The Orphan's Tale(53)

Suddenly I am dizzy. Something hits my stomach then, a wave of nausea so strong I almost lose my grip on the bar. I break out in a sweat and my palms grow dangerously moist. I struggle to make my way back up to the board. Failing moments like this are why I tell Noa she should not swing alone. Looking down, I am seized with fear. Circus performers are not known to have long lives. There were those who died in their act or were injured to the point they withered away. I run through the performers I know, those in my family and beyond, to try to find a single one who had lived to his or her seventieth birthday. But I cannot.

With a last desperate swing, I soar higher and reach the platform, legs trembling. I have never fallen before, or even come close. What is wrong with me?

Another wave of nausea sweeps over me and I make it down the ladder just in time to heave into a bucket that is not my own. I carry it outside to wash at the pump before anyone notices. The stench of wet bile causes my stomach to roil anew. I press my hand against my midsection. I had practically been born in the air and have never been sick from it. I’ve heard other aerialists speak of such things, suddenly being unable to tolerate the height or motion, but that was when they were ill or pregnant.

Pregnant. I freeze, stunned by the idea. It simply isn’t possible. But it is the only answer that makes sense. There had been a liquor-filled night right before leaving the winter quarters. I had not bled in almost three months, but that was not uncommon, and I attributed it to the toll performing and practicing took on my body. Surely if it were something more, I would have known.

I return to the big top and sit numbly on one of the benches, denial whirling through my mind. Erich and I had tried so long to have a child. Before his work became all-consuming, we would make love nearly every night and two or three times a day on the weekends. But nothing had ever come of it. I had assumed that the fault had all been mine. I’d wondered how my mother could have been fertile enough to bear five children and me none. Year after year it hadn’t happened, and eventually we stopped talking about it.

The problem had lain with Erich, I realize, smugly. Not me. His perfect Aryan body was flawed. There would be no family for him with someone else either.

But my anxiety quickly eclipses any bit of satisfaction. Pregnancy had been the furthest thing from my mind, a child a long-forgotten dream. I am too old to be starting a family. Peter, with his moods and depression, hardly seems like an ideal father. We are not that kind of a couple. And we have no home.

I could take care of it. I have heard whispers of such things more than once during my years with the circus. Even as I think it, though, I know this is not an option.

Peter walks in and it is the one time I am not glad to see him. I swipe a hand across my cheeks to make sure they are dry, then cover my stomach, as though he might see the difference. I do not want to tell him and add to the stress and exhaustion of performing and being on the road. He does not need to worry about this now. I wait for him to see that I am pale and shaking, or perhaps smell the stench that lingers about me.

But he is too distracted to notice. “Come, I want to show you something,” he says, taking my hand and leading me from the ring to his cabin. It is close to the edge of the fairgrounds, a single, solid room not much larger than a shed. I stand in the doorway uncertainly, the smell of damp wood and earth mixing with stale smoke. I have not stayed with him since coming to Thiers because he’s been rehearsing so intently I haven’t wanted to intrude. Will he try to take me in his arms? I do not think I can bear to be close to him right now. Instead he beckons me past the bed. On the other side stands a new piece of furniture, a low rectangular oak chest, about five feet long, almost like an oversize steamer trunk.

“It’s lovely,” I say and run my hand over the wood, admiring the elaborately carved lid. “Where did you get it?” And why? Peter, with his Spartan and comfortless cabin, is not one for material possessions.

“I saw it at the local market and bartered with the woodworker. Don’t worry.” He smiles. “I got a good price.” But it isn’t that; the piece is solid and permanent, so impractical and out of place for the circus. What will he do with it when we move on?

Peter is not an illogical man and I wait for the further explanation that will make sense. He opens the lid and runs his hand along the bottom. Then he lifts it up, revealing a secret compartment, maybe a foot deep—just enough for a small person, if one laid flat. “Oh!” I exclaim.

“Just in case,” he says. He means for me to hide in it, if the SS or police come again. He watches my face and I try to control my reaction to the space, suffocating and coffin-like. “We really haven’t had a suitable hiding place for you here so I thought this might do,” he explains, trying to sound matter-of-fact. But his face is grave. Seeing the police try to arrest the man at the show had shaken Peter, as well. He knows as I do that the Germans or the French police will come again. That we must be ready.

He is trying to protect me. But there is something in his eyes, more than concern or even just affection. I had seen that look once before when Erich and I were first married. I turn away, shaken. I recall then what Noa had said about Peter’s feelings for me. I had been so quick to deny it, not wanting to see or believe. When I peer back at his hopeful eyes, though, I know that she was right. How had I not seen it before? Until now it had been easy to just mark this as a relationship of convenience. Then Noa held a mirror up to my face and I can ignore it no longer. I think back over the months, Peter constantly by my side, trying to protect me. His feelings were not sudden or new. They had been there all the time. How had Noa, so young and naive, seen everything while I had missed it?