American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,267

message. George plucked at the bow and untied the string, and then, with the gravity of a priest unscrolling a holy document, he unfolded the paper.

It was—or had once been—a theater bill. Judging by the few acts printed on it and the simple, sloppy printing job, it was from a very small-time theater, one even smaller than Otterman’s. But half of one page was taken up by a large, impressive illustration: though the ink had cracked and faded in parts, one could see that it depicted a short, stout man in a top hat standing in the middle of a stage, bathed in the clean illumination of the spotlight. His hands were outstretched to the audience in a pose of extreme theatricality, as if he was in the middle of telling them the most enthralling story in the world. Written across the bottom of the illustration, in a curling font that must have passed for fancy for that little theater, were three words: THE SILENUS TROUPE.

George reverently touched the illustration, as if he wished to fall inside it and hear the tale the man was telling. “I got this in my hometown,” he said. “He visited there, once. But I didn’t get to see.” Then he looked at Irina with a strange shine in his eyes, and asked, “What do you remember from when he was here?”

“What do I remember?”

“Yes. You had to have rehearsed with him when he played here, didn’t you? You must have seen his show. So what do you remember?”

“Don’t you know the act yourself? Why ask me?”

But George did not answer, but only watched her closely.

She grunted. “Well. Let me think. It seems so long ago…” She took a contemplative puff from her cigarette. “There were four acts, I remember that. It was odd, no one travels with more than one act these days. That was what angered Van Hoever so much.”

George leaned forward. “What else?”

“I remember… I remember there was a man with puppets, at the start. But they weren’t very funny, these puppets. And then there was a dancer, and a… a strongwoman. Wait, no. She was another puppet, wasn’t she? I think she might have been. And then there was a fourth act, and it… it…” She trailed off, confused, and she was not at all used to being confused.

“You don’t remember,” said George.

“I do!” said Irina. “At least, I think I do… I can remember every act I’ve played for, I promise, but this one… Maybe I’m wrong. I could’ve sworn I played for this one. But did I?”

“You did,” said George.

“Oh? How are you so certain?”

“I’ve found other people who’ve seen his show, Irina,” he said. “Dozens of them. And they always say the same thing. They remember a bit about the first three acts—the puppets, the dancing girl in white, and the strongwoman—but nothing about the fourth. And when they try and remember it, they always wonder if they ever saw the show at all. It’s so strange. Everyone’s heard of the show, and many have seen it, but no one can remember what they saw.”

Irina rubbed the side of her head as if trying to massage the memory out of some crevice in her skull, but it would not come. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that when people go to see Silenus’s show… something happens. I’m not sure what. But they can never remember it. They can hardly describe what they’ve seen. It’s like it happened in a dream.”

“That can’t be,” said Irina. “It seems unlikely that a performance could do that to a person.”

“And yet you can’t remember it at all,” said George. “No one else here can remember, either. They just know Silenus was here, but what he did up on that stage is a mystery to them, even though they played alongside it.”

“And you want to witness this for yourself? Is that it?”

George hesitated. “Well. There’s a bit more to it than that, of course. But yes. I want to see him.”

“But why, child? What you’re telling me is very curious, that I admit, but you have a very good thing going on here. You’re making money. You are living by yourself, dressing yourself”—she cast a leery eye over his cream-colored suit—“with some success. It is a lot to risk.”

“Why do you care? Why are you interested in me at all?”

Irina sighed. “Well. Let me just say that once, I was your age. And I was just about as talented as you were, boy. And