The Invisible Circus

by Jennifer Egan

  “Which direction is it?” Phoebe said.

  Wolf gestured to the left, bulky cliffs a shade or two darker than the sky. “I guess Cornigila’s a couple of miles that way,” he said.

  “Can you really walk there?”

  “So they say,” he said. “I guess there’s a local train, too.”

  “Let’s walk. I like the idea of walking.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I wish we could go now,” Phoebe said.

  “We wouldn’t be able to see much,” Wolf said. “Not that there’s probably much to see.”

  “You’re so grim,” Phoebe said. “It’s depressing.”

  Wolf turned to her. “It’s funny you say that,” he said, “because I’m finding your elation pretty hard to fathom.”

  “I’m not elated.”

  “You are!” Wolf said. “You act like a goddamn miracle is about to happen.” He sounded exasperated, but in his face Phoebe saw the other thing, the trouble, and realized that Wolf was afraid.

  “It’s like you think this whole thing is some kind of game, like she’s up there waiting for you. It’s surreal,” Wolf said, addressing the stars. “I find it absolutely surreal.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have come.”

  “Are you kidding? The crazier you act, the gladder I am I did come.”

  Phoebe said nothing. Wolf took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes until they looked smeared. “It’s a place,” he said. “You’ll walk up, you’ll walk back down.”

  “Then what are you afraid of?”

  There was a pause. “What I’m afraid of,” Wolf said quietly, “is what’s going to happen when the ghost you’ve been chasing all this time disappears into thin air.”

  “No,” Phoebe said. “You’re scared to go up there.”

  But she was only scaring him more. Wolf crossed his arms, looking into the water. “Why?” Phoebe said gently, turning to him. “Wolf, how come?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Phoebe put her arms around him, Wolf, her only ally. He rested his head between her shoulder and neck. “Why aren’t you scared, is what I want to know,” he said.

  They decided to eat dinner, more for the ceremony of it than out of real hunger. At a table overlooking the sea they poked at bowls of steaming calamari in a thick red sauce. Couples surrounded them, elderly, teenaged, couples leaning together over glasses of wine, handing kicking babies back and forth. Phoebe watched a man lightly pinch a woman’s cheek as they shared a cigarette, the woman laughing, her color high, a white flower wedged behind one ear. We’re like them, she thought, taking Wolf’s hand across the table, but the gesture felt like bluffing. Phoebe held Wolf’s chilly hand and remembered spying through the crack in his kitchen door as Carla fumbled for his arm, Wolf breathing his fiancee’s smell while he read the paper over her shoulder. And with sudden, eerie dispassion, Phoebe saw that Wolf would never be hers in the way he’d been Carla’s, that the dazzling future she’d imagined with him was out of the question.

  In the candlelight Phoebe stared at Wolf amazed, wanting to say this aloud. But his gaze was fixed in the direction they would walk the next morning. Maybe he already knew, Phoebe thought, maybe he’d known from the start. Maybe that was what scared him so much. It didn’t matter. What mattered now was why. Why, Phoebe wondered, why was it that all her life the things she wanted most already belonged to someone else?

  Back in their room Wolf dove into sleep almost instantly, his shirt still on. But no sooner had Phoebe closed her eyes than she felt again the drift and pull of memory.

  The final night of their father’s final trip to Mirasol. For the first time all vacation she and Barry and Faith had stayed on the beach into twilight, lying on their backs in the sand watching the first pale stars blink awake.

  When their father loomed over them, they scrambled to their feet. “Forget it,” he said, waving away their apologies. “I felt like getting outside.” He seemed more tired than usual, heavy-headed the way he used to get when he drank. “Maybe I’ll go for a swim,” he said. “How about a swim, Faith?”

  There was a startled pause. “I don’t know,” Faith said. “Maybe not, Dad.”

  They stood together in the cooling sand. Their father wore his bathing trunks, an old T-shirt pulled over them. “I can’t leave this place without swimming once,” he said.

  “Let’s go tomorrow,” Faith suggested, “before we leave.”

  “Nah. Tomorrow I won’t have the energy.”

  Faith glanced at Barry. Their father threw back his head. “It’s gorgeous out here,” he said. “Christ, look at that sky. I want to swim under that sky.” And to Phoebe’s joy he seemed his old self again, full of vigor and impatience. He lifted the T-shirt over his head and tossed it into the sand. Though he’d lost weight, he was still well-built, a different species entirely from the soft, overripe fathers of Phoebe’s friends. The patch of dark hair on his chest made the crude shape of a heart. He was more than a father—he was a man, with strong legs and a mustache, a hard flat stomach they’d once taken glee in walloping with all their might, for it never seemed to hurt him. Though their father had once looked imposing, now he was tough and slight, distilled to his very essence.

  “Come on.” He held out a hand to Faith. “Please, babe,” he said in a tight voice. “Come in with me.”

  It was a strange moment, for although they stood in a cluster, their father spoke only to Faith. Phoebe had a brief, hallucinatory sense that she herself was not actually there, was witnessing a private moment between her father and sister.

  A hacking cough shuddered up from deep within him, painful to hear. “Come on,” he said, to Faith. “Do this for me.”

  Faith started to cry.

  Their father smiled, a ghost of mischief in his face. “What’s the matter, you scared?” he cajoled her gently. Faith wiped her eyes, not answering. “That’s okay,” their father said. “I’m scared, too.”

  He took Faith’s head in his hands and kissed the top of it. Phoebe wondered if her father had felt the hot bruise under her sister’s hair. Then he pulled Faith against him, clasping her head to his bare chest as if it were a precious box someone else were trying to wrest from his grasp. Phoebe felt Barry go still beside her. Faith was sobbing now, her eyes closed. Their father’s chest moved quickly, shallowly, as he breathed. Finally he let Faith go and began walking toward the water, feebly, like an old man. There was something terrible in the sight of their slender white father approaching that dark sea.

  “Faith, go,” Barry whispered fiercely. “Go!”

  Faith started as if jerked awake. Without a word she left them and followed their father, who had reached the water’s edge and was standing there as if waiting, knowing she would come. They went in together, bit by bit. Little waves were coming in; their father had to brace himself against their faint impact. Faith took his hand. Phoebe strained to see them in the fading light. She felt a pressure inside herself, as if something there were in danger of breaking. When the water reached her father’s chest, Phoebe said, “I’m going in, too, Bear.”

  Barry made no reply. Phoebe ran to the sea. The water was warm, silky over her feet. Faith and her father floated close together; Phoebe saw only their heads. She went in farther, watching the dark water climb her legs, but when she looked up, she found they’d begun to swim away, down the beach. In the dusk they must not have seen her. Phoebe thought of calling out to them but hesitated, listening to the faint plash of their strokes. She thought of jumping in, of trying to catch up, but the water seemed vast and black and she felt tiny, powerless against it. If something should happen, she thought, they would never be able to save her.

  Reluctantly she turned from the water and walked back up the beach. Her brother was hunched on the towel. Phoebe sat beside him, and they watched the tiny pair of heads move slowly through the water. Then it was too dark to see them. Barry made a choking sound, and only then did Phoebe realize he was crying. “Bear,” she
said. She caught the wet gleam of his cheeks and was about to ask what was wrong when she, too, began to cry, deep gasping sobs she neither understood nor could quell. Alone on this beach there seemed no hope for Barry and herself.

  “Let’s go back,” Barry said. Phoebe nodded, turning to the water, thinking she’d call to her father and Faith and say they were leaving, but it was dark and her eyes were too messed up from crying to see anything.

  “Phoebe, they don’t care,” Barry said. “Don’t you get it? Let’s just go.”

  They stood. Barry left their towel in the sand and took Phoebe’s hand. Walking, she began to shiver, as if her tears were making her cold. They climbed to the boardwalk, then to the street lined with small square houses, each a different color. By the time they reached their grandparents’ house, they had stopped crying. What had happened on the beach felt strange, distant. Inside the house their mother was setting the table for dinner, her hair falling from a pin. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” Barry said.

  From an upstairs window Phoebe watched for her father and sister’s return. It wasn’t long. They moved slowly through the bleached street light, wet hair gleaming. The sight was ghostly, dreamlike. They seemed to hold a secret knowledge between them. Phoebe assumed this must have to do with the swim they’d taken, that if only she’d followed them in, she would be included. She was six years old. Suddenly Phoebe was mad at Barry for dragging her from the beach, mad at everyone for keeping her here, against her will, in the plain bright house. I should have gone in, she thought.

  twenty-one

  A carved sign pointed the way to Corniglia.

  Phoebe and Wolf walked single-file along a narrow path high above the sea. Phoebe went first. The mood between them was resigned, workmanlike. Every word they’d uttered the night before seemed ludicrous now.

  The path rounded a point, then doubled back inland to circle a bay wedged in the mountain’s lap. Rocky promontories reached into the sea on both sides of it. The land was staggered for cultivation, lifting from the ocean like a vast flight of undulating steps, each one carpeted with grape vines growing on silvery wires. Phoebe walked gingerly, fearful of swerving off the path and onto the vines.

  As the morning mist burned off, the heat became intense. Phoebe and Wolf skirted the bay and headed seaward along the second rocky point. Phoebe’s heart began to stammer in her chest. They would turn the corner and there would be Corniglia. But the turn revealed only another bay, larger this time, followed by another promontory. “Damn,” Phoebe said, breathing shakily.

  Under a sheen of sweat Wolf was pale. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Altitude,” Wolf said with a faint laugh. Phoebe didn’t get it. “We’re at sea level,” he explained.

  They began their journey around the second bay. The ribbons of vineyard gave off a rusty smell. Phoebe wanted to go faster but the path was narrow; she had to keep watching her feet. As they neared the hub of the next point, a rush of dizzy blood filled her head. Here it comes, she thought, expectation nearly stifling her breath. But again she was disappointed—another bay, another long arc inland.

  “Jesus,” Wolf said. He leaned against the cliff, hands on his bent knees. Phoebe breathed lavishly, startled by the tinge of relief she felt at not finding it yet.

  She pressed her palm to Wolf’s forehead. It was cool, wet. “Maybe you’re sick,” she said.

  He shut his eyes. “That’s good,” he said. “Your hand.”

  The sea had clarified with the light, deepening to turquoise. The sky looked flat as tile. Phoebe kept her hand on Wolf’s head, and for a moment it seemed they could stand there indefinitely, wind pouring against them.

  Finally they resumed walking. The wind quickened, warm, laced with bracing veins of cool. The clear, salty air stung Phoebe’s eyes. They circled the bay, rounded the far point. And there it was.

  Corniglia lay across another bay, draped over a cliff like a cat on a banister, legs and tail dangling, looking ready to slide off at any moment. Its colors were pale and luminous, opalescent pinks, whites, a flash of orange tile.

  Phoebe stared. The light hurt her eyes. She thought of salt, of San Francisco, its bleached, dry colors. “Do you think that’s it?” she asked Wolf, suddenly fearful it might not be.

  “Yes, I do,” he said.

  Phoebe grinned, she couldn’t help it. “It looks exactly how I thought.”

  They headed inland, cutting around the bay. Wolf led, moving mechanically, his eyes fastened to the town. The thud of wind on Phoebe’s eardrums mingled with the rhythm of their steps: I’m almost there I’m almost there I’m almost there I’m almost there. They passed a few dusty chickens in a coop, a small soiled goat on a chain. A white cat, milky fur sliding over its delicate spine as it picked its way downhill. A bell tolled noon as they rounded the bay. Gradually the path eased into a paved street and lifted them into Corniglia.

  Tall houses shaded the town’s steep streets, giving it a cool, cellar-like feel. Corniglia was crowded, but unlike Vernazza the feeling here was of residents rather than visitors. Women sat outside tiny produce shops, bright tomatoes and striped squash gathered around them like skirts. Bakers adjusted yellowy loaves in their windows. A riot of laundry flapped overhead, sheets and shirts and ladies’ slips strung between the windows of opposing houses, flecked with sunlight. The laundry billowed and snapped in the wind like a thousand welcoming banners.

  They took whichever streets led them higher, scaling the town like the slope of a pyramid. At last they reached an open, tree-lined square. It faced a church. To the left rose the mountain; to the right was nothing but sky. The perennial cluster of women in black sat huddled outside the church. The echoes of bells still hung in the air.

  Phoebe stopped, wondering where to go next. She hadn’t seen any cliffs. Wolf’s skin was gray. A curious blankness inhabited his face, as if his mind had disengaged and drifted off. Behind him Phoebe noticed a smaller church in a spot higher than where they now stood. The church was hunched-looking, as if from years of battling the wind. Phoebe pointed to it but Wolf seemed not to react. She walked past him toward it.

  The church was abandoned, its windows boarded up. It faced the sea, its small courtyard partly enclosed by a salt-encrusted cyclone fence, candy wrappers tangled in its wire. A damaged-look-ing water fountain jutted sideways in front of it. Phoebe leaned over and drank, surprised the thing even worked. The water was warm. Wolf caught up to Phoebe and took her hand.

  A low concrete wall divided church and courtyard from the sea—a ledge, really, no higher than Phoebe’s waist. She peered over it. Directly beyond lay a tuft of dry weeds choked with cigarette butts, then nothing. The land simply fell away. Far below lay the ocean, seething white around chunks of rocks as if the rocks were dissolving in it.

  They stared at the drop. Phoebe glanced left and right for comparable spots, fearful of being taken in by someplace meaningless. Wind tossed and flung her hair. She couldn’t see another place. “I think this might be it,” she said.

  Wolf nodded. There were dark circles under his eyes.

  Gently Phoebe touched the wall. The plaster was faded, chipped. Like the houses in Corniglia, its bleached surface held a tinge of pink. Faith must have stood on this wall, Phoebe thought; her feet—the weight of her body—must have rested on or near where Phoebe’s hand was. Faith’s feet. Phoebe turned to face the church, imagining her sister’s footprints crossing and recrossing the small space of its courtyard. It seemed possible, even likely, that something was left, some shard of Faith’s presence among the dust and pebbles and crushed glass. Some little thing. Phoebe leaned over the wall to peer among the cigarette butts, but Wolf seized her shoulders, pulling her back. “Not so close,” he said.

  “I’m—let go!” Phoebe said, unnerved by the pressure of his hands. He did, reluctantly, but hovered near her. Phoebe ignored him, trying to concentrate. This is the place, she told herself. It happened h
ere. And she was rewarded, then, by a wave of clarity that seemed to lift her from the ground.

  This was it. A ringing filled her ears.

  This is it.

  And so gigantic an event did not just disappear. Fossils, Phoebe thought, the earth’s shifting plates, everything left a print, no matter how stark or faint or deeply buried. She looked slowly around her, heart pounding. For it seemed now that she’d grasped the true object of her search: finding that trace, placing her hand upon some relic from the scene of Faith’s death. As if doing so would correct the accident of time that allowed her to stand in the very place her sister had jumped from, and not be able to stop her.

  Phoebe leaned over the wall. Wolf seized her shoulders again, but she let him this time. She was looking down at the sea, thinking what an infinite number of times its tides had flushed and reflushed those rocks, how many kids had sat smoking on this wall, tossing their butts, making out—it was that kind of place, you could tell—and this offended her, the defilement, the effacement of what few traces might be left. It was more than wrong, it was inconceivable. The true place would be protected from it. Something wasn’t right, Phoebe thought, and the clarity she’d felt only moments before began to slip. She consulted the sky and found it empty, vacant as the silence following loud noise.

  “I don’t think it was here,” she said.

  “No?”

  Phoebe shook her head. A pressure had risen inside her, a feeling of anger, expectation, so many years of waiting and how could this possibly be right? This. After all that. “No,” she said, “I made a mistake.”

  “A minute ago you were sure.”

  “It doesn’t feel right,” she said. The cracked plaster, the dust. She had to get away.