Elefant. Jamie Bulloch
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6 June 2013
A director is only ever as important as the business they preside over. And unfortunately Circus Pellegrini wasn’t as important as it once had been.
That’s why most of the employees and all the artists who worked for Carlo P. Pellegrini just called him Carlo. Only those veterans of the circus who’d been taken on by his father called him ‘Herr Direktor’.
Back then Pellegrini was still one of the three most important circuses in the country. It played the same venues as the national circus and although its gala premieres may have been rather middle-class events, they were still part of the social calendar.
Its decline began right after the sudden death of Pellegrini’s father, Paolo, at fifty-two. He was the victim of a lion attack, or rather, the victim of the abrupt end of an affair between the animal trainer de Groot and a Chinese trapeze artist, who on the orders of her father, the head of the troupe, had to submit to family discipline and terminate the relationship.
De Groot, an alcoholic who’d stayed dry for fifteen years, suffered a relapse and was confronted by Carlo’s father at a training session where he was clearly drunk. The circus director marched into the cage as he’d often done before – he’d worked with lions himself in the past – and gave de Groot a piece of his mind. Pellegrini ordered him to take the lions back to their cages and sleep off his inebriation.
Tarzan, the star of the lion routine, came to his boss’s aid and attacked Paolo Pellegrini.
He died on the spot.
Carlo had just turned thirty and was unprepared for the role of circus director. His dream was to become a musician, but his plans had been thwarted by his sister Melanie. She had been an enthusiastic circus child and they were agreed that when the time came for the handover she’d become the first female circus director in the country. While he, Carlo, would continue the circus lifestyle, but on tour with a rock band.
Then, however, his sister fell in love with the magician and son of an American circus family, and followed him to the States. Which meant Carlo had no choice but to take over his father’s role.
He might have enjoyed more success if it hadn’t been for his father’s widow. Following the death of Carlo’s mother, Paolo had got married again to Alena, a Russian circus princess who was as old as his son. Although he’d bequeathed the circus to whichever child was going to continue it, he’d set aside a generous pension for his widow, which placed a major burden on the circus budget. Moreover, because she no longer did her horse routine, for which she’d once won a prize, Carlo had to hire an external artiste as a replacement.
He’d never got on with her even while his father was alive, but afterwards open hostility broke out between them. She constantly interfered in the management of the circus, undermined the little authority he had and kept causing upheaval in the team by embarking on affairs with the artistes. Carlo was delighted when she stayed on after a holiday to Ibiza and only returned sporadically. Sporadically, but always unexpectedly.
In his will, Carlo’s father had guaranteed her the right of abode for the rest of her life, which meant that the circus always had to shunt around her luxury caravan.
Another problem was that Carlo Pellegrini had no affinity with animals. He was a poor rider, he’d never been able to overcome his fear of horses and he had zero understanding of them. Losing Alena’s equestrian skills left him in a fix, and he ended up hiring rather mediocre acts twice in succession.
After the tragedy with his father he struck large carnivores from the programme, replacing them with pigs, dogs, goats and other pets in acts that were amusing rather than striking and which could have been entertaining if he’d had a better feel for the routines. The same was true of his choice of artistes. He lacked sufficient professional knowledge or interest to spot the really exceptional artistes. And he couldn’t afford those with the best reputations in the circus world, a problem that worsened each year.
Soon this was even the case at the top venues in the country. He had to make do with the second- or sometimes third-best choice.
The last remaining showpieces of Circus Pellegrini were its Indian elephants. Four cows and an adolescent bull. They’d been the pride of Carlo’s father, who was known as an eminent elephant trainer. After his death Carlo took over the elephant act, even though he didn’t have a clue about these animals either.
That this was at all possible was down to Kaung, his Burmese oozie. Oozie, or neck rider, was the name given over there to elephant keepers.
It was Kaung who’d been training and looking after the elephants for years and who led them around the edge of the ring at every performance. Even Paolo Pellegrini’s act with the elephants had been a bit of a sham. He pretended that the grey giants were obeying him, when in fact they only listened to Kaung.
Keeping the elephants was a costly affair. A fully grown animal ate 200 kilograms of fresh twigs, hay, leaves, fruit and vegetables per day. A year after he’d taken over the circus, Pellegrini was determined to sell them. And he would have done if it hadn’t been for Kaung, who one day came up with the idea of submitting the cows to an international breeding programme. He knew that during the pregnancy a client would pay for feed, veterinary services and care, and then hand over a wad of money after the birth.
Pellegrini was convinced. He applied to a programme that worked with artificial insemination. Three of his cows had already produced babies using this method and prospects were good that this part of his business, at least, would continue to prosper. The clients were most satisfied. The elephants were healthy and so well trained that they patiently allowed the procedure to be carried out.
‘Carlo!’ called the woman who looked after the ticket sales, book-keeping, correspondence, telephone and all the other administrative tasks. ‘That Roux guy is here!’
She’d opened the door to his caravan without knocking, pointing behind to a squat man with shaven hair, carrying an open umbrella and a briefcase.
‘Show him in, he’s got an appointment,’ he said gruffly, watching as she – also holding an umbrella – went back over to Roux and indicated the caravan.
17
The same day
The red, white and yellow striped tent with the Pellegrini logo was pitched on the recreation ground beside the recreation hall in a town in eastern Switzerland near Lake Constance, a good hour’s drive from Gentecsa. A dozen circus wagons in the same colours and a motley collection of just as many caravans and mobile homes were clustered behind the big top.
The picture might not have looked so sad if this hadn’t been the penultimate stop before the end of the season and if it hadn’t been chucking it down so persistently from a murky grey sky.
The bad-tempered woman from the office pointed to the caravan that said ‘Director’. ‘He’s expecting you,’ she said, before hurrying back to the box office.
He walked the few metres up to the caravan and knocked. Pellegrini opened the door and invited him in.
Roux knew the man from the media, particularly from the time when his father was ‘Torn to shreds by lions!’ as one tabloid put it. For a while the same rag ran stories on the circus takeover and the rather indelicate question of when Pellegrini would get married. After that, however, media interest in the director and his circus died down.
Roux recalled Pellegrini as slimmer, but otherwise he hadn’t changed much in the intervening seven years. Pellegrini was a head taller than him, his shoulder-length hair a touch too black and he stood slightly stooped, as many tall men do.
The director’s caravan was dominated by a huge desk with three visitors’ chairs. The rest of the space was taken up by three armchairs and a sofa. The walls were covered with old circus posters and photographs from eighty-five years of Circus Pellegrini. The director seemed to be pondering whether to offer his guest a seat by the desk or take him