There was a theater in the East End called the Velvet that was surrounded by factories. Nobody noticed the theater during the day. Women with little kerchiefs on their heads would stand outside on their breaks to smoke a cigarette. But when the sun went down, and the factory workers had gone home, and all the trucks were in garages, the theater lights would come on and that glowing palace was all that seemed to exist on the block.
Rose stepped into the theater. The carpets were a deep burgundy, and the seats were all made out of vermilion velvet. The curtains were such a heavy red that they looked as though they had soaked up the blood from a hundred murders. When the curtains rose, the stage was lit up and seemed like a tiny womb, with the performer tucked inside. The clown on exhibit had an enormous trunk that seemed as long as one that might belong to an immigrant family going across the ocean to the New World.
The trunk held all manner of unusual and extraordinary objects to juggle with. There were bottles that the clown pulled out and spun around quickly. He had colorful balls and pins and a group of butcher knives. Rose wondered if he used these same knives in the kitchen to cut up salami.
But those feats were nothing, as the clown was just warming up. He had some sticks with rags on the ends of them that he dipped into kerosene and proceeded to set on fire. He dipped his white skullcap into some water and then put it on his head. That way his head wouldn’t catch fire if one of the balls of flame chanced to land on it.
He juggled so many at a time that Rose felt like she was hurtling through outer space, passing different constellations. If you were in the audience, you couldn’t help but reflect on all the winking stars immeasurable distances away, which blazed so we’d have something to wish on, and lit up the sky so that we could walk our dogs in the evening without bumping into trees.
His pièce de résistance, which he had worked on for several years before mastering it, was to keep one burning giant ball in the center, with colorful balls spinning around it, creating in essence a map of the universe.
After his performance, the release of anxiety was so intense that he went outside behind the theater to throw up three or four times. Rose met him there. He led her back to his dressing room. He was still so exhausted by his performance that before he could talk he had to weep and weep and weep.
“C’était magnifique. Je comprends que ?a puisse vous vider. That was magnificent. I can see how it could drain you,” Rose said.
“C’est ce que fait Dieu, chaque nuit. That’s what God has to do every night on an infinite scale. He invented the whole universe, and now he has to pay attention to it. Otherwise all the stars will go out one by one. We complain that he sometimes doesn’t get around to the things we want him to, but look up at the sky! Always more spectacular, the people say. Always more spectacular. Les gens en veulent toujours plus.”
“Oui,” said Rose.
She wanted to be a full participant in that extravaganza too.
“Connaissez-vous un clown du nom de Pierrot? He’s so very light on his feet, it sometimes seems as though he is floating above the ground.”
“Il y a quelqu’un qui correspond à cette description au Théatre Magnifique. Go try there.”
Pierrot looked up at the night sky. The North Star was twinkling so bright that it was surely a sign. He wished to find Rose. He never really put much stock in the stars. He rather fancied himself a lucky person. He didn’t feel as though he could impose on the universe and ask for any more favors. And should he find himself needing to make a demand or recommendation to the universe, he would have to be in dire straits before doing so. Although he could not call his situation distressful by any stretch of the imagination, he nonetheless looked up at the big night sky and he asked it for Rose.
41
ON THE FIFTH DAY
The clown performing at the Ocean Theater was wearing a wig with hair that twirled upward in roped braids as if he were submerged underwater. He had a deep-sea-diver outfit on. He looked incredibly clunky and ungraceful as he lumbered across the stage in his flippers.
He climbed up the scaffolding to above the stage. He stood on the tiny ledge, and after attaching two ropes to the hooks that were on the back of his outfit, he dove! Right down he went, and then before he smacked the stage, the complicated system of pulleys attached to the ropes yanked him so that he was able to land on the ground with a certain delicacy. He leaped up again and he floated magically through the air with the slow-motion grace of somebody who is underwater. He flipped around. He did a breaststroke. It was beautiful and ludicrous.
He and Rose sat across from each other at the theater’s café, off the lobby.
“All life began underneath the ocean. So I’m giving people a taste of what existence might have been like before civilization.”
“But we were amoebas and tiny shrimplike creatures. We didn’t start off in deep-sea-diving outfits.”
“We all come into this world with an oxygen tube in our belly button.”
“True.”