El circo - Hector Tizón - Spanish to English Translation

Source text

Hector Tizón
El circo

Translation starts

The circus

The house was made of adobe, with thick peeling walls that were old and long ago painted white. Towards the back, a vine attempted each spring to reach the ceiling. Alas it remained, with its numerous thin strands, gripping the edge of a hole that resembled a window that had been hammered open to aerate the resting fruit. And there it began to die, a yellow and cold death, spreading from the tips, the leading tendrils turning dry, until someone cut them, hacked off with the swipe of a machete.

Inside the house, my cousin José lay in bed, shivering, skinny, his eyes sunken, repeatedly asking for water. My mother, Aunty Macacha, Manuela and others I didn’t know surrounded José, tiptoeing around the bed, looking at his eyes, speaking in low hushed voices, keeping sentences short, coughing softly, or simply sitting in silence.

I had come and gone a hundred times out of boredom. Instead of being at my cousin José´s house, I wanted to return to my house near the river, to continue watching my father on the platform, as he used wicker rings to give the “all clear” to drivers that passed by blowing the train’s horn. But mother said no - to leave her alone.

The days passed, and so I lay on the thick mouldy tiles of the roof. I stared until my eyes hurt from keeping them open, watching the hours go slowly by, as the floating clouds headed towards the horizon.

I was only allowed near José during the siesta, a dull time when almost everyone fell victim to sleep and to the sweet wine stored in earthen jars in the basement.

José didn’t sleep, so I told him about the circus.

The circus had arrived in the city before us, setting up beneath an enormous patchwork tent, a few blocks from the house.

José didn’t know what a circus was.

The first time, I paid to get in. But the second time, I realised that I could sneak underneath the tent through a number of holes close to the ground. With that money I would buy those syrup-covered apples sold by an old man inside the tent.

José didn’t know about toffee apples that came with a stick inserted as a handle, and I tried to explain it all during siesta time. José would stare at me strangely with his big, dry eyes. The giraffes, the cycling monkey, the dancing dogs; they all came out together in the arena for the big finale, the elephant lifting the giant poster with its trunk and the audience applauding.

When the doctor stopped coming, an old lady appeared at the house. With black dirty hair and no teeth, she came for three nights in a row. I watched the way she wrapped José in an old poncho, she lit a fire in the corner of the room using bark wrapped in a newspaper, and in a cloud of smoke she called out to him: “Josééé, come baaack, Josééé”.

Every so often I would also go to the river, wandering around the stony edges, watching the women beating clothes against rocks. I would then recount this to my cousin.

Some mornings I awoke to heartbroken cries, monotonous and strangled, sounds that left the window to be swallowed up and lost in silence.

“Help me” José said. Siesta time had settled once more, beating the sleepless will of the adults. I went to tell him what I had seen at the beach, a cat hanging from a wire fence, falling to its death. “Help me”, he said, “and I´ll get up”. My cousin pushed himself up, sitting on the bed. His eyes were shining, beautiful, his long straight hair covering the neck of his faded Franciscan habit – which he wore as a promise to his mother. “We’ll go to the circus” he said. “Can you hear that? Is that music from the circus?” he added. I had already told him about the circus men that played music, blowing cornets, a lively loud music that made you want to get up, shout and go out dancing and running behind the miniature horses.

He asked me to help him and as I wrapped my arms around him I felt his skinny chest, fragile and weak, with his thin, protruding ribs beating under the habit. As he hugged me, I felt his hot, wet face against my cheek, until I sat him down on the nearby chair. “Can you hear the music? It’s starting.” It was then that I noticed his small bony feet, his twisted legs, thin, dark and trembling.

“Let’s go” he said. His eyes were cheerful. I was beginning to see him as a regular boy. “Can you hear the music?” he said again, but I couldn´t hear it. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and added: “The monkey riding on the giraffe’s neck”.

He then leant back in the chair in silence, and sat very still, with his eyes closed. A long unrestrained shriek forced me to finally look away from José’s small skinny feet, which had for a while now, stopped dangling.

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