Goldenland Past Dark (20 page)

The boxcar where Webern slept with Nepenthe was packed with bunks, floor to ceiling; between eight and ten other new circus people slept there at night, depending on who was sleeping alone. A big sliding door opened out onto the night air, and sometimes it got so hot one of the roustabouts pulled it open with a gravelly screech while the train was in motion, filling the car with a rushing wind that pulled loose blankets. It was all men and freaks in the boxcar, with the exception of a lady sword-swallower who hated the double entendres associated with her profession, who drank with the strongest of them, and who rolled out the open boxcar door one night when the train was crossing the Florida panhandle, never to be heard from again.

It didn’t take Webern long to realize that there were two circuses. One circus faced the parking lot; it was the circus of midway games and steam calliopes, ticket booths, smiles and prizes. This circus was the dream of the real circus, which lay facing the railroad tracks.

At the real circus, Webern stepped over craters left by elephant feet, ducked through underwear that hung on crooked clotheslines. He stood at the window of the pie car, watching men drop quarters from their wages into a slot machine with one broken reel. He washed himself under a spigot in the open-air showers and helped Nepenthe into the costume they had her wear, a ruffled iguana head that left her hair sweaty and limp, plastered to her scalp.

There were no children here. These performers got divorced, cashed their paycheques, talked about joining the army or quitting the sauce or going back to school. They visited the doctor, an old man who’d once botched a nose job and now worked out of a seedy bunk with a 1958 calendar on the wall and a trash can full of bloody gauze; they went to the funeral for the guy from the motorcycle cage, who’d died not from a burst tire but from diabetes. Even on sunny days, walking around this circus gave Webern the feeling of being inside a thin grey cloud.

When he saw Vlad and Fydor, or Eng, as he seldom did those days, a look passed between them that was the opposite of recognition, as though whatever they’d endured together was rapidly being erased. Vlad and Fydor were big stars in the Parliament, glamorous and removed; they wore a sequined jumpsuit with a red lightning bolt that zigzagged between them and rarely spoke in English, or to anyone besides each other. A few months later, when a talent agent from Hollywood cast them in a Red Menace episode called “Sideshow Spies,” no one was surprised that they never came back. As for Eng, he disappeared into his new troupe of contortionists, who formed M. C. Escher patterns with their bodies on brightly coloured gym mats during slow points in the show.

Webern didn’t start working right away. He needed time to think. He felt like he was searching, but he didn’t know for what. When Nepenthe was performing, he wandered all over, from the gilded gates at the midway’s entrance to the Parliament barker’s tilted stage, from the Laff House corridors, all glass and tinted mirrors, to the bales of hay in the elephant corral. He lingered in Clown Alley, where the jokers all bunked together, and strained to eavesdrop on plans for acts, rehearsal strategies, but usually he only overheard pinochle games and the occasional dirty joke.

It was as though the barrier between reality and dreams, breached during his illness, could never fully be restored. Webern passed from the real circus to the dreamed one by hopping a ditch of mud and sugar water, or by sidestepping a barrel of trash, or by walking from the back of the dart toss, where the game operator’s wife lounged on a three-legged lawn chair with her swollen feet in a bucket, to the dazzling neon bull’s eye at the booth’s front.

Sometimes he even stopped at the boxcar where Brunhilde had hanged herself, looking for something—a clue, maybe, as to what had gone wrong. She’d ended it in a supply car, loaded with barrels and splintery crates, a real mess; it seemed like nothing of her fastidious self could remain in there. The rope, the suitcase she’d kicked out from under her, the note she’d left crumpled on the ground: it had all gone out with the trash long before he’d come looking. But one afternoon, amid the abandoned cellophane wrappers and uncooked spaghetti noodles, Webern finally saw something she’d left behind—a golden strand, glinting on the dusty floor. He stooped to pick it up, and the minute he did, he realized what it was: the locket Brunhilde never took off. The clasp was broken, and he spent a minute fiddling with it. Then he opened the locket itself.

Inside was a family portrait. The man wore a pince-nez very like the one Brunhilde had carried in her pocket, and the woman wore her blonde hair short and oiled like a man’s. The little girl was lovely, perhaps twelve years old and wearing a pinafore; her only surprising feature was a pale Van Dyke beard, pointed sharply from her chin. Webern thought of the Dresden suitcase, all those images of destruction. Yet this was the picture Brunhilde had worn over her heart. Perhaps Brunhilde hadn’t been as hard-bitten, as realistic as she seemed. Perhaps it was the memory of this shimmering moment, rather than of everything that came after, that had haunted her the most.

The first day of Webern’s new job, his boss handed him an axe and directed him to the dead horse in front of the tiger cages. The second day, he handed Webern a shovel.

Webern was pretty stoned
, but not stoned enough to start fooling around with Venus de Milo, so when she started licking the banana cream pie off his face, he had no choice but to push her away. It was tougher than he expected, especially since she had him backed up against the sofa. He had to tear some spangles off the neckline of her costume before he finally got free. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbled to himself. He wiped pie from around his eyes and groped around on the floor for his glasses.

It was just like Venus to pounce on him, especially after her third flagon of homemade jam jar wine. She treated lovemaking like it was tackle football, or at least it seemed that way to Webern—he didn’t know from personal experience, thank God. Venus was an angular, fast-talking girl, forever tapping her foot or cracking her gum, and if she had arms they would have been perpetually crossed in impatience. She spoke with a frank Brooklyn accent about menstruation and female ejaculation, even in Webern’s presence, since she considered him “practically a broad himself,” and, with pounds of blue-black hair in a lacquered, tornado-shaped bouffant, she looked nothing like the placid statue she imitated as the Armless Wonder in the Parliament of Freaks. In his more annoyed moments, Webern thought that Venus de Milo might have been better off in secretarial school, even if she did have to sit with her feet up on the typewriter. It was beyond him why she and Nepenthe spent so much time together.

“What’s the trouble, shortcake?” she asked him now. With a deft motion of her left foot, she pulled off her rhinestoned cat’s-eye glasses and touched the earpiece to her lips mischievously. “Don’t want to cheat on your girl?”

Webern sat up. He was lying on the floor of his cabin, half a train car he and Nepenthe shared back toward the caboose. He’d done pretty well for himself the past few years, and the place almost looked like a home, with the little bed covered in a Mexican blanket and a scarred grey desk made of indestructible metal. Nepenthe had taken to growing rock candy in an aquarium on the windowsill, and he looked through the crystals into the dark night. The floor vibrated slightly. He pictured the railroad ties passing beneath them, but the thought just nauseated him.

“That’s right,” he said, cleaning his face on his T-shirt. He thought of pulling it off and tossing it in the direction of the laundry basket, but Venus might take that as further encouragement. “’Til death do us part.”

“What did I miss?” Nepenthe stood swaying in the open doorway. She wore a tiger mask and held a plate of cold bacon—probably the only thing she could dig up from the cookhouse this time of night. “You two carrying on your torrid affair?”

Venus swiped a dot of banana from her nose with one big toe. “Men, who needs ’em? I’m through.”

Webern rolled his eyes. Even if she hadn’t just jumped on him, he wouldn’t believe it for a second. Venus was forever railing about men—it was always plural, even though she usually just meant Zeus Masters, the company strongman. Sometimes she offered Webern the backhanded addendum, “Present company excluded.”

“Um-hmm.” Nepenthe discarded her mask. Her face was hot, the scales glistening. She crunched on a piece of fatback.

“Lemme have some.” In addition to the two jays he’d shared with Nepenthe, Webern had drunk a few beers at a bull session with the other clowns after tonight’s performance; now, he stumbled to his feet. Nepenthe grabbed him by the hump and guided him to the sofa.

“To the conquering hero,” she said. She raised a piece of bacon as if making a toast. Webern opened his mouth, but she bit into it herself. “Oh, God, this is good.”

Tonight’s festivities celebrated Webern’s most original show yet. Dressed in a suit of tinfoil and pie plates, his skin painted an unearthly green, he’d descended on invisible ropes and spent the better part of fifteen minutes inspecting common “Earthling” wares as an alien might. He’d washed his face in a can of paint, greeted a fire hydrant as he would a living creature (even extending his hand for it to shake), and hungrily stuffed his mouth full of marbles before spitting them out—
ptooee! ptooee!
—machine-gun fast in the direction of the ducking, shrieking audience. Most of the other clowns weren’t sure what to make of it yet—the idea still seemed a little conceptual to them, and they weren’t sure the younger kids would catch on—but Webern felt certain they’d come around in time. Punchy Joe and Silly Billy had already come up to Webern after the performance and agreed to play “Earthlings” in the next act, and after they signed on to a project the others were sure to follow.

“You’ll be the first clown on the fucking moon.” Nepenthe lit a clove. She still rolled them in green paper but now they shared space in her cigarette case with the yellow joints she nicknamed “banana sticks.”

“That’s right. I’m a tin man superhero.” Webern chewed on a piece of bacon. He could feel the individual grains of salt like constellations on his tongue. “Think I’ll get a raise?”

“He’s a card, hon,” said Venus, stretching, cat-like, onto the rug. She scratched one knee with the other. “He’s goin’ places. Better hold onto him.”

Nepenthe leaned over her portable record player.

“Oh, please don’t.” Webern pressed his hands to his ears until he heard the underwater roar of the inside of his head. “Can’t we listen to something fun for once?”

Every night for the last week, Nepenthe had played her new Galactic Vibrations album, which Webern detested, especially when he was stoned. Their long spiraling guitar solos reminded him of the endless flights of stairs he had to go up and down all through elementary school, slowed by his stunted legs and twisted back. He preferred his old Spike Jones records; those songs, full of gunshots, slide whistles, and breaking glass, turned into cartoons the moment they burst into his ears. But Nepenthe loved the Vibrations, or at least considered them “important.”

“There’s a war on, kiddo,” she said now. She turned up the volume, then shouted over it, “You can’t just laugh your life away.”

“I’d rather die from laughing than from boredom.”

Nepenthe pointed to her ear, to indicate she couldn’t hear him, then yelled, “Everything’s political, when you come down to it.”

Webern braced himself against the dull music. He’d told Nepenthe before that they would probably draft the Jolly Green Giant before they touched him, but to her that was beside the point. Not knowing any able-bodied young men could hardly stop her from worrying about them. Sometimes she made Webern a little jealous, scratching away at letters to her Congressman (how did she even know which one to write to? She lived on a train, for Chrissake) or tie-dyeing her veils in buckets on the floor while he lay in bed, naked and waiting for her to join him.

One night, as she slouched against the pillows, eyelids low, high and drowsy and picking at her scales, she told him that she had dreamt of a young draftee throwing himself onto a grenade for her, and after that she felt indebted to help stop the war. Webern didn’t know how to respond. It was a lot to compete with, especially since his own body was already broken. After she fell asleep, he lay beside her, imagining himself in another body with muscles and tattoos, or a college education and a decent haircut, or even as a rage-faced, pony-tailed amputee—with a hollow pant-leg, sure, but with large square shoulders and a chiseled jaw. These were the guys from the news, ducking explosions or soberly arguing that after what they’d seen “over there,” the draft should stop at once, and watching them Webern felt confused, not knowing whether he was lucky not to be with them or jealous that he couldn’t be.

The soldier in Nepenthe’s dream continued to bother Webern until, sleepless, he finally consoled himself in the cruelest way he knew how. He pulled back the sheet and looked down at the grey-white shell of Nepenthe’s skin, and as the scales rose and fell with the rhythm of her breathing, he reminded himself that the soldiers would never choose her. Even men who saw death overseas wanted pretty girls when they came back home. As soon as Webern let himself think it, though, the spiteful thought boomeranged right back. Was that why she’d stayed with him all these years? Because she couldn’t get anybody else?

Now, Webern pressed the sole of his sneaker into the soft flesh between Venus de Milo’s shoulder blades, until she rolled over onto her back and gave him a wicked grin. Her body was a perfect hourglass, without any elbows to interrupt it. Nepenthe wasn’t paying any attention, though; her eyes, half-shut, looked faraway as she grooved to the Vibrations’ strains. Would it kill her to act a little jealous? Webern looked down at Venus’s feet. Her toes were painted with images of tiny monarch butterflies, and it occurred to him that she’d probably always longed for a manicure. In another life, she would have had talony, clacking nails and rings on several fingers. Somehow this thought made him very sad.

“Listen, listen,” Nepenthe whispered, although the record was turned up so loud they didn’t have much choice. “This is the best part.”

“He lives in a flat

In a flat little town

He thinks he’s a king

But he ain’t got a crown

He thinks he can sing

But he don’t make a sound

Ohh

He’s Eustace Ordinary . . .”

“I’ve never met a single person named Eustace in my entire life,” Webern protested. “If he’s so ordinary, shouldn’t he be named ‘Bill’ or something?” He wished that Nepenthe would turn off the record and kick Venus de Milo out. This whole scene was getting him down.

“Jesus God, Bernie, it’s a metaphor. Eustace stands in for all the normal people. You know, the squares.”

“I don’t think anybody is normal. Not Eustace, anyway. Even his name is weird. Eustace. Eustace.” The more he repeated it, the funnier it sounded. “Eustace Eustace Eustace. They at least should have named him Eustace Useless.”

“You’re missing the point.”

But now he was cracking himself up: “Eustace Gooseless. Eustace Moosejuice. Eustace Moontooth. Eustace Loomfruits.”

Nepenthe rolled her eyes and tucked her feet up underneath her. “Someday you’re going to realize there’s more to life than making fun of everything you don’t understand.”

“Aww, it’s good for a guy to have a sense of humour,” Venus offered. “Especially if he’s funny-looking.”

Webern didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead he lost himself, as he often did at such times, in daydreamy contemplation. Nepenthe was wearing her ancient pink bathrobe, which had fallen open at the neck to reveal a triangular wedge of grey scales. Webern thought of her body, its strange comforts, the way her skin had a crust like the Earth’s. Then, as he continued to stare at her, a disorienting transformation took place: the pink robe became his grandmother’s burgundy smoking jacket, dark plaid and open at the throat, revealing the high, wrinkled neck of a Mother Goose nightgown. He’d barely thought of Bo-Bo in ages—he’d stopped writing her postcards years ago—and later, he would take the sudden, vivid recollection of her as a premonition of what was to come.

The first day he performed in the clown troupe—at long last, and as an alternate—Webern had nearly come to blows with a swarthy dwarf, who claimed that Webern had “stolen his face.” What he meant was that Webern’s mask of greasepaint and eyebrow pencil too closely resembled his own. But his words echoed in Webern’s head still. This grand new show could influence him, sure, but to steal someone else’s face would be to lose his own, and he couldn’t stand the thought of that. So he worked tirelessly to be original, even in the slightest practical details, and his relentlessly imaginative antics onstage had gained him a reputation as something of an eccentric.

Webern was one of the highest-paid clowns now, but though he’d won the respect of the others over the years, his intensity held them at a distance. He found himself missing Dr. Show more, not less, as the years went by, and sometimes he still woke up in the middle of the night bursting to tell his old mentor about his latest bright idea. For awhile, Webern had even started talking to the Great Vermicelli, an eerily lifelike ventriloquist’s dummy he’d won in a card game with a fire eater—Vermicelli’s eyes, glossy and button-black, brought to mind Dr. Show’s, and hearing his own voice helped Webern put his thoughts in order, even if no one was listening. But when Nepenthe declared the puppet creepy and threatened to throw it off the train, Webern sighed and relegated the little doppelganger to a drawer.

Webern’s job was stressful: one laughless night, one clumsy pratfall or poorly thought-out costume change could topple him from the position he’d worked so hard to reach. It didn’t help that the circus was always changing around him, and usually in ways he didn’t like. Barker & Smart had one of the last traditional big top circuses in the country; most of the other large outfits had switched to stadiums and arenas, and some of them had also stopped traveling by train, preferring the cheaper and less romantic semi-truck to house livestock, while the performers jostled along in trailers behind. Barker & Smart stuck to the old ways, but for commercial rather than nostalgic reasons—not much else set them apart from the likes of the Mulligan Bros.—and as a result, they were always cutting corners everywhere else. More than once, Webern had requested, say, the red VW, only to arrive under the tent and find a green go-cart in its place, accompanied by a grease monkey grunting something about transmissions. He hated having to scramble to adjust his act at the last minute. He sometimes found himself missing the time he’d spent with Dr. Schoenberg’s circus, when he’d had no one to depend on for his routines but himself.