Entertain Us

She stepped into the light; grace and beauty exuberating. Her velvet dress snuggled tight against the contours of her slim body. A hand rose towards her. She rose on her toes, swirled around and nestled into his arms. He was of the same height as her and almost as lithe. He wore clothes of the same color and cut and might as well have been her brother. They looked at us and smiled as loud music played through cheap speakers.

Two white silk robes of immense length poured down from the ceiling about three stories high. They wrapped their arms around it. Their bodies, frozen in a posture, lifted in perfect unison and hovered above us like superheroes just as their clothes and looks had proclaimed them to be.  

I slid back into my chair to keep a good look at the flying figures. They spiraled, they glided, and they danced and fused into one another; all in a rhythm. At times they would rise still higher and then drop by a dozen feet. 

A movement in the ground caught my eye. There in the dark, six men held on to a rope that passed through a pulley in the ceiling to connect with the silk robes. It was they who controlled the dancer’s elevation by pulling and slackening the rope. The assumptions were: they would not let the rope go, the rope would not snap, the couple would not slip; for there was no safety net under the dancers. 

The show ran its course as expected, and they were lowered. I studied her painted face and her wooden smile. She bowed and rose up. With the glaring spotlights focused on her, she would not have seen the near-empty galleries. With the music still on, she would not have heard the scarce claps. The fixed expression on her face remained. I did not clap.

As they turned and scudded off the stage, the announcement repeated, "Circus would move out of your town on the 6th of Feb."

Now the curtains parted, and two dwarfs came in with buckets and other props. As the curtain fell back, I caught a glimpse of her wrapping herself up with a robe. Her performance had been a success.

In the evening, when all is done, I presumed these gypsies celebrated by entertaining each other. Perhaps the fire breathers started a campfire, and the magicians made food out of thin air. Perhaps the Elephants brought in trays of cold drinks in their tri-cycles that were distributed safely by the jugglers. In the end, the jokers made everyone, including her, laugh. They did this for fun, and perhaps they all had a life that they eventually returned to. Perhaps she went back to her village and her school. For now, though, she was just leaving town on the 6th of Feb.