The Spook Who Spoke Again

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As soon as I got there, my mother said, ‘We must put on a revival of Falco’s old play to celebrate.’

It sounded as if she was trying to make me feel at home, but now I had no home. She had come and removed me from where I lived with my other mother and Falco, and taken me to Nero’s Circus, where her troupe of entertainers had arrived to work for a season. I think it is wrong that a very intelligent boy should have to live in a tent. Especially if he must share it with his mother and a large snake.

My change of circumstance came as no surprise. I had met her, the mother who bore me, because she came to our house every few years to have a look at me. She was very tall, with bulging muscles. She never wore respectable dress, only theatrical costumes. She must have decided what size to wear years many ago when she was smaller, so I could see parts of her that I had never been able to inspect closely on other women, even on statues, squeezing out of her tiny costumes. The clothes were bright coloured and trimmed in exotic ways. I keep lists of interesting things and after several visits I had written down: glass spangles, feathers, fur, braid, gold cord, silver beads, and leather fringing. The feathers were from peacocks, ostriches and parrots, all birds she had owned herself in her menagerie, though some had pined away and had their feathers plucked after they died, she said.

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