The Invisible Circus

by Jennifer Egan

  But gradually something else began to happen. As they drove, the gritty stars seemed to shift, realign themselves before Phoebe’s eyes, and her sister, whom she’d barely thought of in days, suddenly felt quite close again. Faith simply returned. She collected there, gathering in around Phoebe like a mist or a change in temperature until Phoebe felt her presence everywhere, perched between them in the Volkswagen, peering down through the cluster of stars, as if this car, these loping hills—the whole of Italy—were encased within a crystal paperweight balanced on the palm of Faith’s hand. She was back. But of course she had always been here. Must have been, hiding as she’d loved to do, giving Phoebe a taste of her absence. She’d been around them and between them, pushing them together—crazy, the thought of leaving her behind, what madness! And what a relief to have her sister back, to feel the world surging back around her in its old familiar shape.

  “What are you thinking?” Wolf said.

  “That we should go to Corniglia.”

  There was a long silence. Phoebe wondered if Wolf was aware of her sister’s return. It seemed to her now that he was—that he’d known all along Faith was there, and kept it secret. “I guess you’re right,” Wolf said, sounding defeated.

  They rode in silence. As the car plunged into darkness, Phoebe felt herself hurtling forward in time until she was looking back from an imaginary future at these days with Wolf, at this very moment. My time with Wolf, she would think, those first days with Wolf, and pictured even now how the memory would break across her, a longing catch to the throat as she recalled their compulsion and wild tenderness, her worries about fate and whether their affair would last. This vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life. Until this moment she had never truly believed it.

  They reached the town and parked outside its walls. Hand in hand they walked up the same sloped avenue they’d traversed that first day. The town felt abandoned by all but a few skulking cats, raking their backs against houses. As they walked, Phoebe felt herself slipping back inside the present time, enfolded with each step, though it was tinged now by a certain nostalgia. Or had it always been?

  Wolf unlocked the front door, then lifted Phoebe into his arms and carried her up the carpeted stairs to their room. Some pressure between them had eased, and they laughed now, undressing each other and falling onto the freshly made bed. Phoebe looked at Wolf’s face, where it seemed she could read every thought. Yet he’d known Faith was there, known all this time and said nothing.

  twenty

  As it turned out, you couldn’t drive to Corniglia. So mountainous was that stretch of coast that the roads all veered inland; it could take hours to get from one seaside town to the next. Wolf and Phoebe learned this in Pisa, where accordingly Wolf parked the Volkswagen on a back street near the train station and left it. Phoebe worried about leaving the car when he’d talked so much about thieves. But he seemed indifferent to its fate.

  Wolf’s dread of going to Corniglia had grown palpable in the days since their Lucca trip. Phoebe would wake in the dead of night to find his eyes wide open, riveted to the ceiling. “What?” she said. “What?” But Wolf shook his head, seeming not to know. He made love with a ferocity that half frightened her, as if by forcing them both more deeply into that moment he might propel them beyond it, to freedom.

  Phoebe, too, was distracted by thoughts of Corniglia, but it was a thrilling distraction, a promise. The sense of a secret awaiting revelation had grown in her. She and Wolf would embrace it together, and in doing so, seal a final bond between themselves. Yet for all her anticipation, Phoebe felt no impulse to move. Days kept passing. It was Wolf who finally said early one morning, “Let’s just go. Today. Get this thing over with.”

  In Pisa they boarded a local train for Genoa. The elusive Corniglia was not among its many coastal stops; they would have to get off one town north, in Vernazza, and spend the night. By now it was nearly sunset; packing, driving, planning their next move had taken up the day. The train was jammed with Florentines headed for the seashore. Phoebe and Wolf were forced to stand. There were groups of warbling schoolchildren, also hundreds of adolescents dangling from the windows with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, trading salvos of shrill Italian. Phoebe watched, amazed by their swaggering naivete, a thoughtless arrogance she could not imagine in herself. She envied them. Yet mingled with that envy was a curious desire to protect these children, shield their innocence.

  Eventually she and Wolf landed facing window seats. The surrounding commotion made it difficult to talk. The train moved languorously as the sun dropped to the horizon. Two leathery older women sharing their compartment pulled sweet after sweet from their beach bags, devouring each with furtive pleasure. Before the train had reached the coast, Phoebe sensed the presence of the sea and felt a wild urge to see it, just see the water spread wide into the distance. She was used to seeing the ocean every day of her life. It struck her only now how much she’d missed it.

  Phoebe nearly cried out at her first glimpse of the Mediterranean. It looked fragile enough to tear, a sheet of thinnest blue silk, streaked pink from the sky. She couldn’t see a beach, but sensed one there, afternoon bathers lingering on the cooling sand, and was overwhelmed by memories of Mirasol, playing on the beach only two blocks from Grandma and Grandpa O’Connor’s house while summer days melted into sultry, bluish nights. At dusk the sand glowed like the moon; she and Faith and Barry couldn’t leave it. Finally their father would come after them, yelling down from the boardwalk, “Come on, you rascals, it’s getting dark.” Then he’d wander down and join them, “just for a minute,” he’d say, lulled by that curious lag time when, despite the darkness, the world still felt gorged on the heat of daylight. He would lie back in the sand with arms crossed at his chest and they would bury his feet, his legs, shrieking and patting down the cracks when he tried to move. Often they got as far as his neck before their mother came outside, calling into the darkness, “Gene? Kids? Honey, I thought you said you were bringing them back.”

  Phoebe sat upright in her seat. For days, it seemed, she’d remembered nothing; now she had an almost physical craving to drift, to give herself up to the past. The City of Fun stayed open all summer long in Mirasol, entertaining the Navy kids. After dinner she and Barry and Faith would go there with their father, who bought them garish colored slushes that ached in the chest when you sipped too fast. From the Ferris wheel Phoebe gazed down at the tingling black sea and felt a tremendous worldliness, out past her bedtime, bathed in the amusement park’s eerie colored light. One man who worked there year after year had a pockmark deep in the side of his face, large enough to hold a marble. Phoebe would stare at him, transfixed by this hole and what secret disaster might have caused it. She thought of him in the off-season, too, his cigarette pack rolled in the sleeve of his white T-shirt, his mouth cocked in a half-smile. Where did he live? she wondered. What did he do besides pull the lever that made the ride go?

  “You look far away,” Wolf said over the din of the moving train. He lifted Phoebe’s foot and held it in his lap. The sweet-eating women winked their complicity.

  Wolf’s hands were warm on her ankle, but Phoebe’s mind drifted from him. “Wolf?” she said, “What ever happened to the terrorists Faith knew in Germany?”

  He looked startled. It had been two weeks since they’d spoken Faith’s name. “They’re dead,” he said. “The main ones anyway.”

  “What about that one woman?”

  “Ulrike Meinhof? She hanged herself in prison a couple of years ago.” Wolf spoke slowly, eyes narrowed. “The other ones—Baader, his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, another guy, Raspe—they all committed suicide in jail. Last October I guess—was it? Yeah, last October. A lot of people say they were murdered.”

  “So it’s extinct now, the Red Army?”

  “Actually not,” Wolf said. “It’s going strong. Why, you thinking of joining?”

  Phoebe s
miled. “Right.”

  “Last fall they kidnapped a guy, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, this big industrialist. Killed three guards and a driver just getting to the guy, held him two months, then slit his throat.”

  “God.”

  “They don’t call it ‘terrorism’ for nothing.”

  The idea of a link between her sister and such bloodletting sickened Phoebe. It would have sickened Faith. “They must be monsters, the new people,” she said.

  “Monsters I don’t know. A few steps further along.”

  “If Faith had been there, she would’ve stopped them.”

  Wolf laughed. “The entire German police force tried to stop them.”

  “But, Faith,” Phoebe said. “I mean, Faith! When Barry threw snails off the roof, she glued the shells back together with Elmer’s glue and they actually lived. You don’t believe me?” she asked, searching Wolf’s face.

  “I do,” he said quietly. “She told me that story herself.” After a moment he said, “Ulrike Meinhof’s still kind of a hero in Germany. A martyr. Kids, especially, worship her, but adults, too, liberals. They see her as an innocent, this pure ideal gone wrong.”

  “Maybe she was.”

  “Maybe. Although it’s hard to say—she’d been in prison since 72, so there wasn’t really time to do much damage.”

  “I guess if she’d killed fifteen people, they’d be looking for another martyr,” Phoebe said.

  Wolf grinned, the first real smile she’d seen on him all day. “Irony,” he said, “from the lips of Phoebe O’Connor.”

  “See what you’ve done?” she said.

  They passed beach town after beach town: Viareggio, Lido di Camaiore, Marina di Pietrasanta, Marina di Massa. Rarely could Phoebe see actual beaches; it was enough to glimpse palm trees, a pastel-frosted slice of old hotel. The tang of salt air mingled incongruously with the smell of pine trees. Phoebe craned her neck to seize glimpses of the sea, boats rising and falling on it like buttons on the vest of someone sleeping, and a familiar excitement overtook her, a sense that something tremendous hovered just ahead. In spite of Wolf she felt alone, a solitary traveler. This troubled Phoebe. She left her seat and curled suddenly in his lap, crushing the German newspaper he’d bought in Pisa. Wolf held her, surprised and pleased, the ladies beside them looking away in embarrassment.

  As the land grew more mountainous, they began hitting tunnels, inside which the train made loud plunging noises as though boring straight through rock. A dank wind filled the compartment. Phoebe endured these interludes, anxious for the sea to reappear. Her gaze and Wolf’s rocked together in the half-dark, but even as they smiled, some tension hung between them. Finally Wolf left the compartment and went out in the aisle to smoke.

  They made a long stop in La Spezia. By now it was dusk, the air a phosphorescent blue. Young girls in summer dresses climbed from the train into the arms of much older men in white shoes, men with silk scarves bunched at their tanned, loose necks. Phoebe thought at first these might be fathers greeting daughters, then realized that of course they were not. As the girls smoothed their dresses and looped their thin arms around the men’s elbows, Phoebe watched, riveted by a sense that what she saw was forbidden yet, in some mysterious way, attractive.

  La Spezia was followed by a wilder stretch of coast. The hordes of passengers thinned. Wolf returned to the compartment smelling of tobacco. “We’re almost there,” he said, sitting back down and gathering Phoebe’s hands in his own, which felt icy. He looked at her deeply, seeming to verge on speech, yet said nothing.

  “I wonder if it’s pretty. Corniglia,” Phoebe said. Wolf let her hands go.

  They sprang from the car in Vernazza, where the train barely paused before burrowing back into the mountain’s flank. The town was wedged in a crevice between two bulges of mountain, its pale stone houses groping partway up the cliffs. Phoebe waited outside a bar with the luggage while Wolf inquired about rooms. An eerie festivity permeated Vernazza, a mix of riotous laughter and desultory music. The orange-tinted light appeared car-nivalesque. Wolf emerged, key in hand, and they followed a steep, cobbled path twisting sharply up the cliffside, barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast.

  Their door was already open. Inside, a man chased a small curly-haired girl through the front hall. Sand fell from her legs on the dark tiles; her feet made a wet slapping noise. From other parts of the house Phoebe heard loud conversation in Italian.

  Their own small room smelled of ammonia. Phoebe heard splashing, shrieks of the little girl being given a bath. Wolf opened the shutters to admit a wet, oceanic smell. The window faced a weave of empty clotheslines dotted with damp pins. “What a weird place,” Phoebe said.

  Wolf smiled wryly and sat on the bed. “Agreed,” he said. “Let’s split.”

  Phoebe sat next to Wolf and he wrapped his arms around her, but to her amazement she felt nothing, not the slightest stirring of desire. It was as if someone else were describing the scene and she was listening, with interest and detachment. Wolf quickly withdrew. He lay flat on the bed, arms folded at his chest. Phoebe stretched out beside him. She felt a curious detachment from her body, as if the throes of these past weeks had been its last and now she were rising free of it. Her mind, by contrast, felt boundless, ready to burst from the small container of her head. She shut her eyes and released it.

  “Phoebe?” Wolf said. She opened her eyes. “Stay here with me.”

  “I’m here.”

  “You’re not.”

  Phoebe turned to him. In Wolf’s face she saw some trouble, like a shadow moving just behind the eyes. “Phoebe?” he said.

  She refocused. “What?”

  “Talk to me. Tell me what’s happening.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What you’re thinking about.”

  “Going up there.”

  Wolf sat up. “Don’t do this,” he said. “It’s freaking me out.”

  “Do what?”

  “Use that zombie voice.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re still doing it!”

  “I’m sorry,” Phoebe said.

  “Stop apologizing!”

  “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Fine,” Wolf said. “Let’s stop talking.”

  He stood up. With angry movements he gathered a change of clothes and left the room to shower. When he’d gone, Phoebe shut her eyes again, giving herself to that drift, the gentle teasing coax of her thoughts.

  Mirasol: the last trip while their father was alive, late summer it must have been, before he’d gone back in the hospital for the last time. By then he was weak, no longer could ride the amusement park rides or even attempt the long ocean swims he’d once favored in the early mornings. Illness forced upon their father precisely the leisure he’d scorned in health; he slept late, lay on the beach fully dressed even under a pounding sun. Still, he rarely alluded to his illness. “I’ll sit this one out,” he’d say as Faith headed for the roller coaster, or to Phoebe, “Bring your lazy old man an OJ, will you?” They took comfort in the day-to-day illusion that he was just under the weather, and Phoebe recalled that last trip as having upon it a glaze of perfection, her parents walking hand in hand on the beach and napping together in the middle of the day, her father taking Barry to the aquarium, the Naval Museum, outings that overjoyed her brother to a degree Phoebe found oddly sad. She and Faith and Barry were exemplary children, returning from the beach well before sunset each day so that no one would have to come fetch them, going to bed when asked without a word of protest. Yet within this harmony ran a jittery cord of apprehension. There was something studied, artificial in it.

  And a strange thing was happening to Faith. She and Phoebe attended Mass each day, and while the priest gave his sermon, Faith would shut her eyes and tense her muscles limb by limb, starting at her feet and moving up, legs, torso, neck, and finally her face, which contorted into a terrible knot. Faith could hold this posture for staggering lengths of t
ime, eyelids aflutter, breath coming and going in gasps while every strand of her slim thirteen-year-old’s body stood out in quivering relief. For Phoebe these minutes were agony; she was terrified the priest would notice and halt his sermon, or that Faith would fall off the pew foaming at the mouth or even die—who knew? Mercifully, the congregation was small, and often she and Faith had a pew to themselves. Only when the priest reached the Last Supper did Faith suddenly relax. A tired, peaceful smile would float to her face.

  After church Faith usually slept, in the car, on a couch or the sand, devouring slumbers much like the ones their father was prone to. But the exertions in church seemed to drain her of something, leave her weak. On the Scrambler one night she took the outside seat as usual, but when Phoebe and Barry were flung against her, Faith lost control of her limbs; twice her head slammed back against the metal beam with an awful thunging noise. After the ride Barry left the car but Faith sat stunned, gripping her head. “Should I tell Daddy?” Phoebe asked.

  “No!” Faith said, sitting up. “No.” When they departed the ride, she was smiling again, a manic grin overlaid on her worn-out face, as if by failing for one instant to engage and astonish their father, she would be delivering him to his illness.

  “Faith, what’s that thing you keep doing in church?” Phoebe asked that night as they lay in bed, Faith cupping one palm around the lump on her head.

  “Praying hard,” her sister said.

  Wolf returned from his shower, wet-haired and somewhat calmer. He and Phoebe were on best behavior now, like strangers sharing a train compartment. Phoebe showered, washing vigorously, possessed of a need to be absolutely clean. She combed the hair straight back from her face, pleased by the plain, childlike result. She wore her white summer dress. The bedroom seemed tiny with both of them in it.

  They went back outside. Wolf took Phoebe’s hand, less a gesture of affection, she thought, than a desire to anchor her. Huge chunks of limestone were piled in a seawall at the harbor’s edge, and they hoisted themselves up to sit on one. The harbor was tiny, like a playground for the painted fishing boats. The sea looked dark and vast, streaked with silver bands of moonlight. Couples dined in the square nearby; sounds of their laughter and dishes lingered a moment, then vanished.