The Circus of Dr. Lao (13 page)

II. THE FEMALE CHARACTERS

KATE: A sad memory.
THE RAILROAD MAN'S WIFE: Martha. Calm, sad, insecure; sometimes she laughed; laughing, she wondered; wondering, she wanted to cry.
MISS AGNES BIRDSONG: The boys all said she was damned good company after she learned to smoke and drink. Doctor Lao's circus broadened her outlook, gave her things to think about when sleepless she tossed on her couch of nights, when bored she listened to her pupils botch syntax of days.
MRS. HOWARD T. CASSAN: Described in the text.
THE WIFE OF PLUMBER ROGERS: Sarah. Loved her children, liked her husband, was content in Abalone, cooked good things to eat, kept a neat home, dreamed of no miracles, desired no victories, fretted when it was time to fret, laughed when it was time to laugh.
TWO SHEPHERDESSES: Dora Beaulais and Dulce Bonaventura.
A CHORUS OF NYMPHS: Dorothy, Louise, Hilda, Elsie, Laura, Dorothy, Opal, Eva. Dorothy, Isabel, Helen, and Hildegarde; Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy.
FIVE COLORED GIRLS: Quintet of pigmented maidens. Pigmented quintet of girls. Girlish quintet of pigmentation.
MRS. FRANK TULL: Before her marriage, Valerie Jones. Frank was a disappointment to her. She was a disappointment to Frank. There were in her life other disappointments, too. For instance, Nature had not endowed her with all the lovely beauty she thought her due, so, in order to augment what little which she had, she covered herself with objects themselves lovely and beautiful, and strove through theirs to add to her lack. From tiny holes in her ears she hung gold and jeweled pendants. Into the pores of her cheeks she rubbed ointments and greases of suave colors. Over her legs she drew stockings of sheer silk. Around her wrists she placed gauds of silver and bright stones. Up her fingers she slid little hoops of metal embossed with carbon. Upon her lips she dabbed rouge. Her abdomen she upheld with a belt and a corset. Her breasts she fitted into pert pouches. Over her feet she laced tight little shoes. Around her shoulders she flung animal skins. Her hair she had permanently waved. Powder she put on her neck and upon her throat; and under her arms, previously shaven smooth, she syringed a deodorant. Thus she managed to change her color, her figure, and her smell, and at the same time gleam with bright metal and glossy fur and dull silk and brilliant stones. Yet, by heaven, even then she still did not attain that beauty she so much desired; and because of that failure of attainment she would occasionally fall sick, and naught would cure the sickness save that Frank buy her more bright stones.
HELEN: Wife of Harvey. Was afflicted with the vice of lying.
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TRIBUNE
" LADY REPORTER: Ardath Williams. A better newspaperperson than the men she competed with. At the same time a mother. At the same time a daughter.
A SCULLION MAID: She was for sale. She could be had.
THE WEREWOLF WOMAN: Maggy Szdolny. There was a curse on her.
FEMALE VOICE RELAYING BEAR-MAN INFORMATION TO JOE: The possession of Maxine McCourtney: a contralto voice, throaty, with a hint of adenoids and beer.
THE WITCHES: Hecate, Belre, Demisara, Pamphile, Haut Roman, Lilith, Alicia Robinette, Vignoche de la Stewart, Salome of Bessarabia, and Perpetua of Galt. The witch Drusye of the Carpathians, the five sisters of Nagasaki, the Sybil of Panzoust, the Klawtawnamam witch of Fettiss Island, Sister Anthony St. Villanova, Atropis, Mary Cornwall, and the two witches of Skaldaeniry Forest. Mugissowri, Kate de Brille, and Tlectholeme. Proserpine van Antwerp, Dutch Annie, and Helen Panacea.
THE SIRENS: Tall, light-haired girls with pale tapering legs and big fruity breasts. Their voices harmonized well together.
GYPSY (UNGRAMMATICAL): Cecily de Brault.
FAT BLONDE: Madame Stradella.
A COUNTRY LASS: Twenty-four years old. Lived out on a chicken ranch. Got up in the morning about the time most dances were breaking up. Milked three cows while Frank Tull was shaving. Had a brother and three younger sisters. Liked picture shows if they were Westerns. Drove a car not very skillfully. Was at her best with a dishtowel. Awfully friendly. After talking with her a little, one always thought what a pity she wasn't a little better-looking. She gave one the impression that whatever one might suggest to her she would be perfectly willing to do. But she was frightfully plain, and one never knew but what she might do a lot of running off at the mouth about it afterwards. Even against those two detriments, however, one of the boys went pretty far with her on a couple of occasions, but he let everything drop when it came to scratch.
ELDERLY LADY: A grandmother. Later a great-grandmother. Like a tree looking at little trees grow up all about it; looking at them proudly, but powerless to help them if they grew warped.
ONE OF THE LORELEI: Her hands and feet and other things were calloused from so much sitting around on the Felsen waiting for mariners to navigate past her on the Rhine. A soprano.
CIRCE: She changed men into swine.
FOOTBOUND CHINESE MAIDENS: Unquestionably it improved their walking; that is, it improved the æsthetics of their walking. It gave them a lilting, stiltlike walk, not designed for long distance, not designed for utility, but designed only to please the eyes of their masters. The deformation fell into critical disrepute when the daughters of the poor adopted it, the daughters who had to work instead of charm.
FRANK TULL'S STENOGRAPHER: A commercial college graduate of the ovarian type.
GIRL FORMERLY A SHE-GOAT: Time after time these transformations are decried in the Old Testament. Today, we live more simply; love less ardently.
VAHINE THAT THE SEA SERPENT ATE: A Polynesian girl. She ate fish and fruit and vegetables. When the sea serpent ate her, she liked it even less than the fish liked it when she ate them.
A FAIR-HAIRED NORDIC GIRL: Elisabeth Poudre.
A GIRL IN APOLLONIUS'S LIFE: A memory.
THE BRIDE OF YOTTLE: Data as to her measurements are lacking. But after the nuptials, after she had left them, after her marriage had been consummated in heaven, the male Woldercanese still thought of her, remembering her beauty. And when they took brides, and kissed them, they made believe it was Yottle's bride they were kissing instead of their own.
THE WOLDERCAN VIRGINS: A dozen green, untasted girls.

III. THE CHILD CHARACTERS

SONS OF THE RAILROAD MAN: (a) Ed junior. Barefoot boy with cheeks of tan, except that his cheeks were pale and his mother wouldn't let him go barefoot. (b) Little Howard. Papa spanked him oftener than he did Ed junior.
THE ROGERS CHILDREN: (a) Alice. She stood first in her class all through the public schools but married while still so young that she never amounted to anything. (b) Willie. He operated a filling station after reaching his majority. (c) Little Edna. She died two months after the circus in a traffic accident. She was the prettiest of the Rogers children.
THE LITTLE FAT BROWN BOY: For seven years he was a diner; then for a few minutes he was a dinner. Ultimately he was incorporated into the cell structure of the sea serpent, a distinction he did not enjoy.
ELDERLY LADY'S GRANDSON: Peter R. Roberts. He took his Ph.D. at Harvard years later. Taught history in a southern school for boys. Married Miss Calanthe Devereau. Achieved the deanship of his department in his fortieth year. Never did he forget Doctor Lao's circus.
LITTLE BOY EVICTED FROM THE CIRCUS GROUNDS BY THE COPS: Gonzalo Pedregon. At nineteen he founded the later-to-be-famous collegiate dance orchestra, "Chalo's Chile Pickers," which through radio broadcasts and movie contracts made a neat bit of change for its director.
LITTLE BOY SLAIN BY THE MAUSER BULLET: A Tongshan kid named Da Go. He would have laughed as readily as the other bystanders had he not been the one who was laughed at.
FROGBOYS: Cretins.

IV. THE ANIMALS

POLAR BEAR: White like the ice floes among which it wanders. Great Mother Nature — she created snowfields for polar bears and pinewoods for black bears and mountains for grizzly bears and toyshops for teddy bears.
MONKEYS: The little brown brothers. From their cages they stare at us staring at them; then leaning over sniff at clots of their own dung.
HYENA: Africa echoes with its laughter.
SONORAN GRIZZLY: The country cousin living in Mexico of the great family Ursus horribilis.
HERMAPHRODITE GOATS: Resemble fishing worms. Nanny and Billy living together in the same husk.
PONY STALLION: Once in a Middle Western state a show of this sort was going on. The framework broke; the pony stallion fell through and killed the woman. There followed a terrible rumpus. The city aldermen met and argued. Finally, they decided that unless those frameworks were made stronger in the future that sort of show would have to be done away with entirely.
HORSES: Anachronisms less speedy, less beautiful, less efficient than the machines which have replaced them.
GOLDEN ASS: Wolves turn into women, mud into turtles, brown boys into snakes, fish into vahines, goats into girls, men into swine. And Lucius Apuleius, with the aid of Fotis, turned into an ass.
HOUND OF THE HEDGES: A dream.
BURRO: Not a white man's animal.
GILA MONSTERS: Pink and black, clumsy and poisonous, egg-layers, egg-eaters.
BEAST OF THE APOCALYPSE: A legend.
IGUANAS: The nuts from which the dragon stories sprouted.
KIT FOXES: Furry, fugitive, pretty little things.
BADGERS: Hole-diggers.
NAUTILUS: Sometimes chambered. Seabeasts. Speechless, sightless, thoughtless. They sail around on the waves and eat and reproduce and die.
SQUID: Adolescent octopi.
OBELIA: Baby jellies. Medusas. Stingers. Transparent umbrellas.
ELASMOBRANCH SHARK: Mankillers.
ENORMOUS TURTLES: The tortoises on the Galápagos and Aldabra Islands.
SEA SERPENT'S MATE: She knew what he wanted when she saw him coming through the waves.
SCORPIONS: Very ancient bugs glorified in heaven every night.
CRUSTACEANS: Crawdads. Cornpaffies. You catch them when you are fishing for catfish sometimes. Dangling from your hook they wave their claws and feelers at you, and you wonder at the fantasies that dwell in muddy waters.
LAMBKINS: Food and clothing for the master, man.
COCKROACH: La Cucaracha, the kitchendweller. Decently dressed in brown or black, discreet and humble, he lives in hovels as readily as in grand hotels. He has been with us a long time. He crawled about the middenheaps of the Neanderthal just as he still crawls about the middenheaps of the Parisian. He is fit and he survives. He watched the dinosaur and the pterodactyl die, and he saw Babylon flourish.
SPHINX: The icon of Africa.
STOAT: A stinkpot.
LION: A symbol.
HIPPOPOTAMUS: God must have loved ugly animals, he made so many of them.
CHIMERA: Described by Rabelais, Flaubert, and Finney.
TIGER: Color scheme somewhat the same as that of an Arizona Gila monster. Life cycle somewhat different.
WEREWOLF: Not the American lobo. Probably some species from the Carpathians or Urals.
MINKS: Fierce and beautiful hunters who, when they ease up on their vigilance, find themselves converted into coats and collars.
CATS: They are wild in the heart of a city, but they are tame and frightened in the heart of the woods. They don't fit anywhere any more.
RATTLESNAKES: Killed on sight, hunted and stamped down, they won't last much longer. Probably they wish along with the Aztec Indians that Columbus's boats had all sunk in the middle of the Atlantic.
TANTILLAS: Sonoran tantillas. They have small eyes, but rather large rostrals. Atop their heads they bear a pair of inter-nasals, a pair of prefrontals, a frontal, a supraocular on each side and a pair of parietals. Furthermore, the posterior nasal is in contact with the preocular; and, it is alleged, their anterior genials are longer than their posterior genials.
SPOTTED NIGHT SNAKES: Hypsiglena ochrorhynchus ochrorhynchus. A very small snake. A very pretty snake. A very secretive snake. Mother Nature has provided for its diet very small, very pretty, and very secretive lizards. So down among the grasses of the irrigated fields the secretive, pretty little snakes chase and catch and eat the secretive, pretty little lizards. And the lizards which do not get caught breed and reproduce more pretty little lizards so that the oncoming generations of Hypsiglena may have plenty to eat. Furthermore, the little lizards eat little bugs, which in turn eat littler bugs, themselves eating vegetation of a sort which has reared its flowers among the decay of animal flesh; and round and round and roundabout the merry dance of eating goes on till each little live thing knows not whether he was designed to be the diner or the dinner.
FADED SNAKES: Lizard-eaters, too; and they also eat each other.
SEA SERPENT: No one has counted his genials and gastroteges yet, nor computed his parietals and described his supraoculars, though there's plenty would like to and pickle him to boot and stick him in a museum for people to peer at.
FRIGATE BIRD: They rove and roam the whole wide ocean with hardly a wing-flap, yet a little canary threshes its wings a thousand times to rise to a perch in a tree.
MERMAID: Described in the text.
SATYR: Described in the text.
ROC: Really not as big as Sinbad thought it was, but plenty big enough to do all that he said it did.
UNICORN: A decorative device on a mustard pot.
MEDUSA: As frigid herself as the stone figures into which she converted men.
WALRUS: Eskimo food.
CAMELS: The daughters of the desert throw sand in their eyes; a curious reaction follows, and the daughters laugh.
BOA: A little snake that squeezes.
ANACONDA: A giant snake that squeezes.
GRASS SNAKE: The one which ornamented the hound of the hedges was of the Coronella group.
GNATS: Mother Nature's tiniest flying machines.
RATS: They fight with cockroaches for the crust left under the table. And once they knew glory: they ate a bishop.
KATYDIDS: Remnants of an Egyptian plague.
BATS: Unsurpassed as small game. The only time one can hunt them is at dusk when the light is poor and fleeting. It takes a good shot to bring one of them down.
TURTLES (SNAPPING): They like to lie buried in the mud with only their noseholes sticking out. So Nature generously arranged nice sloughs of mud wherever there were any snapping turtles; and there they lie buried with only their nose-holes sticking out. Nature always provides things for the comfort of her children.
TURTLE (TWO-HEADED): It died shortly. It could never stop quarreling with itself at feeding time, each head desiring to do all the eating. Once Apollonius, to test its reactions, placed two little lady turtles a few inches away from either head. The thing thereupon nearly tore itself in two.
CRICKETS: Ethiopian grasshoppers.
SALAMANDERS: The little water-lizards, not the water-fairies; though they, too, are interesting. Baby salamanders are gluey white and from their cheeks dangle atrocious-looking gills. Grown-up salamanders are muddy-looking, and as mud puppies are cut up by co-eds in comparative anatomy classes for some purpose never clearly explained. However, it is safe to say that the whole, sole, one and only purpose of salamanders living at all is that in the guise of mud puppies they may be cut into pieces by co-eds in colleges for some purpose never clearly explained. Though it may also be argued that the whole, sole, one and only purpose of co-eds being alive is that in comparative anatomy classes in college they may cut up mud puppies for some reason never clearly explained.
FROGS: The minstrels.
TOADS: Minstrels, too, in their fashion, but not such virtuosi as their more edible relatives.
MINNOWS: Baby fishes on which their aunts and uncles feed.
COLONY OF PARASITES: Lowly life forms. Ciliated and amorphous and equipped with contractile vacuoles.
TICKS: Paradoxes. When they are not feeding on blood, they are blood-red. When they are feeding on blood, they are grey as soap.
POLAND CHINA SHOAT: Food for man.
DUROC JERSEY PIG: Food for man.
GADARENE SWINE: Food for sermons.
HEDGEHOGS: Quiet little pincushions that hate the rain and are unimpressed by the revolutions among the men whose countrysides they adorn.
ELEPHANTS: Grandchildren of the mastodons.
SIDEWINDERS: They walk sideways as a measuring worm walks longways, although not exactly. On their brows they bear the ancient device of cuckoldry. On their tails is a toy. They are yellow as the sands they prowl about in, and from their fangs a venomous syrup drips.
GEESE: They please something in man's palate and therefore are permitted to live.
JERSEY CATTLE: They survive for the same reason the geese survive.
SNAILS: Make their own roads of slime and enjoy the sensation of travel without going anywhere.
STRAY SONGBIRDS GASPING IN THE HEAT: Six sparrows. One thrush.
MARMOTS: Groundhogs.
FISHING WORMS: Sometimes along with the mud puppies the co-eds cut up fishing worms, too. The fishing worms used in zoology classes are great big fat fellows. There is something pathetic about them, for in order to attain such size a worm has to be slated for dissection. The wild worms never get enough to eat to grow that big.
SURINAM TOAD: A slender-fingered, slender-nosed, poisonous toad that likes to loaf under water. It is poisonous in the same manner that a toadstool is poisonous: you have to bite the toad to be poisoned. Probably the nadir of all poison systems. A confined Surinam toad in an interesting condition is more instructive to observe than a Caesarian section. The babies pop out of mama's back and go off immediately about their business.