Читать книгу The Long Shadows - Andrew Boone's Erlich - Страница 13

“Damn it!”

A new roustabout on bucket brigade must have missed it, I thought, scraping freshly dropped manure from my shoes. My logic was of little consolation. I had been thoughtlessly rushing to avoid the long lines at Western Union and now I had to pay the price for my carelessness. Once my shoes were as clean as they were going to get, I raced to Lexington Avenue and the nearest telegraph office.

“For the love of Mike!” I growled when I saw the eighteen others who had beaten me to the punch. That’s just what I need to start my day—a half-hour wait in line with a bunch of palookas being serviced by one Methuselah of a clerk. Just the thought of it made my back ache.

The other customers looked like a regular rogue’s gallery. They were as different from one another as night is from day. But when I walked into the place, they all did the same thing: In a simultaneous ballet of rudeness, all eyes turned and stared at me. Then, as if collectively trying to erase their bad manners, in unison they quickly looked away. I was accustomed to how herd-like people could be in demonstrating and then attempting to hide their lack of manners. As time had gone by, I thought I’d gotten better at ignoring that kind of negative attention. But for some reason, that morning it particularly irked me.

Because of the mess on Monday night and my dithering about whether to stay or leave the circus, I had woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Add to that the horse shit on my shoes and the prospect of an hour-wait in line and you have a recipe for my foul mood and my short fuse. It’s not hard to fathom why I had a hell of a time ignoring their discourtesy. I wanted to be anywhere else but in that crowded Western Union office, but I didn’t have a choice.

That morning at 8:30 a.m. on the dot, as I did on the fifteenth and the thirtieth of every month, come rain or shine, I collected my check at the pay-car, cashed it, and made my way to the nearest Western Union office. Like clockwork, every two weeks I would then wire my folks money. Ever since they went mahulla (bankrupt) after the Crash, Mama and Papa needed my help to make ends meet. Even though things were going a bit better for them, I still sent a little something every time I got paid. Looking back on it now, I can say that needing to help my folks gave me a reason to put up with the lousy things I had to endure on the road; not the least of which was my loneliness, occasionally stepping in fresh manure, and long waits in line.

I just wanted to send my money order to my folks, make it through the rest of that day with no more aggravation, and attend Val’s party that evening. My jaw was clenched as I stomped through the crowd in the Western Union office toward the wooden tables in the back where they kept the forms for money orders.

That’s where I found her. She was standing on tiptoes between two tables, trying to get hold of one of those forms. The little woman could barely reach the counter, let alone the cubbyholes where the documents were stashed. She had her back to me, but there was no mistaking her. I can just picture Lya now.

She was always a sharp dresser. As a matter of fact, that morning Lya was the best dressed person in the place. She wore a conservative knit suit of gray wool, a black cloche, and gray and black gloves. When Lya stretched her three-and-one-half-foot self to reach the necessary paperwork for a money order, I noticed her black patent leather high heels and her finely shaped, tiny calves.

Lya was so intensely involved with trying to get ahold of that form that, unlike the others, she hadn’t even noticed me come in. Encountering my little friend was a pleasant surprise on what was already a most unpleasant morning. Just the sight of her gave me a lift; Lya had that way about her.

I was relieved that my mood lightened a bit. I didn’t want my friend to see my dark side. In those days I still worked particularly hard at hiding it. It must have made me feel a bit ashamed. That probably explains why when my gloominess would descend I’d disappear for a few days. Thankfully those times had been few and far between. But recently they had been increasing. I wondered how long I could keep my moods a secret. Up to that point the worse thing any of my chums in Ringling Bros could say about me was that I was shy. My conversation with Harry the previous day in the dressing room was the first time I had ever spoken frankly with any of the other freaks about my melancholy.

I reached over Lya’s head, down onto the counter, and took a hold of the form she was struggling to reach. “May I be of service, fräulein?” I asked, clicking my heels together just behind her.

She spun around and glared up at me. “I don’t have time for foolishness, Jake,” Lya said in her strong German accent. Then she grabbed the form out of my hand in a way that put me off more than the stares of the people in line. I wasn’t used to that kind of rudeness from her. Normally when we met she was the first one to smile. She was typically playful and even a little coquettish, but never curt like that.

Lya Graf was another one of the sideshow’s little Germans. When she first came to Ringling Bros two years before, Daisy Doll—Harry’s sister—had introduced us. After that, the Dolls, Lya, and I became inseparable. When we went off the lot to dinner or the movies we always got stares. I guess the coming together of opposites always draws attention. It’s magnetic. One reporter in Chicago saw Lya and me together at a fundraiser for orphans at the Palmer House. The picture his photographer snapped of us turned out to be front page news in the next day’s Tribune. The headline that accompanied it read, “The Oddest Couple: World’s Tallest Man and World’s Smallest Woman.” When my friends pointed it out and teased me, I laughed to cover my embarrassment. But Lya didn’t think it was so funny. She got angry. “You think it’s a joke?” Lya asked as she stomped away from the rest of us.

She was an exotic, brunette beauty with prominent cheekbones, porcelain skin, perfectly proportioned features, and an exquisite, curvaceous figure. Sometimes she moved with a combination of elegance, grace, and earthiness. At those times she seemed absolutely sultry. But at others she seemed asexual, like a kid sister.

That morning in the Western Union office, I was surprised by her angry ebony eyes. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’d seen her that angry since the incident with the newspaper headline in Chicago.

That wasn’t the first time we’d run into one another in a telegraph office, each of us wiring money; me to my family in Texas and her to her people in Dresden. I guess family obligations are cross-cultural.

“I know it’s just a little every couple of weeks,” she said once in the Davenport telegraph office, “but my family depends on me.” Her father was a tailor and her mother an accountant, but they barely made ends meet for themselves and Lya’s two younger, normal-sized brothers who still lived at home. Things were tough after the Great War in Berlin. “I wouldn’t think of not helping them out,” she had told me that day. I knew just what she meant.

Though Lya was easy to talk to, we never talked about anything too personal. Still, she was one of those people that make you feel special. Lya was more than a friend. She was intuitive and smart. I imagined her to be a shrewd counselor who, if the need arose, could help me get a different take on things. Sometimes I observed people asking Lya’s advice. When they did, I noticed that she never told them what to do. She just listened. But the way she listened was different than when others, even my friends, listened. Lya listened more deeply. So far I had resisted the temptation to do so, but when she listened to me she made me want to open up more. There’s something unique about her that’s much more impressive than her diminutive size, I concluded back then. It wasn’t only me. Others recognized her wisdom as well.

“She has the gift,” Harry had said. He told me how she had used a dream he shared with her to help him make the right decision about a movie offer to star in an upcoming Todd Browning feature film. That movie turned out to be the smash hit Freaks. It made him a bundle and led to a role in The Wizard of Oz. At the urging of Harry and Daisy, Lya began to use her forte to make a few extra dollars in the sideshow as “Madame Lya, Fortune Teller: Seer of the Stars and Reader of the Crystal Ball.”

Looking back on it, Lya was one of my closest friends in Ringling Bros. I miss her. Yet back then, the thought of telling her about my plans to leave the circus made me nervous, so I kept putting it off. But something told me she already knew. She was such an old soul, with insight beyond her years. It’s too bad what happened to her.

I fondly recall the time we spent together and I wish, I really wish, I had appreciated it more. There were late nights over coffee and cigarettes while playing gin rummy in the pie car, and conversations in the backyard before our shows began and after they finished. When you have the perspective that comes with time . . . oh perspective; it can be a blessing or a curse. Anyway, with hindsight you know what was important and what was a waste of time. You look back and you realize you had people around that you took for granted. You see that you were never as alone as you thought you were.

But that morning in May of 1936 in the Western Union office in Manhattan all I could focus on was Lya’s intensity. She was a freak, like the rest of us in the sideshow, but Lya was a freak in a different way, too. But it’s not what you might think. The word freak had a special significance for all of us in the sideshow. It meant we were troopers, earning a living in the circus. But that word meant even more than that to me.

When I think of that word, I remember an incident with my parents’ dictionary while I was home on a break from Ringling Bros. One day during that trip, it must have been in the winter of 1932, I was sitting at Papa’s old, oak, rolltop desk at Geneva Loan and worrying if I was going to break his uncomfortable office chair. I was thumbing through my folks’ dusty Webster’s Dictionary. They hardly ever used that damned book; it seemed brand new. But that day they finally did have need of it. They were addressing a letter to my mother’s brother, Uncle Label, who had immigrated to Scotland. My parents had asked me to look up the correct spelling of Glasgow. I think the dictionary intimidated my folks. I wondered why they ever bought that book in the first place. Looking back on it, I think they were, like many immigrants, insecure and sensitive about their use of English. They wanted at least the semblance of a reliable literary resource, a linguistic weapon they could call upon in case the need arose to defend themselves. Unlike the pitches of other snake-oil salesmen who preyed on immigrants, when it came to the huckster who sold them their first and last dictionary, they were easy prey.

That morning, sitting in Geneva Loan as I tried to find the correct spelling of Glasgow, I accidentally—if you believe in accidents—came across the word freak. Among the synonyms and dictionary definitions, I found that a freak is someone who has special, other worldly, magical powers.

Well, my friend Lya was the first freak I met who fit those words. There was, indeed, something magical and other worldly about her. As a matter of fact, I had been thinking that maybe some of her other worldly magic might help me interpret the dream I had about the merry-go-round mount who became a Pegasus. But with all that was going on, I hadn’t gotten around to it. Maybe waiting in line together today at the Western Union office will be an opportunity to do just that, I thought.

“I’m sorry, Lya. I was just trying to help you out,” I said, staring down at my little friend and trying to smooth over any feathers I had ruffled.

“Don’t worry, Jake. It’s not arms and legs. I’ve just got a lot on my mind,” she answered.

“I don’t mean to intrude, but what are you worried about?” I asked.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” she said. Then she opened her purse and removed a fountain pen. “Would you give me a lift?”

“Sure.” I picked her up and set her down on the counter. Then she sat down on the granite countertop and began to fill out the form. I heard a snicker and turned to see two of the rubes in line pointing at us. When she finished, she nodded at me. I lifted her up and set her down on the ground.

“Danke shoen.” Despite her thank you, there was a bite in her voice. We made our way to the back of the line. As we walked, her high heels made a loud clickety-clack sound on the marble floor.

“What’s going on with you?” she asked frankly, avoiding any pleasantries. “You haven’t seemed yourself lately.” Was my sadness that apparent? I wondered. “I’m worried about you,” she continued. Her eyes were so concentrated I thought they would burn a hole right through me. “The little voice in my head that I’ve learned to listen to has been telling me things are nicht gut (not good).”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know what I mean, Jake.” She cut right through my subterfuge, like a sharp knife through Swiss cheese. When she was straightforward like that with others I admired her for her honesty, but when both barrels of her directness were aimed at me I wanted to duck. Reflexively, I looked to the door as if I were planning out the easiest path to escape her questions.

“You’ve been moping around for weeks. Even though you’re trying to not show it, I can feel your moodiness like an arthritic elbow feels the rain.”

I wondered if I hadn’t really taken that morning’s scowl off my face and what she was referring to was my sour puss. Maybe I wasn’t doing such a good job of hiding my melancholy. I was worried and embarrassed that somehow, with her second sight, she might be aware of what I had done on Monday night.

“This line is moving slower than molasses in January,” I said, trying to change the subject.

“And what’s this I hear about you attacking a fan in front of Gargantua’s cage?”

I felt cornered. There was no way out. “I have a lot on my mind, too,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

“So what’s eating at you?” She was relentless.

“Well, to tell you the truth . . . ”

“That’s what I’ve come to expect from you, Jake.”

Trying to bullshit my way out would never work with her. Lya was too perceptive for that. In an instant, I decided that was as good a time as any to tell her the truth. “I’ve been struggling with whether or not to leave the circus.”

“What?” she looked amazed at what I had said. Lya put her hands on her hips and continued. “Are you that unhappy?” She snapped at me again.

The look on my face must have been a combination of pain and puzzlement. I would have expected a more compassionate or even a more curious response but not her hostility. Lya questioned me like a prosecutor and a preacher; as if she already knew the answers to her questions before she asked them and like she was going to give me a sermon. Her manner put me off. If I didn’t have to send that damned money order to my parents I would have stormed out of the telegraph office. Hostility or not, I decided to tell her what was on my mind.

“I’m tired of the rubbernecks and the questions about my personal life. I’m tired of not fitting in.” The look on my face changed from puzzlement and pain to anger. Emphasizing my words, I raised my voice and pointed at her. The man in line in front of us turned to watch and listen to what must have looked like a very odd scene. I immediately lowered my voice and spoke in an angry whisper. The rube got the message and turned back around. “I’ve had it with being an exhibit in a sideshow. I’m tired of sleeping on a cramped train, walking through mud, crapping in an outhouse and stepping in manure. There’s got to be more for me in this life.”

“You know, Jake, Ringling Bros has been very good to us.” Her voice was softer now. I felt like a yo-yo. An instant before, I had felt repelled. But when her tone changed I had calmed down a bit and felt drawn to her. “Other freaks like us are shut-ins or working for abusive mud shows.” She sounds like Clyde Ingalls, I thought. But she was more caring. “I came to accept things as they are a long time ago. This is where I am, where I’m supposed to be, and where I want to be. And what’s more, I don’t really have any choice,” she said.

The busybody who had tried to eavesdrop on our conversation a few minutes before took a step toward the front of the line and Lya and I both stepped forward into the vacant space.

“I have many souls who depend on me.” As she spoke, I thought about my mother and father and how they depended on me. “I don’t have time for self-indulgence,” Lya said as we waited. “It’s just a waste of time, Jake.”

“Well, I hope I do have a choice; some other options in this life besides the circus. I don’t want to waste any more time. That’s what I’m afraid I’ve been doing. I’m struggling with this. Can you help me?” I put my hand on Lya’s shoulder. My palm covered her entire shoulder and my fingers went almost half way down her back. She backed away. “Can you share some of your wisdom, Madame Lya?”

Other than my parents, my brothers, and a few friends in Hollywood, that was the first time I’d ever really asked anyone for help. Lya looked up and paused. She took a step toward me.

“I don’t have any special insight, Jake. I’m just practical and I use common sense.”

“Well, I guess I’m not the most practical person and when it comes to common sense . . . it’s not so common, at least not with me.” I forced a laugh.

“I really don’t have any wisdom about what you should or shouldn’t do about the circus, Jake. But I think you know how I feel about the subject,” Lya said as she looked away.

There were several seconds of silence. To avoid the discomfort the quiet stirred in me, I turned to the large window to my left and felt the warmth of the morning sun streaming through the plate glass. Then I turned to my right and saw all sizes and shapes of the shadows cast by the people in line on the bare white wall to my right. I immediately looked back to Lya.

By now more of the people ahead of us had been served and we moved closer to our destination. Lya’s lack of a response to my question about my future in Ringling Bros made me anxious. I really couldn’t tolerate the silence any longer. Maybe my question about leaving the circus had hit a chord with her. Maybe I had put her on the spot and she was uncomfortable, too. In my nervousness, I attempted to make conversation to fill the vacuum. I struggled to find something to say and awkwardly changed the subject from my career to my dream life. Maybe she would respond to that. I knew she liked to talk about dreams. At least we would be talking and not just standing there.

“I had a dream that has been troubling me. Can I share it with you?”

“Sure, Jake, if that’s what you really want to talk about,” Lya answered.

I wasn’t sure if she was being accommodating or sarcastic. I sighed and proceeded to tell her about my dream: the wooden horse stepping into nothing, his transformation into Pegasus, and his flight across the sea to the horizon. I loved that dream. I knew it had to be significant.

Lya listened intently. Then she paused and quietly turned to face the lineup of shadows on the wall. “You see those shadows, Jake?” I nodded, turning again to the black silhouettes. “All we know about this world, each other and ourselves, is shadows . . . superficial, two dimensional, dim reflections. Shadows are all we ever know, and yours, my friend, is quite a long shadow. I think there is a giant sleeping somewhere in there that is starting to stir. It’s time to wake him up.”

I had no idea what in the hell she was talking about. “What about the horse and Pegasus?” I asked.

“It’s artifice. Just artifice.”

“What?” I asked. I was bewildered.

“Next.” I heard the clerk’s gruff voice.

It was Lya’s turn to purchase and send her money order. She turned away from me and walked up to the counter. I felt unsatisfied, confused, and angry. Her interpretation of my dream was anything but comforting. I was more unsettled than before she began to speak. I wished I’d never opened my mouth and asked for her help.

When Lya finished her business, she turned, walked to the door, and left. She hadn’t even said good-bye.

Why was she so dismissive and abrupt? I felt like I’d just gotten stood up, that I’d been abandoned, that I didn’t get what I needed. I mean, I had finally confided in Lya and she had not responded. In retrospect, I think she did respond. I just didn’t like what she had to say. In just a few days I needed to give Ingalls my answer, and I was no closer to a decision than I had been when I left the sideshow the night before. As she walked to the door, all I could focus on was the clickety-clack sound her high heels made on the marble floor. I had unfinished business with that little woman and I knew, sooner or later, I’d have to deal with it.