Accusation (11 page)

It had been a long time, Sara thought, since she and Juliet had been alone in a room together. In the early years after their separate moves to Toronto, they had met in bars and restaurants or galleries, and a couple of times, at Juliet’s invitation, had gone to see dance together, although in those days Sara was often out of town. The last time they’d been alone in a room with this kind of privacy had been when Sara had come to live with Juliet and her roommates in the apartment on avenue de l’Esplanade in Montreal, after she had walked out on Graham or Graham had thrown her out, and Juliet had bumped into her one February afternoon as she sat near the campus in a Van Houtte coffee shop, a knapsack bulging with her belongings at her feet.

It was strange to think of Raymond Renaud as the agent of their new proximity, and uncomfortably strange to find herself once more wanting something from Juliet. As Juliet tucked her keys into the leather handbag that hung from a hook on the back of the door, Sara tried to determine if Juliet seemed resentful of her, given that the circus story had altered so radically since she’d first told Juliet about it. Not noticeably. Juliet must have considered how Sara’s history would shape her interest in Raymond Renaud’s predicament, although neither of them had mentioned this.

How’s Max?

Great, Juliet said. He’s working on a new show. Actually, he’s kind of gone off in a new direction. He’s using images from surveillance cameras broadcasting on the web, so capturing pictures from a stream of images rather than taking them but still choosing them or creating them?

Sometimes Sara found herself wondering what kept confident Max and anxious Juliet together: Juliet’s loyalty and admiration and adoration? Something sexual? They’d been together for around five years. These days, Max’s photographs of derelict urban landscapes and ruined industrial sites sold for far more than she could ever contemplate paying for a piece of art. No doubt Juliet had hoped her film would be her own way to step forward artistically. Now this had happened.

Juliet, I am so sorry about this whole business.

With a grimace, Juliet took a seat in front of the monitor on the desk, wrapped a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and, aiming for a smile, patted the chair next to her. A black bound notebook lay on the desk, a pair of speakers to either side of the monitors, some papers scrawled with what Sara thought were called time codes, and, beside an ordinary keyboard, a contraption with a joystick on it, presumably for manipulating the tape. Businesslike, Juliet plucked a mini cassette tape, small enough to fit in her palm, from a pile on the desk and slid it into the mouth of the videocassette player, which swallowed it with a mechanical gurgle. I wasn’t sure what you’d want to see, and there are a lot of rushes, and I could have shown you the rough cut I’ve been working on, but now I feel too weird about it, so I’ve cued up a few other things.

Weak air-conditioning attempted to cool the room, stuffy with odours of dust and sweat. A small plastic fan clamped to the side of one metal shelf waved some air across them. Juliet reached to switch off the overhead light as an image flared onto the monitor screen: a dirt path by the side of a road sped past, presumably shot through the window of a moving vehicle. There were trees and people walking along the tamped red earth, women in sweaters and flowered dresses with plastic bags swinging from their hands; a man in a suit came close then vanished; a flock of goats or sheep skittered from the road into the comfort of a ditch; a barefoot boy trudged behind a wooden wheelbarrow; voices outside brayed and were whipped away like flags while voices from within the car mumbled and fluttered. The footage felt real because it was raw.

This is our first full day, Juliet said. We’re on our way to the circus compound. Where they rehearse? We saw them perform the first night we arrived, in a field outside the Italian embassy, but you’ve seen them perform so I decided not to show you that.

A donkey trotted along, skinny poles of wood lashed to its sides; a gas station appeared on the right as the car made a sharp turn to the left and scrunched to a stop on dirt and stones. Whoever was holding the camera climbed from the car, footsteps crunching as the view lurched across more scrubby trees and the dusty yellow planes of the car, before rising up the length of a wooden pole at the top of which the cut-out wooden figure of a boy balanced on his hands, legs in the air. His unitard was painted pink, his body red-brown, a splash of black hair daubed atop his head.

Did you get hold of your assistant? Sara asked.

Juliet muted the sound as the car and its passengers jolted up a steep hill, stones projecting from the craterous red dirt, a scrim of trees bouncing outside the car window.

Justin was totally shocked. He spent more time hanging out with the performers than I did, the older ones. But they didn’t speak much English and mostly they were goofing around or trying to teach him to juggle or playing soccer. He said he didn’t notice anything. They didn’t seem upset. They didn’t talk to him about Raymond.

On the screen, at the top of the hillside, where the land levelled into a flat parking area, a white pickup truck, coated in a skin of red dirt, was parked alongside a couple of older, smaller cars. Light glinted off the windshields. Across a hummocky expanse of dirt and grass rose two yellowish single-storey buildings, a fringe of trees beyond them, and on the ground, in front of the buildings, moved a clump of human figures, all of them small, maquette-sized.

Everything felt compressed and intense and mostly we were going crazy trying to make the film, Juliet said.

Something Sara had seen previously, in a photograph, sprang to life: older boys in pink leotards with ribbons dangling from them tossed juggling pins and wandered around the perimeter of a brown square of tarpaulin spread on the ground. A scrim of blue canvas was mounted behind them. A lean, olive-complexioned man in a khaki vest stepped back from a tripod-mounted camera as a human pyramid of girls in white outfits dismantled itself; the girl at the top, whose feet had waved alongside her ears, unwound first one leg then the other in a graceful arc, her feet resting briefly on the torso of the girl beneath her before she jumped free. So at ease in her body, seemingly at ease, even languid. And so extraordinarily flexible. Raymond Renaud, red ball cap on his head, sunglasses shielding his eyes, turned, separated himself from the children and the photographer, and waved.

The photographer’s name is Paolo Sabatini, Italian but shooting for a Dutch magazine, Juliet said, and he was only there for a couple of days. There was an Italian sociologist studying the circus, but he didn’t really interact with anyone, just sat around taking notes, so I don’t know how much use he’d be. There were always people around, always people observing him. Apart from when we interviewed him and once when we went out to dinner, I don’t think I ever saw him alone. And he let me film what I wanted, where and when I wanted.

Can you pass on Justin’s email or phone number to me?

Sure, Juliet said.

Behind Raymond Renaud’s back, the teenaged boys patted one another’s shoulders with carefree bonhomie and the girl contortionist walked with an effortless stride toward them.

That’s Gelila Melesse, Juliet said, pointing to the contortionist. And Alem and Dawit and Kebede Gebremariam. Do they look — ? I don’t know, I don’t know what I see when I look at them now.

Sara peered at them. As the photo shoot came to an end, Juliet stopped the tape, extracted it from the player’s mouth, and fed in another from her pile.

Sara had a sudden impression that Juliet didn’t want to be doing this.

In an echoey hall of painted cinder blocks, Raymond huddled with a quartet of girls, including Gelila, demonstrating something with his arms. Two of the girls made their way into backbends, while Raymond seemed to be discussing with Gelila and the other girl how the two of them would balance atop the bodies of first two. With one hand, Raymond adjusted the feet of one of the arched girls, as if to secure her weight, then touched his fingers to the back of her ribs as if to nudge the curve of her spine higher. His manner seemed kind but exacting, as if he had a clear idea what he wanted.

Isn’t it natural for there to be some kind of touch when you’re doing physical training like this? Juliet said.

I guess so.

A kitchen, a room with yellow walls: three younger boys sat at a table covered in dirty dishes eating what looked like bread and jam and chatting in Amharic.

Is this his house? Sara asked.

Juliet nodded.

And the boys live there?

Three of them do. But there are almost always other kids staying over or coming to use his computer or get help with schoolwork or playing in the courtyard.

The camera swung across the room, and Raymond looked up from stirring a pot on the stove.

Where do the boys sleep, or any of them sleep when they’re there?

They have a bedroom. If there’s too many, then on mats on the floor. Or the sofa. He said something about how they need a proper address to get registered in school.

Did he have favourites?

He looked out for the ones who lived with him, who didn’t have other homes. But usually there were lots of kids, he’d be driving them around in the back of his pickup, and like I said, they were always running in and out of his house.

Was he affectionate with them?

Sometimes it was more like they, especially the younger ones, were physically affectionate with him.

There were situations in which Sara herself had found it difficult to escape being touched by children: touching and being touched. Visiting orphanages, she’d been swarmed by children who’d clung to her, who would not let go of her body, her hands. And it had seemed wrong not to allow this contact, invite it even, given the extremity of their need for touch. Perhaps, under similar circumstances, his touch had been misconstrued — by someone.

Did he ever take kids off on their own?

All I can say is, not that I saw. A couple of kids, maybe, but mostly he’d be with a whole gang of them.

The camera swung into a dim hallway, moved past what looked to be a study, where the flash of a round wall clock read ten past nine and daylight streamed through a window, and pieces of paper and a small Canadian flag were pinned to a corkboard. A door led out into blinding brightness.

And the older ones?

Maybe it was hard because he also had them training the younger kids and leading classes for street kids in addition to their own training so they worked a lot, but the idea was that they would take on this work as they grew older and help run the circus or found other circuses in other places. And I thought they were genuinely excited by this. That’s what Gelila said to me. They seemed excited. She said she wanted to work for the circus for the rest of her life.

Raymond, visible from the waist up, clad in a pinkish T-shirt, sat on a wooden chair, piney fronds and the orange beak of a bird of paradise flower swaying behind him. Familiar and not familiar; the coiled dark hair, his smile. Sara’s heart leaped. Victim? Or a monster ferociously hiding his true self? Or someone caught between … ? How different it was to stare at him fixed in the past from the perspective of the present, with the knowledge of what he might have done. To observe him with this new intensity.

Onscreen, he looked good-natured and expectant, innocent if for no other reason than that he had no idea what was thundering toward him. Through the speakers came breezy flutters from the mike pinned like a spider to his T-shirt, and some off-camera mumbles from Juliet about wind and the quality of sound; then Justin: I think it’s all right.

Still off-camera, Juliet asked Raymond how he’d come to Addis Ababa, and he launched into the story of how he’d arrived to teach English and French at the international school and, as he biked through the city, had things thrown at him, and, on a whim one day, had taken a set of juggling pins and juggled in the street. He wasn’t simply repeating the story as Sara had previously heard it, using the same words, like something memorized. His voice, addressed to Juliet, had a different, thoughtful lightness.

She wondered what Juliet felt as she watched him. After a few minutes, Juliet stopped the tape. Do you want to see more of this or should we go on to something else?

Nothing felt clear, or clearer. Taking in his image, Sara didn’t feel monstrousness. Which didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

A little more.

In his pink T-shirt he said, There are maybe twenty thousand street kids here so we work with only such a tiny number. First we have to train the kids to busk and then we have to get permission from the police.

Was he ever verbally abusive? Angry, shouting, physically rough with them?

He said, They are working in an environment that is very unusual here. It is very cooperative. When they build a pyramid, they have to work together to do it.

Juliet ejected the tape. No. Well, angry, maybe. Frustrated. He shouted. Especially around the time of the trip to Sodo. But nothing that felt outrageous, and none of the kids seemed that upset. We were supposed to go in a bus. They travel in this bus, but the bus broke down at the last minute so he had to organize something else. We ended up going in three different minivans. Plus there was all this equipment that had to be loaded in and didn’t fit properly, and we were supposed to leave before dawn so we could get there in the afternoon, but we didn’t obviously, and it was a nine-hour trip south on not great roads.

Maybe he felt guilty about getting angry at them? That evening we stayed up late in the hotel and talked. There was like an outdoor corridor outside the rooms. Really it was more like a shabby motel with barely running water and all these trucks parked in the yard. He did say how exhausted he was and how he never got a break. Then he talked about how he wanted to create the first black African circus, and make it one of the world’s big circuses. How he thought that was possible. I told him I wanted him to repeat all this for me on tape because I wasn’t filming, which was dumb, but somehow we never found the time.