That night the crowds are still making their way from the fairgrounds when the crews begin tearing down the circus. Unlike the raising of the big top, its demise is anticlimactic, a sight nobody wants to see. Poles clank as they fall upon one another and the canvas begins to collapse like a parachute billowing to the earth. The enormous tent, once full of people and laughter, is gone as though it was never there at all. I step over discarded programs and crushed popcorn kernels that have been matted into the ground. What will be here once we are gone?
I scan the desolate scene, looking once more for Astrid. She had not come to the show. Earlier, as I prepared to perform, I kept searching the backyard, hoping. But she had not emerged from the train all night. It was the first time I had performed without her nearby and I felt helpless, as though the safety net had somehow been removed. With Herr Neuhoff gone, I needed her more than ever.
Gerda walks over to me. “Come,” she says. “We should get changed and prepare to go.” It is the most she had said to me since I joined the circus and I wonder if she senses how lost I am without Astrid.
“When do we go?” I ask as we start back to the train to change.
“Not for a few hours,” Gerda replies. “They’ll finish tearing down sometime after we are asleep. But Emmet has ordered everyone to remain on board.”
A few more hours until we leave Thiers for good. Luc appears in my mind. I had not had the chance to tell him we were going or say goodbye. I gaze longingly over my shoulder in the direction of town, wondering if there is time to find Luc. I think about how I might sneak out unnoticed, but I wouldn’t dare go to Luc’s father’s house after all that had happened, and I do not know where else I might find him.
In the dressing car, the girls are quiet as they remove their costumes and makeup, and there is none of the excitement of when we’d left Darmstadt. When I have finished changing, I start back to the sleeper. I expect to find Astrid, as I so often do, holding Theo. But he is with Elsie.
I take Theo from her. “Where’s Astrid?”
“She hasn’t come back,” Elsie replies.
“Back?” I repeat. I had assumed that since she had not been at the show she had stayed here in bed, as she had much of the time since Peter was arrested.
“She hasn’t been here since before the show,” Elsie says. “I thought she was with you.”
I peer out the window of the sleeper. Where has Astrid gone? I hadn’t seen her in the big top during the show, nor anywhere on the fairgrounds as the teardown had begun after. I carry Theo from the train and scan the length of the cars toward the front of the train, but I do not see Astrid. She wouldn’t have gone far just as we are about to leave. Unless she had gone in a last desperate attempt to find Peter. I look in the direction of town, my concern growing.
Easy, I think. Even Astrid in her current state would have known that was impossible. My eyes travel the length of the train in the opposite direction, toward the rear, taking in the final carriage that had been Herr Neuhoff’s. Then, taking in the one in front of it, I understand. Astrid did not leave. Instead, she has gone to the place where she felt closest to Peter. I start in the direction of his railcar.
I find her lying in Peter’s unmade bed, curled into a ball, facing away from me. She clutches the sheet in both hands. “Astrid...” I sit down beside her, relieved. “When I couldn’t find you, I thought...” I do not finish the thought. Instead I put my hand on her shoulder and gently roll her over, expecting to see tears at last. But her face is stony, eyes blank. Though the railcar is chilly, faint perspiration coats her upper lip.
My concern rises again. “Astrid, are you feeling worse? Has your bleeding started again?”
“No, of course not.”
I reach out and touch her head. “You still feel warm.” I should have fought her harder when she refused to see a doctor but now there is no time.
I hand Theo to Astrid then lie down beside them, smelling Peter in the soiled sheets and trying not to think of the nights he and Astrid have spent here while on the road. I want to tell her what Emmet said about the workers, but I cannot burden her now. A moment later, her breathing evens and when I look over she is asleep.
Theo squirms restlessly beside her, not ready to settle down in the unfamiliar space. There is a loud bang and the whole carriage rocks with the force of something heavy being loaded into an adjacent railcar. “It will be all right,” I say, more for myself than him. I press my palm gently against his back, moving it in small, soothing circles. His eyelids begin to flutter, staying closed longer for a second each time as they do when he is falling asleep.
When Theo has quieted, I roll over, thinking of Luc. He would find out I had left, of course, but not until it was too late. Would he learn, too, where I had gone? Once he had promised to find me, but I can’t see how that’s possible. We will be hundreds of miles away.
I sit up and peer out the window at the familiar site of the fairgrounds, the forest leading to town behind it. We are still here. I can get off the train and go to Luc to let him know we are going, and still make it back in time without anyone noticing. Or maybe even take Theo and leave with Luc for good, I think, remembering his proposal. But where would we go? We have no papers to cross the border, no money for food and shelter. Then I look over at Astrid. Even if it were possible, I would not dare. I close my eyes.
Sometime later there is a great heave and the train struggles forward. I sit up once more and look southeast out the window, imagining the freedom that lies just a few hundred kilometers away in Switzerland. Beside me, Astrid’s body rises and falls methodically with deep sleep. My fate is tied up with hers now, whatever happens.
The train presses forward and the town of Thiers seems to shrink, growing lower and flatter into the earth as we pick up speed. And then it is gone. I touch the glass where the village had been seconds earlier, leaving Luc—and our chance at freedom—behind.
21
Astrid
The squeak of a doorknob turning, hands pressing against hard wood. Through sleep I think I am back in the winter quarters, Peter coming to tell me that he has found someone in the woods near Darmstadt. But when I open my eyes, I see that it is only Noa, hurrying into the tiny cabin we have shared in the past five days since reaching Alsace. I close my eyes once more, willing the vision of earlier times to return.
“Astrid?” Noa’s voice, tight with urgency, yanks me from my memories. I roll over. She is peering out the filthy window, her body stiff and face pale. “You have to get up.”
“Have they come again?” I ask, struggling to sit. Before she can answer, there is a loud clattering outside, a police inspection, officers rattling through the wagons and the tents. Once I might have run and hid. But there is no hiding place here. Let them take me, I think.
There is a hard knock on the door that startles both of us. I sit up, reach for my robe. Theo lets out a wail. Noa opens the door to reveal two SS officers. Always two, I muse. Except, of course, the night they had taken Peter.
“Wer ist da?” one of the men, taller and thin, barks. Who is there?
“I’m Noa Weil,” she offers, managing to keep the quaver from her voice.