Part 5 (1/2)
”Yes,” said Ascher, ”yes. Quite so.”
He spoke vaguely. I think he did not hear what I said. Or perhaps the learned horse struck him differently. Or his mind may have been entirely occupied with the problem of Mexican railways so that he could pay no attention either to the learned horse or to me. If so, he was wakened from his reverie by the next performance.
A company of acrobats in spangled tights, three men and one young woman, took possession of the arena. At first they tumbled, turned somersaults, climbed on each other's shoulders and a.s.sumed att.i.tudes which I should have said beforehand were impossible for any creature with bones. Then a large net was stretched some six feet from the ground and several trapezes which had been tied to the roof were allowed to hang down. The acrobats climbed up by a ladder and swung from one trapeze to another.
The business was commonplace enough, but I became aware that Ascher was very much interested in it. He became actually excited when we reached the final act, the climax of the performance.
The programme, at which I glanced, spoke of ”The Flying Lady.” The woman, her spangles aglitter in a blaze of lime light, did indubitably fly, if rus.h.i.+ng unsupported through the air at some height from solid ground is the essence of flying. Two of the men hung on their trapezes, one by his hands and the other by his legs. They swung backwards and forwards. The length of the ropes was so great that they pa.s.sed through large arcs, approaching each other and then swinging back until there was a long s.p.a.ce between them. The young woman, standing on a third trapeze, swung too. Suddenly, at the upward end of a swing, just as her trapeze hung motionless for an instant, she launched herself into the air. The man on the next trapeze came swinging towards her. She caught him by the feet at the very moment when he was nearest to her. He swung back and she dangled below him. When he reached the highest point of the half circle through which he pa.s.sed, she was stretched out, making with him a horizontal line. At that moment she let go and shot, feet foremost, through the air. The man who hung head downwards from the next trapeze came swiftly towards her and caught her by the ankles. The two swung back together and at the end of his course he let her go. The impulse of his swing sent her, turning swiftly as she flew, towards a ladder at the end of the row. She alighted on her feet on a little platform, high up near the roof of the building. There she stood, bowing and smiling.
The people burst into a shout of cheering. Ascher leaned forward in his seat and gazed at her. The two men still kept their trapezes in full swing. The third man, standing on a platform at the other end of the row, set the remaining trapeze swinging, that from which the woman had begun her flight. A minute later she flung herself from the platform and the whole performance was repeated. I could hear Ascher panting with excitement beside me.
”A horribly risky business,” I said, ”but wonderful, really wonderful.
If one of those swings were a fraction late---- But of course the whole thing is exactly calculated.”
”Yes, yes,” said Ascher, ”calculated, of course. It's a matter of mathematics and accurate timing of effort. But if it were worked by machinery, with lay figures, we should think nothing of it. Somebody would do sums and there would be nothing particular in it. The wonderful thing is the confidence. The timing of the swings might be all right; but if the woman hesitated for an instant, or if one of the men felt the slightest doubt about the thing's coming off--If they didn't all feel absolutely sure that the hands would be there to grasp her at just the proper moment--It's the perfect trust which the people have, of each other, of the calculations--Don't you see?”
I began to see that Ascher was profoundly moved by this performance. I also began to see why.
”It's like--like some things in life,” I said, ”or what some things ought to be.”
”It's like what my life is,” said Ascher. ”Don't you see it?”
”I should be rather stupid if I didn't see it, considering the trouble you took to explain the working of international credit to me for two whole days.”
”Then you do understand.”
”I understand,” I said, ”that you are that woman. Your whole complex business is very like hers. It's the meeting of obligations exactly at the end of their swing, the fact that at the appointed moment there will be something there for you to grasp.”
”And the confidence,” said Ascher. ”If the bankers in any country doubt the solvency of the bankers in another country, if there's the smallest hesitation, an instant's pause of distrust or fear, then international credit collapses and----”
He flung out his arm with a gesture of complete hopelessness. I realised that if anything went wrong between bankers in their trapeze act there would be a very ugly smash.
”And in your case,” I said, ”there's no net underneath.”
The girl and the three men were safe on firm ground again. They were bowing final acknowledgments to the cheering crowd. I suppose they do the same thing every night of their lives, but they were still able to enjoy the cheering. Their faces were flushed and their eyes sparkled.
They are paid, perhaps pretty well paid, for risking their lives; but the applause is the larger part of the reward.
”Also,” I said to Ascher, ”n.o.body cheers you. n.o.body knows you're doing it.”
”No. n.o.body knows we're doing it. n.o.body sees our flights through the air or guesses the supreme confidence we bankers must have in each other. When anybody does notice us it's--well, our friend Gorman, for instance.”
Gorman holds the theory that financial men, Ascher and the rest, are bloated spiders who spend their time and energy in trapping the world's workers, poor flies, in gummy webs.
”And of course Gorman is right in a way,” said Ascher. ”I can't help feeling that things ought to be better managed. But--but it's a pity that men like him don't understand.”
Ascher is wonderful. I shall never attain his mental att.i.tude of philosophic tolerance. I do not feel that Gorman is in any way right about the Irish landlords. I felt, though I like the man personally, that he and his friends are deliberately and wickedly perverse.
”Some day,” said Ascher, ”something will go wrong. A rope will break, or a man will miss his grip, and then people in one place will be starving, while people somewhere else have food all round them rotting in heaps.
Men will want all sorts of things and will not be able to get them, though there will be plenty of them in the world. Men will think that the laws of nature have stopped working, that G.o.d has gone mad. Hardly any one will understand what has happened, just that one trapeze rope has broken, or that one man has lost his nerve and missed his grip.”