The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six by Jonathon Keats

couple of days later. When they asked people where they should go, folks answered, Who are you? When they said they were the circus, folks responded, Which one? They weren’t sure what to reply, for they’d never thought to take a name, so they rode around looking for a theater chartered by the king.
    Apparently the king of this country had chartered many things, and the troupe found his coat of arms painted on pubs and baths, brothels and gambling dens. Half a dozen times, they approached a theater, only to be told that circuses were passé, and sent to a competitor.
    At last somebody they met had heard that an unknown country circus was coming to town. He helped them to find a broadside, and read it aloud. The poster announced the arrival, by special arrangement, of Heyh the Clown. Iser asked if his famous juggling act was advertised. The man shook his head. Teyvel’s sword-swallowing? Schprintze’s contortions? Fishke’s sleight-of-hand? None of them. Then Heyh asked what clown meant. The man just laughed, as if she were fooling, and pointed the company toward a theater down an unmarked alley of stockyards and slaughterhouses.
    The alderman was not there. The manager, a bruiser called Yankel, whose face looked to have been butchered, explained that those in the delegation were investors, quality folks hardly to be seen in a burlesque hall on that side of town.
    So they guessed that the king wasn’t going to be attending their performances, either, especially after Yankel took them inside the hall, which had a dirt floor and not a single chair. Nor was there a stage per se, just a chalk line at the center. There was no roof, only a stone wall enclosing a space the size and shape of a stable.
    Yankel was anxious to set up: Their first performance would be that night, under limelight. He’d no time to discuss why Hodel and Hinde weren’t named on the broadside, and he merely guffawed when Heyh asked him what a clown did.
    He did, however, have a costume for her, brightly patterned. None of the troupe had ever seen a costume before, much less thought to wear one, and, for a short while after she put it on, they stood around, admiring. Then they remembered who she was, and their admiration distilled into envy, which could be dispelled only by providing outfits to everyone.
    Folks lined up outside while the ropes went up. Since there was no barn for Heyh to hit when she flew off the trapeze, Yankel had some boards thrown against the wall. Since there was no lake in which to have her fall, he threw a bucket of water on the floor. Then he sold tickets for a penny apiece until he couldn’t shove another body through the door.
    Nobody paid much attention to the warm-up acts: They ignored Shimmel’s hackneyed horseback acrobatics, shouted out the secrets to Fishke’s slapdash magic, jeered Iser’s slipshod knife-throwing for failing once to penetrate pregnant Glukel, and heckled Hodel and Hinde for stumbling through their girl-on-girl gymnastics without stripping off each other’s clothing. Finally, from a limelit platform, Yankel announced through his megaphone the world-renowned Heyh the Clown.
    Something unfathomable happened that night, from the moment Shimmel pushed her out on the trapeze: Her recklessness metastasized into confidence. She didn’t miss the beam with her feet when she let go, and her hands were there for her as she swung full-circle. She got it that night, and the tightrope as well, from which she juggled fire without once letting her knees buckle.
    That was not what folks wanted. After all, they lived in a city where you could see meaner feats for half a penny any day of the week. They’d paid good money to see Heyh stagger and trip, maybe even break her neck. But aside from the costume, there was nothing clownish about her. She was merely mediocre.
    They called her a fraud, and pelted her with rotten potatoes. They cut the tightrope and broke the trapeze. Someone got hold of the limelight,