The circus is a liminal thing. It appears, tent-striped and dazzling, then vanishes into the night. It can seamlessly cross borders. Its red velvet curtains cut through the Iron one which divides East and West. You have heard the rumours of the disappearing acts; the escapees running away with the circus, hidden under animals’ cages. For a price of course. You are lucky to have sewn your mother’s diamonds into your hems before your house was raided, before your husband was taken.
Decades from now, they will ban circus animals. As a child, you thought of these creatures as monumental marvels. You remember Prague’s Circus Klunsky; the zebras' musk as they arced across the ring, lions leaping through flames, elephants trumpeting beneath girls with red feathers in their hair. However, you will see and be the tiger pacing its iron cage. You know that claustrophobic longing for freedom. The tiger dreams of jungles, you of crossing the curtain.
Before the journey, you tell your daughter, we’re off to visit the circus. You tell her of the thick trumpeting of elephants, the honeyed smell of roasted peanuts and the acrobats flying like diamond encrusted doves. Her eyes are like moons as you mix the crushed sleeping pills into her milk. You will slip out, become liminal beings in the rawness of the night.
You lie in the carriage's coffin-like space, the beast pacing above you. Her paws as big as your daughter’s head. Three pounding heartbeats hybridised. A deep rumble in the tiger’s throat reverberates in yours. Such fearful symmetry of tracks, bars, and stripes. You feel the tiger’s hot meaty breath, the rhythmic exhalations of your doped and sleeping child. It is no coincidence that aspiration means both the act of breathing and the act of hope.
Of course, the performers’ papers are checked but the animals, despite their claws and teeth, pose no threat. They can hold no seditious views. However, as the tiger looks down to where you hide, you see the rage in her amber gaze. How it is reflected in your own eyes.
You recall your husband’s pale face at his trial. A circus of its own sort, the script pre-written with the ritual humiliation and punishment for speaking truth to power. The finale of this show; his face behind bars, an early dawn, the echo of a single shot. You know what they will do to you and your daughter afterward. You know the most dangerous beasts are men with power.
The train halts at the border just north of Bratislava. The metallic screeching of the wheels against tracks shudders through your body. You can sense the tiger’s alert and taut frame and hear the guards’ guttural grunts outside. Then the chink of thick black boots along the tracks. You silently pray to a long-forgotten god. The guards’ spotlight shine hits the tiger’s eyes, and she stares. She stares down these men and their borders and their barbed wire and their politics of division. You imagine her – you - tearing at their jugular veins. Under her paws you feel her sinewed strength, the heat of her blanketing you and your girl in that dark vault. The guards move on. The train moves forward. The tiger lies, covers you, the black tip of her tail brushing your face.
In the years to come, Czechs will talk of the Velvet Revolution. Their uprising against Soviet forces was unviolent and smooth. And you will think back to the feel of her tender tip tickling your cheek and think no, no this was our velvet revolution Tigress. This is when we tore apart men with power, with the fearful symmetry of three beating hearts.
Author: Fiona Dignan started writing during lockdown to cope with the chaos of home-schooling four children. Last year, she won The London Society Poetry Prize and The Plaza Prize for Sudden Fiction. She was a finalist in the LISP poetry competition and is Puschcart Prize Nominated.
Great story - written with feeling.
Glad you enjoyed it, John!