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It means the call of the void, or so he has been told (and he believes it, though German is his first and only language, the only set of sounds he can trust to roll off of his tongue without the slow, ponderous uncertainty of another), and it is a beautiful phrase, he thinks, for an impulse so deadly. He should know- he is a victim of its siren song, too familiar with the thrill of electricity that courses through his veins where others might feel only fear. Because he can go up and up and up with no hesitation, and when finally there is no where left to climb, when he can brush the sky or rearrange the stars, the only instinct that remains is to fall.
But now he is falling in a way he doesn't understand, with no safety nets or crowds to feel for him on his descent, to gasp in that fearful tone that at least reminds him he is cared for, if only in the most disconnected sense of the word. Because the circus can only serve to amaze for so long- and when the people stop coming, the trapeze stops paying. But when the ringmaster explains to him in his broken German that nein, there will be no dinner tonight, he is stunned by the ignorance of the crowd. (How could the sensation of flight ever grow dull?)
He remembers the first time he felt it, this pulse of adrenaline and shuddering atria, as the little boy afraid of everything. The appearance of a circus tent in their too-small town, and the dare that followed (issued by his brother, he recalls with a half-smile), one that asked for more than he could ever give. The dare he accepted the moment he began to clamber up the net, clumsy fingers grasping at coarse rope that had a way of eluding him in those younger days, or cutting into soft, uncertain skin when it did not. The moment he ascended (finding himself in a place higher than any his brother had reached), took the trapeze for his stage, and never came back down.
"Get back, bruder. You're scaring me."
And that was when he realized how dangerous this gift could be, that his own fearlessness came at the cost of someone else's terror- because as long as there were people who cared, there would be those who suffered even as he shone. There was a hesitation, an uncertainty he felt for the first and last time on that night up in the rafters, because suddenly there were footsteps coming too fast for skill or gravity to take him safely to the ground, and while his brother fled, he waited. The man who emerged offered not punishment but praise (and he clung to it desperately, never having felt such a rush before, never having known such flattery), and as the ringmaster applauded his courage he turned names around in his head, testing titles for a new star from a too-small town, introducing ladies and gentlemen to the amazing, the incredible...
Now he has a talent that leaves every audience starry-eyed, and the altitude he feels is written all over their faces, entranced as they are by his deft maneuvers. It comes almost naturally, allowing him to leave one bar behind with perfect certainty that he will reach the next, but what he really lives for the space in between. So he loses himself to the sound of his ringmaster's cries and an endless dance with gravity, because this is something wunderbare, something schֳ¶ne, something no one can ever take away (and he fixes his audience with a smile, that disarming, point-blank smile, and in that moment they believe it too).
He could wonder where his next meal is coming from, consider whether the job is enough to support even his modest needs, or brood over the ringmaster's request to see him when this show is over, but he doesn't, because he is an acrobat, a trapeze artist, because he has something the people below never will, and this split second in the sky is a good enough forever. He has a skill, a gift, a fraction of eternity that the earthbound will never truly understand. He can be something impossible.
He can let go... and fly.
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