(2003) Overtaken Read Online Free PDF

girl from
the trapeze, dressed now in a short blue skirt, blue high heels, stockings and
a low-cut blue top with a tray strapped to her front on which I could see were
arranged tubs of some kind of snack food.
    Nobody
else was buying as, coldly, she watched me approach. ‘Ah, the funny man,’ the
girl said when I got up to her, speaking in a thick foreign accent. ‘You know
you really upset Valery, trowing his ball away like dot.’
    I was
hoping she hadn’t noticed I’d been the one who’d messed with her friend’s head
but I still said defensively, ‘Well, it wasn’t a real ball.’
    ‘It was
to Valery,’ she sniffed.
     
     
    I didn’t really want to
get into an argument with a woman whose friend was a very strong clown, who had
the muscles of a decent middleweight herself and who up close was the most
blistering-looking fucking bird I’d ever seen, so I thought it best to put on a
contrite voice. ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was just showing off to my
friends. It’s not my fault, it’s the group dynamic, honest. For a minute there
I thought Valery was going to kill me.’
    ‘Wouldn’t
be first time,’ she said, refusing to bend to my apologetic tone.
    I
thought a change of subject might come in handy. ‘Hmm. What is that, is it food
that you’re selling?’ I said in a stiff voice that suddenly sounded odd to my
own ears. Unable to stop myself, I realised what I was doing, taking on her
accent. Anybody with a strong inflection could have me talking like them in no
time at all. In Chinese restaurants I would often get nasty looks from the
waiters because I had suddenly acquired a Chinese accent, though I thought in
all fairness that they should appreciate it was not a crude one. I didn’t do
any of that ‘velly solly’ stuff but rather spoke in the accent of the indulged
only son of wealthy traders from Xi’an Province who had been educated at a
Western private school and then had gone on to USC in San Francisco to study
mechanical engineering or something like that.
    In
answer to my question about her tray the girl looked down as if surprised that
she was holding it. ‘Is Khabapchivi,’ she said.
    ‘Dah, I
see. Vat is that dat exactly?’ I replied.
    She
thought about it hard, screwing her face up and staring towards the roof of the
tent. ‘Umm, dar … Well… is like Gobubchaki but slightly less vortery.’
    ‘bat’s
hard to reeseest,’ I said, handing over two pounds for a small polystyrene tub
that had a plastic spoon sticking straight up in the food. Smilingly I put a
small globule of Khabapchivi into my mouth and chewed. It tasted like Birmingham . ‘Hmm…’ I said. ‘There’s
certainly sometink—’ Before I could say anything more the girl interrupted.
    ‘Show
starting again. You better get back to your chair, funny man.’ Then she darted
through a flap in the canvas and was gone, leaving me to dispose of my
Khabapchivi in a council rubbish bin. Just as I was going back in to the show I
saw a stray dog go up to the bin, sniff it then run off whimpering.
    In the
second half of cirKuss there was a lot more tumbling, flying through the air
and knife throwing, pretty much what would be happening outside in the centre
of town by now, I thought. Then the band got out of second gear for the first time
that night and clanked into ‘Last Train to Clarksville ’, by the Monkees, for what was obviously meant to be the climax.
The girl came on again dressed in an orange boiler suit, carrying three nail
guns of the type I knew they used on American building sites. By the girl’s
side was Valery, also an orange boilersuit, carrying a huge gas cylinder on his
shoulders which he dumped in the centre of the ring, raising a cloud of sawdust.
    As the
band played he took a packet of different coloured balloons from his pocket,
selected one, filled it with gas then ;twisted it into the shape of a bird. All
the while the girl had % been juggling with the nail guns; she was