The tent, formerly white but now gray because of being handled so often, spotted with patches and stains like purulent wounds, was small. For seating, the spectator was offered a gallery of splintered planks, and the performance space, marked by gasoline cans painted the red, white, and blue of the Chilean flag, since it lacked good mats, was covered by a carpet of potato sacks. In one truck traveled the baggage and the trained burro and in the other, the entire company, composed exclusively of family members. Toni Carrot, whose real name was Don Hernán Cañas, dressed completely in orange. He said he was a descendant of José Joaquín Cañas Aldunate, the priest of Carahue, who in the high spirits of the days of Independence committed the indiscretion of founding a discreet family. He was the artist’s grandfather.
His wife, Emilia Cañas, a.k.a. Toni Lettuce, was completely dressed in green. For her part, she claimed to be the granddaughter of Blas Cañas Calvo, the priest who organized the Congregation of the House of Mary, who, on the day the convent was inaugurated, imbibed too much punch and sinned with a nun. As soon as her belly began to protrude, she was expelled and had to give birth on the watermelon truck giving her a lift to the Talcahuano whorehouses. She managed the business affairs of the group, distributing the pesos and the food with a severity worthy of King Solomon.
The two trapeze artists, jugglers, tightrope walkers, trainers of the donkey who knew how to bray the national anthem, were the parents of Isolda and her three brothers. The three remaining women were the mobile wives of those same brothers. Each night, they drew lots to decide who would sleep with whom. The children, an indeterminate number, called all the women mom and all the men dad.
The most tedious aspect of the performances was the continuous change of costumes. Toni Carrot and Toni Lettuce retained their identity, but the others, dressed as musicians, began playing a polka next to the ticket stand improvised on the bed of the passenger truck to summon the audience. Then they would run to put on the jackets of an usher, sweeper, assembler of trapezes, seller of balloons, chocolates, or lollipops. Then the changes would multiply, because it was the turn of the contortionists and acrobats, those who mounted a bicycle, eight at a time, those who danced a rumba on the tightrope, those who tossed the burro up in the air to catch him on the soles of their feet and make him spin around along with two huge wooden balls.
For Jaime, who wasn’t born in a circus tent, who hadn’t grown up on a truck, and who, for those very reasons, found it difficult to learn all these tricks, they found an easy but spectacular act. Aside from having to risk his life allowing his lover to outline him in knives, he was hung by his hair. Since he hadn’t had a haircut since his last match, he had a black mane of hair that was thick and straight. The acrobats coated it with pitch, inserted a wire as an axis, and transformed it into a ponytail that ended in an arc of steel. All he had to do when they hoisted him ten feet from the floor was to show off his muscles, eat the empanada that was his dinner, and then read the sheet of newsprint in which the empanada had been wrapped.
This new life, within its magic, was a matter of routine. Monday: break down the tent. Tuesday: travel to another town. Wednesday: set up the tent. Thursday: march through the town in a publicity parade. Friday and Saturday: endure two performances. Sunday: add a “children’s matinee,” and then at night, get drunk, and make love under the grandstand. Sometimes the circus drew a crowd; most of the time, it was almost empty. Sometimes they performed for three or four people. No one grew sad. They didn’t want to get rich but rather to earn a living. In the spirit of those artists, there was no future. They had the mentality of birds. They got up at dawn, penniless, and worked all day to fill their bellies. They were all possessed of a strange happiness that soon spread to Jaime.
To travel that way, free, with the family, enjoying the pure air of the open road, was a gift. Without haste, with the calm of migratory birds, they traveled the nation, village by village, always heading south. They knew how to take a simple chicken, season it with herbs they found in the forests, and transform it into a princely banquet. They filled the monotony of travel with songs and jokes. Isolda was a lover with such a wide range of orgasms, from a girlish squeal to a mammoth’s roar, that Jaime never felt the weeks go by. Toni Carrot, always arm-in-arm with Toni Lettuce — between them their ages added up to almost 190 years — came over to say to him:
“Little friend, you have made our only granddaughter so happy that we want to give you a gift; we’re going to tell you a joke we’ve invented for you and you alone. Keep it like a jewel and don’t tell it to anyone so that when your first granddaughter has a lover who makes her happy, you can give it to him intact. Listen carefully, because we won’t repeat it:
A man sees a frog. The frog says to him, “Kiss me, please.”
The man thinks, “A frog that speaks must be an enchanted princess. I’ll kiss her, she’ll turn back into what she was, she will marry me, and I’ll be a millionaire.” The man kisses the frog, feels an explosion, and finds he’s been turned into a frog.
The first frog says, “How wonderful. You were enchanted for ever so long, and, finally, I was able to save you!”
Jaime never knew what effect the story had on him but instead of laughing, he began to cry.
The two aged clowns applauded in satisfaction: “We were not wrong. You’re a sensitive man. Good jokes, like happiness, should provoke tears.”
When they reached Puerto Montt, they were caught by winter, and the rains became torrential. There they remained for three weeks, hoping the deluge would cease. Water fell, fell, and fell some more. It was impossible to raise the tent on mud. They killed time playing cards secluded in the truck. The women went out to look for work so they would have something to eat. Jaime offered to accompany them, but the men simply put his cards in his hand and placed before him a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a huge glass of wine, insinuating that in the family, by tradition, the men never worked among the rubes, by which they meant all human beings who did not belong to the circus world.
“We are pure and they false, like slips of paper stacked to look like money.”
The grandmother was the only woman who stayed behind, taking advantage of that forced rest to try to train a toad. According to what Jaime was told, she’d begun with this one about ten years earlier, managing to make it say ”mama,” but that wasn’t enough for a public show.
“Do toads live that long?”
“Like turtles, they live more than a century. Maybe one day Toni Lettuce will get this one to take a mouthful of gasoline and spit it into a candle to produce huge flames.”
Toni Carrot was sure his wife would train the toad: “If she trained me, and I lived as a thief, stealing on the trolley, she can do it. She taught me my first number; dressed as a clown, I would make my way through the passengers; I would steal five wallets, toss them into the air, juggle them, and return them intact to their owners. Then I’d pass the hat around. By saving up those charitable offerings, we bought the canvas to make our circus.”
The women always returned with full hands. No sooner did the rain stop than they put on their shows and continued traveling south. When they reached Punta Arenas, they would turn around and travel north, toward Arica. They thought to live their entire life that way, for various generations, transformed into a magic pendulum that would rise and fall along the narrow, long body of the nation like an incessant caress.