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Authors: Max Blecher
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tragic but
noble suffering. Or the life-size Jesus in Catholic churches, the stained-glass
windows suffusing the altar with the dying rays of a red sunset, the late-in-the-day
lilies exhaling the plenitude of their heavy, lugubrious perfume at Christ’s feet.
In this atmosphere of ethereal blood and odoriferous swooning a pale young man draws
the final chords of a desperate melody from the organ. And all this has emigrated to
life from the wax museum. In the waxworks one can see at any fair I find the
repository of all the nostalgia in the world that, brought together, constitutes its
very essence.
I have only one supreme desire left in life: to watch a waxworks on fire, to observe
the slow, scabrous melting of the wax bodies, to look on, rooted to the spot, while
the beautiful yellow legs of the bride in the glass case begin to twist and turn, a
very real flame making its way up between them to her sex.
Chapter Five
The August fair offered me many ups and downs in addition
to the waxworks. It was a prodigious performance, a swelling symphony from the
prelude of individual booths that came early and set the general tone—like a
series of long notes at the beginning of a piece announcing the theme of the
composition as a whole—to the grandiose finale, all blasts, blares, and fanfares
followed by the immense silence of the abandoned site.
The few early wax-figure booths contained the whole of the fair in a nutshell; they
represented it to a T. The instant the first of them was set up, all the color, the
glitter, the carbide aroma spread through the town. And suddenly a clicking noise
rang out. It was neither the grate of sheet metal nor the far-off jangle of a bunch
of keys nor the rasp of a motor; it was the click—easily discernable amidst the
myriad everyday sounds—of the wheel of fortune. Toward evening the darkening
boulevard would come alive with a diadem of colored lights, the first constellation
to appear, the constellation of the earth. Others soon followed, turning the
boulevard into a glittering corridor that I walked along, dazzled, like a boy of my
age I had once seen in an illustrated edition of a Jules Verne novel, glued to the
porthole of a submarine, peering through the ocean’s murky depths at its marvelous,
mysterious phosphorescent spectacle.
Within a day or two the rest of the fair would be up, the semi-circle of booths
having been laid out, put together, and given final shape. It was divided into
well-established zones of sun and shade—the same year in and year out. First came
a row of restaurants with dozens of strings of colored lights, then the sideshows,
their façades bathed in light, and finally the dark, humble photography booths. The
crowds, making the rounds, would pass from zone to zone, bright lights to darkness,
like the moon in my geography book, which alternated between white and black
typographical regions.
We spent most of our time in the small, poorly lit, occasionally
even roofless sideshow booths, where my father could negotiate a reduced rate for
our large family with the barker. There every exhibit looked improvised and unsure
of itself. The night wind would blow cold over the heads of the audience, and we
could see the stars twinkling in the sky. Lost in the chaos of the night, we had
wandered into a sideshow on this tiny point of the planet, and on this tiny point of
the planet men and dogs were performing on stage, the men tossing various objects
into the air and catching them, the dogs jumping through hoops and walking on two
legs. And where was it all taking place? The sky above seemed vaster still . . .
Once, in one of these miserable booths, a performer offered a prize of five thousand
lei to anyone who could do the sensational yet perfectly simple stunt he was about
to demonstrate. There were only several people in the audience. A heavy-set man,
whose reputation as a miser in trade was peerless, moved several seats closer to the
stage: intrigued by the
noble suffering. Or the life-size Jesus in Catholic churches, the stained-glass
windows suffusing the altar with the dying rays of a red sunset, the late-in-the-day
lilies exhaling the plenitude of their heavy, lugubrious perfume at Christ’s feet.
In this atmosphere of ethereal blood and odoriferous swooning a pale young man draws
the final chords of a desperate melody from the organ. And all this has emigrated to
life from the wax museum. In the waxworks one can see at any fair I find the
repository of all the nostalgia in the world that, brought together, constitutes its
very essence.
I have only one supreme desire left in life: to watch a waxworks on fire, to observe
the slow, scabrous melting of the wax bodies, to look on, rooted to the spot, while
the beautiful yellow legs of the bride in the glass case begin to twist and turn, a
very real flame making its way up between them to her sex.
Chapter Five
The August fair offered me many ups and downs in addition
to the waxworks. It was a prodigious performance, a swelling symphony from the
prelude of individual booths that came early and set the general tone—like a
series of long notes at the beginning of a piece announcing the theme of the
composition as a whole—to the grandiose finale, all blasts, blares, and fanfares
followed by the immense silence of the abandoned site.
The few early wax-figure booths contained the whole of the fair in a nutshell; they
represented it to a T. The instant the first of them was set up, all the color, the
glitter, the carbide aroma spread through the town. And suddenly a clicking noise
rang out. It was neither the grate of sheet metal nor the far-off jangle of a bunch
of keys nor the rasp of a motor; it was the click—easily discernable amidst the
myriad everyday sounds—of the wheel of fortune. Toward evening the darkening
boulevard would come alive with a diadem of colored lights, the first constellation
to appear, the constellation of the earth. Others soon followed, turning the
boulevard into a glittering corridor that I walked along, dazzled, like a boy of my
age I had once seen in an illustrated edition of a Jules Verne novel, glued to the
porthole of a submarine, peering through the ocean’s murky depths at its marvelous,
mysterious phosphorescent spectacle.
Within a day or two the rest of the fair would be up, the semi-circle of booths
having been laid out, put together, and given final shape. It was divided into
well-established zones of sun and shade—the same year in and year out. First came
a row of restaurants with dozens of strings of colored lights, then the sideshows,
their façades bathed in light, and finally the dark, humble photography booths. The
crowds, making the rounds, would pass from zone to zone, bright lights to darkness,
like the moon in my geography book, which alternated between white and black
typographical regions.
We spent most of our time in the small, poorly lit, occasionally
even roofless sideshow booths, where my father could negotiate a reduced rate for
our large family with the barker. There every exhibit looked improvised and unsure
of itself. The night wind would blow cold over the heads of the audience, and we
could see the stars twinkling in the sky. Lost in the chaos of the night, we had
wandered into a sideshow on this tiny point of the planet, and on this tiny point of
the planet men and dogs were performing on stage, the men tossing various objects
into the air and catching them, the dogs jumping through hoops and walking on two
legs. And where was it all taking place? The sky above seemed vaster still . . .
Once, in one of these miserable booths, a performer offered a prize of five thousand
lei to anyone who could do the sensational yet perfectly simple stunt he was about
to demonstrate. There were only several people in the audience. A heavy-set man,
whose reputation as a miser in trade was peerless, moved several seats closer to the
stage: intrigued by the
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