The Circus of Dr. Lao (11 page)

     From the brazier on the fire-bearing turtle a red-hot flaming coal fell. Before it reached the water a toad, taking it for a brilliant bug, snapped it up with his agile tongue and swallowed it, and then writhed convulsively as its belly burned. And the great turtle, watching his flame, now and again drove his head down into the muck to bring up in his jaws shreds of peat and snags of wood to toss over his head into the flames and so replenish the fire. And as the wet dripping fuel fell into the flames a hissing would arise on wings of steam.
     The stoats and minks loosened the drawstrings of their scent sacs; the viscous stinks flooded the pond air. And the tomcats yelled, their soprano voices higher and keener and in contrast to the bass belling of the bullfrogs. And the kit foxes barked. And the hedgehogs made uncomfortable, small squealing noises. The badgers sat on their haunches watching, their masklike faces quizzical, their stripes awry, their coats damp and muddy.
     And the witches whirled and danced and giggled and coughed and grimaced as the stink of the minks smote them. And the animals made their grotesque noises, singing the music for the dance.
     "More vigor!" called the thaumaturge. "The master cometh!"
     The animal calls increased; staccato, they crackled in the pond air. And the witches whirled the faster, danced the madder, while the fire sparkled, surged, and roared.
     Then above the flames, bored, fat, over-sexed, nervous, smoking a cigarette, Satan Mekratrig appeared. Green he was, with black patches of mildew on his face and shoulders. He blew grey rings and studied the dancing.
     "Terrible," he said. "Terrible. I never saw such terrible dancing. Pick it up! Pick it up!" And Satan snatched a whip out of the air and flogged the witches. With long lash snapping, the whip danced about the dancing sisters, the tongue of it swirling among them, slashing them and stinging them. And among them the whiplash lit the oftenest upon the youngest witch, a pale slender supple witch, a nude ivory dark-haired witch, Demisara, witch of incest, witch of shame. And the old burnt-out sisters were envious of this mark of favor; they jerked and hissed at her, and covertly they spat at her; but the whip of Satan lit ever and again on the young desirable shoulders of Demisara and curled about her waist and crackled over her back; and the shriveled old harridans sneered to see that Mekratrig had him a new favorite.
     The animals all slipped into the water and joined the dance, wallowing through the mud, trampling down the crayfish, minnows, and tadpoles, leaping among the frogs. Hovering in his flame, Satan laughed at the careful bedraggled cats afraid of wetting their feet, afraid not to dance, loathing the water and the mud, and stepping about as on hot rocks. He grabbed hunks of flame from the fire and tossed them upon the water where they burned among the furry things, igniting coats, singeing whiskers, racing through tails. The animals bawled as they burned and scorched, but danced on and on and on.
     And Satan Mekratrig reached over and caught Demisara by the hair and jerked her free of the other sisters and snatched her to him in the flames and loved her there. Starshine was in her eyes; drops of dew gleamed upon her shoulders.
     "Better stop it, Apollonius," Doctor Lao warned, "or it will be getting out of hand in a minute."
     "Moonlight!" called the mage. "Shrill music on the piccolo!"
     With a rush the moonlight returned, blotting out the blaze of the fire. The screeching of the piccolo drowned the noise of the animal calls. Satan Mekratrig howled out an oath; it lingered like blue smoke in the air. The rhythm of the dance wavered and broke. The visibility faded. The fire died. The animals disappeared. Back to the mountains of the moon streamed the witches on their broomsticks. And the moonlight crept away, and only the pall of darkness remained.
     "Let there be light," commanded the magician.
     Light came, the daylight of Abalone, Arizona, to illuminate the tent. But in the center of the tent above the tanbark, suspended in air, Satan Mekratrig still remained, and struggling in his arms was Demisara. The devil screamed at Apollonius, defying banishment. Froth formed on his lips from the vehemence of his screaming.
     Reaching into his robe, the magician drew out a crucifix. Holding on high the little Jesus quartered on a cross, he advanced beneath the fiend. There was a burst of flame in the center of the tent, and witch and devil disappeared. Apollonius kissed and put away the artifact.
     The applause was sparse and unconvincing. Apollonius and Doctor Lao bowed gravely to each other. Then, drowned in thought, the magician plodded back to his quarters.
     Rapidly thereafter the animals went through the remaining portions of the repertory. Golden ass and hound of the hedges put on a dog and pony show. In purple tights and scarlet sash the satyr came grinning; with his sharp, sure horns he spiked balloons which Doctor Lao inflated and flung to him. Ungaubwa, the high priest of the Negroes, using one of the black girls for a target, threw knives and hatchets, pinning her by her clothing to a shield. From a high ladder the mermaid dived into a tiny tank. In gay Grecian robes the nymphs came, singing the Sirens' Song, the same song that Doctor Browne asserted was not difficult of divination but which, nevertheless, he did not hazard to name, contenting himself merely with the claim he could do so any time he got around to it.
     Shepherdesses and lambkins followed the Siren Song singers. They cavorted in an afternoon full of the fresh lissomeness of the time of May. Like figures on thin old chinaware were these shepherdesses and lambkins, almost as ideal, almost as tenuous. The audience relaxed drowsily while watching them. Then a cruel, bitter, black cloud came roaring from nowhere; and over the edge of the cloud the sweating face of Satan Mekratrig was thrust, greenly grinning down at the sweet shepherdesses and gamboling lambkins. And lambkins and shepherdesses shuddered and cringed.
     "Oh, why does the symbol of evil come into everything and every scene in this circus?" cried Miss Agnes Birdsong. "That cynical old Chinaman, that's all he knows! There is purity and there is simplicity and there is goodness without any hint of bad about them. I know there is! Oh, he's wrong!"
     "It's only a circus," said Mr. Etaoin. "Don't let it disturb you."
     Doctor Lao heard her, too.
     "The world is my idea," he said. "The world is my idea; as such I present it to you. I have my own set of weights and measures and my own table for computing values. You are privileged to have yours."
     He waved away the shepherdesses and the fiend and the time of May. Climbing back on his pedestal, he announced:
     "The afternoon grows late. On some of your faces I detect symptoms of an awful ennui. Well, there is but one more scene to this circus: it is the spectacle of the people of that ancient city Woldercan worshiping their god Yottle, who was the first and mightiest and least forgiving of all the gods.
     "Piety such as theirs exists no more. Such simple, trusting faith is lost to the world. When you folks here in Abalone worship your god, I understand you do it in a church wired for sound, so that every pleasure automobile, radio-equipped, can, even at sixty miles an hour, hear you at your prayers. But does your god? Ah, well . . . what does it matter?
     "For your better understanding of this Woldercan episode, it is necessary that I tell you Woldercan was in the midst of a drought. Rich and poor alike there had nothing to eat, for such was the dryness that nothing could grow. That was a calamity Woldercan had never before been called upon to face; for, while the poor had always been with them and chronically starving, after the fashion of the poor, theretofore the rich had always lived, after the custom of the rich, off the fat of the land. Yet now there was no food for anyone, not even the rich; nor could all the coin of the realm buy even a rotten turnip.
     "Terror, the great leveler, swept into the city. The politicians could do nothing; the police could do nothing; the scholars could do nothing; the rich could do nothing. The people stood around in small fearful groups, waiting for death to come slowly via the route of starvation.
     "But one man among them did something. That man was he who was the high priest of Yottle. He walked rapidly among them, and:
     "'Come,' he said. 'Gather in the temple. We will pray to Yottle. Yottle will protect his own.'
     "So then all Woldercan, having naught else to do, went to Yottle's temple to pray.
     "Now that episode of the starving Woldercanese, in Yottle's temple, praying to him for relief, is surely one of the great and vivid and dramatic scenes of all recorded history; and it is with pride that I bring it to you with my circus. As a little hint as to what happens, I want to recall to you that they sacrifice a virgin to their god. Piety. That was real piety. When you people here of Abalone pray to your god for a drought's end, do you go to such extremes in your protestations of faith? Would you sacrifice Abalone's fairest virgin? Ah, well . . ."
     Then Doctor Lao left his pedestal and sidled away a little. He doffed his showman's hat. "Ladies and gentlemen," he called, "I give you Yottle's temple in ancient Woldercan!"
     And the rear of the tent curled up and back, and there before the eyes of Abalone, Arizona, was the interior of the great somber towering temple of the great god Yottle. And, somber, too, the music of the spheres welled in rolls up from nave and chancel, lingered about the giant beams, and rose higher, ever higher, even to the gold bar of Heaven itself.
     Above the altar on an ivory dais Yottle sat. One hand was upraised; the other caressed his throat. His eyes, peering from jeweled eyelids, contemplated things far off from earth. Incense pots smoked about his ankles. He was bigger than a mastodon, fleshier than a hippopotamus, and more terrifying than either. Bronze was Yottle's flesh, and his fat was a brazen fatness. In a coign beneath his dais rested his sacred stone ax, the sacrificial tool, the brutal mace of death.
     The tattered, starveling Woldercanese, eleven thousand strong, were forlornly moaning piteously and some of them were chaunting low hymns of lost hope. Gray were the faces of the Woldercanese, and it was the grayness of hunger and the grayness of fear which tinted them.
     Out of the gray mass the high priest arose; there was a sort of holy glowing about his head. He blessed them with his hands, and:
     "Peace," he said. "Patience and peace."
     Then the high priest turned to Yottle, making mystic, cabalistic signs.
     He knelt. He prayed.
     "Glory unto thy name, Yottle; homage before thy eyes, Yottle; Yottle the all-knowing, Yottle the omnipotent. Sinners all, we come before thee, foul with the sins of sloth and greed and hate and lust. Weary, we cannot sin more. Surfeited, we sicken and are afraid. Despairing and ashamed, we turn to thee. Dying, we remember our forgotten prayers. Hopeless, we plead: Lord of our world, forgive us; Light of our gloom, enlighten us; Creator of the spheres, aid us; Yottle, great Yottle, forgive us now, forgive."
     But one of the men stood up in the rear of the temple and protested:
     "Why do you pray like that? We assuredly are not ashamed of ourselves. We are not foul with sin and lust. The only reason we are here at all is because Yottle has seen fit to withhold rain from our crops. We don't want forgiveness. We want rain and something to eat. Tell Yottle so. Your business is to intercede for us, not tattletale about us." He turned to the people.
     "Am I not right?" he asked.
     "You certainly are," they said. And to the priest they said: "Of course he is right. We have sinned; yes. But we are not entirely without virtue. In the next period of your prayer, minimize our bad points and accentuate our good ones. Don't make us out a troop of pindling sinners wading through a manure mire of our frailties. Tell Yottle of the straits we are in, if you like, but don't be so anxious to admit we merit them, because we don't believe we do."
     Bitterly, the high priest answered them:
     "So! You criticize me and humiliate me here before the very eyes of Yottle! You tell me, your high priest, how to pray! Very well."
     He turned to Yottle, shouting:
     "Hey, thou lump of bronze and shining stones! Look upon us and marvel that such magnificent people do not throw you down and melt you up and make trinkets of your metal. We do not fear. We are great. Woldercan does not petition; she ordains. Hear us and act:
     "Food we must have immediately. And immediately, too, we must have rain that we may raise more food. So out of thy cosmic kitchen, Yottle, throw us down some pie from heaven, and with thy sprinkling pot wet down our dead grain fields. Feed us, Yottle, well and quickly; fill our ——— "
     But before the priest could say more, a high keen passionate rush of words drowned out his own. And the words came from everywhere at once, as the hurricane comes; and flood-like the words came from all sides; then they ceased.
     The Woldercanese fell down on their faces. That had been Yottle's voice, and they knew it.
     The priest was the first to arise. With his hands he blessed them.
     "Peace," he said to his flock. "Peace and fear nothing. Yottle has spoken. He is indignant, but he is willing to be mollified. He says he doubts our faith in him, but he is willing to put it to test. But he says he is so angry now that we must sacrifice our fairest virgin to him before we do anything else. He says sacrifice her first, then talk to him later about rain. He is very angry. He will not allow us much time. Haste is paramount, my children. So, quickly, let us sacrifice the virgin and appease him. Let us immediately placate our infuriated god."
     "How are you going to find the fairest virgin, though?" demanded the man who had interrupted before.
     "We will hold a beauty contest here and now," said the priest. "Let all our virgins line up; we will choose the loveliest by popular acclaim. It will be a great honor for her. Besides, it is better that only one should die than the whole populace. That is the theory of sacrifice. So let all the virgins line up here. Please, now! Quickness is essential. Yottle is very angry. Hurry! Hurry!"
     A dozen girls formed a nervous row.
     "Acgh!" said the priest in disgust, "there are more girls than this in Woldercan. I can see more with my own eyes. Come! Come!"