Mr Caprice’s World–famous World Fair

MR CAPRICE WAS OLD ITALY. He believed in the Spirits, and when he saw the money float from his fingers and rise into the air, glittering like gold dust–motes beneath the red and white awning of the ticket booth, he thought that the Spirits had come to take payment for some of the bad things he had done.

So he decided to move his World Fair to the ends of the earth. To a land where there was honey in the milk, and where the coast was made up of beaches strung together like a chain of pale crescent moons. There was no trouble getting in to New Zealand. There weren’t many carnivals and travelling circuses. Plenty of people were eager to devour them.

Milan had heard that the new land was covered in sheep, and sure enough, that was the first thing they ate: mutton, stewed up with onions. He lived in a caravan with his mother, her boyfriend Roman, his sister Bella, and his stepsisters Bettina and Bianca. Milan did not belong to Roman, and Bettina and Bianca did not belong to Milan’s mother. It was only Bella that they shared.

The children were Carnival Brats, always getting underfoot. Brats came and they went, and sometimes Mr Caprice wondered if they sprang from the greasy confetti that he was in the habit of pulling from his pocket and scattering across the ground when he shook out his hanky.

They were all over everything. All over the merry–go–round that looked like a big revolving birthday cake, with mirrors and fake jewels and lights on it instead of lollies and icing. Poles twisted upwards through the horses like candles, ready to light. It started spinning backwards after a fight between Milan and Bettina, after Bettina had pushed Bella. Milan and the others jumped off, but Bettina’s hair became caught in the bridle of one of the painted ponies, and it dragged her up and down, up and down. Bianca clung to her hand.

She and Bettina called out to The Merry–go–round Man to make it stop, but the box in the middle was empty. Either he’d gone for a cigarette, or he’d never been there at all. Soon, they were spinning backwards so fast that their mouths blurred into their ears.

Milan’s mother came running from the ticket office when she saw Bella falling, and she saw what was happening to the older girls. Calmly, she went to the side of the merry–go– round and pulled the emergency lever. It lurched to a stop, and Bianca and Bettina were jerked loose. They tumbled off the side and onto the ground. Bettina was promptly sick on Mr Caprice’s shiny black shoes. And Mr Caprice realised that he couldn’t hide from the Spirits. They had found him at the very ends of the earth.

There were other strange incidents. Such as when his big wheel jammed up for two hours, and then started again for no particular reason, as smoothly as a marble rolling across glass.

When it happened, Bettina and Bianca had just received their first communion. They wore wispy veils with white butterflies in them, and beautiful white dresses. Bettina had persuaded Roman to take them up on the rusting pink Ferris wheel with the gaudy coloured lights. This was a treat even for the Carnival Brats, because it went up so high that the people who rode to the top could scrape the cream off the moon with their fingers.

Milan stood with Bella and his mother underneath, watching the carriage rise higher and higher. Halfway up, they saw Bettina’s hand come out over the side, saw her fist unclench, but thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until Milan fell to the ground, certain that his upturned face had been stung by a flying insect, that they realised she’d dropped a small, sharp stone down towards them.

By then, Roman and his daughters had reached the peak of the wheel’s cycle, where it chose to seize up. The entire town lay spread out below them like the sea floor, with their carriage floating high above it like a small boat on the surface.

After a while, the people on the wheel began to understand that something was wrong. The carriages began to rock, and faces could be seen peering over the side. When they finally came down, Bianca had puddled her pants on the seat. Roman cursed the big–wheel operator with strings of brutal words which he cracked like whips. Mr Caprice had to be called before Roman finally slouched off to his caravan. Mr Caprice didn’t stand for trouble.

He was proud of his World Fair. He had acts from everywhere. He had a Frenchwoman who crammed sparkling white paste up her nose so that she could cry real diamonds. Her tear ducts were starting to clog up, and her eyes were drying out. It was turning her slowly blind. Mr Caprice billed her as Anique the Freak.

He had a Dutchwoman who could kiss her elbow, an Indian man who could tie his stomach in knots, and Greta, the white Russian with the black eyeliner, wine on her breath and a dancing bear with a ring through his nose. There was a Columbian man who sang till ropes uncoiled and rose in the air, swaying like drunken sailors in a bar, ogling the girls. Sometimes he lost the Carnival Brats who climbed to the top by sending them up so high that they were swallowed up by the sky.

Despite such dangers, the Carnival Brats were excited when Mr Caprice purchased a new act. He’d found a mermaid advertised for sale, caught off the coast of Florida in a fishing-boat net. She arrived from America in a wooden crate, curled up in the bottom, smelling of salt.

‘Ahh,’ said the man who drew maps when people paid him to make geography from their descriptions. ‘She will not last past three moons.’ All manner of weird beasties lurked in the corners of the farthest reaches of his maps, so some thought perhaps he knew something.

But Mr Caprice was rapt with the new arrival. He put her in one of the animal cages with a golden brush to comb her dark red hair. The Carnival Brats milled around his feet, some of them trying to poke their fingers through the bars to steal one of her sparkling scales.

‘Huh,’ said Bettina. ‘She is ugly.’ Bettina was worried that the Mermaid was even prettier than she was. Bettina looked as if an angel slept inside her, spreading his wings across her cheekbones, touching the sides of her face with their pointed tips.

‘You are ugly,’ said Milan.

A little finger poked Mr Caprice in the knee. ‘What does she eat?’ asked Bella.

Mr Caprice thought. ‘Oysters,’ he said finally. ‘We will order big bags of oysters.’

The Mermaid looked at herself in the mirror.

That night, she started to sing. It was a mournful song, like the stars crying for the creaminess that bled out of them every night, flowing off down the path of the Milky Way, never coming back. The Map Maker said that it was a lament to return to the sea, sung in the oldest Latin. Nobody slept. In the cage next door to her, The Mangled Man paced restlessly, trying to press through the openings of the bars, moaning with his twisted mouth.

Back in Italy, he had been in charge of the lions, feeding them on raw meat and cream, and cracking his whip against his boots while they jumped through flaming hoops. But he was cruel, and had kept them tied too tightly. One day, a rotting rope had broken. Crazed by the pain of the chafed sore underneath, the lion had leapt at him, tearing off half his face and an arm, and twisting his remaining limbs into grotesque positions.

It was thought he was dead, but the blood dried, and he had healed into his new shape. Mr Caprice kept him in a cage so that he didn’t scare people, and he was fed and watered like any other mangy beast that accompanied Mr Caprice’s World Famous World Fair.

The next morning, all the Carnival Brats were grumpy because The Mermaid’s song had stolen their sleep. Milan sulked about not getting a cherry in his plate of fruit salad. ‘What is in that boy?’ grumbled Roman. Milan kicked the table leg, and Roman’s own plate slid into his lap. He leaned across the table to pull Milan’s ear. He meant to pull it hard, but Milan knew how to duck. All Roman got was a handful of dark, curly hair, so oily that it just slipped through his fingers.

Milan acted as though Roman had managed to pull his ear right off. ‘Ah, ah, ah!’ he screamed, clutching the side of his head. Roman stood up, soggy cornflakes clinging to the front of his tight black pants. ‘Wait till I really get to be holding you,’ he threatened. ‘I’ll give you something to be cry about!’

Bella whimpered and bit her fingers.

So far that morning, only Milan and Roman had started their breakfasts. The four remaining white china plates in the middle of the table rattled and tilted. ‘An earthquake is on us!’ said Roman. But one by one, the plates rose into the air until they formed an orbit around Roman’s head and circled him like planets. Milan’s mother crossed herself. Roman lifted his hands and struck out at the plates so that they were flung off course. They hit the walls of the caravan, shattering and sliding to the floor. Some of the pieces hit the map of the world drawn in red indelible ink by Milan’s mother, in the space where the walls curved up to become the ceiling and then rolled out flat. Italy was connected to New Zealand by a dotted line stretching across the sea.

Roman picked up a shard of china and advanced on Milan. ‘Romano!’ said Milan’s mother. ‘Put that down. You are upsetting Bella!’ Bella had her lips pressed together, holding her breath, and a bluish tinge started to spread around her lips. Roman picked her up and shook her, but she kept her mouth stubbornly shut.

Suddenly there was a rustling sound at the windows of the caravan. Birds began to push themselves in through the narrow gaps; thrushes and white–eyes and fantails, until the caravan was full of birdsong and swooping, diving wings. Bella let her breath out with a sigh of delight, and raised her chubby hands to try and catch them.

A shadow fell across them, blocking out the beams of sunlight. And Milan saw that a big black swan from a nearby lake had pressed itself against the glass, trying to fit its huge body into the tiny opening, only succeeding in getting its red beak through.

There was a silence, and then Roman spoke. ‘That boy has the Curses!’ he said.

‘I did nothing,’ said Milan. ‘Why is it always me?’

‘You made the plates fly and the birds come,’ said Bettina.

‘I held my own breath,’ said Bella proudly.

Fearing that Mr Caprice would ban them from the carnival if he came to hear of it, Milan’s mother took him to The Hypnotist, who received them after he’d finished removing someone’s urge to lick the soles of other people’s feet. ‘It’s the electromagnetic disturbances around boys of a certain age that cause these poltergeists,’ he said. ‘Particularly if they are prone to the dramatics.’

He sat Milan down by a large mirror with strips of silver peeling from its backing paint. ‘Do you know what I use this mirror for?’ he asked him. Milan shook his head. ‘Every night, I look into my own eyes and cause myself to fall into a deep sleep. I don’t wake again until I hear the gold and apricot dawn–time shrieks of you Carnival Brats. That way, I get the slumbers that hide themselves from me. But sadly, The Mermaid and her song have broken my spell, and robbed me of my sleep. I cannot even help myself any more. It remains to be seen whether I can help you or not.’

He looked long into Milan’s eyes, and Milan felt gravity suck in on itself, and the points of the compass turn upside down. He walked back to his own caravan, beside his mother, but not entirely inside himself. The Hypnotist had said that this would happen, and that when he took food again, he would return to normal.

Milan stopped by The Happy Hawai’ian’s coconut shy, distracted by the dead branch where goldfish swimming in clear plastic bags were hanging in clusters, waiting to be given out as prizes to those who knocked a husky nut from its perch. His mother pulled him on past the kissing booth, and the stall selling bowls of vanilla ice cream with hot chili sauce.

She took him to where The Woman Who Changes Faces was selling whitebait fritters. Mr Caprice had tasted this new delicacy in Hokitika; light and crispy and crunchy, with a flavour that was best tasted at the back of the nose. He had immediately purchased and frozen enough whitebait to sell the fritters for a year. Milan had his with a drizzle of lemon juice, and immediately, gravity released its breath, and his feet found that the earth lay beneath them after all.

‘Ahh,’ said Mr Caprice, who was passing. ‘Do you think that mermaids might eat whitebait? Mine has turned up her pretty little nose at oysters, even though I have opened them for her, and she can see that they lie fatly and silkily in their shells. They are just waiting to slide across her tongue and slip down her throat, if only she would let them begin the helter-skelter ride to the tip of her tail.’

Milan’s mother took Milan home to rest, fearful in case something else should rise up into the air in front of Mr Caprice. Mr Caprice himself went to consult The Palm Reader. Things were not as they should have been. He could not control either the Spirits or the will of his mermaid.

The Palm Reader looked at people’s hands, but, without their knowing, she was reading other lines as well. The lines of dissatisfaction around their mouths, the white lines on the fingers where wedding bands used to be, the lines of grief around their eyes. She looked at the wrinkles of fat in their necks, the scars on their wrists, the weathering on the backs of the hands of bushmen and shearers and the calluses on the palms of women who mop floors.

But she couldn’t help Mr Caprice. His hands were covered in oily scales and oyster cuts and she did not know what to tell him without losing her place at the fair, so she feigned a headache. He went away with his questions unanswered.

He passed through a dark alley between caravans where Greta with the dark eyeliner had her legs wrapped around Roman’s waist while her underwear lay at his feet. He frowned, and they tumbled in through a caravan door, leaving him to walk past unobstructed.

Where will I bury my mermaid if she dies from either starvation or grief, or perhaps a mixture of the two, he wondered. I cannot bear to leave her behind. I can do nothing but think about her. She must stay alive, so that I can stroke her hair and lick the saltiness from her skin.

Once five days had passed, the whole fair slept, because The Mermaid’s song had softened so that it could no longer be heard unless the listener was very close to her cage. Milan woke, and got up to sneak out of his caravan to have a piss against the wall in the darkness. But when he opened the door, Mr Caprice was waiting for him on the step, holding a jar full of blue and green glow worms that were pulsating like a galaxy of miniature stars, ready to light their way.

‘They are saying you have the Spirits at your command,’ Mr Caprice said to Milan. ‘Come with me, and we will make my mermaid eat.’ Milan went reluctantly. It was very likely that The Hypnotist had cured him. Mr Caprice had placed a plate of raw fish and chocolate cake on the floor of her cage. ‘Make her mouth open,’ he pleaded with Milan. ‘Make the cake rise up, and fall down into her throat.’

But try as he might, Milan couldn’t. He looked desperately at Mr Caprice, but Mr Caprice wasn’t looking at him. He was crying, and his salty tears were falling down onto The Mermaid’s closed eyes like sea spray. But it was not enough to bring back her sea. Her song was now only a faint shudder in the air hanging above her. Milan ran back to his bed.

She died in the morning. Mr Caprice cut her up into little pieces and fed her to The Mangled Man, so that she would always travel with him. And it was not until weeks later that he realised through his pain that a mistake had been made.

He heard a disturbance outside his window, and raised himself from his late afternoon bed. Greta’s bear had worked himself loose from the stake where his nose had been chained so that he couldn’t raise himself from the ground. Somehow he had managed to wind the end of his chain around Greta’s pale neck and was dragging her across the dusty ground. Her face was turning purplish, like the cheap blackberry wine she liked to drink.

Everyone had run out of the way, and there were no Carnival Brats to be seen. He saw Milan’s mother. In her anger, she had risen. The tips of her toes barely touched the ground and she hung in the air under a thundery sky that was the colour of ripe grapes. Her arms were outstretched, and it was as if there was a tornado at the centre of her heart, spinning so fast inside her that it kept her suspended. Mr Caprice watched her cursing Greta in Old Italy, with her dark hair hanging loose, and her black Italian eyes flashing. It was not Milan, or even Bella. He finally knew exactly who the Spirits had followed here to New Zealand, at the very end of the earth.