The Orphan's Tale(31)

“I feel useless just standing here,” Noa says after climbing down from the wagon. “Should we be helping or something?”

I shake my head. “Let them do their job.” We can no more help raise the tent than the workers can swing from the trapeze.

All of the prep work is done but the real show has been saved for the crowd. Elephants, which had not been part of the procession but brought here directly by the train, are harnessed. On command, they start walking away from the center, heaving the hauptmast to its full height. Then the horses are led outward, pulling the shorter poles into place, and the whole thing seems to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, a tent the size of the massive gymnasium at Darmstadt where seconds ago there had been nothing. Though they have undoubtedly seen it year after year, the crowd lets out a stunned gasp and applauds heartily. Noa watches silently, awed by seeing the big top go up for the first time. Theo, who had been chewing on his fingers, squeals with approval.

The crowd begins to dissipate as the workers move to secure the poles. “Come,” I say, starting in the direction of the big top. “We need to practice.”

Noa does not move, but looks hesitantly from me to the child and back again. “We’ve been on the road for almost two days,” she complains.

“I’m aware,” I reply, growing impatient. “But we only have a few hours before we get ready for the first show. You have to rehearse at least once in the big top before then.”

“Theo needs to be fed and I’m exhausted.” Her voice rises to almost a whine and I am reminded yet again of just how young she is. I remember just for a second what it was like to want to do something else, to look through the window of the practice hall and see girls skipping rope in the valley and wish that I could join them.

“All right,” I relent. “Take fifteen minutes. Go get him settled with Elsie. I’ll meet you in the big top.”

I expect her to protest again but she does not. Her face breaks into a wide smile of gratitude, as though given a great gift. “Thank you,” she says, and as she carries Theo in the direction of the train, I look back over my shoulder toward the big top. Acquiescing was not entirely for Noa’s benefit. The workers are still tightening the poles; the trapeze is not quite ready. And she will rehearse better if she can concentrate on flying, instead of worrying about Theo.

As Noa disappears into the train, my doubts rise anew. Since she first let go and flew last month, she has grown stronger in her training. But she is still so inexperienced. Will she hold up day after day in front of the lights and the scrutiny of the crowd?

I walk into the big top, inhaling the moist earth and damp wood. This is one of my favorite moments each season, when everything at the circus is fresh and new. Other performers, jugglers and a few contortionists, have trickled in, working on their own acts. Peter is not here and I wonder if he is rehearsing privately, out of view, so as not to be rebuked for the political act Herr Neuhoff forbade him from performing.

Peter had mentioned it a few days earlier. “Herr Neuhoff is trying to persuade me to water down the act, bury it.”

“I know,” I replied. “He spoke to me about it, as well.”

“What do you think?” Peter was normally so self-assured. But his face was troubled and I could see he really did not know what to do.

It was only because of me that he was considering acquiescing at all. “Don’t stop yourself on my account.” I did not want Peter to have to sacrifice his art for me and resent me after.

Now the workers have just finished securing the trapeze. The foreman, Kurt, has them do this before the seats and other apparatuses, knowing that I will want to practice right away. I walk to where he is conferring with two laborers about the angle at which the benches are to be set. “Has the ground been leveled?” I ask. He nods. It matters a great deal for the trapeze. The slightest unevenness in the earth could affect the speed at which we fly and destroy the precision of our routine—causing me to miss catching Noa.

I walk to one of the ladders and give it a firm tug to make sure it is secure. Then I climb up to the fly board. From below comes the murmur of some of the dancers, chatting as they stretch. I leap without hesitating. The air rushes beneath me and I stretch forth. As always in this moment I feel sixteen again, the sound of my family’s laughter ringing in my ears as I fly. When I first came back to the circus, I wondered if the time away would have made me slower, if I could remember the moves. I was in my late thirties, perhaps too old for this. Others by now had retired to teaching or marriage or seedy cabarets in Dresden or Hamburg. But the air was all I had known. I was good at it still. Why shouldn’t I keep going? In a few weeks my body thinned, the richness of those long dinners in Berlin melting from my midsection, and I was as good as I had ever been—better even, Herr Neuhoff remarked once. I could not tell him that I flew higher and flipped harder to reach a place in the dark eaves of the big top where I could hear my brothers’ laughter, and where Erich’s rejection could no longer find me.

As I swing back up to the board a few minutes later, the chatter of the performers below stops abruptly and the tent grows quiet. Noa stands at the entrance to the big top, looking young and scared. The other performers eye her warily. They have not been awful in the weeks since she joined us, but they’ve been distant, making clear that she does not belong. It is always hard for new performers at the circus. Indeed, they had hardly welcomed me with open arms when I returned. And it is even more difficult for someone like Noa, who is seen as not qualified, too inexperienced to succeed.