Page 45 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

sluiced out its stall. Then he’d go back up on deck and look at the sea. He

sensed a strange violence beneath its gentle surface, beneath the sparkling
shapes which the ship broke open before crashing into the foam. He loved the
silver waves, but also the long silences, the dead sun. The seagulls perched on
the masts, little spots of white. One night, the storm was so harsh, the sea so
wild, that he began to feel afraid. At times, he felt he was dissolving into the
sky.

AS SOON AS HE ARRIVED back in Europe, the performances of the Wild West
Show started up again. He added two new acts. In the first91, you can see a
group of Indians in the middle of the arena. The spectators have hired opera
glasses for a few coins, and they look. No one knows yet what’s going to

happen. The crowd is impatient and jostles with curiosity. Behind the warriors
you can make out a sort of cabin and there’s an older Indian standing in the
doorway. He’s a chieftain, which you can tell from his crown of feathers.
Suddenly, Buffalo Bill enters the arena. He does one circuit on horseback
and bows. The applause rings out. Women stand up on their seats amid the
smell of creosote and horse droppings. The presenter then announces an
extraordinary episode: “The death of Sitting Bull with his real horse and his

real cabin, retrieved by Buffalo Bill himself.” So that’s what it was! Nothing
can stop the demon of performance. Nothing can fill the cash registers fast
enough. And immediately the curious crowd presses forward, people want a
better view. You can never see enough. There’s something grand and fine, or
perhaps very horrible and very vulgar, that will always escape us. You think

you’re going to see it right here, right now! And you absolutely mustn’t miss
it, otherwise you’ll never see it again. You stand there, like the knight of the
Round Table before whose eyes the lance of salvation and the Holy Grail are
about to pass. And like him, dazed and bemused, you watch them go by, and
you forget to reach out your hand and take them.
All of a sudden the horsemen emerge from the wings. They do one circuit
in a frantic stampede. But they’re no longer Indian police officers, they’re a

detachment from the US Army; fiction has these approximations which falsify
everything. Galloping past a long strip of painted canvas, the cavalrymen fire
their revolvers. The air is thick with dust. The Indians open fire in return; the
cavalry slowly retreats to the far end of the arena. But after a few moments,