The Orphan's Tale

by Pam Jenoff

  Emmet’s eyes widen. “We will keep going where we’ve been ordered for the rest of the season,” he relents. “At least as long as we can manage financially. Papa did not leave much.”

  A murmur travels among the performers. We grieve Herr Neuhoff, of course, and we will do so for a long time. The hole created by his loss is vast. But there is a practical side of things, too: How would the circus go on without him? Could it?

  “Surely your father had an insurance policy?” Helmut asks.

  All eyes look expectantly at Emmet, who shifts uneasily. “I believe my father had to cash it out last winter. We needed the money for expenses.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Astrid says quietly. It is just as well, I think. The money would have gone to Emmet as his heir and he would not have used it for the greater good of the circus.

  “There was a will, though,” Astrid continues. Jealousy registers in Emmet’s eyes—he had not known his father or his affairs as well as Astrid. “It had a provision that the circus is not to be sold.” Behind me, someone exhales. No one would buy the circus in these times, but if possible, Emmet would have sold it for the profits and run.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Emmet flares. He had assumed that whatever was left would be his, that he would have free rein to do what he wanted. He had not expected this.

  “And it stipulates that all of the performers are to be kept on, unless there is misconduct,” Astrid adds.

  “At least I have one less performer to pay,” Emmet says coldly, crossing his arms as he delivers this final blow.

  Astrid, seemingly defeated, does not reply. I motion to put my arm around her but she shrugs me off and begins to walk away. “Don’t,” she says as I start to follow. She raises an arm to ward me off.

  “I’ve arranged a late breakfast for everyone,” Emmet says, sounding eager to end the discussion.

  We make our way wordlessly toward the cook tent. Fresh smells of sausage and rich brewing coffee tickle my nose. Inside, the few kitchen workers who had remained behind during the funeral have laid out a breakfast bigger than I have seen since we traveled to France, eggs and even a bit of real butter—a meal designed to comfort. I inventory the menu silently, cataloging as I always do the bits I might be able to take back for Theo.

  “So much food,” I remark to one of the servers, who is refilling the plate of fried potatoes. “It seems foolish to waste it all now, no?”

  “We won’t have time to pack ice if we are leaving in a few hours,” the server says. “We have to eat the perishables now so they don’t spoil.”

  I take a piece of toast and some eggs for myself, then sit down at an empty table. Emmet comes over carrying a heaping plate of food, his appetite seemingly unaffected by grief. He sits down without asking. I have not been alone with him since he confronted me at the wedding and I fight the urge to stand up and leave. Then I remember his sadness at the funeral. “Such a hard day,” I remark, trying to be kind.

  “Things are going to get even harder,” he replies tersely. “There will be changes when we reach Alsace. We’ll have to let most of the workers go.” The laborers are part of the circus, and they come faithfully each year in exchange for steady work, a promise kept on both sides. How can he do this?

  “I thought your father’s will said everyone was to stay on,” I offer.

  “His will only spoke of the performers,” he snaps.

  “Surely your father intended...”

  “My father isn’t here anymore,” he says, cutting me off. “We can’t afford to keep everyone on. We will find help locally as we go.” Just a minute earlier I felt sorry for Emmet. Now my goodwill hardens. The wheels in his mind are turning, ready to bleed the circus of its talent penny by penny in order to draw the most benefit for the least possible work. His father’s body is not even cold and already Emmet is destroying things. He may be genuinely grieving his father, but he is also using it as an excuse for being as awful as he really wants. “We can make do with half as many if everyone pitches in,” he adds. The suggestion belies how little he knows about what we do. Even I understand the manpower and expertise that are needed.

  I look over my shoulder in the direction of the train. If only Astrid was here to reason with Emmet. Then I remember her worn face and weak voice. In her present condition, she would be in no shape to manage it. “When will you tell them?” I ask.

  “Not until we reach Alsace. The workers can stay with us until then.” Emmet says this benevolently, as if bestowing a great gift. But it is not for the laborers’ benefit: he wants them to tear everything down—and to go back accounted for.

  “What about their contracts?” I ask.

  “Contracts?” Emmet repeats mockingly. “Only the performers have those.”

  I do not argue further. My eyes travel across the dining room toward the laborers’ tables, where a thin, graying handyman is clearing his plate, shoulders hunched. I recall the story about the Jewish handyman that Astrid had told me, the man Herr Neuhoff had given refuge. With Herr Neuhoff dead and Emmet dismissing the workers, the man would have no sanctuary. Neither would Astrid or any of the rest of us.

  “Some of these people have no homes to go back to,” I say, staying purposefully vague.

  “You mean like the old Jew?” Emmet asks harshly. I am unable to hide the surprise on my face. “I know about him,” he adds.

  I instantly regret having spoken—but it is too late to turn back. “If you tell him before we go, he might have the chance to escape before we leave.”

  “Escape? He has no papers.” Emmet leans in close to me, his voice low, breath hot and sour. “I’m not telling him or the other workers now. And you better not either, if you know what is good for you.” He does not bother to hide his threat. My blood chills. Emmet would not hesitate to throw a person to the wolves if it suited his purpose—including me.

  Not wanting to listen any longer, I stand and pocket the napkin I used to wrap some eggs and toast for Theo. “Excuse me,” I say. I walk from the cook tent back toward the train.

  As I cross the fairgrounds, I pass Drina, the fortune-teller, seated beneath a different tree, closer now than the time I had seen her before. She smiles faintly and holds her tarot deck up to me, an offering. But I shake my head. I no longer want to see the future.

  * * *

  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 ti
me 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.

  The officer gestures toward me. “And her?”

  A moment’s hesitation. “I’m Astrid Sorrell,” I say, when Noa does not. “The same as when you asked two days ago,” I cannot help but add. What do they think will be so different each time?

  “What did you say?” he demands. Noa shoots me a withering look.

  “Nothing,” I mutter. No good can come from antagonizing them.

  The other officer takes a step into the cabin. “Is she ill?” He nods his head in my direction.

  Yes, I want to say. The Nazis are known to fear illness. Perhaps if they think I am contagious, they will leave us alone. “No,” Noa replies firmly, before I can answer. Her eyes dart nervously in my direction.

  “And the child?” he asks.

  “My little brother,” Noa says with conviction, the lie now long familiar. “His papers are here, as well.

  “Are you thirsty, sirs?” Noa offers, changing the subject before he can ask further questions. She reaches behind her bed and produces half a bottle of cognac I had not known she had.

  The man’s eyes widen, then narrow again. It is a calculated risk: Will he take the bribe or accuse her of stealing or hoarding the liquor? He takes the bottle and starts toward the door, the shorter man in tow.

  When they have gone, Noa closes the door. She picks up Theo and sinks to the bed beside me. “I didn’t think they would come again so soon after the last time,” she says, shaken.

  “Almost every day like clockwork,” I reply, turning away from her, looking out the window of the cabin where we have billeted since our arrival. In Alsace, the most worn of regions, all pretense of normalcy is gone. Across a thin strip of river lies the town of Colmar, its once-elegant skyline of Renaissance churches and timber houses crumbled after the air raids, trees that would have been blooming other years in early May snapped in half like twigs. German trucks and Kubelwagen line the roads.

  “The cognac,” I say. “Where did you get it?”

  A guilty expression crosses Noa’s face. “From Herr Neuhoff’s railcar. Emmet was going through things the other day, taking what he wanted. I didn’t think he would notice.”

  “That was smart thinking.” Than
k God she did not offer them food—rations have shrunk to a fraction of what they were in Thiers; we barely have enough to feed ourselves and Theo.

  “But it’s gone now,” Noa frets. “They’ll expect more next time.”

  “We’ll think of something,” I say. I lie down once more, my throat scratchy from the halo of burnt smoke and coal dust that seems to hang constantly in the air. The cabin, just big enough for Noa, Theo and myself, is scarcely a step above camping, with a roof that leaks and a floor that is mostly dirt. We cannot sleep on the train as we had in Thiers for fear the British RAF pilots might bomb the rail lines. So we have moved to the low cabins, not much more than huts without indoor plumbing, once used as work sheds by workers at the adjacent quarry. Not that they are so much safer. The fairgrounds here are close to the roadway and military vehicles rumble down it all night, making it a prime target for the air raids, as well. Last night the bombs fell so close I pulled Noa and Theo under my cot and we huddled against the cold earth until dawn.

  It has been nearly a week since Peter was arrested, taken God only knows where. I see it now in my waking thoughts, like a bad dream I cannot erase. Herr Neuhoff is gone, too, left behind in a hillside grave in Auvergne. I wrap my arms around my stomach, feeling the hollowness and mourning all that will never be. After Erich and my family, I thought I had already lost everything, that nothing more could be taken from me. But this, the final blow, is too much. I had let myself hope again, against every promise I had made myself when I left Berlin. I let myself get close. And now I am paying the price.

  Noa presses her hand to my forehead. “No fever,” she says, the relief evident in her voice. Bless her, she tries so very hard to care for me. Her concern is a drop of water, though, unable to fill the ocean of void in my heart.

  Noa reaches down and takes both of my hands in hers. “Astrid, I have good news.”