The Oldest Woman in the World.

Hannah looks. She does not have to look. She could just walk straight by. The compartment will not contain Perla.

In the cordoned-off area is a rocking chair. A large rug covers the rough surface of the tent floor: why, they have made this place into a home of sorts. An elderly woman, with an aura of white, wispy hair, goes about her daily business. But there is no way the woman can sit on the chair: she is bent almost double with age. A circus man stands at the side: “Say hello, go on now, say hello to the oldest woman in the world.”

She wants to see not the oldest woman in the world, but the miniature folk. Perla. But still, she peers forward, trying to see the bent-over woman. She wants to catch a glimpse of her eyes.

The circus man continues: “A woman so old that she can not even remember her birthday.”

Birthday? Who apart from city folk and Jewish boys remember their birthdays? The boys because they have brissen and bar mitzvahs and the city folk because they live their lives not according to the season and the weather, but according to a white-bound book called a calendar, that proves each day has passed even if it contained nothing.

Country folk do not know their birthdays — certainly, her family never did. She was born in the spring, and two weeks before Pesach, Ernst buys her a gift and Gertrude bakes a cake — Ernst considered it a convenient time for the family.

The old woman does not look up. Hannah leans forward. The woman’s skin is very wrinkled, but she does not look so very old, only twisted.

Emmy, beside her, whispers into her ear. “What is the woman doing here?”

Felix answers. “Perhaps she has nowhere to go.”

Emmy whips around to face him. “What do you mean?”

Felix shrugs. “No children. No money. Perhaps this is better for her than finding a gorse bush under which to lie down and die.”

Hannah shivers. The woman is probably younger than her own mother.

“Grandma, show us your teeth,” someone calls out from the crowd.

The circus man hears the jibe and picks it up. “Come on then, the crowd wants a smile.”

A little girl points and yells. “She doesn’t have any teeth! Only gums.”

Emmy turns to her. “And why is that funny? Does your grandmother have teeth? Or does she have teeth made from ivory? That means that she borrows her teeth from an elephant.”

“They’re not an elephant’s teeth, ivory is from the tusk,” Felix corrects. “And the teeth would probably be made from porcelain.”

Emmy sniffs. “What does it matter? But really, little girl, can you tell me why is that funny? That someone finds it hard to eat? That a poor old lady doesn’t have a set of false teeth?”

A woman who must be the girl’s mother reaches out and shakes Emmy’s arm. “Why are you talking to my daughter?”

“I’m simply trying to understand what is so humorous about an old lady who has no teeth.”

“She’s just a child laughing.”

Emmy shakes her head. “But why is she laughing? Why are you laughing? Why do all these people think it’s so funny that an old woman has sore gums when she eats?”

“Emmy,” Hannah murmurs.

Felix puts his hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “She is right, Mama. People come to the circus to laugh and point and pretend that they will never grow old and lose their teeth, for that only happens to people who live in circuses, not to people like them.”

“Hello?” Hannah calls out.

The woman looks up at her. “Hello!” Hannah calls out again. She can feel Felix and Emmy looking at her. “Do you know any little people?”

The woman shuffles towards the thick rope that separates her from the crowd. She puts one gnarled hand around the rope that imprisons her — or maybe protects her? — and swivels in the direction of Hannah’s voice. “Little people, you say?”

“Yes!” Hannah calls out.

The woman opens her mouth and starts to cackle. “All of you,” she says, lifting a gnarled, misshapen hand toward the crowd. “All of you are little people.”

They jostle on to the next section: a man with a beard down to his toes. He delights the crowd by bending down to the ground and deftly rolling it up so that it sits, a large ball of graying fluff, around his chin. Then he lets it down again. “Probably not real,” Felix mutters.

Hannah wants to disagree. Her neighbor in the shtetl, a holy Yid, never trimmed his beard, and on Erev Shabbos she’d see him coming back from the mikveh, without having rolled it up. It reached his knees.

They elbow their way through the tent, not wanting to see the man with six fingers prepare tea, nor to ogle at a small child with an enormous head. The little boy catches Hannah’s attention, though.

“He must be ill,” she says.

Indeed, as he limps around his space, one leg drags after him, useless. It may be the light, but the boy’s complexion is pale and his forehead bulges. Hannah feels choked. This is not a circus exhibit. This is a child who needs a doctor and a mother.

Through, through, through. The child who can tie his legs into a knot. The tallest man. A child-creature with one head and two bodies. Freaks. Outcasts.

The type of people whom you look at and shudder and think, thank G-d that this is not me, or my child, or someone I know. A thrill of fear goes through you and then the relief of knowing that you will leave this tent and return to your safe life, having glimpsed all the ways that life could have failed you, family could have failed you, G-d Himself turned against you. And it wasn’t you, it wasn’t you at all.

It was just an old, twisted woman without a birthday.

Outside, she barely has time to breathe before they are pushed by the crowd into the big top.

Music: five men blowing trumpets march around the circus ring, along with a drummer and then, yes, it is, a monkey — dressed in the same uniform, also banging his drum.

The monkey is well trained. As the tune segues, he jumps over to the trumpet players and snatches their hats. They pantomime their predicament —   hat or music. Some choose music, others give chase to the monkey, who tosses the hats into the crowd. The people cheer. Those lucky few in the audience who have received a red felt hat put them on their head, eager at the chance to join in the show.

Two men on stilts juggle fire. Is it just tiredness that makes the fire into two orange glows that shimmer in the air? She closes her eyes and then rubs them. Definition comes, then fades.

The stilt jugglers bow and in run the trapeze artists. They scale rope ladders that hang from the tent top, then take it in turns to fly through the air, catching onto swings just before they fall. The crowd goes wild, whooping and clapping as the artists defy gravity, defy death, defy what it means to be a human being and whoosh through the air.

Hannah rubs her eyes again. Really. They could just go home. Or go and find that hotel which Felix heard about. She only hopes that it will be clean. They do not have to see this — baboons jumping through hoops. She glances around at her children. Emmy sits forward, her chin resting in her hand, utterly absorbed. Felix sits back in his seat. His forehead is slightly creased, as if he is trying to analyze what he sees.

And she? She just feels a mixture of repulsion and fascination, which makes her uncomfortable with herself.

The music changes and an ominous tattoo sounds on the drum. Five tigers spring into the big top, each of them opening his mouth in a roar. Loud. How loud they are. She shivers in her coat. She has never seen anything like them.

Of course, she has heard that there are tigers in Africa. But here, in Europe? In the cold of the winter? They are magnificent. Lithe and graceful and those black and orange stripes signal both beauty and danger in equal measure. The tigers exit and it is time for the ponies. A tiny woman appears in the circus ring. She rides a small horse — a pony, really — and wears a tall hat, with gold and silver ribbons that flow out.

Emmy gasps. She stands up to take a better look and the man behind her yells, “Sit down.”

Felix pulls Emmy down, but Emmy can not sit still. She takes hold of Hannah’s hand and squeezes.

Hannah faces her. “What?”

Emmy just points at the small woman astride the pony, which trots around the arena.

“What? What is it, Emmy?”

People are looking, but Emmy takes no notice.

“Do you not see it?”

The horsewoman gives a whoop, the drums roll and she jumps up so that she’s standing on the back of the horse, both arms held out for balance as the pony tosses its mane and continues prancing through the arena.

Now, it is possible to see that the woman is tiny.

“Ma. It is her.”

Felix is standing up at her side, and behind them, there are shouts of “Sit down, sit down.” But Felix has a pair of opera glasses pressed against his eyes. He tugs on Hannah’s arm.

“Mama, it is she.” He thrusts the opera glasses in her hands.

Hannah shakes her head, bewildered. She puts the opera glasses against her eyes but all she sees is a blur, until she finally catches a glimpse of horse’s mane, then glittering dress, then face. “But…how do you know?”

Emmy tips her head back and laughs. “Why, Mama, you are the mirror image of her — or she of you. The only difference is the height.”

“The only difference,” interrupts Felix, “is the gaudy costume.”

He looks down at the program which he lifts and angles it towards the light. “Here,” he says. “The famous horsewoman, Paulina.”

Emmy grips her arm. “Paulina! Who else could it be, but Perla?”

Hannah keeps her face on the woman who rides around the arena. Paulina — Perla has turned, so she stands backward on the horse. She jumps lightly, and then is performing a handstand, before she slips back into the saddle to the sound of scattered applause. Paulina. Perla. Horsewoman. Sister. She squeezes her eyes tight, but the darkness offers no reprieve.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 716)