The Ladies of the Secret Circus

by Constance Sayers

  He looked down and I saw that he had large green eyes, like the spangles on that night’s costume. Those eyes were in stark contrast to his dark-brown hair and hint of brown beard. I sipped my cherry brandy and nodded, grateful for his intervention. Hemingway quickly moved on to another topic, this time poetry. In my short time with them, I realized that just as they preferred to flit through bars, rarely did this group stay on a topic for long, moving from politics to art and finally bullfighting in anticipation of Hemingway’s upcoming trip to Pamplona. Ernest was talking about Spain when two women joined us who were introduced to us as the Steins.

  At the bar, my sister held court. With her coal-black bobbed hair and contrasting light eyes, Esmé had a circle of admirers and had caught the attention of a short Spanish painter who had just joined the group. “Picasso,” they yelled to him. I could see that he was revered by everyone, particularly Hemingway, who shouted at him in Spanish from our table. With one glance, Picasso determined that Esmé was the prize of tonight’s group and began positioning himself to speak to her. As if she sensed his interest, Esmé, who had taken to smoking long cigarettes, turned her back on him and struck up a conversation with an unknown artist. As she faced away from him, I observed the Spaniard laugh, then down his drink as though he was leaving. With his popularity, I knew that Esmé would never let him go. As he was passing, as if on cue, she pretended to drop her cigarette in front of him. Dutifully, he picked it up and returned it to her lips then lit it.

  I’d seen it enough to know what would happen next. Esmé would go home with this Picasso gentleman. After ending up in bed together and because she is a great beauty, he would insist—demand—to paint her. The world would not be complete until her sketch was realized on his canvas, and no one—no one—could capture her or understand her better than him.

  She would finally acquiesce to be interpreted on his canvas and would then strip for him. For her, it was the ultimate form of attention that she craved, and yet, for her, the need for attention was bottomless. After he had agonized over the flesh colors of the insides of her thighs and the perfect hue of her nipples, like foreplay, he would finally fuck her. And in the morning, she would leave him. After she’d gone, the artist would go to the canvas expecting to admire his work, only to find it blank.

  At first, he would think that she had stolen his greatest work—for the missing work is always the finest in the artist’s mind—but upon closer inspection, he’d see that it was, indeed, his same canvas. Only now it was bare.

  By early afternoon, the crazed artist would have made his way to the last known location of the circus, claiming magic or witchcraft.

  It is always the same. Always. The painter’s name is just different.

  You see, Esmé and I cannot be captured, not in photos, nor in paintings. In the morning, the canvas will always revert to white and film remains blank. But it’s the painters who are bothered the most. They labor, connecting lines into form to create Esmé’s upturned nose, her small cherubic mouth, only to find that by dawn she has faded into the canvas like she was never there at all.

  Within the hour, though, Esmé and the Spaniard had gone. Émile Giroux took a chair and wedged it between Hadley and me. She was amused by his audacity and widened her eyes. He was wearing brown corduroy pants with a sloppy jacket—all the men in Montparnasse seem to wear brown corduroys and sloppy jackets. He told me that he has never gotten a ticket to my circus. I nodded. So this was why he was trying to converse with me. Now it all made sense. I sighed, a little disappointed. “Let me guess. You haven’t gotten a ticket, but all your friends have?” The brandy had gone to my head a little.

  “I hear it’s quite a spectacle,” he admitted, leaning back in his chair. “I never much liked the circus, though.” He studied my face, causing me to look away. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Turn away.” He reached over and turned my chin toward him, adjusting it up to the low lighting. “I should paint you.”

  I smiled. He could, but my likeness would be gone before the paint dried.

  “Are you hungry?”

  It was an unexpected question, and I realized that I was famished.

  “Let’s get out of here.” He didn’t move, but his eyes motioned toward the entrance.

  “Let me guess?” My eyebrow rose. “Back to your flat to paint me?”

  He shook his head, finally standing. “No, to Les Halles.”

  Hadley overheard him. “The market?” She made a face.

  “Come,” he said, taking my hand.

  I looked at Hadley for her opinion.

  “He’s honestly the best of all of them.” She winked. “And he knows Paris better than anyone. I’d go.”

  Her earnest smile made me warm to her. Unlike the flappers, like Esmé, who had dyed and cropped their hair and painted their faces with sapphire and black eye shadow and dark-red lips, Hadley kept her face pristine. There was little pretension to her, and I’d liked her instantly. My own silver hair flowed down my back in ringlets like hers. As it is the fashion, I know that we have both been under pressure to bob our hair. She and I looked like we belonged in another time, like two American Gibson girls.

  Sylvie, in a cozy corner and deep in conversation with an American socialite, eyed me warily as I made my way to the door. “Can you get home all right?” I could feel Émile’s impatience at the door. I’d never been alone with a man before and I was hoping that Sylvie wouldn’t spook me.

  It was the woman who teased, twirling a strand of Sylvie’s hair. “She’s not going home tonight—at least not with you.”

  Her eyes traveled to Émile pacing outside, and a wicked smile formed on her face. My face felt hot. I pushed through the door into the night.

  During the taxi ride across the Pont Neuf, I could see that he was trying to impress me and that the price of the cab would likely cause him not to eat for a day, so this gesture was touching. We arrived at the First Arrondissement and the entrance of Les Halles, a hint of the bone-colored stones of the imposing Gothic Église Saint-Eustache shining above the pavilions of the central market. Even though it was two in the morning, the market still buzzed with activity.

  Men were steering carts—trucks and black cars were weaving among horse-drawn carriages—all with buyers and sellers either loading or unloading crates of apples, cauliflower, meat, potatoes. Boys held empty baskets on their heads while weary women wandered around with full ones tucked under their arms. And throughout the crowd, men in evening coats guided women in ball gowns and furs, smoking long cigarettes, through the halls.

  When I normally left the circus, I did so with Sylvie or Esmé. I had never ventured this far on my own. From the expert manner that he turned past the carts and wove through the crowds, I could tell he came here often. We cut through the opening of one of the marts.

  “Have you been here before?” I could see hints of his breath in the cold air.

  I shook my head.

  “My mother had a flower and fruit cart,” he said. Counting off on his fingers, he walked backward like a tour guide. “There is a flower and fruit pavilion; a vegetable, butter, and cheese pavilion; fish and poultry and then charcuterie, of course.” He pointed to the farthest structure. “My father was a butcher. He was in that pavilion over there.”

  Looking up at the ceiling, I could see the moonlight shining down through the windows. I couldn’t imagine growing up so free, running around the different markets under the iron-and-glass pavilions all day and night.

  “I never…” I stood there in the center of it all, amazed.

  “It’s my favorite part of Paris,” said Émile, grinning. “It is Paris, to me.” His hair had just a touch of curl in it, like he’d missed a few weeks’ worth of haircuts. “Here.” He pointed to a restaurant at the end of the block. The sign read: L’ESCARGOT.

  Tucked inside the market, the restaurant was a gem. Its black ironwork facade recalled the Belle Époque period. Inside, the rest
aurant was warm and cozy. We took a seat in the corner.

  “Their onion soup is the best. They use red, not white onions.” Émile ordered two glasses of champagne and a heaping single order of soup.

  The wood ceiling with its low chandeliers as well as the intimacy of sharing this bowl of soup with this man had been such an unexpected pleasure. This curious order had me wondering if he couldn’t afford two, but when the soup arrived, I understood. The waiter carried a giant pottery bowl with bread and melted cheese spilling out. The cheese was stubborn; it clung to the bread, so I wound my spoon until I got a good chunk of it. The country bread was more than a thumb’s width thick. The soup was too hot, but the first taste of the salty-sweet broth on my lips was heaven.

  The last bowl of soup, the one Sylvie had sneaked out of the kitchen and into my room, had been the genesis of my metamorphosis. As Émile took his first spoonful and shut his eyes in ecstasy, I considered that this broth just might possibly change my life as well.

  What is it about soup? “Magnifique,” I said, smiling.

  Émile wound his own ribbon of cheese. “You have not seen much of Paris, have you?”

  I ignored him. “I hear you paint long arms and legs on women.”

  He laughed. “If you let me paint you, I promise that I would paint normal legs on you.” The soup was messy and our spoons and hands were entwined. That we had both eaten the same thing, tasted the salty broth and red onions on our tongues, was an intimate gesture. He inched closer to me, and I began to notice details—his upper lip was thin, yet his lower lip was full. It was incongruous, making him look like he had the beginnings of a child’s pout. I saw the gold glint of stubble on his upper lip and I knew I was not meant to see these accidental sprouts of hair. Those details were personal, but we had now slid into intimate hours when such things were revealed. The day had gone on too long.

  “Why don’t you talk about your circus?”

  I hesitated, but there was something about him that seemed so honest that it felt wrong not to tell him the real reason. “We can’t.” I thought about my response for a moment and how lacking it was. I tried a different approach. “Hadley tells me that you could paint an exact replica of an arm or a leg, but you don’t. Is that correct?”

  He smiled. “I have the skill to do an exact replica. I could give you an Auguste Marchant painting if that is what you prefer.”

  While I had never seen a painting by Auguste Marchant, I think I understood the point he was making. “Like you, I see the world differently, but I cannot discuss it because you wouldn’t understand how I see it.”

  “You’re a surrealist, then. Your mind is unknowable?”

  I considered his question. “Not all of me, but yes. What I do is unknowable and mysterious, not unlike you.”

  As I said this, I knew it was a lie. We were not producing art—although many people have accused us of being performance artists, like Kiki or Bricktop with their songs and dances, or illusionists, given to elaborate trickery like carnival fortune-tellers or mesmerists.

  The performers of Le Cirque Secret were more than that of course, but I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—say what we were.

  We both reached for the last bread and our fingers bumped into each other. I took in his muddy-green eyes, like the Seine when it hadn’t rained in weeks. I was frozen. After a moment, he insisted I take the last bit of bread.

  At the end of the night, I told Émile that I could get myself home. Despite the intimacy, the evening with him made me feel as though I could never be anything other than alone. Once in the cab, the driver took me back to the empty space. “Are you sure?” The driver looked puzzled; they all do when we ask to be left off in abandoned spaces. “This part is not so safe.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. I waited for the cab to leave and found myself standing at the edge of the woods at Bois de Boulogne. The breeze across the trees felt good against my skin and I closed my eyes and thought of the circus door. The door came first, followed by the grand stone steeds that guarded it; finally the round building appeared. I waited for a moment for everything to assemble, and then I walked through the doors that shut tightly behind me.

  May 11, 1925

  This morning, Sylvie and I went to the markets on the Rue Mouffetard. I saw Émile Giroux there buying tomatoes and my heart leapt. He looked different in the daytime—or perhaps I had just constructed the image of him in my head all wrong. But my heart beat faster and I found myself at a loss for words.

  He smiled when he saw me, but he kept his eyes on the produce. “So you can appear in the daylight.”

  “Dracula?” This statement hurt me. Was he comparing me to Bram Stoker’s undead count? I considered that it was closer to the truth than he knew.

  “I was thinking Cinderella.”

  I blushed and looked down at my shoes.

  “Picasso was in quite a state the other morning over your sister.”

  “Really?” I feigned surprise. The painters always showed up at the last known address of Le Cirque Secret, expecting it to still be there, holding their blank canvases, claiming it was witchcraft. But by then we’d moved on to another part of the city—north to Saint-Denis or nestled in the trees or the Rue Réaumur.

  As he handed me an apple, I could see that his hands were stained with aqua and brown paint. I bit into it and felt some of the errant juice drip down my chin. I wiped it.

  “After seeing your face, Cecile Cabot, I believe I am done with landscapes forever.”

  It now made sense—the weathered look of him—painting hills and lavender and sunflowers. I was about to respond when Sylvie came to show me something: this morning’s edition of Le Figaro.

  “Look.” She pointed to the article. “The reporter Jacques Mourier has written an entire article about you.”

  “Me?”

  Émile scanned the article. “I know Jacques,” he said. “He’s quite influential.”

  Sylvie read and summarized: “He’s never seen more artistry displayed than the smooth way you take to the air and slide down the Spanish Web like a silk snake.” She raised her eyebrow.

  “That’s some endorsement,” said Émile, his voice almost musical with excitement.

  “Any mention of the cats?” I was afraid to look at it.

  “One line, at the very end. He says they’re lovely, but every circus has cats.” Her voice fell and she folded the paper.

  I winced. This would infuriate Esmé.

  With Sylvie’s arrival, however, the spell between Émile and me had been broken. He gathered two more apples and paid for all three.

  “Monsieur Giroux,” I called out.

  “Please, call me Émile.”

  I paused before saying his name. His glorious name. “Émile, where do you live?”

  “Why? Are you coming for a visit?” His hair glinted in the morning sun. No one had ever looked at me with such desire.

  I blushed and I heard Sylvie snicker. She was observing me flirt—something I had never done before. “Your ticket.”

  “Rue Delambre.” He began to tell me about floors and numbers and I waved him away.

  I do not need house numbers or floors. The tickets to Le Cirque Secret don’t work that way. The admission is enchanted. The circus thrives on the energy of people who desire it. The surest way to get a ticket to Le Cirque Secret is to wish for it—blowing on birthday candles, wishing on stars, or tossing pennies—those devotions work well.

  And the tickets have minds of their own. They’re wicked little things, preferring patrons who barter their soul for admission—say, someone who says or thinks “I’d sell my soul for a ticket” will most surely find one on their doorstep, if for no other reason than to tempt them.

  As one of the mortal residents of the circus, I possessed a certain amount of sway with the tickets, but they were moody little things and you have to ask them respectfully, and not too often, for a favor. I simply had to wish him a ticket, as I did the circus door, and one should appear for
the next performance. Yet I nodded politely while he made me repeat his street number and address back to him.

  May 16, 1925

  Today was the unveiling of our new act. The clown Millet delivered a bouquet of blush peonies, cream roses, and green hydrangeas to me before the show, a gift from Émile Giroux, who would be watching me from the second row, center.

  After the article, audiences expected the corkscrew, so they got it. While I’d seen Esmé performing her illusions, I didn’t appear to have that same talent. The ability to levitate was my gift, so I threw myself into perfecting my signature move. While Hugo’s act had been a straightforward trapeze performance, it needed to change with the enhancement of magic. Over the next week, Hugo and I began directing several clowns and women in a performance that started on the ground and moved to the air.

  Madame Plutard balked when I asked for coordinating leotards in the same striped pattern in hues of aqua, soft pink, and moss green with elaborate gold-and-cream piping. All the performers donned white wigs to look like me. The baroque effect was something similar to the colors you’d imagine of the fashion of Versailles.

  The dancers took to the center stage, and their movements resembled a waltz in the court of Louis XVI. The sea of them parted and I appeared in my blush-and-gold version of their outfits, emerging from a troupe of jugglers and synchronized tumblers to ascend the Spanish Web. As I rose above them, the audience was so quiet that I could hear champagne glasses tinkling while the orchestra hushed. Then Niccolò matched his orchestra to my moves, and the song pounded through the hall in a furious, twisting rhythm.

  At the end, when I took my final bow, I could see the outlines of him as he rose to his feet.

  I was a shadow no more.