The little acrobat: a story of Italy

by Janie Prichard Duggan

As half-past eight o’clock approached, the boy became as excited as if this were to be his first appearance in public, and he kept lifting up the flap of curtain dividing the two tents to see how fast the seats were filling. The band had brought back a horde of village children in its train, and though few of these were possessed of the three cents charged for children, they served to keep up an appearance of bustle and enterprise outside, where the band now played the National Hymn of Italy gaily in the light of the big lamp at the entrance.

Cara, the mother of Olga and the rest of the seven, stood in the vestibule and took in the great copper cents which by and by began to pile up in the bowl on the table. She was a very striking person to look at, with her coal-black hair frizzed bushily on each side of her head, with her flashing black eyes and her heavy brows, her red, red lips and cheeks, and her scarlet and black gown. No one dared to slip in behind the rustling skirts or portly form of anybody without paying, for her piercing eyes seemed everywhere. Once or twice, when the crowds about the doors seemed to hesitate and to wonder whether, after all, it were worth while to expend six or even three cents for what was to be seen behind the curtain, the pretty little figure of her Olga was seen to flit, as if by accident, across the vestibule, the full light streaming over her little full blouse of yellow satin, and her pink feet tripping as if on air.

The anxious half-hour of expectation ended in the sight of a full circle surrounding the ring, and then the band came inside and all the performers slipped into the smaller tent and hurried on their costumes.

The band played on; Arduina danced a measured dance on the tight rope which was stretched near the ground; the clown made his funny jokes; Antonio performed his clever feats on the bars; Elvira rode the galloping horses with Cara dancing in and out and everywhere, while Giovanni cracked the whip and Paulo held the bar for Il Duca to leap. The pantomime then brought shouts of laughter and loud hand-clappings from the spectators; and afterward the tumbling began.

There was nothing that Olga loved so much, and she showed it in every line of her chubby, yet nimble little figure as she came prancing into the ring, and then went heels over head, over and over again, without stopping to breathe, as far as the strip of dusty carpet stretched. Then back again she tumbled, only stopping to toss a stray wisp of hair from her flushed face.

Next Arduina came tripping in, and over and over she went too, not so gracefully and daintily as Olga had done, for Arduina was getting a little too large for that kind of thing,—a great girl of fifteen years.

The clown followed Arduina, dressed in his clumsy suit of black and white, and what a farce his tumbling was, to be sure; only the spectators must have known that he failed in order to make them laugh at his awkwardness, and make merry they did.

Somehow Natale never quite enjoyed the laughter which often accompanied his own performances, and now his time had come.

“Ecco! Natalino!” called his stepfather, the clown, rushing behind the curtain all breathless and covered with dust. “Over and over and over you go, youngster, without stopping to sneeze between!”

Natale was such a little fellow, so much smaller than Olga even, that many of the faces outside the ring softened at sight of him, as he darted out into the light of the lamps and then halted to make his funny little salute. He was dressed in imitation of the clown, in long black trousers and a tailed black coat, with a pointed white waistcoat reaching below his waist. With an earnest seriousness very different from Olga’s smiling grace, Natale turned his first somersault, paused on his back, turned another jerkily, while the little boys watching him hooted, and a ripple of laughter ran around the ring. Back again he came, however, his thin black legs sprawling in air, and his pale little face flushing with the exertion. On his feet again, he clapped one hand to the back of his neck, bobbed his head to the spectators, and trotted off behind the friendly curtain, satisfied that he had, at least, done as well as usual, and pleased with the loud clapping attending his exit. Indeed, there was a clapping and a calling out of something with laughing voices.