Stella Descending by Linn Ullmann Page B

in Scandinavia. The Circus Bravado’s tour of Norway proved to be its most successful ever, and El Jabali’s father-in-law, the ringmaster, finally seemed pleased with his son-in-law, slapped him on the back, and kissed him on the lips. Not another word was said about the fact that in the past the ringmaster had been known to refer to his son-in-law in somewhat derogatory terms—calling him a conceited ass, for example. But then El Jabali really was presenting the Bravado’s audiences with a most amazing conjuring trick.”
    “Can you describe it?” Martin asked. The room was dark; his face, across the dining table, indistinct.
    “Close your eyes and picture it,” I said.
    Martin didn’t close his eyes, but he listened quietly nevertheless.
    “The show is almost over. The lights are low, only a single pool of white light in the center of the ring. The pianist plays the first stanzas of what a few people will recognize as the last song in Schubert’s cycle
Die Winterreise
. El Jabali wanders into the ring, dressed like a tramp, a clownish musician in a squashed top hat, a moth-eaten dinner suit, a tattered bow tie, and a pair of enormous black shoes. He shuffles in, heading for the pool of light, stopping now and then to cock his head and point to the circus orchestra, as if to tell the audience that he too can hear the piano music.
    “Then he is standing perfectly still in the pool of light. He casts a wary glance at the pianist before proceeding to turn his right arm in a circle. The pianist plays and the tramp’s arm turns. And so it goes. The pianist plays; the tramp’s arm turns. Eventually two clowns dressed in red run into the ring, carrying a barrel organ. They set it down gently in front of the tramp and indicate with their huge whitened hands that he can play it if he wants; the barrel organ is a gift from them to him. Then they run out.
    “So the tramp plays the barrel organ, one little tune after another, but he doesn’t seem too happy. He looks around. He’s all alone. Even the clowns have gone. No one wants to listen to the organ grinder. But maybe if he plays something else—yes, that’s it, maybe if he plays something else—and so he does, something a bit livelier, as if he were summoning someone, calling out to someone, and to the audience’s amazement a woman begins to materialize in the pool of light. First one arm, then another arm, then a finger, then an eye, a knee, a foot, a toe, then one breast, followed by another. From out of nowhere there she is, a dazzlingly beautiful young woman, half Russian, half Congolese, every bit as solid, every bit as alive as the organ grinder himself. Who would have believed it? A woman conjured up out of nothing.
    “And then they dance. The organ grinder dances with the woman.
    “I can dance, he says. Although, of course, you don’t hear him say that because this is a circus act and words are rarely spoken at the circus. But that is what you imagine he is saying: that he can dance. And pride gets the better of him, the tramp is all puffed up with pride. He says he doesn’t need to stand here playing his barrel organ because he can dance. He can even dance alone. I can dance just as well without you, he says. I can dance alone in this pool of light.
    “The organ grinder raises both hands in the air and gives a little flourish, that’s all he does, a flourish, and the beautiful young woman starts to disappear. She dissolves, dematerializes, melts away, right then and there before hundreds of eyes, and it hurts. You can tell from the look on her face. It hurts to disappear like that, against your will, in the middle of the dance; it hurts to be touched out, erased, vaporized, turned to nothing in the presence of all these witnesses.
    “She doubles up in pain. And then, like a bubble bursting— before you can so much as blink—she is gone.
    “That’s pretty much how it went,” I concluded.
    “And the audience was just as amazed every