The wind howls louder in response.
I try to move forward again. My toes are numb now, legs leaden. Each step into the sharp wind grows harder. The snow turns to icy sleet, forming a layer on us. The world around us has turned strangely gray at the edges. The child’s eyes are closed, and he is resigned to the fate that has always been his. I take a step forward and stumble and stand again.
“I’m sorry,” I say, unable to hold him any longer. Then I fall forward and everything goes black.
4
Astrid
The squeak of a doorknob turning, hands pressing against hard wood. At first, they seem part of a dream I cannot quite make out.
The sounds come again, though, louder this time, followed by the scraping of the door opening. I struggle to sit. Sharp terror shoots through me. Inspections have come without warning in the fifteen months since my return, Gestapo or the local police who do their bidding. They have not noticed me yet, nor asked for the ausweis Herr Neuhoff had gotten for me, the identification card I fear will not be good enough. My reputation as a performer is a blessing and a curse in Darmstadt, giving me the means to survive, but at the same time making my false identity a thin veneer, nearly impossible to maintain. So when the inspectors come I disappear into the bottom of one of the tarp-covered wagons, or if there is no time, into the woods. But here in Peter’s cabin, with its lone door and no cellar, I am trapped.
A deep male voice cuts through the darkness. “It’s only me.” Peter’s hands, which I feel so often in the night these past months, stirring me from dreams of the past I do not want to leave, rub my back gently. “Someone has been found in the forest.”
I roll over. “Who found them, you?” I ask. Peter hardly sleeps, but walks at night, prowling the countryside like a restless coyote even in deepest winter. I reach up to touch his stubbled cheek, noting with concern the circles that ring his eyes more darkly now.
“I was down by the stream,” he replies. “I thought it was a wounded animal.” Peter’s vowels are over-rounded, v’s nearly w’s, his Russian accent undiluted by time as though he had left Leningrad weeks and not years ago.
“So naturally, you went closer,” I say, my voice chiding. I would have gone the other way.
“Yes.” He helps me to my feet. “They weren’t conscious so I carried them back here.” His breath holds a hint of liquor, drunk too recently to have gone sour.
“They?” I repeat, the word now a question.
“A woman.” A bit of jealousy passes through me as I imagine him holding someone else. “There was also a child.” He pulls a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket.
A woman and child, alone in the woods at night. This is queer, even for the circus. No good can come from strange happenings—or strangers.
I dress hurriedly and pull on my coat. Below the lapel I can feel the rough outline of torn threads where the yellow star had once been sewn. I follow Peter out into the frigid darkness, tucking my chin low against the biting wind. His cottage is one of a half dozen scattered across the gently sloping valley, private quarters saved for the most senior and skilled of performers. Though my official residence is in the lodge, a long building set apart where most of the other girls sleep, staying with Peter had quickly become the norm. I slip back and forth at night and before dawn with only the slightest pretense.
When I came back to Darmstadt, I had meant to stay only long enough for Herr Neuhoff to find a replacement aerialist and for me to figure out where I was going. But the arrangement worked, and as I prepared to join the circus on the road that first year, my visions of leaving waned. And I met Peter, who had joined the Circus Neuhoff during the years that I was gone. He is a clown, though not the type of buffoon whom noncircus folk normally associate with the title. His performances are original and elaborate and they combine comedy, satire and irony with an artistry that even I have never seen before.
I had not expected to be with anyone again, much less fall in love. Peter is a decade older, and different from the rest of the performers. He had been born to the Russian aristocracy when there was one; some said he was the cousin of Czar Nicholas. In another life we never would have met. The circus is a great equalizer, though; no matter class or race or background, we are all the same here, judged on our talent. Peter fought in the Great War. He had not sustained injuries, at least none that were visible, but there is a kind of melancholy that suggested he has never recovered. His sadness resonated with me and we were drawn to one another.
I start toward the women’s lodge. Peter shakes his head and guides me in a different direction. “Up there.” The light of his cigarette gleams like a torch as he inhales.
The newcomers are at Herr Neuhoff’s villa—also rather unusual. “They can’t stay,” I whisper, though there is no one else around to hear.
“Of course not,” Peter replies. “Just temporary shelter so they wouldn’t die from the storm.” His shadow looms over me. It is not only Peter’s sorrow that makes his greatness as a clown so improbable. He told me once that the first time he had tried to join a circus, they sent him away, saying he was too tall to be a clown. So he’d apprenticed at a theater in Kiev, developed an ironic persona that suited his craggy features and long-legged style and then gone from circus to circus, building fame around his act. Peter’s antics, which often feature a humorous disregard for authority, are known far and wide. Through the war years, his routines had grown more caustic and his hatred of war and fascism less veiled. As his reputation for daring irreverence grew, so did the crowds.
He opens the door to the villa, where I’ve been only for the holiday party Herr Neuhoff throws for the entire circus each December and a handful of other times since my return. We slip inside without knocking. From the top of the staircase, Herr Neuhoff gestures that we should join him. In one of the guest rooms, a girl with long blond hair sleeps in a mahogany four-poster bed. Her pale skin is almost translucent against the rich burgundy sheets.
On the low table beside her, a baby lies in a makeshift bassinet, fashioned from a large woven basket. Moses on the Nile, watching us with dark, interested eyes. The child cannot be more than a few months old, I guess, though I have no experience with such things. It has long lashes and round cheeks that one seldom sees for all of the deprivation these days. Beautiful—but aren’t they all at that age?
Herr Neuhoff nods toward the child. “Before she passed out, she said he is her brother.”