The Circus of Dr Lao and Other Improbable Stories Read online

  . . . Nay, these were the most beautiful women of the world; the whole world, not just the world of today, but the world since time began and the world as long as time shall run. Nor were the wild animals on display at the circus any less sensational than were the girls. Not elephants or tigers or hyenas or monkeys or polar bears or hippopotami; anyone and everyone had seen such as those time after time. The sight of an African lion was as banal today as that of an airplane. But here were animals no man had ever seen before; beasts fierce beyond all dreams of ferocity; serpents cunning beyond all comprehension of guile; hybrids strange beyond all nightmares of fantasy.

  Furthermore, the midway of the circus was replete with sideshows wherein were curious beings of the netherworld on display, macabre trophies of ancient conquests, resurrected supermen of antiquity. No glass-blowers, cigarette fiends, or frogboys, but real honest-to-goodness freaks that had been born of hysterical brains rather than diseased wombs.

  Likewise, the midway would house a fortuneteller. Not an ungrammatical gypsy, not a fat blonde mumbling silly things about dark men in your life, not a turbaned mystic canting of the constellations; no, this fortuneteller would not even be visible to you, much less take yo«r hand and voice generalities concerning your life lines. Anonymous behind the veil of his mystery he would speak to you and tell you of foreordained things which would come into your life as the years unfolded. And you were warned not to enter his tent unless you truly wanted to know the truth about your future, for never under any conditions did he lie about what was going to happen; nor was it possible for you after learning your future to avert in any way its unpleasant features. He absolutely would not, however, forecast anything of an international or political nature. He was perfectly capable of so doing, of course, but the management had found that such prophecies, inasmuch as they were invariably true, had in the past been used to unfair and dishonorable advantage by unscrupulous financiers and politicians: that which had been meant for mankind had been converted to personal gain—which was not ethical.

  And for men only there was a peepshow. It was educational rather than pornographic. It held no promise of hermaphroditic goats or randy pony stallions lusting after women. Nor any rubberstamp striptease act. But out of the erotic dramas and dreams of long-dead times had been culled a figure here, an episode there, a fugitive vision elsewhere, all of which in combination produced an effect that no ordinary man for a long series of days would forget or, for that matter, care to remember too vividly. Because of the unique character of this segment of the circus, attendance would be limited to men over twenty-one, married men preferred; and absolutely no admittance to any man under the influence of liquor.

  In the main tent the circus performance proper, itself diverting beyond description with colorful acts and remarkable scenes, would end with a formidable spectacle. Before your eyes would be erected the long-dead city of Woldercan and the terrible temple of its fearful god Yottle. And before your eyes the ceremony of the living sacrifice to Yottle would be enacted: a virgin would be sanctified and slain to propitiate this deity who had endured before Bel-Marduk even, and was the first and mightiest and least forgiving of all the gods. Eleven thousand people would take part in the spectacle, all of them dressed in the garb of ancient Woldercan. Yottle himself would appear, while his worshipers sang the music of the spheres. Thunder and lightning would attend the ceremonies, and possibly a slight earthquake would be felt. All in all it was the most tremendous thing ever to be staged under canvas.

  Admission 10c to the circus grounds proper. 25c admission to the big top; children in arms free. 10c admission to the sideshows, 50c admission to the peepshow. Parade at 11 a.m. Midway open at 2 p.m. Main show starts at 2:45. Evening performance at 8. Come one, come all. The greatest show on earth.

  The first person to notice anything queer about the ad, aside from its outrageous claims, was the proofreader of the Tribune checking it for typographical errata the night before it appeared in the paper. An ad was an ad to Mr. Etaoin, the proofreader, a mass of words to be examined for possible error both of omission and commisson, manner and matter. And his meticulous, astigmatic, spectacle-bolstered eyes danced over the type of this full-page advertisement, stopping at the discovery of transposition or mis-spelling long enough for his pencil to indicate the trouble on the margin of the proof, then dancing on through the groups of words to the end. After he had read the ad through and corrected what needed correcting, he held it up at arm’s length to read over the bigger type again and ascertain whether he had missed anything at the first perusal. And looking at the thing in perspective that way, he discovered that it was anonymous, that it carried on endlessly as to the wonders of the show but never said whose show it was, that never a name appeared anywhere in all that overabundance of description.

  “Something’s screwy,” reflected Mr. Etaoin. And he took the ad copy to the Tribune advertising manager for counsel and advice.

  “Look here,” he said to that gentleman, “here’s a whole page of hooey about some circus and not a word as to whose circus it is. Is that O.K.? Is that the way it’s supposed to run in the paper? Generally these circus impresarios are hell on having their names smeared all over the place.”

  “Let’s see,” said the ad manager, taking up the copy. “By God, that is funny. Who sold this ad, anyway?”

  “Steele’s name’s on the ticket,” offered the proofreader.

  Advertising Solicitor Steele was summoned.

  “Look here,” said the ad manager, “there aint any name or nothing on this ad. What about that?”

  “Well, sir, I don’t know,” said Steele vaguely. “A little old Chinaman brought the copy in to me this morning, paid cash for the ad, and said it was to run just exactly the way it was written. He said we could use our judgment about the type face and so on, but the words must be exactly the way he had ‘em. I told him O.K. and took the money and the ad, and that’s all I know about it. I guess that’s the way he wants it, though. He was so insistent we mustn’t change anything.”

  “Yeah, but doesn’t he want his name in there somewhere?” persisted the proofreader.

  “Damn if I know,” said Steele.

  “Let it ride just the way it is,” ruled the manager. “We got the money. That’s the main thing in any business.”

  “Sure must be some show,” said the proofreader. “Did you guys read this junk?”

  “Nah, I didn’t read it,” said Steele.

  “I aint read an ad in ten years,” said the manager. “I just look at ‘em kinda; I don’t read ‘em.”

  “O.K.,” said Mr. Etaoin, “she goes as is then. You’re the boss.”

  The next person to notice something unusual in the page display was Miss Agnes Birdsong, high-school English teacher. Two words in it bothered her: pornographic and hermaphroditic. She knew what pornography meant, having looked it up after reading a review of Mr. Cabell’s Jurgen. But hermaphroditic had her at a loss. She thought she suspected she knew what it meant; she detected the shadows of the god and the goddess, but their adjectival marriage left her bewildered. She pondered a little, then reached for her dictionary. A guardian of the language could do no less. The definitions left her wiser but not sadder. She returned to the ad to wonder further what a fugitive vision seen through a peephole would be like. She pondered upon the conjuring up in a stuffy circus tent of an erotic dream of a long-dead day. She wished momentarily she were a man. She thought, and quickly slew the thought, of dressing up like a man and attending that peep-show. “I’ll go and see the parade,” compromised Miss Agnes Birdsong.

  The children of Plumber Rogers saw the ad while they were searching for the comics. It was a tremendous occasion. A circus in town that very day and they hadn’t even known it was coming. A parade in two hours that would pass two blocks from the Rogers house. Clowns. Elephants. Tigers. Calliopes. Bands. Horses. Fanfare and pomp. The yellow glare of Abalone took on a golden glow for title children of Plumber Rogers, for a circus w
as in town.

  “Now, don’t go getting all excited, you kids,” said the plumber uneasily. “I don’t know whether you’ll get to go or not.” (He hadn’t had work since the first day of the depression.) “I don’t think it’ll be much of a circus anyway.”

  He took the paper from them and read the ad for himself. . . . Eleven thousand people would take part in the spectacle . . . “Why, that’s a goddam lie!” said Plumber Rogers, “There aint hardly that many people in Abalone.”

  “Oh, John,” said Mrs. Rogers, shocked; “you oughtn’t to talk that way before the children.”

  But John wasn’t listening. He was reading about the women in the circus.

  ‘Tell you what; let’s go, Sarah,” he said. “The kids haven’t seen anything for a long time. Maybe something’ll turn up in the way of work pretty soon. These hard times can’t last much longer.”

  At nine o’clock the chief of police read the advertisement. He turned to the desk sergeant. “Say, I didn’t know there was going to be a circus in town today. Did you know anything about it?”

  “Naw,” said the sergeant. “I don’t pay no ‘tendon to circuses anyway. I aint been to one since I was a kid. Never did like the damn things a whole hell of a lot anyway.”

  The chief phoned the city clerk’s office. “Say, about this circus that’s advertised in the paper this morning. I didn’t know nothing about it till just now I read about it. They got a permit, do you know?”

  He listened awhile. “Yeah . . . yeah ... no ... I guess so ... I don’t know .. . yeah ... no ... oh, sure . . . yeah . . . yeah ... no ... uh huh. Good-by.”

  “Well?” said the desk sergeant.

  “The clerk claims an old Chink came in and got a permit for a circus just before quitting time last night. Said the Chink had the owner’s written consent to use the vacant lot for the show.”

  “Well?” said the desk sergeant.

  “Well, you send a couple of guys out there this afternoon to look the joint over,” said the chief. “I guess it’s all right, but it seems kind of screwy to me anyway. Did you ever hear of a Chink running a circus before?”

  “Aw, I aint paid no ‘tention to circuses since I was a kid,” said the desk sergeant.

  A traffic officer of the railroad read the ad at seven-thirty while he was eating breakfast just before going to work. Behind one of his ears a pimple loomed temptingly, ripe for a squeezing. His hair was dryish and thinnish and untidy and brownish and needed further combing. His flesh was the flesh of one neither young nor old, but more old than young, more repulsive than tempting. Cannibals might have eaten him; shipwrecked mariners never. An undiscerning woman might have loved him; a cinema queen never. He wasn’t a very good traffic officer; he might have made a failure of the insurance business. Heaven perhaps could comfort him; this world never. His two young sons sometimes would wonder how his hands would look in handcuffs, his feet in ballet slippers, his nose in a stein of beer. He read the ad uneasily, remarking to his wife petulantly:

  “Here’s a damn circus in town. But it never came over the railroad; must have its own trucks. Just some more business we didn’t get. By George, there’s lots of it we don’t get any more. First thing I know they won’t be needing traffic men on the line any more. Then what in helTll we do?”

  “Oh, now, don’t start worrying,” said his wife, “till you’ve got something to worry about.”

  A state quarantine inspector came in from his nightly vigil at the bug station out on the California highway and at breakfast in a restaurant met a fellow-inspector from the bug station on the New Mexico highway. They saw the ad in the restaurant paper.

  “Did you see any circus come by your place last night?” asked Inspector Number One.

  “Nope,” said Inspector Number Two.

  “Neither did I. It must have come in over the railroad, I guess. If you aint got nothing to do this afternoon, let’s go to the damn thing.”

  “Awright,” said Inspector Number Two. “I kinda like the goddam things.”

  A lawyer who prided himself on his knowledge of history and religion read the ad and bogged down at the “long-dead city of Woldercan” and the “fearful god Yottle.” He went to his encyclopaedia to refresh his memory. Neither city nor deity could he find. He wasn’t sure about Bel-Marduk either, so he looked him up, too. Bel, however, was there. “Yottle .. .” thought the lawyer, “Woldercan ... baloney; somebody’s been making up a lot of stuff. Fooling the people all of the time. Wonder what a circus conception of a god previous to Bel-Marduk would be like. Oh, Lord, what’ll people think of next? Believe I’ll go to the darn thing. Can’t do any worse than bore me to death.”

  A widow, a Mrs. Howard T. Cassan, read the advertisement at quarter of ten. “. . . the midway will house a fortuneteller . . . veiled in mystery . • . prophecies invariably true . . .” Mrs. Cassan always went to fortunetellers. When none was available she cast the cards or seanced with ouija. She had had her future foretold so many times that in order to fulfill all the forecasts she would have to live ninety-seven more years and encounter and charm a war-strength regiment of tall, dark men. “I’ll go and ask this man—let’s see—yes, I’ll ask him about that oU well I dreamed about,” said Mrs. Howard T. Cassan.

  Two college youths from back East, Slick Bromiezchski and Paul Conrad Gordon, at the moment in Abalone, Arizona, after an outing in old Mexico, read the ad and decided to see the circus.

  “Let’s take in that peepshow,” said Slick.

  “You’re damn right; and we’ll take it in cockeyed drunk, too,” said Paul. “Refusing admittance to men under the influence of liquor is a challenge no Sigma Omicron Beta can overlook.”

  Mr. Etaoin, the Tribune proofreader, conned the ad again at his breakfast at ten-thirty to see if he had overlooked any errors in it the night before. Finding none pleased him. He regarded the page fondly, marking the emphasis gained by the use of white space around the big black type, commending the restrained use of italics, admiring the thin Goudy caps and small caps. The sense of what he looked at piqued him. “Wonder what kind of show it is?” thought Mr. Etaoin. “Believe I’ll go to the thing.”

  Mr. Larry Kamper read the ad cursorily in a cast-aside Tribune as he lounged under the palm trees in the park by the railroad station waiting for a freight train to leave Aba-lone. Larry knew not what train he was waiting for, nor in which direction it might be going, nor where he would get off. But he didn’t mind. He had recently been discharged from the army, still had a little money, was reasonably his own master and comparatively free from worry. His last permanent address had been Company E, 15th U.S. Infantry, American Compound, Tientsin, China. He had been discharged at Fort Mason after his return to America on an army transport, had been paid all that was due him, and now was touring the great Southwest, a land hitherto out of his ken, on sidedoor Pullmans. So he lounged under the palm trees in the park near the railroad station, waiting for a freight train to go in either one direction or another, and cursorily read the ad in the cast-aside Tribune, And, lo, upon the world-weary traveler there fell a pall of nostalgia, and waveringly a ghost cry from the bones of his dead youth smote his ears: he had not seen a circus for ten years; to be a little boy again; to tremble at the sight of strange animals; to recapture the simple thrill of wonderment: that would be pleasure; that would be good. Larry the infantryman, Larry the booze-fighter, Larry the whorechaser, Larry the loudmouthed, read the ad and longed for his boyhood. And presently he got to his feet and wondered what time it was and started for the circus grounds.

  Six blocks down Main Street Larry Kamper encountered the parade. Realizing he was too early for the show, he shouldered his way through the mass of Mexicans that cluttered the curb to get a look at the procession.

  He almost laughed when he saw it. Only three frowzy little beast-drawn wagons, the first driven by an old Chinaman, the second by a pale bearded man, the last by a Jewish-looking fellow with a cap of goat horns on his head. There was a big coiled
grey snake in the Chinaman’s wagon, a bear in the second wagon, a green dog in the last.

  “Hey,” said a man standing beside Larry, “what sort of animal is that thing pulling the first cart there?”

  Larry looked and saw a horse bearing on its forehead a long thin white horn.

  “Just some fake,” said Larry. “What d’you call them things? Singlehorns? That aint it. Monohorns? Naw . . . uh . . . unicorns? That’s it. Unicorn. Fellah took a horse and made a unicorn out of it by pasting a horn on its head, I guess.”

  “Yeah, but that aint no horse like any ever what I see,” said the man. “Look at thet there tail. Ever see a horse with a tail like that critter’s got?”

  “Well, I don’t know a hell of a lot about horses,” said Larry. “I been in the infantry six years. But it aint no unicorn; I know that, ‘cause there aint no unicorns, nor ever was.”

  “Well, sir, that thing aint a horse either,” said the man. “I been boy-raised with horses, and I can tell ‘em when I see ‘em; and that aint no horse.”

  “I guess it’s a freak of some kind then,” said Larry. And he also said: “Well, Jeesis, what’s that thing driving the last wagon?”

  The man looked and said: “Why, it’s just a feller with some goat horns on his head. Another fake, I reckon.”

  “I never seen a man like that before,” said Larry. “Look at his feet.”

  “What’s the matter with his feet?”

  “Aw, he pulled ‘em down too quick. He had ‘em up on the dashboard for just a second. Had awful funny-looking shoes on, if you could call ‘em shoes. Look at his face; ever see a face like that before?”

  “Sure,” said the man; “hell of a lot of ‘em. What’s wrong with his face?”

  “I dunno,” said Larry. “The whole thing’s screwy, anyway. Circus parade with only three wagons! My Gawd. Hey, what’s that animal in the last wagon?”