CHINESE PRAYING-HOUSE AT DJARKENT
The clown’s turn ended, there came forward a very handsome Chinee in black satin knee-breeches, tight stockings, scarlet jersey, and English collar and tie. He was rather tall, had a big, womanish face, gleaming teeth, and long, black hair. He walked jauntily in little slippers, and carried a handful of ten knives. Another Chinaman came out with an old tree trunk, which he held up on end. A child came and stood up against the trunk. The handsome Chinee then stood and flung the knives as if to pin the boy to the wood, and he planted them between the child’s arm and his body, over his arm, between his legs and beside his legs, on each side of his neck, on each side of his ears, and over his head—and all the time as he flung them he smiled. He repeated his feat, placing all the knives round about the boy’s head, never raising the skin.
Number four was the owner of the troupe, an old fellow in a light blue, voluminous smock and long pigtail. He conjured a platter of biscuits and cakes, glasses, a teapot, a steaming samovar, all out of nothingness, inviting the public to come and have tea with him, and talking an amusing broken Russian:
“You laugh, you think this fine trick, but I show you ’nother mighty juggle; took me ten years to learn this juggle ...” and so on.
As the applause dies down the bell rings again, and out comes the “Chinaman with the cast-iron head.” All the time “the orchestra” plays Russian dances, plays them very noisily. He with the iron head lies down on the sand and puts two bricks on his temple. At a distance of ten yards another Chinaman holds a brick and prepares to aim it at the head of his prostrate fellow-player. He aims it, but the iron-headed one pretends to lose his nerve and jumps up with a terrible scream, pointing to the music. The music must be calmed down. The audience holds its breath as the trick is repeated to gentle lullaby airs. This time the prostrate man receives the bricks one by one as they are aimed—square on the bricks lying on his temple—and, of course, is none the worse, though he takes the risk of a bad shot.
The old conjurer came out again and danced to the Russian Kamarinsky air, holding a bamboo as if it were his partner, and doing all manner of clever and amusing turns. The young man who juggled the tea-tray on the chopstick reappeared, and did a difficult balancing trick, raising himself on a trestle which rested on little spheres on a table. Then came two most original items, the dancing of an old man in a five-yard linen whip, and the rolling round the body of a rusty eight-foot iron sceptre.
The man who danced made the long whip of linen crack and roll out over the arena in splendid circles and waves, and he was ever in the midst of it. The juggler of the sceptre contrived to roll the strange-looking implement all over his body, about his back and his shoulders and his stomach, and never let it touch the ground and never touched it with his hand—and at the same time to dance to the music. This was a most attractive feat, and was as pleasant to watch as anything I had ever seen in a large city.
LEPERS IN A FRONTIER TOWN
There was an interval and a great buzz of talking and surmise. After the interval came wrestling matches and trick-riding on bicycles. A clever little Mongol had no difficulty in disposing of those who offered to wrestle with him, and a Russian cyclist who rode on his handle-bars received great applause from the people of Kopal, most of whom had not seen a bicycle before.