MICHEL TOURNIER
177
monds. He introduced himself: Signor Silvio d'Urbino, the owner of
the Urbino Circus, whose big top was at the Port
Don~e
for a week .
Would the red dwarf agree to join his troupe? Lucien grabbed a glass
carafe , intending to smash it into smithereens on the head of the in–
solent fellow . Then he had second thoughts. His imagination had
just shown him a vast crater in which the spectators' heads were
squeezed together like granules of caviar, rising up in terraces
around a harshly lit ring. From his crater a mighty, continuous, and
interminable ovation burst over the head of a minuscule individual
dressed in red , standing alone in the center of the ring . He accepted.
For the first months Lucien was content to liven up the inter–
ludes between the acts. He would run along the circular platform
around the ring , get entangled in the apparatus, run away with shrill
cries when threatened by one of the exasperated men in the ring.
Finally he would allow himself to be caught in the folds of the acro–
bats' big ma ts and the men would carry him off unceremoniously, a
large hump in the middle of the rolled-up sheet.
The laughter he aroused in the audience elated him rather than
hurt him . It was no longer the concrete, savage, individual laugh–
ter that had terrorized him before his metamorphosis.
It
was a styl–
ized, esthetic, ceremonial, collective laughter, a veritable declara–
tion of love , expressing the deference of the female crowd to the
artiste who subjugates her. And in any case, this laughter turned
into applause whenever Lucien reappeared in the ring as the
alchemist's lead turns into gold in the depths of his crucible .
But Lucien wearied of this petty buffoonery, which was nothing
but exercises and experiments. One day his comrades saw him wrig–
gling into something that looked like a pair of pink plastic dungarees
shaped like a giant hand. A finger, ending in a nail, corresponded to
his head, his two arms and his two legs . His torso was its palm, and
sticking out behind was the stump of a truncated wrist. This enor–
mous , terrifying organ revolved by supporting itself successively on
each of its fingers, it sat on its wrist, it contracted when facing the
spotlights, ran with nightmare speed, and even climbed up ladders
and rotated around a pole or a trapeze, hanging on by one finger.
The children roared with laughter, and the women had a catch in
their throats at the approach of this enormous pink-fleshed spider.
The press of the entire world spoke of the giant hand act.
But Lucien was still not completely satisfied by this fame. He
