The Ringmaster's Circus

The lights dim, and the crowd quiets. The orchestra, forming a large circle around the three-ring circus, can be heard tuning their instruments. Their dramatic music suddenly thrusts itself through the air, and the crowd roars as a spotlight focuses on the Ringmaster. He begins to sing a beautiful, heartfelt song, full of sorrow, longing, hope, redemption, and love. The audience is moved to tears, when a second spotlight focuses on another ring in the circus tent. She is a beautiful woman, swan-like; she looks like her feet don't even touch the ground when she walks. She floats along, dressed in a beautiful pale purple dress. She begins to do incredible gymnastic feats, first twisting her limbs around her torso in unimaginable, indescribable positions that look absolutely effortless for her. Then, she points to the sky, and leaps one hundred feet into the air, catching a trapeze. The woman dazzles the crowd with superhuman acrobatic moves, jumping and spinning and twirling, but never falling, always catching the trapeze just in time, always one second before it's too late. The crowd is breathless, on the edge of their seats. They are mesmerized by her skill, her fascinating aerial stunts that risk her life. She has no safety net. Meanwhile, the Ringmaster finishes his song, and the lights all suddenly shut off, just as the beautiful swan-like woman is in mid-air. The crowd murmurs. Did she make that last catch? Is she OK? Children and adults all strain their ears to hear the tell-tale thud of a body hitting the soft dirt. But there is only silence.

The orchestra strikes up a new song in the silence, a happy one. The cheerful beat seems profane in the face of the crowd's dread. They don't know how to react. Lights come back. The Ringmaster and the swan-like woman are nowhere to be found. Clowns enter the arena and act playfully in the middle of the ring, toppling over each other and playing tricks on each other. The orchestra's music is full of mischief. Then, a little girl walks out among the clowns, and they all stop dead. What is she doing? She is crying. She says she is looking for her mother. The clowns all look at each other with puzzled looks. What do they do? They try to cheer her up, to get her to stop crying. They act clownish, tripping over themselves, falling down, slapping each other, but to no avail. Finally, one clown approaches her, picks her up in his arms, and holds her close to his chest, patting her on the back and rocking her from side to side. She calms down and stops crying. The crowd cheers, and the clowns exit, cartwheeling away, except for the compassionate clown, who walks the little girl slowly away in the other direction, holding her hand. She smiles at the audience. Horses thunder out into the ring, galloping at full speed around and around the edge of the arena. Their riders are standing on the horses' backs, knees straight, backs straight, arms out to their sides. They have perfect balance as the horses stampede around and around. From the top of the tent, a very large Asian elephant slowly descends, seemingly unattached by any strings. A sitar player sits atop the elephant's back, playing a mystical, exotic song. The elephant's feet finally touch the ground, in the middle of the circle of racing horses, and the sitar player plays his song and sings with a tenuous voice that carries throughout the tent like magical stardust. He is dressed in rags, but has a clean, beautiful, exquisite face, solemn but kind. He sings about love. The elephant then slowly floats back up to the top of the tent. The crowd watches to see where the elephant will stay, but it soon falls into the shadows of the very top, and disappears. No one ever sees anything from there ever again. The horses exit one by one, hurrying at top speed.

The Ringmaster returns, laughing. He tells the audience that the elephant rarely cooperates with horses that way. In fact, it's been 64 years since that elephant has performed that stunt successfully. The audience is lucky tonight. Very lucky. He thanks the crowd for their patrony, and asks how the show is going. The crowd roars its approval, and with a smile of satisfaction, he walks away. A spotlight focuses now on an extremely large, muscular man. He is standing next to a neat line of extremely large boulders, arranged by size. Standing in front of the smallest stone, which is larger than his entire body, he lifts it up above his head. The audience claps. He moves over to the next one, almost twice as big as the previous one, and lifts it above his head as well. The crowd claps again. He continues down the line, each feat of strength more incredible and more baffling than the next, each applause getting louder, until he reaches the final stone. It must be the size of the largest rock in Stonehenge. The audience doesn't think he can lift it, but it also knows at this point in the show to not doubt the possibility of anything. He lifts it up over his head with one hand, and walks away with it raised over his head like it is a tray of empty drinks. The orchestra plays a finale as he walks triumphantly away. The crowd is in a frenzy and is not ready to leave, but the Ringmaster comes out and informs the audience that this concludes the end of tonight's performance.

I sat in my seat for a very long time, as the crowd filtered out little by little. I was one of the last people to leave, I even watched the incredible strongman help the Ringmaster take down parts of the tent with god-like ease. Finally, I snapped out of my dreamlike state and got up, found my way down the stairs, and exited the circus tent. I caught a bus back to my flat. As I sat there in the harsh white light of public transportation, I could not shake the images from my mind. The evening had been so surreal. I wasn't even sure if it had all really happened. I was sitting rather close. None of it could have been an optical illusion or some trick. The elephant really had floated down from nowhere. The bus got to my home, and I stepped inside. The beautiful swan-like woman was lying dead on my couch, a trickle of red blood creeping out the side of her mouth.

She was clutching a note in her hand. It read, in scrawled, almost unintelligible handwriting: I knew your mother.