Holler

Holler

"an empty scream, the kind of scream you are not certain if it is happy or sad"

- Le calmant, Samuel Beckett.

A scream?

*

Setting:

Tents were raised at dawn, as the early bird sang and the morning mists lingered about the air like the pallid emptiness of ghosts. At the clearing people hurry like bees, a shout from certain lips reaches certain ears, and a wagon is unloaded after another.

A few boys come from the town nearby to take with them posters and a few pennies, their laugh seems to go on even as the road makes a sharp turn and they disappear. The circus comes only once a year, with it wondrous beasts from fabulous tales, men that swallow fire and women that are men. The boys will not sleep today, tomorrow evening they will come to see the show, loud and boisterous or like thieves in the night if their parents don't have the money.

The cretin woman knows nothing but facts - she may tell you the exact date of your birth and death, the exact time the sickness begins to spread inside of you like poisoned blood, and if you give her just a little extra, she'll tell you the exact way to woo the subject of your most secret, most embarrassing desires. But ask her what love is and she is gone.

Pass by the man who breathes fire; he won't stop though you linger. The snake woman looks at you from underneath her spidery leg; pass by the snake's bewitching eye, the slit that oozes sweet, sweet rotten milk.

In the innermost folds of the great tent a fortune-teller sits, her hands are your hands and she knows them like all things past and present - everything that will slip away into the hungry mouth of time. Her glass ball sparkles and she sees what you are.

Around the centre stage girls are dancing, their dresses shimmering along with the movements of their bodies. Pipes, drums, tambourines - the flesh is soon becoming music.

As quickly as they had come, they disappear, hidden by the black stomach of the stage. Now you may focus on the man standing on it. With the flick of a wrist doves fly from underneath his cape and disappear into the darkness of the ceiling stretching infinitely above, and the man is not where he used to be, as well.

The stage is empty; an abandoned void in an universe full of action, so still one is far from chasing shadows when he expects something. A bit of blue velvet curtain is drawn to reveal a great colourful circle poised vertically and a boy strapped to it, his red hair heavily contradicting the cloth.

The Wheel of Death, Ladies and Gentlemen, the four-feet-high auditor squeals, as deadly as a knife! And the audience gasps ecstatically, plumes of cigarette smoke travel up from the occasional burning stub. Come, come to see.

Eyes affix to the boy as a strange rattling starts, stops, and he and the stage are surrounded by mirrors. His duplicate appears, standing opposite him with a small table full of knives. The mirrors project and flicker, and millions of red-haired boys are standing, bending, strapped to great wooden circles. Then the music begins: trombones and drums that beat and beat.

The standing boy takes one of his knives, balances it against his back of hand, throws it up, catches it by the blade, and with a sound of metal plunging into wood it has already reached its target. The audience screams and applauds, a formless mass of heads and hands that keep moving and stretching into all directions, incessantly.

The blows continue, metal teeth and wooden prey; the boy is killing himself time after time as he continues throwing. With the turning of the wheel the images in the mirror bend and melt, move and transform.

And it is suddenly quiet.

The mirrors rattle away into the background, the boy strapped to the wheel is released, two immaculate red heads bow in unison and the audience whistles and claps, enchanted eyes opened wide wide wide.

Mother, did you see what they did?

*

Ploy:

In the middle of the space framed by curtains a piano stands. The little tent is the private ground of the dumb musician who plays melancholic melodies and sings sad songs that sing about themselves.

Fred comes here to regain what it feels to be alone, but what is more, the aesthetic pleasure of seeking solitude and knowing everyone knows this - a thought simply unbearably delicious.

"It went great, didn't it? It went great." With a rustle of curtains George appears behind him, bends and breathes into his mouth, pushes him into the centre. They bump into the piano and he laughs, voice hoarse and exasperated. With an elbow and the twine of legs they are on it, his back stretched across the black, cold length.

"Lets get out of here," a murmur; George had stopped at the nape of Fred's neck, buried his forehead in the hollow, "he doesn't give us our worth, sits on his blood money like an old toad that just caught a fly." His hand sneaks up Fred's neck, slides along the jaw-line and ventures up to Fred's temple. Stops.

"Give me the means and I'll find the way? As always, brother?" Fred whispers.

George lies on top of him, a child hesitating a moment as the quest turns to unfamiliar lands. His breath flutters on Fred's skin, the chest raises and falls.

"Tonight," he says, raising his head to capture Fred's eye, "he is drunk, as usual, the safe locked. But you know who already has the solution to that tiny problem. In my pocket, the key I stole when giving him the usual service just before coming here. He's drunk. We can leave right away. You can't stand it here either, can you? You will come with me? Will you?"

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Projects space one can lose oneself into. A mirror to break, a mirror big or small; an image to be haunted by for the rest of one's days.

"Yes. I am you, aren't I?"

Fred puts his hand on George's hair, pulls hard until their lips can meet. The kiss is clumsy and raw, more eagerness than passion, a dying man's last gasp for breath. Fred's hand lifts, up, higher, higher, and lands on the smooth black lid with a force that leaves the discordant tones to echo for a time that recognizes no method of counting.

Sound, voice, vocal cord, lung. Take a breath.

*

Mirror:

As the night begins to melt into dawn they creep to the tent of the circus director. He sits in his chair snoring devotedly, spittle trickling down the jaw like a long, branching path. George squeezes past the man and Fred takes his post near the entrance.

When the lock makes a satisfying click George gasps.

"Well, don't just stare at it! Take it! They will notice the key gone soon."

"The problem is, brother, there seems to be nothing there." George turns slowly to face him, disbelief and panic beginning to crawl into his eyes. With a few quick steps Fred is there, his hand plunging to feel empty space.

"And they have noticed it gone already." Says the one with the knife in his hand.

The broader one does not wait long to charge, a club cradled in his fist. With the sound of the table squealing when being pushed out of the way Fred moves in front of George and his hand flies up to protect his face.

Crack of bone, breath, rustle of cloth and he is on the ground, his forehead ripped across its length from the force of hitting the table. The eyes are bulging, become unnaturally pale, mouth opened to a scream that is not coming out. The hand is twisted to an impossible angle and cradled in his lap, gently, gently like an infant.

The only scream that sounds is George's, as he runs against the man with the club, his fists clenched for a battle that is already lost. He is sent staggering back with an easy fist, spitting blood and the occasional tooth, crawling on all fours in the manner of a scared hound.

"When the monsieur doesn't have money," the one with the knife says, gesturing at the from still snoring in the chair, "we don't get our pay. And that makes us feel very, very disappointed."

In a game the parts change easily; truth becomes lie, the reflection the image - the one who throws not, throws.

The broken hand is strapped to the wheel as well as the other. The audience cheers at the twins that are standing on the stage, at the millions upon millions of identical figures. Red hair, knives, wheels, sound, fury.

George looks at the faces filling the tent, the extravaganza of a hundred hands clapping, smoke from cigarettes curling slowly up.

Mirror, mirror. What is my part? What is yours?

Hands crooked like an old man's cadence.

"I never throw! It's always Fred that throws them. I can't, I'd kill him!"

"Well, then you have two choices - either it is my knife or it is yours. Personally, I'd think my knife doesn't leave the possibility for an unfortunate slip."

George looks at crowd, the many grins that melt into one great mask of a clown. Like Fred does, he balances the knife on the back of his hand, like Fred does he throws it up and catches is by the blade, and unlike Fred feels an instantaneous rush of shock as the metal cuts deep into skin. Unlike Fred he closed his eyes, and like George he hesitates and like himself - throws.

A scream?