The Orphan's Tale(35)

Astrid waves me over. “Don’t just stand around letting your muscles get cold,” she admonishes. “You need to stretch.” She bends and gestures for me to lift one leg onto her shoulder, an exercise we’ve done many times at the winter quarters. She straightens slowly, raising my leg, and I try not to grit my teeth but rather breathe and ease into the dull, familiar burn that travels up the underside of my thigh.

“Do you want me to stretch you?” I ask when she has helped me with my other leg. She shakes her head. I follow her gaze across the backyard to where Peter rehearses apart from the others. He’s changed into an oversize jacket and trousers now and his face, stubbled minutes earlier, is an unbroken field of white greasepaint. “Astrid...” I begin.

She looks over at me, as though she had nearly forgotten I was there. “What is it?” I falter. I consider telling her about the disagreement I heard Peter having with Herr Neuhoff on the train, or seeing Peter come from the beer tent. But I do not want to worry her right before we go on.

“You’re nervous,” she says evenly.

“Yes,” I admit. “Weren’t you at your first show?”

She laughs. “I was so young I can’t even remember it. But it is normal to be nervous. Good, even. The adrenaline will keep you on your toes, keep you from making mistakes.” Or make my hands shake so badly that I can’t hold the bar, I think.

Inside the tent, the lights are lowered and the whole house thrown into darkness. A spotlight comes on, creating a pool of gold on the floor at the center of the ring. The orchestra strikes a stirring chord. Herr Neuhoff appears, majestic in his bow tie and top hat. “Mesdames et Messieurs...” Herr Neuhoff booms into a microphone.

The “Thunder and Lightning Polka” begins to play and the plumed horses prance into the ring. Their riders, among the most ornately costumed of the women, have no saddle but ride bareback, hardly sitting at all as they scissor their legs from side to side. One rider stands and tumbles from a standing position backward through the air, landing neatly on a second horse. Though I have seen the act in rehearsal, I cannot help but gasp along with the crowd.

The program of the circus, Astrid explained once, is deliberately designed—a fast act, then a slow one then fast again, lions and other dangerous animals interspersed with human pantomimes. “You want the light bits after serious,” she’d said, “like cleansing the palate after each course of a meal.” But there are practicalities, too, such as the time needed to bring the animal cages in and out that makes placing them close to intermission a necessity.

Watching, I realize that the design of the big top is deliberate, too. The angles of the benches are steep to face the gaze downward. The rounded seating makes the crowd play off one another’s responses, and the unbroken circle is like a wire for the electricity that fills the tent. The audience sits motionless, mesmerized by the web of color, lights, music and artistry. Their eyes dance with the arc of the juggler’s balls and they gasp in appreciation as one of the trainers waltzes with a lion. Astrid was right: even as war rages on, the people still have to live—they shop for their foodstuffs and tend their homes—why not laugh at the circus as they had when the world was still whole?

Next comes the high wire. A girl named Yeta stands at the top of a platform, holding aloft a long pole for balance. The act terrifies me even more than the trapeze and I have thanked God several times that Herr Neuhoff had not selected me for that instead of the trapeze. There is a slow adagio in the music, a pause for dramatic value. Then as Yeta steps out on the wire, music thunders and the whole tent seems to shiver.

Yeta’s foot slips and she struggles to regain her balance. Why now, in this act she has practiced and performed dozens of times? She nearly rights herself, then wobbles again, this time too far to recover. There is a collective gasp as she falls through the air screaming, limbs flailing as if trying to swim. “No!” I cry aloud. In her descent, I see the day Astrid had pushed me all over again.

I start forward. We have to help her. But Astrid pulls me back. Yeta lands in the net, which crashes low to the ground. She lies there, not moving. The spectators seem to hold their breath, as if wondering whether to worry or if the fall is just part of the act. Workers rush forward to carry her from the ring, out of sight of the crowd. Watching Yeta’s limp body, I grow terrified. That could happen to me. Yeta is rushed outside to a Peugeot that has pulled up behind the big top. I expected an ambulance, but the workers bundle her in the back of the car and it drives away.

“An accident at the first show of the season,” a voice beside me says, spicy breath warm on my bare shoulder. Though we have never spoken, I recognize the woman with flowing silver hair as Drina, the Gypsy who reads fortunes on the midway before the show and at intermission. “A terrible omen.”

“Nonsense,” Astrid says, waving her hand dismissively. But her face is grave.

“Will Yeta be all right?” I ask, when Drina has gone.

“I don’t know,” Astrid says bluntly. “Even if she lives, she may not perform again.” She made living without the show sound almost worse than dying.

“Do you believe the fortune-teller?” I hear myself asking too many questions. “About a bad omen, I mean.”

“Bah!” Astrid waves her hand. “If she can really see the future, then what is she doing stuck here?” She has a point.