The Tightrope Act

By Richard Kuehl

In front of her, there was nothing but the rope: a thin line that lost itself in the distance. It had been worn smooth from countless hours of practice, smooth enough so that anybody else setting foot on it would have been sure to slip and fall. Yet to her, the worn surface felt as familiar as slipping on an old pair of shoes. Below, there was nothing more than a black void. True, she could hear the cheers and startled gasps of the crowd. Their voices formed a barely audible cacophony that from a great distance sounded like soft waves, ebbing against the shore. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine herself standing on the pier of her beloved little village, the wind blowing in her face and carrying with it the scent of the ocean. She took another deep breath, her slim chest widening until she felt as if it were about to burst. Then, with a leap, she set foot on the rope. 

This habit of hers always amused strangers who were fascinated by the many little oddities of the tightrope walker. Her deep breaths before each performance, giving her the appearance of a whale coming up for air, were only one of many private rituals she observed meticulously. Another was her insistence on fastening the rope she walked on herself, securing it to the tops of buildings reaching high up in the sky. She would only perform at night, refusing to set foot on the rope while the sun was still visible. Nobody knew why this was. It was a secret that she had never dared reveal to her fellow performers out of a mixture of shame and fear. At first, the need to ignore the whispers had been a constant source of anxiety, a fear greater than that of falling. With time, the people around her had given in and begun losing interest in her strange behaviour that, by now, only provoked indifference where it had once been a source of derision. 

But all it took to escape these thoughts was for her to set foot on the cord. The wide-eyed crowd below would simply cease to exist, vanishing from her mind. There was only her, the rope and the fresh night air that made her light linen costume flutter in the wind. Slow, timid steps and a long wooden pole kept her balanced as she began her advance. Soon, her steps transformed into one big dance, the choreography of which was only known to her. The closer she came to the rope’s centre, the more assured her movements grew. She excited the audience by executing various tricks, acting as if she were losing control, letting go of the pole until it disappeared into the black abyss below; then, she would stumble, finally giving way to gravity’s pull and letting herself fall into the emptiness. At the last moment,her leg would catch the rope and she would dangle from it before pulling herself back up in one fluid rotation. She barely perceived the shrieks and gasps from below, the eyes fixed on the young woman high above in her delicate white gown and raven black hair: a swan in flight.  

These cries of terror always irritated her. If she were walking through the crowds below, nobody would have given her a second glance. If she were to collapse in the street, nobody would come to the rescue of the little circus girl lying half dead in the gutter. But when she was on the rope, all these strangers, who could not have cared less about her on the ground were all of a sudden highly concerned for her wellbeing. The thought of her falling made them recoil in disgust. And yet the possibility held a strange fascination, drawing in people by the dozen to come and watch her perform her tricks, high up in the air. And perform she did, stunt after stunt on the rope, each one more daring than the other. She advanced across and, just before reaching the other end, started walking backwards. Then, once near the middle again, she spun around and walked on the line with her hands for a short distance, her legs in the air as if defying gravity. To the viewers below, it truly felt as if some strange force were pulling her off the earth and into the air like a balloon drifting into the night sky. With a cartwheel-like motion, she came back on her feet and passed her hand across her forehead as if exhausted, sitting down on the rope, as if to catch her breath. There, she would all of a sudden fall forward and spin on her legs, quickly spinning around the rope in midair. 

With one last movement she returned to an upright position and for an instant remained standing, stretching out her hands as if to embrace the emptiness around her. She closed her eyes until there was nothing but darkness enveloping her. The light breeze had picked up and when she turned her head, it produced a rustling sound that drowned out the noise below. For an instant, she felt as if she were levitating, pushing herself up on her tiptoes until she all but lost touch with the rope. Reaching for the moon above, she longingly glanced at the glowing orb, dreading the return to reality that awaited her at the end of the line. It was then that a blast of light erupted from below. Somewhere on the ground, a flash of light emerged that momentarily blinded her. She could feel the heat creeping up beneath her feet and a sudden gush of fear took possession of her. She felt her heart accelerating, pounding furiously in her chest as if it sensed the pull of the earth and were trying to break loose of its restraints before being dragged down with them. 

The fire had lit up the entire square below, illuminating in a menacing glow the little figures scurrying around, some trying to put out the flames that were threatening to encroach on the neighboring buildings, others fleeing the scene through the many little alleyways of the city. One by one, they merged with the darkness until there was hardly anybody in sight. All the while, she remained perfectly immobile. The isolating blackness that had surrounded her moments ago had vanished and the ground beneath seemed to be inching further away the more she looked. The enormity of the height struck her and she could feel her muscles tensing. Her vision turned blurry. The ground appeared to grow ever more clear and the rope beneath her feet began to quiver. She started swaying back and forth on it as her heavy breathing made her chest rise and fall rapidly. Nobody below was paying attention to her anymore as if the fire had made her vanish. The thought flashed through her head and filled her with a momentary frustration that soon gave way to a profound sense of fear. The true reason for her tightrope walking in the dark was a supreme source of professional embarrassment and a handicap that had made it impossible for her to perform for bigger shows: her fear of heights. 

Just off the ground, she had the balance and agility of a cat. Yet once she stood freely in the air with a clear view of what awaited her should she fall, it was as if some primordial instinct took possession of her, robbing her of the control so characteristic of her performance on the rope. On the opposite side of the cord in the clock tower, she could see the faces of people, stretching out their hands to pull her to safety. All she needed to do was to advance a few feet more and she would be saved. But what would have been child’s play for her a few moments ago now seemed impossible. She lowered herself into a crouch and, closing her eyes, tried to concentrate on her breathing. Now, once again in the darkness, her heart began to slow as she imagined herself back on her training rope just a foot above the ground. With one of her deep breaths she started to slowly raise herself to an upright position. With her eyes closed, she took her first step. The feeling of the rope below her feet reassured her, its surface and texture as familiar as that of the palm of her hand. 

First, she let her foot hover in the air, carefully searching for a hold. Then, placing it on the cord, she shifted her weight until it was evenly spread across both feet. With another movement, she turned her hip and placed the other foot on the cord, all the while picturing the training rope just above the ground in front of her. For she knew that once the image was broken, she would be dragged down with it, shattering her into a thousand pieces. Like this, she advanced for what seemed to her like an eternity. It almost came as a surprise to her when she was finally seized by several strong hands that clasped her arms and waist and pulled her to safety. When she dared open her eyes again, she was no longer hovering above the ground but rather on a raised platform. The other members of her travelling group were standing around her with concerned faces that she hardly recognised at first. Before long, their glances shifted to the spectacle outside. A raging inferno was devouring the old church opposite them. Out of its window, red hot flames were crawling up the stone structure until they reached the spire to which her rope had been fastened. With a sudden blast, the structure collapsed on itself, plummeting into the darkness. The sound of the building's skeleton breaking against the hard ground below was so deafening that nobody even noticed the faint snapping of the rope that only a moment ago had been suspended in the air. 

Trembling, she leant against the balustrade that separated her from the drop that would have awaited her should she have slipped. Staring into the emptiness below, a shape appeared to be stretched out on the ground. A shape that nobody seemed to see but her. “A white swan on a red canvas”, she muttered with words carried away by the wind into an empty night. 

RICHARD KUEHL is a Modern Linguist at Keble College. Occasionally dabbles in writing when he gets fed up with photography. 

Art by ORB