The Orphan's Tale(7)

He did not put his arms around me but remained stiff. “Ingrid,” he said, using my full name and not the pet name he’d given me, “we need to divorce.”

“Divorce?” I wasn’t sure I had ever said the word before. Divorce was something that happened in a movie or a book about rich people. I didn’t know anyone who had ever done it—in my world you married until you died. “Is there another woman?” I croaked, barely able to manage the words. Of course there was not. The passion between us had been unbreakable—until now.

Surprise and pain flashed over his face at the very idea. “No!” And in that one word I knew exactly the depths of his love and that this awful thing was hurting him. So why would he even say it? “The Reich has ordered all officers with Jewish wives to divorce,” he explained. How many, I wondered, could there possibly be? He pulled out some documents and handed them to me with smooth strong hands. The papers carried a hint of his cologne. There was not even a spot for me to sign, my agreement or disagreement irrelevant—it was fait accompli. “It has been ordered by the Führer,” he adds. His voice was dispassionate, as though describing the day-to-day matters that went on in his department. “There is no choice.”

“We’ll run,” I said, forcing the quaver from my voice. “I can be packed in half an hour.” Improbably I lifted the roast from the table, as though that was the first thing I would take. “Bring the brown suitcase.” But Erich stood stiffly, feet planted. “What is it?”

“My job,” he replied. “People would know I was gone.” He would not go with me. The roast dropped from my hands, plate shattering, the smell of warm meat and gravy wafting sickeningly upward. It was preferable to the rest of the immaculate table, a caricature of the perfect life I thought we’d had. The brown liquid splattered upward against my stockings, staining them.

I jutted my chin defiantly. “Then I shall keep the apartment.”

But he shook his head, reaching into his billfold and emptying the contents into my hands. “You need to go. Now.” Go where? My family was all gone; I did not have papers out of Germany. Still I found my suitcase and packed mechanically, as if going on holiday. I had no idea what to take.

Two hours later when I was packed and ready to go, Erich stood before me in his uniform, so very much like the man I had spied in the audience beyond the lights the day we met. He waited awkwardly as I started for the door, as if seeing out a guest.

I stood in front of him for several seconds, staring up beseechingly, willing his eyes to meet mine. “How can you do this?” I asked. He did not answer. This is not happening, a voice inside me seemed to say. In other circumstances, I would have refused to go. But I had been caught off guard, the wind knocked out of me by an unexpected punch. I was simply too stunned to fight. “Here.” I pulled off my wedding band and held it out. “This isn’t mine anymore.”

Looking down at the ring, his whole face seemed to fall, as if realizing for the first time the finality of what he was doing. I wondered in that moment if he would tear up the papers that decreed our marriage over and say we would face the future together, whatever the odds. He swiped at his eyes.

When his hand moved away the hardness of the “new Erich,” as I called him in the recent months when it had all seemed to change, reappeared. He pushed the ring away and it clattered to the floor. I hurried to pick it up, cheeks stinging from the roughness of his once-gentle touch. “You keep it,” he said. “You can sell it if you need money.” As if the one thing that bound us together meant so little to me. He fled the apartment without looking back and in that moment the years we shared seemed to evaporate and disappear.

Of course I do not know Herr Neuhoff well enough to tell him any of this. “I’ve left Berlin for good,” I say, firmly enough to foreclose further discussion. I run my finger over my wedding band, which I had put on once more as I’d left Berlin so as to attract less attention while traveling.

“So where will you go?” Herr Neuhoff asks. I do not answer. “You should leave Germany,” he adds gently. Leaving. It was the thing that no one talked about anymore, the door that had closed. I’d heard Mama suggest it once years earlier, before things had gotten bad. Then the idea had seemed laughable—we were Germans and our circus had been here for centuries. In hindsight it was the only option, but none of us had been wise enough to take it because no one knew how bad things would become. And now that chance was gone. “Or you could join us,” Herr Neuhoff adds.

“Join you?” The surprise in my voice borders on rude.

He nods. “Our circus. I am missing an aerialist since Angelina broke her hip.” I stare at him, disbelieving. Though the seasonal workers and even performers might transfer between circuses, one circus family working for another is unheard of—I can no more imagine myself part of the Circus Neuhoff than a leopard changing its spots. The suggestion makes sense, though—and the way he phrases it does not sound as if he is offering me charity, but rather that I would be filling a need.

Still, my spine stiffens. “I couldn’t possibly.” To stay here would mean being beholden to Herr Neuhoff, another man. After Erich, I will never do that again.

“Really, you’d be doing me a huge service.” His voice is sincere. I am more than just a spare performer. Having a Klemt join his circus, well, that would be something, at least to the older folks who remembered our act at its heyday. With my name and reputation as an aerialist, I am like a collectible, an item to be had.