ACT ONE

Ho ho, nearly got him that time, fat old fart. Maybe I’ll get into trouble with Mr B, but it’s worth it. Another salvo in my long-term campaign. It’s all down to artistry, isn’t it? I have it by the bushel-load and he doesn’t have an ounce of it in all that puffed-up little body. Simple. So it’s only a matter of time. But Lord knows, I get impatient.

Take the chair routine. We’ve been doing it for years. He comes onstage as Napoleon, tries to climb onto a chair, it’s too big for him. So then I come on as a servant with a folding camp stool. I set it down for him and it’s just the right height. He gives me a distant nod and begins to lower himself over the stool. At the same time, I creep up close behind him. Grab stool, whisk it away, Napoleon’s bum falls onto the floor to a crashing discord from Franz’s piano. Up he jumps, bewildered, but I’ve retreated behind the wardrobe and stand winking to the audience with a finger to my lips. Napoleon inspects the rogue stool from every angle, sets it up again, begins to lower his bottom. Out I jump: grab, whisk, crash. Several times, we do it. Everybody hollers to Napoleon to look out, but he hears them too late.

Oldest trick in the book, I reckon. But they laugh every time, harder and harder, until tears cascade down their faces. Why, I ask you? No thanks to Napoleon. He does it just the same way every time. Anybody can do that affronted-dignity stuff, legs in the air like a dead canary on its back. Me, I call the changes. Every audience is different, so why shouldn’t every performance be different? I always remove the chair at exactly the same moment. But sometimes, I lift it high; sometimes, I knock it sideways; sometimes, very slowly and gently, I pull it back, so it looks as if for once his bum will land on the right place — and then whisk, crash, shrieks and bravos guaranteed.

I may be young still, but it’s taken me a long time to get this right. I know I had a life before, on Ma and Pa’s farm, and I had good times with Roddie, but it was like I was a little runt calf, no good for beef or milk, and didn’t exist as a man until I was a performer. Started at fifteen in Mr Lillie’s travelling circus as Tiny George, the Smallest Man in God’s Creation. I’ve heard so often how Old Fatso got a head start, learning his trade as a young boy, strutting up and down for Mr Barnum on a gilded-frame looking glass on the floor by the marble fireplace. Well I didn’t have fire or looking glass, just a broken hand mirror I’d found under the bleachers in the Big Top, and I didn’t waste time strutting; any fool can strut. No, I stared into that mirror and practised my comical faces. Eyebrow up, cheek out, tongue sideways, nose scrunched, upper lip curled, lower lip thrust. Thirty-two faces I do, each one quite different, but when I’m firing they flow into one another, a nimble dance of the features. And the audience, God love them, they know the Commodore is silently telling them more than the most eloquent of orators, and every one of those grimaces kills them dead. And that’s before I’ve even moved or opened my mouth or beaten my drum. Don’t get me started on that.

But if the audience gets it, why don’t the people who run the shows? Old Turkey-jowls — beg pardon, I should say Mr Lillie — was hopeless. Always wobbling and gobbling on about propriety and not offending ladies and gents or ministers of religion. He killed me dead, and I don’t mean the laughing kind. Take that great act I had worked out with my big brother Roddie and me. It went like this: all the punters paid to come into my booth to see Tiny George, and what they saw was Roddie, sitting still on my chair. And so they began to murmur, then grumble, then shout.

Tiny George, my eye, this fellow ain’t tiny, he’s just short. Where’s the boss, we’ve been had, we want our money back!

And just when the booth was steaming up with their fury I came running in from the back, pulling up my pants and looping on my braces.

‘What’s up, can’t a fellow answer a call of nature without starting a riot? Gee but I’m running hot, musta been those fancy chilli beans for luncheon,’ and down the pants went again and six or so comical faces and a sudden hush and Roddie with his hands over his eyes and everyone wondering, is Tiny George actually going to poop right in front of us on his little bit of red carpet? And then an explosion and I ran round the booth with real smoke coming out of my bottom (don’t ask, trade secret), and Roddie chasing me with a bucket of water, and the punters howling, not with rage but with joy. And next day the queue to my booth stretched all the way across to the next potato field.

But after two days Mr Lillie stopped us, said he wouldn’t permit such vulgarity, it would get us closed down. Up your fundament, Turkey-jowls. If you could see me now. Who cares about touring New Hampshire when you can tour the world?

I remember when Mr Barnum rescued me from Mr Lillie despite all his gobbling, dubbed me Commodore, gave me a nut-shaped coach and hired me to perform at the American Museum for thirty thousand dollars, so they said (it was actually twelve dollars a week plus perks to begin with, but he wanted to make me sound priceless), and I thought at last I was going places. How nervous I was all the same, how keen to meet his star protégé, the great General Tom Thumb, performer for the Queen of England, the rage of London society. The excitable French nation had thronged to behold this darling of Nature’s handiwork. And how New York roared for him! Oh, he was suave, and brighter than his polished buttons. They didn’t threaten to pop off his swelling weskit in those days. And I thought he was kind to me, and delighted to meet a little man like himself. I kept mum about one thing, though: I was just a shade shorter than he was, and that perked me up no end, for I was still the Smallest Man in God’s Creation.

But my awe at the General was nothing compared to my prostration on first beholding Miss Lavinia Warren. Oh, that I were a poet, to praise her alabaster complexion, raven hair, musical voice, rosy lips, divine form … In short she was beauty unsurpassed, made for none but me, and with her first smile at me I felt my heart leap up and land in a sweet net of chains that I understood at once would never loosen. But dare I speak my love? One tiny gesture of encouragement would embolden me. And after weeks of growing pale in her presence, and trying nevertheless to act the comic rascal that everyone thought I was, finally it came. She gave me a diamond and emerald ring. It was a present from Mr Barnum that did not quite fit her, she made plain for propriety’s sake; he had said he would give her another instead. But I knew what she meant — or thought I did.

In the next few days I hid away with my old cracked mirror and practised my thirty-third face, the hardest I had ever attempted. Sincere, serious, ardent but respectful, and all the harder because it had to express in perfectly winning balance my real turmoil of feelings. Of course I practised words too, but it was the face and the gestures I had to get right. There would be a chance, soon. Several of the company were invited to Iranistan, Mr Barnum’s house in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a weekend, and I would come down on the evening train after my show at the American Museum, arriving at eleven o’clock. Over the weekend, I felt sure I’d figure out some way to meet with Miss Warren alone. All we needed were a few minutes. Bliss was within my grasp, and I could scarcely stop myself cartwheeling upon my little stage at the evening levee. Even so, there was some extra spark in me. I had never heard my audience roar so.

As my carriage came up the driveway to Iranistan, my whole body quivered at the sight of the brightly lit cluster of Oriental minarets and pleasure domes, modelled as I had heard on the Brighton Pavilion in England. Here was a palace fit for a princess, and I dared to cast myself in the role of the wooing prince. I’ve never felt so wound up, not even in those moments before I first met President Lincoln. I bounded out and rang the doorbell, expecting a servant to let me in, for despite those glowing lights I thought the company would have retired for the night. But it was my angel herself who opened the door, all pink from sitting by the fire, and just behind her in the hallway, even more flushed, stood Charlie. No one else, it seemed, was up. These two had been sitting in the drawing room all by themselves. I looked from one to another. Lavinia’s violet eyes were wide and glistening — were those tears? Of despair? Happiness? — while Charlie shuffled and fidgeted and studied the golden tiles beneath his feet. I could hardly draw breath. All those pleasure domes and minarets above my head were thrumming and pressing down on me with some barely suppressed secret.

What could I do? I went to bed and slept not a wink. I think I knew even then what had happened. Lavinia was civil to me all weekend, but it was as though an invisible veil had descended between us. A few days later, Mr Barnum called me into his office and told me of her engagement to Charlie. What incensed me most was that Mr Barnum made a game of it, called it a prank of Lavinia’s, when it was clear that all were quite serious. He even suggested I should court Lavinia’s sister Minnie, but how could I ever look at another woman? And even if I could, Minnie might be pretty enough in her scatterdemalion way, but she was one of those minxes who could always uncover a man’s heart, who would know whether it was hers or another’s, whereas Lavinia, I believe now, never had any idea of the golden chains that bind my heart over and over. The end of those chains was in her little hand, is still there, and with one tug … But of course she has never tugged.

I congratulated the happy couple. I had to find my thirty-fourth face, the rejoicing man, and that was devilish hard. The greatest ordeal was their wedding. I agreed to be best man, out of some instinct, perhaps, to watch over my darling; but the only way I could get through it was with the help of my best man at that time, the five-star brandy bottle. The bottle also helped me sleep, perform, sleep, perform, sleep. That was my life then. I prided myself on my thirty-fifth face: the sober man. But I couldn’t disguise the reek of brandy on my person.

Around this time, Mr Barnum and Mr Bleeker together began to devise a touring show that would star all four little people. Apart from some brief levees, it was the first time I had appeared with Charlie on stage, and I saw at once that he was not a natural performer. He had to learn every line, every gesture. Spontaneity and the felicitous ad lib were quite beyond him. Of course his stiff, pompous bearing was funny in itself, and the audience indulged him, but he hadn’t the faintest notion of how to take up what he had and build on it. I thought about teaching him the rudiments of the comic art, but was sure he would never take instruction from such an upstart as myself. And then I had a better idea. I would work on my own act, my own personae, my Dandy Pat and my Captain Jinks and my Commodore, and polish them until they shone brighter than my angel’s diamonds. I would study every means to win my audience, from grizzled miners to lords and ladies, from jaded critics to cheeky children. I would sweep all before me with the dazzling force of my comicalities. And what would happen to Charlie? Left stranded on stage, flapping and gasping, a milky puffer fish. All, all would adore me — including the one whom I adore above all.

It was not something to be done quickly, and besides I had to be wary, for Mr Barnum and Mr Bleeker did not wish their star to be upstaged, and Charlie himself would be furious if he ever got wind of it. But it’s amazing what you can do by stealth. An encore here, a drum roll there, a wink, a nudge, a complicity with my followers that I play second fiddle to the greatest fool in show business. I build on it, little by little. And I have an accomplice.

No, not Rodnia, who for so long was my straight man and my protector, hoisting me up on his boulder-shoulders, defending me from the bullies and Lillies of this world. Ever since I was a mite, he’s looked out for me, taking on ruffians twice his size, getting knocked over and coming right back at them until they just can’t take his persistence and hobble off. Roddie has been a good brother to me, no doubt about that, but sooner or later, a fellow requires more than brute strength, a fellow has to move on from family. No, my ally is Ned Davis, a rogue if ever there was one, a man who practises only one face, but a fine one. He knows the art of appearing respectful and insolent at the same time. He knows what it is not to be appreciated for his skills, for Mr Barnum has never promoted him beyond agent. How he worships Mr Barnum, and yet he says it’s as if the man just whisks by him and can’t see him. There’s nothing like being invisible to stoke a fellow’s fires of cunning and vengeance. Sometimes Ned talks of the Gauls and their guerilla raids on the Romans, and I haven’t the foggiest how an uneducated fellow like Ned knows of such things; at first I thought he meant the Gauls were a tribe of apes, but he is a great picker-up of info, and he bids me think of myself as a guerilla, all stealth and patience. He is my touchstone, my judge of the parodic art, and he encourages me to make more and more daring challenges, and rattle Old Fatso’s complacency, until I am at last the conquering hero, the prince who enters the golden-domed palace and claims his rightful prize.

And it was Ned who told me what Mr Up Himself did with that young woman in the mud by the Yarra Yarra, and that means I have the measure of a man’s weakness, which is what every conquering hero needs.

So I bide my time. What I must never do now is think of Old Fatso Up Himself and his good lady wife in private, for then I take out my trusty pistol Widowmaker from under my pillow and hold it in one hand and the cracked mirror in the other and I point Widowmaker at the mirror and I see the thirty-sixth face, a face I have seen nowhere but in my worst dreams.