Читать онлайн «Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti»

The tent is draped with strings of bare bulbs, with bits of mirror tied here and there to make it sparkle. (It doesn’t look shabby until you’ve already paid. )

You pay your admission to a man who looks like he could knock out a steer, but it is a slight young man who hands you your ticket: printed on thick, clean paper, one corner embossed in gold ink with a griffin whose mechanical wings shine in the shivering mirrorlight.

TRESAULTI, it says, and underneath, CIRCUS MECHANIQUE, which is even more showy than the posters. Their bulbs are bare; who do they think they are?

“Go inside, take a seat, the show is about to begin!” the young man shouts to the crowd as he hands out the tickets, his hinged brass legs creaking. Above the noise the food vendor is shouting. “Come and have a drink! Beer in glasses! Beer in glasses!”

Inside some invisible ring the circus people have drawn in the muddy hill, there are the dancing girls and the barkers and jugglers. The musical man is playing within the tent—a cranking, tinkling mess of noise from this far away. The dancing girls shimmying outside the tent doors have metal hands or feet that glitter in the lights, and calling above it all is the young man with the brass legs who had come through the city a day ago and put up the Tresaulti posters.

Inside, the tent is round and bright, dozens of bulbs hanging from the rigging. Some of them have paper lanterns over them, so the light is a little pink or a little yellow.

The trapezes are already hanging from the topmost supports, stiff brackets of brass and iron, waiting for girls to inhabit them. The poster says “Lighter than Air. ” The mood in the tent is, We’ll see. Not that you’re hoping for someone to fall—that would be morbid—but if you say something is lighter than air, well, the bets are on.

(These trapezes are imposters; they are for practice, they are for the beginning of the act. For the finale, the real trapezes walk out. Big George and Big Tom are lifted into place by Ayar the strongman, and they lock their seven-foot metal arms around the poles and hold themselves flat as tables. The girls scamper up and down their arms, hook their feet over Big George’s feet, and dangle upside down with their arms spread out like wings. When Big George swings back and forth, the girls let go, flying, and catch Big Tom’s legs on the other side.