Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [238]
swallow fire, but not if you want to do nothing, you don’t need permission for that, to do evil, no licence for that, point is I’m going now, I’ll drop a coin on the plate the Girl with the Green Crest has left on the ground, drop it slowly so she sees it’s a pound, not pennies, and I value her, the way she swallows fire, I wonder what state her teeth, tongue, lips are in, poor thing, any day a gust of wretched wind, ravenous wind, shadowed wind, that’s the worst, girl, I know my airs, could suddenly turn the fire against you, your lashes, your crest, I didn’t like it at first, now it’s kind of funny, makes you look different in the night, an ancient being, wandering priestess, and up she comes, as if reading my thoughts, doesn’t say anything, slowly, her teeth clenched, though her eyes are laughing, I’ve dropped the coin, these things help, not being there, at the show, for free, Marshal Mountebank used to complain about that when he was in Castro with the troupe, art is a risky business, and there he was, as if he had two bodies, one that worked, the other stiff on account of his spine, that’s what he told Polka, two lame people meet, two classics, he said, though the art of parish gravedigger has a future, ours is uncertain, that box, the television, will finish us off, but he wasn’t a moaner, so long as he was fit, he’d never abandon his sublime, artistic duty of supporting the contortionist, La Bambola was her name, holding her with the harness he tied to his shoulders and head, which secured a bar with a small platform, tiny fulcrum so she could pirouette like an elastic woman, incredible dance in the air, the only man I knew to carry something on top of his head, the contortionist with her beautiful, long hair, one day she came to wash it in the river, dry it with a comb, I’d never seen hair like it, you could wear it as a tunic, but then in the evening, during the show, she’d fasten it in a ponytail, the moment came, the decisive moment, with a bugle call and roll on the tabor, when La Bambola tied her ponytail to the bar and started turning dizzily round and round, Benjamin, the Marshal of Deza, unmoved, with his Napoleonic coat and tricolour sash, that’s how they’d met, La Bambola needed a broad-shouldered man, her husband, Homer, the ventriloquist, was skinny, an intellectual, though he did help with the naughty number, pointing with a stick at the anatomy of the contortionist wearing a bathing suit, sitting on a high stool, and asking where do women have most hair – on their head? – and the public would laugh and shout lower, lower, a number that gave them a few problems, once they ended up in jail, Benjamin covered the contortionist while she slept on a bench with his marshal’s coat, and the jailer said every Napoleon had his Waterpolo, and Benjamin said something to La Bambola in French, the advantage of being on the road, languages stick to you, what he said was Il est très dur de tête, to which the jailer replied with the typical speak normal, or you’ll know about it, the fool didn’t realise how happy he felt protecting his fair lady, a circus artist’s life is full of self-sacrifice, and then came the chance to join the Circus of Portugal, welcomed by a director who was extremely polite, tamed elephants, female elephants, though one was called Dumbo, treated everyone right, as if they were elephants, and theirs really was a very artistic piece, though the historical background was a bit confused, the central motif being a large whale, he was introduced as the knight Donnaiolo, who had to fight in order to get into the whale’s mouth, which involved various trials, out of that mouth came, for example, a Samurai archer shouting halt, you bastard, twit, twat, or I’ll have your balls for garters, which had a certain impact on Portuguese children, and shooting an arrow that stuck in his chest, which he pulled out with his own hands, applause, followed by an old, tame, half-blind lion, which Benjamin frightened by showing it a live mouse, further applause, and so on until the magnificent moment when Donnaiolo finally