It is early, I tell myself, pushing down my unease. I search the brush that shoots out between the rocks at the far end of the quarry, wondering if he is hiding. The branches remain motionless, though, the air still.
Five minutes pass, then ten. Luc is still not here. A list of excuses runs through my mind: he got lost, he had to double back to make sure he wasn’t followed. Maybe he had become ill. Theo, tired or perhaps hungry, begins to fuss. “Shh,” I soothe, fishing in my pocket for a piece of cracker I’d left there earlier. “Just a little longer.”
I look over the edge of the quarry pit, across the flat, empty field. Dread forms and sinks heavy in my stomach. Luc is not coming.
How is this happening? Our plans were certain. Panic fills me. Maybe something had happened to Luc. I see his face just hours earlier. He had asked, no begged, me to go with him—and he had seemed so happy when I said yes. Had he changed his mind and decided that having me and Theo along was too much? Or maybe Astrid had been right all along. I stand still in the cold, dark quarry, tears stinging at my eyes—foolish and abandoned yet again.
Something brushes my cheek then. Theo is looking up at me, his soft fingers reaching out to me as they had in the woods the night I had taken him from the boxcar. Bits of that night come back in flashes: a small fist clenched stiffly, never to be opened again, arms reaching for a mother no longer there. Images I cannot bear to keep in the light of day. A sob tears through me. I had not cried when my father held open the door and forced me out into the cold with nothing more than my purse. Nor when I’d seen the railcar of stolen infants, dead and dying. Now the tears race forth and I am grieving for all of it. I press my hands to my eyes, willing the visions to stop. It is hopeless—I will carry that night at the train car with me forever. Saving Theo had been not just for him—it had been my chance at redemption.
Maybe it still is. I see Astrid standing before me, holding out a ticket to freedom. She is so angry that I don’t know if she would give it to me now. And there is some part of me that does not want to take the pass, her only chance at survival. But I owe it to Theo to try.
I look up at the sky. You are never going back, Astrid said once. She is right. I can no more count on Luc than on my family for salvation. Instead, I will get us to a place where Theo will be safe, and a day at the circus would not be taken from him just because he is a Jew, where people would not stare at him oddly. It isn’t Luc, or even my parents I am looking for anymore. It is a home of my own.
I peer over my shoulder in the direction of the big top. If I go back now and join the final bow, no one but Astrid will realize that I have gone. I can ask her for the pass after the show. I shift Theo to my other hip. He cries openly now, his wails cutting through the darkness as I navigate the steep slope out of the quarry.
“Shh,” I soothe. I take one last hopeful look over my shoulder in the direction from which Luc should have come. Seeing no one, I turn and start back to the circus.
I near the big top once more. Then remembering the anger on Astrid’s face as I left earlier, I slow. What can I possibly say to make her forgive me? As I reach the backyard, I hear the music of the final act trumpeting gaily, building to a fever pitch. The circus is assembling for the final bow. Through the tent flap I see the place where I usually stand at the top of the board, and I imagine the confused face of Gerda, who is normally beside me, wondering where I have gone. Longing fills me to go where I belong, amid the circus family one last time. And even though I am sad Luc did not come and we will be leaving again soon, part of me cannot help but feel glad to be home.
But as I draw close to the circus tent, my happiness fades. There is a strange smell in the air, like someone overcooked the caramel corn, only stronger. Something tickles at my nose then—a burning smell. There is a fire—and close. I think back to the air raid we’d heard during our act. No bombs had hit nearby, but perhaps there had been stray shrapnel or even a cigarette thrown carelessly on the midway. Is it the big top? We have always taken such great precautions against fire. Looking up, I see something flickering in the cloth by the hauptmast: a flame, growing larger even as I watch. Nobody, not anyone among the remaining crowds that linger in the tent nor the performers making their way to the backyard, seems to have noticed yet. No one except me.
I clutch Theo tighter and break into a dead run.
26
Astrid
I stand on the board above the circus ring. Alone, once more.
After Noa had gone, I climbed to the board. Good riddance, I wanted to say as I imagined her leaving. Instead I found myself aching with loss. Still it was not Noa whom I cursed in that moment, but me. How I hated myself for caring yet again! It was Erich abandoning me all over. I remembered the lesson I had learned the day I left Berlin, seared it into my brain now as I should have long ago: the only one I could rely on in this life was me.
It is just as well, I think now. With Noa leaving, I am free to use the pass to go to my brother. After the final bow, I will slip away before anyone notices. Pushing thoughts of Noa and Theo aside, I instead focus on Jules, who is waiting for me.
My cue comes in the music and I unfasten the ropes from their moorings. Emmet had told me at the last minute that he added the Spanish web routine back into the second act. It was only then that I noticed the new ropes, hastily installed where the clockmaker had hung just days earlier. I wanted to protest. It wasn’t that I was sentimental about Metz. Rather, I hadn’t rehearsed it in weeks and the trapeze alone would be exhausting enough. But I didn’t want to give Emmet cause to fight—after all, it was to be the last show before I slipped away forever.
I wrap the ropes around myself and step from the board. There is no bar to hold tight, just two thin slips of satin. I spin around them, extend my leg. If flying trapeze is like gymnastics as I once told Noa, then Spanish web is like swimming, seamless and graceful. Or at least they once were; now my arms are weak from weeks of not training and my movements are jerky. I struggle through the routine. But the audience does not seem to notice.
I make my way back to the board as applause thunders, my body bathed in sweat. I do not climb down. My act is just before the finale and I need to remain here for the final bow. As the elephants prance, interspersed with riders on horseback, there is a yell from below. “Fire!” someone calls. I see it then, a flicker of flames behind one of the bleachers, growing higher by the second. The flames are only on one side of the tent. If everyone evacuates to the far exit, it will be fine. We have done drills for fire before. Herr Neuhoff or Peter, if either was here, would have urged calm.