An uncommon story (part II.)

October 6, Livingston.

All my life I've never stayed in one place for more than two months. Traveling, the idea of traveling, and here, in the United States, traveling from coast to coast, being everywhere.
In the circus in Peru, in the circus the world over since the circus began, life has been a voyage.
In Peru in the eighties traveling with a circus meant jumping on top of a heap of equipment to find a place to sit, and hang on tight. The circus would rent a truck to go from town to town and it was piled high and haphazard with everything that had to be carried, people included. Circus tent, poles, chairs and other equipment piled first, each family's belongings second, and on top of all the stuff one had to find a way to lay down a mattress to sleep on, or just a spot to fit in for the ride.
Fridman: Nothing spelled out "circus" on those trucks but everybody knew it was a circus truck by the mess of it. On short rides you had to just hop in, or rather up. On longer rides in bigger circuses there was someone in charge of accommodating everything and everybody.
I remember once, a truck started to accelerate madly, it had lost his brakes, and my Dad woke me up and told me, "When I say jump, jump." It was dark and you couldn't see where you were, where you were going to jump off into, and the truck was going faster and faster, until there was a hill and it finally stopped of itself. Every trip, there was always something, some accident.
Still, the idea of traveling.
The glut of rules and safety regulations when it came to driving in the United States would astound him for a long time.
But, the similarities: the circus' bad reputation following it like the city's outcasts that caused it in the first place, the runaway hitching a ride for a job and causing trouble, the blame on circus people. To get the city's approval to set the tent, the circus had to send someone to collect signatures from people in the neighborhoods where it wanted to work and only if a majority of these people signed would the show go on. In the small villages of the Amazon jungle things were loser but harder too for the living conditions, and the lack of roads, often, or a sudden river after torrential rains where before there was nothing and you have to cross it, somehow: And we have to go through this way? This way, yes, there is no other.
And: you'd get as far as where your truck could not go on any more, and that was it.
Traveling, the idea of traveling.
Traveling since he can remember. I was born in Peru, somewhere in Peru. Traveling since he was born, the story told, as a boy staying in Lima with aunts to go to school but every Friday as soon as school let out heading for the circus, if it was close enough. Going back to the circus and the traveling, never staying put too long, going back to the circus again and again. In the circus I am like a fish in the ocean.
His parents moving from circus to circus before opening their own, but he was already gone then. Moving from Circo Condor, my circus, to the Las Aguilas Humanas circus, to the Cavallini circus, the Circo Royal Star, the Magic Show Circus and there memories of his dog, named Muere Muere, or Die Die, because he was stepped on and run over by a car but still managed to survive. Memories of life as a boy like any other, crossing the street by himself for the fist time to go to kindergarten, his mother watching, and of not having enough money to buy lunch when everybody else seemed to. Going back to the circus soon enough, and there was everything you'd need.
We had nothing but we had everything. A small world of families, a web of ties.
In Peru in the eighties there were respected big circuses, the American Circus of Ricardo Flores, a legendary figure of the Peruvian circus, an autodidact who started with his wife's transportation business and created one successful circus after another until he got tired of it and went into politics. There were circus families, like the Zapatines, the Balderramas, the Ramirez, the Estefanos, the Cavallinis, and an intricate web of family ties, and most of the families gone now, or drained away by emigration to the U.S., like most of the Cavallini family, now intricately linked to the Carson and Barnes Circus through marriage and business. There were strong shows like Circo Condor, headed by Guillermo Ramirez, or Las Aguilas Humanas, the circus of the human eagles, headed by one of the Balderramas' sons, or the Circo Royal Star, of the Estefano family, where Fridman found work when he left home, and where he stayed for several years before joining the Cavallini clan again, back in Peru after working in the United States, and later still following them when they went back north.
In this country the same web of family ties, stretched over from coast to coast, into constant crossings.
Into another world.

With his sister, Sheyla, and Muere Muere.