SITTING IN FOULED STRAW and looking through the bars of his cage at the heaps of camel dung like fat forgotten tortoises acneying the courtyard, Chimpo plucks at his shorts. He curls his lip, bares his teeth, and spits. It isn't as if the clowns wear underwear decorated with cartoons of great apes, so how come he has to knuckle-walk around the place with Burpo, Belcho, Farto, and god knows what other clown's ugly visage embroidered on his orange boxers? And all for the sake of modesty. The circus owners do not want people to see Chimpo's raspberry-ripple, aubergine, and custard posterior, nor do they want children to get a glimpse of his prodigious apehood. The boxers are better than the nappy he used to wear but not as sexy or as comfortable as the khaki safari shorts sent to him by a fan. Now, where have they got to? Chimpo scratches himself where the sun does not shine and the skin is as purple as the bruise on a hemophiliac's plum. His eyes roll back until the yellow becomes white—his boiled eggs of ecstasy.

A camel hisses, its piecrust lips trembling with drool. A horse nickers. A lion r-r-r-roars. And a Japanese/American man, doing a five-to-ten stretch in Sing Sing, is soon to receive photographs of the Bearded Lady's shaved pudenda. Oh, lucky man. The Ringmaster slips his hook onto the shiny stump of his arm, buttons his scarlet frockcoat, taps his hat in fear of rabbits, pulls on his black and tan boots, smoothes the tight white material of his trousers over his bulging thighs, takes a long drink from a glass of gin and tonic, cracks his whip—missing by millimetres the feathery headdress of Trixie, his latest squeeze—and opens the door of his chrome and caramel trailer. Looking up wearily, Chimpo withdraws his hand from his shorts, smells it, licks it, and starts a small fire.

Noxious fumes of urine-soaked-and-dried straw waft over the trailer park. Rinsing her Bic razor in the sink, the Bearded Lady catches the smell mingling with the sweetness of her salves and unguents. She hastily applies a skin toner, grabs her dressing gown, exits her dressing room in a swirl of satin and lace, and runs in the direction of Chimpo's cage. Pandemonium. Elephants trumpet. Seals cover their faces with their floppy flappy flippers. Llamas hawk in disgust and make a break for freedom. The clowns, first on the scene, fire water pistols into the blazing cage. Nothing to see but smoke. Black. Billowing. The Bearded Lady screams, swoons, and falls into the arms of the Ringmaster. Lowering her to the floor, he covers with his hat her pink and quivering. Pushing through the clowns, he takes his loudhailer and shouts into the smoke as thick as concrete jam.

Chimpo! Chimpo! Are you in there, lad?

Nothing. Not a pant-hoot, not a pant-grunt, not a pant-bark, not a hah, not a woo, not a whimper. The fire extinguished. The clouds of steam and smoke disperse. The bars of the cage twisted and blackened, the straw now ash, the cage now empty. The Ringmaster rubs his eyes and coughs. The clowns look at each other and look again. Where is Chimpo? Using the thick end of his whip, the Ringmaster snatches from the cage the charcoaled remains of what look like underpants. Sitting up, the Bearded Lady grabs at the sooty shorts and holds them to her nose.

Oh, Chimpo! Chimpo! Where are you, my love?

The clowns sidle back to their trailer. Gathering the Bearded Lady in his arms, the Ringmaster carries her home. He makes her a cup of chamomile tea, rolls her moustache in his fingers, and leaves; as he does so, he thinks, 'Is this the first ever case of spontaneous chimpbustion?'

The Bearded Lady sleeps fitfully. Dreaming of ancient jungles, fiery volcanoes, and serpents as thick as tree trunks, she soaks her duvet with grapefruit- and vinegar-smelling sweat. Something covers her mouth and she wakes startled by the gentleness in the dark. Is she dreaming still? Is this a vision? Her eyelids flutter in consensual silence. Her heart pitter-patters. Chimpo. Chimpo alive and here in her trailer. He raises his hand and strokes her beard. He hoohs and haahs. He looks to the bathroom. He tugs at her hair. Pulling down the duvet cover, he points at her bald pubis. Again, she nearly swoons. He shakes his head. He points to his chest. To his back. To his legs. She understands. Following her to the bathroom, he lets out a series of low whimpers and grunts and gives off a heavy odour of smoky mangoes. She runs the water, lathers the soap, and strops her razor. She takes scissors to the hair around his head and neck. His hair is thick and greasy; it falls, spirals to the floor like corpse-bound vultures. Chimpo hoohs. Chimpo haahs. Snip-snip. Scrape-scrape. Buzz-buzz. All done. Spreading the vitamin E-enriched moisturizer over Chimpo's body, the Bearded Lady cannot help but smile. Chimpo admires himself in the full-length mirror. Smooth. Smoo-ooth.

Gathering clothes to fit a four-foot tall great ape proves easy. Four out of the seven clowns suffer from achondroplasia and their clothes—their street clothes that is—are the perfect size for Chimpo. He stands once more in front of the mirror. Tweed cap, white shirt, brown corduroy jacket, Levi's. His feet pose a problem, but the outsize clown shoes—although red and flower-sprouting—complete the ensemble. Opening the door, the Bearded Lady is about to escort him as far as the camp's perimeter when Chimpo places a hand on her breast and shakes his head. Chimpo turns and kisses the Bearded Lady. Later, as he is boarding the train, he delicately extracts a hair from his mouth—he was too polite to have done so in her presence—and places it in his pocket, a keepsake from his days at the circus. As he walks into the star-spat night, somewhere among the animal sounds, the squawk and squeal of traffic, a train whistle penetrates the void and irrevocably closes the not insignificant distance between the species.


To be continued ...


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