The Clown's Philosophy

There is a pattern with the world, just as it is with a sweater, or obsessive flower rows in gardens. With the world, the integral part is the assistant, the comedian before a show, the man of second importance to whom things happen. These are men who live, constantly, with the sensation of a rug being pulled from under their feet. That’s why their brows are always slightly raised, the corner of their mouths a little twitched, and their look is one of indictment. But mishaps, under the guise of surprises, never cease to be one when they come.
Necessary for the safekeeping of the privileged breed, these men are. The privileged breed: the artistic geniuses, the men of capacity and potential who can’t afford to step on banana leaves, or to have their outfits spoilt by stagnant water on the road when a vehicle passes by. The assistants walk by, and make misfortunes less tragic. They persevere to see the silver lining in everything: it’s there, if only you squint a little.


It’s with satisfaction that Baz observes his disquiet fading slowly away with the continuous chatter of the alphabet keys. He brings his fingers down rather severely on them –always does.
A simple case of outpouring. An art, so to say, requiring an effort not unlike that necessary for a musical instrument to master.
He never minds the eyes that are a little too close together, settled under the thick eyebrows, or the nose that’s rather too broad and long, the thick lips and the long jaw that always follow his morning reflections. He wears his hair parted more to the right of his face; long, so that strands of it conceal from view both his ears. The combination of it all, however, makes him hesitant to laugh.
The face already suggests an underlying current of laughter; to confirm it with one is, to him, unthinkable.


A week ago, he had been sitting in a blue velvet tent, quietly engrossed in a circus show.
He found the clown of the previous show on the flying trapeze, and the gymnast of the previous week enduring two pies that landed flat on his face. It’s always more accurate to speak of roles as shoes, and it brought him thorough consolation, then, to think of the many pairs he had stored on his shelf.
Nevertheless, with the switching roles between a clown and a gymnast, and the ever-present possibility of having the rug pulled from under one’s feet, how, indeed, could the man not find himself constantly wobbly?


The clown turned out to be attractive. A clown that, in fact, ceased to be one once the costume was taken off.
Her – the clown’s – body turned out to be not quite so full under the costume, and Baz found himself growing fonder and fonder of it. He didn’t laugh at her jokes. Rightly so, for a face to which a smile was not welcomed.
Her face resembled one of the paintings he remembered to have seen in the school corridor during his student days: easy to become familiar with, therefore difficult to cling to memory.
He admired the ease with which she switched roles – a gymnast to a clown and a gymnast again – and her grace in receiving responses, both applause and laughter.
There were only a few days – those that committed themselves to memory the most, having always reminded him of how that particular painting used to seem on examination days – on which he noticed a slight crease between her eyebrows that didn’t really go away, not even with pies smeared on her face; the crease that made his stomach feel like an active pit of crawling caterpillars.


“You know,” she said in one of those gloomy afternoons as he rubbed cleaning lotion on her face to remove the smudges of red on her cheeks, “I don’t think enough.”
“Of course,” he replied, rubbing harder as the mask started wearing off, “otherwise being a clown is a foolish career choice.”
“I mean it,” she halted his hand, “there’s a friend of mine who absolutely has to know how a movie or a book ends before she starts on one. Play it safe.”
“Uh-huh. So you want to stop those pies landing on your face?”


He found out what the root of the problem was, soon enough. Or more precisely, who. The mystery woman was rather fragile with a knob for a nose – the kind that stood like a challenge, swelling – and a heavy jaw. The upper features of the face, he should be sorry to say, he failed to remember in detail, because his eyes were almost always instantly drawn to that fantastic set of nose and jaw.
He asked her on their first meeting in a well to-do restaurant, quite matter-of-factly, what her problem was with pies and painted faces?
“Oh, it’s not the pies. Don’t you think that someday – in the future, I mean – you’d want to construct the timeline of your life? I wouldn’t want pies as my yardsticks.”
“Ah,” he replied, fighting off the daring nose, “and what do you do?”
“I read.”
“And they don’t lay flat on your face?”
“The value stays with you, you know? It’s not something you remove every night before bed with a cleansing lotion. There’s worth in that.”
The nose loomed larger. In an ancient war scene, this would be a sight the enemy sees on the other side when the sun sets. The horses were edgy, their hooves clicking with the ground; the passengers defiant.
“I know what you mean,” Baz sipped the last drop of his drink, setting the empty glass on the table, then supporting his upper body with his elbow on the table, he leant forward and said, “my Mom cooks brilliant dishes of fish. After she cooks, though, the smell – you know, the rotten fishy smell – never leaves her. Just like you and your books.”
Ah, but the horses suddenly saw something that startled them. Indifferent to their masters, they turned back; the hooves marching poignantly further and further away.


But the circus was deprived of the clown act, and missing one of its gymnasts at his next visit. Nobody knew anything. Vien – the clown – just stopped showing up.
And of course, the typewriter was almost never free from work. A succession of words, then, as if trying to locate the key to the disappearance. In the mode of an untrained detective.
If there was a murder, and an object disappeared from the house of the victim, how would the sequence go?
The object was the primary aim, taken but met with resistance, and murder was necessary. Or the murder happened for a reason obscure in time of investigation, and the object was too incriminating to be left behind?
Which followed which?
The clown and his need.
And so the typewriter went back and forth, letter after letter, furiously clanking, leading nowhere.


Circus watching, meanwhile, had grown to be a habit. A funny thing, habits. Something accidental: stumbling across a book by a particular author in a shelf, a particular brand of toothpaste in a supermarket, or someone in the street…and it teaches you to let go of time, slowly, and persuades you that it’s spent on something worthy.
And the factory stopped the brand; you finished all the books the author had written; the stranger no longer passed through the same street and time hung in the air, refusing to slide.
The furious clanking pierced a small tear through that stale air; cheating it a little, without making it too obvious. Time passed anyway, a bit easier this way.
Back to the tent, a semi-stranger slipped into the seat next to him.
“She’s not coming back,” the stranger said as she shifted into a more comfortable position.
“Oh, you.”
“Yes, me. I found the fish remark offensive.”
“And I found the cleansing lotion remark more than distasteful.”
“I meant it.”
“So did I.”
“No apologies, then?”
“It’s not going to make you feel better. I’m not your problem.” He was ready to leave. The clown act was missing tonight too.
“Do you love her?”
“There wasn’t enough time to know.”
“You don’t,” she stopped. “Do you understand me?”
“How much longer will you wait to slip into that clown uniform and stand there?” He nodded to the ring arena.
“That’s not what I want.”
“It is – it was – and only because that’s what she does. She’s with you, isn’t she? Digging into those books of yours?”
“Don’t be so heated. She spoke of you. Someone with a mind, she said. She said that everyday, and that’s what you kept her for.”
“I have to – “
“We’re the same. Nothing upset me like that dinner. The same, you and me.”
“Hat’s off to you,” he got up to leave, “the same, and you’re one with a genius of a mind.”


Naturally. The man before the show and warm-ups for a life. To whom the absence of a smile, of an applause, is death. There’s no certainty that comes along only with those in the main act and even then, is reception enough?
He walked home and put the typewriter to rest. The absence of sound worked as much wonder as the presence of it.