BOOK 1
1
It was Mum who kept trying to make a lady of me through all my growing-up years but it was Grams who taught me her magic tricks and how to be a pickpocket, and of the two of them I have to say that Grams' lessons certainly proved the more valuable to me in my life.
"Head up," Mum would say. "Shoulders back, Caressa, never say ain't, watch your manners, be a lady and learn to roll with the punches."
Grams, bless her, would only laugh and say, "Waste—all waste!"
Much to my amusement I have at last become a lady, quite elegant and proper in these later years, and if 1 take up my pen to write of the strange events in my past I do this because they've been kept secret for too long. I indulge myself: the time has come to place on paper who and what I have truly been—and what I have seen—and to record all that happened to me during those years when I was young and counted dead by the world, my bones assumed to be whitening under the desert sun with all the others who were murdered. To speak of those years becomes important, too, because of the stranger who came to my door this morning asking to see Lady Teal about a certain antiika nahet with a green stone in it that came from a queen's tomb in the Sahara. What memories that brings back! I'm sure Bertram thought him mad—Bertram is a very proper butler—but he carried the message to me faithfully. The stranger was being discreet, of course, for antiika nahet means in Arabic a sculpture, very ancient, and it was only decades later that I discovered the green stone to be an emerald of much value. He was speaking of the tomb of Queen Tin Hinan, officially found southwest of the Hoggar Mountains in 1925 by Reygasse and deProrak, but how the man had learned of the existence of the little stone figure that I took from the tomb, or for that matter of my own existence I don't know, for I've had many names and it happened so long ago, when this century was not many years old.
I did not see the man; 1 told Bertram to say I was indisposed .., an interesting word. Still, I've lived a longer life than most, and if I should die next week, the prehistoric carving ought to be returned to the country it came from, and Deborah should know why. A pity I'll not be able to see her face when she reads what I write now. Only two people know of my past and both of them are dead, but Deborah always assumed her father was the man I married; it will be one of those shocks that have to be endured when Truth is laid out as bare as the naked lady at Mr. Laski's. As for Mum, if she happens to be looking over my shoulder from that Heaven she always believed in, I'd like her to know that I really learned to roll with the punches—a few too many, I might add—and became a lady after all, with a capital L at that.
Lordy, she'd say—but just listen to me, slipping back into how we talked in Oklahoma, when this is 1980, and I long ago learned to speak what Linton called Impeccable English and have known my share of prime ministers and ambassadors, a dull lot usually, but how easily the mind slips into the past at my age. I don't tell my age now, and I don't look into mirrors either. Beauty is beauty and I had it in abundance, but whether it was a curse or a blessing is not for me to say. Grams told me it was my fate, and "look at the lines in the palms of her hands," but Mum's lips would only tighten and she refused to look, saying stubbornly, "She'll do fine if she's ladylike and learns to roll with the punches."
When I was young 1 told people I came from a circus family but that was long ago and only half-true because after my father fell from his trapeze and missed the net, dead on arrival it was said. Mum and Grams left the circus to begin their own plunge down, which ended in their being carny folk—big-time and then ragbag—where Grams told fortunes in the mitt camp and Mum was in the cooch show, although later, no longer so young, she was the headless woman. If I close my eyes and listen hard I can hear the sounds now: the steam organ on the calliope pumping out its rollicking music, the screams from the Loop-o-plane, the shuffle of a hundred feet tramping the midway, the smell of sawdust and hot grease and popcorn. I can hear the talker shouting his come-ons, the grinders and openers shouting their spiels to the tip: "See the tattooed lady! the sword swallower! Only a nickel to see real, live, man-killing snakes! See the contortionist—the geek! Thrill a minute, folks, thrill a minute.. .. Step up and try your luck at the Cat Rack .., at Spin the Arrow .., a prize every time! .., the bucket game, skillo.... Win a doll, win a teddy bear ... !"
And since the carny was usually full of strong games, and the fuzz paid off, I would be mingling with the crowds, no longer in boys' overalls but an innocent child with a ribbon in my hair and a few ruffles and a washed face, and a vast number of pockets inside my dress for the wallets and bills I collected during the night, handing them to Grams in her tent when my pockets grew stuffed.
I had good fingers for a pickpocket, Grams told me, long and tapering, the first and middle fingers nearly the same length, and she made me take good care of them and rub glycerine or petroleum jelly on them every night. With constant practice I learned all the tricks. It was like conjuring, Grams emphasized, not so different at all from palming coins, needing keenness of eye and quickness, and two strong supple fingers. Picking a pocket was easy enough at the carnival when a mark was intrigued by a game and reached into his pocket for money, advertising where he kept it, but as I gained in skill Grams saw to it that I practiced now and then on the streets in a village, with her observing from a distance and me carrying a cape or sweater over my arm to conceal what my fingers did. I would bump into a man and apologize or brush against him or inquire directions of an amiable-looking one, or in similar manner distract while my two fingers slid into his pocket to open like a pair of scissors and extract what it contained. Later I went to the streets alone; it needed experience to know just how firmly to grasp a bulky wallet without losing it, and without thrusting too deeply into that pocket. Oh, I was good, I really was.
Would Linton call this "emotion remembered in tranquility?" I never knew whether he actually loved me but he made an honest woman out of me—a titled one at that— before he had the tact to die. But I was useful to him, and I was still beautiful when he died, not an aging woman with arthritic knees, although thank God my fingers are still supple and I can wear all my rings .., strange unusual rings, museum pieces now, probably, coming from such faraway places.
If the stranger returns will I see him? What would I say to him, what would I admit? It suddenly brought too much back to me, the nose-quivering smell of the dried cheese they called tikamarin, and the gruel—assink—they fed me; the beat of drums can still do this—bring it all back, and too much at once.
What I didn't know in those contented carnival days was how determined Mum was to make a lady out of me, and why she squeezed every penny until it screamed. It was not enough for her to see me stand up straight and say please and thank you; she had A Plan. Over the years, moving from place to place, she'd taught me to read and write and do sums; presently, between shows, she began to dress up in her best clothes, ask her way to a public library and smuggle out books that she never returned, and suddenly I must learn history, spelling and geography. When I was fourteen her Plan was divulged: 1 was to go to Boston the next year to a school for young ladies, an expensive one called Miss Thistlethwaite's Finishing School for Young Ladies. Worse, I had already been accepted.
"But why, Grams, why?" I cried.
"It's her dream," Grams said, brushing my hair. "People need dreams, there's as much nourishment in 'em as food."
"But what about my dreams'?"
She smiled faintly. "And what might your dream be?"
"I can be a magician," I reminded her.
"You're already a magician, and you'll always be a magician."
"Then make her stop, Grams," I pleaded. "Even the name Thistlethwaite sticks in my teeth. I don't want to leave you or the carny, this is home."
But Grams only sho
ok her head. "It's not just her dream, it's more than that."
"What, then?" I asked stormily.
"It's fate working through her," she said. "It's the beginning."
But of what I didn't know, nor could Grams, but a beginning it was, yes.
Fabrics and paper patterns were ordered from the Sears catalogue, as well as cutting shears and thread, and an orgy of sewing took place all through the winter. I shudder even now at what it cost Mum and Grams in money and stamina, because the carny rarely stayed more than four nights in a town, and the sewing had to be done on trucks or during train stops, or early mornings before the shows began. They had settled it between them that by making my everyday clothes they could afford one Thistlethwaite uniform, a navy blue jumper with insignia that cost a frightening $10; I helped do what I could but I was all thumbs with a needle. By summer when the carny headed north there were three ankle-length skirts, four shirtwaists, a cape cut down from Mum's black winter coat, and Grams had trimmed one of her old hats for me with a velvet ribbon, and one of Mum's straw hats with flowers. The Fat Lady took up a collection for a pair of bright new kid boots for me that cost all of $1.50, the first I'd ever owned that weren't cloth, and the sword swallower's wife came to our tent one morning with a handful of ribbons and lace for my shirtwaists. I thought I was already a lady when I looked at the clothes I'd take with me in the old straw suitcase the Tattooed Lady contributed.
There was no holding back September, though, and one rainy day—an omen, I thought—I was put on a train for Boston to enter Thistlethwaite School, a huge Gothic mansion not far from the Boston Common. There was a lawn with flowers, and dozens of girls as pretty as flowers and wearing beautiful new clothes, and bells rang for each class. The stair railings were solid brass and there were ferns and jardinieres everywhere. The classrooms were downstairs, the rooms for out-of-town students upstairs near the attic, but most of the students were the daughters of Boston doctors, lawyers, ministers, judges and businessmen, and went home every night.
What can I say of Thistlethwaite? My clothes were all wrong and badly made, my yellow kid boots were too bright and my two hats out-of-date. It was only when one of the girls saw me absently palming a coin that I achieved visibility. Or notoriety. Otherwise those early weeks were lonely and homesick, and Mum's ambitions felt very cruel to me. All I could do was study hard so that her hoarded money would not be wasted. Even the $1.00 spending money Grams sent each month was a sacrifice, I knew this, and knew I had to earn good marks so that I'd receive an engraved certificate after two years and magically be a lady. What this would bring me had never been defined, and I had never thought to ask. After all, I was living out someone else's dream, which is never easy, and the staid atmosphere in which I had to live it thoroughly depressed my spirits.
Until November.
I had dyed my bright yellow kid boots brown and I had solved my embarrassing clothes problem by wearing the school uniform every day, but its serge by this time was almost shiny enough to reflect a face. Worse, Christmas was coming and I was determined to send Grams and Mum a gift. I had been very well behaved for two and a half months but now I needed money: it was time to revert.
I practiced first by picking Jennie Todd's pocket of 50 cents and returning it to her, saying the coin had fallen from her pocket. I filched the janitor's key without his feeling the slightest whisper of two fingers invading his pockets, and thus reassured that I'd not lost my touch, I set out for the park one crisp and sunny Saturday afternoon to look for more fruitful possibilities than Jennie Todd and the janitor, glad to be free of Thistlethwaite's virtuous and stifling ambiance for a few hours.
2
I sat in the. park on a bench and watched people passing by, observing each one closely in order to choose the easiest and best mark. I saw a few grand ladies in furs who looked profitable, but out of honor to Mum and Grams I wasn't going to take anything from a woman. Then I saw a man strolling toward me who looked just the right sort of person: he gave the impression of being a professor, for certainly he looked preoccupied, his thoughts entirely elsewhere, but what was best of all he wasn't wearing an overcoat but a belted Norfolk jacket half a size too small so that I could see the bulge in his right-hand pocket. He was neither young nor old, with a stern pale face that was rather long in shape, and dark, melancholy eyes. Definitely he looked easy prey and my spirits rose at once. I stood up and began strolling behind him while I studied the shape of his pocket and its contents, and then I drew abreast of him to pass, and a second later I was slipping his wallet into my own coat pocket.
Two seconds after that I was stunned by an arm shooting out to grasp mine; the man swung me nearly off my feet. "Young lady," he said sternly, "you have just pocketed my wallet."
I thought of Mum telling me to roll with the punches and I couldn't think of any way out of this because his grip was strong and the evidence on my person, so I gasped and said bravely, "Yes, sir, I did."
"Hmmmm," he muttered, staring down at me. His eyes examined my coat, which was not threadbare as he'd probably expected, and my face, which was trying not to look frightened, and he said, "Why?"
"Well," I began, "I wanted—" But I wasn't going to tell him, I made my lips thin and shook my head.
"Hmmm," he muttered again. "And very cleverly it was done, too; in fact if I'd not traveled widely and learned to recognize the—" He glanced down at his jacket and nodded. "But very careless I was today, yes. Where did you learn the trade? Come, come," he said with a faint smile. "If you tell me I'll not turn you over to the authorities, I promise."
It was at this point that I began a real struggle to free myself; if I'd had my wits about me I would have shouted for help, due to appearances being entirely in my favor—a grown man hanging onto a schoolgirl—but having never been caught before, and being thus in a panic, this didn't occur to me and I could only struggle wordlessly. What he did next was pin both arms behind my back and march me toward the nearest shop, which happened to be an ice cream parlor, and once inside he edged me into one of those little round chairs with wire legs, sat me down, took the chair next to me and bid the waitress bring us two ice cream sodas. Vanilla.
"Chocolate," I said.
He corrected the order and looked at me. "So—you prefer chocolate to vanilla and you pick pockets. How old are you?"
"S-s-sixteen," I stammered. He had begun to look less severe and I was ready to admit that much, quite proud that I'd left my fifteenth year behind me a week ago.
He glanced thoughtfully at the blue of my Thistlethwaite uniform with its insignia prominently outlined in gold braid; before I could draw my coat closer to hide it he said, very calmly, "And now you will tell me—in exchange for one chocolate soda and no recriminations—how a pupil at Thistlethwaite, and a very properly dressed young lady—"
Mum, I thought, would be pleased to hear this.
"—learned to steal with such cleverness."
"Not so cleverly," I told him sulkily. "You caught me."
He smiled, which made him look quite kind. "Ah, but you didn't know that I'm a man who has developed a sixth sense. I have learned from two trips to the Middle East to beware of any person passing me so closely when there is space all around. It is, as I say, an awareness grown in me from the rapaciousness sometimes found in foreign climes."
"Is that what you mean by sixth sense?" I asked, growing interested.
He nodded. "I can assure you, young lady, that if you'd chosen any other man on the street you would not be here—ah, thank you," he said to the waitress. "Would not be sitting on that chair, about to tell me your name, I trust, and to imbibe an ice cream soda. Now may I have my wallet, please?"
Reluctantly I dug in my pocket and placed his wallet on the table where it lay between us, bulging obscenely with crisp paper money. Watching me he said, "I see my mistake ... I am not dealing with a pupil at Thistlethwaite but a street urchin." Picking up the wallet with long pale fingers he extracted a ten-dollar bill and place
d it on the table. "Earn this," he said, adding dryly, "Did you steal the uniform, too?'
Ten dollars and an ice cream soda were a better bargain than the police and being sent home in disgrace. I shook my head.
"Then where did you learn such a skill?"
"In the carny," I told him, picking up the spoon to eat the ice cream before it melted into the syrup. "Carnival, that is."
"I see," he said, staring at me. "Well, well, so you visited a carnival? No," he added thoughtfully, "a visit wouldn't do it, who taught you?"
"Grams." Sucking the straw made a great deal of noise and so I returned, ladylike, to the spoon.
"That would be a grandmother?" When I nodded he said, "And was she a pickpocket, too?"
"She's a magician and fortune-teller." I wasn't about to betray Grams. "She's a juggler, too."
"And your mother?"
"Right now she's the headless lady."
Soon enough he was extracting the story of how I came to Thistlethwaite School and asking a great number of tiresome and silly questions. "Because," as he said at last, "I am by way of being something of an anthropologist, as well as a linguist and scholar, and—" He frowned. "1 wonder if a paper on the language of the carnival might be in order for the Society? Fuzz, for instance, what is that?"
Since I didn't know what either anthropologist or linguist meant I very kindly told him that "fuzz" meant police.
"I see," he said, nodding. "Yes, that could be useful, very useful. You haven't told me your name, by the way."
"Caressa."
He winced at that. "Caressa what?"
"Caressa Horvath."
He slid the ten-dollar bill across the table to me. "And my name is Jacob Bowman, but before I leave I want you to pledge, on your honor, that you do no more stealing. You must know it's dishonest, illegal and highly reprehensible."
I'd never thought it more than a game, frankly. Carny folks are a tight-knit people, with a family closeness bred of late hours, constant movement and a struggle to survive, while townies came from a world of nine-to-five jobs, regular meals and real houses, church on Sundays and baths on Saturday nights in real metal tubs. They came to the carnival for thrills, practically being asked to be tricked, and they were as alien to us as foreigners from another country. If Gus Fritz was waiting to wheedle a mark into betting on slum skillo, a bet the man could never win—not with Gus's foot on the pedal under the boards—what was a little wallet-lifting? Nevertheless, I looked at this man and gravely admitted that it might be dishonest, yes. What I really meant was that I understood—with finality—that I was a member of the other world now, where the fuzz had not been paid off and there could be trouble. This was obviously part of learning to be the lady Mum wanted me to be, and ladies did not indulge in picking pockets. I promised.
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