The Orphan's Tale(55)

He lifts his head and a light seems to dawn in his eyes. “We should get married,” he declares, taking both of my hands in his own. Married. The word reverberates in my head. Once it had meant something. Now in my mind, I see the papers Erich had thrust before me, saying that none of it had mattered at all, hear the clatter of my wedding ring as it fell to the floor of our apartment.

“Oh, Peter.” There was only once for me and marriage. I cannot fathom anyone wanting me in that way—or ever letting myself get that close to a man again. “We can’t.”

“No, of course not,” he says quickly, unable to mask his disappointment.

I cup his cheek. “In my heart, I am already married to you.”

“Or we could leave,” he says. I am surprised. Peter had always rejected the idea before because there was nowhere else he could perform as he does here. But now with the prospect of a child, everything has changed.

“I can’t leave,” I reply. “Here I can hide.” At least for now. Once I might have taken the chance and fled. This is about something bigger than just my own safety now, though. I touch my stomach once more. “And Noa needs me...”

“The girl?” His expression is puzzled. “Why should she matter? I didn’t think you even liked her.”

“No, of course not, but still...” It’s true, I admit. I disliked Noa from the first, and even more after she had gotten me pulled from the show. But she depends on me, as surely as Theo does her. “You could go if you really wanted,” I offer. The words hurt to say.

He wraps his arms more tightly around me. “I will never leave you,” he says, and his hand lowers to my stomach. “Or our child.”

Someone who will not leave me, I think, wishing for my younger self, the one who might have believed it. “It will be all right,” I say, pushing away my doubts.

“Better than all right. A family.” I smile through my fears. Can such things possibly be? But my child will be Jewish. An image flashes through my mind of Noa making her way blindly through the woods in the snow with Theo before we found her. We are barely able to protect one Jewish child—how on earth would we ever protect two?





14

Noa

“No, no!” Astrid cries during practice the following Sunday, her voice ringing so shrilly through the big top that one of the jugglers practicing below drops her silver rings to the ground with a clatter. “You must go higher!”

I swing my legs harder as Gerda throws me back toward the bar, trying to heed Astrid’s command. But when I make it to the board and look down, her face is still dissatisfied.

“You must get your legs above your head,” she scolds as I climb down the ladder.

“But you said not to break the line of my body, so I thought...” I begin, then stop, knowing I will not win. Astrid has been ill-tempered these past few days, snapping at everything I say and berating me for the same routines that were just fine a few days earlier. Watching her lips curl with displeasure, I wonder if she is still angry about my part in having her removed from the show. She had seemed to forgive me nearly a week earlier but now I’m not so sure.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

She opens her mouth as if there is something she wants to say. “It’s nothing,” she replies finally, but she does not sound as though she means it.

“Astrid, please,” I press. “If there is something, maybe I can help.”

She smiles but there is no happiness in her eyes. “If only that were true,” she says, then walks away and starts up the ladder.

So there is something wrong, I think, knowing better than to press. “Are we going to keep rehearsing?” I ask instead, dreading the answer.

But she shakes her head. “We’re done for today.” She reaches the board and takes the bar, leaps without warning. Though she cannot perform in the show, this has not stopped her from flying, faster and fiercer than ever. She works without a catcher now, barely touching the bar, in a way that seems impossible even as I watch.

I walk across the practice hall to Peter, who has stopped training to watch Astrid. “We have to stop her,” I say. “She’s going to kill herself.”

But his eyes are a mix of admiration and futility and his posture resigned. “I cannot stop her from her greatness, being who she is.”

“This is not greatness—it is suicide,” I retort, surprised that I dare speak so forcefully to him.

Peter stares at me oddly. “Astrid would never kill herself. She has too much to live for.” There is an uneasy tone to his voice. Maybe he knows what is bothering Astrid. But before I can ask, he walks away.

Taking a last worried look up at Astrid, I pull my wrap skirt and blouse on over my practice leotard. I walk from the big top and start across the fairgrounds. It is late afternoon on Sunday, a little over a week since we arrived in Thiers, and I want to feed Theo myself and spend as much time as I can with him before he falls asleep. Close to the tracks the water truck has pulled up and people are hurrying to fill their buckets at the back of it. There are endless buckets everywhere at the circus, for washing and drinking and other things. The first time I’d spied two with my name on them in the row waiting to be filled at Darmstadt, I’d known that I belonged with the circus just a tiny bit more.

I fill my buckets, one for washing and one for drinking, and carry them to the train, eager to change and reach Theo. I climb the stairs of the railcar, taking care not to spill. The sleeper car, where I expected to find him waking from his nap, is empty. Theo is not there.