Killer, Come Back to Me

The choice news passed from Tattoo to Blimp to Skeleton to Armless to Cyclops to Shorty and on around. Raoul could almost see it go. And he knew that now the matter would be settled; either he’d get the killer or the killer’d get him. Simple. Corner a rat and have it out. But what if nothing happened?

He frequented all the dark places when the sun set. He strolled under tall crimson wagons where buckets might drop off and crush his head. None dropped. He idled behind cat cages where a sprung door could release fangs on his scarred spine. No cats leaped. He sprawled under an ornate blue wagon wheel waiting for it to revolve, killing him. The wheel did not revolve, nor did elephants trample him, nor tent poles collapse across him, nor guns shoot him. Only the rhythmed music of the band blared out into the starry sky, and he grew more unhappy and solemn in his death-walking.

He began walking faster, whistling loudly against the thoughts in his mind. Roger had been killed for a purpose. Raoul was purposely left alive.

A wave of applause echoed from the big top. A lion snarled. Raoul put his hands to his head and closed his eyes. The geeks were innocent. He knew that now. If Lal or Tattoo or Fat Lady or Armless or Legless was guilty, they’d have killed both Roger and Raoul. There was only one solution. It was clear as a blast of a new trumpet.

He began walking toward the runway entrance, shuffling his feet. There’d be no fight, no blood spilled, no accusations or angers.

“I will live for a long time,” he said to himself, wearily. ‘‘But what will there be to live for, after tonight?”

What good to

stick with the show now, what good if the freaks did settle down to accepting him? What good to know the killer’s name. No good—no damned good at all. In his frantic search for one thing he’d lost another. He was alive. His heart pounded hot and heavy in him, sweat poured from his armpits, down his back, on his brow, in his hands. Alive. And the very fact of his aliveness, his living, his heart pulsing, his feet moving, was proof of the killer’s identity. It is not often, he thought grimly, that a killer is found through a live man being alive, usually it is through a dead man’s being dead. I wish I were dead. I wish I were dead.

This was the last performance in the circus in his life. He found himself shuffling down the runway, heard the whirling din of music, the applause, the laughter as clowns tumbled and wrestled in the red rings.

Deirdre stood in the runway, looking like a miracle of stars and whiteness, pure and clean and birdlike. She turned as he came up, her face pale, small blue petals under each eye from sleepless nights; but beautiful. She watched the way Raoul walked with his head down.

The music held them. He raised his head and didn’t look at her.

“Raoul,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

He said, “I’ve found the killer.”

A cymbal crashed. Deirdre looked at him for a long time.

“Who is it?”

He didn’t answer, but talked to himself, low, like a prayer, staring straight out at the rings and the people: “You get caught. No matter what you do, you’re helpless. With Roger I was unhappy: without him I’m worse. When I had Roger I wanted you; now, with Roger gone, I can never have you. If I’d given up the hunt, I’d never have been happy. Now that the hunt is over, I’m even more miserable with what I’ve found.”

“You’re—you’re going to turn the killer in, then?” she asked, finally, after a long time.

He just stood there, saying nothing, not able to think or see or talk. He felt the music rise, high. He heard, far off, the announcer giving Deirdre’s name, he felt her hard fingers hold him for a moment, tightly, and her warm lips kiss him hard.

“Goodbye, darling.”

Running lightly, the sequins all flashing and flittering like huge reflecting wings, Deirdre went over the tanbark, into the storm of applause, her face upward, staring at her ropes and her heaven, the music beating down on her like rain. The rope pulled her up, up, and up. The music cut. The trap drum pattered smoothly, monotonously. She began her loops.

A man walked out of the shadows when Raoul motioned to him, smoking a cigar, chewing it thoughtfully. He stopped beside Raoul and they were wordless for a time, staring upward.

There was Deirdre, caught high in the tent by a white beam of steady light. Grasping the slender rope strand, her legs swung up over her curved body in a great circle, over, up and down.

The ringmaster bawled out the revolutions one by one: “One—two—three—four—!”

Over and over went Deirdre, like a white moth spinning a cocoon. Remember, Raoul, when I go around; the monk’s prayer wheel. Raoul’s face fell apart. Oom mani padme hum. I love, I love you, I love you.

“She’s pretty, ain’t she?” said the detective at Raoul’s side.

“Yes, and she’s the one you want,” said Raoul slowly, not believing the words he had to speak. “I’m alive tonight. That proves it. She killed Roger and ripped our canvas painting in half. She killed Lal.” He passed a trembling hand over his eyes. “She’ll be down in about five minutes, you can arrest her then.”

They both stared upward together, as if they didn’t quite believe she was there.

“Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, forty-five,” counted the detective. “Hey, what’re you crying about? Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-…”

And So Died Riabouchinska

The cellar was cold cement and the dead man was cold stone and the air was filled with an invisible fall of rain, while the people gathered to look at the body as if it had been washed in on an empty shore at morning. The gravity of the earth was drawn to a focus here in this single basement room—a gravity so immense that it pulled their faces down, bent their mouths at the corners and drained their cheeks. Their hands hung weighted and their feet were planted so they could not move without seeming to walk underwater.