The Orphan's Tale(86)

Pushing the memory away, I leap and try to fly once more. There is nothing left for me here, though. Jump, let go of it all. The thoughts tick rhythmically through my head with each swing. Unable to stand it any longer, I launch myself back to the board a second time. My legs tremble as I look down. Was this how it had been for the clockmaker? I see him hanging from the ropes with his neck broken, mouth agape, limbs stiff. I could jump, end it as surely as Metz had. If I die here it will be on my own terms, not at the hands of others. I stretch one foot over the edge of the board, testing...

“Astrid?” Noa calls from the entranceway below. Startled, I wobble, grabbing on to the ladder to steady myself. I had been so caught up in my thoughts I had not seen her return. Her face is a mask of worry. Had she seen what I was contemplating? Or guessed?

She does not seem to notice what I’ve been up to, though. Instead, she motions me toward her, watching somberly as I climb down the ladder.

“What’s wrong?” I demand as my uneasiness grows. “Tell me.”

She holds out an envelope to me. “A letter came for you.”

I freeze. Letters can only mean bad news. I take it with trembling hands, bracing for news of Peter. The envelope bears postage markings from Darmstadt, though. I hold it at arm’s length, as though its contents might be contagious. Just for a moment I want to remain suspended in time, shielded from whatever is written there.

But I have never been any good at hiding from the truth. I tear open the seal. Inside is another envelope, addressed to me, not at the Circus Neuhoff but rather my family’s former winter quarters. From Berlin. Erich’s blocky script reaches out like a hand. Ingrid Klemt, he’d written, using my maiden name. Not his. Even after so much time, the rejection still stings. Someone, whoever had forwarded the letter, had crossed it out and added my stage name, Astrid Sorrell. I drop the envelope. Noa retrieves it quickly and hands it to me. What could Erich possibly want?

“Do you want me to open it for you?” Noa asks gently.

I shake my head. “I can do it.” I rip open the envelope, which is stained and worn. A slip of paper flutters out. My eyes fill with tears as I pick it up and the familiar handwriting, not Erich’s, appears.

Dearest Ingrid,

I pray that this letter has reached you, and that it finds you well and safe. I fled Monte Carlo ahead of the invasion and did not have time to write. But I have reached Florida and found work at a carnival.

“What is it?” Noa asks.

“Jules.” My youngest brother, the weakest and most improbable, had somehow survived. He must have sent the letter to me in Berlin and Erich had sent it on.

“I thought they were all...”

“So did I.” My heart beats faster now. Jules is alive. In America.

“But how?” Noa asks.

“I don’t know,” I reply, scarcely able to process my own questions, let alone Noa’s. “Jules was managing the circus in the south of France when the war started. Somehow he made it out.” I continue reading silently.

I wrote to Mama and Papa for months but received no response. I do not know if you have heard, but I am so very sorry to tell you that they died in a camp in Poland.

“Oh!” I cover my mouth to stop the sob that rips from my throat. Though I have long known in my heart my parents could not have possibly escaped, some part of me had clung to the hope that they might still be alive. Now I am confronted with the truth and it is so much worse.

“What is it?” Noa asks. She bends to read the letter over my shoulder. Then she wraps her arms around me from behind and rocks me back and forth gently. “Astrid, I’m so, so sorry.” I do not answer, but sit silently, letting it sink in that the very worst I had feared is true.

“There’s more to the letter,” Noa says gently several seconds later. She gestures to the paper that lies crumpled in my lap, pointing to the text a few lines down where I had stopped reading after learning about my parents. I shake my head. I cannot. She takes the paper and clears her throat, then begins to read aloud:

I have not been able to find the twins. It may well be that it is only the two of us now. I know that you do not want to leave your husband, but I have arranged for a visa at the Swiss consulate in Lisbon. They say it is good for forty-five days. Please consider coming to me, at least until the war is over, and then you can return. We only have each other now.

Yours, Jules

I try to process it all as Noa hands the paper back to me. The envelope bears official markings from Berlin. Jules had sent it to the apartment Erich and I once shared. Erich must have read it and then sent it on by courier, trying his hardest to make sure it reached me. He had forwarded it to my family’s home in Darmstadt, knowing somehow that I would go there. But there are no winter quarters for my family anymore, so the postmaster must have delivered it to the Neuhoff estate. Perhaps Helga, who remained behind each year to mind the winter quarters in our absence, had corrected my name and forwarded it onward to our first stop in Thiers.

“How did it get here?” I ask.

Noa clears her throat. “Forwarded from Thiers,” she says. I nod. The circus always leaves the address of its next destination behind for bills and other mail. So many stops along the way—the letter might have never reached me at all. But it had.

“My family,” I say out loud. I am not sure what that means anymore. The sob that I have held back for so many months rips from my throat. I am crying then for the brother who had lived and for the so many others who had not. My parents and brothers, all gone.