Goldenland Past Dark (26 page)

He reached down and peeled back the negative paper from one photograph that still lay shrouded on the floor. In it, Nepenthe leaned over his desk, her bosom pressed against his clown notebook, her soft mouth slightly ajar. He felt a surge of arousal tinged with guilt before he remembered he was looking at a picture of his girl. His girl. She was still talking.

“—but I guess it worked,” Nepenthe was saying. “Wait. Let me show you something.”

Nepenthe hurried over to the bed and pulled a cardboard box out from underneath. In the open carton, Webern almost expected to find the real Nepenthe, crumpled and folded with dead, glassy eyes. But instead, he saw the box was half-filled with her scales. They looked pitifully small without her body inside them. Webern picked up a scale and held it between his thumb and forefinger. It was already brittle, turning translucent; through it filtered only the palest, most diffuse kind of light.

“Gross, right? But I figured I could sell them at Parliament. Souvenirs, you know? Like Brunhilde used to do with her beard hairs.”

Nepenthe grinned. Then she did something Webern had never seen her do before. Her hair was falling into her eyes, and she raked it back,
away
from her face. An unveiling. He’d never noticed it before, but she had a slight widow’s peak. Her face was heart-shaped.

“Are you going to stay like this?” Webern asked.

“Fuckin’ A! He gave me a lifetime prescription. Weren’t you listening?”

Webern sat down on the bed. His mind was racing. As Nepenthe flung herself down beside him, he thought of the first time he’d undressed her, the way she’d yielded, as if he’d been prizing away the last of her secrets. But he hadn’t been. Nepenthe had this skin all along, just beneath the scales she’d shown him. Webern felt tricked. He began to remember the old necessity of hiding his body: the lumpy sweaters, the tight-closed blinds. When Nepenthe ran her hand over his hump, he shrank away. She glared at him accusingly. A small line appeared between her eyebrows. She had a tiny mole, a freckle really, high on one temple.

“You’re not even happy for me,” she said. “The best day of my life, and you’re not even happy for me.” She held the camera at arm’s length and snapped another picture. This time, both of them were in the shot. Nepenthe popped it out of the camera, then flapped it back and forth in the air, to make it develop faster. “The happy couple. Jesus God. Say something, won’t you? Don’t just sit there like a zombie.”

“I’m sorry.” Webern covered his face with his hands.

“Hey, how’d that thing get in here?”

Webern looked up. Marzipan had finally come inside, carrying their suitcases.

“Just put them anywhere,” Webern told her.

Marzipan dropped them where she stood. She folded her arms.

“Whose is it?” Nepenthe wrinkled her nose. “Wow, it smells like mothballs.”

“She’s my grandma’s. Her name’s Marzipan.” He plucked at the Mexican blanket. “I guess I’m taking care of her now.”

“For real?” Then Nepenthe realized what he meant. “Oh. Shit. I’m sorry, Bernie. No, I really am. I can’t believe you didn’t tell—well, whatever. I’m a bitch.” She paused, as if waiting for his grief to pass. Then she added lightly, “Does it—does she do tricks? Maybe you can use her in your act.”

“I don’t really think she’s that kind of monkey.”

“Maybe she is. Look, she’s smiling.”

Across the room, Marzipan was baring her teeth.

“No, she isn’t.”

“Yes, she is.” Nepenthe spoke with authority: “This is a trained ape.”

Webern shut his eyes. Hesitantly, he touched Nepenthe’s back. It was smooth, smooth, smooth—except for the one scale she’d missed, a brittle husk still clinging to her left shoulder blade. It came loose as soon as his hand touched it, but Webern held it in place against her skin for a long moment before finally letting it drop.

The stilt walkers moved precariously above the midway
. They sidestepped an exotic dancer, a half-dozen tame peacocks, and a little girl carrying a basket of piglets. They teetered by a pair of mechanics who bent over a dissected clown car, fingers blackened with grease, and three equestrians who were washing their tights in a vat of pink lemonade. As they balanced on their stilts, they juggled: one tossed batons, another bowling pins, a third casaba melons. They wore fringed jackets and armbands with fluttering ribbons, and impossibly long seersucker pants, and enormous papier-mâché heads with eyes that moved and mouths that opened and top hats that sprouted real flowers. It was a brand new act. Even some of the vendors stopped pulling taffy or frying corndogs to gawk. But when Webern passed them, he didn’t even slow his pace.

When he pushed past the animal trainers and the roustabouts, the strongmen and the acrobats, he saw only one thing: the broad, straight shoulders, the muscles and the height, of the men who worked alongside him in the circus. Webern wondered if Nepenthe had been outside since her transformation, if any of these men, catching a whiff of her perfume, had turned their heads in her direction, if they’d whistled or nudged each other, or, worst of all, stood with mouths ajar in respectful silence until she disappeared. He thought of her, in an angora sweater and a tennis skirt, eating an ice cream on the midway, and the thought struck him as obscene. Now that she’d shed her scales, along with the gloves and scarves she’d worn to conceal them, it was like she was walking around naked for everyone else to see. Smells of hay and excrement, fresh paint and old candy, filled the air as Webern stepped under the big top’s awning into the hot, sawdusty shade. The other clowns were there already, practicing in the farthest ring. Webern passed the elephants Stanley and Hortense, who were rehearsing for the daintiest tea party they could manage, and climbed up into the empty stands. As he moved among the bleachers, he looked down, seeing, for the first time in a long while, what the audience saw: the sheer size of the arena, the weathered red and yellow canvas stretching forever upwards like the wind-worn dome of a hot air balloon.

Webern sat down on the bleachers. When he’d left, Nepenthe had been digging through her trunk, searching for the scantiest clothing she could find. Her face had flushed pink with exertion as she tossed muumuus and trench coats over her shoulders. She’d cursed when her clove had burned a hole in a rumpled tie dye T-shirt, but she’d pounded out the flames with a clown shoe and kept on searching for some long-forgotten halter top. Now, here in the dusty ring, Webern felt a kind of relief. At least he still could escape into this.

Even though they weren’t in costume, Webern saw right away that the clowns were practicing a version of his Martian act. Happy Herbert, playing the lead, moved stiffly, robotically; he held his arms as straight as rocket launchers and kept his eyes wide and glassy and fixed forward, mechanically swivelling his whole head when he turned to look at something. It was a typical performance for him: at the first sign of strangeness, Herbert always turned his character into a cartoon, an instantly recognizable grotesque that mimicked the minor characters of TV sitcoms. When Herbert played a clown policeman, he became all swagger and billy club; when playing a drunk, he continually stumbled and hiccupped, never colouring his portrait with the various shades of rage, sorrow, and merriment he so vividly displayed most nights at the Clown HQ. Now, as a spaceman, he was no different. The tin soldier walk, the blank expression, had been stolen from a million mediocre sci-fi movies—movies that Herbert had no doubt glimpsed on drive-in screens over the tops of fences Friday nights when he and his hometown buddies rode on the back of a pickup truck to the empty field where they would huff paint thinner and tip over cows.

Much as he wanted to, Webern couldn’t look away. It was almost impressive how completely Herbert had missed the point. The Martian was supposed to be like a child, seeing everything on Earth for the first time; his wonder and curiosity were meant to reveal the strangeness of ordinary objects—a telephone, a lamp post, an umbrella. Herbert had only seen the spaceman’s strangeness, and had turned him into a figure of ridicule. It made Webern sick, but in a way it was comforting, too. It would have been humiliating to see Herbert outdo him at something.

The other clowns wrapped up the rehearsal with the usual backslaps, friendly insults, and idle horseplay around the scenery. It wasn’t until they began to part ways that Pipsqueak spotted Webern in the stands.

“Hey guys, look who’s back.” Pipsqueak bounded over. Up close, Webern could see he still had on eyeliner from the last night’s show. “Heya, Bump! How’s tricks?”

Webern tried to smile. Pipsqueak’s grin faded.

“My condolences.” Silly Billy strode up with his hand extended for Webern to shake. Webern wondered how he had heard about Nepenthe until Billy added, “I lost my grandma a few years back—she keeled over, sitting right next to me in church. Now there’s a shocker, I’ll tell you. Boy, you shoulda seen my face.”

“See, it wasn’t that bad. With Bo-Bo, I mean. She was in her coffin with the lid shut when it happened. But I’ll probably have nightmares about it anyway, you know?”

Webern realized he was still shaking Silly Billy’s hand. Hurriedly, he dropped it and wiped his moist palm on his pants.

“Sounds like you kinda jumped the gun on those funeral arrangements.” Pipsqueak exchanged glances with Silly Billy.

“You okay, man? You need a cup of joe or anything?” Silly Billy stepped aside as Happy Herbert blustered up to give his regards. The trio of clowns, all scrutinizing him so closely, reminded Webern of the doctors who once stood over his hospital bed, alternately prodding him and holding X-rays of his hump up to the light. The illusion held until the short, pudgy doctor in the middle suddenly squeezed Webern’s hand in his two fists and began to pump it aggressively. Webern blinked and yanked his fingers away from Happy Herbert’s.

“Huh, huh. Bump.” Happy Herbert undid his belt and attempted to tighten it a notch, then gave up and let the Texas-shaped buckle dangle idly near his crotch. “I’ve been wanting to thank you.”

“For what?” Webern glanced suspiciously at the other two clowns. Silly Billy doodled with his toe in the sawdust; Pipsqueak whistled and looked over his shoulder.

“For the laughs, that’s what. For going away and leaving me all your routines. Kids’ve been eating it up. I owe you one.”

Webern nodded slowly.

“We better get going,” Silly Billy told Webern. He grabbed Happy Herbert firmly by the shoulder. “You probably need some rest.”

“What rest?” Herbert protested. “He just got back from vacation.”

Webern watched the clowns walk away; as they passed a trash can, Herbert punched it. The metal lid rolled on its edge for a few feet before finally tipping over. Webern stared down at the ground. An empty Coke bottle lay gleaming in the dust. Then he looked up again sharply. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he’d just seen a little boy, no bigger than a mouse, run across the bench just in front of him.

When Webern got back to the boxcar and found it strewn with brassieres but otherwise deserted, he sat down at his desk and covered his face with his hands. This was bad. Even when he held perfectly still, his thoughts kept whirling around and around, like a carousel of intricately carved nightmares. Bo-Bo’s coffin, flecked with dirt, rolled by, the lid opening slowly. Nepenthe, smiling and blowing kisses to everyone but him, rode on Happy Herbert’s back. Madge, dressed in his mother’s apron and heels, pranced alongside his father, who carried his grandfather’s lion-head cane. Willow and Billow scuttled by on their many legs, dragging a net of cobwebs and bones. And last of all was Wags, snapping the straps of his lederhosen, playing a merry klezmer song on Dr. Show’s concertina.

Webern stood up. His hands were shaking. He crawled under the bed, pushing aside dust bunnies, Napoleon wrappers, and clove ash, until he finally found a half-empty bottle of Campari. It was warm and disgusting and bitter as blood, but he didn’t care. He drank the whole thing, then lay down on the floor. Now the room was spinning, but his mind mercifully stopped.

Webern stared up at the ceiling. Everything felt very hard and sharp and clear. Nepenthe would leave him. He thought about it like it was happening to somebody else. Once, a long time ago, she’d said she didn’t believe in marriage because it was impossible to promise you wouldn’t fall out of love with somebody: “You can promise to stay with them forever, I guess, but that’s not the same thing. That’s basically just promising to be miserable if your feelings change. This country is a cesspool of repression.”

Webern pictured her at a party in an apartment full of beaded curtains and batiked silk tapestries of unicorns, kneeling beside a bong made of swirling coloured glass. “I used to be a circus freak.” No one would even know if the story was true until she started to blubber about how guilty she felt for leaving her hunchbacked midget lover. Then they’d all spring to her defense. “No one could go on living that way,” a guy with a week-old beard and an Oriental tunic would declare. “You have to think about yourself sometimes, baby. Throw off those shackles, you know?” Then he’d talk about how life is cyclical and about three hours later the two of them would be screwing in the bathroom.

It was so obvious, so inevitable, it was almost funny. But one part of him refused to accept it. That part of him lingered on even now in Nepenthe’s old tent, holding his breath, watching her sleep in silvery water for the very first time. That night, so many years ago, Webern had seen her clearly; he had seen her soul, if that was the word for it, written on every inch of her body, from the knee, draped in sodden fabric, that tilted lazily against one wall of the kiddy pool to the grey fingers that skimmed the water’s surface. She had seemed like no one in the world but herself—stubborn and funny and haughty and angry and shy. He had felt that if he was very careful he would have the luxury to know her all his life.

Webern’s hump ached against the hard floor. He pulled himself to his feet. Unsteadily, he picked his way through Nepenthe’s clothing and the Polaroids that still littered the boxcar floor, pausing only to kick the Porky Pig Pez dispenser out of sight under the couch. Then he opened the door and stepped outside. He was going to look for Marzipan.

Webern walked past more stilt-walkers and a few contortionists energetically practicing outside in the noonday sun. Normally, this was the time of day he liked best; between the troupe’s rehearsal and that evening’s show, he developed his ideas into new acts. Most days, he took a sandwich and wandered down the line of boxcars; he usually nodded to the old fortune teller beating her rugs and the Ossified Man cleaning off dishes with a hose. The squalling voices of the sunbathing dancers and catcalling motorbike riders put him in a kind of trance, and he often found himself moving again through the landscape of a recent dream, perceiving details—a bouncy ball, a squeaky sound effect—that he hadn’t recalled upon waking, details that he hastily scribbled in his notebook the moment he got the chance.

Webern jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and held his head low as he walked. Today, he just wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

He sidestepped picnic blankets and wagon cages. He passed the hungry crowd outside the cookhouse, where a vat of spaghetti and a vat of paste for hanging posters boiled side by side, mingling scents and steam. He walked on, past the boxcars still loaded with machinery and tarps, past the rumbling light generator wagons and the empty flatbeds and down toward empty tracks that twinned each other all the way to the horizon. After awhile, he reached a tree on the edge of camp. Marzipan was up in its highest branches, picking summer apples and dropping them into the pockets of her apron. When she saw Webern looking up at her, she bit into one and, chewing thoughtfully, began a long, swinging descent down to where he was standing.

As soon as she reached the ground, she tossed away the core of the apple she was eating, pulled out a new one, and gave it to him. Webern stared at it there in his hand. Its skin was deep, deep red, so dark it was almost purple, flecked with tiny white spots that looked like stars in a violet sky. As he watched, the stars began to orbit, forming shifting constellations, until they became the sky of his childhood, a sky he recognized from one autumn night, when he stood at the bedroom window in his pyjamas, looking anywhere but Earth.