Page 23 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

the stage and that his character had become famous. So nothing had been

decided by him. His life escapes him. A great counterfeiting force had sucked
him in, replicated him and produced a revised version. In the end, he was
induced to play the part of himself. This is how he came to mount the boards,
wearing fancy dress, simply to match his own character. He’s an imitation of
himself. He gradually became the person he was portraying. His life would
become a sort of parody of his life, an alternative, fabricated life, pledged to
others. The illusion was so powerful, the public so thoroughly won over, that

the actors in the show, who had never set foot in the West and never fired
anything but blanks, apparently ended up believing the hogwash they narrated,
and the adventures they mimed. And so it’s said that at the end of his life,
after performing the Battle of Little Big Horn dozens of times over, Buffalo
Bill genuinely believed that he had taken part in it. To meet the requirements

of the show, they had even gone so far as to change the outcome, because
audiences prefer a happy ending. Which is how, after years spent successfully
performing this amended version of grand History, Buffalo Bill was
convinced that he had saved Custer!

But real life is still there. It returns to us with each drop of rain, in the fragile
mystery of things. I imagine, sleeping in all kinds of hotels, or in his special
train, with its saloon, its billiard table, kitchens and bathrooms, Buffalo Bill
will be sipping a drink, as large clouds darken his carriage. For a moment, he
leans out of the window, and senses the huge locomotive, way out in front,

very tall and completely black. As the wind slaps his face, he hears the
frightful rumbling of the engine. Turning his head, he sees broad, uncultivated
expanses, yellow grasses, the remains of a forest bristling with dead pines. He
sits down again, his eyes roasted by the smoke. He thinks about all the people
who come and go, the people he hires and then fires, as if he were dipping his

hand in and out of a bag of salt. And while his fingers hover among the
crumbs on the table, amid the worries of the entrepreneur, the last-minute
problems he has not yet solved, there rises an obscure sense of remorse.
His temperature had risen. Louisa had sat up all night. It had begun with
stomach pains; and after starting off by crying a little, he’d just said where it
hurt, and moaned. They’d given him warm water to drink, sat him up in his
little bed, and he’d begun to vomit. Then they’d got very scared and sent for

the doctor. Buffalo Bill was on tour, far away from home in North Place.
Louisa must have felt very alone. This is what he would think about