THE GHOST WHO DARED TO
DREAM
Part 2: Monsieur Julien's
Marvellous Circus
I walked for hours hidden in
the first row of trees in the hazy forest, like a scared rat. For
hours, I didn't see anyone else in the darkness, even so I couldn't
shake the feeling that I was being observed. However, I attributed it
to the paranoia, conventional on the one who has lived into four
walls his entire life. Only that way I was able to stop myself on
cowardly returning on my steps to the orphanage.
Suddenly, I heard laughter and
a silencing order. Somebody was following me, now I was certain, I
run snaking through the trees to make them lose sight of me, stupidly
because it just made me go slower.
I almost fell on top of me
multiple times, but I believed I could do it.
Just when my hopes began to
rise, I collided with a figure that made me fall. Whoever it was, was
quite a small person, given that while I merely stumbled, the other
fell onto their back and made a ridiculous pirouette. Somebody else
grabbed me by the arms and tried to prevent me from escaping, but it
only took me a bit of a struggle to free myself. But before I could
even motion for escape, another one held me down. While two of them
kept me on my knees on the ground, a third guy got closer to look at
me thoroughly.
This one was a boy not much
older than me, of thin face, black coarse hair, brown skin covered in
dirt and two corroded metal teeth adorning his horrible grin. He put
a sack over my head so I could see no more. The two men holding me
made me get on my feet and I immediately tried break free of their
grip, kicking and throwing my head everywhere. I hit something, right
after I heard a screech and felt a hot liquid slide down my forehead.
"My nose!"
I thought this was most
definitely the best time to escape, although with the sack over my
head I was most likely to hit a tree as soon as I took a step. My
best option was to try and take it off to fight. Before I could make
up my mind, a hit on my face pulled me out of my possibility
evaluation.
"Nikola! Leave him alone, he
have every right to get mad!"
It was strange, quite unreal,
and almost inappropriate to hear such a plaintiff on a little girl's
voice. I heard some murmur that I did not understand and then the
same voice ordering them to continue. They pushed me and I walked
with them blindly, completely unable to see anything through the bag.
I heard more footsteps approaching and got ready to seize any
opportunity to get away, hissing like a bristling cat.
"Don't be scared," said
the girl's voice, "we ain't gonna hurt you and if later you
wanna leave, nobody is going to stop you."
One of those holding me by the
arms let out a quiet chuckle. Her reassurance made me angry, did she
truly believe me dim-witted enough to believe her?
"You're really strong,
y'know, to be a ghost."
"If you are going to free
me, what is the point of taking me by force?" I rustled furiously.
"Any other way, you wouldn't
come with us."
We walked in silence for a
long time, until I heard murmurs from more people.
"Welcome to your new home,
ghost."
They took off the sack and I
saw something similar to a small village, with a bonfire roaring in
the middle, people going from one side to another in strange attires.
A circus. I turned to look for the girl, but she had already walked
away. I could only see her long, frizzy brick red hair, her white
dress and her dirty naked feet walking away. The same moment, a
bearded and robust man stepped in front of me, whose reddish hair and
general countenance made him look like a viking from the 19th
century, even while wearing a cape.
"Sweet God, a ghost in the
flesh! I thought I would never get one."
He smiled and took my chin in
his stout callous fingers to examine my face, then he stretched out
my arms and felt my muscles, "and you're very well preserved."
"And he's very smart and
strong, daddy," the girl was back, beaming at me with her hair up
and ballet slippers in hand.
The man frowned at the girl,
whose face I could finally see. Had I not known my own appearance,
perhaps hers would've scared me: her pale skin covered with
freckles dark and thick as moles, her eyes were green like the forest
and her pale lips looked sickly purple.
"Let go of me," I demanded
with such anger that my voice that demons in hell might've heard me
and believed me one of their own.
"What a voice! A menacing
howl lurking out of the Hades!" He vaguely waved his hand to the
others. "Unhand him, this is no way to treat a guest," the
bearded man ordered to the two guys still holding me. They obeyed,
and the man put a hand on my back to make me walk with him. "Come,
ghost, I want to make you an offer that you will be eager to accept.
Welcome to Monsieur Julien's Marvellous Circus, boy. Inside Saint
Agnese you learned that life is difficult, didn't you? Well, life
out here is even worse!"
"How do you know that I come
from St. Agnese?" I interrupted abruptly. The old man smirked.
"We heard of your existence
from Nikola. He comes from that place too. He wasn't my first rescue
from that orphanage, like you are not the last."
"How did you know I would
escape today? No one did."
"It's your 16th birthday,
son, you'd have to go out whether you wanted to or not."
I frowned, I didn't expect
anyone to know my birthday. The man cleared his throat and continued:
"I was saying, in these
places it is difficult to earn a living with a conventional aspect
--you ought to exploit talents you don't have and renew them over
and over again, so people maybe won't get bored and'll give you some
coins to eat," he moved his hands in theatrical gestures that
accentuated the effect of his words, "but with an aspect like
yours, boy, you will earn money even when you sleep."
Perhaps I'd have found myself
interested in his proposal if I hadn't still been infuriated over my
ridiculously frustrated flight.
"Do you intend for me to
remain here and parade myself like a freak?"
A malicious grin spread across
the man's face.
"Ain't you one?"
I huffed. Did I truly have any
other option? Acquiescent, I agreed to stay and join his freak show.
Perhaps, I told to myself, it wasn't so bad --I would have the
chance to travel with the circus after all. Julien mentioned that he
wanted to travel to America, where the war hadn't left people
impoverished enough nor disgusted enough not to be attracted to a
freakshow.
Had I not stayed, the very
rest could've been avoided.
Immediately after my
affirmative, the girl approached me and clasped my hand.
"Come with me, ghost, I'll
take you with the others."
"The others?" She dragged
me by the hand into the purple tent resting on the peripheric areas
of the circus.
Inside, a cold darkness
reigned, birthing glooming shadows and spooks among the obscurity.
"Why do you guys never turn
the lights on?" she grumbled.
Somebody moved in the back of
the darkness and the oil lamps gradually lit up the room. I will
never know if my face reflected my surprise, because if so was the
case no one let me know: in front of me, the circus' freaks were on
full display. A pair of Siamese sisters joined at the back, but of
voluptuous figures and identical in their precious features, their
delicate makeup and pastel cyan leotards made my body quickly react.
Line up next to them, there was a dwarf looking childish, like a
three or five year old toddler, pale skin and very blond hair, like a
China figurine. Finally, a gorgeous woman with long and thick curly
black hair, skin as obscure as a moonless night and eyes so very dark
that they seem like violets.
I was struck by freaks'
elegance and beauty, sending down my mind the feminine urge to find a
mirror and check if I was as well beautiful within my rarity.
"You can see, we haven't
many freaks, but they are our main attraction. This two are Ginevra
and Griselda, but we present them as the Sun and the Moon. This
little guy here is Jack, his stage name it the Dresden Doll
Incarnated. And this is Marie, her stage name is The Living Shadow."
The redhead girl beamed at me.
"I'll leave you to meet,
you're going to share an act with Marie so she'll explain the
rest, I gotta go back to my clients."
I thought they would receive
me into their circle with hostility, but the twins gave me beautiful
and seductive smirks, approaching me with unexpectedly graceful
pacing despite their condition, and both offering me a hand, as if
they wanted to force me to already choose one of them. I took both
hands and brought them together to my lips.
Then, Jack took two cigarettes
out of his pocket, of his elegant little suit and lit them, placing
one in his mouth and handing the other to me. I took it to my mouth,
not quite sure what to do. I breathed in and choked on the smoke,
causing the little boy to laugh.
"I oughta teach you how to
smoke properly, brat."
The alcoholic hoarse tones in
his childish voice astonished me, and I found it difficult to relate
the sound to the body.
Then, Marie walked towards me,
her exquisite beauty hit me almost as forcefully as the Ginevra and
Griselda's. His eyes were outlined in white ink reminiscing and
Egyptian goddess, and her full lips were painted with indigo paste.
The robe she wore was made of
ordinary, dirty linen and her slender neck was adorned with a dull
brass collar.
"Come on. You will act with
me."
Her voice was strangely sweet,
difficult to bear on the ear. I followed her further into the tent,
where tarps formed divisions that pretended to be rooms. To my
surprise, there were four of them.
"Since the boss found me,
he's been excruciatingly obsessed with having his own ghost and
making an act with a shadow and ghost, you know, an incredibly white
guy and an incredibly black one, so he's had a room for you for the
past months."
The only thing inside was a
bunk bed, but I found the idea of sleeping close to other human
beings strangely comforting.
"What does our performance
consist of?"
She snorted.
"Basically anything, the
only thing that matters is that we contrast our colors. We have to
sell Julien's idea to the audience."
Against my better judgement, I
huffed too.
"As you can imagine, I don't
know what basically
anything
could be."
She stopped dead in her walk
and turned around to face me. Nuisance and irritation blazed in her
violet eyes.
"I don't know, ghost, maybe
we should perform some sentimental idiotic dance or play romantic
stunts."
My surprise must have been
showed in my face this time, because that was not at all what I
expected to do in a circus. Exhaling an impatient sigh --and I
thought I noticed shame too--, Marie pursed her lips and explained:
"Listen, Julien is very
passionate, he was a ballet dancer when he was younger, before the
war, age and overweight took everything away. He loves theatricality,
so we will do every hackneyed thing he chooses for us, and get ready
for anything, ghost, and I mean anything
because he could make us waltz and have sex all the same in front of
the audience."
I couldn't help a laugh.
"That explains why even
freaks are beautiful here."
She raised her round face and
glared at me with feline eyes. I walked out of the purple tent and
saw the ginger girl practicing pointe ballet on a gnawed table.
"Hey," I called. She
turned around and smiled at me.
"Met your showmates
already?"
"Yeah."
"What you think?"
"Amicable."
"What's that?"
"Nice."
She jumped off the table
grinning smugly at her feet.
"Smartsy Ghostsy and his
fancy words. My dad's gonna love you."
"Is that a good thing?"
She sneered dancing around me
"They have to be, you
know. Beautiful. It's the only rule to get a part here."
I raised an eyebrow, once
again wondering if was not monster her.
"What's your name?"
"I ain't have one, my
father calls me Girl since birth and the others too."
"And your show?
"I do ballet on the ropes.
I'm a whore too, with the rest of the girls here."
"The rest?" Including the
freaks?
"All women here are, even
Gin and Gris."
"Marie too?" I asked
before I could stop myself.
"Yeah. Loaded pigs pay
ridiculously big for exotic women, the twins can get more money in
one night than the whole the circus in a month."
Life in the circus was
definitely better than in the orphanage, I had to put up with some
teasing about my condition, but nothing compared to the confinement I
experienced in St. Agnese, I could even say that we were a sort of
family.
My performances and my poetic
personality were ideal to sell melodramatic stories. I had to learn
to do gymnastic stunts, to do trapeze and to walk on the rope. Marie
and I would waltz on the rope almost every night, sometimes we faked
an accident to scare the public and move them with a display of real
love by screaming and shedding tears. I enjoyed acting, but Marie
detested it because she was terrible. She was somewhat adorable, like
a little girl, always reminding me of a grumbling doll.
The seven years I spent in the
circus were certainly the most joyous of my life, I had friends, fun
and got to see so many places. I even got to own some luxuries like a
paint case and a Spanish cape with a wide hood to go out during the
day. Most od all, there was Rena and Marie, who reminded me of my
long lost Melin.
Rena was Julien's daughter.
Since she didn't have a name, I began to call her that. She hated it
because she didn't know what it meant and I refused to tell her out
of fear of offending her: it was short for
renard,
meaning fox in French, because of her red hair. She was thirteen, but
far from girlhood, she seemed to me as much a woman as Marie, who was
nineteen. Even more so.
I made good friends with
Julien, he was like a big brother to me, and Jack, despite his looks,
took in my eye the role of a father.
Many times I wondered if Marie
hated her life in the circus, given that she was always angry and I
thought I perceived some candid bitterness in her deep violet eyes,
but it took me two years to muster up the courage to ask her.
"Shadow," I called from
my little compartment, next to hers.
"What, ghost?"
"Do you hate this life?"
I heard her get up from her
bunk and saw her silhouette countered against the warm light that the
gas lamp projected on the cloth dividing us.
"What's that about?"
"Curiosity."
"No, Ghost. I can't hate
this life, here I've spent the best years of my life."
"How old were you when you
got here?"
She spent several seconds in
silence and I thought she wasn't going to answer.
"Seventeen."
"A year before me," I
pointed out.
"Yes."
"What was your show before
me?"
"I was just a prostitute.
Sometimes danced with Rena."
"Don't you miss something
from your previous life?"
"No. Do you?"
"No."
I did miss something, but I
was incapable of bringing Melinos name to a reality where it
could shatter all too easily.
Marie slipped under the cloth
and entered my booth, looking ready to sleep yet somehow very
beautiful.
"What?" I asked puzzled.
"Don't you want to see
me?"
"No. Yes. I just didn't
expect you to come in."
"I'm cold," she said as if
it were an order and stretched out next to me like a cat. My heart
raced and I tried put an arm around her, but she pushed me away.
"Make some room. To be so
damn skinny, you sure take up a lot of space. And you eat as if there
is no tomorrow."
On that bit I realized that
she was nervous. I grinned.
"Do you love me?" I asked
between sly smiles.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, Romeo, is that you?"
she replied faking a sweet voice.
"Answer me," I begged.
"Of course not."
"Like a friend, then?"
"No."
"I think I do love you,
Shadow."
Marie turned her face to me
and kissed me without passion.
"I'm gonna be twice as
expensive for you."
I chuckled and accepted the
price by kissing her again.
Sometimes it still shames me
to remember that during some of the many encounters after that night,
I thought about Rena. I never asked Rena if she hated her life, but I
doubt she did, because she, like Marie and I, knew not others ways to
live. She might've even been happy.
Over the years I spent in the
circus, I became the interpreter and translator of the crew, given my
ability to acquire new languages. I travelled all over Europe, and
witnessed the horrors of the war, the desperation to survive --and
it marvelled me how even the poorest and the most miserable men would
cling to life and fight for it. Living in such conditions, I wondered
whatever drove them to save and prolong their existences, was life
itself worth it?
Julien took us to America as
soon as he could, since the war had already devastated Europe and he
didn't want us to fall to poverty or death and in the New World,
people still had enough money to give away in freak show. America was
nothing like my native Italy, and sometimes in spite of myself, I
would find my heart longing for home.
Around 1930, however, America
was starting to experience the Great Depression, thus we found
ourselves back to Europe. The boss wasn't pleased with our incomes,
the show was well attended but rich men didn't have the money they
used to before the crisis, meaning that the prostitutes of the crew
weren't making as much money as they did before. Europe was still
struggling with the damages the war caused, and rumours of an
upcoming one poisoned the air, but Julien was good with the business
--he managed to handle our resources so that we survived like few
others to the ravages of the Great War and the Great Depression.
By then, in autumn of 1931, I
was twenty-two years old and my condition had improved hardly enough
so that my pale hair could be referred to as blonde. Otherwise, I was
still a monster. Marie was twenty-five and she got infuriated every
time someone reminded her; she was terrified of growing old, even
though she still looked exactly like when we met. Marie and I had
been dating for two or three years --which didn't stop her from
charging me like a common client--, as both us were growing older, I
was thinking of maybe marrying her, having a life, maybe move someday
get our own place. She detested it every time I mentioned, but I
believe that she was like a scared cat, aggressive and gruff to
protect itself from harm. For all I know, I might've loved her.
But I had the imperious need
to settle down as much as I could, I wanted a home, a wife, children.
It was unreasonable that someone like me could live like a normal
man, but I wanted the home I never had. At least, that's I told
myself back then, now I am not so sure. Marie didn't want the same,
and everything I asked her what she did want, she failed to answer.
Rena, on the other hand, had just turned nineteen and she loved me
madly. She was still beautiful, even with her freckled face, which
she was proud of when I met her, but now she was trying to hide it
under cheap makeup.
My pride rejoiced to see two
beautiful women dispute my affection, but I also felt cruel and
guilty: I adored them both and I didn't want to hurt either, but
Marie and I didn't have the same dreams, so I decided to leave her
and marry Rena. Today, I know that was my mistake.
My years in Saint Agnese were
close to forgotten, and with the black sands and Melino But the
morning I planned to tell Marie of my decision, she asked me about
her.
"How do you know about her?"
I asked, terrified.
"You called her in dreams
last night. You did it before, your first night here, and some other
nights. Sometimes you scream."
I frowned, realizing that I
hadn't had a single dream since I left Saint Agnese.
"A friend from my
childhood."
She frowned at me in turn.
"You miss her," she stated.
I smiled.
"No, how could I, when I
have you?"
Did I still love her? Or was
it pity? Cruelty, perhaps? I don't think I will ever gather the
courage to find the answer.
That very night, I dreamed for
the last time in my life the land of the black sands.
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