Shutterspeed (7 page)

They usually sent their daughters to the shop for their provisions, amber-eyed girls in saris and hair ribbons of a purple so bright it left me speechless.

Not that they said much either, for they would extract from the depths of their shopping bag a scrap of paper covered in hieroglyphs, which for some strange reason Aunt could only decipher by taking her reading glasses from her apron pocket and putting them on her forehead instead of her nose, holding the note at arm’s length, then bringing it up close to her eyes and holding it out again, as if the recondite script did not read from left to right but from far to near.

The purple girls eyed her dispassionately all the while. They slipped into every shop with the same quiet demeanour and laid their illegible shopping lists on the counter. They were the harbingers of topsy-turvy times for the village. To me the roundabouts, rides and stalls were magical machines, not entirely to be trusted in their garish glitter. The morning after the trailers all vanished
in the night and the station square stood empty once more, a flotsam of late revellers staggered about the pavement, grabbing hold of drainpipes and doorknobs to steady themselves, as though fearful of losing touch with the ground underfoot.

‘Well, they certainly look like plucked chickens,’ sniffed Miss van Vooren, who refused to venture out of doors after Mass until the final strains of fairground music had died away. For days on end she remained ensconced in her house amid the lofty cedars, keeping the windows blinded against brass bands, dance parties and drunkards.

Once the fair was over the world sank back into the swoon of summer, where time did not count. Mr Snellaert stored away his solar system, collected the inkwells from the desks, pronounced his Last Judgment and shut the book of latitudes with a firm clap.

On very quiet nights, when I went to bed with the window open I could hear, high in the sky above, a faint rumbling sound, a ruffling like feathers being spanned, the tock of spatulas or hammers, the clatter of chains hauling heavy objects, as if up there, in God’s own belfry, the Great Miller had secretly opened the roof lights to the breeze blowing around the spire and was now funnelling it away into a range of small basins, catching the remainder in sacks to be stored in the recesses of a vast mill.

In my imagination He was a flour-dusted eccentric who took no more notice of the Gloria during Mass than if it
were being sung on the radio, not bothering to raise His eyes from His workbench in the space behind the clock-face, which was where He busied Himself with pliers and tweezers to create new insects, where He lingered among catalogues full of Milky Ways trying to decide which, if any, merited inclusion in the firmament.

The clock had struck half-past three. I headed down the church lane towards the stream, following the footpath along the railway embankment where the hot air shimmered above the rails and conjured an expanse of water on the horizon.

Nothing stirred in the fields. It was only when I reached the tree-lined alleyway that a blackbird or two swooped down from the lindens to catch worms in the ruts cut by cart-wheels.

I began to feel drowsy. Thanks to all the food I’d eaten I gradually became susceptible to gravity again. The port was wearing off.

I stretched out my arms and turned around a few times to get things spinning again, while whorls of dust rose about my ankles. Then I leaned back against a poplar and slithered down. Looking up into the leafy crown, I noticed how the tracery of branches resembled dark veins in the sunlit canopy.

I was half sunken in a slumber perfectly attuned to the soporific afternoon when I thought I heard someone approaching. A moment or two later someone kicked my foot.

I opened my eyes and saw a pair of hands gripping the cane of a furled umbrella, and, further up, a chin, pinched lips, and then large sunglasses.

‘Joris,’ Miss van Vooren said crossly, ‘is this any way for a bearer of the heavens to behave?’

IT BECAME UNBEARABLY HOT IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED
. Uncle Werner said you could fry eggs on the cobbles and that the brewer would be rubbing his hands with glee if the weather kept up for the rest of the week.

In the garden behind the village hall the chairs and tables had already been set up around the dance floor. The village girded itself up to be at the epicentre of the world for the next three days. I didn’t like it. It muddled up my own circles.

On Friday evening around seven the strains of a brass band could be heard in the shop, the pounding on the bass drum, the blare of slide trombones. Beyond the churchyard, in the high street, children stood watching a parade of girls in white busbies. They were twirling batons.

‘Don’t you want to go and have a look?’ Aunt asked. ‘What’s stopping you? You’re doing precious little just sitting there …’

I didn’t care one way or the other. Nor did I care that Uncle Werner had bought tickets for the circus, as he had been reminding me all week, pretending it was all for my
sake, when he was the one who couldn’t wait to get his best suit on.

Around half-past seven Aunt locked up and began to apply her make-up. She was still put out about the incident in the shop, and any mention of it was enough for her to throw me a look of icy contempt. There were certain places in the house that, as far as she was concerned, were sacred. Any trespass amounted to dishonouring Aunt in person, and she did not forgive lightly. One of those places was the glass showcase in which she kept the essential oils. Uncle himself had evidently learned his lesson, because he always summoned her from the kitchen when a customer asked for lavender oil.

Equally out of bounds was her dressing table, which stood in a corner of their bedroom. A splay-legged piece of furniture, glass-topped, with several drawers and a triple mirror, it was a shrine to the girlish vanity she had long since abandoned, though she sometimes caught a stale whiff of its aroma as she sat on her salmon pink, muslin-frilled stool, with her hands flat on the glass before her, studying her three-way reflection.

I never saw her brush her hair at her dressing table. She always did that down in the kitchen, in front of a small lozenge-shaped mirror that hung by the door to the stairs, even though she had to go through all sorts of contortions to get a full view of her face while she stuck hair-pins behind her ears or suddenly pursed her lips in an expression of unwonted coquetry, as though poised to give her reflection a smacking kiss.

She used a lot of blue eye shadow that was far too bright for her, as was the shade of her lipstick; she applied lashings of mascara which after a couple of hours would leave a curve of spidery black flecks on her cheekbones. I thought she looked rather silly, but Uncle loved to see her all dolled up.

He called her ‘my girly’. Sometimes he would creep up behind her when she was busy and give her a smack on her bottom with the flat of his hand. She would fend him off with a thrust of the hips and, much to my amazement, throw back her head so he could nuzzle her throat.

‘Women. Just you watch out,’ was his customary response when he saw the surprise on my face.

Somewhere in the book lent to me by the master it said that the psychologies of male and female were distinct, women being more inclined to domesticity, caring and tenderness than men, who still had the hunting instinct coursing through their veins.

Uncle Werner, though, struck me as more of a harmless shaggy dog in a basket by the stove, a cascade of droopy ears and vertical folds, from whose depths an eye blinked lazily from time to time, or a great yawn escaped. Having polished his shoes to a high sheen, he began to tie his laces, whistling a jaunty tune.

‘Time to be off now,’ Aunt announced, screwing the lid back on the small jar of rouge. And with a bright blue wink in my direction: ‘We don’t want to spoil your fun now, do we?’

We made our way across the churchyard to the high street, where we joined the throng heading to the square by the train station. There had been a sudden shift of focus within the village, which left the church looming desolately in the waning day, notwithstanding the weathercock on the spire being set ablaze by a last ray of sunshine.

Behind the village hall the women danced in pairs over the boards. Under one of the chestnut trees, a young man with a plastered quiff and glitzy suit stood on a podium singing ‘Seven Carnations, Seven Roses’, accompanied by drums and bass guitar. The trees were festooned with coloured lights, and crowding around the beer stand were farmers, thumbs hooked in their waistcoats, exchanging tall stories.

The rides and roundabouts were still covered with tarpaulins, but in the field on the other side of the railway track the top of the circus tent was brilliantly lit. The purple girls were checking tickets at the entrance. They were wrapped in glittery scarves, and the dusk made the pools of their eyes deeper than ever. Their irises sparkled glass-like in their coppery faces. When I showed my ticket I felt as if they were looking straight through me, counting my ribs.

‘How are you doing, girls?’ Aunt crowed, all mercantile heartiness. She poked me in the back for me to greet them as warmly as she did.

Uncle Werner had already disappeared into the tent to find us good seats. He was waiting by the front row, close to the ring, and motioned us to hurry up.

‘At least he’s given up on the trains,’ Aunt sighed, in response to someone’s remark about boys and their toys.

No sooner had we sat down than Aunt cried, ‘Look! Your fiancée’s here too.’

She was sitting beside Hélène Vuylsteke in one of the boxes, the most expensive seats facing the orchestra pit and the curtain, upon which a circle of light was projected. She wore a dark blue hat with a large bow and a puff-sleeved dress. I registered a bracelet gleaming on her wrist as she turned to Hélène and pointed at the masts and rigging in the big top, where the trapezes hung.

She must have primped and preened before going out. At the big house she was bound to have her own dressing table, strewn with her mother’s powder compacts and tooled-leather jewellery boxes full of sparkly rings and pin-sharp earrings. From the way her shoulders were swaying back and forth I could tell she was swinging her legs.

Hélène Vuylsteke gave Aunt Laura a nod of greeting, and Aunt nodded back. When I followed suit it took a while for my nod to be acknowledged – a bit sourly, I fancied.

The girl sat watching the people taking their seats and did not appear to have noticed me. For the past few days the slap she had given me had kept coming back like a boomerang to strike my neck. The slightest inattention to my sums in class was enough to send me crashing against the showcase all over again, with the imprint of her hand branded on my cheek.

Aunt was convinced it was all my fault, but Uncle had
smiled and said: ‘Well, my boy, once you fall into a woman’s clutches, that’s it.’

Women. Their words were always so much more charged than men’s. They dabbed colours on their cheeks and sprayed their underarms with lily-of-the-valley scent. At the hairdresser’s they were amazons riding chrome chairs with steel helmets on their heads, eyes squeezed shut like cats dozing on the windowsill until such time as the steam began to rise from their curls. And they were known to sprinkle strange substances into food – like witches.

‘Bromide in the soup!’ I heard Aunt exclaim over the hubbub in the shop one day. ‘Keeping the flags down then, are you?’

The laughter on the other side of the counter made me cringe.

The lights in the tent went down, the buzz of voices died away. The band sounded off a drum roll followed by a fanfare of trumpets, and stepping out from behind the curtain were the purple girls in shiny leotards with purple beads round their ankles. They did a pirouette, fluttering their arms gracefully over their heads as the curtain divided to reveal a man in jodhpurs and riding boots and a white carnation on his tailcoat lapel. He strode to the centre of the ring, spread out his arms and boomed: ‘Mesdames Messieurs, bonsoir! Good evening to you all!’

He crossed to the other side of the ring, where the girl
and Hélène were sitting in their box, made a gallant bow and boomed with mock deference: ‘Your highness …’

There was a ripple of laughter from the benches. The girl glanced up at Hélène Vuylsteke, unsure of how to behave.

‘Oh my, such a fine-looking feller,’ Aunt sighed, and she started clapping along with everyone else. ‘Dark Eyetalian type …’

‘Fake tan,’ Uncle grumbled. ‘Laid it on with a trowel, he has.’

The Italian returned to the middle of the ring. A marvellous time would be had by all, he promised, ‘an evening of death-defying, daring and dangerous feats of fantasy, graciously accompanied by Freddy Brack und seine Capelle with Viva España, and for your special delectation, ladies and gentlemen, our first spectacle, all the way from France – Mario Marconi and his calibrated zebras!’

The trumpets sounded and the purple girls clacked their castanets.

‘Oh good show!’ Uncle enthused. ‘My favourite – dobbins in pyjamas!’

I saw Aunt nudging his thigh with the back of her hand a few times, but he took no notice.

The zebras wore yellow plumes on their heads and cantered round the ring, driven by a trainer with a whip. His naked torso was bound with leather straps so tight his flesh bulged out on all sides.

The whip cracked, the zebras trotted on the spot, turning on their axis. There was a burst of applause. The
girl was jigging up and down on her seat with excitement. Hélène Vuylsteke shushed her, lifted the hat with the big bow from her head and smoothed her hair.

The act ended with all the zebras rearing up in close formation. Hardly had the tail of the last one vanished behind the curtain when the clowns Titi and Toto waddled into the ring in their oversized shoes. They sat on the same invisible chairs as last year and Uncle almost fell off his own out of sheer hilarity.

‘Werner, do try to control yourself,’ Aunt sighed, but when Titi lowered himself on to a bedpan attached to a string which was jerked away by Toto at the last moment, Uncle almost died laughing.

‘What a scream,’ he gasped, holding his sides.

Aunt was embarrassed.

Next came a sketch with a bucket of confetti and a stepladder with wonky rungs, and before the women had finished dabbing their eyes with their handkerchiefs the following act was already being announced: Nina Valencia and her ten grass-green poodles.

Then there was an African woman wearing a cape made of live parrots which turned out to speak five languages, after which came Professor Pillule and his fabulous flea circus, then Mariska and Petruschka, the sisters of the flying trapeze, and a conjuror who sawed himself in two before vanishing in a puff of brown smoke. After him came Pasha, the world’s second-largest elephant, sagging in the beam like an ancient galleon, with a chimp in a tutu riding on his back.

Pasha juggled a beach ball, sat up and begged, and, for the grand finale, balanced upside down on one foreleg while the ape swung from the elephant’s tail, baring its teeth and screeching.

‘Capital!’ cried Uncle Werner.

Freddy Brack’s German-sounding combo regaled the audience with a thumping pot-pourri of Sicilian salsas, during which time four men in boiler suits assembled the cage for Xerxes, Lion of Mesopotamia, Emperor of the Tigris.

The lights dimmed. A single spotlight was trained on the curtain and a drum rolled menacingly, but Xerxes’ entry was something of a letdown. He shambled lazily into the ring, hauled himself up on a tabouret and gave a bored yawn as he waited for his trainer, a young fellow in a suit covered in metal studs.

The lion had to jump through a burning hoop and obliged with such disdain that he drew only a feeble round of applause, but when he opened his jaws wide to accommodate his trainer’s head, everyone held their breath.

The girl pressed her hands to her mouth with such an aghast look I doubted its sincerity. While the trainer ticked off one to ten on his fingers to the accompaniment of much drum-rolling, the beast held still, eyes cast dolefully upwards at the big top, as if it were at the dentist.

‘Ten!’ roared the audience. The trainer retracted his head from the lion’s maw to a burst of trumpets. The crowd heaved a sigh of relief.

‘Capital!’ said Uncle Werner. ‘Bravo!’

The band launched into a waltz. The cage was dismantled.

‘And now,’ the Italian announced, ‘the time has come for the star of this evening. A clairvoyant consulted by the great and the good all over the world. The genius of the gimlet eyes to whom all souls are bared, the visionary who has successfully foretold numerous earthquakes – fortunately for us they were all in Manchuria. Mesdames et Messieurs, behold the Oracle of Delphi, the Man who knows no pain, the Mysterious Seer Zaromander …’

The purple girls writhed like snakes to the thin notes of a flute, the curtains drew apart and into the ring stepped a tall, slim figure wearing a black cloak adorned with stars and a turban flashing with emeralds.

The clairvoyant swung the cloak over his shoulder, folded his arms across his bare chest, and fixed his gimlet eyes on where the girl and Hélène Vuylsteke were sitting.

‘Zaromander?’ sneered Aunt. ‘His name’s André van Lerberghe, nothing fancy about that. Came into the shop for two tubes of toothpaste and a packet of razor blades.’

The clairvoyant now swung his cloak sideways over his extended arm, releasing a flurry of rose petals while a small crown tumbled down out of nowhere. The man caught it in mid-air, ran to the edge of the ring and offered it to the girl on bended knee.

Hélène Vuylsteke motioned the girl to lean forward. Zaromander drew himself up and placed the crown on
her head. She held out her arm, offering him the back of her hand, which he brushed with his lips respectfully.

‘How does he know she’s from the big house?’ Uncle Werner wondered aloud. ‘How can he tell? It’s beyond me …’

Meanwhile the clairvoyant went over to a woman elsewhere in the audience. This time a shake of his cloak produced a pair of teddy bears. ‘For the twins, Madame,’ he said solemnly. The circus tent buzzed with astonishment.