by Pam Jenoff
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. Her face softens somewhat. “But it’s true, isn’t it? You don’t think I can do it.”
“No, I didn’t think this would work when Herr Neuhoff suggested it.” Her tone is neutral, matter-of-fact. “I still don’t.”
She reaches out and takes my arm and I hold my breath, hoping for a reassuring word. Instead, she rips the tape off my wrist. I let out a yelp, my skin screaming at the burn. We stare at each other hard, neither blinking. I wait for her to tell me I will have to leave here, as well. Surely they will make us go.
“Come back tomorrow,” she relents, “and we will try it again one last time.”
“Thank you,” I say. “But Astrid...” My voice sounds pleading. “There must be something else I can do.”
“Tomorrow,” she repeats before walking away. Watching her retreat, my stomach leadens. Though grateful for the second chance, I know it is hopeless. Tomorrow or a year from tomorrow, I will never be able to let go.
6
Noa
Theo lies across my chest, the way he likes to sleep, the warmth of his cheek pressed against me. “You should lay him down,” Greta, the housemaid who watches Theo while I rehearse, has scolded more than once in the two weeks we have been here. “If he doesn’t learn to soothe himself, he’ll never sleep well.” I don’t care. During the day whenever I am not practicing, I hold Theo until my arms ache. I sleep with him close each night so I can feel the beating of his heart, like one of the dolls I had as a child come to life. Sometimes it seems as if without him I cannot breathe.
Lying now in the stillness of the women’s lodge, I watch him rise and fall atop me on the narrow bed. He stirs, lifting his head as he has just learned to do. Theo’s gaze follows me wherever I enter a room. A wise old soul, he seems to listen intently, missing nothing. Our eyes meet now and he smiles, a wide, toothless grin of contentment. For a few seconds, it is only us in the world. I wrap my arms more tightly around him. There is that moment each evening when Astrid frees me from practice, just before I enter the lodge, when joy and anticipation at seeing Theo rise in me. Part of me fears that he might have been a figment of my imagination, or have disappeared because I had been gone so long. Then I pick him up and he melts into my arms and I am home. Though it has been only a few weeks, I feel as if Theo has been mine forever.
There could be two boys, I remind myself—if I found my child again. Could such a thing be possible? I picture the boys together at three or four. They would be like brothers close in age, almost twins. These are dangerous thoughts, the kind I have not allowed myself to have until now.
I draw the blanket more closely around myself. I dreamed of my own family last night. My father had appeared at the edge of the winter quarters and I ran up to hug him and plead with him to bring me home. But I had awoken to the cold light of day seeping in. Going home is a dream I’ve held on to for all of my months in exile. When I arrived at the circus, I imagined staying a few weeks to get my strength back and then finding a normal job to earn enough money to go back to Holland. My parents were not able to accept me with a child of my own, though; they will never welcome me back with Theo. No, I cannot go home. I still need to get Theo out of Germany somehow, though. We cannot stay here.
The crashing of metal stirs me from my thoughts. The sounds of the circus come early in the morning, the laughter and arguing of the performers as they go to practice, workers fixing wagons and other equipment, animals whinnying in protest. Once, if I had given it any thought, I might have imagined joining the circus to be fun. But it is an act and behind the careful choreography is hard work. Even in the winter quarters, where circus folk supposedly come to rest, they are up before dawn to help with the chores, then hours of training, at least six per day.
Reluctantly I sit up and place Theo in his bassinet. His eyes follow me as I wash at the basin. I make the bed, running my hands along the sheets, which, though so much coarser than the fine linens in the villa, were still worlds better than anything I had slept on since leaving home. I moved to the lodge the day after I arrived. It is a long room, beds laid out dormitory-style in two rows. The lodge is nearly empty, most of the other girls already gone to practicing and chores. I dress quickly then start for the door with Theo. I do not want to appear lazy. I need to work hard to earn my place here.
I carry Theo to the front of the lodge where a handful of toddlers play on the ground. Reluctantly I hand him to Greta, who draws him close, tickling his chin until he coos. Jealousy nags at me and I fight the urge to grab him back. I still do not like sharing him.
I tear myself away and set out from the lodge toward the practice hall. Winter has begun to ease. There is a little less bite in the air and the snow has begun to melt, leaving the ground muddy and smelling of peat moss. The birds that hunt seeds call out merrily. If the weather permits, in the evenings before it gets too dark I walk Theo around the circus grounds, past the practice hall to the menagerie where the tiger and lions and other animals are penned, looking out of place against the snow-covered pine landscape like characters in the wrong storybook. It seems there are endless places at the circus to explore, from the work quarters where laundry is done by the truckload to the circus alley where some of the clowns rehearse.
I near the practice hall and pause, trying to push down my dread. Though I have trained with Astrid every day, I still have not let go and flown. Each day I wait for her to give up and tell me to leave. Come back tomorrow, she simply says.
She has not kicked me out yet. But she treats me like a nuisance, makes it clear that she would rather not have me around and is only tolerating me until I go. I puzzle over again what brings out such dislike. Is it because I am new and lack talent? And yet, she is not always mean. A few days after I arrived, she had brought me a small box. Inside were folded clothes for me and Theo. Everyone had contributed something. Lifting out the faded baby caps and socks, the blouses for me that had been darned many times over, I was touched, not only by the generosity of the circus folk, who themselves had little to spare, but by Astrid, who had thought to gather the items. Perhaps she did not want us to leave after all.
The previous day as I neared the practice hall, though, I’d heard her and Herr Neuhoff speaking in low voices. “I’m doing all I can,” Astrid said.
“You must do more,” Herr Neuhoff countered.
“I cannot get her ready if she will not let go,” Astrid pressed. “We have to find someone else before it is time to go on the road.” I walked away then, not wanting to hear what would happen if the arrangement did not work out. I had originally said I would try for only two weeks. But now that time has passed, I find myself wanting to stay longer and keep trying—and not just because we have nowhere else to go.
When I enter the training hall, I am surprised to find Astrid already atop the high board where I usually stand. Am I late? I brace for her to berate me. But she grabs the bar and leaps off.
“Hup!” Gerda swings from the far board to catch her. A strange lump forms in my throat as I watch Astrid work with someone else. But I see how much she misses it, being the one to fly through the air. She must hate me for taking her place.
Gerda sends Astrid flying back, then swings to her own board. Astrid soars now like a rider taming a wild beast, bending the trapeze to her own will. She spins by her ankles, by a lone knee, barely touching the bar to which I always cling fast. Gerda watches Astrid with disinterest, almost distaste. She and the other women do not like Astrid. Within days of arriving, I heard the whispers: they resent Astrid for returning and taking her spot at the top of the aerial act while they had worked for years, and for coupling up with Peter, one of the few eligible men the war had left. The girls at the home were much the same, sniping and whispering behind each other’s backs. Why are we so hard on one another? I wonder. Hadn’t the world already given us challenges enough? But if Astrid notices th
eir coldness, she doesn’t seem to mind. Or perhaps she just doesn’t have need for any of them. She certainly doesn’t need me.
“She’s magnificent, isn’t she?” a deep voice asks. I had not heard Peter come up behind me. We stand silently watching as Astrid swings higher. Taking her in, his eyes seem to dance with wonder. Peter’s breath catches slightly as Astrid flings herself into the air and spins not once, not twice, but three times. She circles upward, defying gravity.
But then she starts to drop downward at great speed. Peter steps forward then stops, powerless to help her. He exhales quickly when Gerda, who has swung out, grabs her by one ankle, catching her before she catapults to the ground. “The triple somersault,” he says, recovering from his fright. “Only a few people in the world who can do that.” Though he tries to sound nonchalant, a faint sweat has broken out on his brow and his face has gone slack with relief.
“She’s amazing,” I reply, my voice full with admiration. In that moment, I do not just want to be like her—I truly want to be her.
“If only she wasn’t such a danger to herself,” Peter says, so low under his breath I’m not sure I am meant to hear.
Astrid reaches the board and climbs down the ladder to us. Her skin is coated with sweat, but her face glows. She and Peter stare at each other with a hunger that makes me embarrassed to be in the room, though they had surely been together just a few hours earlier since Astrid’s bed in the lodge had been empty all night.
“Ready?” she asks, seeming to remember that I am there, without taking her eyes off Peter.
I nod, and start up the ladder. Below a half-dozen or so other performers rehearse, twirling hoops, doing flips and walking on their hands. My schedule with Astrid is the same every day as it had been the first: training from seven until five with a brief break for a bucket lunch. I’ve gotten better, I think. Still, for all of the practice, I have not let go and actually flown. It is not for lack of trying. I swing endlessly to strengthen my arms. I hang upside down until the blood rushes to my head and I cannot think. But I cannot let go—and without that, Astrid has said over and over, there is no act.
We start with the moves we have already practiced, swinging by my hands, then the hock and ankle hangs. “Pay attention to your arms, even when they are behind your back,” Astrid commands. “This is not merely performance. Theater is two-dimensional, like a painting. There, the audience sees only the front. But in the circus the audience is all around us, like sculpture. Think graceful, like ballet. Don’t fight the air, make friends with it.”
We work all morning around the moment I had been dreading. “Ready?” Astrid asks finally after a break. I can avoid it no longer. I climb the ladder and Gerda follows, taking her place beside me on the board.
“You have to release at the height of the swing,” Astrid calls from the far board. “And then I will catch you just a second later on the way down.” It makes perfect sense, but I leap and as with all the times before, I cannot let go.
“It’s useless,” I say aloud. As I swing helplessly from the bar, I catch a glimpse of the horizon through one of the high practice hall windows. Beyond the hills, there is a way out of Germany, a route to safety and freedom. If only Theo and I could swing out of here and fly away. A thought pops into my head then: go with the circus to France. Farther from Germany, Theo and I will have a chance to flee to somewhere safe. But that will never happen unless I can learn to let go.
“You’re done, then?” Astrid asks as I swing back to the board. She tries to keep her voice neutral, as if she has been disappointed too many times to let anyone do it again. But I can hear it, that faint note of sadness buried deep. At least some part of her thought I could do it—which makes my failure even more awful.
I look out the window once more, my dream of escaping with Theo seeming to slide further from reach. The circus is our ticket out of Germany—or would be if I could manage. “No!” I blurt. “That is, I’d like to try once more.”
Astrid shrugs, as if she has already given up on me. “Suit yourself.”
As I jump, Astrid leaps from the opposite board and swings by her feet. “Hup!” she calls. I do not release on the first pass.
Astrid swings higher, drawing close to me a second time. “Do it!” she orders. I recall Astrid’s conversation with Herr Neuhoff the previous day and realize that time is running out.
It is now or never. The entire world hangs in the balance.
I lock eyes with Astrid on the opposite trapeze and in that instant my trust is complete. “Now!” she commands.
I let go of the bar. Closing my eyes, I hurtle through space. Forgetting everything Astrid has taught me, I flail my arms and legs, which only makes me drop faster. I fall in her direction, but too low. She misses me and I tumble forward. There is nothing now between me and the ground, which grows closer as I fall. In that instant, I see Theo, wonder who will care for him after I am gone. I open my mouth but before I can scream, Astrid’s hands lock around my ankles. She has caught me.
But it is not over yet. I hang upside down, helpless as a calf about to be slaughtered.
“Reach up,” she orders, as though it is simple. “I can’t help you. You have to do this part for yourself.” I use all of my force to reach up against gravity, performing the world’s largest sit-up, and grab on to her.
“Okay when I say ‘now’ I’m going to send you back with a half spin so you are facing the bar,” she instructs.
I freeze. She cannot seriously expect me to fly through the air again to the bar, miles away and moving fast. “I can’t possibly.”
“You must. Now!” She hurls me through the air and the bar finds my fingers. Clasping it tightly, I understand then that I need to do almost nothing—she can position me as surely as a marionette on strings. But it is still terrifying.
I reach the platform with shaking feet and Gerda helps steady me before climbing down the ladder. Astrid, who has come down from her own side, waits until Gerda has gone before starting up to me. “That was close,” I say when she nears me. I wait for her to praise me for finally letting go.
But she is staring at me and I wonder if she is angry and will fault me for panicking. “Your brother,” she says. Anger that she has been holding back blazes in her eyes, suddenly set free.
I am caught off guard by the sudden shift in topic. “I don’t understand...” She hasn’t brought up Theo since the first day we practiced. Why is she asking now?
“The thing is, I don’t believe you.” She speaks through gritted teeth, her fury unmasked. “I think you are lying. Theo’s not your brother.”
“Of course he is,” I stammer. What would make her suspect this now?
“He looks nothing like you. We’ve given you a place here and you are taking advantage of us and lying to us.”
“That’s not true,” I start to protest.
She continues, unconvinced. “I think you got into trouble. He’s your bastard child.”
I reel back, as much from the stinging slap of the word as from her discovering the near truth. “But you just said he looks nothing like me.”
“Like the father, then,” she insists.
“Theo is not my child.” I say each word slowly and deliberately. How it hurts to disavow him.
She puts her hands on her hips. “How can I work with you if I cannot trust you?” She does not wait for me to respond. “There is no way that he is your brother.”
And then she pushes me hard from the platform.
Suddenly I am falling through the air, without any restraint or bar to cling to. I open my mouth to scream, but find no air. It is almost like a flying dream, except my path is straight downward. No trapeze, no training can help me now. I brace for impact, and the pain and darkness that will inevitably follow. Surely the net wasn’t made to catch a person at such great speed.
I cascade into the net, sending it dipping within inches of the floor, so close I can smell the hay that lines it, the stench of manure not quite scrubbed away. Then I am flung upward, airborne once more, saved just barely from impact. It isn’t until the third time I land in the still-bouncing net and it does not rise again, but bobbles like a cradle, that I realize I am going to make it.
I lie still for several seconds, catching my breath and waiting for one of the other performers to come to my aid. But they have all disappeared, sensing or even seeing trouble and not wanting to become involved. Only Astrid and I remain in the practice hall now.
I clamber from the net then start toward Astrid, who has climbed down the ladder. “How could you?” I demand. It is my turn to be angry. “You almost killed me.” I know she does not like me, but I had not actually thought she would want me dead.
She smiles smugly. “Even I would have been terrified. I won’t blame you for giving up.”
I square my shoulders defiantly. “I’m not quitting.” After what just happened, I would never give her the satisfaction.
Herr Neuhoff rushes in, having heard the clatter as I fell from outside. “My dear, are you okay? Such a calamity!” Seeing I am fine, he steps back and folds his arms. “What happened? We can’t afford an accident or the questions it might bring. You know that,” he says, aiming these last words at Astrid.
I hesitate. Astrid watches me uneasily from the side. I could tell him the awful truth about what she had done. He might not believe me without solid proof, though. And what would that solve? “My hands must have slipped,” I lie.
Herr Neuhoff coughs, then reaches in his pocket and takes a pill. It is the first time I have seen him do this. “Are you ill?” Astrid asks.
He waves his hand, the question irrelevant. “You must be more careful,” he admonishes me. “Double the training time this week. Don’t risk it by trying anything before you are ready.” Then he turns to Astrid. “And don’t push her before she is ready.”