The man sat alone; a gaunt, thin man, starkly lit by a
single candle that hissed and burned on the table before him. A
knife-blade thin scar snaked from the corner of his thin-lipped mouth
to a thin, sideburn. A glass of still cider, scarcely touched, cast odd
reflections. Smoke from a hand rolled cigarette curled and twisted into
the shadows. He stared at the burning end of his cigarette, then at the
dark spaces.
On the wall beside him an old,
torn copy of an eighteenth century poster advertised the imminent
arrival of the circus. Next to the poster were three stiff, plastic
heads; clown's heads. The mouths and eyes of the clowns seemed to come
alive in the flicker of the candle, then die again.
He drained his glass with
sudden haste, gripping the glass tightly between his thin-fingered
hands. He stood and walked to the bar. A few heartbeats of nothing
passed, during which he stared blankly at his reflection in the stained
mirror. As his eyes focussed on himself, he realised that the barman
was ignoring him.
"Hey, barman," he shouted, "how
about another drink here?" The barman came across to serve him,
apologising as he did so. "Sorry, sir. I didn't notice you there."
"How the fuck did you manage
that? It's not exactly crowded in here, is it?"
"I'm sorry. I just didn't see
you."
He could see only one other
customer in the bar. The man regarded the customer coldly, said "Good
evening." The customer shifted on his stool, nodded in reply, but said
nothing; just stared back at him. No fear, no antagonism, no
friendliness. The customer just reflected a cold, empty stare. Just an
acknowledgement of each other's existence; nothing more. Little was
said these days.
The man looked away, returned
to his seat in the corner. As he sat down, he banged a clenched fist on
the table. He felt tense. The candle flame guttered, and went out. He
struck a match, which flared uncertainly, and touched it to the wick.
The candle gently, softly, flickered to life again. He stared at the
dancing flame. A sharp pain stabbed into his finger; he dropped the
still burning match. It died in the wet rings on the table. He leaned
back in his chair, sighed, stared into the dark, empty spaces.
"Thank you," said a quiet
voice.
"For what?" asked the man,
still staring ahead, entranced by the hypnotic shadows.
"For the light," replied the
voice.
"That's alright," the man said
indifferently.
He turned towards the voice.
One of the clown's heads looked at him, a slight smile on its lips.
"No matter; let me say again:
thankyou. Not many bring us out of the dark.The candle flame flickers
and dies, and who ever was there is gone when the candle is next lit."
"Who usually lights the
candles?"
"The barman. We talk to him,
but he ignores us."
The head spoke again, with a
whisper of confidentiality. "I think he thinks we're stupid. But we
know who's really stupid." The clown looked around with exaggerated
furtiveness, then smiled and said: "How long have you been here?"
"About long enough to drink a
pint of cider.You should know; you've been here all the time."
"Oh no I haven't," said the
clown.
"Yes you have," said the man.
"Oh no I haven't."
"Oh yes you have."
"Oh no I haven't."
"Stop these silly children's
games. You're plastic. And you've been here all the time."
"No we haven't," and the clown
turned to the orange haired mannequin beside him, "have we Rico?"
Rico turned and said: "No.
Certainly not. Let me also thank you for the light. It gets very cold
and lonely here. It's nice to have someone to talk to."
The man smiled and sipped his
cider. "Does your other brother speak?" Both clowns turned to look at
the third clown. "He hasn't been here for long," explained Rico, "and
still finds the position ignoble, rather than humorous, and... well...
rather grand." He smiled conceitedly.
"What is your name?" asked the
clown who had spoken first. The man frowned.
"My name?"
"Yes. Your name," both clowns
replied together.
Silence. Candles flickered.
Light chased darkness in and out of the corners. The man warmed his
hand over the candle.
"My name. . ." Silent time
passed. The clowns, eyes closed, smiled like Buddha. Until flesh
burned. The man inhaled sharply. "My name is... London." Both clowns
looked out of eyes that shone bright yellow from deep within them.
"And I," announced the clown
who had spoken first, "am Coco."
"Aren't you all?" smiled Rico,
and added, "I am, as you already know, Rico."
"What about your other friend?"
"Well, he's still too upset to
talk, and hasn't condescended to tell us his name."
"You confuse me because you
speak," said London. "Are you mechanical?"
The two clowns shook their
heads. "I thought not." For a moment the scar writhed nervously.
"To be honest," Coco said, "You
confuse us."
"Me?"
"You."
"And your kind," added Rico.
"After all," Coco continued,
"it isn't us who starts wars. It is not the fools who live in fear.
Fear is war. War is fear. You seem to wage a perpetual war. But not us.
Even with the abyss before us, we do not fear. Because there is...
there is always a bright-winged butterfly to make us smile."
Coco smiled. "I see one now."
"Have you ever stroked the
velvet smoothness of a butterfly's wings, London?" Rico asked.
London asked instead: "What
would happen if you did fall into the abyss?"
"We would survive," Rico
replied. "We must. Also, it would be fun to float through the air for
such a long time. Weightless. We do not fear the drop, and so... " Rico
performed the best approximation of a shrug he could manage in his wall
bound situation.
"And how is it beyond these
particular walls?" asked Rico.
"How is it out there?" the man
asked incredulously.
"How is it out there?" mimicked
the clowns. The man fingered the scar on his face. "How is it out
there," London said quietly.
"He likes melodrama, this one,"
laughed Coco.
"Do you want to know what it's
like out there? Do you? Then let me tell you. Stop distracting me."
"Men are easily distracted, we
find," said Coco. "A part of our art is distraction," added Rico.
"Listen then. No more
distractions. Outside is this: plastic mannequins like yourselves fused
together. Broken and lacerated people. I saw... I saw... a man, impaled
on a sliver of glass, hanging alive from a telegraph pole. People on
their hands and knees, limbs broken, covered in bloody sores, skin
cracked and peeling. They looked more like lizards than humans. Their
skin hung down in strips and dragged on the dusty roads.There are
smashed cars. Broken buildings. Mangled bodies. Everything is
tumbledown. Everything is broken. "
"And why aren't you?"
"I was in the wrong place at
the wrong time."
"Hmm. That sounds complicated,"
mused Coco.
"I think I understand," Rico
said. "You wish you had died?"
"I get it, I get it too." said
Coco eagerly, and looked at Rico with a twinkle in his eye.
"He wants to die," they said in
unison and began to laugh. London looked towards the bar. Surely the
barman could hear the clowns? Did the clowns talk often? Was there
nothing special about this? "Why are you laughing?" Both clowns
immediately stopped laughing, and looked serious. Coco said: "Ooops.
Sorry. We do realise the gravity of your situation, and I apologise
most humbly for that little outburst."
"You sincerely want to die?"
Rico asked. "I don't . . . I don't know. . ." London fingered his
glass, rolled it between the palms of his hands. Suddenly, Coco laughed
again. "Oh, oh, to be guilty about living. You do feel guilty don't
you, London?"
"I don't know."
Both clowns squealed with
delight. London's face grew tense. He stared at the candle flame. His
neck muscles moved in spasms. The muscles in his wrists hardened.
Suddenly, glass cracked, bit deep into his hands. Sharp edges cut
through flesh, severed tendons and veins. "Stop!" he screamed at the
laughing clowns; small shards of glass glinted in the palms of his
hands. "Stop!" he shouted; cider dripped from the table into his lap.
"Stop laughing," he pleaded; blood ran down his arms, stained his shirt
sleeves, dripped into the pools of cider, soaked into his jeans.
"You don't know. you can't
know. You can't know how horrible it is out there. You come across
people by the roadside, who are just staring at nothing. There's
nothing to stare at. You go through towns that are levelled, just
ruins, with maybe black stumps of tower blocks visible, but nothing
else, no bird song, no children, no traffic. People just sit and
scream. How many corpes have I seen? I don't know. I can't remember if
I was proud to be human, to be part of a culture... Yet still there are
people out there, out in that dark, sitty world, trying to be proud in
all of this, trying to act like they used to, and even now planning
their revenge on the enemy." London laughed. "The enemy. What fucking
enemy? Who did this? Does anybody know?"
"The proud; it's them what did
it." Rico murmured.
"Now all that's left of my
proud visions are corpses, rotten bodies, the sick, and a mind-numbing
state of collapse. Even people like me who, for whatever reason, remain
unharmed, are suffering. Suffering shock, and fear, and shame, and
guilt. But we're good animals. We survive. I survive. We still fight to
live. Even though we all know we will die before our time."
"Ashes to ashes," said Coco.
"Dust to dust, " added Rico.
"Clay to clay."
"The better to mould us back
again."
"The next time God moulds clay
and breathes life into its nostrils, best to mould us all as clowns."
"Shut up," moaned London, who
seemed to be retreating into himself, whose skin seemed to be drying
out, becoming brittle, ready to be shed. His body began to shake. "Here
is the contradiction. Puzzle this as best you can, riddlers. I'm
frightened of dying. But I'm ready to die. What's more, I should
already be dead. I feel guilty about living. I should be dead." London
started to bang his fist on the table, began crying. "I should be dead
..." he sobbed.
"Do you think," Coco asked
Rico, "that he's trying to tell us something?"
Rico giggled. London breathed
harshly, slowly, painstakingly pulled shards of glass from his torn and
tattered, bloody hands. His eyes bright in the candle-light, he stared
at the broken glass. Slowly, he began to speak again. "It's hard to
come to terms with all this. Everyone has died. My family, my friends,
my wife. And yet, just because I happened to be ..."
"Happened? " squealed Coco. "
Don't you realise yet?"
"I think it will dawn on him,"
Rico said.
"I should have died. Everyone
else has. Why should I survive?"
"Repetitive, isn't he?" Rico
asked.
"Life is absurd, isn't it?"
Coco said.
"Rather a big joke," Rico
concurred.
"Why not stop complaining?"
suggested Coco. "Live for the day. And anyway, you're not the last
surviving member of the human race, are you? There are two more around
the corner. They're not dead, are they?"
"They will be," said London
absently.
"Mind you," added Rico sourly,
"all they do is complain. All this complaining. The world is nearly
dead and all you do is sit around and complain. It's all part of the
fear you fear, I fear."
London dipped his finger into
some of his blood. He smeared it onto his cheeks. The red blotches
stood out on his pasty skin.
"Ah, the bloom of youth," noted
Rico.
"What can I do?" asked London
pathetically.
"On with the motley," said
Rico.
"The world is a game, you know.
A game," observed Coco.
London's wrists still bled, his
palms bled, his fingers bled. Grimacing, he pulled a long, thin sliver
of glass from beneath his fingernail. "What am I going to do?" London
asked pathetically. He dipped his finger into the hot wax on top of the
candle.
"Cauterise your wounds," Coco
said gently. London smeared the wax around the red on his cheeks.
"On with the motley," Coco
said.
"What else can I do?" London
smeared blood around his lips.
"Come and join us," suggested
Rico.
"Join you? Why?"
"We need more clowns. The world
needs more clowns. It needs laughter. The world is waiting for you."
"Come," breathed Coco. "Dispose
of your life if you wish. But in doing so, prepare yourself and the
world for a good laugh. Help make this a fearless world of pratfalls
and bad jokes. Join us!"
London looked around him. The
world that now existed was a crushing, inescapable fact. He picked up a
sliver of glass and made a final, decisive cut across his already
lacerated wrists. He lurched up, staggered towards the wall. He could
feel himself slipping in the blood and pools of cider. He could see a
distant blackness. Pain throbbed at his wrist, the blood thudded
heavily in his ears. A table crashed somewhere. Crazy red patterns
danced before his eyes. His lungs and chest heaved, sucked, his eyelids
felt heavy, very heavy, he felt a solid wall before him, and pushed his
body hard against it. Blood dripped from his fingers to the floor, his
muscles ached, and all the time the slow, steady loss of conciousness,
a loss of reality, a steady dissolution of solidity, a mingling and
melting, the loss of a body, the gaining of three friends, one silent.
When the barman came to clear away the glasses, he noticed the smashed glass, the blood, the overturned table, the scattered chairs. He did not notice the extra mannequin.
Outside,
Through the black night,
through the burned, blackened,
battered remains of bodies,
broken trees and buildings,
through dripping, rotting flesh,
around the carrion crows, melted dummies,
through the broken windows of
crushed and blackened tenements and trains,
about the sick survivors, the mad wanderers,
through bloody streets, the burnt out shells of houses,
across worm eaten infants, the dying, the infirm,
along the streets and above the houses
Comes the cry:
"Here is the circus."