The Ladies of the Secret Circus

by Constance Sayers

  “I have been looking for you,” he said, breathless. “You are not easy to find.”

  “You could have found her at the circus,” said Sylvie sharply. She looked beyond him down the street toward our destination, hoping this was a momentary diversion.

  “Can I walk with you alone?” His doe-like eyes pleaded with me.

  Sylvie tensed. I motioned to her to go on.

  “I’ll be at the Closerie des Lilas waiting for you.” She gave Émile a final, disapproving glance before placing her hands in her pockets, spinning on her heels, and starting toward Boulevard du Montparnasse at a pace that let me know she didn’t agree with my decision.

  Émile and I ambled down the street in the opposite direction, in silence.

  “Why did you need to see me?” I stared straight ahead at the crowd in front of me, not meeting his eyes.

  “I hated that you saw me with her,” he said. His tone was desperate. “I needed to explain.”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation, Émile.” Clutching my purse tightly, I had a vivid recollection of that night. I was humiliated that he saw me in such a state, my bloodshot eyes, tearstained cheeks, and swollen face.

  “But I do.” He stepped in front of me. The soft breeze blew at his hair, and car headlights illuminated him as they passed. “I don’t want her. I don’t know how that could have happened.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you do.” I raised my eyebrow.

  He placed his hands on my shoulders to stop me from moving on. “I tried to find you, but I could not get back into the circus.”

  That was a curious development. Father had shut off Émile’s access to us.

  “Then you didn’t come back here, either. When I couldn’t find you, I painted you, again and again. Each night. I would paint you and stare at you, telling you all the things that I am telling you now, and I would wake every morning—”

  “And I would be gone,” I said. Am I terrible for admitting that I smiled at him then? It was just a small upward tilt of my mouth, but the idea that he had been in agony over me seemed fair. Now we were even.

  “Each time, I tried to change something… your nose or your lips… anything so it wasn’t exactly you.”

  “It isn’t like that, Émile. You can’t paint my essence, even by memory. It has nothing to do with changing my nose or lips.” I could smell the alcohol on his breath. “Have you eaten?”

  He shook his head. “Oh, Cecile. I am so in love with you. After you left, I sent Esmé away. Nothing happened between the two of us, I swear! The look on your face. I could not believe what I had done and how stupidly I’d behaved.” He grabbed his head, like it was pounding. “We’d had too much to drink then we got dancing; that’s all. It was hot in my apartment. You must believe me.”

  “Can I ask you something?” I stood close to him, looking up.

  “Of course, anything,” he said. He began to wind up for another wave of protestations of his innocence, but I held up my hand to silence them.

  “Even if what you say is true, had I not come to your door when I did, what would have happened between you and my sister?” The question lingered. I could see the guilt on his face. “I see.” Having my answer, I turned and walked down the street. Two blocks ahead, I could still make out Sylvie’s shape ahead of me.

  “I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” he called, running after me, catching my arm. “I will do anything that you require to make it right. I will give up painting. We can move away together.”

  I shook free of him. How dare he touch me when he just admitted to me that he’d wanted my sister. There was a cruel streak in me that longed to tell him there was nothing to be done, his choice had been made when he’d invited her to his apartment. The desire to see him twist for what he had done to me was great. Before I’d met him, my life had been lonely, but simple. Surely this spiteful inclination comes from Father. I took a few deep breaths in through my nose, trying to calm myself. I took him in and softened, for the man who stood before me looked to be days away from his own death. He had not eaten nor, it seemed, slept for days.

  “Please,” he pleaded with me. He began pacing the street like a madman, tugging at his hair.

  I was startled to see my own internal storm of emotions physically manifested in him. He looked like I felt. Waves of both worry and relief washed over me as I saw that his feelings for me had been very real, but then I realized that he was causing a scene on the street. Women were stepping away from him as they passed us.

  “Let’s get you something to eat.” I took his hand and led him to Closerie des Lilas. As we approached, Sylvie, who’d found a two-seat table, frowned.

  “Why is he still here?”

  “Shut up, Sylvie,” I said, muttering under my breath as I attempted to locate another chair in the crowded café.

  The three of us sat in the corner table while Émile ordered the duck. In this light, I saw the deep cavities that had formed under his eyes and cheekbones. The skin around his lips had taken on a dusty color. His face recalled the painting that Man Ray had done of Marcel Proust on his deathbed.

  The dinner was deadly silent. Sylvie glared at him as he ate, her hands at her sides and her posture as straight and still as a dressmaker’s form. When he’d swallowed the final forkful of duck, Sylvie clapped her hands and announced, “Well, that’s done. You’ve eaten. Can we go now, Cecile?”

  I was taken aback by her rudeness. “Sylvie!”

  Scowling, she pulled out a cigarette and met my eyes, her face defiant.

  After we left the restaurant, Émile reached for my hand. “Please come back with me.”

  The idea of going back to that apartment where I’d stood outside listening to them was unthinkable. As though Sylvie read my mind, she said, “We can all go.”

  This was not the response that either Émile or I wanted. Since dinner, I’d longed to talk with him alone, but Sylvie tagged along behind us, making it clear she wouldn’t be leaving without me. As we ascended the stairs, the memories of that evening came flooding back to me and I paused. Émile, who was opening the door, looked stricken. It was the same angle—him at the door and me on the stairs. A dreadful déjà vu overtook me.

  If the memories were so bad that I was unable to even walk up the steps to his apartment then I could not go through that door; I could not laugh with this man again, kiss him, certainly not make love to him again. Sadly, I knew it was impossible for me to forgive him.

  Émile’s dire condition, however, prodded me on up the stairs, Sylvie in tow. While the color had returned to his face, he was clearly not well. Tentatively, he opened the door and I walked through, Sylvie following. The room was in complete disarray: canvases broken in two, their wooden frames splintered all around the bed; empty and broken liquor bottles littering the floor; records smashed into sharp pieces.

  “What on earth—?” Sylvie was so shocked by the state of the place that she grabbed my hand.

  “Go, if you cannot bear it.” His tone was sharp. “I will understand, Cecile. I deserve it.”

  “You do,” agreed Sylvie. Her heart-shaped face and pursed lips fixated on him.

  “Sylvie.” I shot her a look. Never had I seen her so hostile to anyone.

  Sensing my disgust with her, she turned and walked out the door, shutting it hard behind her. Next I could hear her heavy steps, and then the door at the foot of the stairs opened then shut.

  We were alone.

  Despite Émile’s appearance, his pride returned and he composed himself, straightening but unable look at me. “Can you forgive me?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged.

  “Could you try?”

  I wanted to say no and then turn on my heels and follow Sylvie out the door and return to my life and my trapeze. There would be other admirers, I knew that now. Émile Giroux was too much trouble for a simple girl like me. The words were on my lips. But then I recalled the last two weeks without him; the emptiness. Some moments, when I pictured him out there
in the world, without me, I’d wanted to retch. Until him, I hadn’t been aware of the hollowness inside me. How quickly he’d wormed his way into my small life and heart. “I guess I could try.” It had been so simple to say.

  “That’s all I ask.” There was no satisfaction on his face. I got the sense that he didn’t believe me.

  “What did you do with her painting?”

  “I threw it in the trash.” He ran his hands through his hair, considered the shamble of a room around him.

  It was a lie. “You shouldn’t have done that. It might be valuable one day.”

  “I want nothing to do with her.” I could tell that he longed to punish Esmé for his moment of weakness, but it was no more her fault than his.

  “I will come when I can, Émile.” I stepped over the broken glass pieces and turned the doorknob, leaving him standing amid the ruin.

  June 27, 1925

  A strange illness has plagued me for days. This morning I decided to leave the circus to determine if it is the circus that is making me sick. The longer I stay on the other side, the more I wonder if I wouldn’t be better over there. To my dismay, I am sick on that side as well, throwing up all over the sidewalk in Montmartre.

  When I returned, it was late and I met Esmé at the door. I was surprised by her appearance. The dress she wore was quite revealing, enough to see that she was not wearing a bra. Her eyes were glassy from crying and heavily lined with kohl. If I did not know her, I would have thought she was a prostitute.

  “Get out of my way.” She nearly knocked me over. Her voice gave her away—she was surprised to see me.

  “Are you okay?” I reached my hand out to touch her.

  She stopped and peeled my fingers from her arm. “I will never be okay again.” She choked the words out as little heaves emitted from her body.

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Émile,” she said, cutting me off. “You have everything.” When she turned to face me, it was not the usual veneer. Her face was gaunt; her eyes glassy and dead. “Why him, too?” Those few words seem to have drained her. Spent, she turned and pushed through the front doors of the circus and into the night.

  After Father had sent her away to the White Forest, I’d sworn that I would never harm my sister again. Whether she accepted it or not, we were connected in body and spirt. To see my twin so broken has made my decision easier. I will not be the cause of her suffering any longer.

  June 28, 1925

  I went to Émile’s apartment. Thankfully, the place was cleaner. He looked at me standing outside the door and pulled me in. “What is wrong?”

  From his face, I saw that Émile had hoped that we were reunited so he could focus on things like his canvases again. In the corner there was a new painting, a nude of a woman. While she was not a beautiful woman, he had discovered the spark inside of her and drawn it out and onto his paintbrush. I could only wonder how he had achieved this. He was an artist, after all. If he seduced his models, it was only part of his craft, perfecting it as he did his brushstrokes. While I had come here with the sole intent of saying goodbye to him, it was at this precise moment that I knew for certain my decision was the correct one. Though I’d longed to be, I would never be the woman for him. I could see clearly that, as the years passed, I would become a shell, measuring myself against each model. Without malice, his talent and passion along with their consequences would chisel away at me.

  He was wiping brushes, his clothes spotted with errant paint strokes, but he placed them on the table and took my head in his hands, kissing me deeply.

  I pulled back. “It’s Esmé.” I found that I could not take my eyes off the painting, the woman’s eyes staring at me in pity.

  “What about her?” He believed that he had won me again, making her irrelevant.

  “She loves you.” My breath was shallow. As I spoke the words, I knew that I was doing the right thing, yet in my heart, I had never wanted anything more than this man.

  “That is ridiculous,” he said, laughing, and yet there was a flicker across his face, perhaps some part of him flattered. To be adored by a beautiful woman such as Esmé was a conquest, whether he loved her or not.

  “It’s not possible for us to be together, Émile.”

  Starting in his eyes, which dimmed like the chandeliers in the circus just before the performance begins, I watched the light leave him. The fade of his normally bright smile came next, once my words had fully reached him.

  “But I only love you, Cecile. I don’t love her.”

  “I won’t destroy my sister, Émile. I do love you, but I love her more.” A flush came over my body, causing me to become sick again in one swift wave. Searching for something, I ran to the window, reaching for the washbasin and throwing up in it.

  Émile led me to the bed, where I gripped the bedsheets with my fists in anticipation of the next wave that I could feel forming. He touched my cheek lightly. “You don’t have a fever.”

  He slid next to me and placed his arms around me. “Cecile.”

  “Yes,” I said, briefly allowing myself one last moment to fully embrace the warmth and weight of him as he pressed against my body.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  July 1, 1925

  I visited a doctor. Everything was strange to me, from the small office where Sylvie and I waited to the entire process of discovering that I was, indeed, pregnant. For me nothing has changed. I have decided to raise this child in the circus world. It would be the little piece of Émile that I could keep.

  I found Esmé in her dressing room. She was about to bar the door with her arm again, but I would not be begging her to talk to me anymore.

  “What do you want?”

  “He is yours,” I said, spitting the words out. “I have told him that I will not see him again.” Pulling my sweater around my neck, I turned to leave. As I walked down the hallway, I knew that I’d left her standing in her doorway both speechless—and elated.

  True to my word, I refused to see Émile, despite his pleas. If my sister wanted him, then I would step aside. I was sure it would only take a modest bit of coaxing on her part to change his devotions from me to her.

  August 8, 1925

  Before tonight’s performance, I was sick again and went to the animals’ stalls where I wouldn’t be discovered vomiting. I was near His Majesty’s stable—an elaborate, lavish corral with a velvet curtain fit for a king—when I spied Esmé, covered in blood, scrubbing herself in a nearby empty stall.

  I had always suspected there was a pattern to our circus. Tomorrow, Father was planning to return, and we would likely move our location again, finding ourselves back at the Bois de Boulogne for the month. As she dried herself with a towel, I could see bloodstains on it. She stood there shivering in the hallway, her silk slip illuminating the outlines of her nipples and the tops of her thighs.

  Later, Sylvie and I were at Le Select, where no one made room for us at the bar. I heard whispering about two men who went missing near the last known location of our circus. Hemingway looked up from the table and asked me if I knew anything about it. All eyes turned to Sylvie and me, cigarettes puffing wildly.

  “She doesn’t know anything,” said Émile from a corner seat at the bar. Even Sylvie was touched that he defended us. Seeing him sent a charge of pain through my body like an errant current.

  When I returned to the circus, Father asked me to accompany him on the Ferris wheel ride that Curio had completed. I was hesitant because I knew that this ride led to the White Forest. I climbed into the car, and with a swipe of his hand, we began to descend.

  “They’re saying that our circus is responsible for several men’s disappearances.”

  He looked far away tonight. I knew what he was—a great general in the Army of the Underworld—yet he has been the only parent I have ever known. Although I have seen his cruelty, I felt the tug of sadness and love for him.

  “Who has said this?” He was preoccupied, looking down at the River Styx
to the right of us. “Giroux?”

  “No,” I said. “It is all the gossip in Montparnasse. It’s in the newspaper as well.”

  “It isn’t your concern, Cecile.” Father’s response was firm.

  “Why?” Leaning forward, I touched his leg. “Earlier tonight before the performance, I caught Esmé in the animal stalls washing blood off herself. Then I heard of men going missing, and now you are here and I know what that means. The circus will move. There is a pattern here.”

  He gazed over at me, like I was a much-loved doll. “You look so much like her… Juno.” He closed his eyes at the memory of my mother; the vision of her still cut him. How hard to be a powerful being and yet be denied the only thing you’ve ever desired. It was the first time I saw the imprint of his own prison on him. “But both you and your sister have cost me dearly.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, so that I absorbed each word. “When you were born, I should have thrown both you and Esmé into the Styx and let it have you.”

  My eyes slowly traveled up to meet his. Those flat pupils stared back at me, unflinching.

  Terror swept through me. I gripped the handle of the ride.

  “I could do it now, in fact,” he said, his tone measured like he was discussing the weather. “Start with you, right here, then her next.” He tapped his cane, then stroked the arm of the gondola seat.

  Tensing, I sat back in my own seat as far away from him as I could get. He had a strange sense of humor, but this wasn’t one bit funny. I felt my heart beating wildly. Would he really throw me from the car? Was this why he’d lured me here?

  He leaned back and draped his arm on the gondola seat. “Relax, Cecile. I’m not in a vengeful mood tonight, although what you girls put me through, no other daemon would take it, I assure you. As part of me, though, I know what you’ll do before you even think of it. That’s why I know that you cannot handle what we are—what you are. You think you can handle anything—oh, you’re a trapeze star now, the talk of Paris,” he said mockingly. “You are quite correct that your sister has killed those men. Now I know what you’ll ask next.”