“You know,” Blumschi says, “when a clown can’t make anyone laugh, he can go mad with grief. You go onstage, the projectors blind you, it’s freezing cold, the circus reeks of old beasts, the smell of piss rises from the sand, and you’re there, to thrash around, to shout, like you’re extremely lonely, with the hope that, despite everything, someone on the bleachers will soon start laughing, in the darkness you can hardly see because of the lamps. But no one flinches. No one giggles or roars. And it’s unbearable. It drives you mad. Years like that, living it night after night. Waiting for laughs that never come.”
“You made me laugh,” says Freek. “I went to see you at the Schmühl Circus. I saw both of you. The kings of laughter, like on the poster. I was in the dark, on the bleachers. The third row. There were some children. They had stopped talking. The closest ones were annoyed that I was sitting next to them. They tried to move away. I didn’t dare laugh out loud once I realized that I was the only one who found you funny. But I had a stomachache. You made me laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life.”
“Yes, but with you, it’s not the same,” says Blumschi. “You’re not really. . I mean. .”
Freek jabs his nose into his bowl of caffeine. He still had the bottom to finish.
“Each one of us is mired in his own awful dream,” the clown says. “You’re there, petrified with grief on top of the stinking sand, and, as petrified as you are, you keep struggling, emitting sounds. . You wait for a friendly laugh to echo from the dark. You wait for a friendly voice to encourage you, agree with you, pull you from there. . And nothing. Nothing comes. . The darkness remains silent. You do the best clownings in your repertoire, and the children move away. No bursts of laughter. . So you don’t even believe in friendship anymore. You move away yourself. You close up. You don’t even try sharing your grief with Little Blumschi. You go hang around under the acrobats’ crossbar one night. You go hang around under the acrobats’ crossbar one night, and you hang yourself.”
Blumschi is once again slumped in his chair. He spoke those last sentences in a broken voice. Mucus and tears soil his cheeks. Yasar rinsed the mop in the bucket, then he washed Freek’s bowl, some saucers, a spoon. At one point, he closed the air vent connected to the temple. The reading of the Bardo Thödol became a distant, uninterpretable murmur. Grümscher can perhaps be heard better right now in his mysterious darkness, but the lama’s guidance is unintelligible.
A police car races down the boulevard. The revolving lights color a wall red and blue for a second. The windows quiver.
Freek has left for the zoo.
Yasar turns the radio back on. It’s the Korean music program again. For those in the know, it is now a traditional dance, accompanied by a popular oboist, the hyangpiri, an hourglass-shaped drum, the changgo, a cylindrical drum, the puk, and flutes. For others, it’s just lovely music that can be listened to for hours, because it’s rhythmic, because it’s beautiful, and because they are extremely lonely.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Antoine Volodine is the primary pseudonym of a French writer who has published twenty books under this name, several of which are available in English translation, including Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven (also available from Open Letter) and Minor Angels. He also publishes under the names Lutz Bassmann (We Monks & Soldiers) and Manuela Draeger (In the Time of the Blue Ball). Most of his works take place in a post-apocalyptic world where members of the “post-exoticism” writing movement have all been arrested as subversive elements. Together, these works constitute one of the most inventive, ambitious projects of contemporary writing.
J.T. Mahany is a graduate of the masters program in literary translation at the University of Rochester and is currently enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas. He is also the translator of Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven by Antoine Volodine.