Floozman and the Traveling Entertainers by Bertrand Cayzac	Table of Contents Vers la version originale
conclusion

Floozman, Zachariah and the little Preciosa were walking in the night along the highway. All the stars in the sky shone above them.

“We have already walked thus along the Ganges, in days gone by,” Floozman told her. “You were a great king, and I had been born as a handsome doe. One day, I came close to a village so that my fawn could hear the washerwoman’s song, and I fell in a trap I did not know of.

“As you were going to your summer palace in great ceremony, you came across the villagers carrying us away, and you were moved by our fate. You ordered our release and banned all the traps in the area. You gave freely to the people for them to live in abundance and conceive no resentment against us.

“Since we had been wounded in our fall, you entrusted us to a young woman in your suite. She took care of us and fed us the choicest meals until we reached the palace. There we lived happily in a magnificent park, where entire herds wandered in liberty. You loved to walk among us in the perfumed evening mildness.”

“And now it is your turn to deliver us?” old Zachariah asked. “How many times has this already happened?”

“At many times and in many ways. I was your slave and you helped me to study and rise above my status. I was your counsellor. I was a brave horse and you, a knight of peace.

“If this life had not been employed in struggling for survival, you could have raised yourself up and remembered everything... But you must go now, I have no park to offer you, where you can live in the peaceful enjoyment of all human pleasures, but the world is yours, Zachariah. You will not work, you will not settle down, you will not seek to accumulate wealth: you will never have been so close to heaven.”

“Thank you, Mr Floozman,” said Preciosa. “I too, would like to do something for you some day, but you are so strong!”

“You know, Preciosa, my power is not so great. I cannot see the past, nor can I see the future. I have only some visions. Maybe we shall meet again? In the meantime, I insist you take to the road. Some ‘villagers’ will want to follow you. Do not reject them. If they want to work, let the steward find them an occupation. If they do not want to work, help them, make sure they live in peace.”

Back at the camp, they find the Floozboys ready to transfer the circus. After the show, a grand open-air ball will be arranged to absorb the crowd and the extra energy. During the dismantling of the big top, Floozman and the Floozboys will pretend to be asleep around a fire. Zachariah and his people will then be in a position to seize the leading truck, where the keys and the papers are. Awakened by the engine noise, Floozman and the Floozboys will set off in the pursuit of them but they will fail. From then on, Zachariah shall control the company.

As a Floozboy was explaining the ritual in detail, Cyril Handlebar came running in.

“Floozman, Floozman, everything is ugly! I’ve lost my wife, I’ve lost everything, but I have seen the truth. I don’t know where to go anymore. I beg you, take me with you. Don’t leave me, you owe me explanations...”

“You want to go with the circus?”

”No, with your people. I want to follow you and learn.”

Floozman hesitated for a long while. He thought of the sincerity of Cyril’s prayer then he looked at his face. He had not changed. No light was emanating from it. Could he give him a chance?

“Let’s take him on as Flooz-probationer. We will see after three months,” said a Floozboy.

“All right, Cyril. You have reached a state of grace, albeit very briefly. I have heard your prayer, but only as a late echo. Our action has shown your spouse another way. Your case is a strange one, but you deserve to follow us. May you find your way with us...”

“Yeaaaaah,” shouted the Floozboys.

Floozman remained silent for a while before adding, “And maybe someone good and mighty has deliberately precipitated your soul into the deepest desolation in the corporate word and sports in order to accomplish a purpose we do not understand...”

“Woooooaaaa,” whispered the Floozboys.

“Have the lawyers take care of the Handlebar family,” Floozman ordered eventually. “Objectives: the circus for her, an initiation for him. And take off that track suit!”

* * *

“I must speak to the beets!” said Floozman briskly, taking his leave of the company.

As he walked towards the darkest place in the immense field, a voice called out to him. “Mr Floozman! Mr Floozman!”

A man in an oilskin coat standing behind him, a flashlight in his hand.

“You must come with me to see the invalids, Mr Floozman. Four of them have specially left the hospital to meet you, Mr Floozman. You know this is forbidden. They only want to touch you. It is very important to them.”

Floozman followed him, stumbling on the edges of the furrows. Some distance away, the crippled were very neatly aligned, shrivelled in their wheelchairs, with the exception of a young paralytic lying on a stretcher. Two nurses, visibly embarrassed, were standing by them.

“Hello, my friends,” said Floozman, worried that he did not feel anything.

Then, violently, four maddened spirits tore themselves from their flesh to question him. The immense distress emanating from them touched Floozman’s heart and shattered him. He concentrated, expecting a strong prayer that would take him up to the doors of heaven, but nothing happened. The spirits swirled around him, and the crippled rolled their dirty, ivory-coloured eyes.

As he instinctively moved ahead to lay his hands upon the disabled, one of the nurses took his hand and guided it towards her naked belly made slippery by the thin rain that had just started.

“They say you heal with carnal love. We are worn out. I am willing to give my body for them, and my comrade is, too.”

“We are desperate, Mr Floozman. These people want to die,” added the man in the oilskin coat. “The rumour tells that...”

“No, no. We have planned no orgies,” said Floozman, aroused against his will. “I have no vision, but here is a million billion dollars. Wait, we can do even better. I must call a helicopter.”

Floozman turned around as he emptied his pockets. He saw only the glittering marquee tent standing out against the night, very far away...

“Let me just kiss your hand,” asked an old lady from deep in her wheelchair, apparently unaware of the torment into which the spinning presence of her spirit has plunged Floozman.

The medical equipment started beeping.

“I bless you. I bless you,” said Floozman, clumsily extending his hand, his eyes filled with tears.

“She is dead!” shouted the second nurse.

Rain was falling.

“That’s it?... That’s all?” echoed the first nurse after a hesitation.

“I reckon it was the right moment,” added the man in the oilskin coat, “but anyway...”

But Floozman had run away across fields, towards Plouvigny. He struggled with the violent shudders of his body, which threatened to metamorphose into Fred Looseman. Sometimes lifted by gusts of wind, sometimes rolling on the oily turf, farther and farther he went, overwhelmed by shame. Thus he avoided Plouvigny’s militia, the Floozboys who were coming after him, and the gypsies, who were breaking camp.

When he reached the highway by the water sports complex, he was still resisting the upheaval that was reshaping his body and mind. It was already dawn. He lifted his eyes towards the east to see the nurse who had followed him, watching him with her wet hair clinging to her face.

“I want to stay among them and save them! I can do it! I want to resurrect the dead. I do not want to disappear to start over again and again,” he told her. “If I could stay in this form, I would save the world, and I would be free too, at last.”

The wind created a restless wave upon the waters. A thunderbolt struck nearby. The first red trucks of the circus were setting out on the highway; they were being washed up by the storm.

The nurse took him in her arms. The rain redoubled in intensity.

“Do you need to hide?” she asked tenderly.

“I must disappear!” Floozman answered, shivering. “Go away. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I will help you.”

She kissed him. They rolled down the embankment. When their bodies hit the fence below, Fred Looseman asked, “Where is my van? I should not be here. Help me. I have had a seizure.”

Later, without a word, the nurse led Fred Looseman to the emergency room at the hospital in Plouvigny. Then she left, taking with her Floozman’s cloak.

A helicopter flew over the beet field, where teams of circus workmen were still busy. Some young people were still dancing amid wax paper and unfettered horses.

Copyright © 2008 by Bertrand Cayzac

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