A Tightrope Walk

A Tightrope Walk

29 May, Whitby 9.30 pm.

Mahomet Achmed Vizaro Mussulmo , the once almost-famous Yemeni
funambulist was forty feet above the cigarette-stubbed floor of Whitby
Working Men's Club balanced on his taut rope. He was begging for his
life.
"Please!" he said swaying, arms out horizontal, sentient of each fibre
of the cord beneath his silk slippered soles. "For the love of Allah,
don't do it! Don't cut the rope. Don't kill me!"
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't," the twenty-five inch figure
of Adam Atom called back from the high-rise platform four metres down
the line, Mahomet's tightrope goal. "One good reason."
"Um...," said Mahomet. "Um..."
Mahomet couldn't think, not of any good reasons anyway. He could have
said that he didn't want to die, didn't deserve to die. He could have
said that he didn't want to be a collection of broken bones on the
floor of some third-rate club in the frozen north-east of England but
he had a feeling that that wouldn't have cut the mustard, wouldn't have
saved his bacon.
Although five nights a week Mahomet performed spectacular feats of
high theatrics, risking life and limb, he beat death though his mastery
of balance, his manipulation of gravity. Now, being asked to convince
Adam Atom, The American Man in Miniature, why he shouldn't have the sky
cut out from under him, he found himself lacking the necessary oratory
accomplishments.
"Adam," he said simply and finally. "Please. I didn't mean it. I'm
sorry."
"You will be," said Adam and he moved menacingly to the edge of the
platform.
At that moment a cry drifted up from below. Old Mr Brimble, who had a
lifelong hatred of anything Levantine, static or otherwise, was
bored.
"Get on with it," he shouted. And for good measure added, "You poncey
A-rab!"
Mahomet gulped. His troubles were growing. The natives were getting
restless.
"Oy! Sultan!" called someone else, encouraged by Brimble. "Jump into
here. Go out with a splash."
And there was a burst of laughter.
The audience were as yet unaware of Mahomet's altitudinal predicament.
And if they had been cognisant of the real situation maybe they would
have enjoyed it. Right now, they were only tired of the supposed
showman's stationary position.
"Come on Mustapher! Dive!" a new voice shouted up from the bar.
"Go on, do it!" said Adam. "Jump or I cut. You chose to insult me, now
you can choose your death."
Mahomet gulped again and looked down. Some prankster had placed a
half-empty pint pot directly below where he was balanced. It was not a
pool he wished to dive into. It was very small and its smallness
emphasised his elevation. He suddenly felt very high up. Which meant,
of course, it was a long way to fall.
Rope-walking does not have Ten Commandments, it does not have nine,
eight or even seven, it has only one. It is very clear and easy to
remember. Do not look down. Mahomet had broken it. And Mahomet didn't
have a very good head for heights. The bar-room below began to blur and
spin and Mahomet felt that he was going to faint. He felt the blood
draining from his face and he started to wobble, swaying from his hips,
his arms rising and falling like a heavily laden set of scales.
"One good reason why I shouldn't," called Adam Atom. "Tell me why I
should let you live."
The words cut through to Mahomet's consciousness and he raised his
eyes. To think that it should have come to this. The tiny man he had
once loved more than any other wanted him dead. Dead. Buried. Pushing
up daisies.
"One damn good cottonpicking reason."
"Um...." said Mahomet, teetering dangerously, trying to focus on the
minute figure before him, trying to think of the words that could
rekindle their once rock-solid comradeship.
"Well then," Adam shouted, "I'm going to cut."
"Please!" said Mahomet lamely. "I'm really sorry."
If Adam Atom heard then he didn't acknowledge it. With a flourish he
pulled out the six inch bodkin he had had inserted between his
truncated pantaloons and the strap of his belt. In anyone else's hands
the weapon would have been a mere penknife, a useful but undeadly
blade. In the grip of Adam's minuscule fist, against the background of
his meagre torso, it appeared more wondrous and deadly than the mighty
Excaliber itself.
"Allah have mercy on my soul," whispered Mahomet under his breath and
began to fear that this was really it.
It was not often that Adam, being only half a metre high, had to kneel
for anything. Most usually he was reaching, standing on boxes,
struggling up his mobile ladders. But kneel now he did. Holding tightly
with one hand to the pole that supported the high-rise platform he
currently found himself on, with the other he started to saw
purposefully through the filaceous walkway before him. He was cutting
the rope.
Mahomet seeing the threads, one by one, ping back, started to
panic.
In situations like these, it is instinct that takes over, it is
adreneline which saves the day, makes heroes out of quivering wrecks.
Right now Mahomet was quivering but there was one thought in his head,
"Get back to the other side. Get back to the other side." If he could
get back to the opposite platform, the haven from which he had started,
before Adam completed his job then he would be safe.
Who knows now whether Mahomet would have made it? He might have
succeeded or he might have crashed to the floor. But perhaps we should
give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he had been rope-walking
for thirty of his thirty-five years and he did have a certain
concomitant skill, did have an abnormal dexterity with the metatarsals
and phalanxes of his feet. Let's say then that he would have reached
the safety of the platform, he would definitely have done it if only
the cruel and so often arbitrary hand of fate hadn't intervened.
Well, actually, to be more precise, it was the hand of Owen
Gallagher.
Owen was fifteen and bored. He had begged his dad to take him to the
club. He had moaned through Neighbours and whined through his tea of
sausage and mash. "Please," he had said. "I'll be good. You won't know
I'm there. Please." He had repeated this refrain many times, mouth full
or not. Eventually he had driven his mum, well, she wasn't his real
mum, mad and she had said to his dad, "Barry, if you don't take the wee
shite, I swear to God I'll suffocate him." His dad had looked at Owen
as if he believed that that probably wouldn't be such a bad idea and
then, suddenly thinking it might be useful to have a buckshee flunky to
ferry drinks from the bar while he played cribbage with his mates said,
"Yeah, right, he can come."
So Owen was there and he was really bored. He had been allowed one
pissing pint of lager shandy and that was his lot. It was before him
now being more nursed than a newly born babe. His dad and the card
sharks, as if!, had not uttered a word in forty-five minutes, only the
odd grunt or burp and there was not a single woman in the place. Even
Sandra, the thirty-eight year old barmaid, was not there. She might be
old, thought Owen, but at least she had a cleavage. And if all that was
not bad enough, the show was dire. They were a bunch of blooming
freaks. Owen had heard better banter in a Sunday morning service.
Owen looked at his watch, nine thirty-five, and then looked up at the
Arab on the wire. Useless, he thought. The guy couldn't have moved for
five minutes. He hadn't even responded when those two comedians had
shouted up to him. He'd just looked down and started to wobble. But he
was still there in the same place. Why didn't he go to the other side?
What kind of act was it?
Owen sighed and picked up his pint and drained the last dregs of the
micturated-like mixture. The beer mat had come up with the glass, stuck
to the bottom. Owen pulled it off and had an idea. A very naughty idea.
He grinned to himself. He couldn't could he? Surely not. But maybe
that's what Mr Iraq needed. A little jolt to help him on his way.
It just so happened that Owen was the champion mat thrower in the
whole of Whitby's School for Boys. Any number of his school-mates could
corroborate this fact. A week earlier, Wednesday morning break, Owen
had beaten Darren Eagleton hands down. Owen had got three head shots,
thirty points, one arm, five points, and one bull's eye, right in the
balls, twenty points. A total of fifty-five points. Darren only just
scraped forty. Owen was a clear winner, an undisputed champion.
Owen looked at the cardboard square with its curved aerodynamic
corners in his hands and then up at the man high above him. It was a
distance of about twenty metres. It would be some feat.
"Go for it," he said to himself, "you can do it my son."
Owen cast a look at his father. He was wrapped up in his game,
sporting one of his poker faces. It was the happy, "I've got a good
hand" poker face and not the, "Of all the crap cards in the world"
poker face. The coast was clear.
Owen took aim and with a backswing of the elbow, a curve of the arm
and a lightening snap of his young wrist he fired.
Bang.
Mahomet never knew what hit him.
One moment he was performing the most delicate of one hundred and
eighty degree turns, pirouetting perfectly to escape from the mad
midget intent on ending his life, and then the next thing he knew,
there was a sharp pain above his left eyebrow. He cartwheeled his arms
once, twice, anticlockwise, slicing through the empty air and then the
ceiling was sailing by, the rope was no longer under his feet and he
was falling backwards. Falling backwards to the hard floor below.
"This is it," thought Mahomet. "I'm going to die."
In times like these it is said that your whole life flashes before
your eyes. It wasn't Mahomet's whole life, it was only the previous two
weeks. And it didn't flash, it appeared in a sublime slow-motion.
It was a shame really that it should have come to this because Adam
Atom had been the best friend a Yemini rope-walker could possibly have
wished for. They had made a great team. Adam would tie Mahomet's
shoelaces, Mahomet would pass things down off high shelves. And so
on.
It was a Tuesday in Scarborough when things had started to go
pear-shaped.
Up until then everything had been quite normal.
The troupe had been settled in Mrs Badger's Bed and Breakfast. Mr Wong
aka Mr Memory, the one hundred and sixty-one year old Chinaman was
sharing with Monsieur De Haute Taille, the tallest man in Bordeaux.
Lord Ziegfeld, the company illusionist and manager, as usual, was
ensconced in the most splendid of suites on offer and Mahomet was in a
twin bedroom with Adam. Everything was tickettyboo. Was.
Mahomet had been having an afternoon siesta, was curled up on the
naphthalene-smelling counterpane, when the door had burst open and he
was shaken rudely awake.
"Well," said Adam, spreading apart his arms and beaming widely, much
as if he had accomplished a particularly insuperable trick, "what do
you think?"
"What?" said Mahomet, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"Can't you see the difference?" said Adam, still smiling.
"What?" said Mahomet again, sitting on the end of the bed and peering
down at the brevity of his mate.
"Look," said Adam, arms still outstretched but the smile beginning to
waver just a little. "Look carefully."
Mahomet could tell from the look on Adam's face that it was important
to him. He leant closer.
"Um...."
"Yes?" said Adam.
"You've had a haircut?"
"No."
"You've got a new jacket?" said Mahomet.
"No," said Adam.
"New pants?"
"No. Come on. Concentrate."
Mahomet slipped off the bed and knelt in front of his friend. He
clapped his hands.
"Yes?" said Adam.
"You're growing a moustache. Nice."
"NO!" said Adam stamping his feet. "I'll give you a clue. It's below
the belt."
Mahomet looked down and smiled.
"Yes?" said Adam.
"You old dog, you've had your penis pierced. I can see the bump now.
Very &;#8230; la mode. The ladies will love it."
"No," said Adam, the exasperation evident in his strained syllables.
"The feet. Look at the feet."
Mahomet put his right index finger to the corner of his mouth and
raised his eyebrows. A pose which meant he was really thinking.
"I've got it," said Mahomet, leaping up.
"Yes?"
"You've got new shoes."
"Yes," said Adam, the smile returning in all its former glory.
"And?"
"And?" said Mahomet quizzically, sitting down on the bed once
more.
"Yes, and. There's something special about the shoes."
Mahomet sighed.
"You like them?" he said hopefully knowing that it probably wasn't the
right answer.
"Mahomet. Try."
Mahomet shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. They were a present? They're a perfect fit? You got two
for the price of one? They're made out of the soft skin of the arctic
fox? Tell me."
"They've got lifts."
"Lifts?" said Mahomet, none the wiser.
"Yes," said Adam. "Wearing these shoes I'm four inches higher."
"Right," said Mahomet. "So instead of twenty-five inches, your
twenty-nine?"
"Exactly," said Adam, his face radiant with joy, brighter than a
quasar.
"And if you stand on a couple of slices of bread," it was on the tip
of Mahomet's tongue to say, "you might hit thirty."
"I've been thinking," said Adam. "I want to change my act, go in a new
direction."
"A new direction?" said Mahomet.
"Yeah," said Adam. "I don't always want to be the human cannon ball, a
living Tom Thumb. Oooo look at him, isn't he tiny. I want to be more
than that. I want to be more than the sum of my parts. I want to knock
them dead with my killer repartee, astound them with my wit. I'm
thinking of becoming a stand-up."
"The smallest comic in the land," said Mahomet, describing the theatre
lights with a movement of his hand. "I can see it now. The stand-up who
seems to be sitting."
"No," said Adam, "you're missing the point. I don't want to be the
smallest anything, the tiniest anything. I want to leave all the
superlative diminutives behind. I want to be recognised for me, for
what's inside and what's up here." Adam tapped the side of his
head.
"I see," said Mahomet.
"You think I'm stupid?" said Adam.
"No," said Mahomet. "But...."
"Yes?"
"No.....nothing."
"Come on. Tell me." said Adam.
"It's just that...."
"Yes?"
"Well look at you."
"What?" said Adam.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a freak. It's what you
are," said Mahomet. He stood up and began pacing the room. "There's
people out there who would give both their legs to be twenty-five
inches high."
"Oh," said Adam.
"You're something special," said Mahomet, "one in a million. No, one
in a billion. And it's that unique quality that people pay to see.
You're a star. Sometimes, from behind the curtains, I watch the
audience before you come on stage. I know what they're thinking. They
think they are above all this, better than the performance they're
about to see. They only came for a laugh, they would say, they would
rather be at Macbeth, they would say, and of course they will be on the
following weekend. But when you come out and you stand there on the
boards in all your compression, your abbreviation, they stop talking
and they can't take their eyes off of you. They have never seen such a
smidgen of a man, such a soup&;#8225;on of a human. And despite
themselves they are mesmerised, dumbstruck. It goes against all their
twenty-first century political correctness but your appeal is ageless,
timeless. And what I like most is, I can feel the tension in the air.
The collective intake of breath and the communal aura of wrongness
committed, ideals broken. And these very people will be at countless
future parties where they will expound quite vehemently that, "Of
course we are against exploitation," but for that time while you're
doing your thing the whole audience is at one with the Romans watching
mortal gladiatorial battles, the Elizabethans attending hangings, the
French braying for the heads of their nobles. It is an innate
voyeuristic pleasure that lives in us all, despite all breeding. The
pleasure of watching that which we know we shouldn't be watching. And
you, my friend, hold power over this primal instinct, can draw on it,
magnetise people with your very presence, for you are truly," and now
hands in the air Mahomet stopped pacing and turned to face the subject
of his narration, "the Prince of Freaks."
Adam Atom put his hands up to his face and ran out of the room
crying.
And from there the friendship had ceased to be.
Mahomet had tried to apologise. He had tried to say to Adam that he
didn't mean to hurt his feelings. He had tried to say that there was
nothing wrong with being a freak, that some of his best friends were
freaks but he seemed only to dig himself in deeper and the distance
grew daily.
Mahomet should have known something was up that night in Whitby. Just
before Adam was due on Mahomet had bumped into him in the wings.
"Break a leg," he had said trying to reconjure their old and much
missed camaraderie.
"I'll break both your legs you bastard," said Adam. "The audience love
bloodshed, love a hanging, well you wait and see."
"What.....?" said Mahomet but Adam had already gone on to do his
act.
All this flashed through Mahomet's head in that fraction of a second,
that nanosecond.
And we're back here again.
Mahomet is falling. Mahomet is still falling. Falling to the wooden
floor.
There is a gasp from bar and all at once poker faces are dropped,
pints are suspended in mid-air, and everyone's attention, for the first
time that night, is one hundred per cent concentrated on the aerial
antics of the once almost famous funambulist above their heads. Above
their heads but getting closer.
The body is horizontal, continuing its downward journey.
"Shit!" said Owen. "I've killed the bugger."
Incandescent in Mahomet's mind, another nanosecond, now appeared the
face of Blondin. Blondin his hero. Blondin who was the consummate
showman, a man who not only crossed the majestic Niagara falls on the
slenderest of ropes but also did so dressed as a Siberian slave and
paused in the middle to balance on his head. And Blondin is talking to
Mahomet. It is not quite Obi Wan Kenobi telling the young Luke
Skywalker to use the force, use the force, but the words have an equal
significance. "The ankle twist," Blondin is saying, "the ankle
twist."
The ankle twist. Of course.
Blondin had thrown him a rope.
For while Mahomet was falling, he was doing so around a central axis,
the axis of the line. And while his hands were currently one point
eight eight metres from the fibrous elixir of life, his feet were a
mere two centimetres.
He had seconds, milliseconds to act.
And this was where those years and years of practise and dedication
paid off. Whereas the instinct to save oneself is human, elemental,
Mahomet's instinct was also honed with a fleetness of foot, a
supernormal strength of the thigh and calf muscles.
With a last desperate primordial lunge Mahomet stretched out with his
left leg and there beneath his toes, yes, he could feel something
except fresh air. He performed a darting mercurial twist of the ankle,
to the left to the right.
There was a spontaneous round of applause from below.
Mahomet was not hanging by a thread.
He was hanging by a foot.
Then he remembered Adam.
Swinging and with blood rushing to his head Mahomet glanced left.
Adam, his face red, was still sawing. He had set out his stall, now he
was about to pack it away. He was nearly through the cord.
Every single person in the bar had now gathered under the rope and
were gazing upwards unable to avert their eyes. The only sound was the
silence of held breath. You could have heard a pin drop. Certainly the
sound of an Arab dropping would have been quite deafening.
"Quick," shouted Mahomet from his bat-like position, aware of the
little time he had before the rope was cut and he would plunge
unbat-like to the floor. "Someone grab a coat. Make a net."
Owen, feeling somewhat responsible for the current drama was the first
to react. With a cry of, "wait!" he ran out of the bar, leapt over the
counter of the cloakroom and grabbed the first jacket that came to
hand. It was Mr Braithwaite's brand new Barbour.
Owen was back in a flash and with an organisational skill that later
in life would land him a job in the town planning department, Belisha
beacon deployment section, of the North Yorkshire local council he had
arranged the members of his father's card corps so that the coat was
held taught and directly under the dangling man.
They were just in time.
There was an audible ping, a sound resembling the crack of a whip and
Mahomet was once again falling.
"Allah, Allah, Allah!" he screamed ever louder and with the ripping of
seams and the virtual severing of the left arm of the jacket he landed
right bang smack in the middle of the target.
He was alive and completely unhurt.
The two hundred and fifty thousand toga cladded Romans packed on the
stone seats of the prelapsarian Circus Maximus could not have raised a
more tumultuous cheer. The noise was extraordinary. People had never
been so thrilled, never seen such a show. And part of their delight
came, surely, from not only the spectacle of the event but from also
their active involvement in its denouement. Everyone was clapping their
hands, producing veritable explosions of flesh on flesh, pausing only
to slap Mahomet on the back and he was loving every minute of it,
enjoying every second of unadulterated adulation.
Only one person was not happy.
And it was not, as you might think, a certain Adam Atom.
In fact Adam was happier than anyone. On seeing the final thread of
the rope snap and watching his friend drop he had undergone a
existential epiphany more meaningful than any fall from a bridge, any
death of an Arab. He had realised that his friendship with Mahomet, the
years of travelling and performing together were bigger than any
inadequacy of size, were greater than his smallness.
No, it was Mr Braithwaite who was not happy. While all was riotous
around him he was looking at the rent pieces of his newly-purchased
much loved garment now being trodden into the filthy floor. So when
Mahomet in an artistically dervish twirl of accomplishment happened to
spin his way he did not hesitate to use his fist.
Mahomet dropped to the floor faster than a pound of lead.

Whitby. 10.05 pm.

The performers' changing room of Whitby Working Men's Club had formally
been the outside gent's toilets. The ripping out of the wooden stalls
and a lick of paint to the urinal had done wonders for the decor but
there was still a certain lingering excremental odoriferousness.
The five members of our troupe were there now, each seated on one of
the extant toilet bowls. Mr De Haute Taille was deep in conversation
with Mr Wong, Lord Ziegfeld, as usual had overdone it on the
complimentary drinks and was out of it and Adam was making up with
Mahomet.
"So you forgive me?" said Adam.
"I told you already," said Mahomet still flying on the buzz of
admiration, "forget the whole thing. We're friends now, right?"
"Right," said Adam.
"No more of this wanting to be tall nonsense."
"No," said Adam.
"Good," said Mahomet, repositioning the steak the kitchen staff had
kindly given him over his blossoming eye. "And Adam?"
"Yes mate."
"I like you the way you are."
"Do you?"
"Yeah," said Mahomet. "All I ever wanted to say was that you're a
star. You don't need to change, you're perfect already."
"Thanks," said Adam, smiling. "Mahomet?"
"Yeah?"
"Now can I give you some advice?"
"Sure," said Mahomet. "Fire away."
"I think the steak would be more effective if you waited until it
defrosted."
Mahomet was on the point of answering when there was staccato knock at
the door and it swung open.
Petr, head of light entertainment at CK1, had been commissioned by
Otta to find performers to entertain the guests on board the Circenses,
and of course by proxy, the watching millions. His brief was brief.
Cheap and cheerful. Quite by chance, visiting his maiden aunt on the
North Yorkshire coast, he had discovered just what he was looking
for.
As he entered the room and saw the quintet sitting on the white
porcelain toilets he thought he had interrupted some post-production
communal crap. He was used to dealing with theatre types and decided it
was best just to ignore it.
"Great show," he said with the accent of one assiduously taught
English by a quondam bumpkin from South Dakota.
"Thank you," said Mr Wong assuming the mantle of authority. At one
hundred and sixty-one he was the most senior member of the company. As
so often Lord Ziegfeld's inebriation had put him quite out of
action.
"Great finale," said Petr. "Loved the way you used the audiences own
clothes to make a net. Nice touch."
"We thought so," said Mr Wong. He raised his already diagonal plucked
eyebrows. "And you are?"
"Thought you'd know that already," laughed Petr. "Aren't you Mr
Memory, the man who knows everything?"
"Very droll," said Mr Wong with a face that looked like he had just
swallowed a mouthful of especially strong soy sauce "But you're
confusing memory and knowledge. I have to know something before I can
remember it. Now young man, tell me who you are and I promise you I
won't forget."
"Oh, I assure you, you won't forget about me, not when you hear what I
have to offer you." "Which is?" said Mr Wong, his left eyebrow now
raised so high it almost could have passed for a very slender itinerant
toupee on his naked dome.
"I spoke to the bar manager and I know precisely what you earnt
tonight. I am offering you an initial six month contract worth ten
times you current rate, free board and lodgings aboard a luxury cruise
liner and television exposure to millions of people. What do you
say?"
Adam looked at Mahomet who looked at Mr De Haute Taille who looked at
Mr Wong. Mr Wong knew his eyes would be wasted on Lord Ziegfeld and
instead he turned to their Archangel Gabriel.
"Present this wondrous covenant and I shall transcribe my
moniker."
"Sorry?" said Petr.
"Where do I sign?"