“Oh!” I gasp. I am stunned. I had assumed Peter had a life before me, but a child? Suddenly it seems I do not know him at all.
“I was married to a ballerina from Moscow named Anya,” he says, looking away, his voice hollow. I try to picture his wife, and imagine with more than a little jealousy someone tall and willowy, with long graceful limbs. Where is she now? “We had a little girl, Katya.” His voice cracks as he says her name. He tries to continue, moving his lips, but no sound comes out.
“What happened?” I ask, dreading the answer but at the same time needing to know.
He sits mutely for several seconds, unable to go on. “Spanish flu. The best doctors and hospitals couldn’t help her.”
“How old was she?”
“Four.” He buries his head in his hands, his back shaking with silent sobs. I sit helplessly beside him, my mind reeling as I try to process it all. A few minutes later, he lifts his head, wiping his eyes. “I suppose I should have said something sooner, but it’s just so hard.
“Anya died shortly after Katya,” he adds. “The doctor said it was also flu. I think it was a broken heart. So it was all gone, you see.” His voice catches and I wonder if he might break down once more.
“I’m sorry.” I throw my arms around him and rest my head against his shoulder. But my sympathy is inadequate and it is impossible to ease a pain I did not share. I understand so much more about him then, his dark moods and his drinking.
“This brings painful memories for you,” I add.
He shakes his head. “No, it is good to remember both of them. But you see why I am nervous.”
“I understand.” He is afraid, I realize, of having another child, loving as deeply as he once had. Then, he had all of the money and privilege in the world and it had not been enough. How could he possibly protect and care for a child now? “It will be fine,” I say, forcing conviction into my voice to cover my own doubts. “We can do this.” Now it is my turn to be strong.
“Yes, of course we can,” Peter replies, forcing a smile. He kisses me once, then again. He brings his mouth to my eyelids, lips, cheeks, breasts. His weight pushes me back against the bed and for a second it seems he will try to take me. But he simply rests his head on my belly, not speaking.
“Before you, I had given up hope,” he says finally. “I don’t know what I would do without you. I love you,” he adds. The feelings that he has kept pent up since we’ve been together seem to bubble forth. And though I once longed for them, I am overwhelmed. It is too much now, to carry him and the child.
He lifts his head and a light seems to dawn in his eyes. “We should get married,” he declares, taking both of my hands in his own. Married. The word reverberates in my head. Once it had meant something. Now in my mind, I see the papers Erich had thrust before me, saying that none of it had mattered at all, hear the clatter of my wedding ring as it fell to the floor of our apartment.
“Oh, Peter.” There was only once for me and marriage. I cannot fathom anyone wanting me in that way—or ever letting myself get that close to a man again. “We can’t.”
“No, of course not,” he says quickly, unable to mask his disappointment.
I cup his cheek. “In my heart, I am already married to you.”
“Or we could leave,” he says. I am surprised. Peter had always rejected the idea before because there was nowhere else he could perform as he does here. But now with the prospect of a child, everything has changed.
“I can’t leave,” I reply. “Here I can hide.” At least for now. Once I might have taken the chance and fled. This is about something bigger than just my own safety now, though. I touch my stomach once more. “And Noa needs me...”
“The girl?” His expression is puzzled. “Why should she matter? I didn’t think you even liked her.”
“No, of course not, but still...” It’s true, I admit. I disliked Noa from the first, and even more after she had gotten me pulled from the show. But she depends on me, as surely as Theo does her. “You could go if you really wanted,” I offer. The words hurt to say.
He wraps his arms more tightly around me. “I will never leave you,” he says, and his hand lowers to my stomach. “Or our child.”
Someone who will not leave me, I think, wishing for my younger self, the one who might have believed it. “It will be all right,” I say, pushing away my doubts.
“Better than all right. A family.” I smile through my fears. Can such things possibly be? But my child will be Jewish. An image flashes through my mind of Noa making her way blindly through the woods in the snow with Theo before we found her. We are barely able to protect one Jewish child—how on earth would we ever protect two?
14
Noa
“No, no!” Astrid cries during practice the following Sunday, her voice ringing so shrilly through the big top that one of the jugglers practicing below drops her silver rings to the ground with a clatter. “You must go higher!”
I swing my legs harder as Gerda throws me back toward the bar, trying to heed Astrid’s command. But when I make it to the board and look down, her face is still dissatisfied.
“You must get your legs above your head,” she scolds as I climb down the ladder.
“But you said not to break the line of my body, so I thought...” I begin, then stop, knowing I will not win. Astrid has been ill-tempered these past few days, snapping at everything I say and berating me for the same routines that were just fine a few days earlier. Watching her lips curl with displeasure, I wonder if she is still angry about my part in having her removed from the show. She had seemed to forgive me nearly a week earlier but now I’m not so sure.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She opens her mouth as if there is something she wants to say. “It’s nothing,” she replies finally, but she does not sound as though she means it.
“Astrid, please,” I press. “If there is something, maybe I can help.”
She smiles but there is no happiness in her eyes. “If only that were true,” she says, then walks away and starts up the ladder.
So there is something wrong, I think, knowing better than to press. “Are we going to keep rehearsing?” I ask instead, dreading the answer.
But she shakes her head. “We’re done for today.” She reaches the board and takes the bar, leaps without warning. Though she cannot perform in the show, this has not stopped her from flying, faster and fiercer than ever. She works without a catcher now, barely touching the bar, in a way that seems impossible even as I watch.
I walk across the practice hall to Peter, who has stopped training to watch Astrid. “We have to stop her,” I say. “She’s going to kill herself.”
But his eyes are a mix of admiration and futility and his posture resigned. “I cannot stop her from her greatness, being who she is.”