On the Many Deaths of Amanda Palmer (5 page)

It was for this reason that Silas Monger VIII had declared that they must break with tradition and bring in some new blood, and hence they had stolen Amanda. However, little thought had been given, or at least little discussion been had, as to who else's blood might be going into the mix. Silas assumed that it would be his, but many among the troupe had other ideas, all of them male, fertile, without wives, and, truth to be told, in most cases diseased as a result of various sordid liaisons with the less salubrious professionals that shared the same passing trade. Naturally Amanda was oblivious to all this for many years. She was more concerned with keeping her head down and ensuring her chores were done to avoid a thorough beating. But then, as she approached her thirteenth year, the rising self-consciousness of impending adulthood began to turn her thoughts, and almost overnight she started noticing the way that they looked at her. Though she didn't understand quite why, it made her flesh creep, of that much she was sure. And then there were the cold and savage glances sent her way by the women of the troupe, particularly Evelyn and Evelyn, the singing conjoined twins (their father had given them the same name so as to avoid confusion) and so she kept her head down, and did her chores with even greater vigour so as not to provide the opportunity for any unwanted attentions.

The only comfort and companionship she ever experienced
was in her relationship with the animals. These were two donkeys, and an old panther, whose teeth were falling out. When she was first taken she had been made to sleep in the animal tent, which was little more than a makeshift tarpaulin awning on the side of the donkey trailer to cover the panther's rusting cage. Not having seen a panther before she assumed it was just a big pussycat and before long she was sleeping in his cage, cuddling up to him for warmth. She named him Fluffy, after all she was only four. It always caused her great inward amusement to see how Fluffy would spit and hiss at the rest of the troupe, and how scared they were of him, though she never let them see it, for that would just have led to another beating. But to her he was quite literally a pussycat.

In the months running up to her fifteenth birthday she could tell something was brewing, something that wasn't good. Her nights were increasingly disturbed by shouts, arguments, and even fistfights amongst the troupe, and the looks she was getting had become ever more accusatory. Then, two nights before her birthday she was rudely awoken from a particularly pleasant dream involving a large pink feathered hat, by an argument heading her way. She was too groggy to understand what was being shouted, but it seemed to quickly turn into a fight, and then silence. Suddenly the door to Fluffy's cage was flung open and a hand grabbed her ankle and was dragging her out. It was Hector, the strong man. She tried to kick and scream with all her might, but to no avail. His hands were just too big and too strong. Before she knew it she was over his shoulder, being carried off. But Hector had forgotten to close Fluffy's cage. There was an almighty hissing screaming sound as Fluffy leapt up at Hector's face, clamping his toothless jaws around the unsuspecting man's nose. In no time Hector was on the ground, wrestling the fearsome beast that Fluffy seemed to have become, and Amanda saw her chance. She ran, just ran and ran straight across the fields into the darkness, and kept on running until her lungs ached and her heart seemed to be bursting forth from her chest. Finally she felt safe enough to stop, and simply
lay on the ground among the corn stems, waiting for daylight, wondering what she should do now.

****

With Amanda gone Monger's circus rapidly went from bad to worse. They hadn't realised it at the time, but it was her who had held the ragged troupe together. With her arrival she had brought to their claustrophobic inward looking world a sticky spider's web of hope, lust and jealously that had managed to distract them from the evident final decline of their profession, binding them together with a promise of better times to come. The women had stopped bitching amongst each other to share a mistrust and jealousy of the new girl. The men had all secretly prized the fantasy of taking her as their wife. In short, they had needed her and indeed Silas Monger VIII had suspected this all along. Now she was gone the in-fighting began again with renewed vigour. Silas had lost his authority, and with it his circus had lost its consensus. They hadn't moved on since that fateful night, and within weeks their little community was falling apart.

One night, Hector, who had not forgotten his humiliation at the claws of the toothless Fluffy, resolved to kill the beast, but being somewhat the worse for drink had only managed to open the cage door when he was once again knocked to the ground, this time breaking his wrist. Fluffy disappeared into the surrounding darkness never to be seen again. Shortly after this the fights started. At first these were isolated events between individuals, but before long the situation had escalated out of hand into what can only be described as all out war between the various acts. Had an unsuspecting traveller stumbled upon the troupe during that final fight, they would have thought themselves dreaming, or on drugs. Indeed the mêlée was more than a little surreal. The four dwarf clowns, two of them mounted upon scrawny donkeys, ambushed the stilt-walkers and the two Evelyns as they sat plotting their takeover, bringing down the tent upon their heads, then circling it with ropes in an attempt to bag them and drag them into
the surrounding ditch. However this plan was not well judged, and one of the immensely tall stilt-walkers managed to wriggle his way free, grabbed the two pedestrian dwarfs by the legs and swung them around his head before sending them flying through the air into the surrounding fields. Meanwhile the collapsed tent had caught fire, and by the time the Evelyns had escaped its entanglement their hair and clothes were all dreadfully singed and they ran screaming around the encampment for water. Hector, who had broken his ankle in a previous drunken brawl in addition to his wrist, came hobbling out of his tent to see what was going on, only to be run down by the dwarf-laden donkeys. Silas himself, however, had taken a number of sleeping pills and remained completely unaware of the ensuing chaos that surrounded the caravan he shared with his mother, Lavenia, the circus fortune teller. Lavenia was stone deaf and never had any trouble sleeping.

As Silas emerged from his caravan shortly after sunrise the following morning his heart broke to see the wreckage of all that his family had worked towards for so many years. The camp had been destroyed, the animals gone, and the troupe itself was battered and bewildered. They sat, in diverse little groups around the camp, bandaged and scarred, united only in the look of despair and bitterness upon their faces.

Silas did all he could in a vain attempt to unite them once again. He gave the best speech of his life, filled with promises no one could possibly keep, and many brilliant comic asides, but all to no avail. Before the sun was fully overhead the troupe had packed up the wreckage of seven generations and dispersed. Silas and his mother were all that remained of Monger's Circus.

As they sat on the porch of their caravan, looking out across the remnants of the previous night's carnage, and drinking coffee out of charred tin cans, Lavenia lectured Silas on all he had done wrong, in her view, as she did most mornings. And, as he did most mornings, Silas sat there, faking a kindly smile whilst calling her all manner of names, many of which a son should never call a mother, in the full knowledge that she was deaf as a doorpost, and
had never learnt to read lips. But underneath this touching scene, darker thoughts were simmering. They both knew who was really to blame, who was really responsible for the destruction of all that their family had worked towards over so many generations: Amanda. It was all down to Amanda. And that is when it happened. That is when the curse was invoked, for the Mongers were a gypsy family, well-versed in the execution of a wide range of curses. But that curse, the dancing curse, that was something special, reserved only for the most deserving of perpetrators, and hadn't been cast since the days of Silas' grandmother.

****

Without wishing to give away the means and execution of such a powerful invocation, for that would indeed be most irresponsible and may well lay me open to the wrath of many a gypsy family who have kept this secret safe, I will summarise its content and effect: in simple terms, if Amanda were to ever experience a single moment of true happiness she would be seized by the overwhelming urge, nay need, to dance, and to never stop dancing. She would dance in every conscious waking moment for the rest of her life, until her body lay broken by exhaustion, and her mind was destroyed by the fitful fever of the dancing madness. A cruel and evil curse indeed, though for now there was no danger of it taking effect. Amanda was lost, confused and had no idea how the outside world worked. A more scared and pitiable figure would be hard to find.

****

It was a long journey from the barren wastes of the Midwest to Boston, and it seemed that at every stage Amanda was accompanied by the most extraordinary luck, as if all the good fortune that had evaded her so far in life had finally caught up with its intended recipient and fell upon her in one moment. As everyone who lives in the real world would know, a fifteen year old girl dressed only in a night-shirt, wandering alone along isolated desert
roads might well find herself in all kinds of trouble, but Amanda seemed blessed. At every encounter, every pickup that passed, every small town along the way she seemed to inspire nothing but the kindness of strangers. By the time she arrived in Boston two weeks later she had acquired a full set of warm clothes and enough money to keep her body and soul in healthy union for quite some time. Why had she headed to Boston? She wasn't really sure, but she had heard it was a beautiful town, and a good long way from the touring routes followed by the Mongers, and that was all she needed.

Her luck seemed to stay with her. A few days after her arrival she had been befriended by the ragtag community of street performers who arrived each morning around Faneuil Hall Marketplace, and set about making herself useful with her many skills for the maintenance and repair of their circus apparel and equipment. Her flair for designing the fantastical did not go unappreciated and before long she had her own pitch, and was making good money as a living statue, dressed in an ever more spectacular array of bizarre and exotic costumes.

****

Her steady rise from living statue to international singing superstar has been well documented in many places. A cursory search of the internet will reveal the path this journey took in far more detail than can possibly be included here, so in the interest of brevity, and short attention spans, my own included, let us jump to that fateful evening in February 2006 when it seemed she had achieved the impossible, and alas, her happiness was, for the first time in her life, entirely uncontained.

****

There she was, standing on the stage of Carnegie Hall, taking in the applause like a drug. She had made it, all the way, to the very top. Was it possible that the frail little circus girl of old was actually here? As she bathed in the glory and adoration of 3000
hysterical fans the great weight of insecurity she had carried with her since childhood finally fell away and she could feel the joy of it all pooling in her belly. She was entirely overwhelmed and could no longer contain herself.

It started with her toes, gently tapping within her shoes. Then her feet began to move, only small gestures at first, barely visible across the vast expanse of the hall, but before long she was leaping and twirling in a manner not quite befitting the situation. After some minutes the applause began to dissipate, to be replaced by an air of puzzlement and confusion. The situation was momentarily rescued by the quick thinking of the drummer who came forward, took a second bow himself engendering a resurgence of applause, and then gently led the frantically dancing Amanda off the stage. As the audience slowly dissipated this peculiar conclusion to the show was soon forgotten amidst the exited babble of high spirits after a most enthralling evening's entertainment. But for Amanda, poor Amanda, the compulsion to dance seemed unstoppable. She was completely unable to change out of her stage clothes or even remove the thick white makeup that had become her trademark. All she could do was dance, dance and dance again.

The hours passed as her roadies packed up the sets and instruments, but still Amanda danced, a look of fear and fatigue steadily growing upon her face. Once everything was stowed in its proper place it was decided that they should carry her to the tour-coach and deliver her to her hotel room. By then it was clear that exhaustion was taking hold, and her movements had become increasingly violent and erratic. A doctor was called, sedatives were administered, but still Amanda danced on. It wasn't until early evening the following day that her movements finally calmed as at last she sank into a deep restorative sleep.

She must have slept for a good 16 hours but then as she woke the next morning, before she even had a chance to consider what might have happened, her toes began to tingle, then twitch, and the whole process began again. And so it continued, day after day, occasionally punctuated by long periods of sleep that served only
to recharge her body for the next onslaught on dancing. She was taken to her home, a large house and garden in Brookline, and a nurse was employed to feed her by drip and bandage her swollen, bruised and bloodied feet as she slept, but still the dancing continued. Doctors were called, specialists brought in, even a retired anthropologist who had spent years studying the dancing pygmies of Namibia, but all to no avail.

Of course all of this cost money, and lots of it, and despite her blossoming stardom her income was considerably depleted along the way by the many demands made upon it by record labels, agents, managers, producers, co-writers, ghost-writers, and all the other numerous hangers-on who had slowly inveigled their way into her inner circle, or at least into access to her bank balance. Without the ability to earn, for it was naturally impossible to sing, to perform, record, to give interviews or even run a business whilst being compelled to ceaselessly dance, it was not long before her funds began to shrink, and with them went much of her staff and, sadly, a fair number of her friends. As further months passed even the more loyal amongst her friends became tired of the continual concern and visits became infrequent. Finally the money ran dry, her house was listed for foreclosure, the nurse discharged herself of her duties, and it seemed as if Amanda might be left to slowly die of exhaustion and malnutrition, for she had no family to fall back upon, nobody to care for her, she was entirely alone.