As for Mamon, he was both an obsession and a constant test of Ruda’s capabilities. The controller and the controlled; theirs was a strange battle of wills that thrilled her beyond anything she could have imagined. Mamon was the lover she could never take, and they had achieved the perfect union, one of total respect. But she knew if she broke their bond, if she weakened, gave him an opening, he would attack her. She liked that.
♦ ♦ ♦
Luis stared in the mirror at his bloodshot eyes, began to clean his teeth, angry at himself for drinking so much. He heard the trailer door bang, and he sighed, hoping it wasn’t Tina again.
“Yeah! What is it?”
Mike’s voice called out, and intuitively Grimaldi knew something was wrong, he ran out of the small bathroom. The boy was panting, waving his hat around. “You’d better come over to the arena, she’s having a really tough time. It’s those new plinths.”
Grimaldi ran with Mike across to the big tent, Mike gasping out that it couldn’t have come at a worse time, the big boss was in, up in the gallery looking over the rehearsals.
Hans Schmidt, wearing a fur-lined camel coat, sat back in his seat, his pudgy hands resting on a silver-topped cane. Below him, way below, he could see the main ring, the cages erected and the caged tunnel. The spotlights were on, and Ruda’s figure seemed tiny as she turned, calling out to the cats.
Mr. Kelm eased into the vacant seat next to Hans Schmidt. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
“This Kellerman business, has it been cleared up?”
“I don’t know, sir, the Polizei were here, I told you. I gave them every assistance possible, but I heard they asked Mrs. Grimaldi to identify him this afternoon!”
Schmidt nodded his jowled head, his eyes focused on the ring. “Very disturbing, bad publicity…very bad!”
“Yes, I know, but I’m sure it’ll all be cleared up.”
“It better be. This is the costliest show to date. What do you think of the Kellerman woman?”
“She’s stunning, I’ve seen parts of her act in Italy and Austria, she is very special.”
“Doesn’t look so hot now…”
Kelm peered down, and then told Schmidt about the new plinths, that the animals were playing up, they always did with new props. Schmidt stood up. “Jesus God, is that part of the act?” Kelm looked down to see the cats milling around Ruda, he nodded his head and then waited as she did the jump, spinning on the tigers’ backs. Schmidt applauded. “I have never seen anything like it…she must be insane!”
Kelm nodded again, his glasses glinting in the darkness. “She takes great risks.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Ruda felt her muscles straining as she lifted one plinth on top of the other; the sweat was streaming off her, her hands in their leather gloves were clammy. She backed the tigers up…gave the command for them to keep on the move, and then tried for the third time to get them seated in the simple pyramid…they went up to the plinths, hesitated, and turned away.
“Goddamn you…HUP RED ED ED ED ED!! DDDDDDDDD! ROJA!” She knew if Roja obeyed her the rest would follow, but he was playing up badly. She was exhausted. Grimaldi moved slowly to the rails, asked if she was okay, and she backed toward him.
“The owners are up in the main viewing box, it’s been mayhem…but I think I’m winning. Can you give me the long whip?”
Luis passed it through the bars. She took it from him without looking and began again, her voice ringing around the arena.
“RED-RED-BLUE SASHA BLOOOOOOOOOOOOot…good girl, good girl, ROJA UP…YUP YUP Red!!!…thatta good boy…good boy…”
Luis kept watch as she got them at last onto the plinths, leaving one vacant ladder to the top.
Ruda gave the signal, the tigers remained on their plinths as she gave a mock bow, looked to the right, to the left. The gates opened…in came one male lion, and a beat after she heard the click again and knew the second one was hurtling down the tunnel.
The two lions came to her, one to her right side, one to her left, and she herded and cajoled them onto the lower seats. They were unsure, backed off… but they were not as uneasy as the tigers.
She gave the signal, and Mamon, spotlighted in the long tunnel, came out at a lope. Ruda pretended she did not know he was there. Mamon was trained to come up behind her, to nudge her with his nose, and then in mock surprise she would jump—onto his back! She had a semicircle to go before she gave him the second section command. The act centered on Mamon’s refusing to do as he was told; it was always a great deal of fun, the audience roaring their approval as Mamon played around.
Mamon refused, once, twice…Ruda called out to him but he swung his head low. Again she gave him the command: “UP…ma’angel up Mamon…”
Mamon refused the jump. He began to prowl around the back of the tigers. They got edgy, started hissing, and then two of them began to fight. Ruda called out “DOWN,” herding them out, leaving Mamon to her right. They behaved well, moving back down the tunnel, but Mamon refused to leave.
Luis waited, watching, swearing to himself about the plinths, but it was too late now. Ruda gave the signal for Mike to lock on, to get the cats herded back into their cages. She was going to have to work Mamon with the new plinths, cajoling and talking to him, all the while trying to get him on the lower plinth. He refused, sniffing, unsure, smelling, circling, giving a low-bellied growl.
“Come on, baby…up up…YUP RED RED RED RED!”
Mamon lay down, ignoring her, staring at her. She stood with her hands on her hips. They eyed each other, and Ruda waited.
High up at the back of the main circle, Tina sat eating a bag of potato chips, watching as Ruda sat on one of the plinths, patting it with her hand, softly encouraging Mamon to come to her. He refused. Ruda checked the time, knew she was running over, and suddenly stood up. “Angel…ANGEL UP, come on—UP!”
Mamon slowly got to his feet, walked very, very slowly to the new plinth, sniffed it, walked around it, and just as slowly eased himself up and sat.
Ruda looked at him, “You bastard, now stop playing around…UYUP BLOOOOOOOO.”
He shook his head, and then just as slowly mounted the blue plinth. He sat. Ruda encouraged him, flattered and cajoled him until he had sat on each plinth, sniffed it—twice he pissed over them. He was in no hurry, his whole motion was slow, leisurely, constantly looking to Ruda as if to say: “I’ll do it. But in my time.”
Ruda gave him the command for his huge jump down; he hesitated and then reared up and sprang forward, heading straight for Ruda. Tina dropped her bag of chips as she stood up, terrified.
Ruda shouted at Mamon, pointing the whip. “Get back…back!…”
Mamon paid no attention. Ruda spoke sharply to him—and suddenly he turned. Grimaldi gasped as the massive animal churned up the sawdust. Now he was not playing, now he was the star attraction. In wonderfully coordinated jumps he sprang from plinth to plinth, showing off, until he reached the highest point. Then he lifted up his front paws and struck out at the air.
By the time Mamon was moving back down the tunnel, Ruda had unhooked the latch to let herself out of the arena.
She slumped into a seat, taking the proferred handkerchief from her husband to wipe her face. He sat next to her and she could smell the brandy.
“That was tough going!”
“You said it, Luis. I am going to need double rehearsal time before we open, you could see! They’re all over the place, they hate those bloody plinths. I hate them!”
“It was your idea to get new ones, I warned you but you wouldn’t listen.”
“I said get them the same fucking colors. These are too bright!”
They argued and Tina looked on. Her vision of herself taking over the act had paled considerably. She watched as Grimaldi and the boys began to dismantle the arena cages, then she went over to the horses and got ready for their practice. Grimaldi hadn’t even looked in her direction.
Ruda was
still in a foul mood, and exhausted, when she walked into the freezer trailer. She began chopping up the meat for the cats’
feed. By the time Mike appeared, still wearing the hat, she had all the trays ready.
“The arena cages are stacked, we got two extra hours tomorrow.”
“That’s marvelous, this’ll be a nightmare. You saw them, they were all acting up.”
Mike shrugged, giving a funny cockeyed smile. “But you handled them. Word is that Schmidt was impressed! You want me to take the feed through?”
Ruda shook her head. “No, I’ll do it, just double-check that their straw is clean, their cages ready.”
“Okay, will you need me later tonight? I reckon if I get their night feed set out—me and a few of the lads want to go around to the clubs.”
“I hope not in that hat. Where did you get it?”
“Oh, I found it, it was in here.”
Ruda smiled. “Well, just leave it, will you? It’s one of Luis’s I kept here so he wouldn’t wear it, it’s disgusting.”
Mike tossed Kellerman’s hat aside. “Sorry, it was just that it was pissing down earlier…Oh, about this guy Kellerman.”
Ruda froze, staring at the blood-red meat.
“Somebody said he was a dwarf, used to work the circus, is that right?”
Ruda nodded.
Mike flushed slightly. “He was found in East Berlin, one of the lads told me he had been murdered.”
Ruda lifted the trays. “Yes, he was, we had to go and identify him today. You ever meet him?”
Mike shrugged, shaking his head. “Nope…I don’t know anything about him, just that I know he used to be your husband.”
“Yes he was, a long time ago.”
Mike watched her carry the trays down between the trailers, stacking them onto a trolley. She returned for the next batch and said sharply: “You going to stand watching me work or are you going to earn your pay?”
“Oh, sorry.”
Mike began to place more feed trays out, and Ruda worked alongside him, until suddenly she banged down an empty tray. “Mike, if you’ve got something to say, why don’t you come out with it?”
He flushed pink, unable to tell her what was bothering him. He was sure he had seen Kellerman the day he died, but he said nothing. She continued heaving out the hunks of meat. “Maybe you can feed Sasha and the two buggers with her.”
“Okay,” he said, already carrying out the second batch of feed. Ruda picked up Kellerman’s hat and put it into her bag, then continued heaping the meat into the trays. Mike was still watching her and she banged down a tray.
“Okay, I married Tommy Kellerman—I needed a marriage certificate for a visa for the United States. Tommy offered it, I accepted, I went to the United States. End of marriage—or is that fertile imagination of yours working overtime?”
He laughed, and then paused at the open door.
“More kids arriving for the tour of the cages! Look at the little gawking creeps.”
Ruda walked with Mike to the loaded trolley. Stacking the last of the big trays, she chatted nonchalantly. “There was one of those kids hanging around the cages the other afternoon, did you see me talking to him? Only came up to my waist, trying to put his hand into Mamon’s cage. I had to give him a ticking off. Did you see him?”
Mike grinned. “I remember, yeah. It was a kid then, was it? I wondered, you know…” He went on with his business and called to her that he would return as soon as he parked the trays. Ruda returned to the freezer. Mike was now sorted out, he hadn’t known it was Kellerman with her, and now that she had the little bastard’s hat, she was safe.
Ruda stared at her hands, her red-stained fingers, the blood trickling down almost to her elbows. She was thinking of Tommy, seeing his crushed, distorted face on the morgue table, and she whispered: “I’m sorry I broke our pact, Tommy, but you just wouldn’t stop.”
It was as if he were calling out to her from the cold marble slab in the morgue, calling to her the way he used to when she teased him, but hearing his voice in her mind, hearing it now, made her feel a terrible guilt, like a burning heat it swamped her.
“Don’t turn the light out, Ruda, please leave the light on!”
Chapter 8
The rain had started again, and the traffic jams built up, the journey to Charlottenburg becoming a long and tedious drive. The baron looked from his rain-splattered window and checked his watch. It was after six. Helen spoke to their driver in German. “I have never seen so many dogs!”
Their cab driver looked into his mirror.
“We Berliners love animals, bordering on the pathological. There are more dogs in Spree than anywhere else in Germany—they say there’s about five dogs to every one hundred inhabitants.”
The baron sighed, resting his head back against the upholstered seat. Helen stared from her window.
“Why is that? I mean why do you think there are so many?”
The driver launched into his theory, welcoming the diversion from the inch-by-inch crawl his car was forced to make.
“Many people living in the anonymous public housing complexes, many widows, a dog is their only companion. A psychologist described the Berliners’ love of animals, dogs in particular, as a high social functional factor.”
Louis grimaced, taking Helen’s hand, and spoke in French. “Don’t encourage him! Please…the man is a compulsive theorist!” Helen laughed.
They passed by the Viktoria-Luise-Platz, heralding the West Berlin Zoo, and their driver now became animated.
“The zoo, you must visit our famous Tiergarten. In 1943 the work of one hundred years was destroyed in just fifteen minutes, during the battle for Berlin. When the bombing was over, only ninety-one animals survived, but we have rebuilt almost all of it. Now we have maybe eleven or twelve thousand species—the most found in any zoo in the world!”
At last, they were near the center of Charlottenburg itself.
“Bundesverwaltungsgericht,” the driver said with a flourish, and then he smiled in the mirror. “The Federal Court of Appeal in Public Lawsuits.”
Helen passed over the slip of paper with the address of Rosa Muller Goldberg’s sister, a Mrs. Lena Klapps. The driver nodded, turned off the Berliner Strasse, passing small cafes and ale houses, and rows and rows of sterile apartment blocks, their shabby facades dominating the run-down street, before he drew up outside a building. He pointed, and turned to lean on the back of his seat.
“You will need me to get you back, yes?”
The baron opened his car door, said in French to Helen: “Only if he promises to keep his mouth shut!”
Helen instructed the driver to wait, and joined the baron on the sidewalk. They looked at the apartment numbers painted above a cracked wide door leading to an open courtyard. The numbers read 45-145. Their driver rolled down his window, pointing.
“You want sixty-five, go to the right…to the right.”
The elevator was broken, and they walked up four flights of stone steps. Dogs brushed past them, going down, and one bedraggled little cross-breed scuttled ahead, turned and yapped before he disappeared from sight. There were pools of urine at each corner, and they had to step over dog excreta. Helen muttered that perhaps the residents were all widows. “Dogs are…what did he say? A social function? More like a health hazard.”
There was a long stone balcony corridor, the apartments numbered on peeling painted doors…sixty-two, sixty-three was boarded up, and then they rang the bell of apartment sixty-five.
An elderly man inched open the door; he was wearing carpet slippers, a collarless shirt, and dark blue suspenders holding up his baggy trousers. Helen smiled warmly. “We are looking for Lena Klapps, nee Muller? I am Helen Masters, I called…”
The old man nodded, opened the door wider, and gestured for them to follow him. They were shown into a room where good antique furniture was commingled with a strange assortment of cheap modern chairs an
d a Formica-topped table. The room was dominated by an antique carved bookcase, covering two walls, its shelves stacked with paperbacks and old leather-bound books.
The old man introduced himself as Gunter Klapps, Lena’s husband, and gestured for them to be seated. He stood at the door with his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“She is late. The rain—there will be traffic jams. But she should be here shortly, excuse me!”
He closed the door, and Helen unbuttoned her coat. Louis stared around the room, looked at the threadbare carpet, then to the plastic-covered chairs. Helen placed her purse on the table. “Not exactly welcoming, was he?”
The baron flicked a look at his watch. “Maybe we should call the hotel?”
Helen nodded, and crossed to the door. She stood in the hallway, calling out for Lena’s husband. The kitchen door was open, and he glared.
“Telephone—do you have a telephone I could use?”
“No, it’s broken.”
He continued to stare, so Helen returned to the room. The baron was still standing, his face set in anger.
“I hope this is not a wasted journey, I am worried about Vebekka, leaving her alone!”
“Their telephone is broken, shall I go out, make a call?”
He snapped: “No!” and then sat in one of the ugly chairs. Helen took off her coat, placing it over a typist’s chair tucked into the table. She looked over the bookcase; some of the leather-bound volumes were by classical authors, but many of the books were medical journals. She was just about to mention the fact to Louis when they heard the front door open.
Lena Klapps walked in. She was much younger than her husband, but wore her hair in a severe bun at the nape of her neck. The gray hair accentuated her pale skin, and pale washed-out blue eyes. She spoke in German.
“Excuse me, I won’t be a moment, my bus was held up in the rush hour traffic. May I offer you tea?”
The baron proffered his hand. “Nothing, thank you. I am Baron Louis Marechal.”
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