The Culí-Culá brothers weren’t brothers, weren’t clowns, weren’t anything but faggots. Theirs was a slick act that delighted the public, a string of farts and proverbially filthy chases around the ring that always engaged the spectators. Smooth-cheeked, soppy Frank Culá ran across the sand with a clumsiness he feigned as he dodged the attempts to catch him made by bearded Juan Culí, a huge prowling bear lumbering awkwardly after him with a gigantic club on his shoulder, desperate to bash his head or wherever with his outsized bludgeon. When Frank was on the point of being captured, he’d aim a sonorous fart at Juan, the stink of which knocked him for six. It was an absurd scene, a grotesque caricature of the struggle between David and Goliath that ended with the giant prostrate on the ground, the butt of zillions of farts, protracted, vegetable efforts his captor graciously directed up his nose. Such a tour de force could only come from a premeditated souring of the intestines that the spectators found a hoot. They all laughed their bellies off during the act and, when it finished, applauded, cracked jokes, belched, and even farted gleefully, a display of flatulence and foul air in keeping with the taste of the spectacle. Juan Culí and Frank Culá made a stable item and, like the best of brothers, shared the intimate space of a caravan with an array of everyday gear for personal hygiene, leisure, and domestic life. Gillette blades, Lea shaving soap, a pockmarked set of dominoes, a depleted set of crockery, towels, bedroom linens and pajamas, and rusty cutlery that once belonged to Culá’s mother made up the bulk of their possessions. Apart from their daily labors, they shared a bed that was on the low side and very plain but didn’t blunt their diversions. The Culí-Culá brothers never showed off their homosexual condition in public, and their measured life, apart from the gross nature of their performance, did them credit and was even exemplary. They never bothered me. Nor am I trying to claim they respected me. Respect on the fringes of a life of disorder is a relative value and subject to non-codified, imprecise, changing criteria. Generally speaking, respect comes from the fear or admiration one has for others, almost never from a mere sense of the dignity that should be part and parcel of being human. In the circus, respect derived from the tried-and-tested strength and hardness of one’s character and, in my case, in equal doses from the pity I inspired or the guffaws I provoked. Juan Culí, the manliest of the duo, perhaps aimed an occasional kick at me when I crossed his path, but apart from that routine reaction, the truth is we behaved as equals. Frank Culá was, however, much shiftier, with a hidden agenda, and probably as a result always looked so two-faced I’m amazed he didn’t go cross-eyed. He’d spy on me doing my chores, I never did find out why, and now and then made lewd remarks, so hedged by warm tributes they were immediately swept away by his apologetic airs and appearance. Nevertheless, Frank Culá had the foulest of tempers, and rage coursed through his veins when he had a prey in his sights or an enemy in range. “Dwarfy, where’ve you left Snow White?” he’d ask, meaning Doris. “Haven’t you let her taste your little red apples yet?” He guessed that I was devoted to her and simply wanted to find a way to ingratiate himself in my feelings. If he sounded so coarse, it was only because he wanted to define the boundaries of his domains, as animals do with their pee. We both knew on which side our bread was buttered and, in one way or another, enjoyed that complicity. I never thought their life as a married couple was at all obscene, and it never, ever occurred to me to play them a nasty trick as a form of retaliation for their devious ways. Quite the contrary, I secretly admired the sugary warmth with which they cohabited, a warmth they fenced in behind sharp spikes and barbed wire to protect it against the rigors of the social climate. I accepted in silence the tiny caresses they indulged in when walking by, the syrupy gazes caramelizing in their eyes, the slight brushes against each other — angel wings their fingertips, an archangel’s their fluttering lashes — and at bottom they were grateful for that.
It isn’t the sleep of reason but the unreason of Providence that finally engenders us monsters. Then it crosses our paths and abandons us to our luck, to our resilience. Frank Culá possessed the hidden strength of the weak and showed it in his use of contempt. He and I were to an extent similar, and so we tried not to cross paths beyond the necessary shoulder-rubbing that suited us both. In this way, year after year sped by for all of us who shared acts, because, things being what they are, I abandoned the shit in the cages and passed over to the ring with the wild animals; as Di Battista had ordained, one had to make the most of one’s dwarves.
A hunchback climbed aboard in Cuenca; he was prepared to work for nothing, for the mere pleasure of seeing the world. He had no known name, and pudgy Di Battista decided to baptize him Mandarino, in memory of a cousin of his from Calabria who was shot down by the partisans. “Mandarino, go off dove li animali e aiuda titch with ze raka and ze forka so ze shit non li arrivi to ‘iz neck.”
Mandarino was built like a beanpole, and one of his legs was too short to touch the ground, so he made up for it with a thick, raised heel made of pinewood worn down by the pebbly paths he’d trod. He walked with a slight stoop in his right shoulder, and despite being so skinny, the plump cheeks that protruded under his eyes like a frog’s were strangely fleshly. His whole body seemed lopsided as he walked, particularly if one kept an eye on his groin, which was quick to stir with an unheard-of thrust that gave a perpendicular aspect to his movements. He was amazingly well endowed. Mandarino started to help me with my chores. He spoke sparingly and initially seemed like a born mute, because he used gestures rather than his tongue when he wanted to communicate. As time passed, he started opening his mouth and even came out with bad-mannered patter, so we quickly concluded he was mad. I wasn’t worried by that, so long as he gave me a hand and did it well. “If you hit the bear in the stomach with a stick, he soon feels like taking a piss. I like watching animals piss, because it takes my thirst away. Rain, rain, don’t go away,” and without more ado he’d start raking up poo that he piled into panniers. I’d look at him perplexed, and the most I saw would be golden piss streaming down his trouser leg while he sang. I don’t know whether it was prompted by lunacy or biological necessity. Mandarino was always involved in one of two visible activities: pissing himself, or pleasuring himself with his hand. He’d do either and not blink an eyelid, and there was no mystery involved beyond the phenomenon he treasured between his legs and the unlikely nature of his behavior in public. It was hardly charitable to reproach him, given his dimwittedness and the fact he spent the whole blessed day sharing the degenerate habits of wild animals.