Ineffable
XXIII
“You know that I love you, don’t you?”
There was no correct response to such a question, at least none that she was aware of. The Young Cripple sat on the edge of her bed, gripping her thighs as The Ringmaster slowly unwound every nut and bolt in the metal contraption that imprisoned her legs. And as her toes wriggled free, a torrent of pain swept its way through her body.
Her legs felt like they were being brushed and combed, with fish hooks and hot needles. The stabbing pain lapped in waves, from her thighs down to her toes, and then back again. But it wasn’t just her legs. Her neck too felt like it had been whipped and scolded, and the tingling and unremitting sting that she felt behind her ears and under her eyes, it reminded her of a pain she once felt after she had angered a loitering wasp.
Every part of her body felt like it had succumbed to a different kind of torture.
“You’re the only one who doesn’t love me in return,” said The Ringmaster. “My own daughter.”
The Young Cripple kept a long and steady glare. She dared not respond for it would only assert his ramblings, and more than likely, set him off on some violent outrage where one or more of her bones might get broken. So she stared at him, around him, and through him. She stared, unaffected, as if his words were foreign, just shapeless sounds of which she had no emotional anchorage. And she stared too, unaffected as if the sound of his voice were no more alarming than the trill of a cicada. She stared, unaffected as if he wasn’t there.
“I could have chosen anyone to end the show, but I chose you,” he said, as the last bolt fell to the floor.
The Ringmaster stared at her legs in marvel.
“You’re perfect,” he said, as her legs sprang up and down.
The Young Cripple looked down, and she wept.
“You are going to steal the show,” said The Ringmaster. “You should be proud of yourself. You should be proud of your deformity. It’s magnificent. Think of how hard you worked to become like this. Just think,” he said, gripping her shoulders. “All the others, they were born as they were; all of them. As beautiful as they are, and as special as they are, each and every one of them came into this world wonderfully deformed. But you my dear, yours is no accident and no freak of nature. Yours is no mere percentile or random occurrence. No, my dear, yours is a work of art. Your deformity took time. It took passion and sacrifice. It took a whole lotta love and dedication. My dear daughter, your deformity is king. It is above one, and above all. It is the future. And it…. will…. trend,” he said, defiant.
The Young Cripple merely wished she could wear a dress, one that covered her toes.
“Have you gone through your act?”
“Yes sir,” she said, obedient.
“Show me your notes,” he said.
The Young Cripple handed him her palm cards. She never used them, but like everyone else, she had to carry them at all times. Most had become reliant on theirs, mainly because their master was so completely dependent on his. Everything that she was expected to say - her key address, and her main points and passage – they were all written in precise order, point after point. The Ringmaster skimmed the card quickly, before turning back to the girl.
“And your act, as you’ve practiced, is entirely from these notes? Not one word unaligned?”
“Of course… not…sir,” replied the girl, unsure if she was answering the first or second questions. “Why would it be any different?”
“There has been talk that your story is different, that you were….” he said, twisting his face into a disgusted pose. “Making….things….up.”
As he said this, his fingers became fists.
“No sir,” said the girl. “My act is, as is written. I haven’t made things up. I promise.”
“There is only one story,” said The Ringmaster.
The Young Crippled nodded her head.
“I am only telling you what I have heard, and it concerns me. It worries me. De..”
“Delilah’s a bitch. And she has it in for me. She always has. She’s out to get me. She’ll say anything you want to hear.”
“You think I want to hear that my own daughter betrays me behind my back? That my own daughter betrays her belief and her faith, behind my back? You really think that’s what I want to hear? That my own daughter is making up stories, and telling lies. That she is blaspheming? My daughter? Do you understand what this means if it is true? I am the sole representative of God on Earth. There is God. There is The Sun of God, and then there is, I. And my own daughter, my own flesh, and blood, cursing with her profanity, going against the truth. Do understand what that means to me? Do you?” he urged.
The Young Cripple barely flinched.
“Of course you don’t. Everyone else does. The whole world understands; everyone except you. And what the hell am I supposed to do? You are broken, and undisciplined. You are iniquitous and ill-mannered. You do not respect rule and order, and you do not follow as others do. You are a goat amongst sheep, a stone amongst jewels, and a tumour amongst healthy organs. You have no focus and no direction. You just drift. You have no will at all, except to make excuses. You lie, with as much as ease as an honest man has with the truth. There is something very wrong with you. Whatever that it is, it alone is the test of my faith. And I swear,” he said, gripping the girl’s cheek so hard that he almost dislocated her jaw. “I‘ll be damned if I let you tarnish all that is good in this world. This wickedness, this making up of stories, this deviation from good and true, it stops right here. Do you understand?”
The girl blinked once for yes.
It was the most that she could do.
“But you do know that I love you?”
The girl blinked once more.
“Good,” said The Ringmaster, releasing his clasp of the girl’s jaw. “Listen, you’re going to be magnificent tonight. The crowd is great. They’re really warm. This is your night. This is what your whole life has been about up until now. After tonight, you will be top dog in this troupe. Nobody will be out to get you, only to be you, to be with you, and to be like you. Tonight is all about you. So you go out there, and you win hearts. You perform with all of your passion and all of your might. You give your best. You give your all. I believe in you, as much as I believe in God almighty, and in Light. I believe in you, as much as I believe in myself. So you go out there. You, be you. Be special. Be wonderful. Be colour. Be love. Be Light,” he said, smiling and blowing kisses as he walked behind a dressing curtain.
As the young girl lessened her fear, The Ringmaster peered over the curtain.
“You fail,” he said. “And you’ll be hung, drawn and quartered, in tomorrow’s show.”
The girl’s fear returned. Panic-like pain swept across her thoughts, just as the stinging and stabbing sensations did across her entire body. She could hear the sound of cursing not a stone’s throw from where she sat, as The Ringmaster struggled behind a yellow dressing curtain, but it was her own cursing in the back of her mind which echoed the loudest. She cursed her father for he was cruel and had little imagination, even when it came to insult and torture. And she cursed Light, and The Sun of God too, for damning her, as the test of a bastard’s faith. She cursed her legs, and she cursed the pain that rippled through every nerve and every goose-bumped inch of skin on her body. She cursed the fear that she had of everything in the entire world, from microscopic bugs and bacteria, to wolves and taloned predators with beady eyes and sharp, gnashing teeth. She cursed the horrible things that were real, and more so, she cursed the deadly and blood curdling things that were not, of which nestled in her thoughts, and projected onto everything that she could see. She cursed this damn carriage and her uncomfortable bed; and she cursed these stupid palm cards, the troupe, and herself.
“Darling,” spoke a woman’s voice, from behind the yellow dressing curtain.
In an instant, The Young Cripple’s fear vanquished.
“Mother?” she said, almost disbelieving.
From behind the
yellow curtain came The Ringmaster, clad in a long floral dress that barely covered his painted toenails and stockinged legs. He wore a green shoal, and a long auburn wig that curled in small, winding spirals past his shoulders. His lips were painted red, but not bright and bloody like a cheap slut; they were subtle as if it was the natural pigment of his skin. He wore blue pumps with a black bow on his toes. And he carried over his right shoulder, a handbag fashioned like a diamond.
“I love you, my darling,” said The Ringmaster, in a woman’s voice. “You know that I love you, don’t you?”
The Young Cripple wept loudly, holding her arms wide and inviting.
“Oh my dear,” said The Ringmaster. “Don’t you cry. Your mother is here, and your mother loves you like you could never imagine.”
The Ringmaster embraced the young girl and pressed her head against his bosomed chest. He stroked the back of her hair gently, as if her fear and pain were a web, or light sprinkling of dust, that only a mother’s gentle touch could shift from a child’s head. He ran his fingers lightly over the round of her head, and then massaged the lobes of her ears, the one thing that always consoled her.
“I know your father has his way,” said The Ringmaster. “And I know it is not always right. You know this too. But it’s important that we make him feel that he is right, even when he is wrong.”
“Will you stay?” asked The Young Cripple, gripping her mother’s hand.
The Ringmaster smiled.
“There’s nothing I want more,” he said.
“I love you, mother,” said The Young Cripple. “But please, don’t go this time. Stay a bit longer. Please? Stay some more.”
“I never leave,” said The Ringmaster. “My darling, you are absolutely never alone, even when you are.”
The Young Cripple closed her eyes and forgot her trouble. She lay in her mother’s arms for some time, until the quiet was stirred by the sound of stampeding feet and racing breaths as a giant and a young boy, both raced through the dark, towards the young girl’s carriage.
“It’s time to go,” said The Ringmaster, in a gentle maternal tone.
He kissed her forehead and then carried her out of the carriage, and into the giant’s hands. “I love you,” he said. “You are my north. You are my everything. Though I come to you for just a second or two each time, believe me when I tell you, each time feels like I have lived an eternity. I love you, my darling, and I am so proud of you. Go out there and shine. Read your story, the way your father would have it read, the only way it should be read. Forget the fables and fairy tales. Forget the ambiguity. Read the story as it is my darling, read it as it is. But read it with the passion that only you can. Do it for me, your mother,” said The Ringmaster, kissing the girl once more, and the disappearing out of the girl’s sight; somewhere off in the darkness, behind the sickly old tree.
“Cutting it close,” said Rex, walking off with the girl in his arms. “We’ve little time for anything. Let’s get you rigged up and ready for the show. You’d better be spectacular, you hear?”
The Young Cripple stared up at the starless sky, as black and vacuous as her thoughts.
“I will,” she said.
“You’d better,” said Rex.
Behind them, The Young Boy stumbled out of the bush and into the dim light, his eyes set on The Young Cripple’s carriage. His hands were cold and soaking in blood, and his head was light and dizzy. He had ulcers in the corners of his eyes, under his tongue, and in the back of his throat, and with every gulp and swallow, his body seized, and his face grimaced with sheer pain. Still, as useless as his eyes had become, and as pained as mere breathing seemed to be, The Young Boy didn’t give up, peering at shadows through half shut eyes, driven on by his aching heart.
Unable to continue, The Young Boy collapsed by the old Sycamore tree, hanging on for sheer life. His nails scratched against the crumbling bark as he thought of the girl, and he felt a great pain in his heart with her absence, far more acute than what he felt in his curdling stomach, or from the sores that had started to fester on his skin. It felt as if his heart were being pulled from his chest; and the part that stayed with him, the part that hadn’t been stretched and skewed, was the part that feared to be alone. And so he thought of the girl, and all he could feel was absolute fear.
As the boy wept, his tears ran from his stinging eyes and fell upon the cursed tree.
And thunder clapped - though there was not a cloud in the sky.
The Young Boy fell on his back, aghast, as above him, The Demon stood.