It is
then that the great house starts to move, rattling forward, a body stricken
with delirium tremens,
pockets
of dust shaken loose as our anchors are raised and we experience the thrill of
momentum building,
slow
a while and then picking up a little speed, picking itself up, floating like a
spirit above the road.
The
old haunted house with its leprechaun of a host, his costume folded around him,
leaves of a head of lettuce turning brown.
"Welcome
aboard one and all," he cries.
"Take
care to stay well back
From
the edge and keep a lookout
For
as it flies
The
house plays games
with
weary eyes."
We've
not been here in years, have we? Have we been here then at all? Us together, as
we are now?
I
would swear we have, watching the same astounded faces on other people asking
how the house knows where to go.
It
does seem I have heard those voices, their uneasy murmurs betraying that
underlying fear
that
this is no trick at all, that the place is really bewitched. No festival ride
could be so real, could fool all senses
to
believing that it hovered, that it shuddered along a path that held no real
design, nothing could feel like that
and
not be singed with evil. And so they whisper furtively, their fear ripening
above the rows of sagging seats
that have
seen too many like them.
I
know I have been here, because I know how everything will unfold. I know that
the woman in the brown jacket
will
fold herself inside her husband's arm for the first time in many months and
that he will hold her with the perplexed
face
of one who has not felt compelled to act this role in many months. The ride
affects each one differently, but I
can
guess them all. In the absence of memory, this knowing is a sort of psychic's
trick. I should be back in the tent
with
Madame Zolta, telling the crowds the small gestures that will form the
foundation of their future.
"You
have no plans to marry
You
say
And
indeed it is a bachelor
You
will stay
And
die a young man"
That
boy asked his girlfriend to marry him on the way out of the tent, I believe;
she turned him down and left him
to
the wild of life and he died three weeks hence, besotted, falling under the
wheels of a train. It matters not
to
Madame Zolta, who tells a bald businessman in a trench-coat that his son is not
his own and laughs when he thinks
she
speaks in metaphor. I like to think she got her powers riding on the roof of
the haunted house as I do, remarking
how
things are ever the same and learning that all shall pass here again, without
remembering. I like to think that
we
are alike, her and I. She probably knows and finds it funny, that I would envy
her her little power and her place
among
the scamps and oddities whose peripatetic lives we cross through, looking for
entertainment.
Now
and again it shakes, this ancient house, as it sails forward into the darkening
sky, carbon over steel,
limp
fingers of gelled rain slapping at our faces, loosening the dirt on our
untended vessel; and with each shudder
growing
in intensity, the voice of the house rising to a miner's cough, we sense the
real magic is about to start.
"For
God's sake hush!"
Our
ugly guide insists.
"You'll
babble without pause
and
miss
the
main event."
The
main event is subtle, lost on no one here, begins with the unfurling of the sails
that catch the wind
that
bear us up further into the twilight, so that the ground below begins to come
into focus,
visible
underneath our eyes, the circus and its tribes arranged for us to see.
There
is the strong man, who whispered words I never heard but that I knew to be a
threat;
His
thin voice, a eunuch's voice, is with me in my ears and in my stomach, the part
that freezes
every
time I think of him. Nearby the bearded lady eats messily and cries that no
man,
not
even the dwarves who hustle customers from one attraction to the next, will
look at her
with
glossy-eyed lust, the way they do each night at the dough-headed acrobats.
Madame
Zolta's tent has a tail, a curled queue of people waiting to speak to her,
people
who must know what they are hurtling towards, without knowing it is already
done.
At
the fringe of the grounds, ostracised by even his peers, the man who swallows
pain
crucified
for the aghast few, he smells of lead and chrysanthemums and speaks in croaks
and clucks
unintelligible
to all, save the lion tamer, who placates him with the occasional glass of
whiskey.
"Less
mwa moorie
Juh
tonn pree
Juh
vuh la moorie
A-layt,
a-layt, a-layt"
The
phantom who brought us here is among the guests by now, stirring unrest
talking
blackly about our motives and our neighbours, he makes the plump woman in the
windbreaker
sob
and ask why, just why, without any further clarification. Her befuddled husband
shrugs and laughs;
her
children turn their backs to her in abject horror. She is heavy on them, her
graceless blubbering
lashes
them in and holds them as the world peels back its skin for them to see from
the shore of safety.
They
do not sense the phantom yet. Against children he is useless, being rumour.
They'll be back, of course
unable
to resist the house and its mysteries and unable to think them away. I know
that I came back
drawn
by that anti-figure, always trying to pin his drifting shadow to my shores. I
know that I came back
but
know not how, or why I keep finding myself here.
And
then he unleashes the power of the house, the fragments of those still trapped
inside, still clinging to the walls
and
wondering why they find neither sleep nor adventure, hung on the
moldering furniture, shaken loose
like
so much plaster dust. We feel them move among us, both groups picking goose
flesh from each other's skin.
Who
are they and why do they stay here? Who are they and why do they come here? And
neither of us moves on.
The
apparition raises his hands and the others scramble, tiny monkey spirits and
form a spinning wheel. In turn,
each
leaves the round and jumps through the centre, then rejoins his brethren as if
nothing has happened.
The
clever tricks continue, the breathtaking leaps, strange passages, the wordless
commands,
always
so clearly understood. And we clap, we clap until our ears ache with it, we
clap again and we ask more.
I
still want to hold him down, force out his secrets, get him to tell me how he
makes them dance and
why
it is that others cannot. I want to wrap myself in that misty embrace and hear
that I can learn
that
they will follow me and he will teach me all that is hidden in him. I have been
here before and yet
I
still hope that of all the arranged bodies, some soft and aging, some like
summer fruit: perfect, firm and ripe,
I
still dream that it will be me he chooses to lift into that afterlife, that he
will see the shards of himself in me
and
take interest or pity, it is all the same in the end. But tonight he chooses no
one, for he never does;
only
ushers the little ghosts back to their lair and nods good night to us all, his
way of giving perfunctory thanks.
And
wordlessly we drift back, hardly speaking or hearing until the metal sound and
weight of the anchor
is on
us, dragging us back to ground as if nothing had happened, as if it were as
ordinary as cotton,
the
fabric that links the elements of this house. And wordlessly we descend the
creaking back staircase,
always
in want of repair, never growing worse or better, room for one by one by one to
pass, no more.
"Good
night, ladies
Good
night, gentlemen
We'll
see you back here
in
Hell or in Heaven
Good
night."
The
host salutes by taking off his cap, by slapping the ticket-taker and the
anchor-man
until
they do the same, until they bow their hulking granite heads toward us, not in
deference
but
in fear. And thus do I pass, full of this place again, I have been here before,
I don't know when.
My
eyes are closed for that last step and I imagine him approaching, coming down
on me
like
a raptor, ending what I know.
When my
eyes open, I realise I have forgotten. I always think you will be with me.
[originally published in paraphilia magazine]
