Top of the Tree
Created | Updated Nov 5, 2003
I was very young when first I met the Showman
The tentpoles were taller then. The canvas vault of the Big Top was proud and immense and pristine-white.
Maybe they used to put something in the greasepaint in those days. The smells of the Circus were somehow headier, earthier. The lights were brighter. The air sang with a different and crisper tension.
And more than all else there was the applause. I can remember what it sounded like back then, when I craved it for myself. It reverberated in my spine.
One day, I knew, the Trapeze would be my own. The snap of the arc, the creak of the hawser. Its perfect, reckless geometry with me at its centre.
Every neck would crane.
Every mouth would gape.
Every heart would stop.
For me above.
For me alone.
Yes, indeed, the lights were brighter then. So bright, in fact, that I could never see beyond the confines of the Ring. The audience were out there, of course, and they were numerous and noisy, but I never saw their faces.
And I didn't care. They weren't really people. The details of their lives didn't matter at all, just as long as they were there for me.
Even when I reached that heady platform atop the pole, I didn't notice anything. Not at first. You can see much more from there, I know that now, but at the beginning the adrenalin clouded my senses.
There was only the gleaming bar that marked the further swing, sharp and clear at the very limits of my reach. Success and fear make a strong cocktail, and I never doubted that Glory and Oblivion were just a fingernail apart.
And then there came a day when everything changed.
It wasn't the crowd that was different. That was as large and expectant as ever.
And the further swing was in its usual place, though perhaps it seemed a little nearer now.
The spotlights began to swivel at the precise moment I knew they would.
I anticipated the start of the drumroll exactly.
Suddenly, it was all so familiar, so certain, so routine.
I finally realised that I was King of My World, unassailable on my lofty throne.
It was then that I looked down.
They supposed afterwards that my nerve failed. They were utterly wrong, of course, but what was the point in arguing? Nerves no longer had any part in this. I could do it, pure and simple. I had done it a thousand times before. It was a job. There was no surprise that the ground was so very far away.
It was what I saw down there that changed everything. The audience were there, row upon row of them, and everyone of them was a clown. Their smiles, their pop-eyed wonderment were simply painted on. They were just an extension of the Circus.
And the Showman, even in his splendid Ringmaster's outfit, was tiny and ridiculous from up there. I saw him flick the switch that turned on the applause. He looked bored, and he picked his nose abstractedly.
It was disillusionment, not fear, that cost me the breadth of a fingernail that afternoon. As I plunged downwards, I knew suddenly that I would not die. The net flexed and yielded, accommodating me. It was no big deal. I rolled off it, and looked around me with new eyes.
The crowd seemed neither confused nor disappointed. Failure seemed to appeal to them, somehow. But the Showman was already exhorting a lithe and tight-lipped young man to climb the ladder. My successor sneered as he passed.
I heard the cheers for him as I approached the door. He had claimed the further swing, drinking his cocktail of private terror and pride. Perhaps it was fortified by a dash of my imagined shame.
To my surprise, I felt no shame, but no-one so much as looked at me as I left the Circus. They were all absorbed by a ritual of which I was no longer part. The Show Would Go On.
That's all I remember, I'm afraid. I've often tried to recall my true feelings as I stepped through the door, but something outside distracted me.
The trees are tall out here. The sunlight is bright and the air sings with birds. The vault of the sky is proud and immense and pristine-blue.
