The Lonely Hearts Hotel(71)
This clown was known for his animal acts. He would take off his top hat to reveal a duckling on his head. He had a legendary dog that had been with him for years. He was quite miserable, as it was hard to rent an apartment when he had such a ridiculous menagerie. He was kicked out of the Saint Martin’s Children’s Circus because one of his geese snapped at a child.
Rose watched his hectic show. He was an enormous clown. He wore a white skullcap. He had on a white one-piece suit with three large red pom-poms as buttons and a red ruffle around his belly, like icing surrounding a cake. He had on white silky pants. He had on large red shoes that must have been about size twenty-six.
He pulled a dove from out of his top hat, followed by a white rabbit and then a white kitten. A tiny goose maniacally drove a little mechanical car around the stage. A small white pony came out from behind the curtain, confused, as though it had just woken up, and the clown proceeded to climb on top of it. The small horse didn’t seem to mind, even though the clown was approximately three times its size.
His famous dog looked like it had seen better days. It looked as if a cigar had exploded in its face. That was the trouble with white poodles: they always looked older than they were. The little dog had on a tuxedo. It was able to walk on its hind legs with fantastic ease. It seemed to be as at ease on its hind legs as it was on all fours, quite possibly because it had been doing this for so many years. It walked across a low tightrope the clown had set up.
He was backstage with the dog in the dressing room. All the other animals were presumably in their cages. But he seemed to treat the dog like it was his equal and so it was allowed everywhere with him.
“I’ve worked with all kinds of animals. I had a great little lamb for a few years. The kids went crazy for him. They wanted to run their fingers through his wool.
“I usually can only afford to keep one exotic creature at a time. It stresses a person out. I’m never sure about them. I don’t know when one of them will turn on me. It was okay to put myself through that kind of excitement when I was a younger man. But now it’ll give me a heart attack.
“I had a lion for a few years. He had a nasty temperament. I sold him to a zoo when I was drinking and needed to pay the rent. You name the animal, I’ve worked with it. I’m a lot like Noah, you know.”
“Have you ever worked with a bear?”
“Ha-ha-ha! You have me there! I never have. Are you in the entertainment trade yourself?”
“When I was young, I had an act with an imaginary dancing bear. We would waltz around the room together.”
“Hmmm. Well, it’s easier to rent a hotel room without a menagerie. Sometimes an imaginary animal can be just as effective as a real one.”
“The Mother Superior said that I was dancing with the devil. But it was kindness and love and warmth and compassion that I was spinning about with. I was welcoming those things with big open arms into the orphanage. I wanted that kind of warmth.”
“Of course. We clowns must tame some of the great metaphors of the world.”
“I’m looking for a partner who I used to work with when I was very young.”
“Describe him to me.”
“He’s a daydreamer, always has his head in the clouds.”
“There’s a clown at the Velvet who’s always half asleep.”
Pierrot went to the zoo. He passed by the different glass exhibition cases. He never could spend too much time with reptiles. They seemed so lacking in compassion, hardly part of an animal kingdom characterized foremost by its penchant for feeling sorry for itself and fretting about what tomorrow would bring.
He stood in front of the swans. Rose had always liked swans. This was the type of exhibit she would come and look at. He remembered the big angel wings that they wore when they were in the Christmas pageant that had changed his life. He threw a small chunk of stale bread into the water. The swans, unaccustomed to being fed in those bleak times, spread their wings and rose up toward him in one movement like a wave.
43
ON THE SEVENTH DAY
The tiny theaters were hard to find, the ones that seated only a hundred spectators at a time. One such establishment was on top of a spaghetti restaurant. Patrons would sometimes smell the sauce cooked in huge vats and get hungry during the show. The owner of the restaurant took the lids off the pots at opportune moments so he would be sure to get the post-theater crowd.
? ? ?
ROSE ARRIVED LAST MINUTE at this theater on a miserable day with freezing rain falling from the sky and hurried to her seat. The spotlight revealed a clown and a bed in the middle of the stage. The clown was dressed in polka-dotted pajamas and a nightcap. He kept opening his mouth and making incredible yawning noises that sounded like an elephant had suddenly been alarmed. Then he picked up a teddy bear and clung to it amorously and dropped into bed and underneath the covers. He put a night mask over his eyes.
He then got out of the bed, not removing the mask, as if he were sleepwalking. He got on the bicycle with his night mask. He began riding his bicycle backward. He was riding it right alongside the edge of the stage, coming dangerously close to falling off. The audience gasped.
He climbed up a ladder at the side of the stage. A child in the audience yelled at him to wake up. He proceeded to walk the tightrope with his night mask on. He ended up in the middle of the rope and began making his outrageous yawns once again. Then he lay down on the tightrope and fell right back to sleep, as unself-conscious of his height as a cloud.