The Pilo Family Circus
For my parents
Send in the Clowns
A carnival for the human race
Cotton candy, happy face
A child talking with his mouth full
Girlfriend gets stuffed animal
A festive mood is all around
Another world is what we’ve found
C
AROUSEL
The Velvet Bag
There was not one among them that did not cast an eye behind
In the hope that the carny would return to his own kind.
‘T
HE
C
ARNY
’, N
ICK
C
AVE
JAMIE’S tyres squealed to a halt, and the first thought to pass through his head was
I almost killed it
, rather than,
I almost killed him
. Standing in the glare of his headlights was an apparition dressed in a puffy shirt with a garish flower pattern splashed violently across it. It wore oversized red shoes, striped pants and white face paint.
What immediately disturbed Jamie was the look in the clown’s eyes, a bewildered glaze which suggested the clown was completely new to the world, that Jamie’s car was the very first it had ever seen. It was as though it had just hatched out of a giant egg and wandered straight onto the road to stand as still as a store mannequin, its flower shirt tucked in at the waist, barely holding in a sagging belly, arms locked stiff at its sides, hands bunched into fat round fists stuffed into white gloves. Sweat patches spread out under
both armpits. It stared at him through the windshield with ungodly boggling eyes, then it lost interest and turned away from the vehicle that had nearly killed it.
The dashboard clock ticked over the tenth second since Jamie’s car had stopped. He could smell burnt rubber. His time as a motorist had cost the world two cats, one pheasant, and now very nearly one absolute fool of a human being. Flashing through his mind was all that could have gone wrong had his foot hesitated
at all
on the brake: law suits, charges, sleepless nights and guilt attacks for the rest of his life. Road rage came on fast and murderous. He rolled down the window and screamed, ‘Hey! Get off the fucking
rooooad!’
The clown stayed put — only its mouth moved, opening and shutting twice, though no words came out. Jamie’s fury brought him to the verge of a seizure; did this guy think he was being
funny?
He gritted his teeth and slammed on the horn. His little old Nissan wheezed with all her might, a piercing sound in the 2am quiet.
At last he appeared to have made an impression. The clown’s mouth flapped open and shut again, and it held its white-gloved hands to its ears as it turned to face Jamie again. Its gaze hit him like a cold touch and sent a shiver up his spine.
Don’t beep that horn again, sport
, said its ungodly eyes.
A guy like me’s got
problems
, wouldn’t you say? You’d like me to keep my problems to myself, wouldn’t you?
Jamie’s hand hesitated above the horn.
The clown turned back towards the footpath and took a few drunken steps before coming to a halt once more. If a car came the other way at speed, it would do what Jamie had almost done. Oh well, Mother Nature knew best — it was just the natural course of the stupid gene, streaming its
way out of the species like the letting of poisoned blood. Jamie drove off, shaking his head and laughing nervously. ‘What the hell was that about?’ he whispered to his reflection in the rear-view mirror.
He would know all too soon — the next night, in fact.
‘Where’s me fuckin’ UMBRELLA?’
Jamie groaned to himself. It was the fourth time the question had been roared at him, with each word now having had its turn at the emphasis. Standing before him was none other than Richard Peterson, sob sister from one of the national rags,
Voice of the Taxpayer
. He’d bustled through the doors of the Wentworth Gentlemen’s Club in a storm of Armani and shoe polish. As concierge, Jamie was getting eighteen bucks an hour to politely endure the tirade.
There was a pause in shouting. Peterson stared at him in baleful silence, moustache twitching.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I haven’t seen it. Could I offer you a complimentary —’
‘That umbrella was a fuckin’ HEIRLOOM!’
‘I understand, sir. Perhaps —’
‘WHERE’S me fuckin’ umbrella?’
Jamie grimaced as two attractive women walked past the doors, smiling in at the commotion. For the next two minutes he repeated ‘I understand sir, perhaps —’ as Peterson threatened to resign his membership, to sue, to get Jamie fired …
Didn’t he know who he was dealing with?
Finally, one of Peterson’s associates wandered through the lobby and lured him up to the bar in the manner of someone luring a Doberman with a bloody steak. Peterson backed away
growling. Jamie sighed, feeling not for the first time like he was the guest star on some British sitcom.
The 6pm rush came and went. Through the doors came a stampede of beer-gutted Brisbane Personalities, from law firm partners to television news readers, AFL head honchos, retired test cricketers, members of State Parliament, and suits of all descriptions, bar young and female. Quiet descended on the lobby; the only sounds to permeate the granite walls were the muffled honking of traffic, the quieting bustle of the city’s working day filing out, and its night life waking. The lobby was deserted, the peace sporadically interrupted by club members leaving drunker and happier than when they’d arrived. Once the last of them had staggered off, Jamie descended into his science fiction novel, stealing furtive glances over his shoulder occasionally in case his boss or a stray Brisbane Personality caught him at it. This, by contrast, wasn’t such a bad way to earn eighteen bucks an hour.
The clock struck two. Jamie started from a kind of trance and wondered where the last six hours had gone. The club was silent; the rest of the staff had gone home, all members were tucked into bed, comfortably full of beer, with their hired escorts asleep beside them.
Jamie walked through the city to the Myer Centre, a tall redheaded young man taking long jerking strides with thin legs, polished shoes tapping crisply on the pavement, hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks, where his thumb and forefinger played with a dollar coin. A beggar had learned his shift times and for weeks had been making an effort to intercept him on his way to the car park. On cue, the old man met him outside the Myer Centre, smelling of cask wine and looking like Santa Claus gone to seed. He muttered something about the weather then acted surprised
and delighted when Jamie handed him the dollar, as though it were the last thing in the world he’d expected, and so Jamie’s shift ended in profuse thanks, which was gratifying in a small way.
Wondering not for the first time why the hell he’d done an arts degree, he started his little Nissan. Its engine rasped like an ailing lung. On the drive home he saw another clown.
His headlights swept past the closed shops in New Farm and there it was, standing out front of a grocery store. This clown was not the same as last night’s; it had dark clumps of black hair sticking like bristles out of a head as round as a basketball. Its clothes were different too — it wore a plain red shirt that looked like old-fashioned cotton underwear, clinging tightly to its chest and belly, and pants of the same fashion, with a button-up seat. Its face paint, plastic nose and big red shoes were the only things ‘clown’ about it; otherwise it might have been any fifty-something booze hound lost on his way home, or in search of back-alley romance.
As Jamie’s car passed, the clown looked to be in the throes of despair, throwing its arms up in exasperation and mouthing some complaint to the heavens. In his rear-view mirror he saw it ducking between the grocer and a garden supply store, disappearing from view.
Jamie would have happily left it at that — there were psychos loose in the neighbourhood, no surprise in New Farm. He’d have driven home, crept up the back steps to shower, put out some cat food for the legion of local strays, slunk back to his room, masturbated to some internet porn
then collapsed into bed, set to repeat it all tomorrow. But his car had other ideas. There was the grinding noise of a big metal belly with indigestion, then the smell of oil and smoke. Halfway down the street his little Nissan died.
He thumped his hand on the passenger seat, sending cassette tapes scuttling in all directions like plastic cockroaches. Home was four streets away and up a hill. He was stretching his calf muscles to begin pushing the mutinous wreck home when he heard a strange voice say, ‘Goshy!’
Jamie’s heart skipped a beat. The voice came from behind him again. ‘Goshy?’
He’d forgotten about the clown. It was a clown’s voice all right, a silly voice with exaggerated worry and a childish whine, from the throat of a middle-aged man. In Jamie’s mind the tone conjured an image of the village idiot pounding his own foot with a hammer and asking why his foot hurt. The clown called out again, louder: ‘Gosh-
eeeeeeeee?’
Goshy? Was that some kind of swearword? Jamie about- faced and headed back towards the grocery store car park. The streets were silent and his footsteps seemed very loud. Obeying some instinct that told him to stay hidden, he crept behind a hedge next to the car park and, through the leaves, he saw the clown standing outside the gardening shop, staring at the roof and going through the motions of a distressed parent, running a hand over its scalp, tossing its arms to the sky, now making an extravagant swooning gesture like a stage actress: hand to the forehead, a backward step, a moan. Jamie waited until its back was turned before darting from the hedge and crouching behind an industrial garbage bin for a closer look. The clown called out that word again: ‘Gosh-
eeeeeeeeeee!’
A thought occurred:
‘Goshy’ is a name. Maybe the name of
the clown I nearly ran over. Maybe this one is out looking for it, because Goshy is lost.
It seemed to fit. And, as he watched, the clown found its friend. The clown from last night was standing on the roof of the plant shop, still as a chimney. The suddenness with which it caught Jamie’s eye almost made him cry out in alarm. On its face was the same look of naked bewilderment.
‘Goshy, it’s not
funny
!’ said the clown in the car park. ‘Come down from there. Come on, Goshy, you come down, you
just
gotta! Goshy, it’s not
funny!’
Goshy stood motionless, up on the roof, his fists bunched at his sides like a petulant child, eyes wide, lips pursed, gut sagging like a bag of wet cement under his shirt. Goshy stared unblinking down at the other clown; he wasn’t coming down, that was for sure. He seemed to be throwing some kind of passive tantrum. He gave one mute flap of the lips then turned away.
‘Goshy, come down,
pleeeeeease!
Gonko’s comin’, he’s gonna be
soooo maaaad …’
No reaction from the rooftop.
‘Goshy, come
onnnnn
…’
Goshy turned back to the other clown, gave another mute flap of the lips, and without warning took three stiff-legged paces towards the roof’s edge, then over it. The drop was about twelve feet. He plummeted to the concrete headfirst, with all the grace of a sack of dead kittens. There was a loud sickening
crack-thud
as he landed.
Jamie sucked in a sharp breath.
‘Goshy!’ The other clown rushed over. Goshy lay face down with his arms locked stiff at his sides. The clown patted Goshy on the back, as though Goshy were having a mere coughing spell. No good — Goshy would probably need an ambulance.
Jamie looked uneasily at the payphone across the street.
The other clown patted Goshy’s back a little harder. Still lying face down, Goshy rolled from side to side like a felled ninepin; he looked to be having some kind of fit. The other clown grabbed his shoulders. Goshy began making a noise like a steel kettle boiling, a high-pitched squealing: ‘
Mmmmmmmmm! Mmmmmmmmmm!’
The other clown pulled Goshy upright. Once on his feet, still making that awful noise, he stared at the other clown with wide startled eyes. The clown held his shoulders, whispered ‘Goshy!’ and embraced him. The kettle kept squealing, over and over, but with each burst the volume lowered until the noise ceased altogether. When the other clown released him, Goshy turned to the plant shop, pointed a stiff arm at it and silently flapped his mouth. The other clown said, ‘I know, but we gotta hafta
go
! Gonko’s comin’, and —’ The clown patted Goshy’s pants, then dug into his pockets and pulled something out. Jamie couldn’t see what it was, but it sent the other clown into throes of distress again. ‘Oh! Oh oh! Jeez, Goshy, what’re you
thinking
? You’re not meant to, not s’posed to have this here. Oh, oh oh, Gonko’s gonna … the boss’ll be
sooo
…’
The clown paused and looked around the empty car park before tossing the small bundle away. It landed with a sound like a wind chime striking a single note, and slid into the hedges by the footpath before Jamie could get a good look at it. ‘Come
on
now, Goshy,’ the clown said. ‘We gotta hafta
go
.’
He grabbed Goshy by the collar and started to lead him away. Jamie stood up, unsure if he should follow the pair or run for the public phone — one of these idiots was going to get himself killed if they were left to their own devices. Then something caught his eye: a
third
clown. This one stood by the
door of a copy centre two doors down from the plant shop, arms folded across its chest. Jamie shook his head in disbelief and crouched back down out of sight. He knew immediately that whatever maladies affected the brains of the first two clowns did not affect this one; there was a sharp awareness in its face, staring with narrowed eyes at the other two as they shuffled across the car park. Goshy and his companion halted. Goshy’s face didn’t change, but the other looked at the new clown with something near terror. He stammered, ‘Hi … Gonko.’
The new clown didn’t move or react. It was thin, dressed in a full uniform of oversized striped pants held by suspenders, a bow-tie, white face paint, a shirt decorated with pictures of kittens, and a huge puffy hat. It squinted at the other clowns like a gangster from a Mafia movie; if it had ever intended to make people laugh, it may well have done so at gunpoint. It glanced around the car park, as though for witnesses, and Jamie found himself crouching further behind the industrial bin, suddenly convinced it was a very good idea not to be seen. The sound of Goshy smacking into the concrete echoed in his ears,
crack-thud
, and he shuddered.