“He is a little evil, I know,” Theobald admitted. “But not usually! And he behaves better and better. He can't help what he knows.”
“I was just trying to straighten you out,” the dream man told Grandmother. “I thought it would do you good. Your husband has been dead quite a while, after all, and it's about time you stopped making so much of that dream. You're not the only person who's had such a dream.”
“Stop it,” Grandmother said.
“Well, you ought to know,” said the dream man.
“No, be quiet, please,” Herr Theobald told him.
“I am from the Tourist Bureau,” Father announced, probably because he couldn't think of anything else to say.
“Oh my God shit!” Herr Theobald said.
“It's not Theobald's fault,” said the singer. “It's our fault. He's nice to put up with us, though it costs him his reputation.”
“They married my sister,” Theobald told us. “They are family, you see. What can I do?”
“They married your sister?” Mother said.
“Well, she married me first,” said the dream man.
“And then she heard me sing!” the singer said.
“She's never been married to the other one,” Theobald said, and everyone looked apologetically toward the man who could only walk on his hands.
Theobald said, “They were once a circus act, but politics got them in trouble.”
“We were the best in Hungary,” said the singer. “You ever hear of the Circus Szolnok?”
“No, I'm afraid not,” Father said, seriously.
“We played in Miskolc, in Szeged, in Debrecen,” said the dream man.
“Twice in Szeged,” the singer said.
“We would have made it to Budapest if it hadn't been for the Russians,” said the man who walked on his hands.
“Yes, it was the Russians who removed his shinbones!” said the dream man.
“Tell the truth,” the singer said. “He was born without shinbones. But it's true that we couldn't get along with the Russians.”
“They tried to jail the bear,” said the dream man.
“Tell the truth,” Theobald said.
“We rescued his sister from them,” said the man who walked on his hands.
“So of course I must put them up,” said Herr Theobald, “and they work as hard as they can. But who's interested in their act in this country? It's a Hungarian thing. There's no tradition of bears on unicycles here,” Theobald told us. “And the damn dreams mean nothing to us Viennese.”
“Tell the truth,” said the dream man. “It is because I have told the wrong dreams. We worked a nightclub on the Kдrntnerstrasse, but then we got banned.”
“You should never have told that dream,” the singer said gravely.
“Well, it was your wife's responsibility, too!” the dream man said.
“She was your wife, then,” the singer said.
“Please stop it,” Theobald begged.
“We get to do the balls for children's diseases,” the dream man said. “And some of the state hospitals—especially at Christmas.”
“If you would only do more with the bear,” Herr Theobald advised them.
“Speak to your sister about that,” said the singer. “It's her bear—she's trained him, she's let him get lazy and sloppy and full of bad habits.”
“He is the only one of you who never makes fun of me,” said the man who could only walk on his hands.
“I would like to leave all this,” Grandmother said. “This is, for me, an awful experience.”
“Please, dear lady,” Herr Theobold said, “we only wanted to show you that we meant no offense. These are hard times. I need the B rating to attract more tourists, and I can't—in my heart—throw out the Circus Szolnok.”
“In his heart, my ass!” said the dream man. “He's afraid of his sister. He wouldn't dream of throwing us out.”
“If he dreamed it, you would know it!” cried the man on his hands.
“I am afraid of the bear,” Herr Theobald said. “It does everything she tells it to do.”
“Say “he", not “it",” said the man on his hands. “He is a fine bear, and he never hurt anybody. He has no claws, you know perfectly well—and very few teeth, either.”
“The poor thing has a terribly hard time eating,” Herr Theobald admitted. “He is quite old, and he's messy.”
Over my father's shoulder, I saw him write in the giant pad: “A depressed bear and an unemployed circus. This family is centered on the sister.”
At that moment, out on the sidewalk, we could see her tending to the bear. It was early morning and the street was not especially busy. By law, of course, she had the bear on a leash, but it was a token control. In her startling red turban the woman walked up and down the sidewalk, following the lazy movements of the bear on his unicycle. The animal pedaled easily from parking meter to parking meter, sometimes leaning a paw on the meter as he turned. He was very talented on the unicycle, you could tell, but you could also tell that the unicycle was a dead end for him. You could see that the bear felt he could go no further with unicycling.
“She should bring him off the street now,” Herr Theobald fretted. “The people in the pastry shop next door complain to me,” he told us. “They say the bear drives their customers away.”
“That bear makes the customers come!” said the man on his hands.
“It makes some people come, it turns some away,” said the dream man. He was suddenly somber, as if his profundity had depressed him.
But we had been so taken up with the antics of the Circus Szolnok that we had neglected old Johanna. When my mother saw that Grandmother was quietly crying, she told me to bring the car around.
“It's been too much for her,” my father whispered to Theobald. The Circus Szolnok looked ashamed of themselves.
Outside on the sidewalk the bear pedaled up to me and handed me the keys; the car was parked at the curb. “Not everyone likes to be given the keys in that fashion,” Herr Theobald told his sister.
“Oh, I thought he'd rather like it,” she said, rumpling my hair. She was as appealing as a barmaid, which is to say that she was more appealing at night; in the daylight I could see that she was older than her brother, and older than her husbands too—and in time, I imagined, she would cease being lover and sister to them, respectively, and become a mother to them all. She was already a mother to the bear.
“Come over here,” she said to him. He pedaled listlessly in place on his unicycle, holding on to a parking meter for support. He licked the little glass face of the meter. She tugged his leash. He stared at her. She tugged again. Insolently, the bear began to pedal—first one way, then the next. It was as if he took interest, seeing that he had an audience. He began to show off.
“Don't try anything,” the sister said to him, but the bear pedaled faster and faster, going forward, going backward, angling sharply and veering among the parking meters; the sister had to let go of the leash. “Duna, stop it!” she cried, but the bear was out of control. He let the wheel roll too close to the curb and the unicycle pitched him hard into the fender of a parked car. He sat on the sidewalk with the unicycle beside him; you could tell that he hadn't injured himself but he looked very embarrassed and nobody laughed. “Oh, Duna,” the sister said, scoldingly, but she went over and crouched beside him at the curb. “Duna, Duna,” she reproved him, gently. He shook his big head; he would not look at her. There was some saliva strung on the fur near his mouth and she wiped this away with her hand. He pushed her hand away with his paw.