“allez!

”
Aleksandr I. Kuprin

Translated from Russian by Douglas Ashby

This jerky, exclamatory order was Melle Nora’s earliest memory from the dark monotony of her
erring childhood. This word Allez was the very first that her weak, childish little tongue ever
framed, and always, even in her dreams, this cry reproduced itself in Nora’s memory, evoking in
its five letters the chill of the unheated circus ring, the smell of stables, the heavy gallop of the
horse, the dry crackling of the long whip and the burning pain of its lash, suddenly deadening
the momentary hesitation of fear. …

“Allez! …”

In the empty circus it is cold and dark. Here and there, the wintry sunlight, scarcely piercing the
glass cupolas, lies in pale spots over the raspberry-coloured velvet and the gilt of the boxes, over
the shields with the horses’ heads, over the flags that decorate the pillars; it plays on the dim
glasses of the electric globes, gliding over the steel of the tourniquets and trapezes, up there at a
tremendous height amid the entanglement of the machines and the ropes, from which one can
scarcely distinguish the first rows of the stalls, and the seats behind and the gallery are
completely drowned in darkness.

The day’s routine is in full swing. Five or six of the performers, in greatcoats and fur caps, are
smoking rank cigars at the end of the first row of armchairs near the entrance from the stables.
In the middle of the ring stands a square-built, short-legged man, with a tall hat perched on the
back of his head, and a black moustache, carefully twisted to a fine point at the ends. He is tying
a long string round the waist of a tiny little five-year-old girl, who is standing in front of him
shivering from fright and cold. The big white horse, which a stableman leads round the ring,
snorts loudly, shaking its arched neck as the white steam gushes from its nostrils. Every time
that it passes the man in the tall hat, the horse looks askance at the whip that sticks out under
his arm, snorts with agitation, and, plodding round, drags the tugging stable-boy behind it.
Little Nora can hear behind her back its nervous plunges, and she shivers still more.

Two powerful hands seize her round the waist and lightly toss her on to the large leather
mattress on the horse’s back. Almost at the same instant, the chairs, the white pillars, the tent
cloth hangings at the entrance—all this is merged in the bizarre circle which spins round to meet
the horse. In vain her numb hands clutch convulsively at the rough wave of mane as her eyes
close tightly, blinded by the devilish flash of the seething circle. The man in the tall hat walks in
the centre of the ring, holding in front of the horse’s head the end of his long whip, which he
cracks deafeningly. …
“Allez! …”

And again she is in her short gauze skirt, with her bare, thin, half-childish arms, standing in
the electric light, beneath the very cupola of the circus on a well-balanced trapeze. From
this, at the little girl’s feet, there is hanging, head downwards, his knees clutching the
upright post, another square-built man, in pink tights, with gold spangles and fringe,
curled, pomaded, and cruel. Now he has raised his lowered hands, spread them out, and,
fixing Nora’s eyes with that penetrating, meaning look—the hypnotising glance of the
acrobat—he claps his hands. Nora makes a quick forward movement with the intention of
hurling herself straight down into those strong, pitiless hands. (What a thrill it will give the
hundreds of spectators!) But all of a sudden, her heart grows cold, seems to stop from
terror, and she only squeezes more tightly the thin ropes of the trapeze. Up go once more
the cruel, bent hands, and the acrobat’s glance becomes still more intense … Beneath her
feet the space seems that of an abyss.

“Allez! …”

Again she balances, scarcely able to breathe, on the very apex of the “Living Pyramid.” She
glides, wriggling with her body, supple as a serpent’s, between the crossbeams of the long
white ladder which a man is holding on his head. She turns a somersault in the air, thrown
up by the feet of the jongleur, strong and terrible, like steel springs. Again at a great height,
she walks on thin, trembling wire which cuts her feet unbearably. … And everywhere are the
same dim, beautiful faces, the pomaded heads, the puffed curls, the moustaches upturned,
the reek of cigars and perspiration, and always that inevitable fatal cry, the same for human
beings, for horses, and for performing dogs:

“Allez! …”

She was just sixteen, and a very pretty girl when, during a performance, she fell from the
airy tourniquet past the net on to the sand of the ring. She was picked up unconscious and
taken behind the scenes, where, in accordance with circus traditions, they began to shake
her by the shoulders with all their might to bring her back to herself. She awoke to
consciousness, groaning with pain from her crushed hand.

“The audience is getting restless and beginning to go,” they were saying around her. “Come,
show yourself to the public.”

Obediently her lips framed the usual smile, the smile of the “graceful horsewoman,” but
after walking two steps the pain became unbearable and she cried out and staggered. Then
dozens of hands laid hold of her and pushed her forcibly in front of the public.
“Allez!”

During this season there was “working” in the circus a certain star clown named Menotti.
He was not the ordinary pauper clown who rolls in the sand to the rhythm of slaps in the
face and who manages, on a quite empty stomach, to amuse the public for a whole evening
with inexhaustible jokes. Menotti was a clown celebrity, the first solo-clown and imitator on
the planet, a world-known trainer who had received innumerable honours and prizes. He
wore on his breast a heavy chain of gold medals, received two hundred roubles for a single
turn and boasted of the fact that for the last five years he had worn nothing but moire
costumes. After the performance, he invariably felt “done up” and, with a highfalutin
bitterness, would say of himself: “Yes, we are buffoons, we must amuse the well-fed public.”
In the arena he would sing, pretentiously and out of tune, old couplets, or recite verses of
his own composition, or make gags on the Duma or the drainage, which usually produced
on the public, drawn to the circus by reckless advertising, the impression of insistent, dull,
and unnecessary contortions. In private life, he had a languidly patronising manner, and he
loved with a mysterious and negligent air, to insinuate his conquests of extraordinarily
beautiful, extraordinarily rich, but utterly tiresome countesses.

At her first appearance at the morning rehearsal, after her sprain had been cured, Menotti
came up to her, held her hand in his, made moist tired eyes at her, and asked in a weakened
voice about her health. She became confused, blushed, and took her hand away. That
moment decided her fate.

A week later, as he escorted Nora back from the evening performance, Menotti asked her to
have supper with him at the magnificent hotel where the world-famous first solo-clown
always stopped.

The cabinets particuliers are on the first floor, and as she made her way up Nora stopped
for a minute, partly from fatigue, partly from the emotion of the last virginal hesitation. But
Menotti squeezed her elbow tightly. In his voice there rang fierce animal passion and with it
the cruel order of the old acrobat as he whispered:

“Allez!”

And she went. … She saw in him an extraordinary, a superior being, almost a god. … She
would have gone into fire if it had occurred to him to order it.

For a year she followed him from town to town. She took care of Menotti’s brilliants and
jewels during his appearances, put on and took off for him his tricot, attended to his
wardrobe, helped him to train rats and pigs, rubbed his face with cold cream and—what was
most important of all—believed with idolising intensity in his world-fame. When they were
alone he had nothing to say to her, and he accepted her passionate caresses with the
exaggerated boredom of a man who, though thoroughly satiated, mercifully permits women
to adore him.

After a year he had had enough of her. His attention was diverted to one of the Sisters
Wilson who were executing “Airy Flights.” He did not stand on ceremony with Nora now,
and often in the dressing-room, right in front of the performers and stablemen, he would
box her ears for a missing button. She bore all this with the humility of an old, clever and
devoted dog who accepts the blows of his master.

Finally, one night after a performance in which the first trainer in the world had been hissed
for whipping a dog really too savagely, Menotti told Nora straight out to go immediately to
the devil. She left him, but stopped at the very door of the room and glanced back with a
begging look in her eyes. Then Menotti rushed to the door, flung it open furiously and
shouted:

“Allez!”

But only two days later, like a dog who has been beaten and turned out, she was drawn back
again to the master. A blackness came to her eyes when a waiter of the hotel said to her with
an insolent grin:

“You cannot go up; he is in a cabinet particulier with a lady.”

But Nora went up and stopped unerringly before the door of the very room where she had
been with Menotti a year ago. Yes, he was there. She recognised the languid voice of the
overworked celebrity, interrupted from time to time by the happy laugh of the red-haired
Englishwoman. Nora opened the door abruptly.

The purple and gold tapestries, the dazzling light of the two candelabras, the glistening of
crystals, the pyramid of fruit and the bottles in silver buckets, Menotti lying on the sofa in
his shirtsleeves, and Wilson with her corsage loosened, the reek of scent, wine, cigars,
powder—all this, at first, stupefied her; then she rushed at Wilson and struck her again and
again in the face with her clenched fist. Wilson shrieked and the fight began. …

When Menotti had succeeded with difficulty in separating them, Nora threw herself on her
knees, covered his boots with kisses and begged him to come back to her. Menotti could
scarcely push her away from him as he said, squeezing her neck tightly with his strong
fingers:

“If you don’t go at once, I’ll have you thrown out of the place by the waiter.”

Almost stifled, she rose to her feet and whispered:

Her eyes fell on the open window. Quickly and lightly, like the experienced gymnast she
was, she bounded on to the sill and bent forward, her hands grasping on each side the
framework of the window.

Far down beneath her, the carriages rattled, seeming from that height mere small, strange
animals. The pavements glistened after the rain, and the reflections of the street lamps
danced about in the pools of water.

Nora’s lingers grew cold and her heart stopped beating for a second of terror. … Then,
closing her eyes and breathing heavily, she raised her hands above her head and, fighting
down, as usual, her old weakness, she cried out, as if in the circus:

“Allez! …”

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