The Orphan's Tale(28)

But this is no time for sentimentality. Whether she will be able to perform as we need her to—that is the only thing that matters. As an aerialist, it is not enough to be technically good. It is personality, flair, the ability to make the audience hold its breath, as if fearing for their own lives right along with ours. Similarly, mere appearance and personality would not suffice—even the most beautiful woman would not survive a season on the circuit without the pure physical grace, agility and strength to back it up.

Noa has surprised me so far. I had thought she would give up after the first day, that she would never fly. I had not counted on her gymnastics training, though, or her tenacity. She has worked hard and she is smart and capable. And brave—her rescuing Theo from the Nazi car had more than proved that. She’s as good as she can possibly be, though it will all hang on whether she can perform under the lights in front of hundreds of people two and three times per day.

Another girl has taken the berth where I was meant to have slept, so I squeeze into the narrow strip of berth beside Noa. But I cannot sleep. Instead I rehearse our opening performance that evening, marking the movements in my mind.

Beside me Noa stirs and shifts in a slow, practiced way so as not to wake Theo. “Are we there yet?”

“Soon. A few more hours.” We lie beside each other, our sides bumping gently as the train sways.

“Talk to me,” she says, her voice hollow with loneliness.

I hesitate, not sure what she wants to hear. “I was born in a railcar just like this one,” I offer. I feel her surprise through the darkness. “My mother stepped from the stage and had me.” Only my father’s protest, the story went, had kept her from returning to the show immediately after.

“What was it like growing up in the circus?” With Noa, questions seem to endlessly beget more questions. She is so curious to know and learn it all.

I contemplate my answer. I hated circus life when I was younger. I longed for a normal childhood, the permanency of staying in one place and having a real home. To be able to own more things than could fit in a single steamer trunk. Even at our winter quarters during the months when I was allowed to go to school, I was different from the other girls, an outsider and an oddity.

When Erich appeared, it was the escape I’d been looking for my whole life. I tried to dress the part, mold my accent so I sounded like the other officers’ wives. But long after we settled down in Berlin, something was still missing. The apartment was empty, without the sounds and smells of the winter quarters. I missed the noise and excitement of performing on the road. How could people live in one place all of the time and not get bored? I loved Erich and after a while my longing began to fade like a not-quite-healed scar. But I remained haunted by the world I had always wanted to escape. My life with Erich, I see now, had been temporary, like another act in one of our shows. When it ended, I had not shed a tear. Rather, I simply changed costumes and moved on.

I do not tell Noa any of this, though; it is not what she wants to hear. “Once when I was a girl we performed for a princess,” I say instead. “In Austria-Hungary. The entire tent was filled with her court.”

“Really?” Her voice is awe-filled. I nod. Empresses are gone now, replaced by parliaments and votes. Better for the people, perhaps, but somehow less magical. Would the circus fade into history, as well? Though no one speaks of it, I sometimes wonder if we are marching toward extinction with each performance, too busy dancing and flying through the air to see it.

I open the locket around my neck, revealing in the moonlight a tiny photo of my family, the only one I have. “My mother,” I say. She was a great beauty—at least before Isadore had been killed and she had taken to the bottle—magnificent where I am plain, her features Romanesque. “Once, before I was born, the circus traveled to Saint Petersburg and she performed for Czar Nicholas. He was enchanted by her and they said the czarina actually wept. I’m only a fraction of what she was in the air.”

“I can’t imagine anyone better,” Noa declares too loudly and the girl sleeping on the berth above us snorts in her sleep. Theo stirs and threatens to wake. As I pat his back to soothe him, I wonder if Noa is trying to curry favor with me, but the admiration in her voice sounds sincere.

“It’s true. She was a legend.” The only two women in a family of males, I would have thought my mother and I would have been closer. She loved me completely but there was a part of her that I could never reach.

“You and Erich,” Noa asks, and I bristle at the familiarity with which she uses his name. “You never had children?” I am surprised, then annoyed by the unexpected change of topic. She has a way of finding the weak spot, going for the question I can least bear to answer.

I shake my head. “We couldn’t.” I’ve wondered so often whether Erich would have fought harder to keep me if there had been a baby. But our child would have been Jewish in the eyes of the Reich—would he have disowned us both? He might have children now—and a new wife, for although I had not signed the divorce papers, the Reich did not acknowledge that our marriage ever existed.

“And then when you returned to the circus, you fell in love with Peter?” Noa asks.

“No,” I reply quickly. “It isn’t like that at all. Peter and I are together. Don’t make it more than it is.”

I feel the train begin to slow. I sit up, wondering if it is my imagination. But the wheels screech as the train stops with a groan. Another checkpoint. Herr Neuhoff procured papers for everyone, even Theo. But they are still not the real thing and at each stop, I am filled with dread. Will they be good enough? Surely Herr Neuhoff had spared no expense in making sure they looked authentic. It would take only one border guard with a sharp eye, though, to notice some detail that was not right. A rock forms on my chest, making it impossible to breathe.