Orphans of the Carnival

by Carol Birch

“Don’t worry.” He lowered his head. “This is purely social.”

  “I’m sick of the lot of them.”

  “Not surprised.”

  “I’m not a piece of meat,” she said.

  “You most certainly are not.”

  No more, he’d promised, after the last one. No more poking and pressing and measuring.

  “Not exactly a doctor anyway,” he whispered, “I don’t think.”

  “These Venuses,” she said, “they’re opened up. You can see what’s inside.”

  “My love, they want you to perform,” he said.

  She sighed. “Do I have to?”

  “I think they’ll be very disappointed if you don’t. I think they’ll never smile again.”

  “They’ll get over it,” she said glibly, but she’d been expecting it.

  “Not the full show, of course.” He leaned close and spoke into her ear. “Just a song or two, and one of your pretty Spanish dances. Nothing too strenuous!”

  “I don’t mind dancing,” she said.

  “And a song? That little Russian thing?”

  “That’s a whole performance, Theo,” she said. “Why didn’t you say? I haven’t got my guitar.”

  “Yes, you have. It’s in the box.”

  “So you knew?”

  “Oh, Julia, you must have realized. You know what these things are like. Lots of other people are going to be doing their turns and none of them are going to be anywhere near as good as you. It’d be peculiar if you didn’t perform.”

  So, after sitting through a great deal of apparently hilarious stuff in Russian and the mediocre warbling of several ladies and a portly baritone, the party was treated to three songs and a Russian dance from the one they had after all come to see. Julia performed as well as she’d ever done, and they applauded wildly, turning their delighted faces to one another.

  “Oh, Julia,” Theo called out, “one more please.”

  “Oh, yes, yes!” cried Liliya Grigorievna, bouncing a little.

  “Sing ‘Lorena,’ ” he said. “A new American song,” he explained to the people, went to take a sip and noticed that his glass was empty.

  She didn’t want to but smiled obligingly and once more picked up her guitar.

  Oh, “Lorena” would slay them. He retreated to the back of the room and refilled his glass. The doors to the veranda stood open. The chandeliers glittered, the crystal glasses glittered, her big black eyes glittered. Big black, wet eyes. He saw Sokolov, his doctor’s stare. He looks like a thin white bird, a crane or something. Oh, what a specimen you are, my jewel. No one else has got what I’ve got, and everyone wants it. Professors want you. A hundred months have passed, Lorena, since first I held that hand in mine. She brings tears to the eyes. Look at them. The parted lips. The fixed eyes. Not one of them can look away, not for one second. Don’t suppose they all understand the words but even so…he slipped out onto the veranda. The air smelled of lilac. Before him, just about still visible through the deepening night, a descent into a steep wooded valley. From out here it was just a woman’s voice, a nice voice, not magnificent but sweet and full of feeling. Hard little worker, my Julia, uses what she’s got. She’s bought you this. This lot, that ridiculously beautiful woman, they wouldn’t give you the time of day if it weren’t for her. Snobs the lot of them. And that pompous old general. Those awful whiskers and that stupid little beard. Those villages we came through, probably full of cholera. What a world. And that fat fool down there stuffing himself like a goose. Still, the same everywhere. Jesus, he could have gone down the sewers himself one time. Back there. Easy to go under in this business. The sultry evening air carried the drink to his head very quickly. No more going under. Not for me. Not anymore.

  She was drawing to a close when he returned to the room, standing by the veranda doors with his glass and his empty grin.

  I hardly feel the cold, Lorena.

  That’s the way, Julia.

  An uproar of applause. The beauty was jumping up and down and clapping her hands, turning to the girl next to her, all teeth and lips and perfect little nose. Sokolov applauded sternly. His mouth constricted to a thin short line, perfectly straight. Theo watched his wife engage with the process of acclaim and congratulation, using all the bits of Russian she’d learned, “Yes, thank you, how kind.” He watched Liliya Grigorievna cross the room like a fawn and embrace Julia, then he watched them converse. Amazing, those two faces close together, their two mouths side by side. It made his head spin. The world could not contain such strangeness. He found himself next to them. They were talking animatedly.

  “Liliya Grigorievna was just telling me that there’s this wonderful fortune-teller in St. Petersburg,” Julia said. “She lives near the circus.”

  “And now he’s going to laugh at us,” Liliya Grigorievna said.

  “Indeed,” said Theo, smiling, “I am.”

  “Theo,” she said later back in their room, “you knew I was going to perform. You brought my guitar.”

  “Of course I did, dear.”

  “How much did they pay us?” she asked.

  He laughed.

  “Theo! It’s not funny. You should tell me these things.”

  “Come on, Julia, you know you’re not interested in all that.”

  “I thought this was a social visit,” she said. “But I find I’m the paid entertainment as usual.”

  “It’s both!” he cried, coming behind her and clapping his hands down on her shoulders. “Haven’t you had a nice time?”

  “How much did Rudakov pay?”

  “Julia,” he said, pushing himself down beside her and smiling drunkenly into her face. His hair was in a mess and his cravat was loose and stained with wine. “You know damn well it wouldn’t mean a thing to you if I did tell you an amount. We did well out of it. You don’t have to worry about a thing. We—we did well.”

  “I’m always the entertainment,” she said.

  “Of course you are,” he said, “because you’re so wonderful.”

  “I like Liliya Grigorievna,” she said later, tucking her feet in under his thigh as they lay in bed. “When we get to St. Petersburg, I want to go and see that fortune-teller.”

  “Don’t waste your money,” he said, “it’s hogwash.” Then after a moment, “Anyway, who was this fortune-teller who said you would travel a very, very long way? A thing just about anybody with half a brain could have told you.”

  “It was in New Orleans,” she said.

  “Oh, your time in New Orleans.”

  “I want to see her anyway.”

  Theo yawned. “Oh, if you want,” he said, “as long as you know you’re wasting your money. Tearing it all up into tiny pieces and throwing it in the sea. Who cares?”

  “Oh, you,” she said sleepily, and in a moment had drifted away silently and completely. There one minute, gone the next.

  Wide awake and still drunk, tears starting in and out of his glazed eyes for no good reason, Theo stared at the moonlight shadows stealing over the top of the curtain onto the ceiling. These tears made no sense, and he didn’t understand them. He only knew he felt terrible. Julia slept by him like a faithful dog. He could feel a pulse beating strongly under the fur in her neck where his hand rested. “It’s not fur,” she always scolded, “it’s hair.” As if it made a difference.

  After a long tour they arrived in St. Petersburg in a high summer of thick yellow heat and many storms. “Here’s where we get you on a horse again,” Theo said. Close by their rooms was the grandest circus of them all. She was tired as hell, and it felt as if they’d been on the road forever.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She’d been getting weepy these past couple of weeks. Sentimental weepy, so that the sight of a dog scrounging ’round a bin or the sound of birds singing in the dark of an early morning would set her off. Now she stood looking out of the window at the gnats dancing in a smoky pollen haze that hovered outside the window overlooking the garden behind their lodg
ings.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and grabbed his hand and kissed it and told him she loved him.

  “I love you too.”

  He could say “I love you” and mean it, at the same time crying out a silent howl of confusion to the heavens. Who is she? Who am I? What am I doing in this strange land?

  “Oh, I’m all right,” she said, pulling herself together. “I’m perfectly fine,” and stepped away and began picking at the garland of small white flowers she was adjusting for tomorrow night’s performance.

  “Well, you’ve got a whole day off. What are you going to do?”

  “I think I’ll read for a bit.”

  “Good idea. Put your feet up.” Theo paced twice about the room.

  “I think I’ll go out,” he said.

  “Bring me something nice,” she said, looking up, “from the pastry shop.”

  “Not in a hurry, are you? I thought I’d take a stroll around.”

  “Not in the least.”

  He went back to the circus, walked about behind the scenes, just strolling with his hands in his pockets, drinking in the smells of the place. Nothing like it. How could he live without this? The circus was in his blood. He’d tried other things, they didn’t work. God! Raising his eyes to the glory of the place. Not so much a circus as a huge palace with columns and frescoes and chandeliers. He’d never forget the sight of her in that ring last night, riding in on a white horse, three times ’round, then dismounting, and smoothly into the dance as the horse is led away. Such a small thing, Julia in that great space of red curtains and gilt, the tiers of boxes around the ring going higher and higher, back and back, with the toffs and the swells with their jewels at the front, and everyone else behind. Oh, you have cracked the nut, boy, you’ve made it, he told himself. One in the eye for the folks back home. From the circus he walked down to the river, over a bridge, back across another, went into a tavern and sat in a corner with his drink, his suave smile imposing itself upon his face as it did more and more these days, even when his insides were quivering. He drank a few more, then walked back, got halfway upstairs before remembering about the pastry shop and went back for a couple of sweet buns.

  When he got back, she was gone.

  He looked in the other room. “Julia?” he said. “Julia?”

  But there was nowhere she could be. She’d gone out.

  He broke out in a sweat.

  She knew exactly where to go. Behind the circus, Liliya Grigorievna had said. The street with the barber’s on the corner, and on the other side a habadasher’s shop. A few doors down, red door, number sixteen. And on the way back from yesterday’s rehearsal she’d seen it plain, as if it wanted to be found so easily, the barber’s corner, the habadasher’s opposite, a quick glance down the narrow street as they passed. I’ll go now while he’s out, she thought. I’ll just knock on the door and make an appointment, I’m sure she won’t be able to see me straightaway. I’ll get back before him, and he’ll never know. Ah, but then I’ll have to get away again, won’t I? One thing at a time.

  It was ages since she’d been out alone. Not since the American tour. She walked past the pastry shop. Her bonnet was deep, the veil very thick and long. A young man was swabbing the steps. He smiled and tipped his head to her, respectful, and she nodded back. It wasn’t far.

  The door was answered by a very beautiful little girl of eight or nine with long tangled golden ringlets.

  “Dobryj dyen,” said Julia brightly to assuage the effect of her thoroughly veiled condition. “Parles tu français, ma chérie?”

  “Oui, madame,” the child replied gravely.

  Liliya had said the fortune-teller spoke good French but no English.

  “I’d like to make an appointment to see Madame Pankova,” Julia continued in French.

  “Un moment,” said the child, withdrawing into the shadowy hall and disappearing into a room at the back. Now that she was here, Julia felt silly. Of course Theo was right. You couldn’t be on the road any length of time and remain unaware of the artifice involved in this kind of thing, but still, she thought. Now and again you got an exception. She had no doubt whatsoever that the gift existed and that one or two people had it, you just had to weed them out from the rest. She heard voices, the child’s and another that cracked and croaked. In a minute or so the girl came back. “If you can wait twenty minutes or so,” she said, “she’ll see you now,” and showed her into a small sitting room with a cheerful fire, comfortable chairs, a samovar on the sideboard and a tall unlit white candle in the center of a round table. Madame Pankova had just seen another client and needed time to remuster her strength, the girl said with the air of someone much older who’d said the same thing many times. She took Julia’s money, asked her to please sit, then poured tea and politely offered the cup, raising her large gray eyes to where Julia’s would have been.

  “Merci,” said Julia, amused by the child’s official air.

  There was a slight hesitation, a flicker of time when it seemed the girl was going to say something more, perhaps ask a question, but it passed and with a solemn bow she turned and left the room, leaving the door open. The sound of dishes being washed came from somewhere down the hall. A bell rang far away in the city, a steady, listless tolling. There was a poster of Paris on the wall, and the wallpaper had a pattern of coiled ferns.

  Madame Pankova entered twenty-five minutes later from an inner room, a short fat woman in a dark blue dress, leaning heavily on a stick. “I have constant pain,” she said by way of a greeting, “constant pain. Nothing can be done about it.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Julia.

  “Nothing to be sorry about. Yeva!”

  She sat down in a high wing-backed chair, resting her stick by its side. The girl appeared and set about what was obviously a familiar routine of putting a battered footstool under Madame Pankova’s black-buttoned boots, which were tied up with indigo ribbons in floppy bows. She lit the tall white candle in the center of the table, placed a worn deck of playing cards next to it, drew the curtains to shut out daylight and withdrew as quietly as she’d come, closing the door behind her.

  “Well,” croaked Madame Pankova, “you’re a mystery woman. Are you going to take that veil off?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I never do.”

  Madame Pankova sighed heavily. She was a swarthy woman with long white hair hanging down under a red handkerchief. She sighed again, looked away, blew out her cheeks in a rude kind of way and looked back. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  “Can I ask anything?”

  “Anything at all.”

  Julia thought for a few seconds, then said, “Does my husband love me?”

  Madame Pankova drank some tea. “Don’t you know?”

  “I think he does.”

  Madame Pankova held up her finger for silence, stared expressionlessly for several minutes at the dark shape before her. At last she leaned forward, wincing and gasping softly as she did so, picked up the pack of cards and shoved them across the table.

  “Shuffle,” she said.

  Julia shuffled with thinly gloved fingers.

  “You’re not taking your gloves off to shuffle? Don’t want your palm read?”

  “No. Just the cards, please,” Julia said.

  Madame Pankova nodded.

  “Is that enough?” Julia asked.

  “Is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Madame Pankova shrugged and looked away as if she’d lost interest.

  “There,” said Julia, “that’s enough,” and laid down three cards as commanded. They meant nothing to her. There was the ace of spades and the kings of spades and clubs.

  “One more,” said Madame Pankova.

  The nine of hearts.

  Madame Pankova stared at the cards blankly for a few minutes, then said, “This is a mess,” and after a longish pause, “You’re having
a boy.”

  Julia started.

  Madame Pankova leaned over with her eyes closed and her head in her hands. Her fingernails were violet, long and thin like talons.

  “Your boy is a traveler.”

  She sat back, opened her eyes and drank some tea.

  Julia’s heart was a distant pounding in her throat and wrists. The blood came and went, not always regular. She hadn’t seen it in a while. Why hadn’t they thought about this? What, was it too impossible to think about?

  “Can you tell me,” asked Julia, trying not to seem surprised, “will my baby take after his mother or his father?”

  Madame Pankova slopped her tea with a shaky hand. How old the hand was, older than the rest of her, a shriveled, shiny-veined whitening chicken claw. “Both of you,” she said. The hand scooped up the cards and shuffled them expertly back into the deck.

  “Shuffle again.”

  The second spread was bigger and mostly diamonds and spades. “Yes,” said Madame Pankova. “He does. Your husband.” Three or four vague meandering forgettables later—it appeared there was some trouble ahead but this would pass and peace would be restored—she suddenly said, “Your mother is watching over you. She is saying, you are mine.”

  “My mother?”

  “ ‘You are mine. You are mine.’ She watches.”

  Dead, then.

  Of course.

  The room was too hot. The fortune-teller pointedly consulted a small watch on the end of a purple ribbon that she drew from a pocket. “One more question,” she said.

  “One more,” repeated Julia softly, “one more.”

  “Come, come,” said Madame Pankova.

  The sound of seagulls passed over the street and settled petulantly somewhere close by.

  “Am I human?” Julia asked.

  Madame Pankova looked down into her lap and said nothing for a long time.

  “Why do you ask?” she said at last.

  “Because,” said Julia, “I want to know for sure.”

  Madame Pankova closed her eyes and raised her eyebrows high. “It’s possible to be human and not know it,” she said, fingering the ribbon in her hands. The minutes stretched, and Julia wondered if the old woman was falling asleep. But then she opened her eyes and stared into the candle flame. Another minute passed.