The Carnival Master

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Weiberfastnacht – Women’s Karneval Night. Cologne. January, 1999.

Madness. Everywhere she looked was insanity. She ran through crowds of the demented. She stared around wildly, seeking an asylum: somewhere she could find refuge amongst the sane. The music thudded and screamed mercilessly, filling the night with terrifying cheerfulness. The crowd was denser now. More people, more madness. She pushed through them. Always away from the two massive spires that thrust up from the mayhem of the streets, black and menacing into the night. Always away from the clown.

She stumbled as she ran down the steps. Past the main railway station. Through a square. On and on. Still surrounded by the shouting, grinning, laughing faces of the insane.

She collided with a knot of figures gathered in front of a stand selling Currywurst and beer. The former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl stood in a nappy stuffed with Deutschmarks, laughing and joking with three Elvis Presleys. A medieval knight struggled to eat his hot dog through a visor that would not stay up. There was a dinosaur. A cowboy. Louis the Fourteenth. But no clown.

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