There is an inherent sadness to traveling—it's the sadness of leaving things behind. The very principle of travel is the principle of motion. You put yourself into motion, and therefore all blossoming attachments are bound toward a rapid passing. And yet this motion is filled with life, the newness of experience, which allows us to cross imaginary thresholds into realms untapped and tricks yet unlearned.
"Now, jump! Layla, jump!" Maxim shouts at me. There's always Maxim, nevertheless, with a whip in hand and a tongue of embers. He travels with me everywhere I go—from St. Petersburg to Kiev to Berlin to Paris to London, across the Atlantic, across the Appalachia, every sunrise, every dusk, there's Maxim.
He yells again: "Jump!" The whip cracks. The ground is quicksand, my feet are anvils, and I want to disappear into the speed of light. I have never jumped, cannot propel myself heavenwards. I am incapable, hellstruck.
I only started performing in the circus once we reached Paris. I remember the day fretfully: the trick I was obliged to perform was simple. I was to balance a red ball on my snout and stand on my hind legs. Then, I would spin around so the entire arena could get a clear portrait of me with this enormous scarlet bow tied around my neck in direct parallel with the delicately balanced red ball, incentivizing a cascade of oh la vaches across the French bourgeoisie. At the moment Maxim placed the ball on my snout, terror crashed into me with the force of a Biblical flood. But I persevered, my gluteus muscles contracted, and I lifted my forepaws off the ground, maintaining the ball's position (which was shaped so as to make the appearance of balance more mystifying than it actually was, to fit snugly into the curvilinearity of my visage). Anxious and invigorated, I unfurled myself into the full six-foot elongation of my upright stature. But as soon as I began to turn, the terror collected in my legs, which tensed, vibrated uncontrollably, and then gave in—I fell over onto my side pathetically, like a punctured blimp, and lay on the dirt, closing my eyes so I didn't have to see the disappointment frothing under the many hats of the stunt-hungry Parisians, or (worse) the hard glare Maxim gives me anytime I collapse under pressure. After that day, though, I learned how to temper my terror—not rid myself of it, but redirect it, confine it to certain parts of my body, and use its stiffness to my advantage.
I have yet to unlearn this stiffness, however, which, though utilitarian when it comes to the ballet of balance, is in devastating contradiction to the grace of a dancer. So when Maxim tells me to jump, all I can do is sink deeper. Maxim does not express anything facially; he carries the Russian legacy of astringency, only emoting when it comes to the abstraction of his nation (as, for example, when a prince is killed, or a national team wins a tournament). For this reason, my body counts towards nothing in the arcade of Maxim's sympathies, but it counts towards everything when it comes to his national pride—for I am not merely an extension of the circus, but an extension of Maxim himself, his ability to tame me, his worthiness. And for him, my butterflies are nothing but bullet shells on the promenades of a pillaged city.
I cannot jump, I cannot dance. I sputter out like an incomplete argument. There's noise everywhere: Maxim shouting, the parakeets twittering, Benjamin the cleaning boy making every possible noise one could make with a sweeper. A sudden burning on my hind. Maxim has whipped me again. I retreat further, further into myself.
And then the cleaning boy interrupts. "Maxim, leave her alone. I think she's feeling sick today."
"Mind your business, boy. If you had any wisdom, you'd be holding the flog and not the broom."
"But Maxim, I feed her every morning. She wouldn't eat today. I don't think she's feeling well." The truth is, I refused to eat this morning because there's no variety of fish more disgusting than tilapia, and I am quietly protesting the inclusion of tilapia in my meals until they realize I will never succumb to it.
Maxim slinks towards the boy, until they're standing no more than a couple inches apart, and Maxim's height over Benjamin only reinforces the power innate to their positions. "She," Maxim gestures at me, "listens to me. I've been working with her for years, now, and you've—"
"I've known her for years, too."
"Because you clean her. All you do is wipe the shit out of her cage and shoot your cum all over the padrooms. You don't know the first thing about training, about becoming adept to an animal's every movement and instinct. Someone who can see stars isn't an astronomer, and a cage cleaner isn't a goddamn tamer!"
Benjamin concedes, for Maxim has clearly laid down his maxim, but the whole affair has succeeded in exhausting the tamer enough that he puts my training session on hiatus, goes out to the back yard—what they call the area behind the wagons with the cages and padrooms—and swigs moonshine alone, as his eyes meander across the collarbones of the bally girls darting in and out of their wagons. But I know there is an end to this hiatus, and I will once again feel my whole body tense from the pressure of the commander, my dancerless body, my round and maladroit body. The fliers have already been sent out, printed with the bold, red letters: "LAYLA THE DANCING BEAR." Oh, body, body I mourn, that I tame everyday, for it's true, the real tamer is I. I exact the regimens, contract the hamstrings, conceal my terror, make myself a paragon of aptitude, the refined wild. Perhaps there is no distinction to be levied between tamer and tamed, since, in the end, we all have to moderate ourselves in order to survive. We willfully step into our own cages, smother ourselves into submission. With Maxim gone, Benjamin strokes my head, pours some water over where I've been whipped to rinse any residual blood away, and I see it in his eyes, too: a reluctant submission, a tamed beast. In the distance, I survey the mountains, mountains as wide and glorious as desire, and as the sky darkens, stars become visible over the mountaintops. I notice how I've familiarized myself with certain stars that remain in place regardless of where we travel, and I begin to wonder if maybe I am an astronomer, too, after all.
Affixed to the side of my cage, with a couple of small punctures and wire strung through to secure it to the cage frame, is a painting of a large bear and her cub. Benjamin painted this for me as a memento of sorts. The large bear is my mother, and the cub, naturally, is me. When he's not cleaning or stifling tears in the outhouse, Benjamin is always drawing or painting, painting scenes from the circus, portraits of angels, nude men with beautiful chests.
I don't remember much from the day they captured me, nor do I remember much of my mother, other than what Benjamin has revived here in his artistic portrayal of her. When I look at the painting, it invokes sensations in me I cannot match with a clear causality. I am imparted a story without a plot; I'm a bundle of effects that have lost their origin. What I remember comes to me in indistinct constellations. The forest, nighttime, stars. Shadows darting along the horizon, and my mother, who in spite of everything, couldn't keep me safe. I carry this with me from tundra to tropics: the one I trusted most, my only tether in this world of tetherless encounters, did all she could and yet couldn't keep me safe. What does this make me? A cross to bear, a failed narrative?
Nighttime, stars. Branches snapping, bloodshed, a memory of a pain far exceeding the realm of the physical. Attempting to hide in the woods, not knowing where. Even after they'd killed her, I remember I was less worried about being captured and more so that I had let my mother down, by failing to uphold the security she had so devotedly defended. And yet, I remember all of this with the precision of one shooting an arrow while blindfolded. But maybe that is what love entails. Love is imprecise. Lacking any explanation, yet persisting, it becomes something transcendental. It's the feeling that, despite the incoherence of the past, despite the failures of memory, your center of gravity becomes completely thrown off at the mere thought of the other, as in the moment the trapeze bar slips from your fingers, and you believe, briefly, you might fly.
When they brought me, tied up and muzzled, to the circus grounds, the Lavender Lady—Maxim's ex-wife—had just given birth. She's an equestrian, but she's referred to as the Lavender Lady because of a trick she performs (for the adult-only shows) in which, over the course of her equestrian act, she strips off her clothing, one by one, until all that's left to cover her body is a meager bodice made of lavender flowers. The child she birthed at my arrival was substantially deformed. While the men of the circus discussed how they would assimilate me into the show, I was left alone with the Lavender Lady and her baby in her wagon, with only the light of a single candle illuminating our bodies in excerpts. The baby had stunted, flipper-like arms, a malformed cranium with an elevated ridge along the middle like a walnut shell, and it didn't cry at all. I watched as the Lavender Lady pressed her hand against the baby's mouth and nose, firmly, and held it there until the baby stopped moving. When Maxim imploded into the wagon ten minutes later full of jubilation, the Lavender Lady told him the baby didn't survive, and a wind blew across the spark of his temperament. Without any sort of verbal response, Maxim took the cold baby outside, passed it onto Benjamin, and told him, simply, "Bury it in the woods." In this way, with I having just been brought from the woods and the baby returned there for its eternal rest, I have been made into an emblem of life and death for the forlorn members of the circus.
They're sitting around the make-shift banquet table in the back yard for our weekly family dinner—one of the few times we, humans and non-humans alike, all come together, though it's a much less celebratory occasion than it may sound. I sit left of the table with a bowl full of salmon and rice. At our family dinner, they speak of everything and nothing, moonshine and loneliness. Conversation among the circus performers is as fleeting as the swing of a trapezist, so that just when you think they're about to enter into a discussion of the significance of tattoos, someone mentions news of a murdered local boy, and suddenly the conversation has oscillated towards urban myths, the justification of violence. All the while, my salmon disappears down my throat like a sweet kiss from an angel—I say thanks on this day for the absence of tilapia.
It's in the midst of the table's rapid cadence, lacking a real transition, that the Lavender Lady says, "It's going to storm Friday. I think we should postpone the show."
Dead silence now except for the careless fluttering of a bird overhead.
Then, the Ringmaster: "The opening show will proceed as scheduled." Maxim, sitting beside the Ringmaster and across from the Lavender Lady, lifts his glass of moonshine up to cheers.
"But, sir, that's extremely reckless," the Lavender Lady insists. "Not only do you risk the animals getting upset, the rain blowing in during performances, high winds wrecking the aerialists' equipment—there's also the fact that nobody wants to go outside, let alone go to the circus, when there's a fucking monsoon!"
"My good lady, the date has already been set. The people will come. They've arranged their plans, invited their families. There's no going back, now. Our equipment is sturdy. Our animals are tame. Besides, people are eager to see our new act, the dancing bear!"
"If she dances."
Maxim, grimacing, interrupts: "Of course she will dance."
"She'll dance as well as Maxim smiles," says Théo with a devious smirk—known on circus posters as Théo the Tornado for his signature aerial act, which involves coiling himself in a corde lisse up to the rafters, then rapidly twirling all the way down as he uncoils himself, so that he appears, given the definition of his physique, like the most beautiful yo-yo you've ever seen. Diagonal from Théo at the table, pulling his eyes from Théo's jaw, Benjamin attempts to shield laughter, his face bent over his dinner bowl.
Maxim retaliates: "She'll dance better than Lavender can give birth, that's for sure."
All turn their faces downwards, avoiding the Lavender Lady's glare at all costs. One of the clowns, standing, reaches across the table to spoon more succotash onto his plate. And there is an imposition all around, something full-bodied and hopeless, that can't be ignored. It's the collective remembrance of death, of tragedy. Momentarily, they had all forgotten the various sadnesses of life in the circus, without realizing they were engaging in an active process of forgetting. When it comes back to them here—lives lost, separation from families, lovers who stayed in another city and became infatuated with someone else—they are reminded this casual glee is ephemeral, a veil, a disappearing heaven. The Lavender Lady and I contain these sadnesses in our semblances—when strummed, we resonate the sound of mourning. I want to lay my body on top of hers, so she may feel the weight of something heavier than herself. I want to make her a language only we could know.
"You know, Maxim," says the Lavender Lady, "unlike you, I feel pride in being without you. There is possibility all around me. You constructed an entire vision of the universe on a single idea: your ability to take a woman's hand in marriage. Yet, you make no effort to love. Love, in your eyes, is nothing but another wilderness to be tamed, mastered, and performed in front of an audience of those whom you consider more successful than yourself. As a result, it has no foundation. It crumbles from the interior. Your one vision, a disaster. A daughterless disaster. You left me alone on the night of the baby's birth—not that it would have mattered, anyways, since I killed the poor thing."
As the banquet cascades into a vitriolic crossfire, I am watching Benjamin who is watching Théo, whose gestures are as frantic as a meteor shower. The Lavender Lady is saying something about how the circus exploits what is most vulnerable, how she couldn't bear to see her deformed baby turned into a cheap sideshow or a shock factor, but her words are merely breakers acting upon the surface of the communicated. There are subcutaneous dialogues, underwater collisions, by way of movement, of tone, of a tapping foot, of a lingering glare. Which is to say: what Benjamin lacks in speech is made up for in the way his pants, under the table, swell between his legs, in post-linguistic harmony with the angle at which Théo falls in his gaze. Somewhere deep in the ocean, in an abyss, their bodies have become tangled together like ribbons of kelp.
After our dinner comes to an end—abruptly, without resolution—the circus performers flock to their respective wagons to alleviate their repressed sentences, and Benjamin, who sleeps among the animal cages, masturbates to climax while holding Théo's aerial strap around his throat. Across the circus grounds, a faint, uncontainable moan echoes like a lament from a soul in limbo.
Sometimes I imagine what our conversation would sound like if Maxim and I could speak the same language. It would begin loudly, and end in near-whispers—an argument in reverse.
"Give me some space" is the first thing I would say. "I can't dance with your beady fucking eyes suffocating me in their scrutiny."
"You need to know I am in control," Maxim would say. "I am always affixed to you. I am bestowed power over you. God said, Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
"I can't dance. I can't dance."
"You should know, by now, that it's not about dancing at all. These motions we call dance, they're merely curbed instincts transformed into a strategic order. The illusion of dance."
"Why do I need to dance like this? I can already twirl. I can already balance a ball on my snout. Isn't that impressive enough?"
"This isn't a matter of impressiveness. It's about mastery."
"Could you forgive me if I'm unable?"
"Forgiveness is for sinners, and inadequacy isn't a sin. There is no forgiveness for falling short."
"And will you be forgiven when you come upon the kingdom of Heaven?"
"I have nothing left to confess."
"Do you remember how you taught me to stand on my hind legs? Do you remember, Maxim? I was just a cub, still. I was motherless and terrified. You and the Ringmaster held my body down with my limbs outstretched. You tied my limbs to the poles of a crucifix, and then you propped the crucifix up in the back yard and left me there for two days with no food. As I was suspended, I watched the sun descend over the mountains and thought of my mother and had this broken, molten feeling I didn't understand, and I cried and cried, partly because of the feeling itself, partly because I couldn't understand it. I didn't know who you were, or why you were doing this to me, or whether I'd be loved again. On the day you took me down from the crucifix, you punctured a hole through my nose and attached a ring to it, which was in turn attached to a chain you held. Every time the chain pulled taut, it shot a current of pain through my body, leaving me no choice but to obey whatever motion your arm directed me in. You would do this as music played, and eventually, I came to intrinsically associate the music with pain, so that even when there was no chain connected to my nose, the memory of that pain is too powerful to defy. When you lifted your arm up, my body followed, like a tide pulled towards the moon, connected through cosmic forces. To this day, the movements of my body are mapped by a principle of suffering. A choreography of hurt."
Instead, Maxim whips me and whips me, and I endure it wordlessly. I can hardly even cry out as I retreat further and further from my own body: a practical mechanism for withstanding pain but an impediment when it comes to dancing. The truth is, much is communicated between Maxim and myself without needing a spoken language. We communicate through the syllables of our anatomies. I can read Maxim's disdain, his anger, even his deep sadness, which he colors as earnestness, and he can read me, too—but the absence of language serves as an excuse for him to avoid what he is most afraid of confronting. So all of those fears are channeled into the whip, which is fearless, does not express, and the whip licks my hide, while from across the tent, I watch Théo, who is rehearsing his new aerial act, and his agile, delicate body enters a plane of motive fluidity, as if he has harnessed the motion of space itself and become one with it. Our two bodies, wrecked by form, fall into a conjunctive rhythm. I imbue myself with Théo's kinetic energy, so that his movements power my movements, his desire powers mine. His body, twisting in the air, has the elegance of a treble clef, and, in harmony, I become a bass clef. I have taken off on my own arpeggio, and I am moving in ways I didn't know I could move, but then I feel my collar yank, crushing my throat. Maxim is billowing with wrath. I uncouple from Théo and fall to the side, anticipating another sting from the whip.
Before Maxim can discipline me, the Ringmaster rushes into the tent with panic, calling out at Maxim. He explains that one of the bally girls has been semi-secretly selling sex to men from broken families (not the first of the bally girls to be caught doing so along our tour). She brought her client into the stables and caused, by their copulation, the Lavender Lady's horse to become agitated and erratic. Maxim ties my leash to a support beam and hurries off to assist with the horse. Some of the performers have begun to gather near me with a presentiment of shared uncertainty, seeking out more information from one another regarding the incident.
"Don't be too surprised," says one of the clowns in between puffs of his cigarette. "Almost all of those girls have prostituted themselves at one point or another."
"I heard they don't have a choice," says the tightrope walker. "The Ringmaster is basically their pimp."
"She's only sixteen," says another.
At the gathering's fringes, Benjamin sweeps halfheartedly, listening in on the exchanges of hearsay. Théo, having dismantled from his corde lisse, prowls towards us, the curves of his body held together by a crimson leotard trimmed with golden bordering. The way in which the leotard cuts off at Théo's upper thigh, pressing slightly into his hamstring and then curving inwards, such that it creates a deeper shadow around the mound bulging between his legs, is enough to cause the broom to fall from Benjamin's hands and clatter to the ground.
"Benjamin." Théo places a hand on Benjamin's shoulder as he utters his name.
"Hello, Théo." Benjamin pulls his shoulders back instinctively to fix his posture, in the vein of a bird preparing to receive a mate.
"I saw you watching me."
"Oh, no, I was only—"
"Only what?"
"Curious."
"Do you want me to show you?"
"Show me your routine?"
"No, show you how to fly."
Benjamin laughs.
"No, I'm serious, Benjamin. I'll show you how to use the corde lisse. Just a simple trick."
"Is it painful?"
"Of course. If you didn't suffer, you wouldn't impress anyone."
"Is suffering a means towards salvation?"
"I'm not religious. You'll have to find out for yourself."
In pursuit of salvation, or perhaps just to feel a little closer to the stars, Théo leads Benjamin over to the aerialist rig. Shortly thereafter, a bally girl walks into the tent—her eyes, red and matted with tear streaks, give her away as the catalyst of the hearsay and horse's dismay. The clustered circus performers dissipate into silence and return to their respective posts as the girl, moving slowly, somewhat shakily, approaches me, collapses next to me, then rests her head on my shoulder. Together we sit there until the amber haze of sunset saturates the circus tent, giving it the appearance of a derelict heaven. If we could speak the same language, I would tell her she will be forgiven.
Opening day. It's raining, and last night I dreamed I was a raincloud. I was heavy and hanging above the circus grounds. I saw bodies, featureless and insignificant, glide across the terrain, both random and intentional, chaotic and meticulous at once, like a ballet. I saw Théo swinging from his aerial ropes, the Lavender Lady soldered to her galloping horse, bally girls drifting in and out of loneliness. And as I watched these molecular encounters, I wondered, where is happiness, where is sadness, where are the feelings that permeate so deeply when we're on the ground? It dawned on me they emerge not from any specific moments, but from an accumulation of moments, from the atlas of our bodies coming together at different intervals to produce unimaginable sensations in the ballroom of time.
And after all, that is what the Ringmaster told us is the circus's aim: to bring the unimaginable into being. For who, unversed in circus whims, could imagine a dancing bear? "You must see it to believe it!" is lacquered across every poster advertisement for Layla the Dancing Bear, a hook into the psyches of the public, who hunger—who hunt—for something to break the surface of their otherwise repetitious realities.
Typically, a clown greets the circus goers outside of the tent's entrance, followed by an entourage of gorgeous girls, whose responsibility it is to set a precedent of both risqué suggestiveness and spectacular artistry. Today, the bally girls are not can-canning, and the clown's pathetic umbrella is hardly enough to keep the rain from smearing his makeup, and I am terrified that when I enter the ring, I will flounder, because I know I can't dance. The rain, battering against the canvas of the tent, sounds like daughters running away.
And the wind panics and the sun surrenders and the Ringmaster is adept at masking his agitation, but I see how he moves stiffly now, how he avoids eye contact as the performers approach him, questioning, What do we do? What do we do? We'll wait a bit longer, the Ringmaster tells them—the stormy weather is no doubt causing people to run a bit late. Plus, it's opening night. Opening night never begins on time, for that would detract from the circus's suspense and unpredictability (so says the Ringmaster). They keep me chained up in the back as we await the Ringmaster's opening signal, and I cannot see spectators gathering in, but from the whispers exchanged among the performers backstage, I glean there are not more than two or three rows of attendees present, even though we're set to begin in minutes.
After optimism has dissipated, and as the attendees have begun to express impatience, we hear the Ringmaster's megaphone, fighting to echo over the noise of the wind and rain, announce the show's commencement: "Spectacle!" A temperate stream of claps and cheers, much milder than what would normally be expected of opening night. The clowns and bally girls hobble out to the ring, morosely. Théo, backstage, stretches, as the Lavender Lady adjusts the stirrups on her horse, who has calmed since the bally girl incident. Benjamin peers out at the ring from a slit between the curtains separating us from the ring, like a child sneaking a look into their parents' bedroom.
The clowns return, and Théo goes on. I am used to this rhythm, and yet it never fails to produce in me a feeling of claws scratching from within. The knowledge of all I am incapable of envelops me. Fear of the body, fear of the flog.
Now Maxim is undoing my chains. Now he is leading me out to the ring. A jury of eyes without faces are borne upon me—in the delirious, storm-softened lighting of the circus tent, that is the only feature of the audience visible to me: whites of eyes, pinpricks of anticipation. As the eyes fixate on my body, the music begins to play, though it is hardly discernible over the increasingly tumultuous winds, which sound like whips beating all around me. I tense my hind legs and allow the weight of gravity to flow backwards along my spine, so that steadily I am able to lift my forepaws off the ground. I am lifting upwards, my face turned towards the heavens, when I hear a crack. It is followed by another crack, metal screeching, shouts of alarm, and all around me, the tent begins to cave in. The support beams capitulate, and a rafter swings down, slamming into a woman sitting in the audience as her child, watching, wails. Cracks—gunshots—the sounds begin to fade into and out of the present reality. And suddenly I remember my birth.
Like breaking through the roof, like rafters falling: explosion into the world, and a howl. I aubergine, I bioluminesce into sentience. She nuzzles me with her snout. The amniotic fluid dries, and shapes of trees begin to materialize. She guides me in between their trunks, so I don't get lost in this sudden immensity, so I don't tumble down the endless void, which hovers, which entices all around, the plasma of the unknown. Towards the noise of a strange whir, in a clearing among the trees, a river. She leaves me seated between rocks along the riverbed as she plods in, pawing through the coiling sinews of rushing water. Then, a lustrous splash as she pulls her head out from underwater with a salmon gleaming between her jaws, head thrown upwards in supernal ecstasy. I experience my first taste of salmon, and color pours into the world. All is imbued with flavors and radiance and an intricacy that might be called beauty. This rapture incites an accompanying dullness, though—it brings into perception all of the moments in between and around it, moments which, by contrast, appear bland, even wretched, as with tilapia, for example. The inferiority and tastelessness of tilapia only exists in its relation to salmon, an awareness of its lack of being salmon. Yet, it's during those lulls that love takes shape. Their continuation is carried forth by the presence of the other, who ensures I do not fall into darkness. We keep each other illuminated with our bodies. The way she pulls berries from a branch and passes the branch from snout to snout. Slipping on rocks along the river, then crying into her shoulder. Sleeping in a bed of moss. We are sleeping together like this when there is a shattering, a new sensation upon the sound of voices, footsteps approaching. She awakens as the footsteps begin to run towards us. There are many of them. They encircle us. She bares her teeth, growls, fends off the void that has come alive, which wants to devour me. My body is vibrating, and I'm unable to move. There's a gunshot, and then she pounces. Blood flung across the moss. I cry and cry, for the void has punctured through: gunshots, undoing, a yelp, and her body acquiesces to the ground. I run, try to hide. The choir is unrhythmed, the wounds of birth unstitched. I'm found, and they cinch me in ropes and drag me through the woods. I am graceless; I am fallen; I cannot dance. I cannot dance.
When I open my eyes, I see below me a mangled body, shiny with blood, faceless, wrecked. I deduce from the suit, now varnished in bright red, that the body is Maxim's. His face has been torn from its skull, with only one twitching eye and the scraps of a lower lip left, and there's blood dripping from my snout, which mixes with the rain into a stream flowing across the ring to a puddle along the barrier, and as it becomes clear what has happened, I look all around me, searching for my mother.
The rain has softened to a timid prayer.
The moisture of love and raindrops condensate together, as not far from my cage, protected by shadows, Théo and Benjamin are approaching each other to a point of critical proximity. They whisper something and then wade into wordlessness, a state of reverence. A hand down the pants, a tongue in the ear, a tulip blooming larger and larger.
I fixate on their bodies so as not to succumb to the void. There is too much darkness, too much pain. And yet, I find myself mysteriously calm amid the debris of the night's wreckage. The distraught circus goers have all retreated to their homes. The tent remains collapsed on the ground. Maxim's body was retrieved by an undertaker—they wrapped his razed face in a bally girl's pink sash, and everyone was silent as they helped clean up the blood and detritus. In the wake of the night's devastation, a strange atmosphere of matterlessness, of languor, has fallen over the circus. Almost by necessity, after most of the circus crew had ebbed into sleep, Théo meandered into the back yard, without any glitter, without any pretenses, just rain streaming down his shoulders, where he knew he would find Benjamin awake, alone, desirous.
We love responsively, reactively. It becomes most pronounced following death, when we most need the presence of the other to know our own state of being alive. I feel something akin to love towards Benjamin, whom I watch now in his tenderness through the bars of my cage. There is the sound of someone else approaching, and Benjamin and Théo disentangle and scurry away from the animal cages like raindrops running down a windowpane. Barely elucidated in the night's reticent glow, I make out a woman's body, an unlaced bodice.
Even moonlight shies away. It is the Lavender Lady. Her expression is illegible, and I tense, fearful she is coming to exact discipline upon me for the slaughter of her former husband. She stands in front of my cage and places our gazes into adjacency. Then, she speaks.
"Since he's gone now, I can finally say it: the baby wasn't Maxim's. Oh, Layla, I thought it would plague me for the rest of my life, but now, saying it aloud, I'm not burdened at all. I feel light. I feel cool. It wasn't his. On the night you came to us, I was certain I'd have to live the rest of my life in a disguise, forever trapped by my shame. But there's a moment where we come together in just the right way, where our memories materialize into something that makes sense, suddenly, and we are lifted out of the injuries of the past. I should have done this ages ago."
Scraping metal and the latch comes undone. The cage door opens. A revelatory injunction comes over me, a recognition of the dissonance between the cage and the rest of the world suddenly unfurled ahead. For so long, the unlatching of my cage preempted the latching of my collar and the lash of the whip, and having been so accustomed to the transition from fetter to fetter, I never imagined the possibility of an opening proceeding to another opening—the possibility of boundlessness. When I step out of the cage, I'm worried, for a moment, that the ground will vanish and I'll fall into an abyss, but my paw lands on soft, moist dirt, as the Lavender Lady, before disappearing back into her wagon in a flare of silence, rubs her hand on my head and along my snout, procuring a lick of gratitude, and impels me to run off. I don't run off. I can hardly walk, my legs still shaking with uncertainty, my body still sore from the ropes they used to drag me back into my cage. I limply amble—away from my cage, then from the back yard, then from the circus grounds altogether, all the while unsure of where to go or how one moment will give way to the next, unsure of when the sun will illuminate all I've surpassed, or whether it ever will.
The rain begins to dissipate, and the sun does, eventually, come up. In the bashful dawn, I finally look behind me and see the circus grounds in the distance, the collapsed tent, and with this dawning comes a strange new feeling. I realize I am alone now, that there are abundant attachments I will have to forsake in order to continue onward. There is a sadness to freedom, the sadness of leaving things behind. Nevertheless, I keep prodding, each paw's impression upon the ground bringing this sense of smooth, silver-coated continuity into presence, and turn my head forward again, orienting my body towards the mountains I so often admired, distantly, between trainings with Maxim, or at night, when their crests were kissed faintly by starlight.
On a hill furnished in brambles, I seek out my first meal of the day. I find myself at the crossroads of exhilaration and terror, terrified for the future, as I have never lived in the wilderness, except with the brief mentorship of my mother, and I don't know much about foraging, let alone how to distinguish between salmon and tilapia when fishing. With the circus I've traveled across multiple continents, innumerable cities, memories of which come to me sporadically, colorfully, with a tinge of regret, but never have I had the ability to exercise this daunting act of wandering. So I attempt to yield to instinct, something which for my whole adult life I'd been impelled to curb for the sake of artistry, for the sake of taming. My instinct—an indistinct yet palpable stream, like an echo from within—pulls me to a thicket speckled with berries. I reach towards a cluster of berries on a branch slightly beyond my grasp. I reach but cannot get to it—I reach and reach again, extending my torso with a litheness yet untapped, a lightness in my body, somewhat like being lifted by grace, somewhat like dancing.
