The Invisible Circus

by Jennifer Egan

  The youth hostel was full. “First come first serve,” said a kid behind the desk, and place-saving was not allowed. The travelers lounging near the check-in desk looked like advertisements for happiness. “There are many hostels in Amsterdam,” said the kid behind the desk.

  Phoebe headed back to the street. Her hands shook as she turned the pages of her guidebook, circling names of other hostels, finding their locations on her map. She marked three spots, then rested on the curb, overwhelmed by the prospect of carrying the heavy backpack even one more step. Her mind reeled again and again back to Karl’s apartment, as if to lessen the horror through repetition, find some new redeeming aspect of the memory.

  Finally Phoebe hoisted herself to her feet. Though the sky was still light, it was evening now, the air heavy with a dreadful sense of too late. She walked ten minutes to a second hostel and found that one full, too; without pause she spun back around and began plodding toward a third, this one back in the direction of the train station along a wide, arid boulevard. Streetcars rattled past, empty and beige. The bottom floor of this hostel was a public bar. Phoebe wove among tables to the owner, whose hands glistened with something from the kitchen. He wiped them, leaving streaks on his apron. Yes, they had a bed; Phoebe nearly folded with relief. His son, a red-haired, insolent boy of about twelve, led Phoebe to a room filled with bunk beds. It smelled of mildew. She longed to open a window.

  She was given a top bunk at the very end of the room, beside a window of rippled factory glass. A ring of dirt surrounded each pane like frost. Carefully Phoebe spread her sleeping sheet across the mattress and rested her backpack against the windowsill. The shower was down the hall and cost extra; there were no doors or even curtains on the stalls, but the room was empty. The floor felt slick. Phoebe went back to the bar and paid for the bed and a shower. The owner was smoking a joint as thick as a finger, and offered Phoebe a hit. She refused politely. She would leave Amsterdam tomorrow.

  A long, vigorous shower improved her spirits somewhat. It was eight-thirty, and through the frosted glass by her bed she saw darkness finally falling. She took everything of value from her backpack, including the bottle of Chanel No. 5, and stuffed it in her purse. She went back outside.

  From a café window Phoebe watched the night descend on Amsterdam. Eating her sandwich and drinking a beer, she found herself longing for company. This was strange, for until now being alone hadn’t felt like being alone. She’d been shored up—crowded almost—by her sense of purpose. Now she felt weak, transparent. She longed to call her mother but this seemed impossible, as if by leaving home she’d closed off that avenue forever.

  There was a small rack of postcards on the café counter, and Phoebe bought one of the War Monument, where she’d first seen the hippies asleep. “Dear Mom,” she wrote, “I just want to tell you I’m fine. I hope you are, too.” It sounded ludicrous, stilted. Phoebe wished she could find it in herself to write, “Everything is great, I’m having a ball,” but the deception seemed too vast to carry off. “Love, Phoebe,” she wrote. The man at the counter sold her a stamp. She had almost no Dutch money left.

  Phoebe mailed the card outside the café. It was dark, and the streets in this part of town were eerily quiet. Phoebe had been curious to see the Amsterdam whores in their famous red-light district, but no longer could muster any real enthusiasm. Still, she was desperate to be among people. The thought of running into Nico or Karl haunted her as she followed the general drift to a livelier part of town where whores lounged like department-store mannequins behind plate-glass windows, chewing gum, reading, doing their nails, as if unaware of the audience gaping in from the street. One woman in a black leather bikini was talking on the phone, twisting its black cord around her calf. Now and then a door to one of these parlors would open, releasing a puff of music and usually a man, both of which lingered a moment before dissolving into the night. To Phoebe it all looked meager, the dregs of something better that had passed. What Karl had said about op-posites seemed to touch all of Amsterdam; the whole city had turned, gone rotten in the eight years since her sister’s visit. Even Karl himself—surely his life had once consisted of more than shooting junkies full of drugs and molesting foreign girls in his apartment. He was his own best example.

  Phoebe felt a hand on her shoulder and yelped, whirling around to see Helen, the younger Australian sister whom she’d met on the boat the night before.

  “I’m sorry,” Phoebe said. “Oh God, I’m sorry.” She took the Australian girl in her arms.

  Helen stiffened, then relaxed, hugging Phoebe back. “We tried to keep your place,” she said, “but the bloody guy wouldn’t let us.”

  “I found another hostel,” Phoebe said. “It’s sort of gross.”

  “Well, look, we’re all back at that pub you just passed,” Helen said. “We knocked on the window, but you were walking too fast. Come have a pint.”

  The bar was packed with young people smoking cigarettes. Diana, Helen’s sister, sat at a table with two American guys who Phoebe guessed were in college. She sat down. The Americans were playing a game of some kind that involved coins and mugs of beer. “You from Australia, too?” one of them asked Phoebe.

  She shook her head. “I’m American.”

  “Where from?”

  “San Francisco.”

  “Fucking A. I love that city, man.”

  Phoebe smiled. She felt deeply separate from these people, as if her experience today had driven a final wedge between herself and her peers. She longed to bridge the gap.

  “What did you do all afternoon?” Helen said.

  “Heineken Brewery,” said one of the guys. “Plus we did Anne Frank’s house.”

  “I meant Phoebe,” Helen said, laughing.

  They all looked at her. Phoebe panicked over what to say, and suddenly was angry at Helen for putting her on the spot.

  “Nothing,” she said dismissively. “Just walked.”

  She saw confusion in Helen’s face. There was a beat of silence, then the boys resumed their drinking game. Diana and Helen opened Let’s Go and leaned over it, planning their next day in Amsterdam. Phoebe sat in silence, sipping her beer. It was enough just to be near them.

  Later, lying on her bunk bed staring at the murky window, Phoebe thought again of Faith’s postcards. At night the stars are so pretty, her sister had written.

  Phoebe had forgotten even to look.

  eleven

  Dear Mom and Phoebe and Barry, From Namur Wolf and I and some others took off to Keims, France …

  Phoebe followed her sister’s postcards from Amsterdam to Namur, Belgium, where she spent a week. In her own company she felt inhibited, shy almost. After dinner each night at the youth hostel, she would linger at the table, then, dreading to be alone, move to the noisy common room until bedtime.

  … because someone knew this French guy in Reims who we could stay with. Well but the poor French guy had no idea we were coming and his apartment is so small …

  When she returned to her room and looked into the mirror, her face looked strange to her, the cheeks hollow, the eyes larger, dark. Objectively, she approved of these changes, but her own reflection startled her.

  … It’s a little crowded but I keep asking people please be neat and they are. P.S. The way they say Reims in Trench, it sounds like someone snorting!

  It was time to move on—overdue—but she couldn’t bring herself to go. Reims, she thought, Reims, and tried to feel anticipation. She wished she had someone to stay with.

  On her second day in Belgium, Phoebe has rented a sturdy black bike and pedaled beside a river to Dinant, a tiny nearby town that Faith had mentioned in her postcards. There she checked her bike at the train station and, still tracing Faith’s steps, followed a narrow street uphill until the houses fell away and Phoebe found herself in an oceanic sprawl of land. It rolled and tossed in grassy swells, curves of bright green. Crushed silver rock filled the road. She saw horses, brown, silky gray, hindquarters flecked w
ith white. The distant hills were studded with sheep.

  A town appeared in the distance. Reaching it, Phoebe was startled by its silence, nothing but a rush and tumble of wind past empty-looking houses. She went inside a tiny shop and bought a bar of white chocolate from an old woman wearing a silk scarf and bright, heavy makeup. When she left the shop, Phoebe was surprised to find several children waiting for her outside.

  “Hel-lo. Hel-lo,” they said, accenting the first syllable of the word so it seemed less a greeting than a kind of chorus, like bird-song. There were five of them, all boys, the youngest five or six years old, the oldest maybe fourteen. All were slim, olive-skinned. Like the town itself, their chipped-looking faces seemed shaped by the ceaseless wind.

  “Hel-lo, hel-lo, hel-lo,” they called, as if it gave them pleasure to say it.

  “Hello,” Phoebe replied. She offered them her chocolate bar, but the boys shook their heads and turned shyly away. Their bicycles leaned near the door of the shop, and the oldest boy mounted his and rode a few paces ahead. The smaller boys clambered onto their own bikes and followed him. When they looked back at Phoebe, she waved good-bye, relieved to see them go. Children made her nervous. She was used to being the youngest herself, noticed only sporadically, following others’ examples rather than setting one herself.

  She continued through the village. The road swung out of town and plunged downhill. The cyclists weren’t far ahead. Phoebe slowed, waiting for them to ride out of view, but the boys, too, slowed down, until it was clear they were waiting for her. “Hel-lo, hel-lo,” they called as Phoebe approached.

  She forced herself to smile. “Avec moi?” she asked with feigned incredulity, hoping to discourage them.

  The boys surrounded Phoebe in a kind of pack. Alarmed, she wondered if her “Avec moi?” had been mistaken for an invitation. She left the town with her five companions in tow. They chattered among themselves, weaving their bicycles in S patterns over the crushed silver pavement so as not to outpace her. It was strange, not being able to speak to them. Phoebe felt like a bad hostess.

  The road ducked under tall trees, and soon they were inside a forest. Wind hissed and gushed in the leaves.

  “Dinant?” Phoebe asked, pointing downhill.

  “Oui, oui,” the boys chanted.

  The oldest rode close to Phoebe. “Pourquoi est-ce-que vous êtes seule?” he said.

  “Je ne comprends pas,” Phoebe said, so haltingly that the boy couldn’t possibly have doubted her. She’d abandoned French for Spanish in eighth grade.

  “Pourquoi est-ce-que vous êtes seule?” he repeated more slowly.

  Phoebe shook her head, embarrassed, and forced a smile. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Pourquoi est-ce-que vous êtes seule?” said another boy, loudly now, obviously sharing in the misconception that repetition combined with volume would get the message across. Phoebe racked her brains. She’d known the word “seule,” but what did it mean? Then she remembered. Alone. The boys were asking why she was alone. Phoebe pretended not to understand. She felt as if they had glimpsed something shameful in her.

  The littlest boy rode close to Phoebe and smiled up at her, revealing a black hole where four front teeth would eventually be. He said something in French, lisping the words, still grinning his toothless, open-mouthed smile. When Phoebe didn’t answer, he kept talking, mocking her, she thought, showing off for the older boys at her expense.

  “I don’t understand!” she cried. “I don’t understand. Please stop talking to me!” She was shouting, on the verge of tears.

  The child’s face went entirely blank. He stopped pedaling abruptly and so did the others, in one motion. They gazed at Phoebe with dark, serious eyes. Instantly she saw that what she’d taken for mockery was no more than high spirits, excitement at the adventure of escorting an American girl into Dinant. Now they looked stung, as if Phoebe had turned on them without warning. Her sharp words hung there, trapped under the trees.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She wanted to say it in French but could not find the words. “I’m sorry.”

  The boys watched her with sad, solemn faces. “I’m sorry!” Phoebe cried with more urgency, but at the sound of her raised voice all five boys turned as one and began pedaling quickly away, back up the hill. The youngest, who was barefoot, lagged behind the rest. He glanced fearfully back at Phoebe, tiny legs straining frantically on the pedals. Finally he stood up to get more leverage, rounded a bend and was out of sight.

  Phoebe burst into tears. For several minutes she stood weeping in the middle of the road, the choking, gulping sobs of childhood. Something was wrong; something was wrong but she didn’t know what. She was alone in the middle of nowhere, behaving strangely, with no one around to help her, and what people were around she wanted only to escape. Wind rattled and shook overhead. The road felt so empty. Had a single car ever driven down it, or was its purpose merely to flatter the landscape?

  Phoebe gazed at the earth beside her, tufts of grass poking up from a rain-beaten hillside. She grabbed a tuft and pulled. The dry, powdery soil released it easily. Phoebe tossed the grass in the road and pushed off against the embankment, walking quickly downhill. Her stomach tightened with the faint beginnings of fear. Trees, road, stone houses with their shutters closed; all of them filled her with dread.

  She walked mechanically. The possibility of panic hovered very near, like a cat brushing her shins. Phoebe kept her eyes on the pavement. The rhythm of her steps seemed the articulation of a single question: What am I doing here? What am I doing here? I could be anywhere.

  Still, she kept the panic at bay. It would all be revealed, she told herself, when she found a way to push herself hard enough.

  Dear Mom, Barry and Phoebe, Wolf and I are back together again THANK GOD!! In Belgium they speak French, did you know that? Everyday we eat a new pastry. The people have simple good lives and we watch the women go shopping with their string bags. But it is a flaw in me that sometimes I get bored. Love, Faith

  At last, Phoebe reached Dinant. Too tired to attempt the ride back to Namur, she waited for the train. It was nearly dusk, the air luminous blue. She stood alone on the platform. When the train came, the conductor helped her with the bike, a courtesy that overwhelmed Phoebe with gratitude. She collapsed into a seat, wishing the ride would continue forever. Sheer transit seemed preferable to actually being anywhere. In spite of herself she began nodding off, head bobbing back and forth, knocking against the window as Nico’s had, in Amsterdam. Afraid she would miss her stop, Phoebe forced herself to stand for the remainder of the ride.

  Finally, after a week in Namur, Phoebe packed her bag and said good-bye to Guy, the youth hostel’s director. He kissed her as he did all his guests, left, right, left, but there was a coldness in his eyes, Phoebe thought, as if already he’d forgotten her.

  She arrived at the Reims train station at six-thirty. The light was thick with dust. A man rode past on a bicycle, a long, droopy baguette tied to the rear. France, Phoebe thought. I’m in France.

  Feeling like Quasimodo under her backpack, she followed her map to a group of beige high-rises outside the center of town. Between them lay large stretches of pavement dotted with benches and skinny trees, suggestive of a park but lacking the density to be one. The youth hostel was inside one of these high-rises, though Phoebe had an eerie sense of being the first and only “youth” ever to utilize it. Everyone in the crowded lobby spoke French and seemed to live here.

  On the twelfth floor she followed a strip of aquamarine carpeting between cinderblock walls to room 1203. It looked like a tiny hotel room, cot, Formica desk and night table, flat indoor-outdoor carpeting. Phoebe felt a wave of unease. The place was all wrong. She opened the window to look down at a group of girls jumping rope on the pavement far below. The sound of their rope slapping the concrete ricocheted among the buildings. The children were singing a song Phoebe recognized, though she couldn’t remember the words. She closed the window, then opened
it again, listening to the song. At the small sink she splashed water on her face and dried it with a rough white towel. She changed clothes quickly and left.

  By now the shops had closed. French people were settling down to dinner at outdoor restaurant tables—candles, half-filled glasses of wine, silver crossed haphazardly over plates. They leaned forward, gesturing with their cigarettes. The picturesque scene heartened Phoebe. This is it! she thought fleetingly, and decided to treat herself to a fancy dinner.

  She chose a restaurant set back from the street, with dark green patterned walls. The tablecloth was white, the cutlery heavy and silver. A piece of lemon floated in her water glass, but what cheered Phoebe most was the single red rose in its slender crystal vase. She leaned back, basking in her own sophistication, wishing someone were here to see her in Reims, France, dining alone at an elegant restaurant.

  The waiter arrived, a good-looking, careless fellow with long-ish blond hair. When Phoebe haltingly explained that she would be eating alone, he removed the table setting opposite hers with a flourish. Most tables were occupied by several people, and wherever Phoebe looked, her gaze snagged on someone else’s. She thought of asking to move but dreaded the waiter’s reaction. She picked up the saltshaker and turned it in her hand, studying it.

  Her waiter brought the wine. He’d begun performing his duties with gross exaggeration, Phoebe thought, uncorking the bottle like a magician preparing it to flap from his hands as a dove. A withering gaze failed to quell his merriment. Phoebe drank and drank, craving that give, that welcome loosening of the world, but the opposite seemed to happen: her focus sharpened, as if she’d donned a pair of high-powered glasses that enabled her to see clearly the pitying looks other diners were casting her way. Her endive salad might have been weeds yanked from the curb, the chicken dish a table leg. She imagined smashing her dishes to the floor, hollering aloud to the room at large, Don’t be sorry for me! Can’t you see I’m here for a reason?