by Pam Jenoff
I had wondered if the days away from the act or all her body had been through would slow Astrid or make her rusty. But it is the opposite: her moves are more intense, razor sharp. Once she had held the trapeze bar lightly with an artist’s touch, but now she grasps it like a lifeline. Her moves are punishing, as if trying to break a wild mare or great steed, taking out her anger on the trapeze itself. She vaults through a series of dizzying pirouettes and somersaults. I sense a slight movement of air around me and I can almost feel Peter admiring her performance with me as he once had.
There is a noise behind me. I turn, for a second actually expecting that Peter might be standing there. But of course he is not and the space behind me is empty. The wind howls through the campground, shaking the tarp and making the sound I had just heard once more. I relax slightly.
Then suddenly an arm grabs me from behind without warning. Before I can cry out, someone pulls me from the tent. I jerk away and turn, preparing to fight my attacker.
There, in the entrance to the big top, stands Luc.
“Luc!” I blink, wondering if his tall, dark figure before me is some sort of strange dream. But he is here. I stare at him in disbelief. How had he made it all this way to see me?
“Noa,” he says, reaching out and touching my cheek. I throw myself into his arms and he wraps them tightly around me.
I pull him farther away from the big top, behind the shelter of a shed. It is best if no one sees him. “How did you find us?”
“I came to the circus looking for you,” Luc says. “But you left.” His face falls. “After that, I went back to my father’s house. I hadn’t planned to,” he adds quickly. “But I needed to see if he knew where the circus had gone. I didn’t want to believe that this might be partly his doing. But I had to know.” I can tell from the pain in his eyes that even after everything that has happened, part of him still wanted to believe in his father. “He denied it, of course. But I found the order in his desk with his signature on it.” Luc’s voice is heavy with sadness. “I confronted him with it and he admitted the truth. Then I left to find you.” I imagine his journey across the miles to reach me. He kisses me long and full on the lips. His face is rough from not shaving, his lips salty and unwashed.
A moment later we break apart. Though it has been only a few days, his face looks thinner, cheekbones chiseled. His eyes are ringed, as though he has not slept for days. “Have you eaten? You need rest.” I search the fairgrounds for a place where I might hide him.
He waves his hand, as though the question is unimportant. “I’m fine.”
I lean against him and he holds me close. “I’m so sorry I had to leave without telling you.”
“I knew you wouldn’t have gone like that if you had a choice, that something must have happened.” I can see the depth of his concern for me in his eyes.
“You found me,” I say, nestling closer against him.
“I found you,” he repeats. “The question is, what now?” He pulls away from me, straightening, and I see the conflict in his eyes. He is hundreds of miles from home—will he simply say goodbye and go back again? “I don’t want to lose you again, Noa,” he says and I hold my breath, waiting for him to propose a life together once more.
“But I’m going to join the Maquis.” Hearing this, my hope deflates. I have heard of the resistance fighters who operate from the woods. But I have never seen them and they seem like the stuff of legend compared to the timid villagers. It sounds dangerous—and far away. “There’s a unit of them east of here in the Vosges forest and if I can get there, I can help,” he adds.
“But that’s so dangerous,” I protest, lifting my head to meet his eyes.
He smooths back my hair. “I’m not running, Noa. You’ve taught me not to be afraid. For once in my life I’m going to stand my ground and fight.”
“So it’s my fault then, that you are going to get yourself killed?” I demand, only half joking.
Luc smiles. Then as he takes my hand, his face grows serious once more. “I only meant that this thing between you and me has opened my eyes. I can’t sit by and watch anymore. I have to do something. And the work that the resistance is doing, disrupting communication and the rails, is more important than ever to prepare for the Allied invasion. There’s talk that it’s coming soon, now that the weather has improved.”
He draws me close to him once more, wrapping his arms around me and kissing the top of my head. “I don’t want to leave you, though. It’s time for something more—for both of us. If...if you would consider going with me.”
“To the Maquis?” I ask.
“Yes. There are some women, too, who are helping with their work.” I realize, proudly, that he is thinking of me, and that I am strong enough. “Would you?” he asks, eyes hopeful.
I want so much to say yes. If only it were that simple. “I can’t,” I say, putting my hand on his chest. “You know that.”
“If it’s about Theo, we can find a safe place for him until this is all over,” he replies, putting his hand on top of mine and lacing our fingers together. “Then we could raise him as our own.”
“I know, but it’s more than that. Astrid, she’s risked everything for us. I can’t abandon her now.” Once Astrid might have managed on her own, but she can no longer manage for herself. Everything has been taken from her except us.
“I thought you would say as much.” His face grows resolute. “I have to do this, though. There is no place for me at home anymore.”
“When will you go?” I ask.
“Tonight. If I set out after dark across the hills, I should be able to find the Maquis encampment before dawn.” He pauses. “If only you were going with me.”
“I know.” But I’m not and so this is goodbye. I wrap my arms more tightly around him. We stand together, pressed close, willing the moment to last just a bit longer. I pull back slightly to peer back toward the tent. “I should go. Astrid is waiting for me.” He nods. “I’m so worried about her,” I confide. “First losing the baby and now Peter.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” he adds, his voice low with guilt.
“You mustn’t blame yourself. I don’t.”
“Actually, that is the other reason I came.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. What other reason could there be?
“I should have told you sooner, only I was so excited to see you again.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an envelope. “A letter came to the village.”
He holds it out and I imagine the worst, news coming from across the miles. Has something happened to my family?
But as I start to reach for it, he pulls his hand back. “It’s not for you.” I take it from him anyway and, seeing the Berlin postmark on the envelope, my breath catches.
The letter is for Astrid.
23
Astrid
Forty feet. That is what stands between life and death, the thinnest sliver of a divide.
I came back to the ring as I said I would and pretended to rehearse for Noa, and leaped as though nothing had changed. She has disappeared from the tent, though, leaving me alone, and so I return to the board. The movement of flying through the air had once meant everything to me. Now each swing is like a knife through my heart. The cavernous space high above the ring, which had been home, is almost unbearable.
I peer over the edge of the board as if it is a cliff, staring into the abyss of the net below. I tried to kill myself once, after Erich told me to leave. He’d walked from the apartment, ostensibly to give me time to pack and go, unable to bear watching or maybe to avoid the hysterics he considered so uncivilized. I’d run to the cupboard and grabbed a bottle of pills and vodka, impulsively downing as much as I could of both. I imagined him finding my body and crying over what he had done. But after a few minutes I realized he wasn’t c
oming back to check. He had already cut me from his life. Instantly remorseful, I put my hands down my throat and brought up the half-digested mess. I had sworn then never to live for a man again. This loss is more, though—it is everything.
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.
Or so I have thought these many months. But Jules is alive. I remember our goodbye at the station in Darmstadt a few years ago, made hasty by Erich’s impatience to board the train. I picture Jules as he must look now, a bit older, but still exactly the same. Somewhere a tiny part of our family’s circus dynasty persists, like a seed carried to a new land to be planted.
I look down at the envelope again, which is thicker than it should be if empty. “There’s something else in here.” Two things, actually. I pull out first a bank receipt of some sort. But it is in an unfamiliar language and the only words I recognize are my own name. “What on earth?”
Noa steps forward. “May I see it?” she asks. I hand her the paper. “I can’t read it, but it looks like money for your journey, placed in your bank account in Lisbon.” She hands it back.
I stare at her, dumbfounded. “I have no such account.”
“It looks like it was opened about six weeks ago,” she adds, pointing to the date. “Did your brother put it there?”
I study the paper. “I don’t think so.” There is a lone transaction, a deposit from Berlin. Ten thousand marks, enough money for me to get wherever I need to go, including America.
“Then who?”
I take a deep breath. “Erich.”
Erich, having read Jules’ letter, wanted to make sure I had the resources to go to my brother in America. He had given me the very last and only gift he could—a chance at escape. I shake the envelope one last time and pull out a small card. A German exit permit, also filled out in Erich’s blocky script and bearing the official seal of the Reich. He had thought of everything to make sure I could get out of the occupied territories and reach safety with Jules. Had Erich done it out of guilt or love? Though it is a part of my past before Peter, so long ago it seems almost like a dream, part of me cannot help but ache for the man who cared enough to do all of this, but not enough to fight for us.
“Astrid, you can go to your brother.” Noa’s expression lifts with hope at the prospect of my finding safety. Then conflict crosses her face as she realizes that she will be left behind.
“You’ll go. Theo and I will be fine,” she replies, trying without success to force the quaver from her voice. Then, scanning the papers again, she frowns. “Your brother’s letter said the visa is good for forty-five days. The letter took over a month to get here. And there’s no telling how long it will take you to get to Lisbon, or to the States from there. You need to go right away. Tonight. You will go, won’t you?” Noa asks, her voice somehow filled with hope and dread at the same time.
Not answering, I start for the train.
“But Astrid,” Noa calls after me. “I thought we were going to practice. Of course, if you are leaving...”
It doesn’t matter anymore, I finish for her silently. “You go on without me,” I say. “After all the news it is really too much.”
I walk back to the cabin where Elsie is minding Theo. “Darling boy,” I say. His face breaks into a wide smile of recognition. As I go to take him from her, he reaches his arms for me for the very first time. Something inside me wells up then, another wave of sorrow rising and threatening to break. I push it down. Later there will be time for tears. Now I must figure out what to do.
I draw Theo close, holding him in one arm, the pass in the other, as if weighing each on a scale. How can I abandon him and Noa? With Peter gone, they are all I have left in the world—or so I thought, until Jules’s letter came today. Now I must think about him, too. I am the only family he has left. And he worked so very hard to get this visa to me, my one chance at safety; letting it go to waste would be a crime.
Theo swats at my chin with his tiny hand, breaking me from my thoughts. His dark eyes look up at me searchingly. The idea of leaving Noa and Theo alone to face an uncertain fate is unfathomable. There has got to be another way.