• Our Circus Presents: (Circul nostru vă prezintă:)
• Novel, “Ego Prose” series, Polirom, 2007 (2nd revised edition), 216 pages
• Copyright: Polirom
• Translation rights sold to: Dalkey Archive Press (USA); Gruppo Editoriale Zonza (Italy); L’Harmattan Kiado (Hungary)

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Book presentation

The main character of the book, a man of thirty, lives in a modest flat on the fifth floor of a housing block. Every Sunday, the protagonist performs a kind of ritual : he climbs onto the window ledge and waits for a suicidal urge, which, however, never comes.

The events of the novel unfold over the course of three days. On the first day, the young man sets off to the town’s railway station in search of prostitutes. On the way, he runs into another young man, known during the story as the “bloke with the orange braces”, who has hanged himself from an old steam engine in an unused siding. The protagonist saves him and takes him to the station hospital, from where the bloke with the orange braces discharges himself on his own two feet. The main character will later find the man he saved in a railway workers’ bar. He is unwillingly embroiled in a fight provoked by the bloke with the orange braces, who breaks a chair over the head of one of the prostitutes in the bar, leaving her in a pool of blood. For the second time in the space of the same day, the protagonist saves the bloke with the orange braces, this time from the fury of the drinkers in the bar, and takes him back to his own flat. This is where the entire atmosphere of the story takes shape : a disabused world of strange neighbours and a building superintendent who is an old woman yearning for a relationship with a young man of thirty.

During the other two days covered by the action of the novel, we discover that the young protagonist is a member of a kind of club for “professional suicides” – people in search of death, sometimes for the most stupid reasons and in the most bizarre ways : one wants to kill himself by sleeping with as many women of easy virtue as possible, in the hope of contracting a fatal disease ; another wants to commit suicide by drinking huge quantities of the finest quality whiskey, until he falls into an alcoholic coma ; etc. They are all “suicide artists”, and it is into this strange group that the young man of thirty would now like to introduce his new friend. Parallel to these events, the two attempt to find out whether the prostitute in the bar has managed to survive being hit over the head with a chair. The answer will not be revealed until the end of the novel.

The finale closes the circle of the tale : during a further visit to the railway station, the protagonist discovers that the prostitute has died. He does not tell his new friend about this. At the same time, however, frightened at the turn that events have taken, he comes up with a plan: he convinces the bloke with the orange braces to go to the station, to the locomotive where he first found him. And he proposes that they both commit suicide. The young man tells his companion that in this way the railway workers will understand that they both regret the incident with the prostitute – and they will be forgiven. In fact, the protagonist’s plan is to free himself from the noose and to chase away anyone who tries to save the other, allowing him to die and thereby escaping from any legal consequences of his association with the prostitute’s murderer. The plan fails, however, for various reasons – the protagonist does not allow his new friend to die, but rather tells him the truth about the prostitute and about what he has been planning. It all ends with a roar of laughter, an agonised roar of laughter which consecrates the general principle and theme of the book, according to which whoever has failed at everything else in life can only be consistent and fail at his own death.

Excerpt from the novel Our Circus Presents:

Chapter Four

There was a period – it was up until about the age of twenty-five – when I used to spend the greater part of my time in various bars around town. I might even boast, if such a thing were really reason to boast, that at that time there were few such places unknown to me.

I used to get drunk in more or less all the local pubs. I made friends there with all kinds of strangers, men and women, with whom I exchanged addresses and telephone numbers, merely so that after that I wouldn’t ever look them up and they wouldn’t look me up.

I used to get drunk in the lowliest taverns, hidden away from the eyes of the uninitiated, frequented above all by regulars. Yet more occasions to strike up friendships over a glass, yet more exchanges of addresses and Bacchic kisses…

And nor did I neglect to get drunk in the pubs only open to certain categories of person. Be it evening school pupils, be it university students, be it rock music fans, be it devotees of folk music, be it homosexuals, be it hard-currency dealers.

There was that period, up until about the age of twenty-five, when I used to frequent most of the pubs in town… Strangely, however, although the bar ought to have awakened my interest, being located relatively close to the block where I lived back then and where I live still, I can’t remember ever having heard of this railway workers’ bar. Maybe it wasn’t open back then. Or maybe I have been here before, but during one of those drunken benders which leave behind only a hiatus in the memory.
But the nurse at the dispensary showed me the way to reach the pub. And so, within a short time, I find the place where, the woman supposed, I might find the one I’m looking for.
Somewhat nervous, I enter the bar. A few railway station workers are sitting at tables, as was only to be expected. Some girls have already made their appearance next to them, again as was only to be expected. Girls of the kind for which I had originally been heading to the station this evening. And I cannot help noticing that they lend a certain merry, and rather appetizing, note to this otherwise rather drab setting.

My eyes screwed up, my hand shading my brows, more as a reflex than out of necessity, given that the clouds of smoke in the room diminish the glare of the light, I look around in search of the bloke with the orange braces whom I saved from death but a short while before. He sees me first, however, and waves.

“Look, he’s the one who carried me!” he introduces me to the other two persons seated, when I come over to their table. “What are you doing here?”
I point my forefinger at him.

“Is it me you’re looking for?” he says, surprised.

“Aha.”

“But why?”

I’ve no idea why. I just came to talk to him, at any rate so that he would tell me more about his attempts to kill himself. I don’t know why exactly, but, in any case, even if I knew, I wouldn’t have the inclination to speak to him in the presence of the other two.

“Just like that,” I tell him. “Just because.”

“Maybe he’s your guardian angel,” butts in one of the railway workers. “Got wings, have you, angel?” he finds it natural to titter in my direction.

“Maybe on his arse,” the other laborer opines, throwing in an undeniably clever quip to break the ice.

Such quips, born of alcoholic vapors, have been familiar to me for a long time. I used to make them myself, back when I thought I was extraordinarily witty in whatever I said. This time, however, not having a single drop of alcohol in me, all I find to do is grimace in disinterested acceptance.

But it appears that the quip is much cleverer than I can comprehend, because the two railway workers set off a cavalcade of guffaws, rising from their chairs and imitating the flight of an angel with wings on his arse. I don’t very well understand – but nor do I make any effort to understand – why this angel would be cackling, stooped over, fluttering his palms next to his bottom. But, assuredly, they have a lively imagination, which, beyond the imbecility of the moment, has to be admired. In the end I laugh too, so that no one will think I’m a bit daft; I laugh because it seems necessary to do so. When, at last, they sit back down, I notice that the only person among those present from whom the railway workers’ cackling antics did not elicit so much as a smile is the man I rescued from the noose a short time ago.
I find this seriousness of his not displeasing. What is certain is that it doesn’t even cross my mind to accuse him of lacking a sense of humor. For all his seriousness, however, the merriment at our table continues for a few more minutes. I follow the example of the bloke with the orange braces and wait in silence for these comedians to find something better to do. I want to be left alone with the man whose suicide I interrupted.

Meanwhile, nothing else remains for me to do except study him: he doesn’t seem to be more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old, which further heightens my curiosity as to his suicide attempts. However, there is not much chance of my satisfying this curiosity any time soon. Because he is ignoring me to the same extent as he is ignoring the other two.
When the waitress comes over to our table, to ask what it will be, I take it as a good opportunity to gain the confidence of the man I’m interested in. But he doesn’t consent to me buying him a vodka. After the woman fills our fellow drinkers’ glasses, I hear him say:

“Pour me one too. I haven’t got any money, but I’ll pay you later.”

“When have you ever got any money?” she mutters.

Then, waving her hand as if to say: “I’m sick of the whole lot of you, who darken the earth for nothing,” she takes an empty glass from another table and fills it for him.

“There,” she says, “but don’t forget you owe me already. I don’t want you to give me money, but you’ll come to do the cleaning, otherwise I’m not giving you anything more to drink ever. My husband and I, we toil until our eyes pop out, but you and your ilk drink on the house, as if this was some kind of church to dole out charity to all you idle scroungers. You promised me you’d come to do the cleaning!”

The bloke whose age I have just estimated to be twenty-two pulls his lacerated legs – for whose condition I should, to a large extent, feel guilty – from under the table and shows them to the woman.

“See what a state I’m in? I would work… I know I owe you. But look, now I’ve had this bad luck with my legs.”

“What the hell did you do to yourself? How did you flay your legs like that?”

I am expecting him to point at me, to accuse me, but he heaves a sigh, and then says gravely:

“I sort of committed suicide…”

Once more I realize how ridiculous these barroom discussions can be, how stupid the atmosphere is, and how it can contaminate even a sober man – I assume that the man I am interested in is sober, given that, from when we parted until now, he hasn’t had enough time to get drunk. And I congratulate myself on the decision I had the courage to make at a given moment: to give up my frequent visits to various dives.

The young man with the orange braces realizes what has just come out of his mouth and tries to correct himself:

“I mean, I was trying to… Not that I did commit suicide…”

Whatever else he might say, it’s too late. How the hell could those two railway workers not laugh? In the end, if I think about it, what’s stopping me from laughing? Because, in truth, to talk to someone who sort of committed suicide is quite comical. Especially if you take into account the fact that, for a dead man, he is quite garrulous, melodramatic, and, above all, desirous to drink.

Nevertheless, although the situation would demand it, I do not at all feel like laughing. Moreover, I tell myself that I have yet another opportunity to find a way of communicating with the man for whom I came here, and so I roar at the two sniggering laborers and at the waitress, who is splitting her sides with laughter:

“Will you cut it out already!? Can’t you find anything better to laugh at!? The man didn’t mean to say that he had committed suicide, but that he tried to kill himself! Who is there that hasn’t, at least once, got sick of this damned stinking life!? He merely had the intention to commit suicide. That’s all!”

My moralizing intervention must have seemed either not very serious or far too serious to those present. Because it is followed by an intensification in the gales of laughter and, amid these gales, the question of one of the railway workers:

“What did he have!?”

“The intention to commit suicide!”

The fellow stares at me, seeming not to comprehend.

“The in-ten-tion!” I repeat, in more determined tone.

Undoubtedly ridiculous to the ears of the railway worker, this word succeeds in irritating the young man with the orange braces. Who, red in the face, after flinging a venomous “thanks” at me, starts bawling at all three:

“What the hell is wrong with you!? I wanted to hang myself, alright!? Why the hell do you have to laugh at everything!? I’m sick of your laughter. I’m sick to the back teeth of idiots laughing!”

Then he rises from the table, not before tossing the glass of vodka down his neck, and angrily heads towards the door. I stand up, in my turn. But I don’t manage to go after him. One of the railway workers, the one who a few moments ago had the bright idea of the angel with wings on his bottom, starts calling out to everyone in the bar – a number of whom were in any case already curious about what was going on at our table – pointing to the young man who has already reached the door:

“The loony has tried to kill himself again! This time he only had the intne… how was it he said?” he asks the other, pointing his thumb at me.
“Intention!”

“Hear that? The ‘intention’! Now he only had the intention to hang himself! And he hanged himself by the legs!”

Hearing the avalanche of sniggers behind him, the young man I saved from suicide stops and turns to those in the bar, aimlessly casting his eyes around the room. And I am convinced that, at this moment, he hates all those who dare to meet his eyes. I move towards him, thinking that it would be well to get him out of this bar full of railway workers eager to find a victim for their mockery. But one of the prostitutes proves swifter than me. Reaching the young man, accompanied by the encouragement of the drinkers she nimbly unbuttons her blouse and thrusts her breasts – rather attractive breasts, I cannot help but notice – toward the face of the one for whom I am here.

“Touch them,” I hear the tobacco-coarsened mocking voice of the woman, “so that you won’t want to kill yourself any more.”
Then, turning to the spectators, the prostitute proudly displays her naked chest. The railway workers’ whoops of joy cause me to awake from the slight reverie that overcame me at the sight of the woman’s breasts, and I become annoyed. And when the bits of bread and cigarette ends start flying at the prostitute and, above all, at the man for whom, I’ve no idea why, I somehow feel responsible, my annoyance reaches a pinnacle. And so I start yelling at the idiots at the tables, without knowing exactly what I want to tell them.

Busy expressing my revulsion, in the general hullaballoo I barely notice when the young man with the orange braces reaches for a chair. But I do see him raise it above his shoulders and, before I can make any move, smash it with all his might over the head of the woman with the bared breasts. I also manage to see how she collapses, how the chair is raised once more above his shoulders before flying at the counter and breaking the few bottles in the glass cabinet, how a number of the men, as if by remote control, rush at the aggressor, throwing him to the floor, next to the prostitute, who is groaning as though in her death throes, her face all bloodied. And, in the outbreak of madness, forgetting to think, I rush horrified at those who are beating the young man and start lashing out with my fists like a lunatic.

A short while later, when I begin to revive from the terror that has numbed my senses, I find myself running alongside the one whose life I have saved for the second time in a single day.

***

The fear that we might be recognized makes us intent on the faces of the passers-by, even long after we have abandoned the vicinity of the station. True, there are few passers-by that venture onto the streets of the city at this time of night, and so our fear reveals itself only when some belated drunk shuffles past.
I have persuaded him to come back to my place this evening; I have invited him back to the flat where I live. Perhaps I would have done so even if the decision were influenced solely by my slight soft spot for the story of the Good Samaritan. But naturally there is more to it than that. To a greater or lesser extent, it is a matter of the curiosity the nurse at the dispensary wakened in me when she told me about the one who is now walking next to me.

And so here we are, heading in silence towards the flat where I live. My friend – I don’t know why, but now, after everything that has happened, even though his name is still unknown to me, even though the difference in age between us seems quite great, I consider that I am almost obliged to call him “my friend” – merely asks, from time to time:

“How much further?”

And I, somewhat annoyed by his questions, keep announcing that there are five hundred yards, three hundred yards, one hundred yards… And, at last:

“Look, I live in the next block.”

We enter the stairwell of the block and, preserving the same silence, ride the elevator to the fifth floor. Once we arrive in my flat, I am overcome by the weariness of this day which began so banally, but continued so thrillingly, and slump into an armchair. And I point out the bed on which he may lie down.

He fastidiously removes his shoes, filling the air with the odor of his feet, but luckily the window is open, and so I don’t worry about it too much. It is not until he stretches out on the bed and emits a number of sighs that I hear him ask:

“What do you think, did I kill her, damn it?”

I should reassure him, even though I have no way of knowing whether the woman we left behind in a pool of blood on the barroom floor is in the best of shape right now.

“You didn’t kill her,” I tell him, “don’t worry.”

“I lost my temper,” I hear from over there, from the bed. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“But I was sick of it. For as long as I can remember, they’ve all laughed at me. Laughed like idiots…”

“I believe you,” I nod, telling myself that it’s true: any man can get sick of it, from time to time.

“What do you believe?” I hear, from the bed.

I hesitate for a few moments, before answering:

“That you got sick of it, finally.”

“As if you have any idea what it means to get sick of it!” he raises his voice, annoyed. “You’ve got this flat, everything you want!”

“Really, believe me, I know,” I counter.

This conversation, very different to the one I would have wished, succeeds in annoying me. I can’t be bothered to answer the one in my bed with, “I know what it means to get sick of it.” I can’t be bothered, because such a reply, born of a dime-a-dozen sensibility, does not suit – and nor do I want it to suit – my nature. Long gone are the times when, in front of bottles of various assortments of rotgut, whose labels were inscribed, with very little justification, “vodka” or “brandy” or “liqueur”, I used to exclaim heartrendingly: “I’m sick of this life!” without being capable even of thinking about suicide. Now, at least, I know that I am trying. And if waiting for the urge might seem just as pathetic as those evenings of despair, at least I have the pride to accept being pathetic with a clear head. And he, my friend with the orange braces, although by his deeds he might seem a determined man, is talking the same as I used to do, quite a long time ago…

“You’ve no idea what it means to get sick of it!” he shouts from bed. “You’re an oaf, just like all the oafs at the station!”

My annoyance increases at these words of his, and I curse myself for the stupid idea of having gone out of the house this evening, of saving this nutcase from death, of bringing him back to my place, of…

That stupid boredom! Those memories that overwhelmed me, memories that wakened in me a desire to have sex! My nature alone, forever deluded by wretched memories, my nature alone is guilty of all this! And then, the curiosity… In the end, so what if he, like me, is fascinated by the idea of suicide? Aren’t other people?
About two years ago, I met a man who wanted to kill himself like this: first of all, to round up some dogs.

“There are a lot of dogs around the neighborhood. Strays,” he told me. “I’d round a few up, put them in a sack, and go somewhere, into the woods, with the sack on my back.”

Then he would prepare nooses for all those dogs and hang them from a tree.

“So that I’d hear their yelps, so that I’d pity them. So that I’d weep, weep for some dogs.”

Afterwards, the apotheosis – he would ready his own noose.

“So that I’d hang myself, next to those moribund dogs, writhing in their nooses.”

He wanted to hang himself like that, surrounded by dogs, because, he said:

“I’ve had a dog’s life and I’d like people to say the same thing about my death: ‘He had a dog’s death!’”

This was a man who had quite a number of screws loose (in fact, that was the impression he gave me at the time; later I would discover that with him it was nothing more than an insipid and vulgar longing to shock). All the same, his idea of suicide, although sufficiently grotesque to repel the more faint-hearted, managed to awaken my interest. But in spite of that interest, and although I met him many times, although we came to be close friends, I never invited him to my house. But now… No sooner do I meet a bloke tempted, like me, by the idea of suicide, than I feel the need to bring him back to my place. Damn me!

My disgust ought to stop here, however. At bottom, I’m not going to judge my new friend according to the weaknesses of which I used to be guilty, some time ago. I ought to get to know him first. I ought, nonetheless, to have more patience. Even if I don’t like hearing him sobbing there in bed at all. Even if I don’t like hearing him pathetically telling me:
“I didn’t mean to kill her…”

And even if I find not the slightest satisfaction in mechanically consoling him, without having any argument to justify my assertion:
You didn’t kill anybody, don’t worry.”

Translated by Alistair Ian Blyth

Critics about Our Circus Presents:

“Outlying districts dominated by aggressive gypsies ; filthy trams full of motley and dubious people ; strange, elderly pensioners, the suspicious and malevolent neighbours in insalubrious blocks of flats ; homeless glue sniffers – this is the everyday circus that unfolds in the background of the novel.” – Marius Chivu, Lettre internationale

“The core of the story is the escapade of a pair of melodramatic faux suicides, who existentially glide through the periphery of all unimaginable worlds in search of the miraculous ‘nothing’. Two hundred pages of one hundred per cent Romanian circus flow before your eyes in this successful spectacle, not recommended for faint hearted pensioners, but recommended to all those who want to taste a serving of life prepared slightly differently, according to an original recipe, with ninety nine extremely piquant flavours.” – Alin Ionescu, Academia CaÅ£avencu

“The publication of Our Circus Presents : constitutes, without any exaggeration, an event. The novel is an anthology of memorable scenes, whose tipping point can be anticipated in every sequence.” – Åžerban Axinte, Contrafort, Republic of Moldova

“There is much laughter in Teodorovici’s novel, the uproarious laughter of characters faced with a ridiculous world, the healthy laughter of the reader, black humour, the absurd, self irony, linguistic humour, and situational comedy. But behind the scenes there is also enormous sadness. The sadness of the clown (the reader clown, the character clown), who is all the sadder the more acutely he understands his condition as a man who, after having failed at life, cannot but fail at death.” – Sanda Tivadar, Familia

“Besides the verisimilitude of the language and the surprising naturalness of events that are by no means natural, Lucian Dan Teodorovici’s book has the merit of localising its action in the strictest present. This anchoring in the present is not one that is in ‘major events’ ; there is no trace of ‘mythic figures’ in the pages of Lucian Dan Teodorovici. The spectacular is extracted from the most innocent of places, and if this has piqued your curiosity, then read the novel.” – Cristina Ionică, România literară