I follow them back into the practice hall. I find a cloth and wet it in one of the buckets. “Thank you,” Astrid says as I hand her the cloth. It is the kindest voice I’ve heard her use. Her hands tremble as she wipes the brown muck from her hair and neck.
I struggle to find the words to ask my many questions. “Astrid, you hid...”
“A trick from the Great Boldini. He performed with my family years ago in Italy.” She smiles. “Don’t ask me how I did it. A good magician never reveals her secrets.”
But I am in no mood for jokes. “Oh, Astrid!” I burst into tears. Though she hates me, I cannot help but care. “They almost found you!”
“They didn’t, though,” she replies, a note of satisfaction in her voice.
“But why did they want you?” I persist, even though I know my questions are too much for her right now. “Why did you hide?”
“Darling...” Peter interjects with a note of caution.
“I can trust her,” Astrid says. I straighten with pride. “She will find out soon enough anyway.” But she bites her lip and studies me, as if still deciding whether to confide in me. “You see, Theo is not the only Jew with the circus. I am also a Jew.”
I am stunned into silence. I had not imagined that Astrid could be Jewish, though with her dark hair and eyes it made sense.
I exhale, thanking God in that moment that I had not told her everything about my past and the German soldier. Something had held me back. And it is for the best, because surely if I had she would have thrown me out.
“I was the youngest of five children in our family’s circus,” she adds. “Our winter quarters were adjacent to Herr Neuhoff’s.” I remember the dark, abandoned house over the hill that Astrid had eyed as we traveled back and forth between the women’s lodge and practice hall. “I’d left it to marry Erich and live in Berlin.” I glance at Peter out of the corner of my eye, wondering if it is hard for him to hear about the man Astrid loved before. “He was a senior officer at Reich headquarters.” A Jew, married to a high-ranking Nazi. I try to imagine what that life had been like for her. I’ve been training alongside Astrid for weeks, feeling as though I had come to know her. But now a whole different person seems to appear before my eyes.
She continues, “When I came back to Darmstadt, my family had disappeared. Herr Neuhoff took me in. Ingrid is my birth name. We changed it so no one would know.” It’s hard to imagine anyone rejecting her. An image of my father standing at the door to my bedroom ordering me to leave appears in my mind. All of the old pain that I have worked so hard to push aside these many months wells up as fresh and awful as the day it happened.
“What about your family?” I ask, fearing the answer.
“Gone.” Her eyes are hollow and sad.
“You don’t know that,” Peter says gently, placing his arm around her. This time, she does not turn away, but rests her head on his shoulder for comfort.
“It was winter when I came back and they should have been here,” Astrid says numbly. She shakes her head. “They would not have been able to go far enough to outrun the Germans. No, it is only me. I still see their faces, though.” She lifts her chin. “Don’t pity me,” she says. How could I possibly? She is so strong and beautiful and brave.
“Does this happen often?” I gesture in the direction in which the police had gone.
“More than enough. It’s fine, really. There have been inspections from time to time. Sometimes the police come through to make sure we are in compliance with code. Mostly it has just been a shakedown and Herr Neuhoff gives them a few marks to be on their way.”
Peter shakes his head grimly. “This was different. SS—and they were looking for you.”
Her face grows somber. “Yes.”
“We have to go,” Peter says, his face stony. Though I have seen him rehearse, it is impossible to imagine the dark, brooding man bringing levity to a crowd. “Leave Germany.” His words come in staccato bursts, breath urgent. He is thinking of Astrid—she needs to be out of the country, immediately, just as surely as I must get Theo to safety.
“A few more weeks,” she says, soothing him.
“Then we’ll be in France,” I offer.
“You think France is so much better?” Peter demands.
“It won’t be, really,” Astrid explains, answering for me. “Once we might have found some safety in the Zone Libre. But no more.” In the early years of the war, Vichy had not technically been occupied. But the Germans had all but done away with the puppet regime two years ago, taking control of the rest of the country.
“I need to go speak with Herr Neuhoff,” Peter says. “Astrid, you’ll be all right?” Though he speaks to Astrid, he looks at me, as if asking me to care for her.
I hesitate. I am desperate to go check on Theo and make sure the Germans had not seen him. But I cannot leave Astrid alone. “Come,” I urge, reaching out my hand. “I’ve got some questions about what we practiced today and a sore ankle that needs taping.” I make it sound as though I need her help instead.
“Here,” I say, taking the now-soiled cloth from her once Peter has gone. I return the cloth to the bucket where I had found it, kneeling to rinse it and wring it out. When I straighten, Astrid is staring out the window across the valley. I wonder if she is thinking of the SS coming or her family or both. “Are you all right?” I ask.
“I’m sorry,” she replies. “What I did to you was wrong.”
It takes a moment before I realize she is talking about the trapeze earlier, pushing me. With all that has happened, I had nearly forgotten. “I understand now. You didn’t want me to be afraid.”
She shakes her head. “Only a fool is not afraid. We need fear to keep our edge. I wanted you to know the worst that would happen so you could be prepared and make sure it does not. My father did the same thing to me—when I was four.” I try to grasp the idea of someone pushing a toddler off a platform forty feet in the air. Anywhere else it would be a crime. But here it was training, accepted.
“Do you have a trunk?” Astrid asks, changing subjects. I shake my head. I had left Bensheim with nothing and have only the bits of clothing she had gathered for Theo and me. “Well, we’ll have to get you one... That is, if you’ll stay?” There is fear in her eyes and a kind of vulnerability that had not been there before—or perhaps I had not seen it. “We can’t perform on the flying trapeze without a third aerialist. And I must perform.” With the Germans having come, the tables seem to have turned and she is begging me now, needing me for the act in a way I might have not imagined possible. I hesitate, considering my response.