John Moore Williams
The Aristocrats
Les Freres des Cirques waltzed in to the green room in dressed-down versions of their stage clothes, leather pants clinging tightly to the taut muscles of their legs, loose wifebeaters drooping to reveal glimpses of petite but muscular, oiled pectorals. They swung in, one behind the other, their (relatively) broad shoulders just missing each other; their timing as unaffected as only years of performing together could make it. Swinging so agilely into the high stools we’d set up for the interview as to entirely elide our thoughtlessness in selecting such elevated furnishings for our miniature guests.
Count Base launched immediately into a rumbling throat-clearing session that ground seamlessly into words, “We’re not even French, you know? Nor are we brothers. German, actually, but before we joined the Aristocrats, our shtick had been a bumbling Nazi dwarves routine. We were so tired of schlepping to the crowds we decided to change our name from the Zeppelin Brothers to les Freres. Ridiculous language, French, but there’s a certain respectability to the French clown tradition that we just couldn’t earn for ourselves as German dwarves in the years just after the First War. We renovated the act entirely, teaching ourselves how to juggle, to ride the unicycle, to tumble with grace instead of comic ridiculousness. And the Aristocrats took us in with open arms. The first years were incredible; we’d enter about half-way through the show, teetering purposefully on our cycles as we juggled butcher knives and swaddled babies lifted from the theatre pews while their negligent parents wandered off to concessions to gulp down flutes of champagne. We gleamed in black leather suits dripping in rivets and studs, our spiraling blades flashing in the roar of the fire breather’s torches. The first couple passes we’d enter from opposite sides, looping out and then crossing at center stage, trading armloads of infants and meat-cleavers as we passed, then meeting again backstage. After the third pass Marquis de Bauche here would leap into my lap on the backstage leg and we’d enter as one, he bouncing agilely atop my fantastically tumescent knob, still twirling his burden of babes and blades while I cycled us through a ring of fire blown from a squatting fire breather’s gaseous ass. Suddenly we’d seem to drop through the stage floor, disappearing down a trick panel, only to leap up moments later like an obscene jack-in-box, this time with de Bauche standing tiptoed on the unicycle seat, myself with lips wrapped around his own very generous, entirely vertical member, supporting myself in what amounted to an inverted mouth-stand, one infant lying comfortably outstretched atop each of my horny-soled feet. Once more we’d plunge magically through the floorboards, emerging again, this time with myself doing a headstand upon the narrow seat, my legs parted and hanging down on each side at a ninety degree angle to my body, de Bauche seated laconically on my lap, back to the audience, each of us deeply penetrating the other while we swayed upon the crowd-heated air. A constant stream of kiddies and cleavers arced above de Bauche’s head, and as we found our center of gravity, he’d lean backbreakingly backwards, eyes fixed on the crowd while the whorl of potential infanticide merry-go-went on amongst the catwalks. Then it was time for our big finale. De Bauche, folding his legs as dexterously as any insect, pressed his feet against my thighs and began to push himself up and down. Three times he rose and descended again, until, on the fourth ascension, he’d push powerfully off, tumbling up into the air as a stream of hot pearlescence arced out over the crowd. As he rose, I likewise threw myself up into a flip, coming to rest with my feet on the seat as de Bauche continued his acrobatics, snaring, one by one, the still tumbling babes and blades, sending the infants hurtling back to their bereft, gasping families, the blades thumping to rest quivering in the thick oaken table to which a young woman had been strapped in spread-eagled vulnerability.
“And so we played our part in the bountiful play of the Aristocrats for nigh unto a year, entrancing all the finest folk of Viridian, our death-defying tumbling a self-contained and beauteous facet of its diamond-like complexity.
“Then, Asterix, our beloved Dionysian ringleader, found Fiona. Fiona’s the only reason we agreed to this interview; she’s the one we came to talk about,” and here Count Base finally paused, leaning back into his chair to cast a silent, encyclopedic look de Bauche’s way, chewing ruminatively upon a cigar the exact width and leathery-brown tone of his stubby little fingers. He sucked loudly upon the cigar, flaring its embered end into florid, bloody life, still staring de Bauche’s way, as if waiting for the latter to receive the whole of some soundless telegraph.
At last it was de Bauche who broke the silent spell of that gaze, and whereas Base’s patrician tones had occasionally betrayed a somewhat poetic, ironic sensibility that entirely befitted his association with the royally patronized troupe, de Bauche’s voice bespoke the hollowed-out and horrific awe of a shell-shocked survivor.
“Asterix found her in Anchorite Square, near the heart of the city. The day was grey as lead, the sky a worm-pale belly baring its vulnerable flesh to the scoring needle-claws of the skyscrapers and cathedrals. Generally, Asterix spends his days with the Aristocrats, incessantly plotting new shows, making arrangements for the show’s next destination, searching, always searching. But every once in a great while, he grows tired of the planning; his eyes grow as leaden, as flat as the grey Viridian days, and he leaves us. Donning his scarlet-velvet overcoat, he strikes out upon the city, wandering its neon-slicked streets with his eyes upon the gloaming clouds, walking as if he were the last man on an abandoned earth, memorializing in his thoughts some catastrophe long forgotten by the mass of man. And then he saw her, his eyes finally drawn to earth, to other eyes, like light drawn to the inconceivable density of a dying star.”
“Understand,” Count Base whispered in what would have been an aside, were it not for that he pitched his voice as if de Bauche were not actually sitting beside him, “he speaks as if he were not himself. This is all as Asterix told us himself; and yet, what can we know of another’s life but the stories he tells us, eh? All I can say is that you hear this as Asterix himself would have spoken it.
“Were he here today.”
“She was squatting on the cement next to a park bench, beneath the denuded branches of an ancient oak, its twigs bejeweled with iridescent drops of rain that dripped down to soak the thin grey shift that was all she wore. Eyes of milky jade caught my own,” de Bauche continued, as if he had not heard his fellow Frere, yet acknowledged the latter’s speech all the same, “and I was drawn forward as helplessly as was my gaze. Before I knew it I stood before her, utterly incapable of speech and yet impelled to encounter this strange apparition in the hazing rain.
“Speechless still, she rose and stepped toward me, lacing one delicate, ivory hand around my upper arm, and together, we returned to the theatre.”
De Bauche subsided back into silence, but even as his flow of speech stopped, Count Base took up the thread again, as if de Bauche had merely handed off the spool to take up the cutting of the line.
“Even though she hadn’t spoken a single word, Asterix knew that she would be perfect for the show. In fact, I believe that it was her very stony silence itself which infected him with the urge to include her in our show of shows, as if the lacunae of words upon her tongue made her more potently mysterious than all the strange goddesses of the East combined. And indeed she did become, and quickly too, a veritable goddess of Asterix’s hall of freaks and prodigies. She was, in some metaphorical but ultimately real sense, a sort of Mary among us, an Our Lady of the Harlots, for though she moved among us, partaking of our meals and our revelries, our shows and our travels, she seemed sublimely untouched by the reality of us. She was of the show, and yet not of it, for though Asterix immediately worked out a routine involving both ourselves and Fiona, she never partook of the peculiarly forbidden fruits that stewed amidst our broiling pot. She was the Virgin of the Aristocrats, and was, hence, or perhaps it was because of her eldritch virginity, never pierced nor entered, nor even caressed during her sojourn upon our libidinous stage. She existed within another world entirely, enveloped by the aegis of stillness, of unsound, she projected around herself. In sum, Fiona seemed like a distant mountain prominence, glimpsed from afar, snowcapped and infinitely removed from our daily lives among the back alleys and freeways of Viridian, and yet intimately involved with that life, just as the arc of a circle defines its center, and vice versa.
“But perhaps a description of Fiona’s part in our show would serve to better illustrate the nature of her position among we, the Aristocrats. In sum, our performance was little changed, for we still teetered onstage upon our little unicycles, juggling our peculiar mixture of innocence and deadliness, but in the burlesque, as in most of life, all is in the details. And in that sense, both larger and infinitely more circumscribed, our lives were utterly transformed. Now Asterix had decreed that our skin-tight leather leggings would be crotchless, and before each show the two of us would whip each other into frenzies of erection (aided, of course, by whatever young boy or girl among the night’s cast proved to be less than adamant in their recalcitrance) previous to wheeling out on stage. As we emerged, then, from the wings, hawkers hidden high in the catwalks would release specially trained peregrines, which would speed down from the rafters with homicidal speed before coming to abrupt, and violent (by all means, violent) stops upon the fleshy but sensitive heads of our cocks. Struggling to stifle our screams as ignorant talons sought firmer purchase in our vulnerable flesh, we searched inside voluminous leather satchels for the adjustable, caliper-like tweezers Asterix had provided us with. Now, as we neared the crossing-point of our arcs, we each pulled free a tweezer with a theatrical flourish, fixing it firmly to the marble-pale flesh Fiona had only just bared.”
“Understand, Asterix had always told us never to fall in love. He said that he wanted a purity in our performances that love would only sully,” de Bauche interjected, seemingly apropos of nothing.
“Uggghhhmmm,” Count Base rumbled on, sparing no more than an irritated glance de Bauche’s way, “The flesh Fiona had only just bared, I was saying, yes, only just bared for, a full three minutes before our grotesque entrance, Fiona had marched magisterially unto center stage, her pale form positively dripping froths of white lace, tulle fogs of pearl-dewed tulle…”
“Decked her out to be his wife,” de Bauche ejaculated suddenly.
“Yes, yes,” Base growled, as if hoping to lance his fellow’s nerves with inattention, “Asterix had lavished his funds upon the outfitting of Fiona. But who is to say that he should not have spent so much? Certainly I would not be so bold, for her beauty fair demanded such elaborate outpourings of wealth. ‘Twas only appropriate that she, our virgin queen, be frocked in those vestments best suited to her role.
“In any case, as I was saying, Fiona had only just disrobed by tugging at the single knot which so cunningly bound that confection of silks and satins to her limpid body. Somehow this simple, forthright act of disrobing, eyes fixed upon the crowd, in purest silence, while all around her cavorted men and women in all states of undress, their bodies besmirched by sprays of shit and cum, smears of blood and spit, utterly transfixed the audience. I cannot count the nights this act, which would seem so meaningless, so tamed, by all the wild orgy at her back, drew from the crowd a gasp so simultaneous and ecstatic as to suck the very air from the room, setting the stage-candles to dance in breathless suspense.”
“You can see why she became our queen,” de Bauche murmured, a truculent child unwilling to give up without at least the ghost of a fight.
“Again and again de Bauche and I passed, each time affixing a fresh caliper to some as yet unbound square of flesh. Finally, we had exhausted both our stock of implements, and the range of her body, and it was thus, her body agonizingly festooned, that Fiona began her dance.
“Amongst we Aristocrats, it was this dance that constituted Fiona in our minds; it was the sum total of our communion with her, and we counted it far more precious than all the baroque and sophisticated language our poet-ringmaster Asterix could offer us. We revered Asterix’s words, I assure you (after all, he had been the toast of the Viridian salons before he gathered together his motley crew), but there was something transcendent to Fiona’s dance, something no words could ever speak.
“In motion, upon that stage, Fiona became as one the Dervishes of old - nay, she was greater than all of them - and it is a sort of fantasy I indulge myself with in these doddering years that if only one of those athletic devotees might have beheld her gliding across that stage, he might have turned those once-worthy anchorites away from the overly loquacious, war-like god to whom they now devote their deadly sword-dances, and founded instead a faith centered on a silent, infinitely graceful goddess.
“But we may wish whatever we will of history and see our dreams come to naught, and there are other, more personal catastrophes I would rather see end differently. Indeed, it is probable that I am here today out of just such a fond, foolish old man’s wish: the dream that a story, in its telling, might change somewhat of that which it tells.
“In any case, as you can no doubt tell from all my florid outpourings upon the subject of Fiona, we Aristocrats grew to love her, and thus we broke the one and only commandment Asterix had invoked upon us. Understand, I do not mean to say that what happened can be laid out our feet; I suggest no such simplistic moral. But our love for Fiona can not be extricated from the events that followed – much as love and death, though antitheses cannot be wholly opposed.
“We Aristocrats loved her, yes; but none loved her so much as me and my brother, de Bauche. Time and work, those twin suturing needles of the soul, worked their magic upon us three, and for a time we were as inseparable as Morgan and Fay, the Siamese twins whose fire-eating act worked its incendiary magic upon the stage of the Orpheum for so many years. Understand: we were no different from the rest in terms of her un-loquaciousness. As with all others, she refused to speak a word to us. But we were favored with many a back-stage performance, and it was through these impromptu eruptions of movement that we began to count ourselves her closest companions. Many was the night when, having retired to our parti-colored wagon, we witnessed the most wee hours of the evening in her company, imbibing both the finest wines gifted to us by our patrons, and the strange enchantments of her movement.
And it was under the auspices of these languorous, drunken nights that we discovered that we were not the only ones to have broken Asterix’s sole commandment.
On that particular night the usual leaden sheet of winter clouds had broken open to reveal a sheet of obsidian opalescence gleaming with the cruel, cold light of stars like the lanterns of lost ships bobbing on infinite, abandoned oceans. The air lay like a titanic, slain beast over the rustling grasses of the field outside the Orpheum, and the heady mixture of wine and beauty had driven us three out under that majestic tarp to dance as heedlessly as mad children. Weaving discordantly around Fiona, de Bauche and I felt our innate ridiculous become something more, become, in fact, the perfect frame to the transcendent sublimity of her dance. We must have danced for hours, turning circles back to the timelessness of childhood, for when we finally abandoned that field for the warm dream of our beds, the eastern horizon showed the pale rose-petals of dawn trembling above the black teeth of Viridian’s fabled towers. I wandered off, stumbling dizzily, alone, and though I did not realize it then, I do believe now that my fellow here, Monsieur de Bauche, wandered off to close the evening arm-in-arm with Fiona.”
Here my eyes turned inquisitively to de Bauche, but now he had no interjections to make; he merely turned his eyes down toward the floor, shaking his head as if to deny that which he could not bring himself to speak.
Count Base continued, unperturbed by this latest manifestation of what must have been decades of a close silence, “In any case, I wandered off the grass myself, my whole body yearning in the ache of muscles for sleep. I had reached the thin line of oaks and poplars amongst which our wagons huddled like spectral fungi when the faint sound of a man sobbing caught my admittedly foggy attentions. Despite my weariness, I felt myself drawn toward that sound, as helpless as a moth given sight of flame, or a frozen meteor hypnotized by the weighty fire of a dying star. I stumbled off in the direction of the sound, and would have come upon my target all unawares were it not for an overly aggressive root whose lust for life had misguided it into the ephemeral regions of the air. I tripped, finding myself horizontal with a mouthful of black earth (which I discovered, the next morning, and upon many a subsequent dawn, to be most excellent proof against the woes of hangover), peering through the dense living lace of some low-lying bushes. Peering through their green chiaroscuro I discovered a shadow upon its knees, hands pressed to tear-gleaming cheeks in an attitude so prayerful that I cannot, to this day, enter a church without seeing that image before my very eyes, blurring out all the marble and stained-glass wonders of pious imagination. His sobs tore through his body like thunder rolling through the summer sky, the thin blades of his shoulders jutting upward with each wracking groan like the latent stubs of long-broken wings. I could see by his attitude that he had been facing toward a break in the underbrush, a gap which peered directly upon the glade where only moments before Fiona, de Bauche and I had danced, like a keyhole gaping back through time.
“And just then, the first pale shoots of dawn broke over the horizon, seeking root in the grimy eye of that district, and finding there the broken, ravaged visage of none other than our beloved poet-ringmaster, Asterix.
“Sometimes it takes but a moment to unfold the terrible truth of love – sometimes it is a mystery whole lives can be spent upon unraveling. This moment…this…was of the former.
“Though, perhaps, it has been of the latter as well. All great mysteries, I think, present to us this doubled face: an answer, as simple as a moment’s thought, and an enigma, infinitely unraveling its simplicities.”
“Understand, sirs,” de Bauche suddenly spoke, his voice a rasping monotone, as if hollowed of all the highs and lows of mundane speech, for Count Base had collapsed back into the wooden arms of his stool as if entirely enervated by his part of the tale, “that we are no playwrights. Though we spent our lives strutting upon the stage, the glaring lights of which often lend the splintering boards an unearthly gleam, our performances consisted of naught but the heights of drama: its apotheosistic ecstasies, its pathetic tragedies, and none of those moments of growing tension. We lived to bring to others the extremes they can often only dream, and rarely live: the horrors and sublimities that all too often elude them. They become as daily fare for us, and thus, the Euclidian, clean geometries of a well-told story are beyond us. So it is that there remains one more player we’ve yet to introduce; but one more player to make our tale told.
“That player: Quinne, the dancing bear.
“Now, the dancing bear may be an all-too familiar star in the obscene cosmologies of roaming carnivals and grotesque circuses. We are all familiar with the heart-wrenching ‘dances’ they perform for the delectation of the ignorant and impoverished: ‘dances’ that are more the revolting contortions of fear inspired in a beast threatened with flaming brands, dragged hither and thither by chains looped through the iron ring inset between the creatures nostrils than acts of creative expression. And yet, irony of ironies, the ‘dancing bears of Winnfairago,’ as Quinne’s species are vulgarly called, are actually representatives of one of the highest cultures to have evolved out of the grim wastes of the Furthest North, and will perform, given their druthers, some of the most peculiar, and refined, dances ever witnessed by human eyes. For the Ursa (as Quinne once told us his people prefer to be called – an interesting fact given the roots of our scientific name for the bear, ursa) view dance as the highest of religious acts, and their dancers are the hierophants and anchorites of their people.”
“Enough exposition,” Count Base exclaimed, betraying an impatience oddly familiar from de Bauche’s earlier interruptions. “Tell how they met,” he finished, flourishing one hand like a bored conductor cueing a sub-par orchestra.
“Asterix loved the world we moved in – that phantasmagoria dreamt by the ‘normal,’ waking world, composed of a shifting kaleidoscope of carnivals and circuses, freak shows and burlesques, strip clubs and drag shows – truly loved it; more, perhaps, than any of the rest of us. Except perhaps for Fay and Morgan, the aforementioned Siamese monstrosities, and oftentimes these three would venture out on free nights to savor the excitements offered by those off-Orpheum curiosities patronized by less…ahem…savory characters than our own,” and here, de Bauche, in an uncharacteristically dramatic move, actually pronounced his momentary throat-clearing, “But whenever Asterix ventured out of our little Aristocratic world, he did so with us in mind, his sharp eyes and ever-inventive mind always tuned into possibilities for the expansion of our show. One night, weeks after we had discovered Asterix’s affection for Fiona, the three stumbled upon a peculiar show in the Black Light District. Asterix would regale us with the scene many times in the following months, and so it is that I can tell the tale as if I had been there myself.
The show was to take place in a squalid little closet of a club, far too downscale even to merit the title ‘dive,’ let alone ‘hole-in-the-wall.’ A giant of a man, freakshow-worthy himself, but far too commonplace to warrant real interest, squatted before the decaying, knife-scarred door, somehow conveying the strange gravity of a gargoyle despite his imposing height. A thunderous groan issued from some monstrous depth within his body as Asterix, Fay and Morgan approached, informing them of the single gold-piece cover and the necessity of a quick, but exceedingly thorough body-search. Fay and Morgan acceded to the latter demand with typical enthusiasm, squealing in delight as the man’s titanic hands roamed over their dual body, much to the doorman’s stoically-masked dismay. By the time he, or rather, they, had finished, the doorman was in no mood to trouble with Asterix, and simply waved our ringmaster inside. Therein, the world became a confused kaleidoscope of shifting bodies, the mingled reek of sweat, burning tar, perfume and alcohol (this last in every stage of being from liquid in the mug to piss on the floor and vomit in the sawdust) and the torturous squeal of a Viridian noise-jazz band. The night-show had already begun, but consisted of nothing more than a series of uncreative stripteases by perfectly normal dancers which left Fay and Morgan yawning, rolling their eyes and checking their watches. The twins began bickering, as is their wont when boredom steals over their iron-grey eyes, but Asterix insisted they stay, placating the boys by reminding them that a club that demanded such thorough ministrations upon entrance must surely have more interesting offerings than exotic dancers. The show went on, one boa-bearing and fish-netted woman following the other, until the noise-jazz suddenly collapsed into a cataclysmic silence, unveiling for a moment the chorus of porcine grunts and squeals the crowd seemed to emit naturally. Then the ghostly piping of a calliope began to drift through the room, joined quickly by the asthmatic wheeze of a poorly patched-up accordion. Tattered velvet currents flurried down over the stage, then rose with a melodramatic flourish, revealing a thicket of guttering torches surrounding a tuxedoed man clutching a thickly-linked iron chain which lead off into the offstage obscurity. The suited man gave the chain an effortful heave, which was answered by a beastly below from the wings, and then there appeared a massive, shuffling mountain of shaggy, flame-dewed fur huffing reluctantly at chain’s end. A ring as wide as a man’s outstretched hand circled through the beast’s cavernous nostrils. With the artificial, almost clockwork motions of a stage magician, the master of ceremonies drew a massive pair of metal tongs from the apparently voluminous interior of his jacket. These he then swung through the flickering forest of flames like an artless swordsman, sending torrents of black, greasy smoke out into the already hellish room. Soon the tong’s circular ends began to glow with a volcanic luster, and at was at this point that the MC gave an oddly balletic turn, attaching the tong-tips to the ring in the beast’s nose.
“Dance, vile beast,” the man cried out suddenly, “Dance!”
And to Fay's and Morgan’s gasping astonishment, the beast did indeed begin to dance, rearing up onto the living pillars of its hind legs and shuffling fearfully, vainly, away from the searing radiance at the tip of its sensitive nose. Impossibly broad paws swung through the air in manic attempts to bat the chain away, sending an almost musical tinkling cutting through the carnivalesque music. The animal lumbered resoundingly back, ‘til it seemed the man must relinquish his hold or be flung offstage. But it took no more than a cruel, casual wrenching of the wrist to haul the bear back to center-stage.
And it was then that Asterix rose, voice resounding with a righteous indignation such that neither Fay nor Morgan had ever heard before, “Stop, sir! I demand that you cease your ridiculous torture of this noble animal immediately!”
Even as he spoke, our poet-ringmaster strode determinedly toward the stage, Fay and Morgan following confused in his wake. Asterix reached the stage and leapt up, only to feel the extraordinarily muscular hand of the bouncer curl around the velvet back of his coat. Asterix halted for a moment, then turned his gaze upon Fay and Morgan, who obliged our leader’s silent request by stepping between him and the bouncer, extending their four hands to caress the brute with an undoubtedly unsettling coordination. Growling inhumanely, the bouncer reached out to push the twins from his way. It was then that they bared their fangs, alabaster flesh rippling up over their noses and foreheads to accommodate their glistening length. Foot long, serpentine tongues undulated through the hot air to lick the beads of sudden sweat from the giant’s face, and he reeled backward, slamming into and shattering the wooden table behind him.
And that was all it took for the thin veneer of civilization that always obtains in such locales to crack open and bleed. In a moment the crowd was transformed into a roiling sea of flying fists and flashing knives, a tornado of violence which easily swept the bouncer into its unsilent eye.
Raising one eyebrow archly, Asterix pirouetted and stepped before the bear’s torturer, relieving the man of his burning tongs with a simple twist of the wrist. Tongs in hand, Asterix turned them upon the other man, quickly clamping them closed around the man’s thin throat. The latter howled as the still-hot metal seared into tender flesh.
“Dance, man! Dance!”
Asterix’ voice grew manic in that moment, possessed utterly by the senseless fury of poetic justice, and he laughed like a holy fool as the man shuddered and twitched in grotesque parody of dance.
And the bear, Quinne, our beloved Quinne, seeing his sadistic master thus mastered, fell upon the man, fangs flashing a fiery, bloody light.
“In that single action, Asterix gained Quinne’s absolute trust.
“But it took some time for the scarred bear to have some faith in the rest of us. I can’t really tell you anything of how that happened; it took place wholly between Asterix and Quinne. It seems strange that this would be true, even so many years later – you would have thought it would take exposure to the rest of us Aristocrats, time working with us…much as it had been for Fiona. But it wasn’t.
In the end, all it took was love of Asterix.
“And so begins…began?...no, begins, the final movement of our little play.”
“Movement? Did you say, ‘movement’” De Bauche erupted, “It should be ‘act.’ Write act, not movement. If it’s a symphony, then it’s a movement. Not an act. An act’s in a play.”
“Act? No, these days, it seems less like an act, and more like a movement. An act’s something willed, something voluntary. None of us willed what happened. But a movement – a movement’s something that doesn’t have to be acted, or performed. A movement, that can be involuntary,” Base rejoined, with an abstracted air, as if the objection had been his own, rather than his compatriot’s.
“And so began the final movement, in which our act was changed yet again. We had only a day to practice the changes, for the crown prince of Viridian was to attend the show that night, and Asterix simply demanded that the new script be worked into this most crucial of performances. The day was grueling, but by twilight, we had it down…
“The new act went like this: Brother de Bauche and I were to perform our usual cunning circles, both backstage and fore-, speeding on our shiny little unicycles. Only now we were to forsake our usual juggling instruments in favor of a set of surgical-steel scalpels, the medically-fine blades of which flashed and glittered in the stage-lights like the tiniest, most jewel-like of stars. And now, at center-stage, there stood, not our lovely Lady Fiona, but massive, beastly Quinne, unknown to all of us and deific in all his shaggy, intelligent ferocity. De Bauche and I passed him again and again, flinging our tiny blades in deadly arcs around his towering, furry form at each pass, so close that it seemed they must be passing through his tough flesh. Minute balloons filled with pig’s blood and scarlet silk scarves which had been cunningly knotted into his fur added to the illusion, as our blades sliced through their membranous skins and fine threads, unveiling gouts of black blood and crimson flesh. Just after our fifth pass, Quinne threw his massive arms out and away, falling through the same old trick door in the stage, unveiling our beautiful Fiona, as if he, all along, had been nothing but a fine, fierce fur worn by some immaculate lady. Fiona stood, unveiled, magisterial and naked…”
“And that was when Asterix…our beloved Asterix….charged out onto the stage. Tearing the gaudy ringleader’s uniform from his flesh even as he ran. Colliding with Fiona, center-stage, collapsing the two of them into a furious tangle of limbs and panting breath. And there he had her, naked and brutal and shameless, raping silent sibylline Fiona for all the best of Viridian, including the crown prince, to see,” De Bauche cut in, his voice devoid of the usual energy with which he interrupted, sounding now as if he had been drained of all life even in the telling, and now wished for nothing more than the painful end of this, which was not only a tale, but a turning-point, a pivot, of his life.
“All the while, she made not a sound. But when Asterix had finished, and fled the stage, streaming tears and semen all over his pale length, she rose, and cried out at the top of her lungs, reaching notes no human throat should breach, nor human ear hearken to,
"All these years I have submitted myself to your eyes, Viridian, bared myself and my life to your impassive gaze. And only tonight have I been violated. Only tonight have I been taken by your inextinguishable gaze…’
“And at that, Quinne, catapulted upward by cunning machinery of Asterix’ own devise, swept up upon the stage, a holy Fury, a dervish in his rage, and swept her down with a single stroke of his massive, bone-clawed paw.
“That was the last hurrah of the Aristocrats.
“You should have seen the ovation we received that night. I’m told the crown prince exited in tears.”
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