I heard children’s shouts, calling people together. I looked out at the street. An elephant was really going by. It seemed to me as if the street were growing older as this gray mountain moved through it. And once again the world was just a small, poor theater, a tiny circus for this enormous animal. It brought a tension into the city, so that people weren’t content to stay within their own four walls. And other people must have felt the same way, because as I could see and hear, everyone was now out in the street. I caught wind of a carousel song. I was infected with carnival fever. I had to go out. I looked up again at the violins. I unconsciously gestured to one among those many, it was my own. It had made itself known to me again. I almost smiled. I wanted to take it down right away. But the maid, who seemed to know everything, said that it hadn’t been broken in yet, maybe she knew because of where it was hanging. I would leave that to him if he thought that was needed. So I left. I was down in the street before it struck me. In my mind those small living quarters now seemed to fall in on themselves like a castle built of sandstone blocks, when a child shakes it. All it would take was a single event from this outside world, the kind that had been carefully avoided until now, and that life would be extinguished; the hunchback’s life. I could really feel that, in my own flesh. Already my blood was beginning to flow along this great circuitous course. And I took things up in my small, hot hands, feeling them like those animals that we believe have no eyes. What if a dancer were to come between those peculiar fingers? She would recoil in horror, even at the thought.
For love was a matter of little interest to that man. God had kindly granted him these wonderfully clean rooms in which to make his home, and a maid and a mother, and all the violins of heaven. With all that, one could just as well do without love. I grew so agitated, and turned so strongly against that man. I even thought the birds were being too imprudent. With young girls’ souls imprisoned in their bodies. In that moment I wouldn’t have put so much as a mirror in his room. And yet things could have been quite different. He might have been superior to us, to the whole world. Something might happen that none of us had ever imagined.
“My God,” I suddenly said; I had already arrived at the open square where the circus would take place, “what if by some terrific accident I end up sitting next to him!” I calculated. It was certainly possible. The inexpensive seats were long gone, and the wealthier parties would take their sweet time, and some wouldn’t buy their tickets until evening. By now it even seemed to be a sure thing. After all, it was such a small city. When it came to important things, you were always everyone’s neighbor. A child came toward me with a carnival hat on his head. A man came out from inside, selling little flags. I bought my ticket. I would have preferred to spend the afternoon there until the performance began. It seemed unnatural to return home again. But the world is so terribly big and wide and unwelcoming when we come there as strangers, tired and bored, seeking a place to sit. There is a meadow everywhere, but this is only for the poor little spectators who are so close to the ground to begin with, who have already been there for hours, not wanting to miss a single glimpse of what they have paid their pennies for. They have been living there for months, any time they had a free hour. But I, particularly as an adult, have no right to enter there. The poor have their own kingdom, too, and their own laws.
And on the southward side, where I finally found a little bench placed at the edge of the tent, a wind was blowing that was strong enough to numb you. And there was not a soul to be seen. There was just a paper kite that had broken loose and was flying off into the sky, observed by me alone, and no one else. It was a circus of wind that whipped the kite along, a stranger to itself and to the clouds. It was a fantastical drama. I was almost afraid. Solitude may be the only thing that can chasten a man who lacks humility, and bring him back to himself. It widens the space around him, lifts the heavens up like a gigantic banner, and lowers the earth beneath him. And he must live on it — this earth — after it has suddenly taken on the dimensions of the endless universe, has grown at once flat and round again. The earth is a giant, it is a globe on which we are not even a single point.
I had gotten so far away; I pulled myself up short like a dog and followed the scent of the world from which I had come. And we need only seek, and we will find it again. That is how animals, too, can find their way back to their previous masters — though the route may seem impossible.
But I would have had to become a beggar woman, or an orange vendor (I was too old to become a circus rider or an acrobat, let alone a poor child who slips under the wall of the tent, it was much too late for that), just to spend a few hours undisturbed beneath that circus canopy in the meadow.
So we weren’t free to walk about where we pleased. Those who belonged at home had to go home. That was a proper rebuke for me; and so I only meekly returned to take my seat shortly before the performance began.
I was seated a bit below the middle. There were so many heads there, looking on, that at first it all confused me.
A child in a pink ballet dress on a horse! Now and then you could hear an imitative call cross her lips, and you noticed how silent it was in the circus. The music closely followed the child’s lead, seeming to go on tiptoe. But then, as the child left the ring alongside her little horse, like a porcelain figure, the crowd found its voice again, first one and then another. And among those applauding people I recognized a woman who lived in my apartment house. And diagonally in front of me, it couldn’t have been better, was the little hunchback. He sat motionless beneath his cape.
The music didn’t leave us much time for reflection. A greyhound entered the ring. He shot through a paper hoop. His silver hair shimmered, seemingly wet from the speed. He could run through the legs of six wonderfully trained white horses. He wound around in a circle from one to the next like a wreath of flowers. Then suddenly he stood in the middle and took a bow by bending his head backwards. This dog was exquisitely suited to that sort of performance, in which everything depends on beauty. But in the first moment that he was free, he yawned as if unspeakably bored; and he seemed to leap into the jaws of the little lump of sugar that awaited him as a reward for his performance. And finally he disappeared. We were freed, and yet we regretted it. I was already so happy that I had forgotten any ulterior motive for my visit to the circus. (But even so I had not stopped reproaching myself for a single minute.)
How could anyone want to observe a person, to learn about his nature. . Laughter awakened me from this contemplation. Now the horses were alone. They were walking in a line. I looked around. Because I knew that couldn’t be the cause of their laughter. It must have another meaning. Yes, indeed. A little hunchback was running along behind this train of holy white horses. He seemed to be tied to their shining pink tails. And now he was flying, simply by letting his legs go.
The whole circus was laughing, laughing with pipes and drums. The musical accompaniment was made for the occasion. Fear was coursing through my limbs. Yes, here they were, these people. And here was the circus in them. The whips cracked, one after another, invisibly in the air.
In my fear, I looked over in spite of myself to the little hunchbacked spectator. He was wrapped even smaller in his coat, and he wasn’t moving. If someone had jostled him right now, even by accident, it probably would have created a scene; one of those agonizing spectacles that the world refuses to answer for. But the little hunchback in the circus ring was still swinging, and in the end he became like a ring himself, like an orbit. He became a ring that he himself had crafted, he merged with his own orbit, until finally he disappeared entirely beneath the sound of kettle drums and the whirl of snares and laughter. You couldn’t say anything now, not even to yourself, the shouts drowned you out. And you had to stop for a moment in the midst of this watching; having lost your connection to the place where you were sitting. You were tired and wanted to sleep.