Tommy shut his eyes. The face of the merry little man with the snow-white hair suddenly seemed terrible in its gaiety.
“Things happen like that in this business,” Mario said somberly. “One slip—and boom! One minute, center ring, on top of the world—next minute, nowhere. If it happened to me, I’d hope I’d break my neck and be done with it.”
“That’s a nice morbid thing to say!” Tommy said angrily. He shivered; it was cold in the dark little room.
Mario sat up and leaned over to unsnap Tommy’s suitcase. “I didn’t mean it that way, not really. Joe was in a bad way for a while, but he’s okay now, he gets along fine. And it didn’t make him morbid or anything. He loves to come down and watch us, and he’s letting Barbie learn to fly. I guess I’m just sort of depressed because Liss didn’t get in. I sure wanted to see her.”
He helped Tommy unpack and put away his clothes, clearing drawers in the dresser for him. After they had shoved the last drawer shut, Mario said, “Now I’ll take you down to the practice room and show you around.”
The back stairs were narrow and dusty, and the double doors at the foot of the staircase were carved and ornate and rather dirty, contrasting oddly with the polished and shiny look of the rest of the house. They stuck slightly when Mario turned the knob; he finally threw his weight against one of them, and it burst open, revealing the enormous practice room.
Inside, Mario stooped over and untied his shoes.
“House rule. Throw yours in that box over there, Tommy.”
The crate was of rough wood with Keith’s Apples stamped across the side, but a piece of felt had been glued to the bottom so that it slid noiselessly on the floor. “Papa Tony has the floor sanded every December,” Mario explained, “and God help anyone who scuffs it up. He memorizes every shoe sole in the house.”
Mario flicked on a light. The fluorescent lighting was the only modern thing in the room. Around the walls old rococo carvings and moldings framed wide mirrors in blackened gilt frames, remnants of the room’s days as a ballroom. The walls were immense, and the mirrors, reflecting and redoubling the carvings and the lights, made them seem even vaster, as if the room stretched into empty space. A great expanse of shiny floor, polished to glassy luster, reflected the lights that shone high above it. Tommy, used to the makeshift practice barns of most circus acts, was impressed and startled, and in later years the riddle of Papa Tony was to find repetition and solution in the memory of the shiny floor and preserved antique carvings.
At the far end of the room the flying rig had been mounted; a big bundle rolled into a canvas sack—the stored net—was lying beneath it. So immense was the room that the flying rig neither crowded it nor seemed crowded. Against the sidewalk, a web and a rope ladder were fastened from the ceiling. About fifteen feet high a single fixed trapeze had been mounted; another, at about eight feet, had a thick mat below it. Mario pointed to the lower trapeze. “Belongs to the kids,” he explained. Moving quietly in his socks, he led Tommy out into the middle of the floor. Up over their heads, just above the door by which they had entered, was a small gallery.
“The old musicians’ gallery,” Mario said. “There’s a door to it from the front part of the house. People can sit up there and watch, though there’s sort of a rule about that, too. You’ll think this place is worse than the Army, all my talk about rules, but actually, outside the practice room, this place is Liberty Hall. Nobody argues with Granny, but aside from that, it doesn’t matter much what you do. Down here, though, we have stiff rules, and we keep them.”
He seemed to be waiting for comment, so Tommy said, “I guess you’d have to.”
“Sure. If anyone breaks them—and that means anybody, not just the flyers, anybody from Papa Tony down to Clay—he gets down on his hands and knees and polishes the floor. It sounds silly,” Mario laughed, “but it really works—you’d be surprised. It’s a big floor, and once or twice at the most, with the others standing over you making wisecracks, you don’t break that rule again.”
“What are all these rules?” Tommy asked apprehensively.
“Mostly the obvious sensible things.” Mario flung a door open. “This door leads into the change room. That’s what we call it—although the family, of course, usually changes clothes up in our bedrooms. But Papa Tony’s trained a lot of flyers, and for a few seasons we had a couple of dozen acts coming in and out, using this place for a practice hall in the winter. And this is the rigging room—” He opened a second door into a musty jumble that smelled of metal and hemp and resin and dust. “We keep the spare equipment in here—old riggings, tumbling mats, that stuff. These rooms used to be serving pantries or servants’ quarters or something like that. And now,” he said dramatically as he closed the doors, “I’ll introduce you to the family rules. We make a little ceremony of it.”
He led Tommy to what looked like a framed picture on the wall, but it was not a picture. It was a very old, yellowed piece of paper, with beautiful copperplate handwriting in faded ink. Tommy stood on tiptoe to read it, then drew back, disappointed.
“Why, it’s in Italian!”
“What else? I doubt if old Mario di Santalis ever learned any English, He died before I was born, of course, so I don’t know for sure. But back then, circus families were a lot more clannish than they are now. And all of us still lose our tempers in Italian—or make love. Haven’t you ever heard Papa Tony get good and mad?”
Tommy nodded, laughing. Papa Tony’s explosions were already a legend, after one season, with the Lambeth Circus.
“Papa Tony had this framed after his father died; they’re sort of a family tradition. There’s a typed copy in English posted in the change room. Here, I’ll read them for you,” Mario said, but instead of reading he leaned back, his hands in his pockets, and quoted from memory.
“The following rules will be observed at all times in our family:
“One. It is forbidden to smoke at any time in the practice halls.
“Two. Shoes must not be worn on the floor or on the riggings.
“Three. It is forbidden to rehearse without the net firmly fixed in place.
“Four. No one may work on the high riggings when alone.
“Five. Not for any reason may street clothing be worn on the riggings.
“Six. Idlers and outsiders may not watch unless given permission.
“All infringements of discipline will be suitably punished. The careful observance of discipline is the mark of the artiste.”
Standing there, listening to Mario’s quiet, grave voice, Tommy had the sudden, blindingly clear awareness that here—not up there in front of the warm fire, but back here in the cold, bare, dusty room, behind the protective glass of the frame—lay the real heart of the house. He shivered, looking up at the bold, arrogant European signature, which was all he could read of it:
Mario di Santalis.
“You see,” Mario said, smiling, “All the rules make sense. No matter how sure of yourself you are, you never, ever practice without a net, and nobody, ever, steps on the rigging unless somebody is there with him. Street shoes ruin the floor, and you’d be surprised what a temptation it is, when you want to try something and don’t want to be bothered to change, to go up on the rigging in your street clothes. And as for that other rule . . . It goes without saying, in a family like this, that everybody’s curious about what everybody else is doing, so here’s how the system works: Once you’re working, you automatically take precedence over anyone else not in the act. So if you make up your mind, say, in the next few weeks, while you’re getting back in trim, that you don’t want my mother, or the kids, watching you work out—and don’t kid yourself, they’ll be curious—just ask them to leave. They won’t think you’re rude; it’s just the way we run things in this family. It works both ways, too. If anybody else is working out or practicing here—say, Johnny and that girl partner of his—and you come in, you ask if you can watch. If they say yes, okay, then you watch from down here or in the gallery,
either one. If they say no, you disappear, right away, and you don’t argue or get offended.”
“I see.”
“Some of us don’t mind and some of us do. Liss, for instance—my sister. While she’s rehearsing she’s nervous as a cat, and it drives her crazy to have anyone watching. Papa Tony’s worse than Liss, though he keeps it under control a lot better.” Tommy remembered Papa Tony, on the road, chasing the circus children away from the flying rig during rehearsals. “Angelo doesn’t care one way or the other, and Cleo always was a regular show-off. And so it goes.”
Tommy wondered who Cleo was, and how Mario himself felt, but he didn’t feel able to ask. Mario went on: “The low trapezes—the kids’ things—don’t count. You can work out on them, and on the parallel bars and the mats without anybody around, if you want to. Barbara does her ballet barre work down here—that’s why we have the low mirror over there. Lucia had it put up when Liss and I were kids.”
“You don’t live in the house, you said?”
“No, I don’t. I love my family, but I have to get away sometimes or I’d go crazy. I get enough fratellaccio on the road.”
“Enough which?”
Mario chuckled. “Brotherhood—but don’t repeat it in that form to Papa Tony; the proper word is fratellanza. Anyhow, I have a place out in Santa Monica. I come here for meals most of the time, and sometimes when rehearsals get heavy I sleep over. But I like having a place of my own. Oh, they kid me about it. Liss has a standing joke about my opium den. Lu’s probably convinced I got the place to take women there—and Angelo hopes I did.”
“Huh?”
Mario chuckled wryly. “Family joke. Forget it, hey?”
But it hadn’t sounded quite like a joke, and Tommy asked suddenly, “Do you have a regular girl?”
And just as suddenly Mario was angry. “Now when in the hell would I have time for girls? I’m on the road eight months a year, and the rest of the time I’m working. Hell, no.”
But it wasn’t like that, Tommy thought, not even on the road. There were men with the show who knew girls in every town, and anyway, there were two girls for every man in the show. What was Mario talking about? But he didn’t press the question; instead, he turned back to the framed rules.
“What was that last thing down there, about discipline?”
“The careful observance of discipline,” Mario read again, “is the mark of the artiste.”
Papa Tony repeated the words from the open doorway: “The careful observance of discipline is the mark of the artiste.” He came across the floor, and Tommy noticed that he had slipped out of even his soft carpet slippers and was barefoot. But even barefoot with rolled sleeves, he still had all the lordliness of a king in his own domain.
“You might have waited until tomorrow for the guided tour, Matt,” he reproved gently. “I’m sure Tommy must be tired, and hungry, too.” But Tommy had the impression he was not at all displeased to find them down here. Papa Tony laid one hand on Tommy’s shoulder and the other on his grandson’s.
“I see you have already been introduced to the traditions of our family. Has he told you how many years the di Santalis family have been performers, here and in Europe? But don’t let that intimidate you, son. Down here you are one of us, as he told you, with the same rights as any of us. And beyond that door”—he smiled, suddenly, and the smile lighted his whole face—“you are one of us, too.” It seemed incredible to Tommy that the stern old man he had feared so much could smile like this. He put his arm around Tommy and stood holding him as he went on:
“I want you to hear what I said to the family—and to your father, too—before you came here. We do not take outsiders into the Flying Santellis, Tommy. Anyone in the family act, anyone who carries our name into the ring, must be one of us. We expect to treat you just like one of us,” he added gravely, “our son, our brother, not just a stranger working with us. But listen to me, my boy—” He turned and stood holding Tommy firmly by the shoulders. “This means a responsibility, too. Unless you are willing to be one of us, a child of our house, a good obedient son and a younger brother to us, not a guest or a stranger, this will not be successful. You cannot be a stranger here.”
Tommy felt embarrassed by the intensity with which the old man spoke, but he was moved, too. He said, in a low voice, “I’ll try, sir.”
“Good. Good.” Papa Tony released him, smiling, and wrinkled his nose at the aroma stealing through the open door. “I think dinner is ready. Lucia will be calling everybody soon. Matt, take Tommy upstairs and show him where to get ready for dinner.”
“You bet. Come on—” Mario hesitated, glanced at his grandfather, then laughed, gave Tommy a pat on the shoulder, and said, “Come on, kid brother.”
Tommy suddenly realized that he was, indeed, cold and extremely tired, and, in spite of the big breakfast, extremely hungry. The tension of the trip and the introductions was running out of him like water now. He wondered what there was for dinner—it smelled delicious, but so unfamiliar that he couldn’t even make a guess about it. He knelt down obediently beside Mario to collect his shoes from the box on the floor before going upstairs.
CHAPTER 7
The practice room was dark when Tommy opened the door a few days later, but a crack of light was coming from the half-open door of the change room. He went in and saw Mario there, kneeling in the corner between a pair of enormous cardboard cartons.
“What’s up, Mario? Saying your prayers?”
“Not likely.” Mario straightened. “Housekeeping chores. Next year this will be your job. Low man gets all the dirty work.”
There was a curious smell in the room: camphor, glue, a stale smell he could not identify. Mario bent over the cartons again.
“Every year we swear we’ll do this the day the tour breaks up, and every year we end up bundling it into cardboard boxes and telling each other how much easier it will be to get through it at home. Next thing we know, it’s New Year’s and time to start getting things together for another season.”
Tommy had forgotten to take off his shoes. He bent quickly and rather guiltily to unlace them, and took them out to the box in the practice room. When he came back, Mario had finished his preliminary exploration of the boxes. He upended one of them and dumped the contents out on the floor. A tumbled mass of cloth, black and green and gold and white, fell out in one lump and separated into a ragbag cascade. Mario repeated the process with the other carton, scattering mothballs, which rolled into the corners of the room with a little scurrying noise, and surveyed the pile without enthusiasm.
“What a mess!” He caught Tommy’s eye and laughed. “Everything gets thrown in together at the end of the season, and it’s my job to sort it all out, decide what’s good for another season, what can be patched up and used for practice or something, and what should have been thrown away on the road instead of being hauled home.”
Tommy was amused and startled. The Santellis were so methodical on the road, almost frantically so. He voiced his thoughts to Mario.
“Yes, and by end of season we’re so damn sick of triple-checking every little thing that somehow every year, that last night when we’re getting ready to haul off, all we can think is: Hell, let’s chuck everything into the box and hit the road for home.”
The room where they were standing was about fifteen feet square, lighted by an enormous frosted-glass window. On one wall was a long, low counter with a square sink in the middle—the room had once been a service pantry, and cupboards over and under the counter had been roughly carpentered into lockers. On another wall was a bulletin board, and Tommy went to inspect it. Mario followed slowly. “That’s a copy of the house rules, more or less, in English,” he said. “Lucia put it up when there were a lot of outsiders coming in and out.”
Tommy stood on tiptoe to read:
ALL GYMNASTIC APPARATUS IS DANGEROUS IF IMPROPERLY USED!
For your own safety and ours, we ask you to observe the following rules:
Pleas
e do not wear street clothing or shoes in the practice room at any time.
Do NOT go on the rigging unless your manager or instructor is with you.
Do NOT make ANY adjustments to ANY piece of rigging at ANY time!
Ladies, your hair must be properly secured so it is out of your eyes!
Please do not smoke down here.
ANYONE CONSISTENTLY VIOLATING OUR RULES WILL BE BARRED FROM THE ROOM!
“You’d be surprised,” Mario said, “at the people who think those rules are unreasonable. But Papa Tony’s chucked out half a dozen people for not keeping them, no matter how much they were paying to practice here or for lessons. I could tell you a funny story about every one of those rules. But we’ve never had a serious accident down here, and we’re proud of it.”
There were other things on the bulletin board: half a dozen circus cartoons clipped from newspapers or magazines, a few blurred snapshots, taken in the practice room, of various family members and strangers, and a little painted wooden sign that said simply, Down with the law of gravity.
Tommy chuckled. “Sure, if it wasn’t for gravity, we’d have it made!”
“Oh, I’m not so sure. Without it, everybody’d be able to fly, and then how’d we make a living?”
A large piece of unframed cardboard was thumbtacked to the adjacent wall; in childish but very neatly printed red crayon letters it read:
The Catch Trap Page 10
