silence came laughter and greetings. They came from behind and
scuffed his circles. The trucks were surrounded by the inhabitants
of the town, who shook hands with the drivers, and others who
came from the backs of the trucks. The wind blew on Hargreaves
and on the inhabitants of the town and on the machines. They soon
came to loud life again and moved around the end of the town, the
people following. The dust settled. John Hargreaves felt he should
leave the town. His foolish gesture of defiance would not make a
good story. His circles became small and ridiculous. He stood in
the ruin of them until the sun stretched his shadows across the miles
of his walking. Now7 there was no dust. Only the wind.
The bar below him yelled in drunken male tones. The circus had
changed the town. Children had emerged from the houses and run
in the street with their dogs. The patterns they made refused to
mesh with those of the sun and the desert and his own stepstepstep
as he traced the wind-lines in the sand. T hat first explosion of life
46
Timothy D ell
had settled now, and become instead a forced gaiety. The townsfolk
still clung to a myth of the city. He wondered at that. The heat had
made the make-up run on the faces of the clowns, and the elastic
bound noses had slipped with sweat and made their faces lop-sided
and ugly. John Hargreaves couldn’t see how the townspeople could
keep their myth after seeing such evidence. He struggled with it,
hoping to find something that would explain their behaviour.
The bar below him yelled. The drivers had congregated down
there; some of the men from the town also. They’d invited him for a
drink, but his own feeling of foolishness and a residue of his hate for
the trucks held him back. He no longer had the words to talk to
them. The words had been burnt out in the desert where meanings
came from millennial movements.
The bar yelled. It came loud and ugly. It made him restless.
Eventually he decided to go into the dark of the street.
It was cooler here, but the noise still arrived. The lights from the
hotel destroyed the power of the stars. John Hargreaves decided to
go and see the circus. There was nothing else to do.
They had set up in a place marked ‘Oval’. He could distinguish
nothing that should make this place any different from the surrounding desert. Four poles stood at one place near the tents of the circus. The stars were pointed out by the poles, but the brighter
arc-lights dimmed them. The circus lights had a focus, the tents.
The poles were white, the central pair taller, as though they had
been there longer and grown more. He noticed that they leaned
towards each other. He followed the line of them to their meeting
place, hoping to find a star there. With a small movement of his
head he found he could place a star in the imaginary apex of the
poles. Hargreaves felt that this sight was one he might wish to recall
in the future. He made sure he could remember the scene by
tracing the lines over and over.
The tents huddled in the centre o f ‘Oval’, in the protection of the
lights. They appeared two-dimensional. He circled around them,
looking for the entrance. His shadow multiplied and stretched in
the halo of lights. It was an effect totally unlike that of the sun.
Nothing. He toured once more. The area seemed closed. John
Hargreaves felt he had a right to go anywhere in the desert. He became frustrated that this place was closed to him.
A clown emerged. It went past him, seemingly oblivious. John
A step in any direction
47
Hargreaves followed the figure as far as the poles. Beyond them
were the trucks from the morning. The clown went into one of
them. Its footprints could just be detected in the sand; they made
small shadows that were regular, not like the small dunes of the
desert. He followed them to the entrance,
