XXII
Act after act stepped out onto the stage, and under an amber spotlight, they gave their all. Talent and skill paled when compared to the colour of their passion. Out in the bleachers, the townsfolk roared with laughter, and when it was asked of them, they wept and consoled one another too. There wasn’t a single cued response that went amiss.
If the card said laugh, they laughed. And backstage, so too did Rex. If the card said cry, then they did just that, with as little effort as one needed to clear their throat, or to wipe the sleep from their groggy eyes. And as they wept, so too did Rex, ignoring the acts completely, and instead, staring straight out into the bleachers, trained on the fragile and inconsistent expressions of his audience.
The audience was trained on each performer, and Rex, on them. As each performer performed, danced, and wrestled; and as each singer sang out their hearts; the audience cheered, roared and clapped in a fury of thunderous applause. And when they were exhausted and spent, it was Rex whose turn it was to be moved by the human spirit.
If the end truly were to justify the means, then all of this, this grand spectacle, was solely for the merriment of one grotesque and lonely giant; for there was no-one, nobody except for you and I, to know that he felt this way.
The second last act made her way onto the stage. Her four legs dangled from a chair, decorated as a princess’ chariot. Behind her, her assistant stood, frozen under the gleam of Light. No amount of practice had prepared him for how he felt right now. Every inch of his being screamed, “Run, run for your fucking life.” His heart beat in a rampant and worrying fashion; and had Tetanus not turned his legs into two rigid anchors, he might just collapse and make an ass of not just himself, but of the woman he adored, and of whose every necessity, had become the scripture of his preservation. And so he didn’t run. He stood still, looking on the outside, a great deal different to how he actually felt, under his skin.
“Hello,” said The Four-Legged Woman. “I am a queen of one day in the future, and these are my twenty-two toes. And tonight, I want to show you all of my favourite colours. Then maybe one day you can show me yours. Laugh whimsically,” she said, having memorized her lines, and every mark and cue. “Do you have a favourite toe?”
“Yes,” thought her assistant. “When will you ever ask me?”
“I do,” said The Four-Legged Woman. “And it’s this one here,” she said, wiggling her eleventh toe, from the left. “What colour should I paint?” she asked.
The audience shouted the only colours they knew.
“Grey,” they all said, some louder than others as if their grey were shaded or tinted differently.
The assistant took out a small vial and passed it carefully forwards so that the bright liquid didn’t spill. “Oh, my favourite,” said The Four-Legged Woman, “for this toe at least. It’s so hard to have a favourite amongst so many favourites. For every colour has its own heart and expression, just as every heart has a thousand words that it can say, about the thousand ways that it can feel. But this colour,” she said, stroking the nail lightly, “this is definitely my favourite for this toe. And let me tell you why…”
As The Four-Legged Woman spoke, the audience listened with such delicate attention. Most held their breaths for fear that their own gulping or wetting of their lips might drown out even the most innocuous syllable. With each painting of each nail, she told the same story over and over again. But she told each story as if it were different, dressing the nouns, and innocuous syllables, in bright, adjective colour. And just as an average person might dress according to their profession, celebration, tribe, or physical condition and yet still be that very same person, so too did The Four-Legged Woman dress the story of The Sun of God, the very same story that was embedded in everyone’s thoughts, in twenty-two different dresses for twenty-two different occasions. And on each occasion, just like the average person, the story seemed relevant and new, and each inspired a different emotion. One toe told a story of brotherhood and fraternity, and another of grand treachery and betrayal. One toe spoke of desire and passion, and another spoke of a kind of love, one that was unreasonable and absurd.
Her twenty-two toes told twenty-two tales.
And though they were all different in how, when, and to whom they happened; there were, in fact, like the average person or a deck of cards, the very same underneath. As she spoke, though, Rex paced nervously back and forth, angered by the absence of that stupid girl.
“Any word on the cripple?” he asked.
Everyone shook their shoulders.
“What about Master then? Has anyone seen him?”
Again, hundreds of shoulders shrugged.
“What do we do?” asked a stagehand.
“If there is no sufficient end, what good was it, in coming so far?” said Rex.
“But…”
“Shut up,” said Rex. “I’ll go. Worst comes to worse, send out the wrestlers. They can fill in until I get back.”
As he spoke, man and alligator looked at one another and wept.
“Whatever happens, there cannot be an empty stage. We do this once, and we do this right, go it?”
“Got it,” they all shouted back.
“God help us,” he said, as a he ran off through the encampment.