The Immortalists(26)

‘This,’ she says, ‘is Gran.’

Simon leans over the table. He recognizes Gertie’s mother from the photo tacked above Klara’s bed. In one image, she stands with a tall, dark-haired man on top of a galloping horse, stocky in her shorts and tied-off Western blouse. In another, the cover of a program, she is tiny-waisted and teeny-footed. She lifts the lip of her skirt with one hand; with the other, she walks six men on leashes. Below the men are the words, ‘The QUEEN of BURLESQUE! Come see Miss KLARA KLINE’S muscles shake and shiver like a BOWL of JELLY in a GALE of WIND – the DANCE that John the Baptist LOST HIS HEAD over!’

Simon snorts. ‘That’s Ma’s mom?’

‘Yup. And that,’ says Klara, pointing to the man on the horse, ‘is her dad.’

‘No shit.’ The man isn’t quite handsome – he has thick, mustache-like eyebrows and Gertie’s large nose – but he has a glowering sort of charisma. He looks like Daniel. ‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve been researching. I couldn’t find her birth certificate, but I know she arrived at Ellis Island in 1913 on a ship called the Ultonia. She was Hungarian; I’m pretty sure she was an orphan. Aunt Helga arrived later. So Gran came with a girl’s dance troupe and lived in a boarding house: the De Hirsch Home for Working Girls.’

Klara picks up a piece of paper on which several pictures have been photocopied: a large stone building, a dining hall full of seated, brown-haired girls, and the portrait of a severe-looking woman – the Baroness de Hirsch, reads the caption – in a high-necked blouse, gloves, and square hat, all of them black.

‘I mean, God knows – Gran was Jewish, and she had no family. If it weren’t for the home, she’d’ve probably been on the street. But this place was really proper. It taught all the girls to sew, get married young, and Gran wasn’t like that. At some point, she left, and that’s when she started doing this.’ Klara fingers the burlesque program. ‘She got her start in vaudeville. She performed in dance halls, dime museums, amusement parks – nickel dumps, too, which is what they called movie theaters. And then she met him.’

Carefully, she lifts a page hidden under the program and passes it to Simon. It’s a marriage certificate.

‘Klara Kline and Otto Gorski,’ says Klara. ‘He was a Wild West rider with Barnum & Bailey, a world champion. So here’s my theory: Gran met Otto on the way to a gig, fell in love and joined the circus.’

Klara pulls a folded piece of paper out of her wallet. It’s another picture, but this one shows Klara Sr. sliding from the top of the circus tent to the bottom, suspended only from a rope that she holds in her teeth. Below the photo is a caption: Klara Kline and her Jaws of Life!

‘Why are you showing me all this?’ asks Simon.

Klara’s cheeks are pink. ‘I want to do a combination show: mostly magic, plus one death-defying feat. I’m teaching myself the Jaws of Life.’

Simon stops chewing his vegetable korma. ‘That’s nuts. You don’t know how she did it. There must have been some trick.’

Klara shakes her head. ‘No trick – it was real. Otto, Gran’s husband? He was killed in a riding accident in 1936. After that, Gran moved back to New York with Ma. In 1941, she did the Jaws of Life across Times Square, from the Edison Hotel to the roof of the Palace Theater. Halfway through, she fell. She died.’

‘Jesus Christ. Why didn’t we know about this?’

‘Because Ma never talked about it. It was a pretty big story back then, but I think she’s always been ashamed of Gran. She wasn’t normal,’ says Klara, nodding at the photo of Gertie’s mother on the horse, a denim shirt hiked up to reveal her muscular stomach. ‘Besides, it was such a long time ago – Ma was only six when she died. After that, Ma went to live with Aunt Helga.’

Simon knows Gertie was raised by her mother’s sister, a hawkish older woman who spoke mostly Hungarian and never married. She came to 72 Clinton on Jewish holidays, bringing hard candies wrapped in colored foil. But her nails were long and pointed, her smell was that of a box unopened for decades, and Simon was always afraid of her.

Now he watches Klara put the photocopies back in her folder. ‘Klara, you can’t do this. It’s insane.’

‘I’m not going to die, Simon.’

‘How the hell do you know that?’

‘Because I do.’ Klara opens her bag, puts the folder inside, and zips it shut. ‘I refuse to.’

‘Right,’ says Simon. ‘You and every other person who’s ever lived.’

Klara doesn’t respond. Simon knows this is how she gets when she has an idea. Like a dog with a bone, Gertie used to say, but that isn’t quite true; it’s more that Klara becomes impermeable, unreachable. She exists somewhere else.

‘Hey.’ Simon flicks her arm. ‘What’ll you call it? Your act?’

Klara smiles in her feline way: the sharp little canines, a shake of glitter in her eyes.

‘The Immortalist,’ she says.

Robert holds Simon’s face in his hands. Simon has woken in a panic from another bad dream.

‘What are you so afraid of?’ Robert asks.

Simon shakes his head. It’s four in the afternoon, a Sunday, and they’ve spent the entire day in bed, save for the half hour when they made poached eggs and bread slathered in cherry jam.