The Troupe (6 page)

George sighed a little. He had never felt like this before. It was as though he’d been stabbed somewhere hidden, and was bleeding out, helpless to stanch it. He became so lost in his reverie that he almost didn’t notice Silenus mount the stage again.

“Truly, some are diamonds, and the rest of us simply coal,” he said. “Only occasionally are we allowed to bask in the radiance of those precious few and understand how beautiful we can be. Let’s have another round of applause for Her Majesty, Colette de Verdicere.”

Silenus politely tapped the white-gloved fingertips of one hand
against an open palm while the rest of the crowd made a storm of applause. There were more than a few wolf whistles, and at these the icy ache inside of George flared hot. But he pushed these thoughts from his mind and returned to watching Silenus, who seemed to be in a better mood now.

“But not all are slender beauties like Her Majesty,” said Silenus. “Others have a more functional dimension, but are no less wondrous. On the contrary, they may be even more astounding in their capabilities. My next performer, Miss Frances Beatty, is possibly known to you. I found her in a foundry, if you can believe it. There she was employed by the factory men for the purpose of bending girders and repairing damaged machinery with her bare hands,” he said, and displayed his own to the crowd.

There were a few scornful laughs from the audience. Silenus smiled a little and raised a prim eyebrow. “Some of you may laugh, yes,” he said. “I did myself, when I first heard the tales. Yet when I saw her and witnessed what she could do, my laughter died in my throat, as yours may do yet. I advise you to observe closely, and try not to miss a moment, for few are the things that could possibly compare to the abilities of Miss Frances Beatty!” He flung out one hand and faded from the stage again as the curtain lifted once more.

George felt that nothing could compare to the last act, or pierce the sickness that seemed to have overcome him. But when he saw the woman (was it a woman?) standing on the stage, he reluctantly sat up and paid attention, curious to see what she was about to do.

She was a skinny creature of medium build, not muscular in any way, and she stood in the center of the boards with a slumping posture that was a far cry from the showmanship of the other two performers, or Silenus. She had frazzled, reddish hair, and her face was painted white and her lips red, much as the professor’s had been; but whereas for him this had highlighted his comical reactions, for her it emphasized her stillness. George did not think he had ever seen anyone so still as she, frozen in place with her head turned backstage,
barely breathing. And then there was her clothing… He had expected to see the strongwoman in tights of some kind, but she seemed to be wearing tightly wrapped colored bandages that concealed every inch of her body below the neck. It rendered her strangely sexless and artificial. Only her hands remained uncovered, and these hung limp by her side. He could not think of anyone less likely to perform feats of strength, yet surrounding her on the stage were a host of huge and intimidating props: iron safes, thin steel girders, train car wheels, stone statues, and steel bands. The woman seemed tiny in comparison to them, yet she did not pay them any attention. In fact, she seemed utterly unaware that there was a performance going on at all.

“Do something!” someone called from the back, and there was a smattering of laughter throughout the crowd.

As if in answer, the orchestra started up and the strongwoman snapped her head up to stare out at them. The crowd shrank back a little. It was an unnatural movement, as though her skull had been pulled by a string, and George understood Irina’s confusion: he was no longer sure if this was a puppet or a person. He watched as she stiffly walked to the steel bands and picked them up, and agreed that something was missing in the way she moved or stood. She could have been an automaton.

The strongwoman tilted her head back and forth as she examined the bands. Then she stared out at the crowd and thumped the bands down on the stage, proving their density, and lifted them up, grasped them in different sections, and pulled.

From the way she moved it looked like she exerted nearly no force at all, but the steel bands snapped apart and bent to form a large
O
, which she displayed to them. Then she grasped different segments of the bands and twisted and curled them, using her elbow to make the angles, until they formed an
H
, which she also displayed to the crowd, who now applauded politely. Then she bent them in half and pulled them through one hand, straightening them out, and held up
what appeared to be an
I
. She pulled the bands apart again, forcing them into the first shape she’d made, and the crowd began chuckling in disbelief as they realized what she was spelling out. When she held up the final
O
, completing her gesture of honor for their state, the crowd had already begun to clap, completely won over by her. But she did not acknowledge their applause at all, and tossed the bands aside to continue on to the next feat.

She went to the girders, and stood one up on its end. It came with a large, flat base, which allowed it to balance easily. Then she went to the iron safe. She pulled at its door, but found it locked. The audience laughed, sensing that this was a gag for the show, but the strongwoman did not mug for them as they expected. Instead she sleepily went through the motions of listening to the click of the dial as she tried to crack the safe, but then shrugged, giving up, and took hold of the handle of the door and gave it a tug.

The door fell open with a loud squawk, and part of the now-damaged lock fell clanking to the floor. The crowd laughed and clapped and hooted at this. The strongwoman situated herself over the safe, positioned her feet, and pulled at the door. There was a moment of silence, and then the hinges gave way, twisting off the safe completely. She held up the amputated door to show the crowd, and bent it in half over one knee as though it were paper. Then she tossed it aside, and it landed on the stage with a loud clunk that reverberated through the theater. George could even see where it had dented the boards.

But it was odd. Whereas in the Persian’s act he could see every flex and bend of her musculature, for the strongwoman he could see none. It was as though she was not straining to do any of this.

“Part of that’s got to be rubber or something,” muttered the man sitting next to him.

“Yeah,” said George.

He forgot about it when the strongwoman picked up the safe, felt its heft, and tossed it up in the air, twirling end over end. The
audience gasped in horror. George thought for sure that it would come down and crush her, but instead its open side came down on the end of the steel girder with a deep, resonant
bong
, and it hung there, spinning slightly. Everyone applauded madly at this. Then she bent the steel girder down piece by piece, folding it up in segments with the safe still dangling on its top, until finally the safe was at eye level with her. She took it off and set it on the floor, picked up the train car wheel, slowly folded it in half, and stuffed it in. She grabbed the safe door, unfolded it (rubbing it along her forearms to remove the larger dents), and replaced it on the safe’s hinges, attempting to lock the wheel in. But the door fell off, clanking to the floor. She tried to replace it, but it again fell off, so she leaned the door against the front of the safe, picked up the second steel girder, and wrapped it around the safe bit by bit, leveraging it with her foot until she had tied the door on. The crowd erupted in laughter and applause, but again she did not seem to notice, or care. It was as though she was sleepwalking through her performance.

Her placid expression did not change once throughout the rest of the act. Not when she tossed the statues in the air and flipped forward to catch them, nor when she picked them up, one in each hand, and stacked them on the safe. George wondered if her face could move at all.

After she’d completed her big finish (balancing the statues on her shoulders while she imitated their poses), she bowed to the crowd’s wild applause, and turned and walked away backstage without looking back once. It was an extremely impressive but bizarre performance, George felt. The strongwoman had seemed to neither know nor care who was watching.

As the curtain went down for the second time George wondered why no one could remember any of the acts of the Silenus Troupe. He’d never seen anything more amazing and amusing in his life, and was determined to never forget a detail. But then, he reminded himself, they still had one more act to go.

Silenus hopped back up to the corner of the stage. “That, my friends, was the wonderful Miss Frances Beatty. One wonders what husband she shall find in this world of ours,” he said, and smiled. The crowd laughed, now in good spirits.

“And now is the moment when I myself join these wondrous performers on the boards,” said Silenus. He walked out to the center of the stage and tugged off his gloves. He took off his hat, put his gloves in, and tossed the hat into the wings. “Hopefully I’ll impress and entertain just as much as they have tonight,” he said. “But then, my role is minimal—all I must do is lead them in a song.”

Two other performers came out from backstage. One, George noticed with a thrill, was the girl in white and diamonds. She was no longer wearing her mask, and he saw her face was smooth and angular, and her eyes a curious green. She smiled as she walked to join Silenus on the stage, and he took her hand and kissed it.

The other performer was a very tall, thin, and very well-dressed man with bright blond hair. He carried a cello and a bow in one hand, and in the other he held a light chair. He was slightly stooped, as though he’d recently borne a great weight and overstrained himself, and there was a hitch in his step as his right hip dipped in and out. He set the chair on the floor and extended the endpin of the cello, and sat. Then he settled into his position and lightly whipped the bow across each string to listen to the pitch and tune it accordingly.

But then the man did something George thought was odd: the cellist crinkled his brow as though he’d heard something strange, and looked up to find its source. His eyes searched through the crowd, trailing over the balconies and the stage seats, until finally they sought out the very section that George was sitting in, and even seemed to rest upon his seat. George got the strong impression that, though the man had lights shining directly in his face and was surely
blind to the rest of the theater, the cellist was looking for him, and could even see him.

“The song we will play tonight,” said Silenus, “is one of our own devising. Or, rather, our own orchestration. The melody is a far, far older one than any you’ve heard this evening, an ancient folk melody passed down, in one form or another, from generation to generation. It has no name, as far as I know. But we here simply refer to it as the Chorale, if you please. Surely its age speaks of quality, and should we play it well enough you will hear it, and agree.”

Then he turned to the two performers and raised his hands. The man with the cello looked away from George and snapped to attention, and the girl in white settled her shoulders back, preparing to sing. There was a pause, and Silenus dropped his hands.

The cellist leaped into the prelude of the song. He played in perfect synchrony with Silenus’s conducting, his eyes fixed on every movement. It was an extraordinarily high and difficult piece, and his left hand had to crawl all the way up the strings of the instrument almost to the bridge to produce the clear, clean tones the song required. George knew only a little about the cello, but from the flurry of shifts and rapid slurring of the bow he knew he was seeing a formidable display of skill. The song itself was achingly, painfully beautiful, and put George in mind of green, rolling hills that ended in black cliffs as they were eaten away by the sea. It was desolate and forlorn, and yet always hinted of a key change to come, when the song would shift from minor to major, from mourning to gratification. As it was, it felt torn between an elegy and a celebration.

Then the girl began to sing. Her voice was husky and honey-sweet, and as before the song was not in English, but George could not identify which language it was. It certainly didn’t sound like French, as her previous song had. It was difficult to tell one syllable from the other, and sometimes George could not understand how her mouth made the sounds it did.

George lost himself in the song, basking in its trills and turns. But
he eventually found himself distracted. There was something making a sound in the theater, very quietly.

After a while, he realized what it was: a second song.

He glanced down the aisles, but could see no one whistling or humming to themselves. It was a very soft song, different from the Chorale yet played alongside. The two matched notes occasionally so that no one noticed, like hiding a noise in a clap of thunder. George somehow felt that he’d heard this second song before, but could not say where. It was too faint to hear clearly. It must have been somewhere long, long ago, he thought as he tried to listen to it.

George studied the cellist and the singer, but they didn’t seem to be the ones playing it. Yet as he watched them he noticed that they had changed a little: their colors seemed brighter than before. The blond hair of the cellist was now a piercing gold, and Silenus was lit up like a flame. George wondered if he was imagining things and looked around, but saw that no one else seemed disturbed in any way. But then he peered closer at the people nearby.

None of them were moving at all. They all seemed catatonic, their eyes wide and glassy, some with their mouths hanging open. Even the orchestra had gone still as stones, staring up at Silenus and his performers.

George turned to the man sitting next to him and whispered, “Pardon me, sir—do you hear that?”

But the man did not respond. He was transfixed as well, his unfocused eyes set on the air above the stage.

George reached out and poked him. “Sir? Are you all right? What is going on with everyone?” But neither he nor anyone else moved.