The Master Butcher's Singing Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

that swirled as she walked before the crowd. She did four cartwheels, and ended up sitting on a low, broad table. Cross-legged, she closed her eyes, folded her hands, and meditated to draw out the suspense. Just as the audience began to shift, impatient, she flipped over and became a human table. Cyprian then approached, holding a large wooden tray set up with tea things. On his head and his shoulders he carried an arrangement of six chairs, which he shrugged off, one by one. He sat upon the last chair, put the tray on Delphine’s torso, nodded pleasantly to her. He drew a fork, a knife, a napkin, a herring from his sleeve, and then proceeded to lay out the plate and eat the herring, which he cut into tiny bites and chewed rapidly. When he was finished, he dabbed his mouth, stretched, appeared ready to relax with a smoke and a good book.
    At that point, he frowned, he did not look comfortable. He sat in each chair, frowning harder, until he came to the last chair. “Do you mind?” he politely asked Delphine. “I suppose not,” she answered. He then cleared off the tea things and set the first chair on the tea tray on her stomach. Now they needed a helpful member of the audience to pass the chairs up. One by one, leg upon wooden seat, Cyprian balanced the chairs. Climbed higher, higher. Finally, he had the sixth chair balanced and he sat down on it and took a cigarette from his pocket.
    That was always when he noticed that he had forgotten his matches on the table, or rather, upon Delphine. (Someone in the audience always hollered the information, proud to make such a discovery.) Someone always offered to throw the matches up, but Cyprian politely declined any help, for already he had taken from his shirt collar a little collapsible fishing rod and unreeled the line. The end was fitted with a bobber, an ostentatious hook, and a sinker that was really a magnet and easily attracted the fixed matchbox.
    Once Cyprian had possession of the matches, he slowly and luxuriously lighted his cigarette. Then with many flourishes he pulled out abook, and pretended to regale the assembled crowd with its contents—more or less off-color jokes, which he laughed at, too, and even kicked up his heels, so that the chairs swayed alarmingly and drew gratifying whoops of anxiety from the crowd. Cyprian did not fall, of course. Once he finished his book, he tossed it. Did a handstand, on the topmost chair. Everyone applauded until, most amazingly—and here is where Delphine wished for an accomplice to produce a drum roll—he came down the chairs, headfirst, dismantling his tower by piling each chair onto his feet, hooking one to the next, until he stood on his hands under the chairs, on Delphine’s stomach.
    Let us not forget that all of this time she was beneath, wrists locked, neck in a vise, gut clenched, legs solidly planted underneath the feminine red skirt!
    Balancing on her torso, with the chairs on his feet, Cyprian craned his neck until his lips met hers. His kiss was falsely passionate, which got a roar from the crowd and had already started a slow burn of resentment in Delphine. The chairs were still balanced above them. They looked into each other’s eyes, and that to Delphine was at first intriguing. But what do you really see in the eyes of a man doing a handstand with six chairs balanced on his feet? You see that he is worried he will drop the chairs.
    THEY HOOKED UP with a vaudeville group and traveling circus from Illinois in the town of Shotwell, by the North Dakota border. “This is more my kind of place,” said Delphine to Cyprian, comforted by the horizon all around them. At the end of every street the sky loomed. There had been too many trees surrounding the towns before. The open sky was homey. As well, they met carousing friends. Cyprian knew a few of these people from fairs and other shows, and the first evening, he brought her along with him to the local saloon. The place was a low, dank sty. They sat in a booth