The Fire Dancer

KEMAL ONOR

Several years ago, I spent the summer working for a carnival. My position was not so coveted as the clowns with their prat falls and late-night drunken conversations about life before becoming a clown. It was also not nearly as impressive as the sword swallowers or the fire eaters.

That summer, it was my job to put out any fires that were started by the fire dancer. A woman, whom at the time, I thought older than me. Her act was mesmerizing. Her tall, thin frame would spin and jump. The rings on her arms jingling to her movement. She would spin so fast that the earth-color of her skin would flash with the fire in her hands. As she spun faster, her body would create a flower of fire and it would bloom in a brilliant display, like a silent firework. She would become one with the glow. Like a wick completed consumed by flame.

It was my job, that should something go wrong, I was to run out and douse any wayward flame with my fire extinguisher. Most of the time there was no need for me, and I was able to slip into a daze. I would ooh and awe with every night’s audience feeling the incredible thrill of this woman in her deadly dance. After her act, I would go to my cot and sleep a sweet-dream filled sleep. Night after night, through the season she continued to draw large crowds. I became more relaxed in my job.

Then one night, it happened. During the fire toss. The burning torch did not return to the dancer’s hand. Instead it rolled down the front of her dress. There was a blaze of fire. The hiss of a sparkler. She cried out in her Eastern European language. I almost called for help, forgetting my job entirely for a precious moment. Then the fire was out. Her dress had a hole in the spot where the torch had burned it, the edges curled like burned book paper.

I stayed with her as she was carted from the ring. I sat with her in the medical tent. The shock had frightened me worse than it did her. It seemed odd, finally being so close to this woman. Without the bright lights on her, she looked no older than a child. I watched as the doctor took a look at her. She rolled up her dress, and pointed to the spot where the fire had touched her. It became apparent that this was not the first time she had been burned. Soft, pink, charred skin marked her body all over. She turned her head and there was a mark over her eye that her hair covered and could not been seen at a distance. I waited with her. She gave grimaces at the doctor’s touch.

By the time we left the tent, she was in high spirits. We wandered the carnival together. Most of the big attractions were over, and clowns were about collecting trash in barrels. It was a bright night in July. The sky full of stars. We went slowly through the paths.

“You must be tired,” she said.

“I’m alright. I don’t mind staying up,” I said. That night she brought me back to her cot. She let me touch her. My hands running over her skin. Noting each scar and burn through the years. We slept together that night. The whirr of crickets playing in the fields coming in through the window. She had a sweet smell like wild flowers and smoke. Lying with our eyes closed, my skin pressed against hers. She felt warm, like a fire burned under her skin.

“I hate fire,” she said.

“Do you?”

“Yes. It does nothing but burn and scar.”