IN THE RING

KOLIA ARRANGED TO RETURN TO the tavern the following Monday. Pavel had promised him a ticket for the circus. He kept his word. Kolia’s features, while not particularly attractive, still fascinated Pavel. They seemed to be constantly in flux beneath the surface of his skin. His handshake was firm, his palms rough and callused. Kolia had mentioned his work in the sewers as an explanation for his blackened fingernails. People said that he was born in Kamchatka, that he could read French. A strange character.

Kolia found his seat in the crowd. He was sandwiched between the pillars of a family — on either side of him, a man and a woman were each propping up a child. The children bore a definite resemblance to each other. The mother was cursing the woman who had sold them the tickets and “cut the family in two.” Kolia offered her his seat; the lights dimmed and changed hue. The crowd fell silent, and, for a moment, the world shifted.

After the troupe had made its entrance into the ring, Beria, the tightrope walker, commenced his act. The wire cable suspended high above the crowd had a soul. At its centre was a solid core of hemp. Beria advanced slowly, without any special manoeuvres, balancing with a pole that was much longer than he was tall, until he reached the other end of the cable. Then, proceeding in the opposite direction, he stopped to pay his respects to the guy line that was stabilizing the cable, and at mid-span, he greeted the crowd with an elegant wave, a flourish that most of them would have been unable to reproduce on solid ground. As a finale, he performed an irreverent pirouette, as if he were thumbing his nose at royalty. Beria walked between two invisible walls made of nothing more substantial than the gasps of the public. They were the guardrails he relied upon. A tightrope walker is a resistance fighter. His art lies in the subtle self-control he must exert in his constant struggle against the elements and against his own nature. It is an art anchored in faith and trust in that which cannot be seen.

The moment the Bounines made their first appearance, Kolia started laughing. It was a deep and strange laugh that might have broken the silence like a phlegm-filled cough at a concert, but it went unnoticed in the crowd’s uproar. He felt like standing up and boasting that the white clown was a personal friend of his. Suddenly, he was eight years old, born in Moscow, and everybody loved him.

After the grand finale, Kolia decided to approach the ring. With the most pleasant face he could put together, he caught the attention of a technician who was coiling cables, and, raising a weak smile, asked him if he could see the clown. When asked which one, Kolia replied with Pavel’s full name. The technician retreated to the dressing rooms and found Pavel in the process of removing his makeup.

“Petrov, someone wants to see you. He’s standing by the ring.”

“Brown hair? Not that tall?”

“Yeah. A funny lookin’ guy.”

Pavel extended his hand and invited Kolia to have a drink with him and Bounine. Just before he opened the door to their dressing room, Pavel turned to Kolia as if he were about to say something. Realizing that Pavel was waiting for some response to the evening’s performance, Kolia made it clear that he’d really enjoyed the act and offered his praise.

Bounine was sitting in front of a mirror, stripped to the waist, wiping makeup from his face. He was in a foul mood. He had completely forgotten a part of the act and had been forced to employ some skilful improvising to cover up his memory lapse. The lapses were becoming more and more frequent. It had happened for the first time the previous year — before that, he’d always had an exceptional memory. He could recite all his monologues flawlessly, without skipping so much as a comma. It was clear that he felt like punching someone. Pavel presented Kolia to him nonetheless.

“I was thinking about bringing a dog into the act,” Bounine said, studying Kolia’s physique in the mirror as if he were some type of caricature.

Half of Bounine’s face was still pale, not exactly white, and the other side revealed the natural colour of his skin. He was as charismatic in person as he was in the ring.

“Us and a dog?” Pavel was clearly surprised.

“No . . . me, you, and a dog.”

“It’s already been done, Ilya Alexandrovich.”

“Look, there’s no shortage of students, we’ve got candidates lining up. Why him?”

“You’ll see.”

Bounine’s bluster impressed Kolia. Without turning around, the master asked him his age. Twenty-four.

“You look older than that. With that face, I’d say you were around thirty.”

He asked Kolia what he was doing at the moment, where he came from and where he was living.

“I’m a labourer. I work mostly underground, mainly on the subway.” Kolia was a little wary.

“You’ve got a wife? Kids?” Bounine persisted, taking a sip of wine.

“No. Why?”

Kolia turned towards Pavel, who had removed all expression from his face because the master was still staring at him in the mirror.

Bounine asked him for his employment booklet and flipped through its pages with fingers that were still covered in makeup. There was no sign of military service between Kolia’s employment in Khabarovsk in 1954 and his job in Moscow, which puzzled him. Kolia responded by saying that the doctor who had examined him at the military committee office had given him a medical exemption because of the arthrosis in his hip, which left him limping by the end of the day. He kept quiet about the real reason. His documents contained everything Bounine needed to know.

Bounine interjected, “And you think the circus will be a cake walk? . . . That someone is going to follow you around and tickle your bad hip with a feather?”

Kolia frowned, then realized what Pavel was up to and decided to play along.

“I’ve been performing on stage for three years now,” he said, summoning up as much conviction as he could.

Bounine loved to get under someone’s skin — prodding Kolia was simply a distraction from the evening’s disastrous performance. But it was out of the question that Kolia could be admitted directly into the circus school. The master advised him to start preparing for auditions. And then, if you show an aptitude for any of the disciplines of the circus, yes, we might consider taking you on and training you.

They opened a bottle of apple wine.

In the days following his meeting with Bounine, Kolia began to dream. That was permitted, and it was free.