‘Hush,’ says Robert, smoothing the hair off his forehead. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters.’
‘No. You don’t understand.’ Simon dog-paddles; he gulps. It is urgent, that he say this. ‘Everything does.’
When Robert leaves to use the bathroom, Klara comes to Simon’s cot. The skin beneath her eyes is swollen.
She says, ‘Will I ever find someone I love as much as you?’
She scoots into bed beside him. He’s become so thin that they both fit easily in the hospital’s twin.
‘Please,’ says Simon: her words, when they stood on the roof as the sun rose, when they stood at the very beginning. ‘You’ll find someone you love much more.’
‘No,’ gasps Klara. ‘I won’t.’ She lays her head on Simon’s pillow. When she turns to look at him, her hair falls over his collarbone. ‘What did she tell you?’
What does it matter, now? ‘Sunday,’ Simon says.
‘Oh, Sy.’ There is a strangled cry, like something that would come from a chained dog. Klara puts a palm over her mouth when she realizes it’s hers. ‘I wish – I wish . . .’
‘Don’t wish it. Look what she gave me.’
‘This!’ says Klara, looking at the lesions on his arms, his sharp ribs. Even his blond mane has thinned: after an aide helps him bathe, the drain is matted with curls.
‘No,’ says Simon, ‘this,’ and he points at the window. ‘I would never have come to San Francisco if it weren’t for her. I wouldn’t have met Robert. I’d never have learned how to dance. I’d probably still be home, waiting for my life to begin.’
He’s angry with the disease. He rages at the disease. For so long, he hated the woman, too. How, he wondered, could she give such a terrible fortune to a child? But now he thinks of her differently, like a second mother or a god, she who showed him the door and said: Go.
Klara looks paralyzed. Simon remembers the expression he saw on her face after they moved to San Francisco, that eerie combination of irritation and indulgence, and he realizes why it disturbed him. She reminded him of the woman: counting down, watching him. Inside him a bud of love for his sister breaks open. He thinks of her on the rooftop – how she stood at the edge and spoke without looking at him. Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t start your life.
‘You aren’t surprised that it’s Sunday,’ Simon says. ‘You knew all along.’
‘Your date,’ Klara whispers. ‘You said it was young. I wanted you to have everything you’ve ever wanted.’
Simon squeezes Klara’s hand. Her palm is fleshy, a healthy pink. ‘But I do,’ he says.
Sometimes, Klara leaves to let Simon and Robert be alone. When they’re too tired to do anything else, they watch videos, rented from the San Francisco Public Library, of the great male dancers: Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Nijinsky. One of the Shanti Project volunteers wheels the television in from the community room, and Robert lies with Simon in his cot.
Simon stares at him. How lucky I was to know you. He fears for Robert’s future.
‘If he gets it,’ Simon tells Klara, ‘he has to get into the trial. Promise me, Klara – promise me you’ll make sure.’
Word has spread throughout the corridor about an experimental medication that showed promise in Africa.
‘Okay, Sy,’ Klara whispers. ‘I promise. I’ll try.’
Why, in his years with Robert, has he had such trouble expressing love? As the days become longer, Simon says it over and over: I love you, I love you, that call and response, as essential to the body as food or breath. It is only when he hears Robert’s reply that his pulse slows, his eyes close, and he is able, at last, to sleep.
PART TWO
Proteus
1982–1991
Klara
10.
Klara can turn a black scarf into a single red rose and an ace into a queen. She can produce dimes from pennies and quarters from dimes and dollars from nothing but air. She can do the Hermann pass, the Thurston throw, the rising-card illusion, and the Back Palm. She is expert in the classic cup-and-ball routine, passed from the Canadian master Dai Vernon to Ilya Hlavacek and then to her: a dizzying, dazzling optical illusion in which an empty silver cup is filled with balls and dice and then, finally, one full, perfect lemon.
What she cannot do – what she will never stop trying to do – is bring her brother back.
When Klara arrives for a gig, her first task is to rig the space for the Jaws of Life. It isn’t easy to find nightclubs with high ceilings, so she also performs in dinner theaters and concert halls, and occasionally, as an independent contractor with a small circus in Berkeley. Still, she prefers clubs for their smokiness and dark moods, for the fact that she can work them alone, and because they are populated by adults, the people for whom she prefers to perform. Most adults claim not to believe in magic, but Klara knows better. Why else would anyone play at permanence – fall in love, have children, buy a house – in the face of all evidence there’s no such thing? The trick is not to convert them. The trick is to get them to admit it.
She brings her tools in a bulging duffel bag: drop line and ascension rope, wrench and clamps, swivel mouthpiece, sash cord. Ilya taught her that every rig is different, so Klara assesses the height of the ceiling, the width of the stage, the style and strength of the battens. There is no gap between failure and success – the timing is perfect or it is disastrous – and her pulse trills as she lashes the ascension rope to the batten from a ladder, as she wraps it thrice with sash cord and puts a safety break on the reverse rope. On stage, she measures sixty-nine inches up from the floor: her own five feet six inches, plus seven for her feet when pointed, and a two-inch clearance to the ground.
She started performing the Breakaway two years ago. An assistant pulls the rope until Klara hovers at the ceiling with the bit in her mouth. But instead of floating back down, as she did in her early shows, she plunges when the rope is released. The audience always believes it’s an accident, and there are gasps, sometimes screams, until she jerks to a stop. By now, she’s almost used to the way her jaw jolts as it absorbs the weight of her body, to the whiplash snap of her neck and the sting in her eyes, nose, and ears. All she can see is the hot white of the lights until the rope is lowered inches more and her feet touch down. When she lifts her head and spits the bit into her palm, she sees the audience for the first time, their faces slack with wonder.
‘I love you all,’ she whispers, bowing – these words inspired by Howard Thurston, who repeated them before each show, standing behind the curtain as the overture swelled. ‘I love you all, I love you all, I love you all.’
11.