The Night Circus(7)

Her lessons have become less formal. When before he would sit her down at marked, though irregular, times, now he tests her constantly, but never in public.

Even tasks as simple as tying her boots he forbids her to do by hand. She stares at her feet, silently willing the laces to tie and untie in messy bows, scowling when they tangle into knots.

Her father is not forthcoming when she asks questions. She has gathered that the man in the grey suit whom her father called Alexander also has a student, and there will be some sort of game.

“Like chess?” she asks once.

“No,” her father says. “Not like chess.”





*


THE BOY GROWS UP in a town house in London. He sees no one, not even when his meals are delivered to his rooms, appearing by the door on covered trays and disappearing in the same manner. Once a month, a man who does not speak is brought in to cut his hair. Once a year, the same man takes measurements for new clothing.

The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies down sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines. He reads histories and mythologies and novels. He slowly learns other languages, though he has difficulty speaking them.

There are occasional excursions to museums and libraries, during off-hours when there are few, if any, other visitors. The boy adores these trips, both for the contents of the buildings and the deviation from his set routine. But they are rare, and he is never permitted to leave the house unescorted.

The man in the grey suit visits him in his rooms every day, most often accompanied by a new pile of books, spending exactly one hour lecturing about things the boy is unsure he will ever truly understand.

Only once does the boy inquire as to when he will actually be allowed to do something, the kinds of things that the man in the grey suit demonstrates very rarely himself during these strictly scheduled lessons.

“When you are ready” is the only answer he receives.

He is not deemed ready for some time.





*


THE DOVES THAT APPEAR ONSTAGE and occasionally in the audience during Prospero’s performances are kept in elaborate cages, delivered to each theater along with the rest of his luggage and supplies.

A slamming door sends a stack of trunks and cases tumbling in his dressing room, toppling a cage full of doves.

The trunks right themselves instantly, but Hector picks up the cage to inspect the damage.

While most of the doves are only dazed from the fall, one clearly has a broken wing. Hector carefully removes the bird, the damaged bars repairing as he sets the cage down.

“Can you fix it?” Celia asks.

Her father looks at the injured dove and then back at his daughter, waiting for her to ask a different question.

“Can I fix it?” she asks after a moment.

“Go ahead and try,” her father says, handing it to her.

Celia gently strokes the trembling dove, staring intently at its broken wing.

The bird makes a painful, strangled sound much different than its normal coo.

“I can’t do it,” Celia says with tears in her eyes, lifting the bird up to her father.

Hector takes the dove and swiftly twists its neck, ignoring his daughter’s cry of protest.

“Living things have different rules,” he says. “You should practice with something more basic.” He picks up Celia’s only doll from a nearby chair and drops it to the floor, the porcelain head cracking open.

When Celia returns to her father the next day with the perfectly repaired doll he only nods his approval before waving her away, returning to his preperformance preparations.

“You could have fixed the bird,” Celia says.

“Then you wouldn’t have learned anything,” Hector says. “You need to understand your limitations so you can overcome them. You do want to win, don’t you?”

Celia nods, looking down at her doll. It bears no evidence that it had ever been damaged, not a single crack along the vacant, smiling face.

She throws it under a chair and does not take it with her when they depart the theater.





*


THE MAN IN THE GREY SUIT takes the boy for a week in France that is not precisely a holiday. The trip is unannounced, the boy’s small suitcase packed without his knowledge.

The boy assumes they are there for some manner of lesson, but no particular area of study is specified. After the first day, he wonders if they are visiting only for the food, entranced by the luscious crackle of fresh-baked bread in boulangeries and the sheer variety of cheeses.

There are off-hour trips to silent museums, where the boy tries and fails to walk through galleries as quietly as his instructor does, cringing when each footfall echoes. Though he requests a sketchbook, his instructor insists it will be better for him to capture the images in his memory.

One evening, the boy is sent to the theater.

He expects a play or perhaps a ballet, but the performance is something he finds unusual.

The man on the stage, a slick-haired, bearded fellow whose white gloves move like birds against the black of his suit, performs simple tricks and sleight-of-hand misdirections. Birds disappear from cages with false bottoms, handkerchiefs slip from pockets to be concealed again in cuffs.