Read by Cliff Chapman
Ladies and gentlemen, our venue for tonight's entertainment is Paris. Here an emperor will meet with a mouse – although you shall soon hear how both are merely men.
But first, you may cheer - you may cheer, ladies and gentlemen - as a metaphorical curtain rises upon our stage, revealing the Emperor of the Air, the globe's greatest wirewalker, balanced, precarious, nervous, upon his tightrope. Crowds below fear and jeer as he sways in the increasing breeze.
He has done it! The Emperor of the Air has done it! The crowd is cheering now. The crowd is cheering now, ladies and gentlemen. He is, they insist, the greatest performer of the nineteenth century. We knew he could do it all along, they add; no, we didn't doubt it for a moment. Not even - well, all right then, perhaps for just a heartbeat as his thin shoe slipped off and fluttered down to our outstretched hands. The Emperor of the Air is on their shoulders now as they bear him to the bulbs of the press and tomorrow's front page.
Tomorrow's front page keeps the Sewer Mouse warm in the catacombs. The twisting, weaving, scum-flecked walls that comprise a tunnel network of sewers, cells, crypts, plague pits and desperate underground hovels. The last refuge of outcasts from the world above. Through the catacombs wash every type of sewerage, the rejected wastes of men's bodies and their societies.
The Sewer Mouse begs on Paris's streets. His name comes from the smell and his size - too scrawny, that is, to pass as a Sewer Rat. His shortness is all that he shares with the great Emperor of the Air - his shortness and a natural instinct for balance.
In Paris the homeless must be industrious to survive. The competition for spare change is fierce. Some whittle keepsakes from scavenged wood. Others dangle begging cups from fishing rods, dropping them without warning in front of passers-by, breaking them from reverie. It may raise a smile, even half a centime.
The Sewer Mouse has elected to become a street performer. He does his own tightrope walking along the narrow, slimy rails of bridges that one day will be covered with lovers' padlocks. He displays far less skill than the Emperor of the Air. The handrails are flat and wide, the width of half of a shoe. When he overbalances it is easy enough to push his weight to his right, to land safely on the bridge. Sometimes an onlooker shoves him hard, toppling him leftwards through the surface of the Seine. Afterwards, the amused crowd may offer a few sympathy centimes.
But today a cold wind sweeps pedestrians along before they linger. All is motion, save for one figure, squatting on the short pebble beach where the Sewer Mouse staggers ashore, dripping. The stranger's overdarned collar is turned up against the elements; his patched hat brim is pulled down across his brow. Yet oddly, despite the cold, his bare hands are on his lap, not inside his pockets, giving an impression of warmer, richer clothing underneath. Which surely cannot be the case, the Sewer Mouse thinks.
"Would Monsieur spare a franc," he begins, the weary automated routine jolted out of him by the shivering. "If Monsieur would be so kind..."
Eyes and nose - the only visible parts of Monsieur's face - stare back. Eventually his covered mouth speaks.
"What makes you think I have a whole franc to spare? Look at me. Why not ask for a sou, a centime?"
The Mouse has had time to evaluate the stranger's appearance. The destitute that survive Paris's streets have sharp wits.
"Because Monsieur's uncovered fingers are covered with fresh marks where rings recently sat. Because Monsieur sits upright like a man never beaten by poverty, as if Monsieur is in disguise, not wishing to be noticed. I can be discreet for a few francs should anyone later question me.”
The Mouse’s words irritate the stranger. He tugs at his scarf in frustration, pulling it loose to reveal-
"The Emperor of the Air," the Sewer Mouse breathes.
"You recognise my face?" the Emperor asks, stretching the scarf tight like a balancing pole.
"No. But I have seen you from below - I and all of Paris. The mob has scrutinised every little gesture of your body, the way you move your feet, your arms, your elbows - searching for a hint that you were about to fall. You are, after all, the city's most fêted figure every summer that you come."
"Fame and riches are not borne easily," says the Emperor. "Even when aloft I feel their weight upon my back."
*
"Then perhaps Monsieur would gift some of his fortune to me, to lighten his load."
"I have watched you perform," the Emperor says. "You have talent."
"Not as great as yours."
"It is true that I am greater, but for performance you need only basic skill. The audience care not about skill. What they want is theatre, which is easy to learn. But they want it always, this theatre. In opera house boxes, at embassy receptions, at ballooning shows, at dinners in Prussian castles. Everywhere I go I am fêted and everywhere I cannot be myself."
"Everywhere I go I am ignored. I can only be myself, no better."
Each set of eyes holds the other, balancing their rival's gaze.
"I propose an exchange," says the Emperor of the Air to the Sewer Mouse. "You teach me to be invisible and I teach you to be me, to take my place and dance across that wire."
The Mouse extends a shivering hand. He would sell his soul to the Devil for a firewood bundle, only the Devil has never made such an offer. This pact is wondrous beyond comprehension, like the riches promised by the conmen who shuffle cards along the Rive Gauche. The deal is made.
*
For a month they train. The Emperor spins a wire across a crypt in the Mouse’s catacomb home, from grinning skull to grinning skull. But for a week they practise only footwork, without taking to the wire. The Emperor teaches his protégée all of the eighteen parts of a wirewalker's foot, alongside the five cardinal actions.
"Levée on the Anvil," he shouts, and the Sewer Mouse raises his sole's Anvil accordingly, shuffling along a chalk line. Next comes levée on the Point, levée on the Palm, bridge the Point, bridge the Anvil. The Mouse has taken his first step.
"Clutch the Trinity."
The Trinity are the left foot’s three smallest toes, the last, prayerful clutch of many a performer. Instinctively when overbalancing, a wirewalker leans to his dominant side – meaning that the Trinity is the penultimate chance for any right-handed balancer. If that fails, only the desperate Fingernail Grip remains - the left hand snatching the wire. But for that the performer must have fallen well. The Mouse spends the second week walking the wire and falling well, left arm raised.
Sustained concentration is key to wirewalking. During frequent breaks the Mouse shows the Emperor how to be invisible. How to slouch, to scowl, to linger, to melt into surroundings. How to wear rags. In the evenings the Emperor takes the Mouse to his apartment, teaching him cutlery, poise, elocution, attire. The Mouse studies the society column of the newspaper.
Finally after a month they are ready. It has been short but the Emperor is the globe’s greatest wirewalker. In any case, he insists that crowd-pleasing is nineteen twentieths showmanship, not skill.
"Ladies and gentlemen, after a month’s absence to perfect new, thrilling techniques, I give you the man who has never fallen, the talk of Paris... the Emperor of the Air!"
The crowd cheers as the Mouse, clad in the Emperor's clothes, steps out of the basket and onto the wire, thirty feet above their heads. He strides confidently to the middle and begins to juggle three oranges. The crowd claps politely.
The Mouse catches the oranges, pocketing two of them. He peels the third, opening a clasp knife to segment it. He eats leisurely, feeling the crowd's frustrated anticipation below and letting it build, just as the Emperor has taught him. Then he withdraws the other oranges, juggling them with his open knife.
One.
Two.
Three.
He is walking now, steadily, not looking at their thrill-flushed faces. Not listening to their jeers. Eyes fixed ahead at Notre Dame’s spire, wondering in his mind’s corner what lies beyond its horizon.
He reaches the end to applause and reverses into a backwards walk, still juggling.
One.
Two.
Three.
Still juggling, he steps backwards along the - he has slipped! He has slipped, ladies and gentlemen, on an orange peel fragment!
His body bends wildly, defiant against gravity. He rights himself, pocketing the knife and oranges, but the wire bounces now against his motion, jerking him from left to right.
He uses his arms to their fullest extent - leaning forty-five degrees to the right, now to the left, then back again. He lowers his knees, reducing his centre of gravity. His Anvil tries to levée but bridges instead, his Palm is bridged when it should be levéed.
A tramp in rags spots the inevitable fall before it happens. He leaps up and screams crazy words, ignoring the shushing crowd.
"Clutch the Trinity!" he screeches. "Clutch the Trinity!"
But the Mouse clutches too late and falls - falls - falls...
His left hand snatches at the wire and - the Fingernail Grip. He dangles from a single hand and then pulls himself up, stepping cautiously into the basket. The crowd explodes with flashbulbs, carries him shoulder high. He fell well.
That night he sleeps soundly in a gilded four poster. Tomorrow evening he goes to London.
*
Rising at eleven, he lounges until a caller is announced. The caller describes himself as an old friend but the Mouse is flushed with invincibility.
"Show him in," he orders, and his command is obeyed.
"You don't seem to recognise me, Monsieur l'Empereur," the old friend objects.
"Refresh my memory."
"Again? It’s a strange game you play. Each year when you visit Paris, I come and each year you deny recognising me. The cruelty amuses you, I suppose. But this sixth year I see some guilt in your weary, haggard face. Fear.”
“Guilt? Fear?”
The caller’s eyes blaze.
"My son. Alexis. The boy idolised you when you were a two-bit street performer in Nice, scraping survival. He became your assistant. One night he fell from a wire running from the plundered safe room of a Monaco casino. That morning you booked first class steamer passage to India, to study with the Fakirs of the Rope. You returned the next summer, still wealthy.
“Since then, my brave Alexis has slept. Slept in his bed at home, waiting to wake up, to testify. Then what will you do? You are too famous, too recognised to flee. Every year your appearance changes a little, a new haircut, perhaps altered clothes, but always the same arrogant mannerisms. My magistrates will recognise you anywhere, pursuing you to the earth’s ends once Alexis wakes and gives his testimony.
“Your long wire of good fortune wears thin, Emperor. Your balance grows precarious. When Alexis wakes... your fall will come.”
Alexis’s father stands up to leave, looking for a reaction. He gets none.
The Mouse is preoccupied with calculations of how much money the globe’s greatest wirewalker might earn in London.
He wonders if there are trainable bridgewalkers who balance across the Thames.
(c) Peter Saul, 2014
Peter Saul can't wirewalk but does juggle after learning in Ghana last month. He isn't employed as a tramp either, though he has slept rough in Liechtenstein. If you have a spare fortune to offer he'll travel the world indefinitely.
Cliff Chapman is Leicester born, Manx bred and just about getting the hang of London. He's proud to be Liars' League MVP two years running, and can be wooed with red wine, stalked on Twitter @CliffChapman or offered work via www.cliff-chapman.com
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