Now young Jacko was in the ring with his twelve entrancing
ponies. What would the Education Authorities say if they knew
he was only ten years old? I shrugged. They wouldn't believe it.
Young Jacko's as good as his old man, Captain Jack. My father
found him in Prague. He spoke no English, nothing but his native
tongue, but when he died he knew twelve languages.
The atmosphere changed, tensed. The finale had come. Rapidly
the riggers formed the big cage in the center ring. The cowboy
with his lasso came to one side. The quiet man with the gun to
the other. Then happened the sudden moment of darkness, the
fine dull sounding call on the trumpets, and then the center arena
full of lights to reveal the cat man dressed in the traditional cos-
tume of the Ruritanian Captain of Hussars, with gun in one hand
and whip in the other. I stared. Sweated. Remembered. He was
Jules, big, quiet, magnificent. My eyelids pricked. I shook my
head. Jules was gone. This was the sandy American I had brought
from Ensenata in old Mexico.
The atmosphere changed again. Heightened. The big thrill was
here. The cats were coming, two black jaguars from the Equator,
three black panthers from Sumatra, three spotted jaguars from
Colombia, four North American pumas, three tigers, six lions and
lionesses. And the snow-leopard.
To the syncopation of snapping jaws, throaty, snarling roarings,
and flying claws, the American guided the varied felines to their
pedestals, then turned his back and crossed the cage.
Now handing the whip through the bars he quickly followed
with the gun, then unbuttoned his tunic, threw it from him,
pulled off his white silk shirt, and stood. Glistening.
Jules again. Naked to the waist amid a collection of cats that
hated each other, and one snow-leopard, whose love could change
a man's face from beauty into beefsteak.
I watched the act coldly. The sandy boy was good. He worked
well with the snow-leopard. But I kne~v he would not perform the
Judas Kiss. Papa Gaudin cut it from the act after Jules went.
There's no time, you see. No time at all. If anything goes wrong,
what is it? A gasp. A sigh. And in the moment that it takes the
first customer to scream, a career is out, a cat man is finished,
and a freak begun.
I shivered. When did it happen? How long ago? Five years?
Nosix. And the place? KOln on the Rhine. I got up suddenly. I
could not watch the American. Jules was too strong in my memo-
ry-
I left the circus and strolled along the midway between the
booths. As usual the concession was sublet and the lane was
packed. It was grubby with discarded litter, raucous, and alive
with human enjoyment. Bright unshielded lights illuminated red,
yellow, and green painted posters specially designed to tickle the
original sin in all of us. They brought even my jaded head around.
I watched the people, the customers, flooding to rubberneck the
fat lady, the dwarf, the double-jointed man, to buy the pink clouds
