A woman climbs the high ladder: not even slowly. She runs up. Hell, the trick probably bores her. There’s a dagger in her mouth—right? Get this, friend: a sword is balanced point to point on the dagger’s tip. Enough? On the sword hilt she’s balanced a tray with four glasses of red wine. I simply do not believe it possible. Her name is Veronika Birina: if she did this act tor the Virgin Mary’s statue—as the old joke goes—believe me, the Virgin would not have tiptoed down to say, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” The Virgin would have tiptoed down to give her the pedestal. It’s a miracle. Up the ladder, in baggy pantsuit no less, hook on a rung by one pinky toenail, hang down. The wine’s surface isn’t even troubled. Man, you don’t send the second string to America. Veronika bows. On the way out she spills some wine—just in case you thought the glasses were painted red. My eldest son, in astonishment, has crushed his Cracker Jack to a horrid ball. “Boy,” he says. “Can you do that, Daddy?” I most decidedly cannot. I’d be hard pressed to do what bears and dogs can do in the Moscow Circus.
They are trained, trained, trained. The level of professionalism is—well, it’s frightening: from the most sophisticated gymnast to the smallest dog bipedaling it in a tutu. The Moscow Circus is state-supported; there are circus schools. It is their self-expression. Circus has the popularity that baseball has here, with most valuable performer awards, with acrobat and equestrian rookies coming up in the farm system. The only way, more or less, that Russians can make an Iron Curtain call— can get out, buy a good cheap pair of American pantyhose, dodge the hookers in Times Square. Heck—in a nation where you can’t write novels or worship comfortably—even I’d probably start working out on a unicycle. Only once did I see an error: Sergei Ignatov, the Willie Mays of jugglers, bobbled two hoops in a difficult trick. Death passed over his face: no more pantyhose. He succeeded a second time, and the Felt Forum crowd gave him its warmest applause of the afternoon. We were relieved to see fallibility. Later though . . . think I saw Ignatov pushing a mop behind two nervous bears.
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