Page 72 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

rain fell. Suddenly, there was a violent storm; his white horse tacked into the

wind, nervous, and lost in the mist. But on the eighth day of January, he
sighted land. Struck by the beauty of the place, like one of those tiny creatures
that crawl towards the light, he hugged the last coastline of his life, berthed,
and then, when his lungs became excessively inflamed after catching a chill,
he fell seriously ill.
Through his bedroom window he could see the vast spectacle of things.
From time to time he would still adopt a stage voice, a tone in which to

harangue the world, and then he would exhibit the forced jollity of a worthless
bum. He made an effort to laugh, but his secret wound hadn’t healed, and the
ceiling reflected back to him the worst pangs in his heart. What had he done?
His face was pale, his skull gleamed. Oh! reality was terrible with a cold food
tray beside the bed, a lukewarm glass of water and a pillow that felt too hot

and was soaked in sweat.
Cody became sentimental. He wept at the least thing, held his sister’s hand
squeezed tight in his own and sighed. Like an old plant, he wished he could
produce one more flower and smell its perfume! But Cody was already dead,
and had been for a long time. In becoming Buffalo Bill, he had disappeared
behind the tasselled jackets and the bravura repartee. Yes, Cody was dead, but
not like Sitting Bull; his quintessential being had transmogrified into America

itself. A living legend is a dead person. And now, seventy million spectators
later, he needed to be resurrected in order to become a living being as he
entered the gates of death for real. And this he could not do. He continued to
perform, hamming it up to the last. There is nothing finer than spectacle.

One morning, William Cody’s voice turned reedy. His belly swelled. He
didn’t even look towards the window. He could feel the exhausted wellspring
inside him, the ice, the incurable wound; time slipped its long skeleton fingers

beneath his skin. For a moment, perhaps, he saw a cotton dress, beautiful
children, a landscape. And then it was like a rushing stream through his flesh,
a deluge. And, in a last burst of consciousness, he saw how far he would have
to climb in order to live another life... And then, it seemed to him that life had
been a horrible trap. An hour passed. Sunlight entered the room. His breathing
was a little easier. And all at once he thought he saw his mistakes so clearly
that he loved them. He felt his back slide slowly against the rough sheet, tiny

clusters of dust particles swirled by his bed, and he saw a wide plain, with
bodies lying on it, and the snow that served as their shroud; he opened his