John Berger on tumblers and jugglers

John Berger on tumblers and jugglers, from Confabulations.

https://harpers.org/archive/2015/02/some-notes-on-song/13/

Recently, in a French town, I saw a family of tumblers performing on a street corner near a supermarket: a father, three boys, and a girl. There was also a dog, a Scottish terrier. The dog, I later found out, was called Nella, and the father, Massimo. All the kids were slim and had dark eyes. Massimo was thickset and imposing. 

The eldest boy, who was probably seventeen, perhaps more (difficult to estimate their ages because for them there is no category of childhood), was the principal juggler and handler. The young girl, of six or seven, climbed him as if he were a tree, a tree that then transformed itself into beams for a roof that she sat upon. The father was standing a good way behind them with an amplifier and sound gear between his feet on the paving stones.  

He was watching them with beagle eyes and strumming a guitar. The roof beams became an elevator that gently deposited Ariana, the girl, on the ground. The boy descended like an elevator, very, very slowly, and the girl stepped back onto the paving stones to the rhythm of her father’s guitar. 

Comes the moment for David (ten or eleven years old) to do his number. There are only half a dozen spectators, it is midmorning, people are busy. David mounts his unicycle, rides it down the street, turns and rides back with the minimum of exertion. He does this to show his credentials. 

After, dismounting onto the sidewalk, where there is a stuffed leather ball the size of a gigantic pumpkin, he kicks off his sneakers and steps onto the ball. Pushing with his heels, and using the soles of his feet to take on the curvature of the ball, he slowly persuades it forward. The two of them advance. He keeps his arms down by his side. 

Nothing he does reveals the difficulty of maintaining his balance on the rolling ball. 

He stands on it, chin up, looking into the far distance, like a statue on a plinth. The ball and he advance in triumph at the pace of a very slow tortoise. And at this moment of triumph, he begins to sing, accompanied by his father on a harmonica. David has a miniature microphone attached with tape near his left cheekbone. 

The song is Sardinian. He sings in an unruffled tenor, the voice of a solitary shepherd. The words describe what happens when a jinx is put on you, a story as old as the hills. 

Triumph and jinx, jinx and triumph, brought together in an act that, as you watch, you hope will go on and on and on.