the supposed homeland. To present authenticity. To say, I’m Chinese alright. I’ll be your Chinese Acrobat. People tend to stick to what they know. He dreamt, as hundred of others dreamed in his village, of one day making it to America. To become rich and famous. And so he made it here with me. He was unsuccessful in his initial attempts. He tells me of how The Circus of the Sun rejected him. The French neo-Chinese Acrobats had arrived there before him. And besides, they only hired through agents. Who wants their dirty money anyway? Exploiters. But you, he says to me, you are my friend. Sure I am, I say. Sure I am. Now, It’s not that my circus was shoddy nor that it was something to smirk at. We were just getting started. I just needed my Chinese acrobat. He had come to me. I remember how he presented me with the fortune cookies and all. He had said, I am Chinese from China. A gift for you. And I received a bunch fortune cookies in a little red box. I took one and cracked it. I pulled out the little paper first. It read: “Your future looks promising“. I asked him why they were written in English. He said, yes, yes, yes, national product. An Expart. Export? Yes, Export. (Somewhere I read that Fortune Cookies originated in San Francisco. If true, I wondered then how they made it all the way back into Asia.) He says he learned English from them. I believe him. Every time I see him he remarks weird things like: “Your day will be divine” or “Success means competition.” or “One must be available, alert, active, and adaptable.” or “Concern more about yourself than others.” and other things like that. Then, of course, I discovered he was from Laos. Those were the good old days, he says to me as we sit on the empty benches that were once full of hundreds of spectators. We stare at the empty planks. They surely were. I mean, we were labeled The Second Greatest Show on Earth by the New York Times. The word “Greatest Show on Earth” had been copyrighted that’s why. But we were THE show. Heck the President had even come over to witness our show. How did we become that successful? I call it a stroke of luck. It must’ve begun when I read the Chinese fortune cookie. It must’ve begun with my Chinese Acrobat. But then there was Bernice. ~Of How the President fell in love with Bernice and got Impeached~ The day she arrived, five years ago, Bernice was as beautiful as ever. She wore a silky white dress and had the prettiest aquamarine eyes I had ever seen. Oh yes, her beautiful eyes were radiant enough to make me forget about her beard. For a while I couldn’t keep my eyes out of her gaze. But then I looked down. It must’ve reached six foot back then because it even dragged on the floor. That tragic beard. She presented her hand to me. I took it and kissed it gently. I still remember the feeling of her skin. Smooth as onion skin. She said, I’ve come to join your show. I nodded. I thought about what I’d do with her. She stroked her beard sadly. She cried. I told her, it’s ok. It will be alright. And then I cried. The next day she was set up on the platform. I asked her, are you sure about this? She replied with what began as a solemn yes and turned into a roar: Yes! I can still picture her: her fierce eyes, the aquamarine turning to turquoise as I presented her. Ladies and gentlemen the tragic bearded lady! Some people looked at her and laughed. Others nodded to each other in sadness. Such a shame, they’d say, what a beautiful woman. If it weren’t for that beard I‘d take her home. That cursed beard. But still they looked. And they munched their peanuts. And they made jokes of her. But she didn’t seem to be bothered at all. She would just stare back at them. She never cried again since the day I met her. I was happy to have her and she was happy to have me. As our show progressed, the crowds became more and more sophisticated (though they always kept on laughing at Bernice and the rest of them). We left the old circus carpet behind. We were nomads now, no longer sedentary. Except for Andy, the clown who would never leave his hometown, we were all happy to be on our way. Our equipment was carried by diesel powered machinery. We moved from venue to venue as we toured the greatest cities of this nation. It was on one such day that we were informed of a special guest. THE President himself would witness our spectacle, I was told. Be sure to put on your greatest display, some man said to me. But what did this agent know? We’d, without a doubt, put on the greatest show mankind has ever seen. And it turns out that we did. So much that the President insisted in meeting us in person. That is he requested to see me and Bernice and only us two. The others were sad but only for a while, just as soon as they discovered the lavish gifts that the President had brought with him. They thought of nothing more. But I was nervous. And so was Bernice as we waited in the dressing room. What could the President possibly want with us? She continued, We are in the middle of the war and he’s out here, watching our show, asking to talk to us. Shame on him. I told her that it wasn’t of harm to us. This publicity would surely help us a bunch. Stop complaining. Then the President came alone. He greeted me with a handshake and done so he continued eagerly to take Bernice’s hand which he kissed swiftly and delicately as if kissing the most precious diamond, all the while raising his eyes to peek at her. She looked uneasy, now that I recall. And she did pull her hand away. But he insisted to remain holding it. He said to her, My dear you are the prettiest person I’ve ever seen. What about the beard, she asked. What about it? Suddenly he turns to me. Then I realized that I was more of an obstruction than a desired presence and so it was that I reluctantly forced myself to leave the room. I began to shut the door behind me but before all sound became contained within that room, I distinctly heard the marriage proposal: Will you marry me? And that is how Bernice, the bearded lady, became the first lady. That sudden and all. He married her, beard and all. The President did. And a fancy wedding at a fancy hall in New York city it had been. We got invites but we didn’t show up. We were afraid to remind her. We saw her wedding picture in fancy gloss magazine. She had no beard at all. Not anymore. And he got impeached. He got trapped between the people who wanted war and those who didn’t. And they moved to an island in Barbados. And who knows what happened to them after all. Though I do hear rumors that they had bearded children after all. At least Bernice got it good, I say as I conclude my thoughts of her. She deserved it, he, the Chinese Acrobat, says. She surely does. She deserved a better fate than this. And so did Wolf Boy. Ah yes, poor Wolf Boy. ~Wolf Boy & The Blimp~ Wolf Boy came from a family in Mexico. Story goes that Wolf Boy and his other brothers were abandoned by their parents, who, convinced by townspeople that they had been cursed for marrying (they were cousins), left them to die by locking them in the shanty and setting it on fire. The parents were set to run away very far and bound to never return, but surprisingly enough one of the brothers woke up coughing smoke and all. He alerted his other brothers and soon all of them were able to leave the house through the window that was still clear from fire. They searched and searched for their parents through the woods and all. And there they were, running into the distance. Into the far horizon, suitcases and all. Like little hares. The moonlight denounced them. Stop mother. Stop mother! They must’ve surely screamed. That is the first and only time Wolf Boy remembered crying, so he told me. He had a thing for blimps huh?, the Chinese Acrobat asks, interrupting my train of thought. He surely did. I wonder what led him to do that? Before he followed the blimp into oblivion, Wolf Boy worked for me. And before he worked with me, he worked at a famous circus in Mexico where he and his brothers were known as Los Hermanos Peludos (the hairy brothers). Then one day he crossed the borders in search of a better fate. Perhaps more acceptance too. Kids in his town probably didn’t like him. No they didn’t, now that I remember. . . he was sad because all he ever wanted was a true friend. He told me of how he realized that, indeed, people were not laughing with him but rather at him. How did he realize this? It was hard to know, he said: being laughed at all my life, it was natural. I couldn’t think of it in other ways. We were contained behind a window glass. I couldn’t hear what they said or how they laughed. I thought they were laughing with us, my brothers and me. I thought they tried to cheer me up. That is what his boss, El Jefe, used to tell him, that the crowd was there to cheer them on. But one day the window cracked. Behind it stood Wolf Boy and his brothers, smiling and waving at people and outside was the laughter of the people. The laughter flooded through the cracks. It was only then that he realized what was going on. For the first time in his life Wolf Boy felt shame. He found the same thing here that made him leave his home. Shame and guilt. He tried to escape it but it followed him everywhere. I was a last resort. He had given up hope. One day he stumbled into my circus. He saw Bernice and became impressed by her courage. That is why he decided to join us. Together, with Bernice, Wolf Boy had grown stronger. He accepted people’s laughter. Both of them did. Bernice and Wolf Boy. I swear that at times they laughed back at the crowds. Perhaps in sorrow. Perhaps. I don’t know if that’s possible. The two of them gave courage to each other for a long time. But then when Bernice married he was left on his own. Bernice didn’t take him with her. The President wouldn’t allow it. I don’t want no monkey boy, we heard him say. And so Wolf Boy was alone one night by the corn fields (we had stopped in Ohio). He cried. Then a blimp appeared. It soared in the sky. It’s magnificent billboard of dazzling lights read: Follow me to Wonderland! (It was an ad for Booze) And so he did: Wolf Boy ran after the blimp with all his might. He almost flew after it, his tiny feet barely touching the ground and all, as he yelled: Wait for me! Wait for me! How do I know this? I saw him. I saw him following it. I yelled after him to stay but he didn’t stay. And then I never saw him. Maybe the pilots, noticing him and feeling sorry for him, threw down a rope and pulled him up and now he soars the skies. Maybe he fell of a cliff. Maybe he ran ‘till he could no more and died. Maybe someone shot him thinking he was a wolf. Who knows. Well it’s now only us, I finally say, breaking the silence. Only you and me. Yes, people grow tired of the circus, says the Chinese Acrobat. We sigh together. ~Broken Bones and Broken Hearts~ Great things come to an end sooner or later, I say. Yes, they do. He finally says. Our old glory is far gone. Left us in old age. He now sits in a wheelchair. His legs and arms weak. He hardly ever drank milk. Do they even have cows over there where you‘re form, I ask him? Where? Laos or China? We both laugh. You know what I’m talking about, I say. China of course. Well . . . we import lots of them from New Zealand last I heard. A billion people, now that’s a lot of people. A billion Chinese acrobats. If all of your people invaded us we’d be in shame. Most of us can’t even balance a pencil. You know, Joe, not all of us are Chinese Acrobats. We both laugh.
Copyright © 2006 Alexei Chamakov |