"Twice in Szeged," the singer said.
"We would have made it to Budapest if it hadn't been for the Russians," said the man who walked on his hands.
"Yes, it was the Russians who removed his shinbones!" said
the dream man.
"Tell the truth," the singer said. "He was born without shinbones. But it's true that we couldn't get along with the Russians."
"They tried to jail the bear," said the dream man.
"Tell the truth," Theobald said.
"We rescued his sister from them," said the man who walked on his hands.
"So of course I must put them up," said Herr Theobald, "and they work as hard as they can. But who's interested in their act in this country? It's a Hungarian thing. There's no tradition of bears on unicycles here," Theobald told us. "And the damn dreams mean nothing to us Viennese."
"Tell the truth," said the dream man. "It is because I have told the wrong dreams. We worked a nightclub on the Karntnerstrasse, but then we got banned."
"You should never have told that dream," the singer said gravely.
"Well, it was your wife's responsibility, too!" the dream man said.
"She was your wife, then," the singer said.
"Please stop it," Theobald begged.
"We get to do the balls for children's diseases," the dream man said. "And some of the state hospitals -- especially at Christmas."
"If you would only do more with the bear," Herr Theobald advised them.
"Speak to your sister about that," said the singer. "It's her bear -- she's trained him, she's let him get lazy and sloppy and full of bad habits."
"He is the only one of you who never makes fun of me," said the man who could only walk on his hands.
"I would like to leave all this," Grandmother said. "This is, for me, an awful experience."
"Please, dear lady," Herr Theobald said, "we only wanted to show you that we meant no offense. These are hard times. I need the B rating to attract more tourists, and I can't -- in my heart -- throw out the Circus Szolnok."
"In his heart, my ass!" said the dream man. "He's afraid of his sister. He wouldn't dream of throwing us out."
"If he dreamed it, you would know it!" cried the man on his hands.
"I am afraid of the bear," Herr Theobald said. "It does everything she tells it to do."
"Say 'he,' not 'it,'" said the man on his hands. "He is a fine bear, and he never hurt anybody. He has no claws, you know perfectly well -- and very few teeth, either."
"The poor thing has a terribly hard time eating," Herr Theobald admitted. "He is quite old, and he's messy."
Over my father's shoulder, I saw him write in the giant pad: "A depressed bear and an unemployed circus. This family is centered on the sister."
At that moment, out on the sidewalk we could see her tending to the bear. It was early morning and the street was not especially busy. By law, of course, she had the bear on a leash, but it was a token control. In her startling red turban the woman walked up and down the sidewalk, following the lazy movements of the bear on his unicycle. The animal pedaled easily from parking meter to parking meter, sometimes leaning a paw on the meter as he turned. He was very talented on the unicycle, you could tell, but you could also tell that the unicycle was a dead end for him. You could see that the bear felt he could go no further with unicycling.
"She should bring him off the street now," Herr Theobald fretted. "The people in the pastry shop next door complain to me," he told us. "They say the bear drives their customers away."
"That bear makes the customers come!" said the man on his hands.
"It makes some people come, it turns some away," said the dream man. He was suddenly somber, as if his profundity had depressed him.