On the windswept plateau of La Mancha, where Don Quixote once tilted with windmills, a man from the Spanish S.P.C.A. last week came upon a midget sitting beside his dog in an empty lot outside the town of Manzanares. The midget was guarding all that remained of a once great German circus that got stranded at Manzanares almost 14 months ago.
The circus Willi Holzmuller confidently invaded Spain in spring last year with 125 wagons, 70 performers and a splendid menagerie of elephants, lions, bears, dogs, horses, ponies and monkeys. But Spaniards are not great circus fans. By the time the circus reached Manzanares, business was so bad that 30 performers had quit, and all but 18 wagons had been sold to settle debts or buy food. In Manzanares, the manager himself ran out, to be followed soon afterward by the rest of the performers, who went home to Germany. Only Francis Grutzius, the 62-year-old midget, stayed on—to look after three elephants, two lions, seven bears, 14 dogs, a colony of monkeys, two porcupines and one eagle.
With his fox terrier Sweikof, Grutzius camped out in a circus wagon, sleeping on the floor (for all the furniture had been sold), scrounging food from local citizens who themselves were too poor to spare much. In the winter, the dwarf kept warm by getting drunk on harsh red wine, some of which he shared with Sweikof, and by burning dried grapevines in his stove.
One night the temperature dropped to 15°, and six monkeys died. Sympathetic townspeople took most of the remaining monkeys as household pets. In February, a ravenous elephant ate the roof of his pen, and died of wood splinters in his stomach. The other two elephants died from eating the straw coverings of wine bottles, which was the only food the people could find in sufficient bulk for such huge appetites. Grutzius buried the elephants, and by selling their tusks for ivory got enough to buy food for man and beast for a few more weeks. But by winter's end the last of the lions had eaten the carcass of the last of the horses, and the performing dogs had turned cannibal.
Summer in La Mancha is as fiercely hot as winter is bitter cold. In July, when the temperature rose to 104°, two bears died. Grutzius buried the bears beside the ele phants. Eventually Madrid's Society for the Protection of Animals (a not very aggressive outfit in the land of bullfighting) belatedly arrived on the scene. All that was left of the once-proud circus Holzmuller was the midget, his dog, five emaciated bears, a scraggy monkey, three performing dogs and one eagle, all too weak to eat.
With cod-liver oil and vitamins, veterinarians revived the monkey, the dogs and the bears. The eagle perked up on grain and fruit. By week's end all the beasts were feeling better, and the Barcelona zoo promised them a home. The midget, weak and undernourished, was installed in a home in Ciudad Real. All that remained of the abandoned circus was Sweikof the fox terrier, who lay down before the wagon of his absent master, and mournfully refused to eat.