“Fine,” I relent, letting him take my arm. He starts walking once more, leading me toward the edge of town. His fingers are warm through my sleeve. He moves quickly with self-assurance, the kind of boy whom I never would have dared speak to back home.
We cross the footbridge, near the edge of the forest. I stop and pull away, more firmly this time. “I can manage myself.” Letting him walk me out of town is one thing. If he comes any farther with me, though, someone from the circus might see me mingling, as Astrid said I should not. I can almost feel her eyes on me. I turn in the direction of the woods, wondering if she is watching. But I see no one. Still I am not supposed to be here. It has been well more than an hour and she will be waiting for me to practice, perhaps even worrying. “I have to go,” I say firmly.
He brushes a lock of hair from his forehead, his face a mix of hurt and puzzlement. “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” he says and begins to walk away.
“Wait!” I call out. “Lucienne...”
“Luc,” he corrects, starting back toward me.
“Luc.” I roll the name across my tongue. “I need to buy some things.” In my haste to get away from those awful boys and their mother, I had nearly forgotten about finding food for Theo.
“What sort of things?” Luc asks.
I see Astrid in my mind, hear her cautioning me not to ask. “Milk, some rice cereal.” I falter, not wanting to reveal the truth about Theo.
He eyes me evenly. “For yourself?”
“Yes.” I meet his gaze, not wavering. He is a stranger, not to be trusted.
“Or for the baby?” he asks. I freeze, panicked. How does he know about Theo? “I saw you holding him in the parade the day the circus arrived.”
Goose bumps form on my skin. I hadn’t realized he had noticed me. Our lives even outside the ring suddenly seem like a fishbowl. “My little brother,” I manage, praying that he will not suspect otherwise as Astrid had.
“Don’t you have ration cards?” he presses, seeming to accept my explanation.
“Yes, of course,” I reply, “but they’re never enough.”
He looks back over his shoulder toward the town center. “The shops are closed on Sunday,” he says finally. “Perhaps if you come back during the week.”
“It’s difficult with all of the performances,” I reply carefully. I consider asking him about the black market but do not dare.
“What do you do with the circus, anyway, tame tigers?” Luc’s tone is chiding.
For a second I want to tell him that I have been here only a few weeks and am not really part of the circus. But they are my people now. I lift my chin. “Trapeze, actually.” I am proud of how good I’ve become at my new craft, the work I’ve put in to become so. It is lost in translation to noncircus folk like Luc, who still looks simply amused. “You haven’t seen the show, have you?”
He shakes his head. “Maybe I should,” he says, then smiles. “But only if you’ll meet me afterward. For a coffee,” he adds, to make sure I hadn’t thought he was suggesting something improper. “I’m sure I’ll have questions about the show. What do you say?”
I falter. He seems nice enough and in another time I might have said yes more easily. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” I say.
Disappointment flashes across his face, then vanishes again just as quickly. “I can walk you the rest of the way,” he offers. “In case you see those boys again—or their mother.”
“It isn’t necessary,” I reply. No good would come from encouraging him. And I do not want any of the circus folk to see me with him—especially Astrid.
I start down the road before he can offer further, feeling him watch me as I go.
11
Astrid
I watch Noa cross the footbridge. A wave of protectiveness swells in me. Her first time off the fairgrounds. Will she manage it or will her nervousness cause her problems? For a minute I want to go after her and remind her again to be careful and not speak to anyone and a thousand other things. I’d like to go to town and wash properly myself, but after the German nearly recognized me the other night I do not dare risk being seen. I look around warily. The place where I am standing near the edge of the woods is not so very far from town and I don’t want to run into anyone and answer questions about the child—or myself.
My mind reels back to the previous night’s performance. As I peered into the tent, someone caught my eye. A man in uniform, SS pin glinting on his lapel. Roger von Albrecht. He had been a colleague of my husband’s in Berlin, and had visited our apartment on Rauchstrasse a few times.
How was it, I wonder now, that of all the towns in Germany and France, Erich’s colleague had come to see our circus at its very first performance, hundreds of miles from Berlin? Such misfortune hardly seems possible. Of course he had not been such a close friend of Erich’s, just an associate we encountered at holiday parties and such. Close enough, though, that he might have recognized me. We had thought by traveling to France we were moving farther from danger. But it looms here just as real.
I watch as Noa walks toward the town center, shoulders squared. She is nervous, I can tell, going into town for the first time all by herself. But she presses forward. “She really is a good girl, you know,” I say aloud to Theo as I start back for the woods. I can almost feel him nod in agreement. “She loves you very much.” She. What will Theo call Noa when he is old enough to speak? “Mama” seems a betrayal of the woman who gave birth to him and whose heart surely still breaks. But every child should have a chance to call someone his mother. I shift and Theo nestles contentedly into my neck. I have never taken to children, but there is something wiser about him, an old soul. I lift him higher on my hip and begin to sing “Do You Know How Many Stars?” a merry children’s tune that I have not thought of since my childhood:
Do you know how many little stars are in blue heaven’s tent?
Do you know how many clouds trail all over the world?
The Lord God has counted them,
So that none of them are missing,
Among this great vast amount.
I look down at Theo. Has he heard the song before? I wonder about his parents, whether they might have sung it to him. Were they religious Jews or perhaps not observant at all? I switch to “Raisins and Almonds,” a Yiddish lullaby, searching his face for some sign of recognition. He watches me with wide, unblinking eyes.