The Bullet Trick (9 page)

'There’s no time for you to go to your lodgings now. He’ll put your luggage in the dressing room.'

I got to my feet.

'I’ll do it myself.'

Kolja walked past without glancing towards us, leaving me standing awkwardly by the table. I sat back down and lit a cigarette. Ray shrugged. He sounded tired.

'He’s proud of his muscles, let him use them. Come on, let’s finish our business, then perhaps you’ll do some preparations.'

'Perhaps.'

Ray smiled and led me through to his office.

'So this is my sanctuary. Anytime you need to find me, you start looking here.'

Ray’s sanctuary was cramped. A workbench ran the length of the far wall, hidden beneath stacks of paper and some surprisingly new computer equipment. A small window above the bench looked into the ticket-booth where the girl who had been clearing the tables was now busying herself behind the desk. Beyond her I could see the empty foyer and an open door leading out into the courtyard. The wall behind me was covered in a mosaic of photographs, some expensively framed, others carelessly sellotaped to the wall. I looked at a smartly mounted photograph of a man in full evening rig placing his head inside a polar bear’s mouth. The man had removed his top hat for the act, and now flourished it in his right hand. His own grin was just visible through the jagged teeth of the bear.

Ray saw me looking and said, 'My grandfather.'

'It’s an amazing picture.'

'More amazing than you can know. Outside the ring my grandfather was as soft as butter. People said he let his children run wild, but when it came to animals he was in charge. He ruled lions, tigers, polar bears even, for thirty years, with no injury to himself or to them.'

'A brave man.'

'Yes, he knew the risks.' Ray turned his attention to his desk, sifting through a pile of papers looking for something. 'The moment after that photograph was taken the bear attacked him, perhaps the flash provoked it. My grandmother was his assistant. She was standing by the cage, as she did every night, with a loaded pistol. She shot the bear, but it takes more than a single bullet to kill a creature like that.' He glanced back at the photograph. 'It’s something we should all remember. Even if you’re not placing your head in a bear’s mouth, show business is a risky occupation.' He smiled. 'It’s a sad photograph. Let me show you one that will make you smile, then you can meet our stage manager and go through your requirements.' We rose and Ray walked me into the theatre’s small foyer. 'Look.'

Pinned behind glass was a large poster featuring a publicity shot Rich had insisted on three years ago. It was a while since I’d looked closely at it and blown up poster size it was clear that the intervening years had been crueller than I remembered. The suit I was wearing no longer fitted, and either the photographer had employed an airbrush, or I’d grown a deal redder and a trifle more craggy since we’d met. The man in the picture looked younger, leaner, sharper than I ever recalled being. It was even possible that he had a little more hair than me. I stroked my hand across my head wondering if I was about to add baldness to my list of worries. Ray’s expression was hidden behind the grey moustache, but his voice sounded anxious.

'What do you think?'

I looked at the red lettering scattering superlatives across the poster. My German might be non-existent but I could guess the meaning of Fantastisch! I turned to the posters hanging beside my boastful image and it suddenly became clear why Ray had decided I was unsuitable to join the ensemble. Schall und Rauch’s cast shone from the picture fresh and smiling, the outlines of their bodies impressive beneath the tight fabric of their costumes. The recognition that Ray was right stung, but another more pressing worry had suddenly presented itself. Painted in shiny blue letters below the image was the legend,

Cabaret Erotisch!

The stage manager turned out to be the girl I had first seen wiping the tables. She slid wearily from the ticket booth, brushing back tendrils of not very clean hair that had escaped from the loose roll twisted at the back of her head. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in weeks, but the look suited her. Suddenly, despite the rundown theatre and the reminder that I lacked the basic equipment to qualify for an erotic entertainment, Berlin didn’t seem such a bleak prospect. Ray introduced her as Ulla; I held out my hand and she shook it gently. Her palms were cold and dry and slightly calloused. I tried to keep the wolf out of my face and asked, 'Do you do everything round here?'

Ulla frowned.

'I do my job.'

Her English was slightly more accented than Ray’s. I liked it better. She was easier on the eye too, even when she was frowning. I slipped the duster that still dangled from her jeans pocket into my own.

Ulla led me through a door marked Privat and towards the changing rooms. Her silence should have been a relief after the journey, but I wanted her to talk to me. I reached into my pocket and drew out the old duster now tied in the centre of a ream of rainbow-coloured silks, presenting them to her with a flourish and a half bow.

'There was no time to buy flowers.'

Ulla accepted the string of scarves without smiling.

'The clowns present me with flowers all the time.'

'And now you think every bouquet is going to squirt water in your eye?' She ignored me, gently detaching her cloth as she led the way through the backstage labyrinth. 'I hope I’m not disrupting you too much.'

Ulla handed back my crumpled silks without looking at me. I followed her gaze and saw the object of her attention. The buff athlete detailed to deliver my case was striding our way, a large cardboard box tucked casually under his arm. He stopped when he reached us and Ulla raised her face to his in a swift but tender kiss. I stood awkwardly while he whispered something into her hair that made her laugh then shake her head, glancing quickly towards me. Kolja turned the corners of his mouth down, gave her waist a quick squeeze with his free hand, and then continued along the corridor. Ulla’s eyes followed him briefly and then turned back to me.

'Kolja has moved in with the twins, so you can have his dressing-room.'

There seemed no point in protesting that I was used to sharing. After all, I seemed destined to disrupt Kolja. The room Ulla had assigned me was like a slim prison cell bereft of even a barred window. I sat in the only chair and looked at the photos of Kolja stuck to the mirror.

He was a good-looking lad. Here he was on stage balancing an upside-down fellow athlete on one hand. Here he was again, stripped to his bathing shorts posing with both hands resting on his waist, his pumped-up arms a perfect complement to his inflated trunk. Did Kolja need these mementoes as reassurance of his athletic prowess? Or did he just like looking at himself? I wondered why he hadn’t taken the photographs to the twins’ cell with him. There were a lot of them, but not too many for Kolja’s muscular arms. Perhaps he’d been in too much of a rush or maybe he didn’t think I’d be around long enough to warrant the move. Whatever the reason I hoped I hadn’t upset Kolja. He looked like he could destroy me with a flick of his wrist.

Outside I could hear exchanges of greetings as staff and performers started to arrive for that evening’s show. I imagined I could smell the winter damp settled on their coats. I pushed the noise away, tried to ignore the resentful stares of all the different Koljas and concentrated on preparing my act.

Ray’s moustache trembled a little when he saw me leaving the theatre half an hour before show time, but he knew better than to interrupt a performer before their act. Folk have strange rituals and who was to say mine wasn’t walking out before I walked on?

There was a stall in the courtyard selling soup that was all noodles and dumplings. I bought myself a bowl, added a beer to go with it and sat on a wooden bench in sight of the theatre entrance, watching the audience arrive.

Unless you’re a children’s entertainer, your audience doesn’t believe that what you’re doing is truly magic. They want showmanship. Anyone can feel the satisfaction of teaching their hands to twist the rope until it unravels the way they intend. It isn’t so hard to jump the right card from the deck, or snap a shiny silver coin into your fingertips. The skill lies in making these moves into a performance.

I was always in the smart-suited-cheeky-chappy conjuring brigade, bounding on stage and spinning a line as I spun through my act. I’d long ago consigned mime to a box marked ‘puppets and face painting’. I lacked the nimbleness for a dumb show. And all those exaggerations of the face and form, the Marcel Marceau smiles and grimaces, made me cringe. Sitting outside the theatre in Berlin I began to think how important words were to my act and began to hope that it was true all foreigners understood English these days.

The arriving audience looked young, bundled against the cold in dark coats livened by bright hats and scarves. I watched them drift in and wished I was one of their number, out for the evening with a pretty girl, looking forward to a show. I got up and returned my empty dish and half-drunk beer to the stall. It was time to get focused.

Inside I bought another beer, deposited myself on a seat near the back and watched an old woman in a black dress going between the tables trying to sell the contents of her tray of clockwork toys. She wasn’t having much luck. I signalled her over and blew twelve euros on a small tin duck. I turned his key and let him clack between the ashtray and my beer.

Then the lights dimmed, the audience grew quiet and high on a platform, way above the stage, a woman with the black hair and red lips of Morticia Adams grinned and stroked the ivories of her baby grand into something soothing that spoke of the sea. She reached out her right hand, never letting the music fail, and caressed a huge hollow drum as it descended past her to hang mysteriously over the stage.

The ensemble from the poster ran from the wings, the females in thigh-skimming dresses, the men in close-fitting shorts. Kolja jogged on last, his face shuttered and his muscles specially inflated for the occasion. The troupe waved to the audience, acknowledging their applause then stood still, like a starship crew ready to be teleported, as the glowing drum descended all the way down to the stage, trapping them within its bounds, silhouetting their forms against its pale walls. One by one each dark outline peeled off its clothes to reveal the black shape of their naked body, then they started to rotate slowly, forming a living magic lantern. Each disrobing received a polite round of applause that was rewarded with a pose as the artistes took turns to fold themselves into new shapes, slipping from athletic to romantic, from Charles Atlas to Rodin’s Kiss. There were no unfortunate bulges, no regrettable slips of decorum, and I guessed that the nudity was an illusion, each person contained in some tight-fitting body stocking. Kolja was the easiest to spot. His was the widest chest; the thickest thighs. It was he who held two seemingly naked girls on his shoulders, balancing their weight like a set of human scales. He too who got the loudest applause as he flexed his physique through a catalogue of muscleman positions. Overall it was a good effect, an innocent erotic, about as naughty as an Edwardian postcard.

The first of the performers to appear solo was a lithe lycra-clad girl with a blonde ponytail, who seemed to be in love with her hula-hoop. The audience sat still in anticipation as she twirled the hoop around her body, letting it rotate her waist, chest, neck then suddenly drop to her ankles in an act of obsequiousness that seemed sure to kill its gyrations, but was merely a prelude to a snaking dance up her body and onto her right arm. Her hand snatched a second hoop, rival to the first, which proceeded to do its own dance around her curves. It seemed this girl couldn’t get enough of the hoops. She lifted them one by one from a pile as high as herself until she had screwed her little body into a spiral of weaving plastic. The small audience went wild and my tiny tin duck clacked like there was no tomorrow.

I was hoping for Kolja, but the hula girl was followed by a trio of juggling clowns. They cavorted onto the stage dressed in bright baggy shorts and outsized shirts. The tin duck drew me a sad stare, I took a sip of my drink and nodded back at him. The crowd were clapping them on but the jolly jesters looked too wholesome to amuse me. I’ve always preferred Kinky the Kid-loving Clown, a hard-drinking funster who has his full makeup tattooed on.