Moving Parts

Somewhere in the audience the hotel receptionist is glimpsed in the company of a soldier of the Wehrmacht and a dark blue Polish policeman. She’s sitting between them, on the best of terms with both. Her shift at the hotel is evidently over. Amid the young women with short-cropped hair dyed red is the sullen youth with dangling suspenders. Elsewhere there is the all-knowing hobo with his torn sleeve and his earring, a sign of illusory freedom. There’s also the old man in the red dressing gown. And the auto mechanic, head of the household, who boasted his whole life of having a heavy hand. They’re almost all there, even the two arrivals from the Balkans, a pair of workmen in blue overalls, probably brothers. With them is the girl from the photograph. Clearly their complaint eventually reached where it needed to; perhaps it was decided that two men who have nowhere to go back to may always come in useful. Here and there is a solitary black man, dark as the night, though these, too, are only appearances, a sort of costume. Among the dockers from the ports of the Far East are groups of Russian sailors of the merchant navy who after the show will immediately set off once again in search of ever more outlandish adventures. Kind-hearted black women exchange comments and slap one another on their fat thighs, continually laughing in raucous and slightly hoarse voices. People never want to be reminded of their own suffering. All they want is to be entertained. The wise guy will not let the narrator rest; he already has him by the collar. From beneath the bowler hat he pulls out a large polka-dot handkerchief. He tweaks the narrator’s nose painfully; the French horn sounds out like a ship’s foghorn. The narrator of course tries to break loose; he swings his legs in place to the rhythm of a ragtime played so unevenly it sounds as if the band has begun a crazy chase among the instruments. All of this pleases the children mightily. They even ask for the hilarious scene with the polka-dot handkerchief to be repeated. But the end of the act is drawing close. A well-aimed slimy apple core hits the narrator in the face. The wise guy in the leather jacket twists his neck with an iron grip, and forces him to bow over and over. The audience warms up again, because in a moment the elephant is to emerge from the wings. From the better seats its trunk can already be seen. Drumrolls sound. The audience goes wild. It’s obvious that everyone was waiting only for the performing elephant.

The band plays and the elephant, raised on its hind legs, dances a tango; its trunk sways to the rhythm of the music, and a splendid pink bow flutters on its flat forehead. The leather-clad wise guy cracks a whip for effect. The audience grows quiet, mightily amused that the elephant is dancing solo, and that it keeps misstepping. Festoons of colored lights are turned on around the ring. The standing ovation goes on and on. From one bar to the next the tango turns into a circus march — it isn’t clear exactly when, as hardly anything can be heard. The chaotic finale is drowned out in a storm of applause and cheers. The elephant makes a triumphal lap of the ring. In a moment it will be led offstage. The leather-clad wise guy suddenly leans out from behind its immense body, makes a face and in lieu of a farewell throws something at the narrator. A crumpled ball of paper. The narrator smoothes out the letter, once torn up and now taped back together. He would read it, but it’s too late. As the spotlights go out, everything is swallowed in darkness.