The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney (illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff). (2/2)
Title: The Circus of Dr. Lao.
Author: Charles G. Finney (illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff).
Genre: Literature, fiction, fantasy.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1935.
Summary: Abalone, Arizona, is a sleepy southwestern town whose chief concerns are boredom and surviving the Great Depression-that is, until the circus of Dr. Lao arrives and immensely and irrevocably changes the lives of everyone drawn to its tents. Expecting a sideshow spectacle, the citizens of Abalone instead confront and learn profound lessons from the mythical made real-a chimera, a Medusa, a talking sphinx, a sea serpent, witches, the Hound of the Hedges, a werewolf, a mermaid, an ancient god, and the elusive, ever-changing Dr. Lao himself. The circus unfolds, spinning magical, dark strands that ensnare the town's populace: the sea serpent's tale shatters love's illusions; the fortune-teller's shocking pronouncements toll the tedium and secret dread of every person's life; sensual undercurrents pour forth for men and women alike; and the dead walk again. (Only the PART 2 in this post, refer to PART 1 for the rest of the quotes).
My rating: 8/10
My review:
♥
♥ Then the witches came. Straight from the mountains of the moon they came, riding on their broomsticks down the highway of moonbeams to the pig-wallow and the waiting hosts. Lovely some, ugly others, thin and rancid, fat and nasty, old and youthful, repulsive and divine, they came and came. Some were ill from their rapid flight and vomited strange fluids, and some spat blood. Some were cowled like nuns. In lavish circles whirling, broomstick-borne, they skittered over the water top; weird women flying, their snarls and tatters streaming, laughing profanely like bawds; circling, circling, then alighting. The wallow banks blackened with the thronging of the sisters; sisters of temptation, sisters of falsehood, sisters of decay. A convocation of garrulous crow-women, unwashed, unshriven, undesirable, and sterile, they hopped about in the mud and cackled.
"Dance," said Apollonius. "The master cometh."
In the middle of the water, on the back of a huge turtle, a fire flared in an iron brazier. Firelight fought moonlight, and the moonlight died; and the gold of the firelight washed away from the wallow the silver of the moonlight. The batrachians, turtles, and salamanders raised their wet heads, marshaling like troops to form a living bridge to the fire. And the witches, raising their skirts, tripped out upon the water over the pathway of the water dwellers' heads. Ringaroundabout the flaring fire they danced.
Croaking, the frogs marked the measures of the steps. And bats came, night-borne, to greet the dancing sisters. Like wavering, restless flakes of soot the bats came; hovering about the witches' ears they squeaked at them; alighting in their hair they bit their ears with friendly bites and chided them and told them secret things.
From the brazier on the fire-bearing turtle a red-hot flaming coal fell. Before it reached the water a toad, taking it for a brilliant bug, snapped it up with his agile tongue and swallowed it, and then writhed convulsively as its belly burned. And the great turtle, watching his flame, now and again drove his head down into the muck to bring up in his jaws shreds of peat and snags of woof to toss over his head into the flames and so replenish the fire. And as the wet dripping fuel fell into the flames a hissing would arise on wings of steam.
The stoats and minks loosened the drawstrings of their scent sacs; the viscous stinks flooded the pond air. And the tomcats yelled, their soprano voices higher and keener and in contrast to the bass belling of the bullfrogs. And the kit foxes barked. And the hedgehogs made uncomfortable, small squealing noises. The badgers sat on their haunches watching, their masklike faces quizzical, their stripes awry, their coats damp and muddy.
And the witches whirled and danced and giggled and coughed and grimaced as the stink of the minks smote them. And the animals made their grotesque noises, singing the music for the dance.
"More vigor!" called the thaumaturge. "The master cometh!"
The animal calls increased; staccato, they crackled in the pond air. And the witches whirled the faster, danced the madder, while the fire sparkled, surged, and roared.
Then above the flames, bored, fat, over-sexed, nervous, smoking a cigarette, Satan Mekratrig appeared. Green he was, with black patches of mildew on his face and shoulders. He blew grey rings and studied the dancing.
"Terrible," he said. "Terrible. I never saw such terrible dancing. Pick it up! Pick it up!" And Satan snatched a whip out of the air and flogged the witches.
..The animals all slipped into the water and joined the dance, wallowing through the mud, trampling down the crayfish, minnows, and tadpoles, leaping among the frogs. Hovering in his flame, Satan laughed at the careful bedraggled cats afraid of wetting their feet, afraid not to dance, loathing the water and the mud, and stepping about as on hot rocks. He grabbed hunks of flame from the fire and tossed them upon the water where they burned among the furry things, igniting coats, singeing whiskers, racing through tails. The animals bawled as they burned and scorched, but danced on and on and on.
And Satan Mekratrig reached over and caught Demisara by the hair and jerked her free of the other sisters and snatched her to him in the flames and loved her there. Starshine was in her eyes; drops of dew gleamed upon her shoulders.
"Better stop it, Apollonius," Doctor Lao warned, "or it will be getting out of hand in a minute."
"Moonlight!" called the mage. "Shrill music on the piccolo!"
With a rush the moonlight returned, blotting out the blaze of the fire. The screeching of the piccolo drowned the noise of the animal calls. Satan Mekratrig howled out an oath; it lingered like blue smoke in the air. The rhythm of the dance wavered and broke. The visibility faded. The fire died. The animals disappeared. Back to the mountains of the moon streamed the witches on their broomsticks. And the moonlight crept away, and only the pall of darkness remained.
"Let there be light," commanded the magician.
Light came, the daylight of Abalone, Arizona, to illuminate the tent. But in the center of the tent above the tanbark, suspended in air, Satan Mekratrig still remained, and struggling in his arms was Demisara. The devil screamed at Apollonius, defying banishment. Froth formed on his lips from the vehemence of his screaming.
Reaching into his robe, the magician drew out a crucifix. Holding on high the little Jesus quartered on a cross, he advanced beneath the fiend. There was a burst of flame in the center of the tent, and witch and devil disappeared. Apollonius kissed and put away the artifact.
The applause was sparse and unconvincing. Apollonius and Doctor Lao bowed gravely to each other.
♥ "Oh, why does the symbol of evil come into everything and every scene in this circus?" cried Miss Agnes Birdsong. "That cynical old Chinaman, that's all he knows! There is purity and there is simplicity and there is goodness without any hint of bad about them. I know there is! Oh, he's wrong!"
"It's only a circus," said Mr. Etaoin. "Don't let it disturb you."
Doctor Lao heard her, too.
"The world is my idea," he said. "The world is my idea; as such I present it to you. I have my own set of weights and measures and my own table for computing values. You're privileged to have yours."
♥ "Piety such as theirs exists no more. Such simple, trusting faith is lost to the world. When you folks here in Abalone worship your god, I understand you do it in a church wired for sound, so that every pleasure automobile, radio-equipped, can, even at sixty miles an hour, hear you at your prayers. But does your god? Ah, well... what does it matter?
"For your better understanding of this Woldercan episode, it is necessary that I tell you Woldercan was in the midst of a drought. Rich and poor alike there had nothing to eat, for such was the dryness that nothing could grow. That was a calamity Woldercan had never before been called upon to face; for, while the poor had always been with them and chronically starving, after the fashion of the poor, theretofore the rich had always lived, after the custom of the rich, off the fat of the land. Yet now there was no good for anyone, not even the rich; nor could all the coin of the realm buy even a rotten turnip.
"Terror, the great leveler, swept the city. The politicians could do nothing; the police could do nothing; the scholars could do nothing; the rich could do nothing. The people stood around in small fearful groups, waiting for death to come slowly via the route of starvation.
"But one man among them did something. That man was he who was the high priest of Yottle. He walked rapidly among them, and:
"'Come,' he said. 'Gather in the temple. We will pray to Yottle. Yottle will protect his own.'
"So then all Woldercan, having naught else to do, went to Yottle's temple to pray.
"Now that episode of the starving Woldercanese, in Yottle's temple, praying to him for relief, is surely one of the great and vivid and dramatic scenes of all recorded history; and it is with pride that I bring it to you with my circus. As a little hint as to what happens, I want to recall to you that they sacrifice a virgin to their god. Piety. That was real piety. When you people here of Abalone pray to your god for a drought's end, do you go to such extremes in your protestations of faith? Would you sacrifice Abalone's fairest virgin? Ah, well..."
♥ He knelt. He prayed.
"Glory unto thy name, Yottle; homage before thy eyes, Yottle; Yottle the all-knowing, Yottle the omnipotent. Sinners all, we come before thee, foul with the sins of sloth and greed and hate and lust. Weary, we cannot sin more. Surfeited, we sicken and are afraid. Despairing and ashamed, we turn to thee. Dying, we remember our forgotten prayers. Hopeless, we plead: Lord of our world, forgive us; Light of our gloom, enlighten us; Creator of the spheres, aid us; Yottle, great Yottle, forgive us now, forgive."
But one of them men stood up in the rear of the temple and protested:
"Why do you pray like that? We assuredly are not ashamed of ourselves. We are not foul with sin and lust. The only reason we are here at all is because Yottle has seen fit to withhold rain from our crops. We don't want forgiveness. We want rain and something to eat. Tell Yottle so. Your business is to intercede for us, not tattletale about us." He turned to the people.
"Am I not right?" he asked.
"You certainly are," they said. And to the priest they said: "Of course he is right. We have sinned; yes. But we are not entirely without virtue. In the next period of your prayer, minimize our bad points and accentuate our good ones. Don't make us out a troop of pindling sinners wading through a manure mire of our failures. Tell Yottle of the straits we are in, if you like, but don't be so anxious to admit we merit them, because we don't believe we do."
Bitterly, the high priest answered them:
"So! You criticize me and humiliate me here before the very eyes of Yottle! You tell me, your high priest, how to pray! Very well."
He turned to Yottle, shouting:
"Hey, thou lump of bronze and shining stones! Look upon us and marvel that such magnificent people do not throw you down and melt you up and maker trinkets of your metal. We do not fear. We are great. Woldercan does not petition; she ordains. Hear us and act:
"Food we must have immediately. And immediately, too, we must have rain that we may raise more food. So out of thy cosmic kitchen, Yottle, throw us down some pie from heaven, and with thy sprinkling pot wet down our dead grain fields. Feed us, Yottle, well and quickly; fill our-"
But before the priest could say more, a high keen passionate rush of words drowned out his own. And the words came from everywhere at once, as the hurricane comes; and flood-like the words came from all sides; then they ceased.
The Woldercanese fell down on their faces. That had been Yottle's voice, and they knew it.
♥ "Very well. As I walk behind these girls, my children, and hold my hand over their respective heads, you will, by your applause, indicate the one you wish for the bride of Yottle."
Facing the faces of the people of Woldercan, the twelve lumps of ripe but untasted sex stood posing, stood waiting for the accolade that would bring to one of them the crown of beauty, the caress of death. The old trembly priest doddered behind the girls, holding over their fair, triumphant heads-fair with grace and charm, triumphant with youth and life-his wrinkled hands.
♥ Acolytes in an honor guard hush-hushed the congregation as, a little behind them, the virgin walked to the altar. A strange dark light was on her face, and above her head a faint pallid halo hung. She was of Woldercan no more; they knew it. Staring at her with twisted, side-glancing eyes, they wondered, now that she was consecrate, why they had not perceived her holiness before. And the temple of her flesh moved through the throng in the temple of Yottle, a sweeter, holier temple, more mysterious and provocative of a greater adoration than the stone temple trough which she walked.
THE CATALOGUE
(An explanation of the obvious which must be read to be appreciated.)
♥ Clowns: Pantaloons whose hearts are bursting.
♥ Chinese Troops in Tongshan, China: Members of Chang Tsolin's Manchurian forces. Coolies dressed in scarecrow uniforms, handed guns they didn't know how to shoot, and dubbed soldiers. No pay. Rations, a couple of doughballs every day. None regretted he had only one life to give for China.
♥ A Condemned Chinese Deserter: Lin Tin Ho. Age thirty. Survived by his wife and two daughters. A Shanhaikwan farmer. Impressed into the service on May 11. Shipped to Tongshan May 18. Deserted May 19. Captured May 20. Tried and sentenced May 21. Executed May 22. Pictures of his execution may still be purchased in Tientsin and Peiping. Lots of tourists and missionaries have them. The thing to do is buy one of those snapshots showing Lin getting pistoled, take it home with you carelessly intermixed with pictures of temples and canals, and then when your friends, who are looking over your Chinese album, run across it, why, just nonchalantly pass it off as a little thing you took yourself. There's no way to check up on you, unless someone you show it to has seen it before.
♥ Nebulous People Some Day to Bury Mrs. Cassan: A minister, an undertaker, a gravedigger, some mourners, and some morbid curiosity-seekers.
Nebulous People Some Day to Exhume Frank Tull: A contractor, a straw boss, and seven laborers. They didn't do it on purpose. They were fixing to dig the holes for the foundation of a new T.B. sanatorium and didn't know they were scratching into sepulchral ground.
♥ Men That Stayed Out on the Hills With Their Flocks: This was before the cattle-sheep feuds of the West. But, anyway, these men and their followers are largely responsible for the wealth of sheepherder stories that flood the world today. And where there is fire, there must be smoke. The Book of Leviticus contains many a specific warning, Godspoken to Moses, about the penalties of loving your live-stock unwisely and too well.
♥ The Little Fat Brown Boy's Father: A spearer of fishes and a god husbandman. When he planted rice seeds rice came up. When he planted plantain seeds plantain came up. When he planted his own seed the little fat brown boy came up.
♥ The Belvederian Doctor: He taught his students that it was better to live a life rather than earn a living.
♥ Kate: A sad memory.
♥ The Railroad Man's Wife: Martha. Calm, sad, insecure; sometimes she laughed; laughing, she wondered; wondering, she wanted to cry.
♥ The Wife of Plumber Rogers: Sarah. Loved her children, liked her husband, was content in Abalone, cooked good things to eat, kept a neat home, dreamed of no miracles, desired no victories, fretted when it was time to fret, laughing when it was time to laugh.
♥ Five Colored Girls: Quintet of pigmented maidens. Pigmented quintet of girls. Girlish quintet of pigmentation.
♥ Mrs. Frank Tull: Before her marriage Valerie Jones. Frank as a disappointment to her. She was a disappointment to Frank. There were in her life other disappointments, too. For instance, Nature had not endowed her with all the lovely beauty she thought her due, so, in order to augment what little which she had, she covered herself with objects themselves lovely and beautiful, and strove through theirs to add to her lack. From tiny holes in her ears she hung gold and jeweled pendants. Into the pores of her cheeks she rubbed ointments and greases of suave colors. Over her legs she drew stockings of sheer silk. Around her wrists she placed gauds of silver and bright stones. Up her fingers she slid little hoops of metal embossed with carbon. Upon her lips she dabbed rouge. Her abdomen she upheld with a belt and a corset. Her breasts she fitted into pert pouches. Over her feet she laced tight little shoes. Around her shoulders she flung animals skins. Her hair she had permanently waved. Powder she put on her neck and upon her throat; and under her arms, previously shaven smooth, she syringed a deodorant. Thus she managed to change her color, her figure, and her smell, and at the same time gleam with bright metal and flossy fur and dull silk and brilliant stones. Yet, by heaven, even then she still did not attain that beauty she so much desired; and because of that failure of attainment she would occasionally fall sick, and naught would cure the sickness save that Frank buy her more bright stones.
♥ "Tribune" Lady Reporter: Ardath Williams. A better newspaperperson than the men she competed with. At the same time a mother. At the same time a daughter.
♥ A Scullion Maid: She was for sale. She could be had.
♥ One of the Lorelei: Her hands and feet and other things were calloused from so much sitting around on the Felsen waiting for mariners to navigate past her on the Rhine. A soprano.
♥ Footbound Chinese Maidens: Unquestionably it improved their walking; that is, it improved the æsthetics of their walking. It gave them a lilting, stiltlike walk, not designed for long distance, not designed for utility, but designed only to please the eyes of their masters. The deformation fell into critical disrepute when the daughters of the poor adopted it, the daughters who had to work instead of charm.
♥ Girl Formerly a She-Goat: Time after time the transformations are decried in the Old Testament. Today, we live more simply; love less ardently.
♥ Vahine That the Sea Serpent Ate: A Polynesian girl. She ate fish and fruit and vegetables. When the sea serpent ate her, she liked it even less than the fish liked it when she ate them.
♥ A Girl in Apollonius's Life: A memory.
♥ A Little Fat Brown Boy: For seven years he was a diner; then for a few minutes he was a dinner. Ultimately he was incorporated into the cell structure of the sea serpent, a distinction he did not enjoy.
♥ Frogboys: Cretins.
♥ Polar Bear: White like the ice floes among which it wanders. Great Mother Nature-she created snowfields for polar bears and pinewoods for black bears and mountains for grizzly bears and toyshops for teddy bears.
♥ Horses: Anachronisms less speedy, less beautiful, less efficient than the machines which have replaced them.
♥ Golden Ass: Wolves turn into women, mud into turtles, brown boys into snakes, fish into vahines, goats into girls, men into swine. And Lucius Apuleius, with the aid of Fotis, turned into an ass.
♥ Hound of the Hedges: A dream.
♥ Burro: Not a white man's animal.
♥ Sea Serpent's Mate: She knew what he wanted when she saw him coming through the waves.
♥ Scorpions: Very ancient bugs glorified in heaven every night.
♥ Cockroach: La Cucaracha, the kitchendweller. Decently dressed in brown or black, discreet and humble, he lives in hovels as readily as in grand hotels. He has been with us a long time. He crawled about the middenheaps of the Neanderthal just as he still crawls about the middenheaps of the Parisian. He is fit and he survives. He watched the dinosaur and the pterodactyl die, and he saw Babylon flourish.
♥ Cats: They are wild in the heart of a city, but they are tame and frightened in the heart of the woods. They don't fit anywhere any more.
♥ Roc: Really not as big as Sinbad thought it was, but plenty big enough to do all that he said it did.
♥ Unicorn: A decorative device on a mustard pot.
♥ Medusa: As frigid herself as the stone figures into which she converted men.
♥ Boa: A little snake that squeezes.
Anaconda: A giant snake that squeezes.
♥ Rats: They fight with cockroaches for the crust left under the table. And once they knew glory: they ate a bishop.
♥ Ticks: Paradoxes. When they are not feeding on blood, they are blood-red. When they are feedinf on blood, they are grey as soap.
♥ Poland China Shoat: Food for man.
Duroc Jersey Pig: Food for man.
Guadarene Swine: Food for sermons.
♥ Pan: Physically the largest of all the gods. In his troupe were lemures, ægipanes, bassarides, bacchides, evantes, mænades, fauns, and sylvans. They all adored him.
♥ Tu-Jeng: Solid brick. All about it are red brick kilns breathing reddish smoke into the dead air. And the road past Tu-jeng is red for it is made of chips and slivers of brick. And the water in the canal near Tu-jeng is red and runs through red clay banks. But everything is a dead red, not the cool red of wine, nor the hot red of blood, nor the blood-red of hate.
♥ THE STATUETTES, FIGURINES, ICONS, ARTIFACTS, AND IDOLS
YOTTLE: Bronze.
KATE: Carnelian chalcedony.
SPHINX (MRS. ROGERS'S): Terra cotta.
SPHINX (WINKELMANN'S): Ivory.
SPINX (EGYPTIAN): Sandstone.
ONE ANONYMOUS MAN: Sandstone.
ELEVEN ANONYMOUS ONLOOKERS: Chert.
TEN DRUNKEN SAILORS: Jade.
CRUCIFIX: Gold.
CHIMERA (ALEXANDRIAN): Rags and clay and hide and bones.
CHIMERA (TIBETAN): Porcelain.
CHIMERA (KUBLAI'S): Bronze.
EPHESIAN DIANA: Rosewood.
LINGAM: Second growth black walnut.
YOTTLE'S SACRED STONE AX: Basalt.
♥ THE QUESTIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS AND OBSCURITIES
1. Was it a bear or a Russian or what?
2. If the sea serpent was as poisonous as it claimed to be, why didn't it kill the chimera when it bit him?
3. Why, after all the discussion between himself and his wife, didn't Frank Tull hunt up the bear and see what it really was?
4. Why should Apollonius of Tyana, who claimed superiority to Christ, fall back on the crucifix to banish Satan?
5. Why didn't the two college punks get sore when they were thrown out?
6. Why didn't Doctor Lao notice anything unusual when he found Miss Agnes Birdsong and the satyr in such a compromising posture?
7. What was the business that the dead man whom Apollonius resurrected had to attend to?
8. What did Mumbo Jumbo do with the fair-haired Nordic girl?
9. If the circus didn't come to Abalone on the railroad and didn't come on trucks, how did it get there?
10. What happened to the eleven people who were turned to stone when the medusa dropped her blindfold?>
11. If Apollonius was such a great magician, why did he waste his time fooling around with a little circus?
12. Inasmuch as legend tells us that chimeras were invariably females, how did it happen that Doctor Lao's was a male?
13. Was it for this same reason that Tu-jeng, when Doctor Lao caught the satyr there, was a hamlet near the Great Wall, whereas it is now a suburb of Tientsin?
♥
