Pigment
Once upon a time a circus clown riding
a camel watched the sky turn black. They traveled together at a slow
pace through the endless distant desert. Somewhere behind them the
high top welcomed in young guests with tired chaperones. “Too far
from home,” the clown had whispered earlier in the day as he'd
untethered the camel from it's post.
American men who thought in bills and
coins had attempted to escape the land now so far away, who's
citizens' cravings for spectacle were easily sated. Small screens in
their homes now provided them with wonders far beyond what the 3
rings could muster.
They'd gathered up the strong men, the
gymnasts, the freaks and the lion tamers and traded hemispheres.
They'd been through Mongolia, India, the rural areas still left in
China. The women of the flying trapeze had soared through the air
above the gaping mouths of full grown men in The Congo. The
elephants had risen to what roar could be mustered by a hundred
Nepali school children. But though the crowds were often grand, the
only people who truly believed that the magician had cut his lady in
half were too poor to sustain the traveling entertainers.
On that night the man in the red
velvet coat tails had removed his top hat and held his head low. The
show would end after that evening's performance. The clown had slunk
behind the curtains at first glance of the bereft ring master,
knowing what news was come.
“Egypt,” he'd crooned into the ear
of the great beast as it knelt for him to climb upon it's back, “Is
no place for a camel to be impressive,” Neither animal was in a
hurry as they walked from the glowing candy striped tents. “And
what good is a clown to them? I haven't ever made an Arab laugh, I
don't think they even know I'm meant to be funny! What good is it
being where no one knows what you're for?”
As the night cast it's shadow across
the dunes the clown wondered where he might be headed. “I'm
depending on you, you know,” he spoke to the back of his
companions head. “This is your home isn't it? Perhaps for the
first time you feel like you belong, don't you? After all you've
never really had to use this thing before?” He patted the hump on
the camel's back. “You've always had all the water you've ever
wanted, never had to push yourself. I guess we'll both finally find
out what you're made of.” Even in a windless desert the sound of
crunching sand under the big camel's feet was almost inaudible.
“Clowns were meant for madness, you
know. My ancestors? They smeared their faces in white paint filled
with mercury. I don't really know if the first clown was even trying
to be funny, or if he just went insane, but I suppose it doesn't
really matter, all those that came after him were mad.” He wiped
his hot forehead and paint smeared across his hand. “First clowns
went mad, then mad men became clowns, and people like me found out
what they were for.”
By the middle of the night the camel
had stopped. “Yes, I suppose it is time to sleep,” replied the
clown and dismounted. He wrapped his loose clothes around him in
opposition to the growing chill and leaned against his travel
partner.
“I was always mad you know,”
Unconscious flicks of his tongue wiped away the red paitn around his
lips, while the white of his forehead was washed away from the days
sweat. “I always knew what I was for, you know, but before you
knew me I was different. Or maybe just the same but in different
clothes, with different tools, and different paint.” The stars
were brighter here than the shedding clown had ever seen before.
With no moon to out dazzle them they flickered the size of silver
dollars making the sky seem within arms reach.
“I never thought I'd be allowed this
close to heaven,” He said in an amused voice reaching up to swiped
at one of the sprites that seemed to float in front of him, “doesn't
seem like the place for a man who's killed, a man who never grew a
conscience.” The camel took a deep breath in and huffed through
it's nose in a long sigh.
The next morning the mad clown climbed
once again atop the golden camel and they continued in no particular
direction. There was a gentle breeze that kicked up small swirls of
sand.
“Those dust devils, they always
amazed me. That wind blows all the time but it ain't till it's been
possessed by devils that any of us know it's there, what it looks
like,” he laughed to himself softly. “maybe that's why the
world has demons, cause pure things are invisible, evil adds the
pigment.” The only paint left on the mad clowns face hid behind
his ears and ran along his hair line. His lips were tinted pink but
had lost their paint entirely. “It figures we'd run into the devil
in the desert.”
Hours later he called out over growing
wind gusts. “I heard once the desert is where a creature goes to
change, to face himself. Seems your kind must constantly be reborn.
Every morning you wake up in the sand a new camel, ha,” the mad
clown snickered to himself. “I don't suspect I'll change, don't
think you can change a mad person. Madness ain't part of yer
personality, it's deeper than that. It's just what you are.” A
piece of sand landed in his eye, he slammed his hand to his face and
started rubbing mercilessly till tears ran down and flushed away the
contaminant. “Yep, ain't nothing worse than being somewhere where
no one knows what yer for. Years ago I made people scream, then I
made people laugh. Most would probably see those things as opposite
and say I'd changed somewhere in between. But if any of them had cut
me open and looked inside they'd have seen I was exactly the same.
Same person, same soul, different pigment, different face.”
The second night fell on them and they
slept beneath a sharp crescent moon, in the morning they met the
wind. They walked till noon before the mad man spoke again.
“I know how hard it must have been
for you all these years. The only camel locked in a cage. It must
be wonderful for you now in your element, doing what you were made
for. There's something intoxicating in being exactly what you are
isn't there? There's nothing more tragic than being stripped of your
purpose.” the spinning gusts of sand twirled around the figure of
the mad man and the camel.
“Do you see the town ahead?” he
asked sounding relieved. “I was worried we'd both starve,”
The town was no more than a collection
of small tents. A huddled circle of nomadic living quarters bundled
up to resist the wind that grew wilder by the minute. The camel
knelt and the clown dismounted. He walked the short distance to the
nearest tent drawing a blade from his oversized tweed coat before he
entered through a heavy flap at it's front. The wind tore at
everything
Moments later from the tent was born
the mad man, hands and face covered in red dragging behind him a body
wrapped in cloth. He tossed it on the back of the camel before
himself climbing aboard. The three strode forth into the storm.
That night fell with a glowing
crescent moon and silence as the wind loosed it's hold on the sand
and fell to the earth. Curling up against the edge of a dune the mad
man began to butcher the body. “It's a pity to not know what
you're for,” he spoke out as he worked. “But the real tragedy
is to know what you're for, and to not be fulfilled in that
knowledge,” He cut a large piece of flesh from the back. “So
forgive me, friend, because I know, unlike me, this is not what you
are,” He held the meat up to the camel. “You'll get used to it
quick though, just pop it in your mouth and chew.”