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Why was HE a clown?
It was Magdeleine who asked him the question, an expression of boredom upon her unpainted face as they both settled down on one of the hay bales which helped to mark the edge of the circus arena, the talented contortionist and equestrian vaulter fated to months of simply watching the rehearsals and performances - courtesy of her pregnancy, her belly having just started showing. HE had just finished his first attempt at his clown makeup, his lines unsteady and patches of skin tone showing through his white paint. HE didn't have an act yet, and he hadn't joined a preexisting one, so he was resigned to watch the rehearsals and performances alongside Magdeleine until he managed to get himself an act.
Magdeleine and Sylvestre - her husband and one of the lion tamers, a good man who had been the one to show HE around and introduce him to the circus when he first arrived - were hoping for twins, proclaiming to any troupe member who would listen that they planned on raising them as tumblers, just like Magdeleine had started as when she had been a young girl in the circus.
HE couldn't be happier for them, but his heart still stung as he thought of what could have been for him and Marie, of what could have become of his life - of his family - if she hadn't betrayed him in the cruel way that she did.
"HE? Did you hear me?"
Magdeleine was peering at him curiously, one hand settled over her belly and the other reaching out to poke at his knee.
"Ah, apologies," HE flashed a wide smile, "I was lost in thought. What did you say?"
"I was wondering why you came to join the circus, to be a clown. Most of us were raised into it or are freaks," Magdeleine rolled her eyes at the word, "it's not often you see someone as old as yourself join fresh, especially since you don't seem to be from an entertainer background."
HE supposed it was rather obvious that he wasn't like the rest of the troupe, his eyes still filled with wonder when he watched the tumblers do breathtakingly intricate flips across the arena, gasps still escaped his lips when he watched the daredevil horse riders perform their gravity-defying tricks. He was one of the few that hadn't been born into the circus.
"Ah..." HE hummed, "it is certainly a tale that I do not often tell, nor do I care to revisit it, but for you I will share it."
Magdeleine scooted closer to him, her green eyes filled with curiosity as HE raised his hands to extenuate his tale with grand guestures and movements.
"I have not always been known as HE," HE began, "I was once called by the name of Paul Beaumont. And I did not strive to cause people to laugh and smile, but to gasp and wonder. I was a scientist, a scientist who worked alone day and night, for hours, for years, to prove my theories on the origin of mankind, theories that the scientific world refused to see as truth."
Magdeleine was watching HE tell his tale with wide eyes, the lady - and a gathered group of horse tenders and other troupe members without a job to do at the moment - hanging on tightly to every word of the story he shared.
"I labored alone for years when," HE scrunched up his nose in distaste at the memories that were resurfacing, "in an offering I once saw as a blessing but I know see for what it really was - a curse, a Baron by the name of Baron Regnard offered to be my patron. I eagerly accepted and he allowed me to live in his mansion, living like a prince while I focused on my research instead of worrying over things such as paying bills and affording housing. I also had a wife, my Marie, and she lived with the Baron and me as well."
The gathered audience looked surprised at the admission that HE had been married, knowing that he had come to the circus alone.
"One day I came to the conclusion that my theories were proved, and that they were ready to be presented to the Academy of the Sciences. I, a fool," HE spat, his voice twisting with anger, "left the arrangements to my good friend, the Baron. Little did I know, my wife," HE hissed out that word, disgust and bitterness almost palpable on his tounge, "my Marie, she had betrayed me. As I slept she stole the key to the safe that held my most precious documents and writings, giving them to the Baron - with who, unknown to me at the time, she was having an affair with."
The audience gasped at the reveal, eyebrows rising and eyes widening.
"When it came time to present to the Academy, the Baron told me he wished to speak first - to announce me to the academicians as he held a much higher status than I. But instead he took the credit for my work, he was the one who was applauded as a brilliant scientist," HE snarled, remembering how horror and anger had filled his entire body on that dreadful day, "I got nothing. And when I confronted him, he proclaimed to the audience that I was his student, a mere assistant, and then he slapped me, right there in front of everyone - which the academicians laughed at, they laughed at me and my humiliation! And when I returned home and sought the comfort of my wife, she revealed the betrayal that was her relationship with the Baron, and she called me a fool and a clown. I left them that night, I left everything behind, and I came here." HE sighed, a foul taste in his mouth from the bitter memories the tale had brought up, "I came here, to Paris, to be the clown which she had proclaimed I was."
HE looked up, meeting the eyes of Magdeleine and awaiting her reaction to the story of how he had come to be a member of the circus.
"Oh, HE!" Magdeleine smiled and reached out a hand and -
Magdeleine slapped him.
She lightly slapped his cheek, not with enough force to hurt but enough to make him jolt slightly, HE's mouth falling open in shock as a light giggle escaping Magdeleine's carefully painted lips as she retracted her hand, "you are so good at telling tales! You, a scientist, living in a mansion and presenting to the Academy of the Sciences of all things? Hah!" Magdeleine covered her mouth as she laughed at HE, who felt as if he had been dunked into a tank of glacier-chilled ice, "Your lies are hilarious, HE, you should consider making an act out of it. The audience would love it."
Magdeleine grinned at HE, oblivious to the hurt she had caused him.
"Hit him harder," Grégoire, one of the horse tenders who had been listening to HE's tale called out to Magdeleine with a wide grin, the other horse tenders shrieking with laughter, "the audience loves seeing people get slapped!"
Magdeleine obliged with a giggle, reaching out before he could duck away and slapping him again - once more not enough to bruise, but this time enough to force his head to the side. HE's eyes were wide, his mind filled with the memories of Baron Regnard slapping him, of Baron Regnard humiliating him.
Laughter filled his ears, and HE was unsure if it was the laughter of academicians in his memory or the laughter of the troupe in the present moment. Humiliation flooded him, sinking sharp claws deep into his trembling bones, and he knew that his cheeks were flushing red beneath his alabaster coloured makeup, the makeup that was applied so badly with a novice hand that it most likely did nothing to hide the humiliation that was taking over him.
HE thought for a moment.
HE blinked, a strange feeling coming over him, and his painted lips split into a wide smile, a slightly hysterical laugh escaping him and mixing with the laughter of his audience.
HE did need an act.
"Yes," HE cried, "yes! You are right, Magdeleine, I think I shall make this my act! I will call it 'The Man Who Gets Slapped', the audience shall laugh as they see me tell my lies and get slapped for it!"
For they could not humiliate him with their slaps and their laughter if it was HE who invited them to slap and laugh at him! If HE was in control, it would be HE who was loved and who was popular.
HE would be in control, it would be HE who was laughing with the audience, not HE who was being laughed at by the audience.