The doorman pointed down the street. Grimaldi walked for about ten minutes, stopped and turned this way and that, and was about to give up and return to the Slaughterhouse when he saw the club door. He grinned, and crossed the road.
The club looked the same, but the clientele had changed a lot. The club was now a leather bar; he had never seen so many chains and leather jackets crammed into such a small space. Beefy bar men, with T-shirts and muscles, wearing spikes and God knows what attached to their chests and throats, served customers, chained to bars. Some men were chained to each other, carrying on animated conversations, as if their chains were part of the decor.
Grimaldi pushed his way to the bar, asked for a beer, and turned to face the club floor. Only then did he realize that the patrons were all male! He was asked to dance by an aging homosexual in a strange leather helmet, a jockstrap and white tights. He downed his beer, and tried to edge his way toward the exit but it took a great deal of jostling. He shoved a large muscular man wearing an SS hat, who turned and gripped Grimaldi by the testicles. "Don't push me!"
Grimaldi grimaced, the man's grip tightened. "I just want to leave, I am not looking for any arguments."
"You don't, cocksucker?"
Grimaldi was eye to eye with the SS officer's handlebar mustache. "I don't, but you will get in a lot of trouble if you don't get your fucking hands off me!"
"Make me," lisped the pursed lips through the mustache. Grimaldi backhanded the SS queen, then jabbed an elbow in his throat. He could feel his testicles burning as the man went sprawling.
Suddenly a blond-haired boy tried to swipe Grimaldi with his whip. Grimaldi snatched the whip and began to crack it, giving rise to a mixture of hysteria and applause. A bottle of champagne was waved at him from behind the bar, the chained barman screaming it was on the house, and Grimaldi abruptly broke up, laughing. The incident was so crass, so hideous, he had to laugh, and everyone joined in. He kept on saying he had only fallen into the place by mistake, he was straight. "Just get me out of here, somebody get me out!"
Grimaldi could hear his name being shouted, bellowed. "Luis... Luis... Luis!"
Grimaldi shook his head. His name was being yelled by a bloody chimp!
Boris was up on Fredrick Lazars' shoulders, the little animal's arms and legs virtually covering the man's face. Boris was pursing her lips; she looked as if she were the one calling Luis.
Grimaldi broke up in a roar of laughter, and the two men clasped each other in a bear hug as Boris whooped and screeched with excitement. Lazars introduced Grimaldi to friends and ordered drinks, dragging Grimaldi to a brick alcove.
An hour later, Tina stood outside the Slaughterhouse club, in tears. She spoke no German, and her young dancing partner was still trying to persuade her to return to the club. She pushed him away, she shouted that she was looking for someone, but he began to pull at her arm.
"I'm looking for somebody... leave me alone!"
"I help you... I find for you, okay?"
Tina was so relieved he understood English, she hugged him. and kept tight hold of his hand as he talked to the doorman, who pointed down the street.
"Your friend, ze big man... go there, you come? I show you, come with me, yes?"
Tina teetered after her young friend, looking back doubtfully to the doorman, who gestured to the street with his hand. "Zat way... he go zat way."
While Tina was walking down the dimly lit alleyway, Grimaldi was staggering out of a taxi, with Lazars. Boris was on Lazars' shoulders; the two men were stumbling around the pavement. Lazars tried to get his wallet out of Boris's hand but Grimaldi took out a thick wad of notes and paid the driver. Tina's handbag was still hooked over his arm, though he seemed unaware of it. He was very drunk. Lazars bellowed for him to follow as he entered his apartment.
Lazars handed Boris over to Grimaldi, and opened two bottles of beer. He drew up two chairs, and then weaving slightly he spread both his arms, beaming. "She's a good girl, you won't regret this, and I'm giving you a good price!"
"I don't want a fuckin' chimp!"
"But you know somebody who would want her! You got lots of contacts, somebody'd want her. She's two years old, lot of years in her. She's intelligent, sharp, an' I've got all her papers, her certificates, her inoculations; it's a hell of a deal, I can't keep her here, shake on it! Look at her. You don't have a heart for human beings but a heart for animals. You don't have compassion... I love her, my friend, but I am willing to let you have her."
Grimaldi shook his head. "I can't..."
"Put her in the act."
Grimaldi drank the beer, and banged the bottle onto the table. "Forget it, I don't want a goddamned chimp!"
Standing Boris on the tabletop, and pulling a worn old cardigan over the chimp's head, Lazars showed the little animal as much affection as if she were a child. "She's toilet trained. She could live in your trailer, heard it's like a palace."
"You been up to the grounds?"
"No, Tommy Kellerman told me, you know he's dead?"
Grimaldi yawned, scratching his head. "Ruda had to identify him!"
Lazars tucked Boris up in the old horsehair sofa, gave her a teddy bear to cuddle, patted her head, and waited for her eyes to close before he opened two more beers.
"Do you remember the mad Russian, Ivan, the crazy horse?"
Grimaldi nodded. "He's a tough one to forget, you been over there? I hear he's still with the Moscow Circus."
"Yeah he's still with them, earning peanuts and working in that jungle of concrete and glass. He's got eighteen tigers, ten lions, and two panthers — act's good, he's good — one of the best, but..."
Lazars drank thirstily, and then stared at the bottle in his massive gnarled hands. "Not the way it used to be. Ivan took me to see the cages, steel cages on wheels, hardly enough room for the poor creatures to turn around in. You know, all my life I dreamed of working with big animals, but I never had the money or the breaks, and then — just like that!"
Lazars slapped the table with the flat of his hand. "I changed my mind... my whole outlook changed. I didn't wish it anymore. I talked to the Soviet Union's Society for the Protection of Animals, SSPA, I said there should be greater controls. You know, they lost three, three giraffes a few years back, they transported them around in railway carriages. They couldn't stand upright, hadda travel with their necks bent, crouched on their knees, for five days. But they told me they could do nothing against the power of the Soyuz-gostsirk — the organization that runs most of the circuses in Russia. It sickened me! For the first time I began to think we should reconsider, try again to find the heart of the circus."
Lazars opened more beer, and gulped half a bottle before he continued. "Then, my friend, my eyes were opened. You ever seen France's Circus Archaos? You seen it?"
Grimaldi shrugged. "Yeah, but it's not everyone's taste!"
"They got chainsaws, punks, Mad Max, and fire! Rock music — it's new, its exciting!"
"Bullshit. What kids want to see clowns in dirty mackintoshes and rubber boots, Bull shit!!"
Lazars banged the table. "No, you are wrong, my friend. They have some of the finest performers. The heart of their circus are the jugglers and the trapeze artists. The shows have all been updated, they cater to the new audience, the kids, the teenagers that don't want to see fucking bears pedal bikes, chimps, like Boris, forced to become entertainers. They see through it, they know it's a fucking lie! You train a dog to sit and you've got to use force. Animals are no longer wanted."