and coins onto the kitchen table. Then he unpacked his black boxes. As they were dumped on the table, Vidot could see that in each case all the fleas lay still, without the slightest twitch or sign of life. They all had perished, worked to death in the course of a single day’s performance. With a quick, efficient bang, Billy would knock each box’s contents into the dustbin. Then he would strip off his suit and perform his evening toilet before finally coming to bed, where his wife, still in her makeup but now naked, already lay fast asleep. Billy would pull the blanket up over her body and whistle for their little dog, who would leap up onto the foot of the bedspread. Then Billy would curl up beside his wife, kiss her cheek gently, and switch off the light.
The Paris skyline sparkled through the window, its twinkling illumination bathing the room in a dark cerulean blue. The city’s glow seemed to be taunting him, thought Vidot, like the visions of silver crystal kingdoms that arise in the deliriums of fever-crazed soldiers. Vidot stayed awake, hypersensitive to everything around him, the rhythm of the nervous hopping fleas reminding him of deep African drums beating before a savage blood sacrifice, a percussive prelude to the certain doom that awaited him when the circus master rose again to don his terrible magnifying glasses. For tomorrow was the day; there were only three bottles sitting to Vidot’s right, and Billy used more than a dozen to prepare for every show. Vidot knew that he would have to come up with some sort of a plan if he wanted to survive.
Regrettably, Vidot’s flea-sized brain was at that point utterly devoid of any ideas. He knew that once Billy set his tweezers on him beneath that white cloth, his life was over. He thought of all the things he would miss: listening to football matches with the chef at Chez Barbe, playing dominoes with Claude Attal, walking through the market in the April spring when the cherry and the pear blossoms colorfully bloomed overhead. He thought of the comfort of a glass of Brouilly and the grace of Satie’s
The tap-tap-tapping of the fleas on the glass kept distracting him from his thoughts. He wanted this to be a moment of contemplation, his last night on earth, and yet these persistent pests kept breaking his concentration as they leapt about in their little vials. As he gazed down the row, his neighbors’ ceaseless jumping reminded him of Camus’s Sisyphus, forever pushing his boulder up the hill and eternally happy in the futility of his effort. Then he noticed that a few of the fleas next to him, instead of frantically attempting to leap to freedom, merely were crawling about at the bottom of the glass. He watched to see if they would hop at all, but they did not. These fleas simply paced around, circling endlessly, as the condemned often do. Vidot thought at first they were merely depressed or discouraged, but then, looking closely, he observed that, in fact, the rear legs of the creature were shaped slightly differently. Vidot found this very interesting.
The next day began as the days had before: Dottie put the water on, Billy and the dog went out and returned soon with a single loaf of bread. They ate silently. Then Billy chose a pair of small oil paintings from a stack in the corner. Perhaps he was going to a dealer, Vidot thought. Whatever the errand, it was an unsuccessful one, as Billy returned an hour later with the same canvases tucked under his arm. As he placed them back in the stack, Dottie said nothing—it had clearly been too long since any paintings had sold for any comment to matter now—instead she kissed him on the cheek and heated up some carrot soup. A little later Dottie boiled a large pot of water and filled the bath, a narrow steel tub that sat in the corner of the loft. Billy combed her hair while she soaked. When she was done, Billy took their dog out again for a long walk, and when he returned, the mutt’s fleas were meticulously harvested, bottled, and placed up on the shelf. In the afternoon Dottie sat and modeled again while Billy painted. Debussy’s
When Billy rose from the easel and put away the paints, Vidot knew it was time. He sucked in his breath and waited, watching as, one by one, Dottie reached for the bottles on the shelf. The first bottled flea caused Billy no problems. Within seconds the flea emerged attached to a harness and was swiftly put away. The fate of the second one, however, was exactly what Vidot most feared. After disappearing beneath the white hood, his neighbor’s mauled carcass was quickly swept out, falling to the floor before it had even finished its final convulsions. Vidot had no time for sympathy, for at that moment Dottie reached for his vial.
The moment Billy shook him down onto the hard white paper Vidot began his charade. You’re going to have to force yourself to march, he told himself, march, march, march, though it is against your instinct, though every microgram in your exoskeleton is begging you to leap, to soar, to break free and escape the doom that awaits, this is the time you must march. He tried to remember what it was like to march in unison with his fellow cadets in his youth brigade. But that brought other memories that were even darker than his current condition, so he blanked them from his mind and kept marching beneath Billy’s careful gaze.
Observing his neighbors the night before, Vidot had come to the conclusion that while most fleas jumped, there were some fleas that could not jump at all, and these, he assumed, were the ones that Billy put into the chariot harnesses. Vidot knew his only hope at outwitting a man who had been outthinking fleas for more than thirty years was to convince the man that he was the wrong kind of flea. As he marched across the table, he prayed it would be enough. Vidot saw the gleam of the tweezers coming down. Then he jumped.
The fist came smashing down hard on the table behind him as he leapt. He had spotted a fold in the tenting where he knew he could hide for a moment. When Billy lifted the fabric to find him, Vidot leapt again, right over his captor’s head, through the small opening and out into the rich, warm kaleidoscopic light of freedom. He did not pause to look back, he did not know if he had enraged the circus ringleader or if his escape was being shrugged off as a minor irritation. He thought he heard Billy curse, and the little mutt barked, but Vidot did not pause to worry as he leapt, jumped, and practically flew up to the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, the great wide open window.
Only after he passed across the threshold and began tumbling and spinning down toward the cobblestone street below did it occur to Vidot that leaping out from a fifth-floor apartment’s window might not be the most prudent path to liberty.
XIX
Witches’ Song Five
