Пэм Дженофф – The Orphan's Tale: The phenomenal international bestseller about courage and loyalty against the odds (страница 13)
When she faces me, Astrid’s expression is hard and businesslike once more. “Your brother,” she says, “he looks nothing like you.”
I am caught off guard by the abrupt shift of topic. “My mother,” I feign. “She was very dark-skinned.” I bite my tongue, trying to counter my natural instinct of offering too much information. I brace for an onslaught of additional questions, but Astrid seems content to leave it alone and continues eating in silence.
At the end of the theater, Peter is rehearsing an act, goose-stepping with legs straight out, imitating with great exaggeration the march of the German soldier. Watching him, I grow nervous. I turn to Astrid. “Surely he isn’t planning to do that for the show?” She does not answer, but stares at him, her eyes narrow with fear.
Herr Neuhoff enters and crosses the hall with more speed than I would have thought he could manage, given his age and weight. He barrels toward Peter, face stormy. Had he seen Peter rehearsing through one of the windows or had someone told him about the routine? The music stops abruptly with a clatter. Herr Neuhoff confers with Peter. Though his voice is low, he gestures wildly with his hands. Peter shakes his head vehemently. Astrid’s brow wrinkles with concern as she watches the two men.
A minute later Herr Neuhoff clambers toward us, red-faced. “You must talk to him,” he thunders at Astrid. “This new act mocking the Germans...”
Astrid raises her palms plaintively upward. “I can’t stop him. That’s who he is as an artist.”
Herr Neuhoff will not let the matter go. “We keep our heads low, stay out of the fray—that’s how I’ve been able to keep this circus going—and protect everyone.” From what? I want to ask. But I do not dare. “Tell him, Astrid,” Herr Neuhoff urges in a low voice. “He’ll listen to you. Tell him—or I’ll pull him from the show.”
Alarm crosses Astrid’s face. “I’ll try,” she promises.
“Would he?” I cannot help but ask after Herr Neuhoff has walked from the building. “Pull Peter from the show, I mean.”
She shakes her head. “Peter is one of the circus’s biggest draws and his acts are what hold the whole thing together. Without him, there is no show,” she adds. But she is still upset. Her hand shakes as she puts her sandwich away, largely uneaten. “We should keep going and rehearse the next bit.”
I take a bite, swallow hurriedly. “There’s more?”
“You think people will pay just to see you hang there like a monkey?” Astrid laughs harshly. “You’ve only just started. It is not enough to simply swing back and forth. Anyone can do that. We need to dance in the air, do things that seem impossible. Don’t worry, I will line up your trick so that when you release and fly, I’m in place to catch you.”
The bread I’ve just eaten sticks in my throat as I remember the way she tumbled through the air. “Fly?” I manage.
“Yes. That’s why it is called the flying trapeze. You are the flier and you will release and come to me. I will be the catcher.” She starts for the ring.
But I remain in place, feet planted. “Why must I be the one to let go?” I dare to ask.
“Because I would never trust you to catch me.” Her voice is cold. “Come.”
She heads for a ladder on the other side of the room, parallel to the one we’d climbed earlier, but with a sturdier-looking swing. I follow, but she shakes her head. “You go on that side with Gerda.” She gestures to another aerialist whom I hadn’t seen come in and who is already climbing the ladder Astrid and I had used previously. I follow her. At the top, Astrid and I stand on opposite platforms, an ocean apart from one another. “Swing just like before. And when I say, you let go. I will do the rest.”
“And Gerda?” I ask, stalling.
“She will send the bar back for you to catch on the return,” Astrid replies.
I stare at her, not believing. “So I have to let go twice?”
“Unless you have wings, yes. You have to get back somehow.” Astrid grabs the opposite bar and leaps, then swings around so she is hanging by her legs. “Now you,” she prompts.
I jump out, kicking my toes high. “Higher, higher,” she urges, her arms extended toward me. “You have to be above me when I tell you to let go.” I force myself upward, driving with my feet. “Better. On my cue. Three, two, one—now!” But my hands remain stuck to the bar.
“Fool!” she cries. “Everything in the circus depends upon timing, synchronicity. You must listen to me. Otherwise you will get us both killed.”
I manage my way onto the board, then climb down the ladder and meet Astrid back on the ground. “You let go in gymnastics, surely,” she says, clearly frustrated.
“That was different,” I reply. By about thirty-five feet, I add silently.
She folds her arms. “There’s no act without the release.”
“There is no way that I can do this,” I insist. We stare at each other for several seconds, neither speaking.
“You want to go, so go. No one expected more.” Her words shoot out at me like a slap.
“Least of all you,” I retort. She wants me to fail. She does not want me here.
Astrid blinks, her expression somewhere between anger and surprise. “How dare you?” she asks, and I fear I have gone too far.
“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.
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.