From Dusk to Dawn

The illusionist is thrown a birthday party, not on her birthday but a few nights later, when the weather is appropriately dismal, the air full of mist and pounding rain. The cirque is closed, a sign posted outside the gates apologizing for the inconvenience.

Inside her tent has been opulently decorated; bowers of flowers are suspended over the guests and throughout the evening petals drift on shoulders and in hair like perfumed velvet-soft rain. The guests are handed garlands of white roses at the entrance, and though many are found later draped over the backs of chairs, some folk take them home and tuck them behind ears or in lapels in the days following.

Colour treated lights bath the tent in sunset, warm and vivid. There are some staff outside the circus who are allowed to cater and serve drinks (silver tinted white wines in special dark tinted champagne glasses) on the condition that they do not breath a word of the night’s events to anyone outside the circus.

The guests are cloaked in a rainbow of colours. The contortionist wears a deep blue gown that leaves her arms and neck bare, with bone white accessories, her tattoo visible around her neck and disappearing into her décolletage.

Tamas wears a suit the colour of autumn leaves, with pure gold earrings and his eyes rimmed in kohl. He spends the majority of the evening speaking with the contortionist of Pamina, when Pamina can be persuaded from her own guest.

The fortuneteller is draped in silver silk, though she has a collection of violet ribbons braided into her hair and a blue rose tucked behind the ear.

She arrives with Hansen at her side, dressed in mostly black but with a bright orange scarf. While the inception of the circus occurred some years ago, it is not too late, Pamina argues, to add to its list of compatriots. Hansen has been involved with the circus to such a degree lately that he has been forced to abandon some of his personal projects, and to rush to finish commissioned pieces. Pamina has dragged him to the party, insisting he meet the illusionist and leading him around the room, introducing him as their composer. He is received warmly and soon is engaged in conversation about modern art and music.

Another gentleman arrives, adorned in an ivory suit with a matching white mask. He does not give his identity, and instead distracts each attendee he speaks with by discussing art and philosophy. Many assume he has come with the puppeteer as a special guest, since he spends much of the night by her side.

Farrin wears a turquoise suit but manages to blend into the party so well his mother is sometimes certain he has left to read or seek the animals, who are mostly alone in their respective tents. He has short conversations with most of the guests and runs small errands, fetching pitchers of lemonade and bottles of wine and fans for those that cannot abide the heat, returning quickly so they may flutter their fans like wings against their chests.

The honoured guest, the illusionist herself, is dressed in a crimson gown decorated with numerous pink silk roses. She always wears a crescent of quarts on a ribbon around her throat, usually of pale sugared white but tonight it is lurid and red, as though her throat has been slit. It is exotic and morbid and beautiful.

Rose spends most of the evening rooted in one spot, surrounded by guests who, once they discover her place of origin, beg her to regale them with a few stories. She omits the more sordid details of New Orleans, resorting to praising the jazz, when Farrin’s parents, who have been occasionally checking on the elusive boy to make sure he is still in attendance, question the suitability of the tales’ content for a young boy. Rose continues on, withholding only some parts of the stories that she tells Farrin with the lilt in her voice or the look in her eye. She laughs easily and loudly.

Members of the circus beg Rose to perform, and after a few glasses of wine they coerce her to the middle of the room where she borrows Hansen’s bowler hat and tosses it in the air. It turns over and over and becomes a dozen black roses, woven together. As it falls petals cascade around the bowing illusionist, she catches it in one hand and spins it behind her, occluding it as she transforms it back into a hat and returns it to its owner. Immediately one of her immediate company inquires as to where she was trained.

“I had a private coach for such things. He was – is very odd. He was an exotic man. He is the son of some courtesan, they say. The Mata Hari’s offspring,” she says, laughing.

“Surely you didn’t learn that-,” the juggler points to Hansen’s hat as the composer speaks with the cat tamer, “on your first try.”

“No, no. When I first began my teachings I pulled a rabbit from a hat,” Rose says, laughing again. “My instructor was not pleased at all about that. He went on at length about pushing boundaries, about how gravity was a convention and we should strive not to conform to such confined thought. Or something alone those lines.” The illusionist smiles at the chorus of mild laughter as she accepts a glass of freshly poured champagne.

Rose once dances once throughout the entire night and, when midnight passes and the party shows no signs of stopping, the morning. She dances with the juggler, with Tamas, and she and Pamina have an entertaining moment in which they both try to take lead in a dance together. Rose dances with amazing grace, free and carelessly yet with an aristocratic elegance, something Paikea notices from across the room and mentions absently to Farrin.

Pamina is in and out of conversation. She often must attend to some running of the party (a matter with the staff, the changing of music boxes when the tunes begin to replay, a new dish to be served on the hour) but returns to ensure the guests, especially Hansen, are having a good time.

Pamina has taken to calling him Maestro Hansen, and has requested a special piece, insisting money is no object. He waves her away, promising he will not ask for any price, and giving her a tentative date of completion in the very near future.

When Farrin is alone with the illusionist he considers it such a treat he is reluctant to leave her, though he can see the thin bottle of absinthe and the decanter of lemonade and wild mint are getting low. He listened curiously to Rose’s recollection of her former instructor and has been feeling inquisitive since.

“I did not know you had a teacher,” Farrin says. He has assumed Rose had always done the things she had, or he had never given much thought about it. “If he saw… magic that way, how do you see it? Does he approve of the shows you do?”

Rose sips a glass of champagne for a moment while she thinks of a response. “I have not seen him for a long time,” she answers finally. “I doubt the would approve. I had many years to formulate my own opinion about magic. I started when I was very young. He was always pontificating of the limitlessness of proper magic. He views early education as a preliminary strike, as though magic is a chess game and the world is to be toppled and checkmated.”

Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of the main course. There is not enough space for the entire company to sit at a table, nor a table that would seat all of them, so they flock like tropical birds to the staff who offer plates on large silver trays. There are small slices of chicken with raisins and chestnuts, quail eggs and shallots, pyramids of bright fruit, large and spherical and exploding with flavour. There is fruit in melted cheese and pasta with sauces piquant with peppers. The delicacies range from mildly spiced to burning hot, and there are some that are flavoured mysteriously, where guests catch hints of rosemary or saffron but also something beneath them that they cannot name.

Those who eat little return to the dance floor as the band strikes up another tune. Around them, while the guests are distracted by food and merriment, the hangings on the wall are removed and others put in their place, festooned with lanterns. Where the tapestries are scarlet and canary yellow the tent looks like it is being licked by flame.

For some time most conversation is abandoned and the only sounds are the music, guests’ footsteps, and the rustle of silk and satin and frosted lace.

Festivities resume and the tent is abundant with noise again, and bathed in the light of a sunset, which some guests do not notice until they pick up their drinks and see the colours reflected in the glass.

There is another silence when desert arrives that is fleeting and gone much quicker. There are iced éclairs and cakes with sugar bells and crystallized roses, and fruit dusted with sugar and silver tiered trays of sugared violets on tarts. What enchants the guests so is the enormous cake brought out on a platter; the only serving that has required a table. It is set down so all the guests may admire the tiered wonder before it is cut. It is shaped like a hat, identical to Rose’s and the illusionist herself laughs at the sight of it. When she cuts into it is froths with a deep rich chocolate cream. Those who previously insisted they could eat no more suggest perhaps they could manage one more bite. There is some repartee about food and the capacity of respective stomachs that continues until the tent is bubbling with chat.

Rose abandons the discussion some time during the early morning with the interesting of coercing Paikea to the dance floor. The contortionist is almost lost in the throng of guests. When Rose finally locates her, the contortionist is engaged in discussion with the masked gentleman. Paikea seems slightly agitated. As Rose approaches she catches only a fragment of their conversation. “I have written to the address before,” the gentleman pauses and reaches into his pocket, extracting something and handing it to the contortionist who hurriedly conceals it on her person.

The gentleman leans closer, as though about to divulge a secret, but the tenor of his voice remains the same. “Miss Paikea, I am only asking you to consider the possibility that there is more to this than you know.”

Before Paikea can respond Rose appears at her side, holding her elbow. “Hello, I’m sorry sir, I hope you don’t mind if I steal away Paikea for a dance.”

“Absolutely not,” the man assures her. He gives them each a short nod before turning and disappearing into the crowd.

Paikea dances for only a short while. She and the majority of the crowd are becoming sleepy from the combination of sleep and the early hour, though it is considered a late hour by the company. There is a round of short farewells with the few acquaintances who are not a part of the company, punctuated by laughter as some of the livelier crowds make their way out of the tent. The decorations are already vanishing, the staff who served dinner whisking away empty glasses and plates. Pamina and Farrin stay with Rose to see off the last of the guests.

The puppeteer kisses Rose’s cheek and compliments the party. The gentleman in the white mask kisses the hand of the illusionist before wishing her a happy birthday and following the puppeteer out.

Pamina urges Rose to sleep, recognizing her giddiness as an effect of the late hour and sugar and champagne. Farrin leads her backstage, peppering her with more mature questions about New Orleans in the absence of his parents.

Pamina stays until all the decorations are gone, the canvas walls once more dark and star speckled and the chairs bare of embroidered saris and tinted lanterns. She feels exhausted when she is done, though there is no heavy lifting involved. The only things that physically remain are the bowers of white roses, which have always been there, regardless the appearing and disappearing hangings and lanterns. Their scent is heady and Pamina gathers a few of them to take to her backstage room.

When she leaves the tent is almost bare, save for a few scattered petals that glisten like flakes of silver. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay