My dad refused to buy me a little sponge cap that had a band that made a funny cackling sound and would inflate and go up when blown through a mouth-high straw. It was green, it cost 8 sucres, and my happiness, my future and my whole life depended on it.

My bemba displeasure almost touched my navel when the most elegant elephants imaginable at my age passed by. I was 9 years old and we were supposed to enter the big tent of the Tihany circus, camping somewhere in a city I don’t remember. What I do remember is that it was an elegant circus, that we were almost as well dressed as the elephants, but never as the trapeze artists in brilliant suits, the magician in his immaculate tailcoat and top hat, and the poodles dancing the ballet in pastel tulle . The clowns with huge shoes, which I saw for the first time, did not wear the traditional sausage, but also performed magic and took out of their pockets flowers and chocolates and doves and colorful ribbons and dreams and laughter and life… show closed Magnificent: the dancing waters moved to the rhythm of the blue Danube. (A waltz that years later I would inevitably dance with my daughters, every time we got into the pool).

The circuses he used to go to were poor circuses with torn, patched tents, with the most outrageous and faded clowns in the history of the circus, with poor old and starving elephants who could not hide their sadness. Circuses without fancy poodles, with a poor magician whose frayed tailcoat was too tight and whose tricks were easily discovered. Obviously no dance moves or glamour, or grace, or illusion. Some poor circuses.

For the past week, a big circus was taking place in that part of the city whose name I don’t want to remember. A circus full of glass elephants, Pekingese trained to dance to the sound of unreason. Elephants capable of running over the windows of democracy, re-inventing tastelessness and absurdity.

Fachos and fachos magicians and magicians sawed each other’s seams, their position was great and their ignorance gigantic. Nothing suited them, we recognized their tricks, and the viewers were embarrassed.

Allegedly, the circus administrator is to blame for all this failed show. Someone should have advised him in selecting this very large cast. I don’t understand how and why he made the decision to include so many clowns in the show. A couple or two would be nice, but there were so many of them that they couldn’t pull off a good joke, a new trick, something clever. I don’t know about you, but I was on edge during the session, I didn’t laugh once, I just wanted to cry, and I did. I wept with anger, indignation and helplessness when I realized the brutal price we had paid for such a mediocre performance.

And of course, as grandma used to say, what starts badly, ends badly. There were no dancing waters, glamour, grace, illusion. It was a miserable circus. A miserable and shameful menagerie. (OR)