Fairground Magician. Jelena Lengold

those lion’s heads, stroked my hair and said very gently,

      ‘Oh, my dear! Why, you’re really sad …’

      I simply nodded. Just like a child who has given in and decided finally to cry.

      4

      Somewhere between his third and fourth whisky, Elvis told me that one night, to his own surprise, he had married a Bulgarian lion tamer. She was a bit wall-eyed, but she was a dab hand with a whip. And he liked that. They only lived together for two years, during which time they mostly quarrelled about whether he should follow the circus or she should follow the Elvis-band, and when they eventually tired of this, they simply went their separate ways. She, to crack her whip and stand tall in front of wide-open jaws, and he to whisper to ladies on the terraces of European resorts.

      ‘You were wise,’ I told Elvis. ‘People should always follow their dreams. Whatever they are. Marriage is a great killer of dreams.’

      ‘Surely it’s not that awful, my dear?’

      ‘No, it’s not, it’s not awful. But … it can be a bit dismal. For instance, I catch myself in this kind of thing: he’s sitting in his room, working on some stuff of his. I’m sitting in another room, trying, in vain, to concentrate on something. Then I think I might go to him and grab him, at least for a bit, for some kind of sex. He would be up for it. He’s always up for it. And I’m just on my way, really, I’ve already got up, set off towards his room … But then I glance towards a little table and see that there’s a cup there full of steaming cocoa which I’ve just made –good, warm, sweet cocoa, just the way I like it and – I change my mind. I don’t want to let it get cold. I tell myself, OK, I’ll drink my cocoa first and then I’ll go to his room. But even while I’m thinking that, I already know that nothing will come of it. I know I’m fooling myself. You understand, at that moment I prefer my cocoa to him. And what are you supposed to do then? What?’

      Elvis looked at me as though he really understood.

      ‘One night I dreamed about God,’ he said. ‘God had no form; he was not a human being. He was a kind of creeping plant that wound round a stick or a tree, or something … Before my eyes, that plant grew and climbed in a spiral up that stick, and in my sleep I knew that this was God who was showing me the meaning of time. I don’t know whether I can explain it. That stick in the centre - that was me. The plant was God in transient time. The speed with which the plant grew was the speed with which my life is passing. Something like that …’

      Elvis and I must both have been fairly drunk by now, because it seemed to me that I knew exactly what that climbing plant looked like. I could feel the small white flowers of bindweed growing all over me and wrapping me up. Tender, but merciless tendrils, whose shape adapted to the shape of my body. Little leaves that merged with my skin. I could feel all that here somewhere, at the height of my chest, moving towards my neck and it was only a matter of time before it would wrap round my neck and begin to throttle me.

      5

      We were floating on the water, both of us. Each on our own lilo. My husband had pulled his peaked cap down over his face, and lay with his arms under his head. The late afternoon sun nuzzled our bodies agreeably. A slight hum from the beach merged with music from three different cafés. And the cries of children. And an old man carefully entering the water, slowly wetting his skin with his hand, bit by bit, as though any speedier action might have cost him his life. Maybe it would, what did I know? And a young couple, not far from us, kissing in each other’s arms in the water, and I could only guess that her legs were wound around him, and he was holding her by her arse. For a moment all of that seemed to me perfectly clear. Meanwhile, I was lying motionless and waiting, for something.

      I knew exactly what each of those people whom I had already left a little behind me would say at that moment.

      And I knew what I would reply.

      The climbing plant was still just under my throat, waiting.

      I glanced at my husband again. I knew every millimetre of his body. And there was no part of him that I particularly disliked. It was all in some inexplicable way mine, forever. Those fine hairs on his thighs, that youthful fold of his hip, those tended hands, those nipples which for some reason could not tolerate kisses. I knew it all by heart, including what could not be seen, what was lying on the lilo, covered by his swimming trunks; I knew his firmness that sometimes liked to press against me as soon as we woke up, I knew the smell of his breath, and I also knew that in his wildest imaginings he could not guess what I was thinking about just then.

      The moment the sun finally disappeared, he felt cool and lifted his cap from his eyes. Squinting a little, he looked at me.

      ‘Shall we go?’

      I smiled at him and nodded.

      Just today, I told the climbing plant. Just this one day, be patient.

      One tenderly green branch, I could see it clearly, had sprouted at just that moment and was waving at me in a cold wind, in front of my eyes, threatening me. Orwas it just that nightwas beginning to fall. I am not entirely sure.

Fairground magician