The 24th Apr 2010 WriteOnSite Winning Entry
Arnold Capelli could remember when circuses were really circuses – a colourful big top, clowns with oversized shoes, roaring lions and midget acrobats. White horses with feathered plumes on their heads, ridden by girls in sequined leotards. Tubs of vanilla ice-cream eaten with miniature wooden spatulas. The hushed expectation of the crowd as one trapeze artist reached out to catch another. The shouts of excited children as the elephants paraded into the ring. The thing Arnold remembered most vividly was Clara, with feathers in her hair and her face an epitome of concentration as she crouched on the back of her horse – Lapis Lazuli, he had been called – as he trotted, cantered, galloped around the ring, the sound of his hooves pounding in the hearts of all who watched as Clara uncurled her body, vertebrae by vertebrae, to stand – barefoot to bareback. She would smile then, and arch her back like Zeus the Lion, as the crowd would stand to applaud.
Things were different now. Arnold knew this implicitly, and not through experience, as he had not set foot in a circus for forty years. It was all twirling around in ropes now, with safety nets and insipid clowns so as not to scare the children. And of course, no animals. Animals nowadays were doomed to live their lives in antiseptic zoos being gawked at by morose tourists.
But today was different. Arnold was going to the circus. He had seen a poster, as he shuffled home from the Happy Shopper one day. A proper circus, with a traditional Big Top, set up on the town common. And horses, beautiful white Arabian stallions. At the top of the poster, in big, black print, it said CAPELLI’S and Arnold’s heart jumped and pounded for a moment, as Lapis Lazuli’s hooves had done that last time Clara had ridden him. Then he blinked, and the words refocused and it was not CAPELLI’s at all, but some obscure Siberian city. It was the horses that persuaded Arnold. He had tried not to think of Clara, but her face floated into his mind several times a day. She had had a smile that turned his limbs to smoke. It still did.
And so here he was. He had gone home first, hobbling up the stairs to his flat as the lift was out of order again. He had pulled the small, old-fashioned suitcase out from under the bed, flicked open the catches. And here it was. His Ringmaster’s costume. A little musty, but not too bad. Arnold shrugged his hunched shoulders into the faded red coat, the tails hanging limply against the back of his knees. It was slightly too large. Arnold, it seemed, had shrunk with old age. He popped open the top hat and wheezed slightly as the dust puffed out of it. And his whip, which he had used to crack across the ring, artfully missing those it appeared to be aimed at, eliciting oohs and aahs from the crowd. There was no room in his single, old-man’s bedroom to try it out, but he brushed it off and took the bus into town.
And here he was, in full costume, people staring. Arnold lingered at the entrance to the big top, hesitated. Imagined the applause, the horses hooves, the crack of his whip.
He tried not to remember the moment Clara had fallen.
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.