The magician laughed and introduced himself as Mr. W. Frinkell. And when the bearded lady asked his real name and offered to feed the birds in his hat, he said, Call me Pips, and we all shook hands and I, who was rehearsed in the art of illusions and sleeves, offered to assist him with his next show. I picked up his tall hat and collected the riches while the handkerchief turned into birds and the stick turned into flowers and the horizon into a sun and the hat into the world. At night, as we walked along the deck, he told the bearded lady, I’ve been around the world, and the sweetest people I’ve ever met are dwarfs and misfits.
During the rest of the crossing, I would wake up in the middle of the night and see that the bed I shared with the bearded lady was empty except for me, but I was happy because I knew that Pips would take care of La Dame. He would love having her in his bed as the sea rocked the boat and splashed the deck and the little round windows with water and fish and every other kind of creature that originated from the sea.
Pips decided to travel with us the rest of the way, and when we arrived in the Carnival city the three of us shared small rooms with a communal bathroom. Pips found a few birthday gigs and a restaurant where we performed some nights, but then, suddenly, poverty hit us and hunger surfaced again from beneath our clothing and hats, it settled in our mattresses and covered the tablecloth, and we all went looking for jobs. I wore a turban on my head and a long robe that reached past my feet. I stood on corners while Pips shouted, The
Surmise
Boy, ladies and gentlemen! He will guess your age and weight and the remaining number of your living years . . .
The bearded lady couldn’t find a job because people here want everything to be clear: men are men and women are women and those who are in between are left to the vultures and the crocodiles. We were barely surviving, and one day Pips held me and said, Listen, kid, I have another trick up my sleeve, but you have to help me without our lady knowing. He showed me a book on “spiritism,” as he called it. He flashed the book in front of my eyes. I read the title,
The Book of Mediums and the Secret World of Beyond and After
. When I tried to grab it, Pips pulled it back and said, You will read it someday.
With the little money we made on the street, Pips rented a room and proclaimed himself a spirit medium. We fed on old ladies who had lost their husbands, mothers who talked to their missing sons in the jungles of war or the sunken ships below the seas, and we summoned lost lovers, wives, dogs, sons, and daughters from the beyond. When new clients called for an appointment, Pips, to look important and sincere, would ask for a reference, and then he would ask for their names and the year of their birth and tell them that he would be in touch soon. And I would go to the library and research past addresses, occupations, and lives. Then, in the afternoons, Pips and I would stroll to our clients’ childhood places: we would note trees and watch kids play, we would observe the colours of window frames, the meadows, or the electric poles nearby. We went to the local bars and coffee shops and made conversation. It was easy to evoke the dead, because their traces are everywhere. Their past lives stretched and covered candy stores, benches, water fountains, dirt roads, and dusty graves. The dead, Pips would say, are what we make of them.
Pips and I dimmed the lights in the rented room, hung velvet drapes, and skilfully positioned the dancing tables and talking chairs. We bought a cheap skull and passed thin ropes through it. And I let my own dark spirit hide behind the wardrobe door to pull the rope and make the skull talk and shiver. We built a wooden box, placed a bell inside it, and positioned the box under the table. Whenever the box was kicked or nudged, the bell would ring. Just when the spirit was about to respond, Pips would hold the client’s arm and ask everyone to move back from the table, hold hands, close their eyes, and let their bodies fall forward. From there he would faintly jiggle the table with his head, making it shift and squeak, and kick the box.
Later we oiled the wardrobe’s door so that when it opened, no sound could be heard. Before the client came into the room, I would slip inside the wardrobe with a few sealed envelopes. During the session, Pips would ask the client, let’s say it was a lady, to write a question to the deceased. She would insert it into an envelope, seal it, and Pips would take it from her and ask her to close her eyes and concentrate. From inside the wardrobe, I would exchange envelopes with Pips, right under the lady’s nose. Then Pips would ask the lady to open her eyes and read the answer of the spirits. The messages we wrote were always vague, a reference to a place that we, Pips and I, eerie humans that we were, had visited the day before.
Pips even made deals with the undertaker. He promised him that, once in a while, a client would come to him wanting to upgrade a loved one’s headstone to something more expensive. And Pips would take a cut. The contents of some envelopes read
The white stone, change the white stone
, or simply
the fountain
,
I am happy here
, or
Grandpa
. From inside the wardrobe, I tried not to breathe heavily, not to sneeze, not to laugh or feel sorry.
For a while business thrived and we ate well. Pips walked around in a new suit and bought the bearded lady flowers from the shop. And then, one day, the bearded lady cornered me with a stick and a rope, and I confessed that the money had come from the wishes of old ladies and the desperation of orphans. That it was collected from mothers in tears and extracted from old husbands who had no one left to talk to. The bearded lady cried and said only clergy and charlatans would promise to secure the welfare of the dead. She told me that we might be jokers, tricksters, rope walkers, and buffoons, but we had never been the kind to swindle desperate believers with falsehoods. And she held my hand and said, The best of them fall when they are in despair; they spend the rest of their lives and their fortunes on seances and dark chambers, waiting for the table to rattle, for the glass to speak. Listen, my son, all we’re allowed to sell is the wonders that we see, the acts that we witness, and the plays that we perform. Now close the curtains and go to your room before the door opens and hell breaks loose.
Late that night Pips appeared and the bearded lady grabbed him by the skull and pounded him to a pulp. She called him a swine and packed his clothes and threw him into the street. She cried all night, she climbed into my bed, and I swept away her tears and kissed her beard.
HUNGER
THE DRUG DEALER
came out of the strip bar, sat in the back of my car, and said, Okay, let’s call it a night. Drop me at the next bridge, the blue one. I’ll show you once we get there.
But then he became friendly and talkative and I wondered if he’d had a few drinks and a lap dance or two. Hey, Fly, where you from, he asked from behind his shady cool glasses.
From everywhere, I said.
Yeah, like you’re from China or Timbuktu. But really, are you from here?
I grew up among the animals, I said.
So you are one of those farmer boys; we do business there too, he said. My grandfather was a farmer, but his kind, the God-fearing, churchgoing farmers are all gone. Now they all have TVs on their roofs and orgies in their barns. The flux, Fly, man, the flux of time. If everything goes tits up, there’s always the farm and the cows . . . speaking of which, are you on for long drives outside of town?
Anywhere the wind brings the barley and the dough, I said.
That is my man, Fly is the man. Fly, are you gay?
No, I said.
No offence, but I am asking because the other day you said you had no girlfriend, so I didn’t know if you meant, like, no girlfriend but a boyfriend or if you’re just into ascetic living, deprivation, or masturbation. You know these things can be tricky.
No, no girlfriend.
But you do get laid, don’t you? Not with animals, I hope. Are you into kink, chains and shit, classy whores, white pussy, pink pussy, Chinese pussy, black pussy? Because I could set you up. Just say the word.
Much appreciated, I said. But you know how it is with mixing business and pleasure.
It can be pleasurable, the dealer said. My girl is my accountant, manager, fashion consultant, and my whore, if you know what I mean. Hey, we were never properly introduced. You are Fly, I know. Call me Zee. Zee as in “zee one, zee only Zee,” and he laughed . . . And thank you for asking me my name, Fly, now that we are friends. That was very polite of you, Fly. Very polite, Fly.
I looked in the mirror and smiled. He smiled back.
You do high, Fly?
Not on the job, I said.
I’ll leave you something for tonight. You know, something nice for your long-looking nose. Turn left here, we are close . . .
Before he left my car, Zee handed me a capsule with a bit of cocaine inside. I immediately went home for fear that the taxi inspector would be feeling sentimental. I knocked on the Romanian’s door. She opened and said, Yes?
I have something I thought the doctor might be interested in, I said.
Like what?
Pharmaceuticals.
You’re selling pharmaceuticals to a doctor? she said.
Yes, you know, I’ve noticed that he has this habit of passing the back of his hand below his nose, and I happened to have something for this medical condition.
What condition, she asked.
You know: the itchy-nose, bug-eyed, permanent sniffle condition. I noticed it as he was giving me a lecture on the benefits of good consumption. Of food, that is.
Okay, cut the joking, what do you have?
Nice white snow.
How much.
A cup of coffee. Inside, I added.
She let me in.
I gave her the capsule.
She went straight to a table in the middle of the room.
We both sat on the edge of the bed and she spread out some cocaine and lined it into a few rows.
Do you have a bill on you? she asked.
I handed her one. She rolled it and immediately went down on it. Then she swept her nose and said, What do you want for this?
I have a good friend who is like a brother to me. I want him to be able to consult a doctor. And I also want to talk, if you have a minute.
She picked up the capsule, put it in a side drawer, and said, The leftovers I am saving for the doctor. Now what do you want to talk about?
History.
I don’t know anything about history, she said.
Your history, I said.
What am I, a tree? Do you think I am so old that you can ask me about my history?
Life, I said. Your life.
My life? What for? Why do you want to ask me about my life if you can have something else?
I can’t.
You mean you can’t do it?
Well, no, yes, I can, but I prefer to be alone.
So what do you want to know?
Tell me about your house.
You are in my house. Look at this tiny dump. You have the same size house as me.
What was your childhood house like?
Oh, that house. I don’t know. Nothing special. You know how it was in those communist places.
Where was it?
Why? If I told you the place, would you know it?
Well, I might. I grew up in the circus and we crossed many lands.
Well, that’s funny, she said. The place I grew up in, everybody called the Circus.
Oh, I knew we had something in common! I rejoiced. What colours were your tents?
Well, no, not that kind of circus. Actually it was called the Famine Circus.
Yes indeed, I heard about it from a Romanian magician who also played Dracula now and then.
Dracula is from Transylvania, she said. I come from Bucharest. What did you hear about it?
I heard that a dictator built a large complex and a large palace, which caused the nation to starve.
Yes, that’s it. Now what do you want?
I just wanted to make sure that the doctor gets his gift. And that you are happy.
What is it to you, my happiness?
Does he pay you?
Pay me for what? she shouted.
Does it cover the food and the rent? I asked.
Get out, you crazy man. Get out now before I call the police. Crazy man. Crazy! she shouted, and she pushed me out of her apartment and slammed the door in my face.
Expelled, offended, hungry, I left.
TEMPLES
I ENTERED MY
a
partment and squeezed myself through the history section at the entrance to the kitchen. I made myself a small sandwich with a bit of olive oil and goat cheese. I ate it and then moved towards the carpet on the ground. Transylvania seemed too bloody, too morbid and full of fangs for me at the moment. Besides, it was daytime and the vampires were still asleep. So I wondered which event in history I should recall. From all the filth and violence that we talking apes have caused since our descent from the branches and our expulsion from the banana paradise, which seance of lust, horror, and blood should I choose to rectify today? Which plain, mountain, or river should be my battlefield, and what history should I exorcise to further the evolution of bacteria into a gentler, dancing ape? As I lay down, an image of red rivers of clay passing between the cedars took me back to the ancient Levant, where, for every virgin who left the temple of Baal after offering her lips, breasts, and collection of orifices to the gods, thousands more would be born to walk across the Canaanite’s land and fill her place. I, handsome, half-naked Adonis, lying on the carpet, I am no Greek, as those Europeans mistake me for, and the wild boar that killed me had no land but that demarcated by his piss on tree trunks and stones. And the Greeks were not Europeans, because they never gave a fuck about Günter and his pale-skinned tribe. The Greeks always looked and marched towards the east, through the olive trees of the Assyrians, down to the Egyptian deltas, and towards the boastful Persians, their arch-enemies. So here I was, fancying myself on a carpet below a vineyard, drinking wine and waiting for the Greek diner-owner Bacchus to accompany me on my long trip to the temple. Before the Mongols, the Arabs, the Hebrews, or the Hellenics; before Telly Savalas, that bald-headed actor, I, Adonis, walked these lands in peace. Our temples were filled with our obedient daughters, who waited to be deflowered by a stranger. Those were our customs. Only afterward would they be permitted to marry and to begin a family. Those were the Cannanites’ norms, I repeat. Some parents even bribed strangers and priests because no man came forward. Offerings always involve blood, and ours came from between the thighs of our women, where everything started, where all originated. It was the blood of a virgin that coloured my thighs and the river beneath my feet.