“Ruda? You okay? Ruda?”
She opened the door, her face pale, shiny with sweat.
“What you lock the door for?”
Ruda gave a weak smile. “I just didn’t feel too good. I think it must be something I ate. I’ve been sick.”
“You running a temperature?”
He reached out to touch her face and she stepped back. “No, I’m fine now, you get on with your work. I’ll lie down for a while. Goon.”
“I’ll check on the cats, I swear I heard screaming. Did you hear anything?”
“Get back to work, you lazy old so and so. I’ll bring over some food. It was just something I ate, now off… off you go!”
He smiled, walking back to the barn, calling her a slave driver. He didn’t notice that she held on to the door for support.
As soon as Grimaldi was out of sight, Ruda inched back to the table and slumped into the chair by her typewriter. She had felt this same pain before, although she couldn’t remember exactly when, but the pain had been the same. She tried to type, forcing herself not to think about what she had just been through because it frightened her. She was terrified of doctors; hospital doctors in white coats made her shake with terror.
She felt her energy returning, and with great determination she forced herself to continue working, jotting down the week’s itinerary for the work she had lined up for Grimaldi. Almost immediately she felt better.
With Ruda pushing him, Grimaldi continued taking on more training work. As the money came in, they began to buy more and more animals. Weekends he would train them, and she sat and watched his every move. Gradually she began to work alone when he was away, putting into practice everything she had seen him do.
They bought a new trailer and a truck and then one night, he sat her down.
“I know your injuries, the scars, but I was wondering, with you being here, and me away working until we have enough finances, that maybe this would be a good time…”
“For what?” she had asked, dragging out the typewriter.
“Maybe we should see a specialist. They have all kinds of newfangled equipment now, and maybe we should go see someone about having a baby.”
She continued picking up papers, stacking them neatly at the typewriter, carrying her boxes of mail to the table. Over the past few months her little sideline had grown into a lucrative business. Having a semipermanent address helped, and she worked each evening after the animals were settled. Grimaldi sometimes sat and watched her, although he never read any of the letters, he was never that interested.
Tonight, though, he wasn’t prepared to sit. He didn’t want her working, he felt this was too important.
“Ruda, listen to me. Maybe, just maybe, you can have this done medically, you know, artificial insemination. We could at least try.”
“I have enough work cut out for me, without bringing up a kid.”
“I want a son, Ruda. I mean, we’re breaking our backs to get an act back together, so why not? We’d have a hell of a boy, Ruda. Don’t you even want to give it a try?”
She rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter and started to type. He came and stood behind her, massaging her shoulders. He felt her shoulders shaking. She tried to type, and then folded her hands in her lap.
“If it hurts you, then we walk away. I don’t want anything to hurt you, but we should just go see somebody.”
He kissed the top of her head and left her. Slowly she began to type: “Baby-baby-baby-baby…MY BABY. MY BABY. MY SON…”
She stared at the word until it blurred. She touched the paper, the word baby. Nothing had prepared her for this, for Luis wanting a child. She whispered: “My child, he would be mine. My baby.”
It had never occurred to her that there was a way. The more she thought about it, the more excited she became. Would it be possible? Dare she think it could be?
She ran out of the trailer, shouted to old Two Seats asking if he’d seen Grimaldi, and he pointed to the barn. She ran, calling for him, and hurtled into the barn. He was using a pitchfork, heaving the bales of hay. She threw herself at him, backing him onto the bales.
“Luis, Luis…I want a baby! I want a baby…I want I want I want!”
They kissed, and held each other tightly. She was excited, almost feverishly so, and asked him to fix an appointment. She would do anything necessary, and then she had leaned up on her elbows, looking down into his delighted face. “You love me, don’t you? You really love me!”
Luis knew what it meant to her to learn she could not conceive. She had not spoken a word since they had returned from the clinic, and he was incapable of comforting her, needing comfort himself Even when he tried to reach out to her in bed she had turned her back on him.
“Don’t touch me, please leave me alone.”
He was almost grateful that he had to leave for a two-week stint in Chicago.
After he left she didn’t want to get up. She didn’t even open the blinds, but remained in the darkened trailer. She remembered Eva then, a girl she had hardly known, a girl much older than herself. Eva had been in the camp too, like Ruda had survived. After the liberation, when Ruda had been taken to the mental institution, she hadn’t known Eva was still alive—not until she saw her in the ward. Eva had a beard now, like a man. The teenage girl who had always had stories and jokes to tell the little ones now sat on a stool with her head bowed and her face covered with hair. Her eyes stared to some distant place.
Like Ruda, Eva had not spoken since she had been found, but Eva was docile, while Ruda showed signs that she was greatly disturbed. They had to sedate her. Ruda found it impossible to utter a word, impossible to believe it was over. Every night she waited for the men in white coats to take her back to the hospital ward in the old camp. She forced herself to stay awake; the screams and weeping from the inmates didn’t frighten her, she was used to those sounds. What she was terrified of was being taken back, back to the camp. A key turning in the door sent bolts of terror through her. She could not verbalize her fear, could not cry. When the doctors tried to comfort her, she was sure it was a ruse; when they spoke kindly to her, she was sure they had some hidden motive. She spat out the pills they gave her, refused the food. Suspicious of everything, everyone, from the moment she had arrived in the institution, her paranoia grew in intensity when she saw Eva. Now she was certain it wasn’t over, and she knew she had to escape somehow, because any day, any hour it would be her turn and she would become an animal like Eva.
In the end, Ruda made herself think her inability to conceive was for the best. Maybe she could only produce a monster, an Eva. She would not think of a baby, her baby, anymore: She would forget. As it was, the entire episode had taken her back to the darkness of her childhood. She was angry, determined that nothing would ever drag her back again.
Ruda had no real concept of how long she had been unreachable, how many times Luis had attempted to embrace her, show his love and concern. She wasn’t aware he had slept on the couch, tried to tempt her to eat, or that she had kicked the tray from his hands. She was oblivious of the fact that when Luis had tried to tell her that he had to leave for a few weeks, she had told him to fuck off, go wherever he liked, she didn’t care.
Grimaldi had discussed her behavior with old Two Seats, who suggested that all Ruda needed was time. She was just hurting, he said, and this hitting out at Luis was her way of dealing with it.
“She’s just like one of ‘em cats, Luis. They get injured, and by Christ you’ll know it, they’ll go fer you! She’s just hurtin’.”
Luis punched the old man’s shoulder, said perhaps he was right. He never mentioned to her his own hurt; he had wanted a son. And he had left. She hadn’t said good-bye because he hadn’t wanted to disturb her. Ruda had been sitting on the bunk bed, with her old tin box.
♦ ♦ ♦
Luis sighed, his face still pressed into Ruda’s pillow. He rolled over, awake now, and he sighed again. “I w
anted a boy, a son so bad, Ruda…but most important, I wanted him to be ours!”
He sat up and ran his hands through his thick hair and he got out of bed and straightened the bedcover. The photo album had fallen open at an old picture of himself with his father. He picked it up, touching the picture lightly with his finger. “Ah, well! Maybe the circus days are numbered, an’ maybe I’d get a kid who wouldn’t want to go into the ring, it happens…”
Luis stepped up on the stool, still talking to himself. “The Karengo brothers got a kid who’s studying law! Mine’d probably end up in jail someplace, who knows?…Can’t all be warriors, eh Dad?”
About to shut the cupboard door, he saw the box, the old square black tin box at the back. He stretched and reached, then stepped down with it. He tried to open it—it was locked. He went into the kitchen and took a knife, but when he tried to pry the box open, he buckled the lid. He swore as he wrenched and pulled, but it wouldn’t open.
The trailer door banged, Luis turned guiltily: He was behaving just like Kellerman—had he reached this point with Ruda, too?
Mike called out that they were on in ten minutes.
“Ruda said to get over to the ring, the big boss is in the viewing room, and he’s got a scout from Ringling Brothers’ circus with him. We’re all set to go.”
Luis shouted that he would be right there, and quickly hid the box under his mattress. Mike was waiting at the door, and raised his eyebrows at seeing Grimaldi; he admired the old man’s resilience. There he was all done up like a Christmas dinner, and not long before he had been good and plastered.
“Your hand okay?” Mike asked as they walked toward the big tent. Grimaldi gave a big rumbling laugh and hooked a huge arm around Mike’s slim shoulder.
“Son, I’ve been slashed by a lot more dangerous species than a pitchfork!”
Mike laughed, then lifted the tent flap. “She’s all steamed up as usual, pacing out there like a panther…Mamon’s acting up, I hope to God he’ll play ball tonight. It’s those plinths, he hates them…did I tell you the Ringling scout is in?”
“Yeah you told me, son. You know once I had a contract with them, some years back, but they offered me a…”
Mike had gone, and he was alone, talking to himself. He stood in the semidarkness staring at the empty rows of seats. A juggling act was going through its paces in the ring, the performers’ spangled costumes catching the spotlights. He looked to the lighted viewing box; Schmidt was talking with a man sitting next to him, gesturing down to the ring. Then Grimaldi saw a third man, seated just behind Schmidt. He shaded his eyes to get a better view. It was Walter Zapashny, probably one of the finest animal trainers in the world. Grimaldi wondered why he was up there; it made him feel uneasy.
Grimaldi inched down the aisle; he saw one of the hands standing by to erect the cages around the ring and moved quietly to the man’s side.
“Have you seen who’s in the viewing tower?”
The man nodded. Everyone knew, he whispered, it was the big Ringling scout; the word was out that he great Gunther Gebel Williams was about to retire. It meant that the most lucrative circus job in the world, a possible ten-year contract with the Ringling Bros, of New York, was coming up for grabs. Williams had dominated the bill as one of the greatest showmen for almost twenty years.
Grimaldi’s heart was pounding. What he had dreamed of all his adult life could now be Ruda’s. He felt a rush of pride.
“Tell Ruda I’m here, tell her to make this the best show she has ever done…hurry!”
Chapter 14
As Ruda prepared to begin her act, Vebekka sat at the dingy bar, its red light giving the customers an eerie pink tinge. It was only nine, the club was almost empty; three girls wearing miniskirts and tight lace tops chatted quietly at the end of the plastic-covered bar. Vebekka had gone from club to club until she found Mama’s. The bouncer came out of the toilet, looked at the elegant woman sitting alone, and gave her a careful once-over; he was sure she was after young blood—male or female. She’d get it, if she had enough money. He went under an arch, its green and red beaded curtain held back by a ribbon, and started up the stairs leading to the main entrance, then flattened himself against the wall as Mama began her heavy descent. He saw the swollen ankles first, the fat rolling over her gold sandals, as the tiny feet moved down one step at a time.
Mama Magda Braun’s massive frame bumped into her bouncer, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She was talking loudly to a small man who was following her, clutching her poodle. “I am sick to death of those ugly bastards, I don’t wanna see those bitches stealing my girls’ jobs. The smell of them! Emptying the store shelves, bringing crime and bad taste, I hate them! Everything used to be under control, now, Jesus Christ what a mess!”
His high-pitched lisping voice squeaked behind her. “Now, Magda, the shops are doing a roaring trade, you know it, I know it.”
He was referring to Magda’s sex and porn shops in East Berlin. She was making money hand over fist, but hated it when the girls from the East tried to come to her clubs in the West. Magda was the biggest porn shop owner in the West. Now with the wall down, she had been quick to identify the new market; the sex-starved Easties, as she called them, needed an injection from the Westies, and she was giving them what they wanted—but they didn’t have to come swarming over into her clubs. Magda Braun owned four nightclubs, she was a multimillionairess.
Magda’s peroxide curls turned bright pink in the red light, her diamonds glittered, as did the large beaded necklace dangling over her huge bosom. She gave a bad-tempered look around at the few customers. It was early, but she hated it when it was empty. This was her main club, the one in which she had her small, cramped office. Eric, her diminutive husband, called out to the girls, waved to a few couples, followed Magda to a door marked private. The effort of walking across the small dance floor had exhausted what little breath she was able to squeeze through her nicotine-polluted lungs. Her chest heaved, and she gave a phlegmy cough. She could still be heard coughing as the door closed behind her.
Magda checked the day’s earnings on the computer, a cigarette in her crimson-painted lips. Years of smoke had tinged yellow one side of her jowled face. “Our take is down again this week. You think those bitches are at it again? I tell you Eric, you have to watch them like hawks, give me a barman any day, I trust men better than those tarts…”
Eric was peering through a small peephole. “You seen the class act at the bar?”
Magda paid no attention, continued working on the accounts. The boys handling the girls over in the East were shortchanging her, she knew it. They’d have to be taught a sharp lesson.
“I’m gonna check what the deal is with this woman, be back in a minute.”
Magda picked up a pencil and dialed, hooking the phone under her chin. “It’s Magda, can you get over here, send a couple of the boys, yeah?…Yeah he’ll do, no!…Give me another.” She listened and agreed to three of the names supplied by the caller, then she replaced the phone, sighing. They never learn their lesson, they should know you don’t get to be near eighty and rich without learning every trick in the trade.
Eric scuttled back, gestured for Magda to come to the spy hole.
“She’s asked for water, just sits there, she may be a fruitcake—
you want to take a look? She’s wearing good jewelry, that’s sable on the edge of her wrap. Magda?”
“I don’t give a fuck, if she’s paying, then what’s the problem?”
“That’s just it, she’s been here for over half an hour, says she’s got no money, just wants to sit. She didn’t pay at the door, the bouncer wasn’t on duty…Magda!”
Magda shoved him aside and peered through, her heaving breath seeming to stop suddenly. She straightened up. “I just seen a ghost…fuck me!”
She laughed, and sank down into a wide cushioned seat. “Eric, bring me a bottle of champagne, good stuff, and ask the lady to come in.”
Magda nodded. “I know her, she may look like class now, but honey, believe you me, that was one hell of a whore. You know something, Eric? They always come back…one day, they come back, maybe to see where they came from, or how far they’ve gone…but they always come back to Mama. Get her in, this one I’ve been waiting for so long now I can hardly remember.”
Eric crossed to Vebekka, asked if she would join Madame Magda for a drink. He pointed to the office, the door left ajar. Vebekka hesitated, looked toward Magda, who was smiling, gesturing for her to come in, but Vebekka shook her head.
“Thank you, no…I don’t speak German.”
Eric asked if she was English, she told him she was French, and he attempted to repeat his invitation in French.
“Ruda! Come in here, Ruda!”
Suddenly Vebekka felt strange, a little faint, as the fat woman kept calling, waving her over. She slid from the stool. “Excuse me, I must go…”
Eric ordered champagne, took Vebekka by the elbow. “Please, you come.”
“No, thank you, no…”
“Ruda!…Ruda!”
Eric insisted, holding her arm firmly, as one of the girls carried a tray with a bottle of champagne and two glasses across to the office. Vebekka was ushered into the small room, and the big woman held open her arms. “Come here…Come and give me a kiss!”
Vebekka stepped back, repelled. Eric pushed her further into the room, the waitress squeezed out, and Magda waved Eric away. “You, too, get out…”
Disappointed, Eric walked out. He went to the bar and ordered a martini. He noticed she had left behind her purse.
Magda poured the champagne and handed Vebekka a glass, but she shook her head. “No, I don’t…”
Magda smiled and set the glass down and lit a cigarette from a stub, offering the case to Vebekka. She took one, and Magda flicked a Zippo lighter across the desk. “You look very good, I didn’t recognize you at first…”
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