The Rope Tamers
They were an odd sight - the French youth, his long hair falling in ringlets, the Ethiopian woman in white tights and tutu, the American carnival barker speaking to the crowd in broken Japanese. The metal scaffold under which they stood rose 20 meters into the air and from it hung a rope, the earth-bound end coiled at the feet of the American. Looking out over the park, the American saw people coming toward him - families and groups of teenagers, but also smartly dressed men and women.
"Yokoso! - Welcome!" he shouted. "Don't be shy. Come closer," he urged. "We are the magnificent rope tamers!"
Hidden in the gingko trees a solitary crow announced its presence. Dully, the American turned toward the sound and searched the fluttering leaves. A million fans quivered and red and silver tracers flickered like goldfish before his eyes. The American's head ached and he badly craved a drink. His sins were small but plentiful and like coins in a jar they added up. By day's end his hat would fill with 1000-yen notes and he would go to Kabukicho in Tokyo's red light district and buy himself a whore. She would bind him in ropes and press her heel into the soft flesh of his back and make him beg for forgiveness. In the multitude of his sins, robbing the Ethiopian was a minor transgression (he wasn't really stealing, just reallocating resources), but the prospect of punishment excited him and buoyed by the thought he felt a stirring below his cummerbund.
Smiling, he removed his hat and bowed, his hand sweeping the air, and as he did the French youth stepped into the circle of spectators.
The youth's handsome features were rigid, as if cast from concrete. He gazed up at the gingkoes and tried to clear his mind before turning to the rope. Archways of stone rising above a river - unbidden, the ancient Roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard came to him. The youth willed the image away, but not before he saw himself by the river's edge, his sister's legs stretched out before him, her skin dappled in the leaf-covered shade. The picture changed and sadness brushed him like a fast-moving current as he watched her struggle to breathe under the cold hospital light. With the money he earned from the rope he sent her CDs of her favorite music, videos of the latest movies from Hollywood. The accident would live with him forever, chasing itself in his thoughts like a dog running after its tail. He hadn't seen the white Fiat bearing down until it was too late and his sister was ruined because of him and this too he tried to banish from his mind.
"Mina-sama! Ladies and gentlemen!"
The American's voice gutted the silence in one swift stab.
"I give you -- Renard the Rope Master!"
The French youth pulled off his shirt and tossed it into the air. The shirt rose in an arc, sleeves flailing like wings, and as it fell the Ethiopian darted forward and caught it in her teeth. Her arms raised, fists clenched, she uttered a forlorn cry, the muffled call of a sad but noble creature she called Wub, a flightless bird, an ostrich with the soul of a hawk. Startled faces in the crowd looked on as she danced around the scaffold, arms beating the air, the youth's shirt hanging from her mouth like the limp body of a small animal.
She could taste the youth on the shirt, the peculiar odor his body gave off when he was about to mount the rope. She was through with him and with the American too. She had loved the youth from the moment they'd met in the white heat of the carnival at Nice and she'd watched him perform on the high wire. But he had betrayed her. He had sided with the American in apportioning their earnings, cheating her of a fair share. Didn't she climb as high as the youth? Wasn't she as much an artist? No, the American had scoffed, half-drunk, you're the comic relief, and the youth, his eyes cast down, had said nothing, not a word in her defense.
The Ethiopian bowed, curtsying quickly three times to the audience. Raising her head, she watched the youth flex the muscles that braided his arms and back like small hillocks. His skin was as white as river-washed stone.
In two days they would leave Tokyo and she would tell the American she was quitting. She'd go to Rome to live with her sister or maybe to Tuscany where an old lover had offered her his bed. She had thought it over. The pain in her fingers, the tremor in her left hand - her body was starting to falter. In Paris she'd seen a tightrope walker fall and break his back on the cobblestone. But this was more than a balancing act. Rope Taming, the American called it. Thrill the crowd with danger. People are fools. They'll pay more if they believe there's a good chance you'll kill yourself.
One at a time she and the youth would shimmy up the rope in bare feet, winding themselves in its plaited coils until they reached the top of the scaffold. High above the crowd, they squirmed like caterpillars suspended from silk threads until the American shouted Voila! and the rope unraveled and each plunged headlong toward the ground. A cry rose from the crowd, but just as quickly the rope would snap to attention and the fall was broken, and she and the youth dangled like spiders above the pavement. A miracle, ladies and gentlemen, a miracle! the American would cry as the audience applauded and he stepped into the fricative rustling of money being dropped into his hat.
Breaking the fall was easy. The Ethiopian had taught the youth how to anchor the rope around his knees and elbows, leaving just enough slack to give the impression of a free-fall. The hard part was controlling the rope during the descent, making sure the loops and coils didn't get tangled and cause injury. Be careful, she had warned the youth. One wrong move and you
In the two years they'd worked together pupil had surpassed teacher and the youth was now the star.
When Renard is on the rope take care to study the audience, the way fear paints itself on their faces, the American had instructed her. When Renard is falling, he is falling to his death. This is what people come to see.
The Ethiopian understood how it was. She could not fall as convincingly as the youth, spinning and whirling as the rope unraveled, and so the American had decided she deserved less. But the youth had grown reckless. He let the rope curl dangerously around his neck. He waited until the last moment to break his fall. She was unable to cede control to the rope as he did. To compensate, as counterpoint to the youth's ominous spectacle, she had constructed a sideshow of high jinks and farce, prancing around the scaffold as she did now, head bobbing, her eyes trained on the youth as she watched for any indiscretion or lapse of caution.
"Totemo kiken desu - This is very dangerous," the American was saying, wagging a gloved finger at the crowd.
For the youth, the rope had been a slender seam stitched into the sky and then its coarse body was grinding against his skin, his heart beating like a muted drum stretched taut over his chest. If he looked down, he knew he would see the Ethiopian dancing below him, her body compressed into a series of jerks and stutters. She had wanted too much from him and now he pitied her, the way she played the fool to the audience. Soon he would reach the top and await the American's command and his heart thumped harder thinking about the dizzying vertigo that was to follow. As he ascended, he felt the rope tighten around his neck, blood pushing hotly against his face. He grasped the rope and hoisted himself higher, somersaulting end over end, the rope winding like a snake around his body until there was no more room to climb and he hung and waited, his head pointed toward the earth, his hair brushing gently against his face.
The crow cried again from within the shifting trees. Uncanny, clever bird, the American thought. Rage was his greatest sin. The sparrow-eyed girl had laughed at him. She had laughed at him when he told her he was from Ohio because Ohio meant good morning in Japanese and Uma meant horse and Uma was his mother's name and that was close enough. The sparrow-eyed girl had laughed at him and he had pulled her arm behind her head until he felt the bone splinter beneath the skin and marrow spilled from her mouth, red and frothing like the sea. She had laughed at him; and the Ethiopian was laughing at him as she danced around the scaffold, mocking him with her black face, taunting him with every twitch and shudder of her body.
But the Ethiopian had stopped dancing. She crouched beneath the scaffold, rocking back and forth as she waited for the youth to fall. The crow was insistent and hearing it she answered, craning her neck, her voice weaving into the heavy brocade of the crow's caw. Soon the American would give the word and the youth would fall and she would open her arms as if to catch him, then step away, because that, too, was part of the act.
The American looked up and observed the youth and considered the way his hair glistened in the sun like polished wood. On his order he knew the youth would fall, as he had many times before, tumbling and spinning, arms and legs like spokes on a wheel careening though the sky. And later, the whore would make everything better and he would teach her how to hurt him just enough so that the pain was real and he would confess his sins.
"Voila!" the American said.
Hearing the word the youth let go of the rope and hurtled toward the Ethiopian. The rope snapped tight and shivered as the crow rose into the air and spread its magnificent wings.