The Orphan's Tale(52)

The audience hurries from the ring after the show, not loitering as they usually do but wanting to make it home and far away from the trouble. As we make our way from the tent, Herr Neuhoff comes into the backyard. He sinks down on top of an overturned crate, breathing hard.

“An arrest at the circus,” he pants. “I never would have imagined.” Until recently, the circus has been a haven from the war, like being inside a snow globe while the world continues outside. But the walls are thinning. I think back to Darmstadt, recalling Astrid’s reaction when I remarked that we would be safe in France. Even then she had known the truth. Nowhere is safe anymore.

Mopping at his brow with a handkerchief, he continues, “They’ve gone for now. But I want all of you to go back to your quarters immediately—and stay there.” I wait for him to rebuke me for what I had done on the trapeze, but he does not.

I look in the direction of the grove, searching for Luc. I spy him, half-hidden behind a leaning oak. Still here. Our eyes meet. He had seen me fall and his face is racked with worry. I start to smile, raising my hand in a low wave to signal to him that I am all right. His expression relaxes somewhat but his eyes remain locked on me, bidding me to come closer.

I take a step forward. But Herr Neuhoff is still sitting on the crate, watching. I cannot go to Luc.

I shouldn’t want to anyway, I remind myself. He kept from me the fact that he is the mayor’s son. Could Astrid be right about him hiding other things, as well?

Luc is still watching me, seeming to hold his breath, waiting. Several seconds pass. I take a step backward. Even if I wanted to, I would not dare defy Herr Neuhoff’s order and go after the police have been here. Luc’s face shifts from hopeful to confused and then disappointed as he realizes I am not coming toward him.

I take another step backward and nearly trip on something lying on the ground. By the edge of the big top, a doll lies in the dirt. I picture the girl who had been too upset at having to leave the circus to notice dropping it. Despite her father’s promises, she will not be coming back. I pick up the doll and take it with me for Theo.

Then I turn back to look at Luc once more. He has started in the direction of the village, shoulders low.

“Wait!” I want to cry. But I do not and a moment later he is gone.





13

Astrid

It is not quite dawn when I climb the ladder to the trapeze in near darkness, the entire chapiteau lit only by a single spluttering bulb that someone had forgotten to turn off. From the benches the big top appears magnificent, but up here the fabric is faded and around the edges the tassels frayed. Old music, tinny like that of the carousel at the end of the midway, plays in my mind. I see my brothers, teasing one another as they prepared to perform. The air seems to dance with the ghosts of my family.

I take hold of the bar and jump, flying through the air. I am ignoring my own admonishment to Noa never to fly alone. I have no choice, though. I can no longer perform, but I cannot stay on the ground. “You are addicted to the adrenaline,” Peter has accused me more than once. I want to argue, but it is true. There is a moment as I stare down from the board, the split second before I let go, where I am always certain I am going to die. That clarity—the focus of that moment—is what I miss most about not performing, more so than the adulation of the crowd or anything else.

The previous night when Noa had gone into the ring without me was the first time I had ever actually observed the circus in its entirety. As I watched the show, I was reminded of the time Erich had taken me to the Volksoper to see a show, Die Jungfrau von Orleans. Surrounded by the fashionable Berlin women and clouds of Chanel, I shifted around in my seat awkwardly, feeling as if I did not belong. But as the show began, I was able to see so much that others could not, the way the set was made to give the illusion of depth, how the act was enhanced with the little tricks all we performers had. I realized then that I could see through people, on stage or not. I had been doing it my whole life.

I fly higher, as if trying to outrun my memories. Heaving my legs upward, I swing high back to the board. Fine perspiration coats my skin and my legs ache pleasantly. That Herr Neuhoff said I might get to perform again when we reach the next town is little consolation. That is still two weeks away—a lifetime of performances. And there are no guarantees that I will be permitted to remain in the ring; now that Herr Neuhoff is aware of the peril, he will pull me from the show at the slightest of scares.

Scares like the police interrupting the show a few days earlier. Seeing the little girl’s face in the audience, the full magnitude of just how bad things have become crashes down upon me. She had started that day brightly like any other—as I had that last morning in Berlin with Erich—not knowing in just hours her world would be destroyed.

I wipe my eyes, brushing away the sting. In my family one did not cry, not for illness or death or other tragedy, and even as a girl I had held my tears through it all. It could have been worse, I remind myself; it could have been me the police had come to arrest.

I leap again and hang on to the bar in midair, not trying to swing higher, but letting the gentle rocking motion carry me back and forth. It seems for just a moment that if I do not move I can go back in time and everything will be as it once was. My body, this flight, they cannot take these from me—despite the thing Noa had done.

The things Noa had done, I correct myself. It was more than just telling Herr Neuhoff about the German officer. She had invited the mayor’s son to the show. And she had thrown herself from the trapeze in an attempt to save that man and his daughter from the police, a stunt as foolish as it was brave. Though we are nothing alike, more and more I see a headstrongness about Noa that reminds me of myself when I was young. An impulsiveness that makes her a danger to herself—and to all of us.