The ghost who dared to dream. Part 2

THE GHOST WHO DARED TO DREAM

Part 2: Monsieur Julien's Marvellous Circus

I walked for hours hidden in the first row of trees in the hazy forest, like a scared rat. For hours, I didn't see anyone else in the darkness, even so I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being observed. However, I attributed it to the paranoia, conventional on the one who has lived into four walls his entire life. Only that way I was able to stop myself on cowardly returning on my steps to the orphanage.

Suddenly, I heard laughter and a silencing order. Somebody was following me, now I was certain, I run snaking through the trees to make them lose sight of me, stupidly because it just made me go slower.

I almost fell on top of me multiple times, but I believed I could do it.

Just when my hopes began to rise, I collided with a figure that made me fall. Whoever it was, was quite a small person, given that while I merely stumbled, the other fell onto their back and made a ridiculous pirouette. Somebody else grabbed me by the arms and tried to prevent me from escaping, but it only took me a bit of a struggle to free myself. But before I could even motion for escape, another one held me down. While two of them kept me on my knees on the ground, a third guy got closer to look at me thoroughly.

This one was a boy not much older than me, of thin face, black coarse hair, brown skin covered in dirt and two corroded metal teeth adorning his horrible grin. He put a sack over my head so I could see no more. The two men holding me made me get on my feet and I immediately tried break free of their grip, kicking and throwing my head everywhere. I hit something, right after I heard a screech and felt a hot liquid slide down my forehead.

"My nose!"

I thought this was most definitely the best time to escape, although with the sack over my head I was most likely to hit a tree as soon as I took a step. My best option was to try and take it off to fight. Before I could make up my mind, a hit on my face pulled me out of my possibility evaluation.

"Nikola! Leave him alone, he have every right to get mad!"

It was strange, quite unreal, and almost inappropriate to hear such a plaintiff on a little girl's voice. I heard some murmur that I did not understand and then the same voice ordering them to continue. They pushed me and I walked with them blindly, completely unable to see anything through the bag. I heard more footsteps approaching and got ready to seize any opportunity to get away, hissing like a bristling cat.

"Don't be scared," said the girl's voice, "we ain't gonna hurt you and if later you wanna leave, nobody is going to stop you."

One of those holding me by the arms let out a quiet chuckle. Her reassurance made me angry, did she truly believe me dim-witted enough to believe her?

"You're really strong, y'know, to be a ghost."

"If you are going to free me, what is the point of taking me by force?" I rustled furiously.

"Any other way, you wouldn't come with us."

We walked in silence for a long time, until I heard murmurs from more people.

"Welcome to your new home, ghost."

They took off the sack and I saw something similar to a small village, with a bonfire roaring in the middle, people going from one side to another in strange attires. A circus. I turned to look for the girl, but she had already walked away. I could only see her long, frizzy brick red hair, her white dress and her dirty naked feet walking away. The same moment, a bearded and robust man stepped in front of me, whose reddish hair and general countenance made him look like a viking from the 19th century, even while wearing a cape.

"Sweet God, a ghost in the flesh! I thought I would never get one."

He smiled and took my chin in his stout callous fingers to examine my face, then he stretched out my arms and felt my muscles, "and you're very well preserved."

"And he's very smart and strong, daddy," the girl was back, beaming at me with her hair up and ballet slippers in hand.

The man frowned at the girl, whose face I could finally see. Had I not known my own appearance, perhaps hers would've scared me: her pale skin covered with freckles dark and thick as moles, her eyes were green like the forest and her pale lips looked sickly purple.

"Let go of me," I demanded with such anger that my voice that demons in hell might've heard me and believed me one of their own.

"What a voice! A menacing howl lurking out of the Hades!" He vaguely waved his hand to the others. "Unhand him, this is no way to treat a guest," the bearded man ordered to the two guys still holding me. They obeyed, and the man put a hand on my back to make me walk with him. "Come, ghost, I want to make you an offer that you will be eager to accept. Welcome to Monsieur Julien's Marvellous Circus, boy. Inside Saint Agnese you learned that life is difficult, didn't you? Well, life out here is even worse!"

"How do you know that I come from St. Agnese?" I interrupted abruptly. The old man smirked.

"We heard of your existence from Nikola. He comes from that place too. He wasn't my first rescue from that orphanage, like you are not the last."

"How did you know I would escape today? No one did."

"It's your 16th birthday, son, you'd have to go out whether you wanted to or not."

I frowned, I didn't expect anyone to know my birthday. The man cleared his throat and continued:

"I was saying, in these places it is difficult to earn a living with a conventional aspect --you ought to exploit talents you don't have and renew them over and over again, so people maybe won't get bored and'll give you some coins to eat," he moved his hands in theatrical gestures that accentuated the effect of his words, "but with an aspect like yours, boy, you will earn money even when you sleep."

Perhaps I'd have found myself interested in his proposal if I hadn't still been infuriated over my ridiculously frustrated flight.

"Do you intend for me to remain here and parade myself like a freak?"

A malicious grin spread across the man's face.

"Ain't you one?"

I huffed. Did I truly have any other option? Acquiescent, I agreed to stay and join his freak show. Perhaps, I told to myself, it wasn't so bad --I would have the chance to travel with the circus after all. Julien mentioned that he wanted to travel to America, where the war hadn't left people impoverished enough nor disgusted enough not to be attracted to a freakshow.

Had I not stayed, the very rest could've been avoided.

Immediately after my affirmative, the girl approached me and clasped my hand.

"Come with me, ghost, I'll take you with the others."

"The others?" She dragged me by the hand into the purple tent resting on the peripheric areas of the circus.

Inside, a cold darkness reigned, birthing glooming shadows and spooks among the obscurity.

"Why do you guys never turn the lights on?" she grumbled.

Somebody moved in the back of the darkness and the oil lamps gradually lit up the room. I will never know if my face reflected my surprise, because if so was the case no one let me know: in front of me, the circus' freaks were on full display. A pair of Siamese sisters joined at the back, but of voluptuous figures and identical in their precious features, their delicate makeup and pastel cyan leotards made my body quickly react. Line up next to them, there was a dwarf looking childish, like a three or five year old toddler, pale skin and very blond hair, like a China figurine. Finally, a gorgeous woman with long and thick curly black hair, skin as obscure as a moonless night and eyes so very dark that they seem like violets.

I was struck by freaks' elegance and beauty, sending down my mind the feminine urge to find a mirror and check if I was as well beautiful within my rarity.

"You can see, we haven't many freaks, but they are our main attraction. This two are Ginevra and Griselda, but we present them as the Sun and the Moon. This little guy here is Jack, his stage name it the Dresden Doll Incarnated. And this is Marie, her stage name is The Living Shadow."

The redhead girl beamed at me.

"I'll leave you to meet, you're going to share an act with Marie so she'll explain the rest, I gotta go back to my clients."

I thought they would receive me into their circle with hostility, but the twins gave me beautiful and seductive smirks, approaching me with unexpectedly graceful pacing despite their condition, and both offering me a hand, as if they wanted to force me to already choose one of them. I took both hands and brought them together to my lips.

Then, Jack took two cigarettes out of his pocket, of his elegant little suit and lit them, placing one in his mouth and handing the other to me. I took it to my mouth, not quite sure what to do. I breathed in and choked on the smoke, causing the little boy to laugh.

"I oughta teach you how to smoke properly, brat."

The alcoholic hoarse tones in his childish voice astonished me, and I found it difficult to relate the sound to the body.

Then, Marie walked towards me, her exquisite beauty hit me almost as forcefully as the Ginevra and Griselda's. His eyes were outlined in white ink reminiscing and Egyptian goddess, and her full lips were painted with indigo paste.

The robe she wore was made of ordinary, dirty linen and her slender neck was adorned with a dull brass collar.

"Come on. You will act with me."

Her voice was strangely sweet, difficult to bear on the ear. I followed her further into the tent, where tarps formed divisions that pretended to be rooms. To my surprise, there were four of them.

"Since the boss found me, he's been excruciatingly obsessed with having his own ghost and making an act with a shadow and ghost, you know, an incredibly white guy and an incredibly black one, so he's had a room for you for the past months."

The only thing inside was a bunk bed, but I found the idea of sleeping close to other human beings strangely comforting.

"What does our performance consist of?"

She snorted.

"Basically anything, the only thing that matters is that we contrast our colors. We have to sell Julien's idea to the audience."

Against my better judgement, I huffed too.

"As you can imagine, I don't know what basically anything could be."

She stopped dead in her walk and turned around to face me. Nuisance and irritation blazed in her violet eyes.

"I don't know, ghost, maybe we should perform some sentimental idiotic dance or play romantic stunts."

My surprise must have been showed in my face this time, because that was not at all what I expected to do in a circus. Exhaling an impatient sigh --and I thought I noticed shame too--, Marie pursed her lips and explained:

"Listen, Julien is very passionate, he was a ballet dancer when he was younger, before the war, age and overweight took everything away. He loves theatricality, so we will do every hackneyed thing he chooses for us, and get ready for anything, ghost, and I mean anything because he could make us waltz and have sex all the same in front of the audience."

I couldn't help a laugh.

"That explains why even freaks are beautiful here."

She raised her round face and glared at me with feline eyes. I walked out of the purple tent and saw the ginger girl practicing pointe ballet on a gnawed table.

"Hey," I called. She turned around and smiled at me.

"Met your showmates already?"

"Yeah."

"What you think?"

"Amicable."

"What's that?"

"Nice."

She jumped off the table grinning smugly at her feet.

"Smartsy Ghostsy and his fancy words. My dad's gonna love you."

"Is that a good thing?"

She sneered dancing around me

"They have to be, you know. Beautiful. It's the only rule to get a part here."

I raised an eyebrow, once again wondering if was not monster her.

"What's your name?"

"I ain't have one, my father calls me Girl since birth and the others too."

"And your show?

"I do ballet on the ropes. I'm a whore too, with the rest of the girls here."

"The rest?" Including the freaks?

"All women here are, even Gin and Gris."

"Marie too?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"Yeah. Loaded pigs pay ridiculously big for exotic women, the twins can get more money in one night than the whole the circus in a month."

Life in the circus was definitely better than in the orphanage, I had to put up with some teasing about my condition, but nothing compared to the confinement I experienced in St. Agnese, I could even say that we were a sort of family.

My performances and my poetic personality were ideal to sell melodramatic stories. I had to learn to do gymnastic stunts, to do trapeze and to walk on the rope. Marie and I would waltz on the rope almost every night, sometimes we faked an accident to scare the public and move them with a display of real love by screaming and shedding tears. I enjoyed acting, but Marie detested it because she was terrible. She was somewhat adorable, like a little girl, always reminding me of a grumbling doll.

The seven years I spent in the circus were certainly the most joyous of my life, I had friends, fun and got to see so many places. I even got to own some luxuries like a paint case and a Spanish cape with a wide hood to go out during the day. Most od all, there was Rena and Marie, who reminded me of my long lost Melin.

Rena was Julien's daughter. Since she didn't have a name, I began to call her that. She hated it because she didn't know what it meant and I refused to tell her out of fear of offending her: it was short for renard, meaning fox in French, because of her red hair. She was thirteen, but far from girlhood, she seemed to me as much a woman as Marie, who was nineteen. Even more so.

I made good friends with Julien, he was like a big brother to me, and Jack, despite his looks, took in my eye the role of a father.

Many times I wondered if Marie hated her life in the circus, given that she was always angry and I thought I perceived some candid bitterness in her deep violet eyes, but it took me two years to muster up the courage to ask her.

"Shadow," I called from my little compartment, next to hers.

"What, ghost?"

"Do you hate this life?"

I heard her get up from her bunk and saw her silhouette countered against the warm light that the gas lamp projected on the cloth dividing us.

"What's that about?"

"Curiosity."

"No, Ghost. I can't hate this life, here I've spent the best years of my life."

"How old were you when you got here?"

She spent several seconds in silence and I thought she wasn't going to answer.

"Seventeen."

"A year before me," I pointed out.

"Yes."

"What was your show before me?"

"I was just a prostitute. Sometimes danced with Rena."

"Don't you miss something from your previous life?"

"No. Do you?"

"No."

I did miss something, but I was incapable of bringing Melinos name to a reality where it could shatter all too easily.

Marie slipped under the cloth and entered my booth, looking ready to sleep yet somehow very beautiful.

"What?" I asked puzzled.

"Don't you want to see me?"

"No. Yes. I just didn't expect you to come in."

"I'm cold," she said as if it were an order and stretched out next to me like a cat. My heart raced and I tried put an arm around her, but she pushed me away.

"Make some room. To be so damn skinny, you sure take up a lot of space. And you eat as if there is no tomorrow."

On that bit I realized that she was nervous. I grinned.

"Do you love me?" I asked between sly smiles.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, Romeo, is that you?" she replied faking a sweet voice.

"Answer me," I begged.

"Of course not."

"Like a friend, then?"

"No."

"I think I do love you, Shadow."

Marie turned her face to me and kissed me without passion.

"I'm gonna be twice as expensive for you."

I chuckled and accepted the price by kissing her again.

Sometimes it still shames me to remember that during some of the many encounters after that night, I thought about Rena. I never asked Rena if she hated her life, but I doubt she did, because she, like Marie and I, knew not others ways to live. She might've even been happy.

Over the years I spent in the circus, I became the interpreter and translator of the crew, given my ability to acquire new languages. I travelled all over Europe, and witnessed the horrors of the war, the desperation to survive --and it marvelled me how even the poorest and the most miserable men would cling to life and fight for it. Living in such conditions, I wondered whatever drove them to save and prolong their existences, was life itself worth it?

Julien took us to America as soon as he could, since the war had already devastated Europe and he didn't want us to fall to poverty or death and in the New World, people still had enough money to give away in freak show. America was nothing like my native Italy, and sometimes in spite of myself, I would find my heart longing for home.

Around 1930, however, America was starting to experience the Great Depression, thus we found ourselves back to Europe. The boss wasn't pleased with our incomes, the show was well attended but rich men didn't have the money they used to before the crisis, meaning that the prostitutes of the crew weren't making as much money as they did before. Europe was still struggling with the damages the war caused, and rumours of an upcoming one poisoned the air, but Julien was good with the business --he managed to handle our resources so that we survived like few others to the ravages of the Great War and the Great Depression.

By then, in autumn of 1931, I was twenty-two years old and my condition had improved hardly enough so that my pale hair could be referred to as blonde. Otherwise, I was still a monster. Marie was twenty-five and she got infuriated every time someone reminded her; she was terrified of growing old, even though she still looked exactly like when we met. Marie and I had been dating for two or three years --which didn't stop her from charging me like a common client--, as both us were growing older, I was thinking of maybe marrying her, having a life, maybe move someday get our own place. She detested it every time I mentioned, but I believe that she was like a scared cat, aggressive and gruff to protect itself from harm. For all I know, I might've loved her.

But I had the imperious need to settle down as much as I could, I wanted a home, a wife, children. It was unreasonable that someone like me could live like a normal man, but I wanted the home I never had. At least, that's I told myself back then, now I am not so sure. Marie didn't want the same, and everything I asked her what she did want, she failed to answer. Rena, on the other hand, had just turned nineteen and she loved me madly. She was still beautiful, even with her freckled face, which she was proud of when I met her, but now she was trying to hide it under cheap makeup.

My pride rejoiced to see two beautiful women dispute my affection, but I also felt cruel and guilty: I adored them both and I didn't want to hurt either, but Marie and I didn't have the same dreams, so I decided to leave her and marry Rena. Today, I know that was my mistake.

My years in Saint Agnese were close to forgotten, and with the black sands and Melino But the morning I planned to tell Marie of my decision, she asked me about her.

"How do you know about her?" I asked, terrified.

"You called her in dreams last night. You did it before, your first night here, and some other nights. Sometimes you scream."

I frowned, realizing that I hadn't had a single dream since I left Saint Agnese.

"A friend from my childhood."

She frowned at me in turn. "You miss her," she stated.

I smiled.

"No, how could I, when I have you?"

Did I still love her? Or was it pity? Cruelty, perhaps? I don't think I will ever gather the courage to find the answer.

That very night, I dreamed for the last time in my life the land of the black sands.