Balancing Act

Balancing Act

Marc was forty minutes late, so I waited in a café on Fitzroy Square to escape the London winter. I ordered a coffee, took a table by the window, and watched the B.T. Tower for a full half hour. As a kid I had looked at pictures of it in magazines and imagined it was a giant Soviet rocket attempting takeoff with the whole of London as its launch pad. It looked less impressive now. From a distance it cast its selfish shadow over anonymous city streets, but up close it just resembled an oversized match stick which was almost indistinguishable from the iron-grey sky.

A ceremonious tap on the café window interrupted my thoughts. Marc stood there with an apologetic smile. He wore a frayed leather coat with jeans and his head was covered by a baseball cap. He approached my table and pulled me towards him to hug hello.

“Aidan my friend, it is good to see you again. Look at me, dressed like a common English tramp. Is there anything more tragic than a Frenchman living abroad? But you, the Irishman abroad, you look happy. Married life is treating you well, non?”

“It is. Will you join me for a coffee?”

“No, no,” he said, motioning me towards the door. “I must show you something incredible. Come. I will drive and we will catch up.”

I hesitated. For years the rule among friends had been if Marc suggests something spontaneously, find any excuse to decline.

“Come come,” he said, ushering me out the door.

I relented. It was too cold to argue.

Marc drove for a half hour. Sunday traffic was thin and we updated each other on events in our lives. The routine was quick and perfunctory for me: marriage (yes, we were still happy: no sign of the one-year itch), work (yes, I still worked for the Home Office) and friends (no, I had not heard much from our mutual college friends but they were all safe and healthy). Marc on the other hand had a lot to tell, and he did so with his usual urgency. He had abandoned Paris for good and was lecturing in the performing arts here in London. Circus school, he called it. He informed me while he slalomed through sets of traffic lights that his speciality was choreography, and he was working on a book on the history of travelling performers in his spare time.

I watched him for signs that might betray the truth but they never appeared. Marc never lied -- he had always been too self-involved to bother -- but he did have a tendency to exaggerate the truth. To perform. His face remained placid on this occasion, so I decided not to question him further. I did notice that his beard showed premature strands of grey, and, with his baseball cap now removed, I saw that his hairline had continued to recede. His forehead was two inches larger than the last time I had seen him. He looked vulnerable in the way that only people on the cusp of middle age can.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked after a long silence.

“A small restaurant run by circus performers who have been disfigured in horrible accidents. I think you will like it. I think I am in love with one of the waitresses. I sometimes go there just to watch her.”

I looked at him and laughed.

“Marc, I’ve missed your stories.”

He pulled into a car park, switched off the engine and turned to me with a look of pity.

“You never could tell when I was being serious. We are here.”

***

‘Here’ was somewhere south of the Thames. I could still see the river, so I guessed we were in Vauxhall. Marc led me in a complex and, I suspected, deliberately circuitous route through three long streets and a short alleyway to a grey building with clandestine windows. A small blue panel was attached above the door with “LE CIRQUE” written in chrome letters. An icy rain was beginning to fall and fleck the façade with dark stains.

Marc opened the door to release a welcome flood of warm air. It was small and narrow inside, like the corridor in a large house, and it looked grotesque. Naked light bulbs hung from a stuccoed ceiling and the walls were orange and red and adorned with black-and-white photographs, framed nude portraits, postcards and newspaper clippings. Six or seven tables hugged the wall to my left and there was a small bar in the corner with a one-legged waitress propped against it. I gawped and she returned my stare with determined eyes. I felt myself begin to blush and quickly returned my interest to the café’s interior.

Five of the tables were occupied and our sudden appearance seemed to have caused a minor disruption. I followed Marc to a vacant table in the corner, over which there was a poster for a German movie.

The one-legged waitress made her way towards us. She moved with surprising grace, pressing her hands against the wall and alternate tables for support. I guessed she was in her sixties. Marc touched her elbow as she placed two menus on our table and she winked at him in reply.

“Is Nika working?” he asked.

“On smoke break. Back soon.”

She turned and made her way back to the bar.

“The look in your eyes is amazing,” Marc said, turning his attention back to me. “You are somewhat bemused. You believe me now?”

I ignored his question. I had not registered my surroundings fully. The other diners ate and chatted, no longer interested in the new arrivals. The one-legged waitress started to clean the coffee machine which hissed gushes of steam that settled on the glass of the framed nude portraits and made the subjects look as though they were perspiring in a moment of intimate passion. I marvelled at the secretive underbelly of the city: the fact that a place such as this could exist without my knowledge seemed incredible, but my amazement was giving way to anger.

“What is this place?” I whispered.

“I told you already, non? A restaurant run by performers who have had to quit the circus for one reason or another.”

“Circus freaks, in other words?”

“Yes and no. The owner Asya lost her leg when it was crushed by an elephant. Very sad. Safety in the Soviet circuses was very bad. And there are the two chefs, of course. One is an acrobat who broke his wrist and could not perform again. The other used to be a trapeze artist. And Nika… well, you will see her soon. All this you can only find in London, eh?”

I sighed.

“This place is a freak show. Is it your idea of a joke?”

“Circus freaks,” he said with the hushed tones and urgency of a conspirator, leaning across the table so he was a foot from my face. “Does it scare you, Aidan?”

He searched my features for the answer I was in no mood to give.

“Here is Nika,” he said, breaking his stare and transfixing his attention on the kitchen door where a blonde girl had entered.

Nika was pretty and imposing, despite her trim build. She was no older than twenty and taller than most men. Her height, like most of her features, was exaggerated -- the high cheekbones; the long fingers emphasised with a tasteful manicure; the infinite legs. Her arms were her only flaw. They were red and blotched.

“Marc, you are back again and you bring a friend,” she said, making her way to our table and removing a pen from behind her ear. “What will you have?”

“I will just have a Caesar salad and a Coke. I’m driving. This is my Irish friend, Aidan.”

Nika smiled at me. “And you, Aidan?”

I let my eyes rest on the dark red stains on her arm. The shapes reminded me of spilling a glass of red wine on the new white carpet in our flat, and instead of running to get a cloth I had watched mesmerized as the sepia infected the carpet and spread in a slow-creeping march of blots and irregular shapes until my wife had come in, screamed, and run to the kitchen to get salt.

“Aidan, what will you have?” she asked again, self-consciously rubbing her arms, and I felt guilty for staring. I ordered a bowl of vegetable soup, a sandwich and a beer. She gave me a weak smile, lodged the pen back behind her ear and moved to the next table.

Marc smirked.

“What happened to her arms?” I asked.

“She was a fire-eater. A talented performer. Her skill was the forward fire blast, a risky art form. Well, the rest is history, as the English say. I keep asking her to come work with me at the school, but she says no. She is quite something, don’t you think? Her imperfections make her more perfect.”

I ignored his question. Two young men nearby spoke in loud, obstinate Russian. The café seemed repulsive. I just wanted to leave. Marc sat back in his seat, content to watch Nika. I reclined, too, and studied the circus paraphernalia. Elephants. Big tops. A skinny shirtless boy juggling. A framed advertisement: THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH FOR JUST 5 CENTS. Charlie Chaplin being chased by a lion in The Circus: A United Artists Picture.

A black-and-white photograph in a metallic picture frame that hung beside the kitchen’s swing door caught my eye. It showed a tightrope walker with a balance pole as he walked a rope between two skyscrapers in an anonymous cityscape.

Marc looked at me with curiosity and followed the direction of my stare.

“Tightrope. It’s not so difficult as it looks. I can teach dogs to walk the tightrope. Fire eating, though, that takes real skill.”

“I don’t know. It looks terrifying.”

“It’s easy. Tightrope is for the common man; it requires no grace.”

“It’s not the performance. It’s what he’s risking. He’s risking his life. It’s the sacrifice he’s making to perform that gets to me. Do you know what I mean?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

Marc shifted his seat to the left. If my words offended him, he didn’t let it show. The two young Russian men nearby were now flirting with Nika; she giggled, and Marc eyed the men enviously.

“Fire eating, that’s a risky art form, too.”

“Jesus Marc, give it a rest. That girl is more than half your age. You’re just – we’re just... No girl like that is going to look twice at us now.”

An awkward silence fell between us and I focussed my attention once again on the tightrope walker. I shut my eyes and imagined myself in his place. The air was thin, really thin. Complete silence: the silence of nothingness. Dizziness. Anonymous annihilation to my left and right. The threat of falling felt so real.

I opened my eyes and the brightness of the café’s walls made me squint. Marc was pulling at a beermat, causing small shreds of cardboard to flutter to the floor in pathetic clumps.

“My wife miscarried,” I said. “Three months ago. She hasn’t been the same since. Distant. Not really there.”

Marc blew some stray pieces of cardboard off the table. Then after a pause: “I’m sorry to hear that, Aidan… I don‘t know what to say.”

Nika returned with our drinks and placed a spoon and a napkin in front of me. Marc threw some nervous small talk at her. I picked up my spoon, turned it over in my hands and scrutinized my deformed reflection in its curved metallic underbelly. I smiled, and the crows’ feet at the corner of my eyes became rivulets that stretched and multiplied.

Tightrope. Maybe Marc was right and anyone could do it. I could probably do it if I had to. I definitely could. It’s just a matter of balance.