Orphans of the Carnival

by Carol Birch

Nothing fazed her.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Why are we married?”

  “I told you. So you can’t go running off with any old fly-by-night that takes your fancy. This business is full of crooks. Secondly, because your old man would never have let you go otherwise. And thirdly, why do you think?”

  She stepped back and said wryly, “Oh, my dear, don’t tell me. You peeped over my garden wall and fell in love with me at first sight.”

  I have her. Another hurdle flown over, whoosh, there it goes.

  “I understand completely,” he said, “if you find this disturbing. I realize I’m at fault for not telling you straightaway, but I was a coward, I didn’t want to scare you away. You’re a free woman, Marie. If you want me to take you back home, I will.”

  Of course she didn’t.

  “Oh, I’m not going back there,” she said decisively. “I might visit sometimes, but I’m not going to live there ever again.”

  Relief flooded him. He started babbling about how wonderful she was, how mature, enlightened, understanding, but she cut him off. “If you stuff me,” she said, “I swear to God, I’ll come back and haunt you.”

  When she first saw the mummies, she was just like everyone else, transfixed. ’Round and ’round them she went, ’round and ’round, saying nothing, then stood still with her attention fixed on the baby.

  “He has the sweetest little chin,” she said.

  After that she took charge of them. First thing she did was demand new boots for Julia. Those ankle boots were all wrong apparently. “Look at her dumpy little legs,” she said, “those boots make her look like a washerwoman.” She veiled up and insisted on him accompanying her at once to Scheers, where she picked out a pair of knee-high lace-ups that he had to admit did look much better.

  Of course a woman knew more about that sort of thing. He watched, oddly moved, as Marie brushed and combed Julia’s hair, rearranged the paper flowers, the pearls, the feathers.

  “There now,” she said, standing back and admiring her handiwork. “You look lovely. Sister.”

  “And how does it feel to be back in St. Petersburg, Mr. Lent?”

  “Wonderful. Julia was very fond of St. Petersburg.”

  Theo had been out drinking with a bunch of hardened old circus cronies, and the reporter was drunk too, though neither would have admitted it. They were in a corner of the vast parlor of the hotel, beneath a pompous portrait of some bewigged nobleman, and the sound of revelry drifted in from the lobby whenever someone opened the door.

  “Twenty-one years,” Theo said, “maybe a little more, since she last performed in this city. Hard to believe.” To be honest, he was losing track. Years, years, many, many, many.

  “And yet the memory of those spectacular shows remains strong.” The reporter squiggled in his book. He was a big bull of a man who looked as if he should be digging a road.

  “Of course,” said Theo. “Who could ever forget Julia? Many of those coming through the doors now weren’t even born when we last played St. Petersburg, but they grew up hearing stories from their parents about the time the most remarkable woman in the world sang and danced for them. She has become a legend.”

  “And your wife, Mr. Lent?” The reporter looked up. “The equally remarkable Zenora. One can’t help but wonder how she feels performing nightly alongside her predecessor. Particularly as that predecessor is her own sister.”

  “My wife and I are of one mind,” Theo replied smoothly. “Five years we’ve been together as a family—the four of us—my wife and I, Julia and, of course, her son. And a very happy family at that. In a sense Julia is still with us. We feel that our show is a tribute to a wonderful woman.”

  The reporter smiled. Skeptically, Theo thought. “I’m sure you realize—many women who marry a widower shy away from any mention of their husband’s previous spouse.”

  “That’s true.” Theo nodded. “But my wife is a woman of sound good sense. Perhaps the fact that she is Julia’s sister makes a difference. They were very close.”

  “I’ve heard,” said the reporter, “that some people think Zenora is Julia.”

  Theo smiled. Let them think it. Never hurts to keep the rubes guessing.

  “It’s unusual,” the reporter said, “for a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister.”

  “It is.” Out with the spiel. “But as soon as she arrived in Europe to attend the commemoration service, I think we both realized it had to be. Our grief united us, and in time that feeling changed to something more profound. We feel that our arrangement, unusual as it may seem to other people, is a source of constant joy.”

  The reporter didn’t look convinced. “It would be wonderful,” he said, without hope, “if we could speak with your wife, Mr. Lent.”

  “I’m sorry.” Apologetic smile. “She never gives interviews.”

  “That’s a pity.”

  “Yes, it is, but I’m afraid she’s adamant on that point.” He stood up, brushed down his knees.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Lent.”

  “It’s been a pleasure.”

  Theo shook hands with the man, checked the front desk for messages and walked heavily back upstairs to their suite. He’d always been a thin man, a slight man, the years had never put any weight on him. There was no need to feel so heavy, yet he did.

  Marie was sitting at the writing desk with a pile of playbills in front of her and a large sheet of paper on which she was scribbling rapidly.

  “No—no—no,” she said as he came in, “this has all got to go. We really have got to update these, Theo, they’re terrible.”

  She was always doing this. He was tired. “What’s the matter with them now?”

  “You know exactly what’s the matter with them. They’re old-fashioned.” She was thirty years younger than him and was always telling him he had no idea what people wanted these days. Got to move with the times.

  “The way you write!” she said. “It’s appalling. Listen to this—‘this uniquely singular wonder of the natural world’—uniquely singular! Uniquely singular! That’s terrible.”

  “So change it.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  One side of his head felt funny. Another migraine.

  “I’m going for a lie-down,” he said, stumbling slightly against the glass cabinet wedged in between the bedroom door and the writing desk.

  “Theo!” said Marie. “Careful!”

  “Stupid place to put them,” he mumbled.

  Julia and Theo Junior had just gotten back from another stint in Vienna. Good. It was always nice when they came home. He went into the bedroom and got under the purple silk coverlet with all his clothes on, closed his eyes and tried to shut down his brain, but it wouldn’t stop. The door was slightly ajar, and he could hear Marie in the other room talking to herself in a semiwhisper as she crossed things out and jotted down phrases.

  Deep down in his bones was an ache. Marie came bustling into the room. “I’ve got it all worked out,” she said, ignoring the fact that he was trying to sleep.

  He pretended he’d already nodded off.

  “Doesn’t do you any good lying about in bed all day,” she said. “Best to get up. You’d feel better.”

  He opened his eyes. “Marie. I’m getting a migraine.” He closed them again. “I’m just going to lie here for a while.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, but carried on irritatingly doing things in the room, opening drawers and rearranging things, messing about with her hair.

  “Marie!” he said. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Won’t be a moment.”

  He flounced over petulantly in the bed and pounded the pillow.

  “Misery guts,” she said without malice, walking out of the room and closing the door behind her. Pain stabbed him in one eye. He could still hear her, singing to herself as she puttered about next door.

  When he eventually emerged from the bedroom later that day in search of tea, the migraine having settl
ed slightly, Marie had the cabinet open and was hauling out Theo Junior on his pole. “Look at the state of him,” she said, “they’ve let moths get in. We’re not leaving them there again.”

  “Really? Moths?”

  “Look.”

  “They do pay well,” Theo said, “Is there any tea?”

  “There’s a pot of coffee. There.”

  Theo shambled over and started pouring. He’d gotten into his slippers and dressing gown.

  “Good thing we didn’t leave them there,” Marie said. “Wish we could leave them there. You know the market’s slipping, don’t you?”

  Here we go again.

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “You’re always crying doom,” he said.

  “I’m just realistic.” She sat down, picking at the side of the small mummy with her dainty, long-nailed hands. He saw that the table was littered with pieces of old playbills and there were more in the bin. “Why are you tearing these up?” he asked.

  “I’m throwing them away. I can’t stand them any longer.”

  He put the fingers of one hand through the front of his hair and pushed it back, and was again surprised at how far it had receded. “They’re all right for now,” he grumbled, “we don’t want to run out before the end of the season.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said cheerfully, “it’s all under control. I’ve already sent a boy to the printer’s.”

  “Without showing me first?”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, Theo, you know I’m better at this sort of thing than you.”

  “Marie,” he said, “how do you think I managed all these years without you? I did all the playbills myself.”

  “Yes, and they were terrible. Mine are better.”

  He stood drinking his coffee and sifting through the fragments on the table. He caught words and phrases, some of it in blue curly writing, some plain. Wonder of. Root-Digger. Culiacán where. Broadway and. Many an eminent.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  “Do we indeed?” He flopped into a chair. “I’m rather tired, Marie.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but you always are, so we might as well talk now. Give me those scraps.” She held out her hand without looking up from her minute examination of the baby’s hide. Theo gathered up a few bits of paper and handed them to her. “There’s an actual hole here,” she said.

  He yawned, put down his coffee and searched about for his cigars.

  “You left them on the dressing table,” she said.

  When he returned from the bedroom with a lit cigar in his mouth she was stuffing the bits of torn up playbill into a hole in Theo Junior’s side. “So much for the wonderful new method of embalming,” she said, “it’s just sawdust in there.”

  “Is it?” He leaned over, squinting down at her repair.

  “Look.” She sounded indignant.

  “That’s probably just the top layer,” he said. “What’s underneath is the real stuff. Obviously it’s a complicated process.”

  He watched her tamp the paper inside with the tip of her little finger. “Now you know what we have to talk about, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so.” He flopped down again.

  “Look at you,” she said. “You’re not a well man. You’ve been on the road for forty years; it takes its toll. Go and see that doctor again.” Briskly, she set about closing the hole in Theo Junior’s side with rapid, tiny stitches that she drew ever more tightly together. “You’re pushing sixty, face reality. You’ve earned your retirement.”

  “Retirement!” he said, as if it were a curse.

  “You know what I said, right back at the beginning.” She sewed diligently. “I said I’d do it for a few years and then settle somewhere nice.”

  “I know. That was always the plan.”

  “You know,” she said, “we could afford somewhere really nice.”

  “Well, yes, that’s always been our plan,” he repeated, “but it’s a matter of timing. The time has to be right.”

  “It’s never right with you,” she said. She got up and fetched a saucer, took it to the fireplace and scraped a little soot into it.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Aha!” She poured a drop of water from the jug onto the soot and started mixing it with her finger.

  “To be truthful,” Marie said, “the thought of living with these two for the rest of my life is weighing me down. I never thought it would be years like this, you know I didn’t. Theo, you can’t say I haven’t been patient living with them all these years. How many women do you think would do that? Waking up and seeing her standing there. I’ve grown used to them, but…” She started rubbing soot and water over the bundle of stitches with her finger, shading it all in carefully. He stopped listening.

  “And it’s not been easy,” she was saying when her voice filtered back in again.

  “You want to get rid of them,” he said.

  “Not completely.” She propped the baby against the side of the cabinet. “But maybe a long-term hire. Nice returns. Not Vienna obviously, maybe Munich. They’d still be ours, of course, but we wouldn’t have to keep lugging them ’round with us. Think of how much lighter we could travel.”

  “Why do we need to travel lighter?”

  “Oh, Theo, I wish you’d open your eyes. They’re not coming to see her anymore. We’ve been all over the place and everybody’s seen her already. You can’t keep it going.”

  “I think you’re being terribly pessimistic,” he said, sounding hurt.

  “It’s me they come for now,” she said, “Zenora Pastrana. You know, the one that actually does all the hard work after all, all the singing and the dancing, all that silly stuff, you know. All she does, when all’s said and done, is stand there.”

  “If everyone here’s seen her,” Theo said, “there are other places. We’ll take her to Scandinavia. We’ll go and see the Northern Lights.”

  “But Theo,” she said, “what if I don’t want to go? It’s not fair. This is now. That was then.” She pulled up Theo Junior’s white drawers. “There, that covers it pretty well,” she said, and started putting him back in his place. “I know it’s hard to let them go,” she said, “but I honestly don’t see myself staying on the road very much longer.”

  “You really do want to get rid of them, don’t you?” he said listlessly.

  “His arm should keep it covered,” she said, brushing Theo Junior down with her hands. “There you are, Baby, good as new. I don’t think anyone will notice. Theo, you check Julia.”

  He went and sat in the cane chair in front of the open case, leaned back and crossed his legs, smoking his cigar. “Hello, Julia,” he said. Three or four times they’d hired out the mummies, once for a whole two months. Occasionally he thought about them, rattling on trains between cities. Whenever the mummies came home he’d get a certain feeling, as if an old friend had returned. Not that he’d ever really had an old friend to feel that way about. She’s been gone…she’s back. Things are in place. About the baby he didn’t think so much. Most of the time it was just a prop. He’d never gotten as far as thinking what his son might have been. But once, putting the mummies away late one night, he’d touched the boy’s cold hand, and a shaft of excruciating sadness had pierced him. It was nothing like the warm baby fist he remembered.

  Funny. After all this time he could still get lost in looking, just looking at her. Marie didn’t have that. Her face, though hairy enough, was completely human. With Julia, you did wonder. Sometimes still, he wondered. But he didn’t care. These days he was sentimental in his mind, though not to outward appearance. After a few drinks, reminiscing, he allowed it, sinking into a reverie of the glory days when theater fronts heaved with masses desperate for a glimpse, and she’d tiptoe into the spotlight and strike them dumb.

  “She looks all right to me,” he said.

  “You don’t know,” she said, “she could be all fleas under that dress.”


  “We’d know if she had fleas.”

  He went to bed. Later she came in. “I know you think you can’t live in one place, Theo,” she said, “but how about this?”

  “What?” he said unenthusiastically.

  “What about a little fixed concern? Something in the business, then you wouldn’t be bored. What about something like a wax museum? Wax museums are very popular. And we could use Julia and Baby. That’s something no one else would have. We’d be unique.”

  “It’s an idea,” he said with no interest whatsoever.

  No fool, Marie.

  Gets what she wants, he reflected, thinking back. First it’s, oh, yes, we’ll get a wax museum, then we can keep the mummies at home and we’ll all be happy. Chip, chip, chip, every day, like a patient woodcarver. Then she’s pregnant. Oh, well, that’s it, I’m not performing when the baby’s born. Then it’s, oh, well I’m not taking any chances, look at poor Julia, working up to the last minute and look what happened to her. Face it, Theo. Be sensible. We need to look around. Then—what about this, Theo, a wax museum. Perfect! Prime location. We both like Petersburg. Poor old Theo, you deserve a rest. A lovely apartment upstairs. Plenty of room. A nursery. And all the exhibits included, to which we add—tada!—our Julia, our Baby. A home for them, downstairs with the waxworks, pride of place.

  Oh, if it’s what you want.

  He was ill. Sick stomachs, sore throats, splitting headaches, one thing after another. His sleeping had gone all to hell. Hip baths and purges didn’t help. He wondered if it was the pox. He still visited those girls in their rooms, more so since the pregnancy, she wasn’t interested anymore. Could be, he thought distantly, could be. Then suddenly they were living above the museum and Oscar was all over the place, as fair and normal as a little Apollo, a squalling being that punched red fists in the air and tried out faces. Theo kept looking at Marie nursing the baby and wondering if she’d got the pox too. Probably not. Pox wouldn’t stand a chance with her. She’d just clap her hands and send it on its way. She was right, of course, she was always right. The museum was doing well. It was just off the Nevsky Prospect and pulled in a good mixed crowd. She loved it. Humming and smiling about the place while he wandered like a ghost from room to room feeling unreal, wandered like a visitor among his own exhibits, stopping every time in front of Julia’s cabinet. Till one day she said, “We’ve had an offer.”