Little Nothing by Marisa Silver

says.
    â€œNo,” the woman says, and for a minute, Pavla sees not FrantiÅ¡ka, but her mother behind her, staring past her shoulder into the mirror. “You’re not going to die,” the woman says, patting her back. “Now go away and leave an old couple in peace.”
    â€”
    A FTER THAT NIGHT , Pavla’s performance changes. When Danilo removes the cape, instead of simpering and pretending to be ashamed and then roaring for effect, she simply stands motionless, looking out at the audience. She waits out the horrified shrieks, the gasps, the catcalls, and stoning until that menacing energy is spent. At that point, the audience, no longer allowed to engage with her as an act, must come to different terms with the fact that she is a living truth, no more fantasy than those who look upon her. Her stillness, her unwillingness to prance and perform, become a different sort of confrontation that makes them feel less superior, vulnerable even, as if their own maskshave been violently ripped away and now the truth of their ugliness and their distorted desires are on display for Pavla to see. Each night, as the women drop their hands from their eyes, as the men stop leaning into one another to tell their nasty jokes, Pavla sees in their faces not ghoulish pleasure but confusion. Why is she staring at
them
? What horror does
she
see? She watches as even the most obstreperous of them wither; their shoulders turn inward, their eyes cast about for reassurance. They grab one another’s hands. People leave as quietly as they do the confessional. And then they buy a ticket for the next show.
    Smetanka is delighted by the turn of events. Word spreads in advance of their arrival in new towns. The carnival’s most reliable acts, Margolius, the Combustible Man, who can make smoke come out of his ears and nostrils before flames burst from the top of his head; Evo, the Fish Boy, whose mother has sewn flippers onto his back to go with the fin-like hands he was born with; and three-breasted Magdalena, and even Juliska (and Pavla feels a bit guilty about this), lose patrons to the Wolf Girl. Each night the lines in front of Smetanka’s tent are the longest of them all. Pavla stops badgering Danilo about leaving. After all, she has no argument. They are neither of them indentured to the doctor and yet both of them stay.
    â€”
    T HE CARNIVAL STOPS are few as the warm months draw to a close and by the time of the first snowfall, nearly all the acts have dispersed. The Chinese twins and the human skeleton travel tosoutherly countries where the season is longer. The giant returns to his village, where he spends the winter cramped inside a house he shares with his average-sized wife and children. The combustible man has been hired by a circus across the ocean where he will be shot out of a cannon while his hair is on fire. Without a plan, and fretting about money, Smetanka orders Pavla to change the act. Once she has lowered her hood and revealed herself as a wolf to the sparse, cold, and drunken audience, she and Danilo follow a new script:
    â€œYou are a wolf!” Danilo says.
    â€œI’m no wolf. I’m a maiden,” she says.
    â€œIf you are a girl, then you must prove it. Otherwise I will get my gun and shoot you and use your pelt to make a winter coat for my dear mother.”
    â€œBut I have no pelt. I have skin just like any girl.”
    â€œShow me.”
    And so, little by little, as the stragglers in the audience hoot, Pavla begins to undress. One glove comes off. Danilo demands more proof. She removes the other. Danilo says that for all he knows she is a type of wolf out of Asia that has no hair on its paws. Off comes her boot and so on until she is down to her slip. The exposure of her stretched and scarred body is torture. Danilo falls to his knees before her and claims that hers is the most beautiful female body he has ever seen and that despite her terrible face, he promises to love